Foreign Minister Kotzias’ statement to Independent Balkan News Agency reporter Spyros Sideris (Pravets, 31 May 2016)

Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias made the following statement to Independent Balkan News Agency reporter Spyros Sideris, on the margins of the proceedings of the Ministerial Meeting of the South East European Cooperation Process (SEECP), in Pravets, Bulgaria:

“We had an extremely good meeting with the Bulgarian Prime Minister, with whom we discussed the preparation for the Intergovernmental meeting and its content: what basic sectors we want to develop in our cooperation at the Summit, such as economy, foreign policy and our role in the region. We also talked about other matters, such as culture, research, cooperation among our educational institutions.

Also discussed were our bilateral relations as such, as regards the common action and common projects we can carry out; major projects, like railways, roads and energy, as well as smaller projects that concern our cross-border relations. We also talked about tourism, naturally, as it is well known how fond the Bulgarians are of Greece and how often they visit.

We also discussed the need for us to organize additional informal meetings between the leaderships of the two countries, so that we can talk about issues of wider and regional interest.

We need to have many meetings with the Bulgarian side. The priority right now is the meeting between the two governments in a multi-minister format. The second is for the Bulgarian Prime Minister to visit Greece, and the third is the new SEECP meeting this coming October. There are many meetings, which will be happening with greater frequency in the coming time, since Greece and Bulgaria, as we agreed with Mr. Borisov, constitute an anchor of stability and security for Southeast Europe.”