Samaras confident coalition will survive May elections

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras insisted on Tuesday that there is no prospect of the coalition collapsing after this month’s local and European Parliament elections.

Speaking to Antenna TV, Samaras played down the threat of government turmoil if New Democracy and PASOK have poor election results. “The government has held up through tough times. It will hold up now as well,” he said. “There is no way that stability will be at risk after the elections.”

New Democracy decided to refrain from voicing objections to PASOK’s decision late on Monday to object to certain articles in a bill introducing new regulations for open-air fruit and vegetable markets. The conservatives interpreted this as PASOK caving in under pressure from producers and traders but decided not to highlight the issue as the Socialists are struggling in opinion polls.

Instead, Samaras focused on his government’s pledge not to make more cuts to meet fiscal targets. “There will be no new memorandum, there will be no new measures,” he said, adding that the fiscal gap until 2018 will be no more than 1 billion euros.

Samaras, however, refused to commit to scrapping the solidarity tax on people’s incomes later this year. “I cannot promise something I am not 100 percent sure about but it is our intention to do something like that,” he said.