
Varoufakis to Publish Notorious Eurogroup Recordings from 2015 Meetings - znpy
https://greece.greekreporter.com/2020/02/14/varoufakis-to-publish-notorious-eurogroup-recordings-from-turbulent-2015-meetings/
======
tasubotadas
That's a really shitty move.

>a USB of the conversations he had secretly recorded while attending a
Eurogroup discussion in Brussels

People in private converse completely differently (more freely) than in
public. Judging people on what they said there by a public standard (it's
impossible that this will not happen) is extremely unfair. Especially since
Varoufakis knew that he will be recorded, he has probably chosen his wordings
accordingly.

~~~
odshoifsdhfs
While what you say is true, the contents of these meetings should be public
knowledge. A lot of citizens of a few countries had their lives almost
destroyed by the decisions of these politicians, so is only fair they know
what was discussed, who defended them, etc.

Let us not forget the pressure the ECB (and other european institutions) put
on _some_ countries that have come to light after the fact. (Like only
allowing emergency liquidity assistance to be used based on bailout
conditions, thus interfering and blackmailing supposed sovereign governments)

edit: And to be fair, while I don't like Varoufakis, the fact his party wants
these recordings to come to light, means there is probably something there are
is damning to someone

~~~
CarelessExpert
> While what you say is true, the contents of these meetings should be public
> knowledge.

I honestly don't think it's that simple.

While decisions should _always_ be public, in order to come to reasonable
compromises on issues, it can be valuable for leaders to be able to have
closed-door conversations outside of the spotlight, where they don't have to
engage in political grandstanding; after all, it's that kind of compromise
that allows democratic systems to function.

In fact, I would make the claim that at least one reason why the US democratic
system has become so utterly paralyzed by polarization is because so much of
political debate is now happening in the spotlight of social media, instead of
behind closed doors where politicians can have the more nuanced conversations
that might displease an electorate that is too busy cheering for their team to
worry about actually getting anything done.

That's not to say this isn't without peril. Behind closed doors, corruption
might happen as easily as compromise. I'm just not convinced the risks
outweighs the benefits.

~~~
odshoifsdhfs
When these discussions impact so many people (various countries affected) I
don't believe they should be kept secret.

Lets (just for example, I am not saying it happened), during that meeting, the
German/French Finance minister said: 'I don't care about the Greek people, we
can't let German/French banks fall, so do what you must if you ever want the
ECB to lend you money'. Wouldn't the greek people deserve to know and make up
their mind about their part in the EU project?

(again, I am not saying this happened, but I can see similar backdoor deals
being put forward)

Lets not forget that any opposition to the EU project by the citizens is seen
as misinformed or misleded people. It is never the EU's fault [1]

[1] - [https://torrentfreak.com/eu-commission-portrays-
article-13-o...](https://torrentfreak.com/eu-commission-portrays-
article-13-opponents-as-a-misled-and-misinformed-mob-190215/) (Sorry, no time
to search for other source, but the comments were also published in my local
newspapers)

~~~
olivierduval
And even if it was the case... Maybe the logical reasoning is something like:
EU need some worldclass banks to be independant, so we can't let a single
country trash everything for all other EU countries.

I can understand that Greek people would be angry to be "sacrified"... and
that's why that kind of meeting is secret! Because to govern is not only to be
elected but sometimes to have to take bad choices, when only other choices are
worst

~~~
tsimionescu
If that were the case, the politician would have to be able to explain that to
the electorate and convince them of it. If they can't, then that decision
should not be taken.

That's what democracy should mean - we don't elect representatives so that
they can take decisions we don't want but that they think are good for us. We
elect representatives because direct democracy doesn't scale.

~~~
olivierduval
Actually, that's 2 different points of view on democracy: do we elect people
to to do what we want now or to do what is best for us in the long run ? And
who is "the people" ? The majority of the numbers (without any though for all
minorities) ? The loudest minorities ?

At best, both would be same: elected people would explain to the people what
is best for them and convince them, then people would want what is best for
them in the long run.

But sadly, nobody like to be sacrified now for the long term better good of
all. And politicians need to be reelected. So politicians have to hide and
manipulate to some extend (for what they think is the greater good of most of
the population)...

"Crowd wisdom" is nice for really specific matters... but not really for
managing a population with diversities in the long run.

------
lucianoq
To the people who think Greece deserved that:

lender is responsible for checking how much the borrower can take. My bank
reasonably doesn't give me a billion. Default likelihood exists because there
is an interest that prices it. When default happens, shame on the borrower and
shame on the lender for having been a bad checker or just shame on no one if
that default was one of the "expected" and covered by all the debt+interest
already cashed in.

An any case increasing suicide-rate and child mortality-rate is not the right
answer, unless you are called "mafia" or "IMF".

~~~
mrtksn
So you argue that it is O.K. to game the bank and live a lavish life
destroying your own way of living and if the bank catches up and wants you to
take measures so you can pay back, the right thing to do would be to jail the
people who were gamed or conspired with the people who gamed the bank and
simply continue the lavish life and let the people who dod not manage to game
the bank(some richer and some poorer than you) keep writing checks to you so
you can sustain the lifestyle you achieved by gaming the bank?

Do I get this correct?

~~~
tsimionescu
No. The point you are missing is that it is also not ok for the lender to lend
everyone a billion dollars, wait for people to default, and then go ask the
government to give them a billion dollars back because otherwise they will go
bankrupt.

If the supply of money has essentially been exhausted, then both borrowers and
lenders have been doing something wrong, and it should be BOTH that suffer, so
that both are incentivized not to resch this point again. What happened in
Greece instead was that only the borrowers suffered, the lenders got all their
money back.

~~~
fifnir
> What happened in Greece instead was that only the borrowers suffered, the
> lenders got all their money back.

Even worse, it'll be the borrower's __children __who will suffer the
consequences.

------
petermcneeley
This is about "elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy" It
reflects the anti democratic perspective of the Eurogroup and is one of the
most fundamental political issues of our times.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/markcarrigan.net/2017/05/08/ele...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/markcarrigan.net/2017/05/08/elections-
cannot-be-allowed-to-change-economic-policy/amp/)

~~~
pavlov
Greece voluntarily joined a larger currency zone and reaped the benefits for a
decade.

Should state elections in Mississippi drive US Fed policy?

~~~
xfs
Reaped the benefits? Greece's GDP dropped 30% since 2008 it and was forced
into austerity by the Troika to move debts from the left pockets of Deutsche
Bank to the right pockets, with the interests paid for by Greek tax payers.

~~~
rumanator
> Reaped the benefits? Greece's GDP dropped 30% since 2008

Most of it was due to the fact that Greece had forged their nation accounting
to falsify their actual state and hide sovereign debt, and once they faced
bankruptcy they had no alternative than to come clean and straighten their
accounting.

Another important fact that is oddly left out by proponents of the "austerity
is a conspiracy" rhetoric is the fact that EU's national accounting reform
kicked into effect in 2014, and included anti-accounting engineering measures
which were highly abused to artificially inflate GDP and mask sovereign debt.

> it and was forced into austerity by the Troika

This conspiracy theory is absurd, as it weirdly imits the fact that member-
states that underwent bailout processes had already exhausted their own access
to sovereign debt markets resulted from their own financial and economic
colapse, and the ECB/EU/IMF trio were quite literally the last people in the
whole world willing to lend emergency funds that helped them soften the blow
of the problem these countries' governments created to themselves over the
years.

~~~
xfs
Look, I'm no Greek, and you're entitled to your opinion. The problem is this
is exactly the same kind of finger pointing and the Greeks (the Spaniards, the
Italians, etc) are the spoiled brats rhetorics that are creating toxic
politics in Europe and causing the rise of far right populists. I wouldn't
imagine a rhetoric where evicted homeowners are blamed for causing 2008 crisis
with irresponsible borrowing instead of the Wall St.

~~~
rumanator
> The problem is this is exactly the same kind of finger pointing and the
> Greeks (the Spaniards, the Italians, etc) are the spoiled brats

You're getting emotional and in the process trying to out words into others
people's mouths for no good reason. Greece's problems were a political and
institutional problem, and it's not possible to hide this fact and its
consequences. You cannot have a string of governments patently and
systematically committing state-wide accounting fraud, and even resorting to
paying consultants to optimize their fraud, and still try to spin it as
emotional pettiness. Eventhough the actual Greek people had to bear the blunt
of the problem, that changes nothing with regards to the problem, what caused
it, andwho were responsible for it.

------
aazaa
This article does a poor job of explaining what could be controversial about
the 2015 Eurogroup Meeting. Who cares? This just sounds like Euro-Politico
Soap Opera.

After some digging, I found this:

> The Eurogroup on the 11 July 2015 discussed the request by the Greek
> authorities for financial assistance from the European Stability Mechanism
> (ESM) and their new proposals for a reform agenda.

[https://www.europeansources.info/record/extraordinary-
eurogr...](https://www.europeansources.info/record/extraordinary-eurogroup-
meeting-11-12-july-2015-euro-summit-brussels-12-13-july-2015-european-council-
brussels-12-july-2015/)

So presumably, the recordings provide evidence of some kind of back-door deal
between the EU and Greece as terms for refinancing its debt.

~~~
mrtksn
As far as I remember, Varoufakis was personally offended that the eurocrats
did not take him seriously and did not engage in a discussion of his ideas. He
wrote about it several times, he sounded extremely disappointed that you can't
have an academic discussion on that table.

I had a really hard time to sympathise with him as I got the impression that
he didn't pay attention to the reality of the situation and kept complaining
that it's not like the way he likes it.

He seems like a nice guy to drink with but not a person you would like to do
business. My guess is that the recordings will prove how cool and smart is he
and it wasn't his fault.

~~~
xfs
> he didn't pay attention to the reality of the situation

Or he paid too much attention to the reality of the situation.

According to him, as a professional economist, the Euro is structurally
unsustainable and is going to implode in the next 2008 because of the way the
EU is set up politically creating a situation of a central bank without a
country and countries without central banks.

What angered him is the way Eurogroup bureaucrats pretend this situation does
not exist, even when they themselves admit they understand the same thing,
which, to an academic like him, is a crime against logic.

~~~
mrtksn
See, here is the problem: This was not the topic of the meetings.

They did not convene there to fix the grand issue that was well known since
the inception of the Euro. Not really a scientific discovery he made, a hot
topic since ever.

Some professional economists argue that the current capitalist economy is not
sustainable, how well do you think it will go if an economist brings this up
in his meeting with his bank about the restructuring of his debt he/she racked
up?

It's simply ridiculous. It's like those tech people over-obsessed with the
technical aspect of an issue who get a managerial job and screwing up royally,
get fired and keep bugging people about how company X is doomed because they
did not implement his tech idea.

He simply did not understand what job he got and where he is. He thought that
he had all the answers for all the problems of the world and he can fix them
in those meetings with the eurocrats but they did not listen to him.

It's cringie.

~~~
xfs
I'm not talking about _the_ meetings either.

The meetings were even simpler: he went there for debt negotiation with an
election mandate to not capitulate and with the most open mind for compromise,
and was immediately handed an ultimatum to capitulate, with quote verbatim
"elections cannot be allowed to change economic policy."

The crime against logic was what he discovered afterwards.

~~~
mrtksn
Okay, he could have not capitulated and let the electorate face the music of
their decision.

It was a referendum among the Greek people about what their government should
do.

You can't hold a referendum about what other people should give them.

The UK got a Brexit referendum and they got out. Nobody would have cared if
they held "EU gives as market access but we do not allow Europeans coming over
and work referendum" which is what the UK essentially wants.

~~~
xfs
He could. He was committed to a Grexit, which he calculated to be
substantially better for Greece than what it has now. Then he got immense
political pressure and death threats to his family.

~~~
rumanator
> He was committed to a Grexit,

That was his personal political goal but not Greece's collective goal or will,
and he did nothing more than to run political manoevers to try to manipulate
Greeks to assume there was a ridiculous conspiracy by the whole world against
them.

------
phlipski
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. All citizens deserve to know what their
politicians are saying behind closed doors.

~~~
koolba
That type of blanket statement is a great example of theory vs. practice.

In theory you’d want everything to be public in the interest of informing your
populace.

In practice that’s nonsense. There’s genuine national security concerns,
forthright debate of alternatives by advisors, and discussions of limits on
negotiating positions.

Earring on the side of transparency is a good idea but there’s a whole lot in
government that should never, and will never, be public.

~~~
tsimionescu
How can the public take informed decisions if the reasoned debate is always
assumed to be held in secret?

OK, national security and foreign negotiation is a special topic where secrecy
can be warranted. But if the government of a country or union of countries is
considering, say, pay cuts, why on earth would the population not be entitled
to hearing all sides of the argument?

~~~
tgv
How can politicians take responsible measures if they can be called out on any
nonsensical thing?

Not that I'm against transparency, but there really are two sides to this. In
the best case, politicians act in the interest of the people, which makes
publication of their private dealings unwanted. In the worst case, they act
against the interest of the people, which can only be dealt with by complete
openness and independent justice. In practice, there's a balance between the
two.

And it's worse if the decision makers are judged by people that are only
partially affected, such as in EU decisions.

~~~
tsimionescu
I disagree completely.

If there were real transparency, the public can also, in time, grow together
with their politicians, and understand why certain decisions must be taken,
and can help the public take a more active and measured role in their own
government.

Controlling the actions of politicians who explicitly act against the public
interest is at best a minor win. Open and honest dialog is the much more
important aspect of this.

And the best case of this is - a politician working for the public interest
convinces people to be mindful of their long term goals even when it
contradicts their short term goals.

------
jnmandal
People deserve to hear this. Varoufakis has tried to go through the proper
channels to make this public. Now DiEM 2025 (his party) has every right to
self-publish these recordings. I for one welcome the transparency.

------
leto_ii
Not directly related to the article, but here's a bit of context regarding the
industriousness of different populations:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_annual_labor_h...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_average_annual_labor_hours_in_OECD_countries)

As can be seen, Greece is towards the top and Germany close to the bottom of
the ranking.

This should not be taken as saying that the Greeks are better than the
Germans. It's just that individuals in Greece, like those in many other
places, spend their lives working hard and they don't deserve to suffer for
the corrupt dealings, incompetence and prejudice of their or other countries
ruling elite.

~~~
champagneben
That list speaks nothing of industriousness. It's about how many hours are
spent at work. Most people who have experienced working in different cultures
could tell you that that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how
productive people are at work or how much actually gets done.

~~~
leto_ii
Productivity is not the same as hard work.

A guy with a pickax can work very hard and still be a lot less productive than
a guy with an excavator.

------
dimig
If we wanted to release them, he would have already. Clearly he won’t, cause
this could backfire at him. Most probably it will be evident that he was not
really participating in the negotiations about the future of his own country
and he was literally just a listener (and eves dropper) responding with
politically correct generalities. I really want him to publish them, in order
to bust the image he is trying to build (that of some type of savior). He
never will, unfortunately. He “threatened” to do it to get attention, such as
the one he gets in this thread, because he can sense that he has become
irrelevant. Please people, stop taking him so seriously.

------
leto_ii
Might be worth taking a look at _And the Weak Suffer What They Must?_. While I
still think Varoufakis is a bit too much of a calculated politician, the book
is compelling in showing that the treatment imposed on Greece stemmed to an
important degree from the creditor state's desire to save their own banks and
from cultural animus.

------
Gravityloss
This is a really good chance for EU to become more open and organized.

I know of MEPs that have pushed for more open decision making in the past, and
not making a lot of progress.

------
buboard
Whatever is in these recordings, is probably meaningless. We know EU is a
bureaucratic organization, we deal with it all the time in business, in
research funding, in financial filing, etc etc. We also know that people argue
a lot, thats why there isn't a central government, and the rules are based on
consensus, not majorities. At best he should give them to an interested
journalist, who could report on whatever is interesting to be reported.
Publishing them wholesale just reeks of egomania.

As a greek, this kind of thing being "news" is insulting to me. This guy is a
veritable idiot: a rich boy academic with little-to-show, who became popular
for talking in economic gibberish to the most foolish part of the readers of
The Guardian(1). After he was summarily dismissed at a cost of at least 100B,
which caused needless pain and the first capital controls in my life, he
proceeded to write a novel, make a movie, and write another novel for his
personal vendetta. He now leads a tiny party of the worst champaigne
socialists of europe[2] (who thankfully are on their way out of life). Yes, we
have scumbags of this kind in this country, but this is not a representative
specimen, or at least it shouldn't be the model of greek citizend who are
struggling to catch up with the rest of europe.

1) I 've been tricked to watch a lot of his speeches. I couldn't find a single
damn coherent actionable proposal there.

2) [https://diem25.org/ap](https://diem25.org/ap)

~~~
knbknb
I agree with you. He likes to give long speeches, but doesn't have anything to
say.

------
tobltobs
My first thought was: "Did he write a new book?"

And indeed, "Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present" will be
published soon.

------
alexge233
Varoufakis only cares about himself, always promoting himself and is just
seeking attention. What a joke of a person! He wanted to replace Euros with a
crypto-currency as IoU at some point rather than going back to Drachma. The
man is an academic, not a very good at that either and a clown of a
Politician. His "negotiations" cost the Greek tax payer about 100Bn Euros, and
enabled DB to shift their debt to the German taxpayer, passing it as a
"financial rescue".

~~~
xfs
> He wanted to replace Euros with a crypto-currency as IoU

I don't know where you get this piece of information, but in all his books he
argues against Bitcoin and crypto-currency as a reserve currency, making a
point of the impossibility of apolitical money.

------
raverbashing
I think the essence of those conversation have already published by Varoufakis
in a book he wrote.

~~~
toyg
That's true, but until now it's basically been "he said / she said". Having a
recording that shows the outright callousness of certain elements of those
meetings, is another thing. At the very least, it would set the historical
record straight.

------
thedudeabides5
I for one, would be interested to read the primary source, when it comes out.

If no one else does, will try posting a link in reply to this comment when it
does,

------
zweep
I think that in 2020, everyone outside of a specifically secured facility
should assume that are being recorded at all times.

------
agumonkey
My intellect may be too small but I never understood anything Varoufakis said.
I understand how shallow and hypocritical governments can be, but I never got
the point of his interviews or actions, beside ranting about how imperfect
things are (kinda like Snowden).

------
kolikotime
This would be quite spicy to hear.

------
m0zg
It's as though Farage was right, and there's a lot of unsavory undemocratic
backroom dealing going on, cigar smoke and all.

~~~
rumanator
> there's a lot of unsavory undemocratic backroom dealing

That's an extremely loaded word for negotiating consensus. It's as if populist
parties are manned by opportunists who have no qualms to throw everyone under
the bus if that gives them any advantage.

~~~
m0zg
Well, if it's all above board, they shouldn't be worried about transparency
then, so what Varoufakis is doing is totally OK, am I right? Except I think
there will be unsavory stuff in it, or there wouldn't be any reason for him to
disclose this.

~~~
rumanator
> Well, if it's all above board, they shouldn't be worried about transparency
> then

That's either extremely naive or disingenuous. It's quite frequent in
negotiations that you have to concede parts that might be spinned as collosal
political losses even if they are completely inoquous or even in line with the
greater good or your political mid to long-term interests. The sovereign debt
crisis is an excellent example, as even though it was in no one's best
interests to let states go bankrupt, a hand full of member states were forced
to navigate populist and extremist political parties and movements who were
fundamentally opposed to both the EU, euro, and bailout processes who were
spinning this issue to further their personal agenda. It's absurd to even
assume that needlessly exposing your nation to this sort of manipulation is in
anyone's best interests.

~~~
m0zg
Who decides what is "greater good" though? Some unelected bureaucrat in the
Brussels? A globalist cabal? Frau Merkel? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Why
do you have so much trust in these "negotiations" that you don't even want to
see what transpired in them?

~~~
rumanator
> Who decides what is "greater good" though?

The people you voted and elected for that exact role of course. That's what
being a democratic republic is all about.

