SYRIZA’s Tsipras: South European debts should be partially cancelled

“The first challenge for 2014 is to reverse the policy of austerity. We must plan an exit from the crisis that benefits society and the people. Therefore, part of the debt Southern European countries hold must be cancelled and the rest restructured and used to fund policies of growth that create work and stable jobs,

The SYRIZA leader said his candidacy for European Commission president is a means to support his party’s positions. “We are the only ones expressing an alternative option to neoliberalism…Although we are an outsider in this battle, we have a (major) advantage – our competitors are supporters of a system that has failed, they are the powers that belong to a system that can no longer win the people’s trust,” he was quoted as saying.

“Divisions (in Europe) are not geographical but political. Our great challenge is to persuade the countries and peoples of the North that their real interests lie not in continuing the policies imposed today which include the systematic resort to new loans. There is a foul cycle: austerity-recession-debts-loans. We want to break this,” he said.

According to the SYRIZA press office, the interview took place in Madrid on December 15, 2013, on the sidelines of the European Left Party’s congress, where Tsipras was named a candidate for the presidency of the European Commission.

Source: AMNA