Greece’s debt crisis

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2025

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

It was a week that brought the future of Greece and the Eurozone to the brink. Ten years ago, on 6 July the Greek people voted against the terms of a financial bailout which included raising taxes and slashing welfare spending.

Greece owed €323bn to various countries and banks within Europe. Its banks were closed. A quarter of the population and half of Greece’s young people were unemployed.

The morning after the vote, Euclid Tsakalotos was brought in to replace Yanis Varoufakis as finance minister. His predecessor had accused European leaders of “terrorism” in their handling of the crisis. Parachuted in to last-ditch talks with angry European leaders, Euclid Tsakalotos describes to Josephine McDermott the make-or-break 17-hour summit in Brussels.

He reveals that when Angela Merkel, the leader of Greece’s biggest lender Germany, said she was leaving the room because she could not accept what was on the table, Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, actually locked the door to stop her leaving and force an agreement to be reached.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.

Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.

(Photo: A queue outside a bank in Greece in 2015. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Mariana Spring, the BBC's social media investigations correspondent.
0:06.3	In my podcast, I've been investigating what happened to the daughter of a conspiracy theorist
0:10.9	who died having rejected chemotherapy.
0:13.5	It would mean the world to me if I could make it that she wasn't just another in the long line of people that die in this way.
0:18.9	How does this reflect the rise of health conspiracy theories on social media and beyond?
0:24.8	The new series of Mariana in Conspiracy Land. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:34.1	I'm Josephine McDermott from the BBC World Service.
0:38.1	If you ever wonder what's happening behind closed doors when there's a huge news event, this is the program for you.
0:44.9	At Witness History, we mark the crunch points that steer the globe, bringing them to life with insightful first-hand accounts and archive.
0:52.6	Episodes are just nine minutes long.
0:55.0	Make sure you subscribe, share and turn on your notifications so you never miss a thing.
1:00.0	Now we're going back 10 years to the week when the future of the European Union was hanging in the balance.
1:06.0	The Greek people had voted against the conditions of a financial bailout from the European Union that
1:12.1	would have saved them from bankruptcy. Euclid Sackalotos had a seemingly impossible task.
1:18.8	The leaders here today are grappling with one of the biggest challenges the European
1:22.3	Union has ever faced. Greece's debts now stand at a staggering 230 billion pounds. That is, about
1:30.3	180% of what Greece's economy produces each year, almost double the size.
1:36.3	EU finance ministers today arrived to hear what Greece is now proposing after it rejected
1:41.3	their reform plan in its referendum.
1:51.0	But Greece's new finance minister came clutching not a plan, just some scribbled notes to the dismay of other countries.
1:58.1	That's our witness, Euclid Sackalotos, he's talking about in that BBC news report on the 7th of July 2015.
2:03.9	He steps out of a silver minibus wearing a light blue suit, a little more casual than the other finance ministers. He's clutching a beaten up brown leather satchel and he has a bunch of
	...

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