Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou echoed those comments, saying in Davos he was focused on cutting the deficit and restoring confidence. "Greece is in a situation where we need to take very strong measures and structural changes in our country," he said. "We're determined to implement the programme."
The eurozone member partially regained investor confidence on Monday when it succeeded in selling 8 billion euros of bonds and announced plans to sell more in February. It has pledged to cut its budget deficit this year to 8.7 percent of gross domestic product from over 12 percent and return to the EU's 3 percent cap by 2012.
But fears that Athens will not be able to rein in spending have continued to haunt markets, putting pressure on the euro and even prompting speculation that Greece would be forced to default or leave the 16-member eurozone. Papandreou said Greece would stick with the euro. "On balance one has to say, is the eurozone good for us or bad for us? It's good for us," he said.
"You don't have all the tools, you have other things that protect us. We have to make difficult internal changes." Almunia's comments went a little way to calm sooth jittery debt markets on Friday. The cost of insuring Greek government debt against default fell to 397,000 euros per 10 million of exposure from a record high of 422,500 on Thursday, according to the five-year credit default swap prices from CMA DataVision.