Athens: As part of a 130 billion euro ($161 billion, Dh605 billion) bailout package from the EU and the IMF, Greece has committed to sweeping reforms and some 11.5 billion euros of cuts in 2013 and 2014.
But amid reports that the budgetary hole is close to 14 billion euros and as a recession has entered its fifth year, Samaras is thought to want a two-year extension to make the cuts.
Samaras pledged Friday to stick to all of Greece’s promises to its international creditors and said that he was not asking for more bailout money, but just “breathing space” to implement the spending cuts and reforms.
Neither Merkel nor Hollande responded directly to that request.
Samaras told reporters in Paris he was confident that Greece would not be ejected from the Eurozone.
“I also think that we can achieve our goals and our commitments, reduce deficits, our debt, complete the structural change we have begun,” he said before heading back to Greece.
In the run-up to his trip to Berlin and Paris, Samaras embarked on a media charm offensive, telling papers in Germany and France that a “Grexit”, or Greek exit from the euro, would be catastrophic for Europe.
The German chancellor, entering the countdown to elections by October 2013, faces resistance at home to granting Greece more aid after nearly three years of the Eurozone lurching from one crisis to another.
But at the helm of Europe’s effective paymaster, she has been under pressure to chart decisive action to shake off the debt crisis, inspire confidence in the markets and keep the bloc intact.
Just hours before Samaras landed in Berlin for Friday’s crisis talks, a newspaper reported that a secret cell has been set up in the German finance ministry to examine the possible consequences of a Greek Eurozone exit.
A ministry spokesman later played down the report, saying that a “working group” had been set up a year ago that deals with “the whole topic of the sovereign debt crisis” and not merely a possible Greek exit.
