Reaching agreement is the priority, Labour Minister Katrougalos says

"I believe and continue to consider that there are margins to restore, if not ideological unity then at least for the different tendencies to walk more 'in step'," he added.

At the same time, he noted that there was a "difficult political equation" to solve, since the referendum had recorded the Greek peoples' clear desire for an end to the austerity policies that the new agreement called for, "and then we had the economic coup of the banks closing".

"Society cannot operate with the banks closed. The prime minister, as a national leader, therefore rightly took on the burden of a compromise. Precisely because the alternative would have destroyed the country. Now we must see how we can carry out two entirely incompatible things: to combine the mandate that says no to memorandum measures with the forced agreement that we will sign that contains such measures."

In spite of this, Katrougalos added, the prime minister will continue to govern with a leftist mandate and did not want to become a "leftist interlude". SYRIZA did not want the return of the ministers that had lead the austerity drive, he said, nor the worst-case scenario where SYRIZA would govern in the same way as they did.

"Those dreaming of such a thing can forget it. We are a different party," he stressed. He also ruled out the formation of an all-party government. "Some people are trying to pin ownership of the programme on us and then to join us in government, as if there was no difference...we will not become the same as them," he said.

"We want to achieve what we said before the elections and in January, what 61 pct of the Greek people have ratified. We had an economic coup and, faced with the prospect of the economy falling apart, we made a forced compromise. Now comes the hard part. How to serve our goal in this negative correlation of forces that has been formed," the minister said. He also promised that pensions will be paid on time.