Part of the port of Piraeus - Europe's largest passenger port. Wikimedia/Nikolaos Diakidis. Some rights reserved.
This is an excerpted version of a speech given at Panteion University on May 12 and at the University of Athens, May 13, 2015.
The Syriza government was elected in January, 2015, on the promise that it would tear up the deeply unpopular memorandum imposed by the Troika while at the same keeping the euro. It was a promise that it could not keep. After several months of tough negotiations it has become clear that Greece’s creditors, led by the German government, have no intention of accepting a renegotiated deal that substantively lightens Greece’s debt burden and thus the need for the type of harsh austerity measures contained in the memorandum.
