Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer in Vienna. The Prime Minister’s statements during the joint press conference of the two leaders follow:
“Dear Chancellor, dear Karl, it is with great pleasure that I am back in Vienna for a meeting which confirms the excellent relations between our two countries, but also our very close personal relations.
We are not just partners in the European Union, we are members of the same family, the European People’s Party, and I believe it is extremely important that we keep our contacts very active, very lively, because we have many challenges ahead of us, and we need to coordinate both bilaterally and at the European level to address them.
Allow me to start from the very substantial discussion we had on the issue of migration and refugees and to reiterate once again how grateful I am and how grateful the Greek people as a whole are for the fact that Austria was one of the first countries to stand by our country in March 2020, when we faced, in fact, an organised attempt by migratory waves to breach the Greek borders, which, fortunately, we managed to effectively repel for the benefit of both Greece and Europe.
It was a first message that we sent then, a precursor to the change in the European stance that followed in the next years, which made the external border management of the European Union as the absolute priority of an integrated migration policy. This has now become common ground, reflected in the conclusions of the European Council, but embodied also to a great extent in the Pact on Immigration and Asylum, which recognises the extreme importance of effective management of the European Union’s external borders.
Greece has done a lot in this direction in the last five years. One only has to look at the image of the Greek islands of the eastern Aegean today and compare it with what it was five years ago. With organised reception structures, with far fewer flows passing from the Turkish coast to our islands. With an effective guarding of the maritime borders but also with absolute respect for the protection of human life, with our Coast Guard always saving people in distress, who may be in need.
However, our message is clear and we are absolutely united on this and I want to repeat it because our positions in the European Council are absolutely identical: it is not possible for the wretched smugglers to determine who will enter the European Union. This is a decision that must be taken by the Member States of Europe themselves.
That is why effective border management is a priority, not only for the states on the front line but also those in the center of Europe, which in turn may become the recipients of some people, migrants or refugees, who have entered the European continent illegally in the first place.
I would also like to thank Austria for the support it has provided to Greece’s long-standing request for more European funding for the guarding of the European Union’s land borders.
Greece is building a deterrent barrier on its border with Turkey. We will continue to build it, but it makes perfect sense that this barrier does not only protect the Greek border, it protects the European border and should receive European funding.
In any case, we will build it with either European or national resources, but it is only fair that the burden of border security is shared fairly.
Along with active border protection, we must, of course, look at the two other pillars of our policy: effective returns, where more coordination is needed at European level, because the truth is that we can do much better for those who are not entitled to asylum, and of course legal migration, legal migration channels.
Greece has already initiated such agreements, for example with Egypt. And I would like to thank Austria, which in turn has very good relations with Egypt, because you also played a very important role in the EU-Egypt agreement.
We must enable citizens of third countries, with which we can have a framework for political cooperation, to come safely and legally to Europe to work and be able to return to their homeland in complete safety.
We discussed the Western Balkans. We both support European integration, the European path of the Western Balkans. But I pointed out to dear Karl, to the Chancellor, that any ghost of nationalism that awakens in the Western Balkans ends up threatening the European idea itself.
And I think our message to the states that are seeking to join the European Union is common: in a Union like our European family, there are no discounts from the rule of law and there should be no compromises on the rule of law and adherence to existing agreements.
Regaring the Middle East and the current crisis in Gaza, which is affecting the entire Middle East, I will repeat the long-standing position of our country: The need for the immediate conclusion of the relevant talks that will lead to an immediate ceasefire to alleviate the tragic humanitarian situation in Gaza, and of course the immediate release of the hostages, because, as we have unfortunately and tragically seen, every day that passes puts the lives of the few hostages still being held today by the Hamas terrorist organization at even greater risk.
And, of course, we are also working to avoid the worst-case scenario, which would be none other than a regional explosion that would affect the whole of the Middle East, and it is a given that it would affect not only Greece but also the whole of Europe.
Finally, we had the opportunity to briefly discuss the priorities for the next European cycle, the recent Draghi report on the competitiveness of the European Union, which I believe contains substantial proposals. I also reiterated to dear Karl, my friend the Austrian Chancellor, my belief that there are certain European common goods, such as security, defence – of the European Union, not the defence of the Member States – or the interconnectivity of our energy networks, where we need to think outside the box, to see how these European common goods, which ultimately affect the well-being of all of us, can be financed, not only with private or national resources, but also with European resources, because ultimately the footprint of such an effort would be positive for the whole of Europe.
I’ll stop here. I want to once again thank my friend Karl for his hospitality. It was a short visit this time to beautiful Vienna, but an opportunity to reaffirm the extremely close ties between our two countries.”
In response to a question about the competitiveness of the European economy and the Draghi report, Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated:
“The Draghi report is indeed – I haven’t managed to read the whole thing, but I have read the summary – it is a very interesting document, it is a bold document. And I think it is a text that puts all of us, as European citizens and leaders, before our responsibilities, describing a situation in which, unfortunately, Europe is widening its competitiveness deficit for the worse, especially in relation to the United States, while at the same time having to face the great threat of China.
Without going into too much detail, the fact that Europe needs to support its domestic innovation and the technology sector is something that I think we all agree on.
We have often talked about the need, for example, for a capital markets union in Europe, so that European companies can raise resources in Europe and not have to go to America for funding, so that we can have more European champions, not just national champions but world champions.
Defence issues have been of great concern to us. Austria has its own particularities in this matter because of its particular history. However, we all understand that Europe as a whole needs to invest more in its defence, and this is something that does not concern only the NATO member countries; it concerns the ability of the European Union as a whole to protect its citizens.
Let me just say that Greece is one of those countries that never benefited from the peace dividend after the fall of the Berlin Wall, because it always spent more than 2% of its GDP to support its defence due to the particular geopolitical conditions it had to manage.
And finally, Mr Draghi says something that is right: we need to combine the green transition with supporting the competitiveness of our economy. This cannot be done at the expense of European businesses, of European consumers.
We pay much more for energy today in Europe than in the United States. Greece, and not only Greece, we were discussing this with the Chancellor, but also other Balkan countries have been victims in recent months of a distortion in the European energy market, which has led to much higher regional prices in Greece, in Romania, in Bulgaria, than the prices that might have existed in Austria and Germany, in a market that is supposed to be connected.
Therefore the need to invest more in European networks to have a truly single market becomes, in my view, an obvious priority. And of course, yes, some of these investments – I am being realistic – some of these investments can potentially be financed, and not only, by additional European resources.”
Asked about the issue of migration and the new Pact on Migration and Asylum, the Prime Minister said:
“I will agree with the Chancellor that the implementation of the Pact on Immigration and Asylum, which was agreed after a great deal of effort and concessions, I would say, by all Member States, should be the absolute priority today.
What a country like Greece certainly cannot accept – and you implied this in your question – is to bear a disproportionate burden simply because of its geographical position, because of the fact that it is on the external borders of the European Union.
Greece is already spending significant resources on border security and is supported by the European Union with significant resources for the management of those migrants and refugees who eventually arrive in Greece. And this support should continue.
I want to stress that having reception centres on the islands is a difficult and expensive process, and it makes sense, I think, for Europe to fund this process, because we are essentially carrying out a European mission, not a national mission.
And I also want to stress that the financial resources that are at the moment available in the current Multiannual Financial Framework are certainly not sufficient and will not be sufficient in the future for us to be able to carry out this mission.
It is also something that we should be concerned about, the resources that we have, that is, to support Member States, not only for border security but also for the management of migratory flows, because the whole identification process is currently taking place on the Greek islands and we are assuming this responsibility because we are the first gateway for those who will eventually manage to enter the European Union.
Let me add to what the Chancellor said that it is obviously not our job to indicate to any European member state what its subsidy or social welfare policy should be.
However, the reality is that there are countries in Europe today that are very attractive and attract not only illegal immigrants but also refugees who have refugee status in one European country and move, as they are legally entitled to do, to another European country to seek asylum from that country.
This is something that Germany itself should be concerned about and it is certainly not our job to indicate to Germany, which also has constitutional constraints, how to organise its welfare state.
What I think, nevertheless, would not be right, would be to move towards an ad hoc approach with exceptions to the Schengen Agreement, with border controls that may not allow free movement of citizens after all and damage one of the fundamental achievements of the European Union.
Therefore, I think the implementation of the Pact in the first place should be the priority. It is a complex Pact which puts a heavy burden on all countries. That is the direction we need to move in.
Let me say one last thing: no one can demand that Greece, a country which, effectively, a few years ago came out of an unprecedented fiscal crisis – is firmly on its feet, its economy is growing fast, it has good finances – but no one can demand that Greece has a more favorable social protection framework for refugees than it has for its own Greek citizens.”
