Tsipras says he never contemplated leaving EU or euro

Former prime minister Alexis Tsipras has said he never contemplated taking Greece out of the European Union or dropping its common currency when he called the 2015 referendum.

"Not even for a moment did it cross my mind to negotiate the country's presence in the EU and use of the euro," he told the final day of the "50 Years of the Metapolitefsi" conference.

Tsirpas, who was prime minister from 2015 to 2019, touched on the dramatic events of 2015 in a fireside discussion with Kathimerini journalist Xenia Kounalaki.

The referendum "was the culmination of a long period of austerity and weakness on the part of the EU leadership. We had a popular mandate to negotiate so that there would be a sustainable prospect of exiting the crisis with society remaining on its feet," he said.

But he admitted that, while his government included people and forces that...