In response to the deal with Greece being reached over the debt crisis:
Tim Jones, economist at the Jubilee Debt Campaign said:
“This is not an agreement but an outrageous imposition on the Greek people. If implemented, it will continue the five-year long crisis in the Greek economy since the first disastrous bailout of European banks in 2010 for another decade or more.
“At the heart of it is a lie from Eurozone leaders that ‘nominal haircuts on the debt cannot be undertaken’. They can, they should and they must. Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America suffered from 20 years of economic stagnation and increasing poverty in the 1980s and 1990s because of a refusal to cancel debt and the imposition of austerity overriding democracy. The same now awaits Greece and the Eurozone unless there is a sudden change of direction.”
Nick Dearden, the director of Global Justice Now said:
“The deal that Greece has agreed to has nothing to do with a democratic union of countries, but rather resembles the imperial politics of the 19th century. Is it so unthinkable to put the rights and livelihoods of ordinary people ahead of threatening the interests of the banks? The European governments and institutions seem to think so. The lives and rights of millions of Greeks, and now the very existence of the EU as a democratic union, come a poor second to the economic fundamentalism of Merkel and the Troika.”
Polly Jones, the head of campaigns and policy at Global Justice Now said:
“Millions of people have had poverty forced upon them across Latin America, Asia and Africa as a direct result of the austerity policies which were imposed by the IMF when those countries were indebted. Greece was the first country to put these policies to a referendum and its people resoundingly rejected them. Their voices must not be lost in the struggle between the creditors. The lives of the Greek people cannot be transferred onto a banking spreadsheet.”