MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras pledged on Monday to lead the nation out of the years-long financial crisis and stressed that the worst of the crisis was "clearly behind us" in an exclusive interview with The Guardian newspaper.
"The worst is clearly behind us… We can now say with certainty that the economy is on the up … Slowly, slowly, what nobody believed could happen, will happen. We will extract the country from the crisis … and in the end that will be judged," Tsipras said.
The key priority of the Greek government at the moment is to regain the country's economic sovereignty, the prime minister stressed.
On June 14, European Commission Vice-President for the Euro and Social Dialogue Valdis Dombrovskis said that since 2015 Greece had received nearly 11 billion euros ($12.3 billion) from a large pool of EU funds for the economy development apart from loans as the country is burdened with an outstanding debt and has been attempting to manage the crisis through austerity measures and loans since 2010.
The third economic adjustment program for Greece, worth 86 billion euros, has been launched on August 19, 2015, and is expected to run until August 20, 2018. The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) provides the financial assistance.
