Monti: Greece paying high price for its past mistakes

Feb 15, 2012, 16:13 GMT

Strasbourg, France - International lenders were 'probably' treating Greece with 'excessive' harshness but the country's problems resulted from 'a perfect catalogue' of bad policies, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti said Wednesday.

'We can certainly judge the harshness with which Greece is being treated today to be excessive, and it probably is,' Monti said in a speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.

'But I would suggest that we do not forget that Greek policies, for many years ... have been a perfect catalogue of worst practices,' he added.

These included 'corruption, nepotism, lack of competition, irregular public tenders, tax evasion,' Monti said. He later also referred to Greece's past falsification of national statistics to hide its debt woes from European Union partners.