Συνέντευξη του Αντιπροέδρου της Κυβέρνησης Θεόδωρου Πάγκαλου στο BBC στο δημοσιογράφο Malcolm Brabant

(Αγγλικό κείμενο όπως ακούστηκε στην εκπομπή του BBC World Service)

PANGALOS: I have been 11 years, in the foreign affairs council of the European Union and I was there with Lord Geoffrey Howe, Mr Andreotti and Mr Genser from Germany. I don’t think the situation would be what it is today if that problem was discussed between, let’s say Jacques Delors in the commission, Mitterrand, Thatcher and Kohl. This is another level of leadership which we don’t have today most unhappily. The question is what the quality of leadership is and the quality of leadership today in the union is very, very poor indeed

BRABANT: There will be many people to say that Europe is right to be angry with you because Greece has for example cooked the books to get into Europe, it falsified its statistics.

PANGALOS: I wouldn’t agree about the first BRABANT: You didn’t cook the books?

PANGALOS: We didn’t do it more that Italy or Belgium or France SRABANT: So you did cook the books.

PANGALOS: Everybody did, Everybody did, You know it’s not something that sounds like an Agatha Kristie novel. We simply put some amounts of money in the next year that arranges you better but this is what everybody did 3nd Greece did it in less extend than Italy for instance at the moment of the creation of the euro zone.

BRABANT: Is Greece going to survive?

PANGALOS: Greece has survived you know from conquerors and wars we survived the ottoman empire we survived the German occupation by the way we’ll survive the economic crisis.

BRABANT: On the issue of the German occupation, there are many villages in Greece which had massacres and are still trying to get compensation.

PANGALOS: You used an understatement. Towns were destroyed; Hundreds of thousands of people were assassinated and killed. We don’t want to open it again, the chapter of the WWII but there is an issue that stands there and we have to face it sometime. They took away the Greek gold that was in the Bank of Greece, they took away Greek money, and they never gave it back. This is an issue that has to be faced sometime in the future, i don’t say they have to give back the money necessarily but they have at least to say thanks. And they shouldn’t complain too much about stealing and not being very specific about economic deals.

Share