S. KOUVELIS: Mr. Antonopoulos, thank you very much for your very interesting presentation on how and what can work with some of our neighborly countries and especially Morocco. I would like to thank all of you and congratulate the Embassy of Morocco and of course the initiative of the Minister to visit Greece so soon after our Joint Ministerial Committee Meeting, because it is a kind of a follow-up and cooperation that we are looking for, but also I would like to thank you before I get into my speech for the invitation and the opportunity to be here representing the Greek government.
I would like to thank particularly Mr. Lavidas for the words he had said about me, because I do not know if I can see myself as a catalyst, but I see myself as a believer, that is why I am doing what I am doing and I was firmly believing when I started this process of trying to open up the economic cooperation and the economic diplomacy with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is doing. I was hoping that there would be a reaction in technical terms or in economic terms and I am satisfied to see that there has been a reaction. The business community of Greece was actually waiting for this signal to remember that outward opening is very important for development within the country and it is also important for development of good business and it is important, in our eyes at least, for public policy as well. So, thank you very much for this introduction, which I take as a great compliment.
I would also like to say that when I met Mr. Adellatif Mazouz, my colleague, I explained to him the very high esteem and admiration that I have for Morocco, the country that I got to meet through my work for the environment. I was also lucky enough to witness that Morocco is a country that can demonstrate very high levels of efficiency and friendliness in those that are trying to cooperate. I think that the fact that we have Minister Mazouz with us today, just a few weeks practically after the previous meeting within the context of the 7th Joint Ministerial Committee session between our two countries indicates that when Moroccans say they mean business, they mean that they are in business.
At the 7th Joint Ministerial Committee, we managed to do quite a lot although the session was very brief I remember which is indicative of the efficiency in our meetings. We managed to sign the bilateral protocol for the meeting and to put down in paper the lines of cooperation, we also had a bilateral agreement in cooperation for customs matters, a memorandum of understanding for industrial cooperation that was established between our countries and a memorandum of understanding for standardization and conformity assessment.
These are important things because the institutional basis in which two countries can cooperate is actually the platform on which the business people can go on and build their cooperation. We also had at that time the ratification of an agreement for the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of physical evasion for taxes and income, which is a very important base for cooperation, and, I believe that we set a good precedent for the work to come to be done between our two countries.
Now, notwithstanding all this, unfortunately the economic relation between Morocco and Greece due to the financial crisis has shown a tendency to go down, to decrease and the regression of the numbers was: From 110 million Euro in 2007 it has dropped to 69 million Euro in 2010. Obviously this is a thing that does not follow at all the excellent relations between our countries, it only indicates the downturn of the global economy but I believe that having indicated to our business people the willingness to go on, this is something that we will be addressing very soon.
Having said that, I think that Morocco has one special attribute that one has to consider: Morocco is a country that affirms every day its political stability within a region that shows signs of upheaval in the north Africa and Middle East and this is something that is very important also for Greek business people to take into account. Morocco is also a country that is showing a very strong tendency and trend for development, economic development but also development of infrastructure and networks, and that is an additional value that one has to take into account. I would also like to echo what was said, if I remember right, by Christos Folias, that there is this misconception that Morocco belongs to Spanish and French business people to do work with. That is a misconception. We, Greeks, have a lot to do, because it is part of our mare nostrum, we share quite a lot, and I think that where we can do good business, we should do good business.
On the institutional level, we have a number of other agreements that need to be included in the pipeline and included rapidly, I will not go into details about them now, we discussed them and we advanced them with the help of the Embassy, so I do not need to take your time with those, but what I would like to underline is that likewise, as I said for Morocco, that presenting good deal of opportunities for Greek companies and Greek entrepreneurs to do their work there, the same holds for our country. What we have been doing in Greece was to implement a program of stability for the economy, a program of facilitating investment and promoting collaboration between countries and I think that the same way we consider Greek business people to work with their Moroccan counterparts, the same thing we need to see in our region, in our country, in Greece, Moroccan entrepreneurs working with Greeks either in the two countries or, as it was very correctly said, to work together in third countries, which can be very important. I think that the program of changes that we have established is very important as significance to that plus, of course, the fact that Greece is a very important springboard for activity in the overall Balkan and southeastern European region, which needs to be taken into account.
Now, one final point I would like to make is that I single out one or two points of cooperation, for example tourism cooperation, and the fact that Morocco is a country that is a very developed tourism market like our country, Greece. There is a cooperation that we can foresee, for example, for cruise ships between our two countries and the Mediterranean, and, of course, I would like to echo what was mentioned at the beginning by the Ambassador, the need to see the possibilities of direct airplane links as well between our two countries, because it was said that for business people quick mobility is very important and the same goes for tourism.
March 29, 2011