E. VENIZELOS: I briefed the President of the Republic on yesterday’s visit to Albania, as well as on the visits last week to Israel and Palestine.
Mr. Papoulias will be visiting Tirana in a few days, so my visit was in preparation for his. It is very important that we upgrade Greek-Albanian relations, support Albania’s European perspective, and at the same time shape substantial good neighbourly relations. And this concerns not only our mainland borders, but also our maritime boundaries. It concerns the Agreement on the maritime zones; it concerns the resolution of problems that concern our citizens, because our relations are close and the two economies are interconnected.
What I said yesterday, in Tirana, at the press conference I held with my counterpart, conveys the positions of our foreign policy; we confirmed these positions with the President of the Republic, and these positions are the framework within which his visit, too, will be carried out in a few days.
And of course what we discussed with the President was very interesting regarding the developments in the Middle East and North Africa – developments he too follows, as we do at the Foreign Ministry.
But we didn’t have just the international issues. We also have very important institutional developments, democratic developments. You will remember that, for months now, when only Pasok and I, by myself, as the President of Pasok, raised the issue of Golden Dawn, I often appealed to the President of the Republic, speaking of the need to activate the constitutional arch. And I am truly pleased because – better late than never – the justice system and the necessary political will, which should have taken shape much earlier, were activated. Parliamentary institutions are being mobilized, our democracy is becoming stronger because it is defending itself. But, of course, we need to safeguard the constitutional arch, because, as I have said very many times, violence is an extreme. And we need a united front against all forms of political and social violence.
JOURNALIST: But we are also under pressure from the troika issue.
E. VENIZELOS: Look, once again we are watching the same scenario: the recycling of the international debate on Greece, as if Greece were the big problem of the Eurozone or of the global economy. Greece has achieved a fiscal miracle thanks to the dramatic sacrifices of the Greek people. Right now, Greece is showing the best structural primary surplus in the whole of the Eurozone, at 5% of GDP.
What has been achieved is a fiscal miracle. But we cannot eat the flesh of Greece’s real economy. Now the goal is growth and new jobs. Because there is no point in achieving goals of a surplus in the numerator when you lose points in the denominator. It doesn’t produce the mathematical or, mainly, the growth and social result that is needed. The recycling of this debate is damaging to Greece, damaging to the Eurozone.
The Greek sovereign debt, despite the fact that it has been growing for years due to the ongoing recession, is at about €350 billion. The three largest countries in the Eurozone, all together, have a debt of €7 trillion – just the three largest. Greece is very small as a debt problem in absolute values. So we need an approach that is technically perfect, but also politically responsible and visionary. And the messages we send to the global economy as Europe, as the Eurozone – regarding Greece and its position in Europe – must be clear. What is happening is unacceptable.
And I hope that the formation of the new government in German will help a great deal, because here each of us has to step up to his responsibilities, and we are obliged to raise the issues with technical proficiency, with credibility, as well as at their political core. And as there is no alternative solution – there is no Plan B, and Plan A is very, very harsh – we have to negotiate with resolve and with a strategic perspective on Plan A, so that we can lead our country safely and definitively out of the crisis.
October 15, 2013