Lawmakers from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party are stepping up pressure on Greece as it struggles to meet the terms of its second bailout, saying that a Greek exit from the euro region would be manageable and less costly.

The comments by senior members of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, made before a meeting of the CDU leadership that begins today, keep the focus on the Greek government as it strives to reach a debt-swap deal with private creditors that Merkel has said must be struck to win more aid. They are also a challenge to the chancellor’s public stance as she steers European efforts to keep the 17-member single euro area intact.

Such “threats” should be taken seriously, said Moritz Schularick, an economy professor at the John F Kennedy Institute of Berlin’s Free University. “The costs of rescuing the euro are so outrageous it’s no surprise that Merkel’s lawmakers are beating the drum on what’s at stake,” he said by phone. “At some point, a euro exit may become a real option. That wasn’t the case before.”

Michael Meister and Michael Fuchs, both Christian Democratic Union deputy parliamentary caucus leaders, called into question Greece’s future in the euro zone in separate interviews, saying that crisis-fighting bulwarks introduced since Greece tapped aid in 2010 have made contagion “significantly” less likely.

Greece will have no other option than to exit the euro area as it struggles under a mountain of debt, unable to regain its competitiveness without having its own currency to devalue, said Fuchs, the CDU’s parliamentary economy spokesman.

For Greece, “the problem is not whether they are capable of paying their loans -- they will not, not at all, never,” Fuchs said by phone from his Berlin office on Jan. 11. Greece is still a “special case” and the other 16 euro members will resolve their debt problems and retain the currency, he said.

Fuchs dismissed the prospect that letting Greece go would trigger speculative attacks against indebted countries such as Spain or Italy. Italy is a “rich” country and banks would be able to withstand any contagion effect, said Fuchs. Talk of contagion from Greece would be “right if we’re talking about two years ago.”