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Samaras Tells Finns Greeks Not Fascists

Antonis-Samaras2With his government immobilized over how to deal with the rising neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party accused of attacks on immigrants and with its strong anti-Semitic, anti-gay, ultra-religious stance, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras told a Finnish newspaper during his visit that he will deal with the problem.

In an interview with Helsingin Sanomat, the country’s largest paper that Greeks are not racists and that his uneasy coalition government is easing the country out of a crushing economic crisis and back to recovery.

He said that he has ended talk of Greece leaving the Eurozone by following orders of international lenders and imposing more of the austerity measures he opposed before being elected last year. He said that “Greece passed from “Grexit” to “Grecovery” adding that “the collapse of Greece is in practice an improbable scenario”.

“Now nobody believes that Greece will return to the drachma,” Samaras said, noting that, “We have restored the confidence in the country. The adjustment of the public finances continues at the pace set by creditors while the public deficit is shrinking in unprecedented speed”.

He added, however, that the situation is a “social nightmare and the year 2013 will be the most difficult of all,” adding that “from next year on, the economy will present a slight growth,” a prediction disputed by many analysts with Greece still locked in the sixth year of a deep recession with a record 26.8 percent unemployment rate.

Regarding the raise of Golden Dawn, Samaras said “Greeks are not fascists, they have just lost their hope. People have to believe that their sacrifices will bear fruit”.

As Helsingin Sanomat noteed, the Greek Prime Minister is cautious when commenting about the hard adjustment program, and that he thinks that Brussels could have been easier on Greece. Along with pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions, he said that more attention should have been given to the development of the economy. “The worst thing would be: no recovery after all the sacrifices the people have made,” he underlined.

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