The Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs, Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, met today with Stephan Mayer, the Parliamentary State Secretary to the Federal Minister of the
Interior, Building and Community of Germany.
During the meeting, the Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs stressed that “we must not allow Turkey to use migration flows in order to blackmail the European Union”,
and underlined the importance of cooperation between Greece and Germany, the latter being a top ally to our country in regard to the issue of migration to the EU. Mr Varvitsiotis added that it is necessary to strengthen solidarity between EU Member States and to adopt a new, common European asylum policy that does not
unduly burden countries of first reception. He repeated that Greece is showing zero tolerance to the violation of borders by traffickers.
In turn, Mr Mayer, who has been appointed as the political contact person for migration at the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community,
congratulated the Greek government for its recent legislative initiative concerning the migration issue, characterising it as great progress and a success. Finally, he noted that, since the two countries have common interests, given that Greece is the primary country of reception and Germany is the primary destination
country of migration flows, it would be expedient to achieve further bilateral cooperation in this area.
November 25, 2019