G. KATROUGALOS: I am pleased to welcome you once again and declare the opening of our 4th Meeting. This is one of the best initiatives undertaken with the aim of deepening our cooperation. As you know, the European Union is facing serious challenges. President Juncker himself said, during his opening speech before the European Parliament, that his Commission is a last-chance Commission for Europe. This Sunday, the leaders of the European Union will try to solve one of the most important issues, one of the greatest challenges facing our Community of Nations and peoples: Brexit.
Before us we have two groups of friendly states: Two European Union Member States, and two states that aspire to accede to the European Union. As you are aware, during the Summit Meeting held in Thessaloniki, Greece firmly declared its commitment to enlargement, which we believe will be mutually beneficial for Europe, for Greece and for all the countries in the region. You must have heard the remark circulating widely - that there are two kinds of states in the European Union: small states and states that have not yet realised that they are small. Our region has no major powers, major countries, but through our cooperation, we can emerge as an important political power, not in order to stand opposed to others, but to promote dialogue within our community of states. Therefore, we believe that enlargement will be a positive development, as it will create a market within the single market. Every time I travel abroad to promote the goals of Greek diplomacy, I say that we are not just a market of 11 million people. Greece and the other countries of the region must be considered parts of a wider regional market. It is therefore in our interest to deepen our cooperation and, naturally, to help countries that have not yet acceded to the European Union to do so through different means - for example, through memoranda of understanding. We have provided technical assistance to all friendly countries in the region.
This scheme, the meeting of Foreign Ministers, is combined from the outset with a cooperation session of various other Ministers held in tandem. The first meetings focused mainly on issues of migration and home affairs. The first meeting exclusively focused on migration, the second focused on civil protection, and the third, held last May, focused mainly on police collaboration, aiming at the institutionalisation of these meetings at the administrative level. Thus, one of the major benefits of this initiative is that it has already become an institution. From here on in, I believe we must focus precisely on the following: preparing the deliverables, thoroughly monitoring the actions subsequently undertaken, and organising meetings in the future, not only on the political level, like today's meeting, but also on the technical level and the level of experts.
We decided to focus on the economy during this meeting. In my opinion, this is a completely logical choice, as we have examined issues of security and police collaboration, which are very important for us because all our countries are facing challenges that concern not only migration but also organised crime and corruption. Therefore, I believe it is logical to move on to a level that requires much more mature cooperation: the level of the economy. Our colleagues from the Ministries of Economy will hold separate meetings. However, even at this stage, following the conclusion of the opening remarks, I would like to give the floor to Stergios Pitsiorlas, who would like to share a few first thoughts on the organisation of our joint plans.
I believe that at our next meeting we should discuss how our cooperation will be structured in order to achieve tangible results and promote decisions made during previous Ministerial Meetings. I remind you that during our last meeting we decided to organise social networks to support our political programme, citizen organisation networks. For example, we discussed the networking of our countries’ Universities, selecting one University from each country. We would, therefore, have a network of 4 Universities, with joint meetings, common projects, scheduling of common projects and use of European funds. We also discussed the possibility of a joint mission of journalists and representatives of the Media of our four countries, who will visit Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia in order to talk with the citizens of these countries and gain a sense of how our cooperation is being promoted.
Nikola made a very interesting proposal, which was adopted: prior to Ministerial meetings, preparatory meetings on the level of experts should be held. This time, this did not occur. Therefore, I propose that we attempt to do this after this meeting. For example, in one month, a similar meeting could be organised on the technical level, on the level of experts, in order to further explore the ideas to be discussed at the Ministerial meeting with regard to the economy. I would like to propose to Nikola that, after our joint effort for the ratification of the Prespes Agreement is completed, after we have celebrated this courageous effort by Nikos Kotzias and the two Prime Ministers, we could make a specific announcement in the context of the quadrilateral scheme. This would be a celebratory event, beyond the political message to be sent by our leaders. We could present our work on the level of economic cooperation.
I do not wish to impose. I would like to give the floor to Stergios, who will present his ideas on the prospects for economic cooperation, and we will later have the opportunity for further discussion, not to report our ideas in parallel, but in the context of meaningful dialogue.
Thank you for your attention.
ST. PITSIORLAS: Good morning and I also bid you welcome to Thessaloniki. This is an opportunity to take a further step in the cooperation between our countries, our economic cooperation.
Many meetings have taken place to date, and major steps have been taken. It has been repeatedly discussed on the level of Ministers and Prime Ministers that it is necessary to promote networks in our region: railway networks, road networks, energy networks; I believe we have taken important steps in these directions and all these projects are under way. I believe that this discussion must extend to issues that concern the market in the entire region and to how we can strengthen economic cooperation on this level, to trade relations, to cooperation between companies, and to cooperation on issues related to investments and exports. I think we must shape an outlook and communicate it to the rest of the world: that we here do not put emphasis on competition between us, but on cooperation, and that we wish to promote the region to the entire world as a united front where we work together in order to forge common policies and goals. I think that this will be the challenge in the near future.
In this sense, I would like to propose certain ideas in this direction.
The first concerns cooperation between our countries’ Organisations for attracting foreign investments and promoting exports. I believe that we must work together in this area in order to promote the region as a whole at international exhibitions and to underline the need for investments in this region as a whole as much as possible, rather than each of us focusing solely on their country. We have a unique opportunity at the moment, as the region is at the centre of the international stage and has attracted the attention of the international community following the Prespa Agreement. I believe that we must capitalise on this opportunity and jointly organise efforts to attract investment interest in the region. I think that this should be the first step and, starting tomorrow, there could be a group of experts to study this.
The proposal for the interconnection of our countries’ commercial registers is based on the same logic. I believe that this interconnection would enable companies to have information on each other country, enjoy a clearer view and engage in better cooperation. The Greek Commercial Register is interconnected with the European Business Register, and I believe this would be helpful for the other countries as well. Moreover, I believe that the interconnection of the Commercial Registers would be of tremendous assistance for economic cooperation.
A third idea concerns consumer protection issues. This concerns every market, every country. There is a European system to which we all adapt - or ought to adapt. I think we could organise our cooperation even more specifically, conclude a Memorandum of Cooperation with each other in order to shape common rules for the markets of our countries.
Furthermore and by the same token, I believe we should proceed with cooperation between our countries’ central markets. Greece has enjoyed an exceptional experience through its cooperation with Italy in this area, and I believe we can capitalise on this experience in relations between us. This step would help us tremendously in trade between us, and I believe we are sufficiently mature to proceed with this.
Finally, an issue that is of concern to all of us, in my view, is control of the markets in every area, which will require our cooperation. This means control of quality, control in the assessment of procedures; additionally, issues of illegal trading in every country, including ours, have been raised. We have extended a proposal to Bulgaria, in particular, for bilateral cooperation on these issues. I believe this cooperation could be generalised and extend to the countries present.
These are certain ideas that, in tandem with the issues of major projects on networks, could, in my view, strengthen the market, the single market of our countries, and would help us further develop economic and trade relations.
In closing, I would like to repeat my first statement: In our opinion, the Balkan countries must shape a common image and promote it to the world, laying claim to a share in the global market on the level of both exports and investments. If we succeed, this will help everyone, while if we give the appearance, as was the case with political issues in the past, that we are engrossed in internal competition, this will be at the expense of everyone.
Thank you very much.
November 23, 2018