{"id":36619,"date":"2026-05-12T20:50:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/36619\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T20:50:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T20:50:18","slug":"ex-eu-chief-claims-bloc-official-sought-acropolis-sale-during-greek-debt-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/36619\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-EU chief claims bloc official sought Acropolis sale during Greek debt crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ex-EU<\/p>\n

Jean-Claude Juncker.<\/p>\n

Former European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has claimed that a former finance minister of an unspecified European Union country suggested, at the height of Greece\u2019s financial crisis, that the Acropolis should be put up for sale to cover the Greek debt.<\/p>\n

Speaking during an episode of a Skai TV documentary on the crisis, called Sto Xiliosto, Juncker maintained that the proposal was made during a meeting of finance ministers of EU members using the euro currency, known as the eurogroup.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He didn\u2019t say whether the suggestion had been intended to be taken literally and declined to name the person who made the proposal. Nor did he say when the alleged incident occurred.<\/p>\n

As Luxembourg\u2019s prime minister and finance minister, Juncker headed the eurogroup from 2005-2013.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember in the eurogroup meetings that some finance ministers were proposing to sell the Acropolis to get money,\u201d he said, later clarifying that the purported proposal was made by a woman.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said \u2026 \u2018shut up,’\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Juncker used the anecdote to illustrate the catastrophic consequences of Greece\u2019s under-reporting its deficit figures just before the crisis broke in 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a really big mistake,\u201d he said. \u201cGreece after having acknowledged that they were leading others in error were no longer trusted. That was the main problem. And so everyone could say about Greece whatever he wanted to say.\u201d Or she.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jean-Claude Juncker. Former European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has claimed that a former finance minister of an unspecified…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36620,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[53,3154,182,22933,3144,980,22934,464],"class_list":["post-36619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anthropic","tag-anthropic","tag-anthropic-claude","tag-claude","tag-crisis","tag-culture","tag-economy","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36619"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36619\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}