Greece rounded bitterly on its EU paymasters when the finance minister and socialist leader, Evangelos Venizelos, accused the eurozone of deliberately changing the terms of a proposed €130bn (£110bn) bailout because key players wanted to kick the country out of the single currency.
The charge that some eurozone countries were seeking to engineer a Greek sovereign default and exit from the euro deepened the rancour between debtor and creditors in the dangerous standoff. "There are many in the eurozone who don't want us any more," Venizelos declared at a meeting with President Karolos Papoulias. "We are constantly being given new terms and conditions."
Papoulias went even further, denouncing Germany and Greece's north European creditors after Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, said that Greece must not turn into a "bottomless pit" for eurozone bailout funds and that Europe was better prepared than when the crisis erupted two years ago to cope with a Greek sovereign default.
"Who is Mr Schäuble to ridicule Greece? Who are the Dutch? Who are the Finns?" declared the Greek head of state. "I don't accept insults to my country by Mr Schäuble." » | Ian Traynor and Larry Elliott | Wednesday, February 15, 2012
