Politics also means educating people. It's important to speak openly with our fellow Greeks, to tell them what our problems are and that we have to change something.

At times of distress, we all like to recall the advice of fathers and mothers. The best advice my father gave me was to keep faith and deep confidence in the potential of the Greek people; nurture the belief that they can do things.

We have made major reforms in Greece. When I took over after a landslide victory we had a mandate for change and I knew my major focus would be re-organizing the state.

The structures in Europe in a globalising economy need to be modernised, need to be more integrated, need to be stronger.

The Marshall Plan was after destruction, and the U.S. came to our help and obviously this was very, very important for the future of Europe. I think now we have all the capabilities of doing it on our own and, in a sense, we have to.

If we were going to default, we would have decided that many months ago. It would be wrong for the Greek economy, it would be wrong for the European economy, it would make things worse in the end. That's why we're taking the pain and making these structural reforms, and we're on target.

Despite the deep reforms we are making, traders and speculators have forced interest rates on Greek bonds to record highs.