He even held a referendum on the subject in July 2015, when a majority voted to reject all the conditions which Greece was asked to fulfil in return for financial credits.
But days after that referendum, Mr Tsipras discovered that the EU would rather see his country collapse than lend it money with no strings attached, so he accepted all the conditions which the lenders demanded.
EU finance ministers accepted this week that around 100 of a staggering total of 113 reform measures that Greece was required to adopt – including privatisation of government assets, the overhaul of the tax system and painful cuts in pensions – were implemented.
The EU therefore released another loan tranche of €6.7 billion (S$10.8 billion), to be paid in stages from next month, and ending in April.
With no major debt repayments expected in the near future and the national economy now growing for three consecutive quarters, the US ratings agency S&P also gave the country the thumbs up, moving it up by one level. Although this still puts Greek bonds in the “junk” territory status, it has emboldened the government in Athens enough to announce plans to borrow up to €4 billion on global financial markets.
However, these are early days in Greece’s journey to financial stability. To start with, many of the reform measures which are yet to be implemented are hardly small.
And then, there is the question of Greece’s national debt overhang, which currently stands at a staggering 180 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product. The International Monetary Fund has long argued that this level of debt is unsustainable, and that the Europeans should write much of it off, since it won’t ever be repaid.
But, fearing that it will create an unwelcome precedent, EU governments have rejected this approach. Instead, they simply rolled over repayment dates for much of this debt. Awkwardly, however, the EU Commission, the union’s own executive, recently admitted in a report that, even if everything goes well, Greece will still have a debt equal to its entire economy by 2060 so, sooner or later, the question of debt forgiveness has to be faced.
And to make matters worse, EU governments have signalled their determination to monitor Greece well into the future to ensure that their loans are being repaid.
In short, even if their country will no longer subjected to new austerity demands, ordinary Greeks may well have to have to accept that, for decades to come, they will continue putting up with EU officials who fly into Athens, check into five-star hotels and tell the Greek government what to do.