Samaras and Barroso both sought to strike an upbeat note at an official ceremony for Greece’s assumption of the European Union’s Presidency emphasizing the country’s progress and playing down the fragility of Samaras’s government.

Controversial ultranationalist Nick Griffin MEP has been invited by Golden Dawn mp Elias Kasidiaris to Athens for the presentation of the Golden Dawn appeal to the Court of Human Rights.

In an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, Klaus Regling - who heads the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Greece's largest creditor with 133 billion euros in 30-year loans already disbursed at an interest rate of 1.5 percent, is quoted as saying "there will be no debt restructuring."