Schäuble and Varoufakis | EPA Varoufakis: Schäuble will bring troika to Paris The German finance minister harbors a plan to “redesign the eurozone” and kick out Greece.

Yanis Varoukafis, the former Greek finance minister, told a Spanish newspaper that his nemesis Wolfgang Schäuble will not stop until he has imposed “troika” inspectors now working in Athens on Madrid, Rome — and eventually Paris.

Varoufakis accused the German finance minister of harboring a plan to “redesign the eurozone” and kick out Greece.

“Today we have read that Schäuble wants to sideline the Commission and to create something like a budget commissioner who oversees the ‘rules’ that strike down national budgets, even if a country is not under a program,” Varoufakis said in an interview in El País. He published the full transcript of the interview, in English, on his own blog.

“Schäuble’s plan is to put the troika everywhere, in Madrid too, but especially in … Paris!” said Varoufakis, who had a difficult relationship with Schäuble and many other eurozone officials when he was a member of the Eurogroup of ministers from the currency union.

“Paris is the larger prize. It’s the final destination of the troika. ‘Grexit’ is used to create the fear necessary to force Paris, Rome and Madrid to acquiesce,” Varoufakis told the Spanish daily.

A spokesperson for the German Finance Ministry declined to comment on the interview.

Varoufakis stepped down as minister in early July in order, he said, to make it easier for Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to forge a third bailout deal. A pact was reached on July 13, in exchange for precisely the kind of tough auserity measures the Greeks had overwhelmingly rejected in a referendum eight days earlier.

A mission from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — formerly known as the “troika,” but now dubbed the “quadriga” after the addition of the European Stability Mechanism bailout fund — is now back in Athens discussing how to implement the economic and fiscal reforms that are the condition for up to €86 billion in aid over three years.

Varoufakis has kept a high profile since leaving office, especially following revelations that he had hatched a secret plan for Greece to return to the its former currency, the drachma.

He said Greece’s latest rescue package “has no future. It is based on continuing with the charade of kicking forward: extend the crisis with unsustainable new loans, and pretend that resolves the issue,” he told El País.

In the full transcript published on his blog, Varoufakis also laid into the Eurogroup president, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, saying he was key to the Greek deal “not just because he is so intellectually lightweight but, primarily, because he is untrustworthy. For example, he chose to lie to me in my first Eurogroup about procedure. It is one thing to disagree with the Eurogroup president. It is quite another thing to have him lie to you about gravely important procedures.”

French criticism

Schäuble also came under fire from his French counterpart Michel Sapin, who critized the German finance minister’s proposal of a temporary Grexit, in an interview with the German business daily Handelsblatt on Monday.

“I think that Wolfgang Schäuble is wrong and even in conflict with his own profound European will. This will, which is also my own, implies to a stronger eurozone,” Sapin said.

The French minister was at pains to point out that the Franco-German relationship was “not broken.” But his comments show that there is a clear split between France and Germany over the future direction of the single currency bloc.

“If a temporary Grexit is authorized, that means that every other country that is in difficulties will want to get out of the eurozone through an adjustment of its currency,” Sapin said.

During the eurozone’s marathon talks on a third bailout for Greece in July, Schäuble proposed that Greece be offered “swift negotiations on a timeout from the euro area.” The sentence did not make it into the final agreement.

In a Der Spiegel interview on July 18, Schäuble defended his position, saying, “We never said that Greece should leave the eurozone. We only called attention to the possibility that Athens itself can decide on taking a timeout. Debt relief is not possible within the currency union. European treaties do not allow it.”