Prime Minister George Papandreou, addressing an informal cabinet session at the Maximos Mansion on Wednesday afternoon, stressed that "we are ready to turn a page, we are ready to curb the deficits considerably, placing at the same time the country on a course of growth, however we do not want to be a lightning rod for whatever profiteers who do not permit us to deal with the programme that the Europeans and we want to implement." The prime minister briefed the council on his contacts in Paris and Brussels that were concluded with a joint declaration of political support for Greece by the 27 heads of state and government.
"We are not asking for money from others, we are not asking for money from Germans, Italians, French or whatever other taxpayers. We are asking for the necessary time to enable us to implement our programme which will secure for the country the credibility and the possibility to borrow with regular terms," Papandreou stressed.
The prime minister also pointed out that "we want a serious evalualation of the existing stability, growth and reconstruction programme and not general and irresponsible talk of measures on what Greece needs and what not."
"We are asking for support so that the easiness of profiteering and the degradation of the country with secret aims or not will stop," he said, adding at the same time that the problem is not exclusively Greek but a wider European one.
Referring to the implementation of this programme, Papandreou said that checks at ministries will be monthly and with indexes which is something, as he said, that is taking place for the first time in the Greek state.
The prime minister mentioned that Greece "is receiving blows continuously due to unreliability" and added that the Committee of independent experts from the government highlighted the size of the cover up of the deficit last year, as well as the size of the political problem that it created.
"Our decision for a fact-finding committee on the economy does not have a revanchist logic," Papandreou underlined noting that "we want the country's new page to be built in the light and in truth and in addition that consensus required must be based on a state of law and not the concealment of the truth."
18.02.2010
