Varoufakis: Creative vagueness, VAT and taking a pee in Germany (videos)

Finance minister Yanis Varoufakis laid out his cards on the table in an interview with private Greek TV ANT1. Speaking to veteran presenter George Papadakis, he said that the government had committed itself to increasing VAT but assured that this would not threaten basic goods and services or harm islands that are privy to special tax laws. He said taxes would not increase for pharmaceutical supplies, for basic foodstuffs, books, in tourism, on islands and border areas. Asked where taxes would increase, Varoufakis said that he would search for a good of little use and increase VAT on it as a show of goodwill.

He said that the Greek government's agreement with the Eurogroup was vague because that is what the EU partners wanted in order to ensure that they would be able to pass the program through their parliaments in order for it to be ratified.

Do we have a memorandum? 

We have great success. We had a memorandum and the state always had one. We had elections. The people gave a mandate to go against the logic of the memorandum. We managed to align both. On my first meetings (abroad), I was told that the elections haven't changed anything. It was not possible to abolish democracy for the sake of the Eurocrisis. This would be a gift to Golden Dawn and euroskeptics. Never before have we exploded two Eurogroups in the air, and this has not happened before, we combined political with financial discussion. We managed to have a third Eurogroup for Greece to change the relationships. We were alone but became the majority.

The bar for expectations was high, have you promised a lot and now it looks as though you're backing down? 

I was not and am not a member of the Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA). I asked to become one but this has not...