Thank you very much, Secretary General. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me to this gathering to share a Greek experience in terms of delivering early warnings for all.
As the President of the Maldives pointed out, we are all shaped by the natural tragedies that have affected us. In our case, it was a wildfire that ravaged through a wealthy suburb of Athens in July 2018, killing 104 people who received no early warning about what was about to hit them. We pledged at that time that we needed to overhaul how we deal with natural disasters.
Then we quickly focus on three themes. The first is technology. The one investment which we made, which has clearly paid off, is strengthening our “112” emergency broadcast number, which means that we can now blast to all cell phones in the country, regardless of whether these are owned by Greeks or tourists, targeted messages, giving them very clear instructions about what they should do in case of a natural disaster. This is a relatively cheap technology and can be implemented easily.
And of course, coupled with more advanced weather-predicting models which use AI, can give us a very good understanding of which areas of the country will be affected by what type of disaster.
The second focus has been on governance. As you pointed out, we set up a Ministry for Climate Crisis and Civil Protection. It was a very important organisational change because it brought together all the necessary stakeholders, military, police, fire, ambulance services, the forest services, the Coast Guard. We codified responsibilities. We wanted to make sure that lines of communication are open and the chain of command was very clear.
Of course, we also invest significantly in our civil protection infrastructure. We use more than 2 billion of European funding to bolster our civil protection, and a lot of that is directed towards smart technology, be it drones that we use in terms of early fire detection or more advanced, localised weather prediction technology.
My third point, which was also touched upon by the President of the Maldives has to do with building relationships of trust with the local stakeholders. It’s no use of blasting a “112” message telling people that they should get out of harm’s way in case of a wildfire if they don’t listen to it. So building these relationships of trust, educating people, building an evacuation culture, making sure that the people trust the civil protection services is incredibly important.
In our case, we have succeeded in doing so. Sometimes it’s better to evacuate some people unnecessarily and to err on the caution side than losing people because we have not warned them about what was coming their way.
Again, we are ready to share our experiences and our practises with anyone who would be interested in learning about the Greek example.
Thank you very much for inviting us to this gathering.
Prime Minister’s participation in Parallel Events at COP29
Earlier, the Prime Minister attended the opening of the Greek Pavilion at COP29, where he stressed that Greece is a pioneer in the energy transition, having reduced emissions by about 45% compared to 2005, noting that the shift to clean power generation technologies is generating new investment opportunities in the country. Kyriakos Mitsotakis noted that Greece is gradually becoming an energy exporter, underlining the importance of a more extensive network of interconnections with other European countries.
The Prime Minister also underlined that the circular economy and the protection of unique ecosystems are an important part of Greece’s broader sustainability strategy, which is particularly important for tourism.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis also participated in the Parallel Event entitled “Vertical Corridor: Europe’s New Energy Lifeline”, where he noted that Greece’s infrastructure for the reception of LNG and the Vertical Corridor helped to shield the supply of the broader region when Russia drastically reduced exports to Europe, adding that the corridor can serve even Ukraine.
The Prime Minister also stressed that the divergence in wholesale electricity prices between South-Eastern European countries and other EU Member States demonstrates weaknesses in the internal market.
Finally, Kyriakos Mitsotakis participated in the Bulgarian Parallel Event “High-Level segment of the President’s Administration and the Ministry of Energy”. The Prime Minister noted the need for cooperation at the regional level and at the level of the European Council and the European Commission in order to address the distortions observed in the electricity markets of South-Eastern Europe.
He referred to the possibility of cooperation between Member States, such as Greece, Bulgaria and Romania, in order to support each other in meeting their energy needs, using sources in which each country specialises.
