"I immediately cut her short and said: ‘We will not continue this discussion, it does not exist. I do not accept this and will not, in any case, agree to withdraw Greece from Euro so forget about it’", Samaras told the broadcaster Skai.
The former prime minister added that if he had mentioned this conversation to anyone, it would've created turbulence on markets and in the economy.
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Samaras noted that Greece then managed to meet all the preconditions to receive a huge 54 billion euro ($60 billion) loan.
In an interview with Skai published on Thursday, the former prime minister said that he met with Merkel in Berlin on 24 August 2012, when they discussed the crisis in Greece and Merkel asked Samaras if he wanted Greece to leave the Eurozone. Merkel added that there was a plan B to help Athens in that case.
Greece also received 32.1 billion euros in loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to tackle the economic crisis.
A series of crises hit Greece in the aftermath of the global financial meltdown of 2007-08. Between 2010 and 2012, 52.9 billion euros in loans were disbursed to Greece by eurozone members under the so-called Greek Loan Facility to held Athens cope with the recession. From 2012-2015, Greece received 141.8 billion euros in loans from the European Financial Stability Facility.
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The Greek authorities were forced to carry out unpopular austerity reforms in exchange for the loans. Greece joined the Eurozone in 2001 and its exit from the currency bloc was narrowly averted in 2015.
