Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met on Saturday with Paul Krugman, the renowned economist who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2008, at the government headquarters in Maximos Mansion.

The meeting between the two men lasted about an hour and a half and no statements were made at its conclusion.

Earlier in the day, President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos received Krugman at the presidential mansion in Athens.

During their meeting, the Greek President reiterated his conviction that Greece will remain in the European Union and the eurozone.

“Your views and positions, as expressed in your last book ‘End This Depression Now!’, help us – together with our partners – modify specific points of the program imposed on us,” Pavlopoulos told Krugman,

The Greek President congratulated Krugman for a lecture given by him in Athens on Friday and said that it helped significantly in the effort Greece was making to remain in the euro area and the EU and to fully meet its obligations. He also praised Krugman for his contribution to the efforts to deal with the global economic crisis.

In reply, Krugman said that things were at a “turning point” for both Greece and Europe and underlined that steps were being made in the right direction.