Photo: kathimerini.gr
As indicated by the Financial Times, after the elections, when the approval of the tranche of € 34.3 billion was still in question and Antonis Samaras was seeking revisions of the bailout programme, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso decided to visit Athens. The conversation lasted two hours. Barroso told the new Prime Minister that the requests for revisions of the programme needed to stop. According to senior officials who were present at the meeting, Barroso urged Samaras to implement the commitments for at least one year. After that, the topic of revisions to the programme could be raised again but execution had to come first. "Don’t start asking for new conditions; there is no way", one of the persons attending the meeting recalls Barroso’s words.