Pangalos blames peers for failures - The Best from Greece

In an interview with Kathimerini, outspoken Deputy Prime Minister Theodoros Pangalos admitted the economic policies of the outgoing Socialist government had failed but laid the blame for this on his peers.

The memorandum -- the original debt deal drawn up between Greece and its creditors last year -- failed because “we failed to curb spending and raise revenue by curbing tax evasion,” Pangalos said.

He claimed that most of the blame for this lies with former Finance Minister Giorgos Papaconstantinou, who now holds the environment portfolio, and current Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos. “It is clearly an issue of leadership,” he said, noting that he had “only an advisory and not legislative competence.” He added that “those who took their money out of the country” were also to blame.

Pangalos also blamed Citizens’ Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis for the fact that he “can’t cross Syntagma Square without being jeered at.” The comments prompted a reaction late on Sunday from Papoutsis, who said it was not only in Greece that people had reacted angrily to the impact of a broader debt crisis.

Asked about former Prime Minister George Papandreou’s decision to call for a referendum on the latest EU debt plan for Greece -- a move that accelerated the Socialist government’s collapse -- Pangalos described it as “a curse.”

As for New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras’s delay in offering creditors a written commitment to the debt plan, Pangalos said the conservative leader had “created a huge issue out of a nonexistent one.”