13% of those self-placed in the Left feel pride in the 2015 referendum, while for 47% of the total the dominant feeling for that time is ambiguous - disappointment. Three out of four citizens state that the EU and the IMF operated mainly punitively for Greece at the time. Most negative opinions from the prime ministers of the time of the Memoranda have George Papandreou (85%) who took the "mudouri" of the appeal to the IMF and the memorandums. On the contrary, Alexis Tsipras has the most positive opinions about his prime ministership - they reach 25%, according to a QED survey on the "Galop at the boil" podcast by Stavros Theodorakis, who discussed with Eleni Varvitsiotis at pod.gr for persons who appeared in the documentary "In the Millennial", presented with Victoria Dendrino, on Sky TV.
Europe and the IMF stood supportively or punitively towards Greece and what emotion does the memory of the ‘15 referendum cause them? How do Greeks perceive today the role that the IMF eventually played? How do citizens comment eight years after the Memoranda on the prime ministers of 2009 - 2018? So how do they evaluate George Papandreou, Antonis Samaras, Lucas Papademos and Alexis Tsipras? The answers are given through the QED poll, which was made for the "Galop in heat" podcast by Stavros Theodorakis.
See the research:
IMF failures
EB: Look, the IMF needed at first because Europeans were irrelevant, to say it as politely as possible. They had no idea how to deal with a country in crisis and how to lend it. So they did well and brought the IMF that had done so in so many countries, it had not done so in advanced countries, not even in a monetary union.
SF: And in a euro country. Yeah, that.
EB: Exactly. So he brought a suit that just didn't work out. He also did not take the key step, which is a debt haircut. He says "Okay, I'll get into the program, I'll lend you, but in order for this whole recipe to come out, we need to cut your debt." There Europeans said 'No, forget it'. And Stros-Kahn says in our interview and explains it and you understand it then and he says to you "Look, you were right after America's big crisis. When this crisis occurred that the banks collapsed in America, we thought there would be a crash, we'd be back in 1929. And in 1929 we did a basic thing wrong. We didn't save the banks, so the whole system collapsed. So when the dilemma for Greece came, we said we would save the banks or not." And they said we'd save the banks.
So your rating, to put it that way, in relation to the IMF would be much more severe;
EB: Yeah, I'm not talking about it
Reactions to Riga
STH: Do I remember that statement from the former Eastern countries saying that "Are you asking us poor people for money to feed your rich pensioners?" Rich in relation to us, I mean..
EB: That's right. I, Stavros, will not forget in Riga that was this Eurogroup that became a mess with Varoufakis that was on the sidelines anyway, which was the first time the plan B for Greece was discussed that was April 2015. I had gone to cover it up and Riga don't know if you've been there, she has a very nice picturesque center – let's say like Plaka ours – but as soon as you get out of the tourist center you see too much poverty, suffering people, real poverty and I was walking there and saying, "So how do we ask these people to lend us?";
I mean, I was a little uncomfortable. Yes, and I think the Greeks didn't understand it to a large extent or they didn't know it. And I think Greek politicians did not understand that the Greek issue had now come out of the genie and was a matter for a number of countries. It was on their political agenda. When the AFD far-right party came out of the Greek crisis, when the first debate question in the Dutch elections in 2014 I think or 13 was "Will you give another euro to the Greeks?" So it was an issue that affected the political scene in a number of countries.
Junker is the living history of Europe
Who did you like? Leave the Greeks.
EB: I loved Junker's interview terribly. While I have seen him many times, I think the interview he gave us was very good, because this man is the living history of Europe. That is, if there's a politician who expresses the recent history, it's him. Since the Maastricht Treaty, which he has signed, until he was 17 years Prime Minister, 18 years Minister of Finance, President of the Eurogroup, President of the Commission, that is, there is no other such person.
STH: And he loves Greeks.
EB: Not really.
AH: And not just about political events. He has a cult.
EB: He has a Greek cult.
STH: Both Greek women and Greeks, that is.
EB: Everyone. And I think he was very good at interviewing because he has a special sense of humor. I don't know if you noticed and went into too much detail, but he also saw the general picture of what was happening in Europe. So he had a very good balance and gave various information that we didn't know, from what Putin took him from when Tsipras left Russia and told him "Alexis Tsipras came and asked me for money and help" and he said "Long hands, it's our issue." The fact that 15 countries the day before the Summit from the 18th of the Eurozone told him "Okay, let Greece go, I don't care", and he took them one by one to convince them. In general, Junker should be honored in the country because he played a very positive role.
EB: Look, what basically let us down was Paul Thomsen, who had closed the interview, the IMF chief then and..
A tough guy.
EB: Very tough. We had an interview to go to Washington. We weren't taking two steps. We're a big crew. We had closed the rest of the Americans we did and five days before we arrived, cancels our interview. And I think it was a great pity that this man didn't speak, because no matter what he came out, he came out of the majority as the villain of the case, that he had taken the matter very personally. Everything left over from the beginning..
AH: He had a thing, though, didn't he;
EB: He had a thing.
STH: Yes, he had a obsession with the Greeks, say. So he had a shaped view that I would say very popularly the Greeks steal, the Greeks do not do what they should do.
EB: They're corrupt, to a certain extent. They do not belong to the euro. So it was a little bit, and all the Europeans called it. In episode 4 that we are very much talking about in the IMF, it was a series of people who said that he played a very important role negative. That it had become personal to him now. And you know, it's terrible when you think that decisions about a country for eleven million people.
It can be taken from a man.
EB: Paul Tomsen, a Danish technocrat, can play such an important role.
EB: So Dysselblum, in the interview he gave us, we went 15th August to his home in Eidhoven. He is now mayor in Aidhoven, which is a city that is Tech Hub, there are too many things happening in his city. He didn't want to talk to us. So we had to approach him I don't know how many times because he said "I have closed this chapter, I don't care, we have finished, I have moved on, I am mayor in Eindhoven, I don't have time.".
We say "Good 15th August in Eidhoven what do you have to do"? Anyway, the man accepted us and I'm so glad he agreed to do the interview because I think he matured from the whole process, which is that many people told me after that that "I disliked Dysselblum, I found him very cruel and unfair with us, but in this process he turned out to be better." And I think if you saw the last episode in which we have the estimates anyway, what they did wrong, what they did right, the nicest answer could have been Dysselblum's that said we were completely unprepared for this whole financial crisis.
ST: Europe.
EB: Europe. We made a series of mistakes. We were very unfair to ask Greece, in this situation, to make all these reforms. Has the country improved? Yeah. Has the situation improved? Yeah. But at what cost? Very high.