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The events connected with the visit of the Vice-President of the Greek government in Istanbul Theodoros Pangalos and his official statements which were published in the Turkish daily Hurriyet grew into government crisis. According to the article, the Greek politician compared the lazy lifestyle of the Greeks in recent years with that of the more hard-working Turks in an attempt to explain the reasons for the economic crisis in Greece. Yesterday, the Turkish edition came with a title influenced by the famous fable about the ant and the cricket, to which the Turkish and Greek people were compared respectively.

Two statements came out from the office of the Vice-President of the Greek government within a few hours refuting that Theodoros Pangalos made such statements. It seems at least for now that this is sufficient for the government, although the Prime Minister George Papandreou has asked to be informed in detail on the matter.

Rumours of a record of the conversation between the Greek politician and the Turkish journalist circulated the Greek websites and hundreds of private conversations still yesterday. In today's article Vima reports that it has contacted the author of the article Zephathah Kaplan. He said that his conversation with Theodoros Pangalos was not a private one and insisted on the truthfulness of the statements at issue made by the Greek politician at the end of his speech. The journalist also said that the Hurriyet newspaper avails a video of the speech of the Vice-President of the Greek government. The speech was in English and held before a large audience consisting not only of members of the Greek community. According to the article in the Turkish newspaper, Theodoros Pangalos said that the Greeks have chosen a convenient, but at the same time lazy lifestyle.
 
In turn, the Greek politician explicitly refused in three communications that he had made the controversial statements. At the same time, he seriously attacked New Democracy, which through the statements by the representative of the party Yannis Mihelakis put the topic on top of the cross-party criticism. "New Democracy does not know what to keep and what to tackle. It is only able to make personal attacks against members of the Government from time to time. This is the new morality of Samaras in the political life of the country," says the latest statement made by Theodoros Pangalos.

Sources from the office of the politician insisted yesterday that he did not say anything that could cause problems, only he has defined the purchase of the Turkish bank Finansbank by the Greek National Bank as successful move, but it was an old view of his, which he stated earlier.

New Democracy, however, continues to push Theodoros Pangalos to state "clearly and definitely whether he defined the Greeks as lazy and the purchase of Finansbank as a successful investment, which was defined as "scandalous" by PASOK and Mr. Papaconstantinou as a party spokesman at that time. The first message - response by the Vice-President of the Greek government states that Theodoros Pangalos had no contacts with press representatives during his visit to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. He had not made any statements and had not given an interview with the content outlined in the communication of New Democracy or of any other content."

The second communication by Theodoros Pangalos contains another refutation and also the text of the interview that he gave for the Economic Observer in July 2010, in which he stated that "the Greeks are working really hard. Our productivity is higher than the average for Europe", and part of his speech in Parliament: "Greece is in very good state. It has economic resources and a very hardworking people in the private sector." He then drew the arrows to the main opposition party: "When New Democracy insists on discussing the "lazy" and the "laziness" we will not deprive it of this opportunity. In the Sunday's edition of Vima dated April 7, 2011 the former Minister of Finance in the governments of New Democracy stated that Kostas Karamanlis, despite being fully aware of the state of the economy, said: "Leave it for now." This phrase is a monument of procrastination and denial of a leader to fulfill his duty. History has proven that the Greeks have never been lazybones or sluggish. This was their example at that time and this has led the country to disaster."

The today's edition of Eleftheros Typos published the exact text of the speech by Theodoros Pangalos in English and its translation into Greek. It states: "We had to deal with the problems of the public sector. For many years we tried to avoid this. It was a comfortable, but at the same time lazy lifestyle, with which we have to deal with now. "

It is not clear yet whether these specific statements could take Theodoros Pangalos out of the government, but in all cases they further trouble the Prime Minister Papandreou, who is the recipient of dozens of opinions in favour of this scenario.