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New Efforts Begin to Form a Government in Greece

Antonis Samaras, center, whose New Democracy party placed first in the latest Greek elections, met Monday with the leaders of three other political parties in hopes of forming a coalition soon.Credit...Petros Giannakouris/Associated Press

ATHENS — Antonis Samaras, the leader of the center-right party that placed first in Greek parliamentary elections, began talks on Monday to form a coalition government aimed at keeping Greece in the euro zone and renegotiating its loan agreement with the foreign creditors keeping the country afloat.

But even as European leaders expressed relief at the outcome of the election, it was not clear how far Germany and the rest of Europe were prepared to go to ease the terms of Greece’s bailout agreement — or whether the results of the vote would improve life for Greece’s fast-imploding middle class or stem a deepening political divide between right and left.

At the same time, attention quickly shifted to Spain, where market traders pushed up rates on its long-term bonds in an apparent expression of little confidence that the election in Greece would resolve many of Europe’s larger problems.

In a televised statement after meeting with his Socialist counterpart, Evangelos Venizelos, Mr. Samaras said the two had agreed on the need to put their differences aside in a country with no strong tradition of coalition rule and form a governing bloc, something they were unable to achieve in elections in early May that yielded largely the same outcome.

“We agreed that a government has to be formed within this exploratory mandate,” which ends on Thursday, Mr. Samaras said. “We will talk again.”

Mr. Samaras, whose party placed first but does not have enough seats to form a government on its own, also met with the leaders of two smaller parties: Independent Greeks on the right, whose leader appeared unlikely to join a coalition, and Democratic Left, whose leader may be open to joining one.

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Antonis Samaras, center, left the Parliament building in Athens following a meeting with Alexis Tsipras, leader of the Syriza party, to form a coalition government on Monday.Credit...Oli Scarff/Getty Images

New Democracy won 29.6 percent of the vote, while the Socialists, who once dominated the electorate and were in power when Greece signed the first of its two loan agreements in 2010, placed third with 12.2 percent of the vote, or 32 seats. They were punished by austerity-weary voters who turned to the leftist party Syriza, which placed second with 70 seats.

Syriza spooked European leaders with its calls for tearing up Greece’s loan deal and shifted the debate with its position that the loan agreement was fatally flawed, a point Mr. Samaras and Mr. Venizelos have both conceded.

After his talks with Syriza’s leader, Alexis Tsipras, on Monday, Mr. Samaras emphasized the need to renegotiate the bailout conditions.

Mr. Venizelos had earlier said that his party would join a coalition only that included Syriza, but Mr. Tsipras has said his party will not join any government that supports the loan agreement, preferring instead to take on “the role of a strong and responsible opposition” and “intervene in a powerful way.”

It remains to be seen whether any coalition Mr. Samaras forms will have popular support. Because of a peculiarity of Greek electoral law, in which 50 bonus seats go to the front-runner, a pro-bailout government will emerge from a vote in which half of Greeks actually voted for parties that are opposed to the bailout or its conditions.

Speaking at the Group of 20 summit meeting in Mexico on Monday, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany said Greece must honor the commitments it has already signed in its loan deal with creditors.

But with a backlash against austerity growing by the day — not only in Greece but in larger countries including Spain and Italy — creditors are likely to be sympathetic to arguments that Mr. Samaras had vowed to make to ease the burden on the average Greek citizen. “We would be crazy not to grant them some flexibility,” said a European Union official in Brussels, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly since negotiations are pending.

European Union officials said Greece’s creditors would likely show some flexibility, especially on the time frame in which Greece is expected to reduce its budget deficit. To slash its deficit rapidly, the Greek government has raised taxes and cut wages, actions that have hit families hard and caused the real economy to dry up.

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On Sunday, Greece’s New Democracy party narrowly defeated the leftist Syriza party, which had surged on a wave of anti-austerity sentiment.

“The conditions that were negotiated have to be observed, but we also need to give the Greeks room to breathe,” said Austria’s chancellor, Werner Faymann. “For example, it must be assured that people have sufficient access to medicine. Consolidation cannot be carried out solely on the backs of the people.”

Many Greeks said they had feared that a Syriza victory would have pushed their country closer to quitting the euro, but many others feel they are paying for the profligacy of the same political parties, the Socialists and New Democracy, that caused Greece to seek a bailout and then imposed austerity measures that have helped push unemployment to 22 percent.

“We’re an experiment,” said Vasso Kalama, 28, an architecture student who said she had voted for a small left-wing party that did not make it into Parliament. Her friend, Stella Soundoulounaki, 25, a medical resident, agreed.

“It’s going to be even worse,” she said. “After two elections it’s the same government, and they have the people’s O.K. to proceed doing exactly what they were doing.” Ms. Soundoulounaki said that her monthly wages had been cut to about $1,000 from $2,275 and that she would take to the streets if the government imposed more austerity measures. “Now people have nothing to lose if they come to the streets and protest,” she said.

Greece’s new leaders face the formidable tasks of trying to slash public spending and restore growth as the economy is in its fifth year of a grinding recession. That task would seem impossible in the near term without more help from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The government is rapidly running out of money — state coffers will run dry in mid-July, officials say — and is struggling to draw in tax revenue, much less lure investments from wary foreign companies.

The next government must act fast. Greece’s troika of foreign creditors — the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund — are scheduled to send the country bailout payments totaling $9.6 billion at the end of June — but only on the condition that Greece identify an additional $14.5 billion in savings.

If Greece manages to form a government committed to pushing through structural changes, the troika will likely agree to new bailout terms — as well as to the conditions surrounding a third bailout package for Greece, before an end-of-September deadline, said the European Union official who insisted on anonymity.

But the lenders are unlikely to bend on demands for key reforms, including that Athens instill more flexibility in the Greek labor market and press ahead with the politically charged requirement to cut tens of thousands of civil service workers from a government that has more than a million.

Reporting was contributed by Niki Kitsantonis from Athens, Jack Ewing from Frankfurt, Stephen Castle from London, and Helene Cooper from San José del Cabo, Mexico.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Talks Under Way to Form A Government in Greece. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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