The European Commission and its president felt that it was not an option to fail to find a solution to the Greek crisis, Jean-Claude Juncker said on September 9.

“It was absolutely essential for us to recognise and say that Grexit was not an option. If we had not said that loudly and clearly Grexit could have happened,” he told the plenary at his State of the Union speech, followed by applause.

Juncker said the Commission has to be a custodian of general interest. “The Commission had to deal with the Greek issue because failing to do this would have been a great weakness on our part and it would have been a failure on the part of the Commission,” he said. “Therefore we did what we felt was right and we felt it was our duty.”

“And I said to Mr [former Premier Alexis] Tsipras and other members of the Greek authorities at the time that it was important that they understood that this didn’t mean that they would be saved at any cost. I was not a magician, as I said to Alexis Tsipras. I didn’t have a magic wand. I couldn’t pull a rabbit out of a hat. I had to make it clear to him and I think that he understood that Grexit was a possibility, that it was not an option that we were going to mention publicly, but it was not something absolutely excluded as a last resort,” the Commission president said.

He stressed that the Greek issue is not just a question of consolidating public finances and structural funds. It was a problem affecting the whole issue of economic growth in the country and its position in the EU. “I think that the European Union is delighted to have Greece as a member and I have been profoundly perturbed by comments in recent months that Greece should leave the euro, that it should leave the European Union and it wasn’t a serious-minded partner in Europe. I think that the Greeks who are least well off are hard working people who have been making their outmost to ensure that their country does make progress and I think that we need to show respect to the Greeks and there has been a failure to do that in some quarters in recent times,” Juncker said.

He, however, warned that the agreed programme must be respected by the Greek government who negotiated it and by all future Greek governments. “There are a number of rules which have been agreed and in the past some of these agreements have been flouted in the European Union and the eurozone. And I think this time we all need to realise that we’re serious and we’re for real and we require respect of the arrangements and agreements have been reached,” he said.