‘There Is No Way You Are Leaving This Room’: The Creepy Talk From Inside the ‘Violent’ Greece-EU Negotiation

A Greek exit from the Euro was reportedly closer than ever at 6am European Time on Monday, 13th July 2015. It followed 14 hours worth of talks between German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Greece Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. That is until the unelected president of the European Council Donald Tusk got his words in: “Sorry, but there is no way you are leaving this room.”

There, in just 11 words, lies the problem with the Euro and the EU; it’s not up to the member states. It’s up to the Eurocrats who have spent their whole lives dedicated to building an undemocratic, European superstate which has little regard for the will of the people of its own membership countries.

The Financial Times report about the talks sheds light on the “extremely hard, violent even” round of talks that sounds more like it descended into a shouting match in a playground than a high level, diplomatic summit. But that is probably because the outcome of the meeting may well have been worse than any of these Eurocrats could have ever genuinely imagined.

Their whole project, decades of work, trillions of pounds, dollars, euros, marks, drachma, lira, francs, and all the rest poured into their ideal of a centralised Europe with suffocating control over national parliaments – all to be undone by a tiny little collection of islands closer to Beirut than Paris? Sacre-bleu! 

Here’s what the FT said:

After almost nine hours of fruitless discussions on Saturday, a majority of eurozone finance ministers had reached a stark conclusion: Grexit — the exit of Greece from the eurozone — may be the least worst option left.

Michel Sapin, the French finance minister, suggested they just “get it all out and tell one another the truth” to blow off steam. Many in the room seized the opportunity with relish.

Alexander Stubb, the Finnish finance minister, lashed out at the Greeks for being unable to reform for half a century, according to two participants. As recriminations flew, Euclid Tsakalotos, the Greek finance minister, was oddly subdued.

The wrangling culminated when Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister who has advocated a temporary Grexit, told off Mario Draghi, European Central Bank chairman. At one point, Mr Schäuble, feeling he was being patronised, fumed at the ECB head that he was “not an idiot”. The comment was one too many for eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who adjourned the meeting until the following morning.

“It was extremely hard, violent even,” said one participant.

So what was the outcome of it all? Effectively a partial outsourcing of Greece to the Troika – the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. Basically, as per the deal that was forcibly hashed out by Chancellor Merkel, President Hollande, Prime Minister Tsipras, and President Tusk, around 25 per cent of Greek national infrastructure will now be privatised and sold off. This is nothing short of a national embarrassment for Mr Tsipras, and perhaps Mr Farage was correct last week when he wrote for this parish that we may be seeing the back of the Greek PM before we know it.

“They crucified Tsipras in there,” the FT.com quotes a ‘senior eurozone official as having said, “Crucified.”

And they’re crucifying Greece alongside him. ZeroHedge is right: “In other words, Greece will be liquidated piecemeal to repay creditors. In even other words, the proceeds from the Third Greek Bailout will not only not reach the Greek people, but Greece will have to sell itself in pieces to top off the creditors’ funding needs.”

Just over 20 per cent of the bailout, funded by the privatisation of “airplanes, airports, infrastructure and most certainly banks” – or even Greek islands – will find its way into alleviating the plights of the Greek people. Most of these actions, and this money, is for the international creditors. And it is clear that as far as the Eurocrats are concerned, the Greek people can go to hell. How does this bode for Britain, and Brexit? Not well.

If they’ll “crucify” the Greek PM for having the nerve to want his country to remain sovereign, imagine what they’ll do to British Eurosceptics who might herald the collapse of their entire project, not just their monetary union, through a few months of effective political campaigning.