Wieser puts cost of 2015 ‘negotiations’ at 200 billion

The first six months of the SYRIZA-Independent Greeks government in 2015 didn’t just cost Greece 100 billion euros, but “probably twice as much,” the former head of the Euro Working Group, Thomas Wieser, told Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant in an interview.

Crucially, he believes that it wasn’t just then finance minister Yanis Varoufakis who was to blame for that huge toll, but the entire Greek government of the time, led by Alexis Tsipras.

The reasons cited by Wieser for the doubling of the cost of the government’s “negotiations” with Greece’s creditors are “the financial contraction, the lack of investor confidence and the blows the Greek banks suffered.” He went on to stress the decisive role that then Eurogroup head Jeroen Dijsselbloem played in the eurozone extending a proposal to Tsipras in the summer of 2015, when the climate was particularly negative for Greece.