The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes. Apparently there was a popular video about an area in Athens where the people paid almost no taxes, but an overhead view showed houses with swimming pools.

Well, yes. But also they had to be very stringent to justify the bailout to their constituencies. Just try to imagine being Angela Merkel and having to sell the idea of German taxpayer money being sent to bail out Greece which got into problems because of their irresponsible and exorbitant spending (instead of spending that money in Germany on healthcare, infrastructure, education etc). Really difficult to sell that to regular German voters. The only way to politically survive that was to be super tough and in exchange for German taxpayer money demand very strict rules of how they will behave after receiving the money.

>The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes

Of course when the corruption was done by and was in favor of German companies getting some job, all it was well (Fraport, Siemens, subway bribing, etc).

Germany even refused to cooperate to clean things up, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_Greek_bribery_scandal

With Greece the problem was German/French banks would go under if Greece defaulted on its debts. That's why the pressure on Greece was so high. Basically EU taxpayers sending money to Greece which just sends money right back to the banks so they don't have to write off their loans and bonds.