euobserver.com - Former vice-president of the European Central Bank, Lucas Papademos is set to be named the new, technocrat prime minister of Greece, a changeover demanded by the EU and IMF.
A senior Greek source confirmed to EUobserver that the name has all but been agreed, although Papademos is demanding a longer term in office than the current administration of George Papandreou favours and much longer than the six-week caretaker government that the opposition conservatives have demanded.
“He wants more than four to five months,” the contact said, in reference to the term limit demanded by Papandreou.
“The other problem is that there are still people in New Democracy that want to stay out of a coalition government,” the official continued. “They don’t want to see their image damaged by agreeing to the spending cuts and so on.”
But the official, close to the discussions, expected Papademos to be installed by the end of the evening.
Other names in the frame have included EU ombudsman Nikiforos Diamantouros and former European commissioner Stavros Dimas, a New Democracy man but a political moderate who made his name in Brussels as an environment chief willing to take on the corporate sector and potentially more amenable to the centre-left Pasok.
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