Eurogroup chief Jean-Claude Juncker said Friday that Greece’s financial woes were well known among top EU officials but kept quiet until the crisis erupted last year.
“It was quite obvious that one day Greece would have to face this kind of problem, and we knew that this problem would occur,” Juncker told a forum on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington.
Juncker said German and French officials along with European Central Bank chief Jean-Claude Trichet had for some time been discussing “the perspectives of what was not at that time known as so-called Greek crisis.”
“I knew that both France and Germany earned a lot from their exports to Greece”, Juncker admmited
“I could not go public with the knowledge that I had,” he added.
“The Greek crisis could have been avoided, but not starting last year, starting two or three decades ago,” the European finance ministers chief said.
Juncker said he tried at one point to seek a solution to the problems with an unnamed Greek prime minister who told him: “I am governing a country of corruption.”
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