E. VENIZELOS: It is with particular pleasure and warm wishes for success that I welcome, in the name of the general interest and continuity of the country’s foreign policy, Mr. Nikos Kotzias and the two new Alternate Foreign Ministers, Nikos Chountis and Euclid Tsakalotos.
Mr. Kotzias and I have a long acquaintance and relationship, and I am pleased that the duties of Foreign Minister are being taken on by an individual who has experience in three different, but critical, areas. He has a great deal of experience with party phenomena, party processes, internal processes and power relations, due to his long and successful terms in the Communist Party space and in the Pasok space.
Second, because he has long experience at the Foreign Minister. He was an associate of former prime minister George Papandreou for many years, and he has served as an expert counsellor, a member of the Service with very deep knowledge of all the critical dossiers. And third, I especially appreciate the fact that he belongs to the university community and has a theoretical sensitivity that is well known.
I had the opportunity to deliver to the Minister a strictly personal 16-page letter with my findings, my notes and experiences with regard to the open fronts in Greek foreign policy. I address firstly, ladies and gentlemen, my associates the Deputy Ministers, Dimitris Kourkoulas and Akis Gerontopoulos, whom I thank warmly for their close, effective and smooth cooperation.
The Secretary General, Ambassador Anastassis Mitsialis, my closest collaborator on the day-to-day functioning of the Ministry, and the Secretary General for International Economic Relations, Panagiotis Mihalos. I thank them warmly.
And my heartfelt thanks to all of the Service executives, without exception, the Directors General, Directors, heads of Missions, and all of the personnel, diplomatic and of the other branches, without exception. In the Service, I found support in meritocracy, making optimum use of the sense of duty and the quality of the Foreign Ministry’s personnel.
During my term, there was not a single non-ministry associate or adviser brought in; no such person involved in any foreign policy or administrative issue.
I hardly need stress that the axis of our policy was close cooperation with the Hellenic Parliament, with the Standing Committee on Defense and Foreign Affairs, with the Committees on European Affairs and overseas Greeks, and of course with the National Council on Foreign Policy, because foreign policy is, par excellence, the policy of the broadest possible consensus and continuity.
We tried to show in practice that foreign policy is a policy of principles that is not impacted at its core – that is, as concerns matters of national sovereignty and the list of national issues – by the difficult experience of the crisis over the past five years, and certainly over the past 19 months, when I was directly responsible for foreign policy.
The fact that there was a downturn in the country’s economy and fiscal sovereignty in no way means that national sovereignty was compromised on any point in issues of foreign policy and security and defence policy.
The fields in which we move are always two: the first is the short list of the major national issues and priorities of foreign policy. The second field includes the international and regional issues, rife with crises during this time, also bearing in mind our capacity as a member state of the European Union and NATO.
On these issues, we always moved with moderation and rationality, attempting within the European Union and NATO to safeguard Greece’s relations with third countries, beyond the circle of the members of the European Union and NATO, to defend the national interests, and this is apparent mainly in how the EU’s enlargement policy and NATO’s open doors policy evolved.
This dictated to a very great degree Greece’s stance on all of the ongoing international crises. Greece’s stance on all of the other issues pays off directly in the narrow field of national issues. Thus, our criterion is to make choices that benefit and do not damage the national issues, and to differentiate only when it is worth the trouble in terms of the national interest.
We also had the opportunity during my term to handle the Hellenic Presidency of the Council of the European Union, during the first half of 2014 – with dignity and success, I think – the Chairmanship of BSEC in the second half of 2014, and to participate in the decision-making with regard to the new open fronts of European policy – mainly economic governance issues.
On the list of national issues, I would like to state publicly that on the Cyprus issue, which is always the top national issue, our axis was close and excellent cooperation with the President of the Republic of Cyprus, who acts, as we all know, as the Leader of the Greek Cypriot Community in the intercommunal talks.
Greece maintained the stance that it needed to maintain with regard to the drawing up of the basic text, which is the joint communiqué of 11 February 2014, and does not accept – and this is our firm position – any idea of a quadrilateral Conference or process.
You know that we accepted the reciprocal meetings with the negotiators of the two sides, only to the extent that it was requested of us by President Anastasiades, and we point up two basic issues: the importance of the existence and continuity of the international legal personality of the Republic of Cyprus, and the referendum as the culmination of any negotiation, determining everything, because any outcome must be acceptable democratically and directly to the Cypriot people; that is, by the legal members of the two Communities.
We handled the ongoing Barbaros crisis; that is, the flagrant violation of the sovereign rights of the Republic of Cyprus within its continental shelf and exclusive economic zone, in close cooperation with President Anastasiades and the Cypriot government, and we tried to make Turkey’s responsibility clear to the international community.
With regard to Greek-Turkish relations, I would like to stress that we have excellent cooperation with the Ministry of National Defence on the issues of confidence-building measures and general with air force and naval activities; issues that we discussed one-on-one with the Minister.
In the very critical area of the exploratory talks that have been under way since 2002, we have at this time made it clear that, in our view, the subject of the talks is the delimitation of the continental shelf and the exclusive economic zone, not just in the Aegean, but also in the Eastern Mediterranean, and that the clarification of the rule of reference is of very great importance for us, and it has already been accepted in the consultations that the rule of reference derives from the corpus of the relevant international case law. Without wanting to go into details, I believe that these are very important developments.
On the issue of the name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, as you know, we respect and are following the process under Mr. Nimetz, while it is important to us that our stance was confirmed at NATO, at the June meeting of Defence Ministers, in Brussels, and mainly in the conclusions of the Cardiff Summit Meeting, in September.
Within the European Union, our stance was confirmed in the conclusions of the December 2014 General Affairs Council. Our policy on the Western Balkans was set down at the Meeting of Foreign Ministers of the European Union and the Western Balkans, in Thessaloniki, at the end of the Greek Presidency, and during the tour I carried out in March, as the President of the Council, of all the countries of the region.
In the field of Greek-Albanian relations, I see as important the fact that an agreement has been reached on the matter of toponyms; an issue with much broader historical and international political connotations.
Needless to say, our interest in the Greek national minority is ongoing and unflagging, but we have not been able to agree on the completion of the procedures for the validation and ratification of the agreement on the delimitation of the maritime zones; an agreement that was signed in 2009.
I don’t want to go into details, but this is a departure point for my referring to the next issue, which has been the major horizontal priority at the Foreign Ministry for the past 19 months.
I am referring to the coordinated efforts on all fronts towards the delimitation of maritime zones. I already mentioned the issues that concern our relationship with Turkey, our relationship with Albania. You are well aware that we invested in our relationship with Egypt. I paid four visits to Cairo during this time. The culmination was the Cairo declaration, in November.
Also of very great importance is the fact that we moved ahead with our negotiations with Italy on the transformation of the old agreement on the delimitation of the continental shelf, the 1977 agreement, into an agreement on the delimitation of all the maritime zones – that is, the EEZ as well – and we are expecting final confirmation from the Italian side soon.
Unfortunately, the turbulent situation in Libya has not allowed us to do something similar on that front, but we made optimum use of the outer limits of the continental shelf and the EEZ, set down in Law 4001 of 2001, and we moved ahead to collaboration with the Environment Ministry on calls for tenders – for the first time – with regard to offshore fields in the Ionian Sea and south of Crete.
Of particular importance from this perspective is an act of international law to which we proceeded a few days ago. We recalled and at the same time resubmitted, amended, the statement of acceptance of the jurisdiction, the unilateral jurisdiction, of the International Court in The Hague, just as we also submitted a statement under article 298 of the Law of the Sea, of the Convention on the Law of the Sea, with regard to the jurisdiction of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.
I hardly need mention the importance of our trilateral cooperation with Cyprus and Egypt. As with Cyprus and Israel. Trilateral cooperation platforms that are in no way aggressive in nature, but that are aimed at peace and stability in the region, with the joint basis of respect for international law and, in particular, the International Law of the Sea.
The second major horizontal policy was energy diplomacy. I will not refer to issues concerning the TAP and our relations with Azerbaijan. But I will mention the importance of President Putin’s statement regarding a new corridor and a hub on the Greek-Turkish border.
Something that I think needs priority consideration in the coming time, while it is also of very great importance that Greece is participating actively in all of the discussions regarding the “central corridor”, which will utilize existing networks between the Aegean and Baltic Seas, in cooperation with the Visegrad countries and the other two EU countries in the wider region, Bulgaria and Romania. And the East Med plan with Cyprus remains open.
On issues of the southern neighbourhood and our relations with the Arab world, Greece organized, as the Presidency, as you remember, a major event in Athens: the Meeting of EU and Arab League Foreign Ministers. The Mediterranean group of European countries was reestablished, with Greece playing an active role, and we invested in relations with countries like Egypt, Algeria, Lebanon.
We also developed privileged relations with the Gulf countries, a partnership with the United Arab Emirates, and advanced relations with Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
We took part – and this is something that was not the case in the past – in all of the meetings on Libya, in Rome and Madrid. In the Geneva II conference on Syria – we hadn’t participated in the Geneva I talks – and in the Cairo conference on Gaza.
We attached particular importance to our relations with Iran. I visited Tehran. I have met three times, outside Tehran, with my Iranian counterpart, and before the announcement of elections we were awaiting the reciprocal visit of the Iranian Foreign Minister, which I hope will take place as soon as possible.
In the eastern neighbourhood, as you can understand, we are closely monitoring everything that is happening in the wider region of Mariupol, with the aim of ensuring the security of the Consulate General and the security of all residents of Greek origin. I was in ongoing contact with the new Consul General.
Our relations with the Ukrainian government are on the level of the relations with the member states of the European Union, but I want to note, if only via a brief mention, where our relations with Moldova, Georgia and Armenia stand at this time.
I accepted the invitation from my Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, to visit Moscow at the end of January, in reciprocation of his visit. I didn’t carry out the visit due to the elections, and I hope that visit takes place as soon as possible.
With regard to the BRIC states, and beyond Russia and China, with whom we have advanced economic and political relations, and with whom there were numerous meetings on the level of Foreign Ministers, I would like to note our very warm relations with India, as affirmed in my latest meeting with my Indian counterpart, on the margins of the UN General Assembly, while a great effort is needed for our bilateral relationship with Brazil to gain practical characteristics, and this has to do, to a great extent, with the manner of Brazil’s participation in the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund.
On issues of economic diplomacy, we attached particular importance to cooperation with the Development Ministry, thanks to the efforts of the economic Counsellors and Attachés branch, which remained at the Foreign Ministry.
Mr. Gerontopoulos handled Hellenism abroad issues very skillfully, just as Mr. Kourkoulas handled European policy issues in an exceptional manner.
I address a warm patriotic greeting to all Greeks abroad, with the assurance that in Greece there is continuity and consensus on foreign policy issues.
We attach very great importance to church diplomacy, and allow me to close with a reference to what I think are two very critical pieces of news concerning the issues of German reparations and the occupation loan.
A few days ago, on 19 January, the Finance Minister forwarded to me the confidential findings of the working group of the State General Accounting Office regarding the assessment of the claims of the Greek state, and I forwarded it immediately to the Legal Council of the State, now awaiting the opinion of the Plenary.
On 14 January, in response to relevant statements from the spokesperson for the German Finance Ministry, I made a public statement, referring to the need for these issues to be resolved diplomatically, within the framework of mutual respect and shared respect for international law and historical truth. And on my instructions, this statement was delivered with a note verbale to the German Foreign Ministry.
With these words, and having once again thanked the accredited correspondents, who are also a factor in the exercising of public diplomacy, and all of the personnel of the Foreign Minister, I would liketo welcome you, Mr. Minister, and the Alternate Ministers, and before you take the floor, please do me the favor of our giving the floor to Akis Gerontopoulos so that he can make a brief statement, as a political figure.
K. GERONTOPOIULOS: First of all, I would like to thank the President, Antonis Samaras, for the honor he did me and the trust he showed in me. I would like to thank Mr. Venizelos for the excellent cooperation we had, as well as Mr. Kourkoulas.
I would like to thank all of the administrative personnel, because throughout this time we moved ahead together, as well as the diplomats of my office, with whom we travelled around the world. As Mr. Venizelos said at some point, we travelled the less-travelled line together.
In foreign national policy, many things are not immediately apparent. I believe that our successors will judge us strictly, but fairly. And I would just like to make the reminder that the state and, even more so, foreign policy have continuity.
And I would like to thank all of the correspondents again, because they supported us, because, as Mr. Venizelos said, they are part of our diplomatic effort. Thank you very much.
E. VENIZELOS: Mr. Minister.
N. KOTZIAS: Mr. Minister and Mr. President of Pasok, I thank you for the hospitable introduction you made in the presence of the Foreign Ministry’s new leadership. I have to thank Alexis Tsipras publicly for entrusting the country’s foreign policy to myself and the two Alternate Foreign Ministers; a foreign policy that I must underscore is buttressed by the Foreign Ministry’s personnel.
On the way here, someone asked me how I feel, and I responded with just one phrase: I am pleased because I am returning home. I am pleased because I am returning to friends and associates.
What does the Foreign Ministry always need, what did I learn in the 18 years I served as an employee here? It needs to learn to think even more, it needs to contribute with critical thinking to a proactive foreign policy. It does not suffice, ladies and gentlemen of the Foreign Ministry, for one simply to state one’s view, to carry out the formal bureaucratic procedure.
What is needed are proposals. I want critical thinking and proposals from you. The good diplomat, the good expert, the good employee in all of the Ministry’s departments is the one who leaves his or her mind free to think about what the best way is to serve the common good of all Greeks and Greece’s sovereignty within the international system.
So I invite you, first of all, to act with free thinking as your guide. In 1989, I essentially belonged to no political party, and you know that today I do not belong to a party. Know that the three of us who are here today want to bleed for a Greece that will stop bleeding.
Why do we need today, as never before, the critical thinking of every person who is active in foreign policy? Because the problems are more complex and contain many dangers in relation to the past. The problems are very complicated, because you know better than I that globalization and European integration are moving ahead, and we must not allow the country to be cut off from these two processes.
Greece is sovereign when it infuses international organizations, multilateral negotiations and the European Union itself with Greek foreign policy. And Greece will defend its sovereignty, as it must defend the democratic sovereignty of its people, defend its sovereignty within the international system itself.
I want to tell you my basic thought and concern. We are living in a region with many unstable forces. If I wanted to put it schematically, I would say that Greece lives within a triangle of instability, with Ukraine at the top, Libya in the bottom left corner, and the Middle East on the right side of the triangle’s base.
Greece is a relatively bright beacon of stability, and our allies and partners must and need to see this – particularly those who think or believe that, through the debt and the memorandums, they can lead Greece and its position in the international system to any destabilization.
Any lack of the necessary stability here in the region will mean much suffering for the Greek people and the whole of the European Union. Consequently, we should go to the upcoming negotiations with respect for the results of Democracy.
Secondly, I want to say that foreign policy must be based on and serve the new government’s struggle for rational negotiation and resolution of the problems related to the public debt and to the overriding of the memorandum agreements.
Foreign policy in the era of the memorandums and the heavy burdening of the country’s large public debt must be a proactive foreign policy that builds and opens bridges with the whole world.
We are a European country, and I, personally, and the Alternate Ministers are also Europeanists. We are in a country where we are Europeanists, but we are looking forward to major bridges with the emerging world, with the BRIC countries, with countries like China, with our traditional relations with Russia, with India, to which the Minister referred, with Brazil and many other countries.
We do not believe, as some would like to characterize us, that the relations between our European accession and course run counter to or conflict with our relations with the emerging new powers.
We are a country that at no time in the past 500 years of colonial capitalism damaged our relations due to some aggressiveness towards third peoples, and we are thus the country that, for historical and cultural reasons, can help to develop the relations between the European Union and the emerging markets and powers.
Third, this relationship as a bridge between Europe, the European Union, and these countries requires the development of our capabilities and potential, what we call our capacities. That is, in the world that is emerging, Greece needs to specialize in the ability to mediate, to contribute to arbitrations, and to develop its negotiating capacity, for itself as well as between other states that are located in crisis regions.
These three are the initial duties, and they are linked with the fact – and I thank the Minister very much for receiving us today – that tomorrow night we have to go to Brussels, because since yesterday we have been involved in a tough negotiation on the issue of a third wave of sanctions against Russia, and, as you know, on Thursday we have the extraordinary meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council.
Allow me to say from here that certain initial signs from our partners were not the best. They violated the rules according to which the European Union functions and tried to force a fait accomplis on us before the new government was even sworn in. We made this clear from the outset. It will not be accepted. Anyone who thinks that Greece will relinquish its sovereignty and active contribution to European policy in the name of its debt is mistaken.
We want to be Greeks, patriots. We want to be Europeanists. We want to be global internationalists. We want, above all, a Ministry that thinks, that dares to think differently, that will turn a new page and serve the general concerns and prospects of our people.
Remember that policy is not just plans and negotiation, but, as I often say, it is also sentiments. We think, we feel the pain of our people and we think about how we can achieve Greece’s gaining the best possible position in the European and international systems.
I thank you for coming this evening. I thank the Minister, who received us and briefed us in his office a short while ago. I thank President Alexis Tsipras. I thank the two Alternate Ministers, with whom I will be facing difficult, but always interesting, moments.
And I thank you in advance, because I know that you like to think freely and to contribute to a creative Greece. Thank you very much.
E. VENIZELOS: Mr. Minister, allow me to say this: I wish you good luck, starting tomorrow. As, during the past five years, I have served as Defence Minister, Finance Minister, Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, I want to assure you and all of the Greek people that not once, not for a moment, did Greece accept pressure or an attempt at pressure regarding issues of foreign policy and security and defence policy, with the economic crisis, and particularly public debt issues, used as leverage.
Not for a minute. Not only did we not accept pressure, but no one dared to exert such pressure and link the issues. As you didn’t link the competency of the Foreign Ministry with the negotiations, with the adjustment programme, with the next phase and with the public debt.
And as I have lived through the whole negotiation with the public debt, the drastic haircut, the unique international restructuring, and I have lived through the nights of 21 February and 9 March 2012, I express my hope that the Prime Minister, the Finance Minister and the whole of the government will not live through such experiences and will bring something more than what is already prepared and achieved, something better, and not something worse.
N. KOTZIAS: Mr. Minister, I thank you for the wishes you expressed. These matters were decided in the elections. It is well known that we believe there is a different approach to certain problems, and that is why I call on all of our associates at the Ministry to open up their thinking critically and to think of new and more innovative and more creative ways for us to contribute, as the Foreign Ministry, to solving the problems that are oppressing our people. I thank you once again for being here.
E. VENIZELOS: And I thank you. Above democracy there is history. Never forget that.
N. KOTZIAS: And now Alternate Minister Nikos Chountis would like to speak.
N. CHOUNTIS: Thank you very much. I know that I am exhausting the limits of your stamina, as you are all standing.
E. VENIZELOS: Please.
N. CHOUNTIS: But I feel it is my obligation to say a few words. It hasn’t yet been 48 hours since the result. Things moved fast after that, and I didn’t have the opportunity to say a few brief things publicly. First, I want to thank the citizens who voted of Syriza and who elected a basic government from here on in.
And of course I would like to thank Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose choice it was for me to be here.
I want to thank the previous leadership, Mr. Venizelos and his colleagues, Mr. Kourkoulas and Mr. Gerontopoulos, who waited for us, received us, briefed us. And I thank them very much for that.
I want to say, dear friends, that my contact with foreign policy issues goes back to when I was a first member, following the constitutional revision and the establishment, Mr. Minister, of the National Council on Foreign Policy. But subsequently, what I think can help me is my experience over the past five years as a member of the European Parliament and, in fact, as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence.
And I want to say once again that during that time, on these issues, we had very good collaboration with Mr. Kourkoulas, and whenever I requested it, he was very helpful. And I think this helped me to form a better opinion or to be more effective in my work.
Our intention, dear friends – the responsibility I am undertaking, from the experience I gained in these difficult times we are living in, my effort and the effort of the Greek government – in the negotiations will be to endeavor to get our partners in the European Union to treat us as an equal member of the European Union, with obligations and rights deriving for the EU treaties, and on this basis we are undertaking obligations, but we are pursuing our rights.
My efforts will be in this direction, as will the collective effort we will all be making as the government, in the face of the problems we have to confront.
I don’t want to tire you any further. I considered it my obligation to say it, and of course I want to say that with the Ministry’s personnel – because I am aware of the work that is being done – we will have the best possible relations, I am certain, and cooperation, because I believe that the effort that is being made is expressed in the Ministers, Alternate Ministers, but is a responsible and serious effort. I look forward to that. I thank you very much in advance and hope that we get on well. Thank you very much.
E. TSAKALOTOS: I, too, would like to thank Mr. Venizelos and the Ministry for the hospitality. In the elections, there was a major debate over whether or not there is continuity in the state. I believe that there is continuity and discontinuity. As a university lecturer I teach my students that societies and citizens always have choices, there are always controversies, different analyses, different ideas, different imperatives. We of Syriza will build on what is there, but we will also bring new analyses and ideas and proposals.
Of course, all of these will also be open to criticism and debate and consultation. I think that in the field of international economic relations we have a lot to say. I think that the ears of Europe and beyond are open. As we went to be sworn in, I responded to the foreign correspondents that, if you have things to say, ears will be open.
I think that we in Syriza have a lot to say about how the negotiations should be conducted and about the macroeconomic framework – that we need to make a new macroeconomic space, as well as with a number of reforms. Some of these reforms will continue from earlier reforms, and many will not.
I too hope for very good collaboration. We in Syriza were very distressed for a very long time – before the crisis, as well – regarding a general discrediting of civil servants: a pervasive view that they were to blame for everything. We are not of the view that this general criticism was fair. We believe that if you want to change something in the public sector, you take the good example and generalize it. And I am certain that here, too, there will be many good examples that we can generalize and that we can create something new, which this land needs very much.
Thank you again, Mr. President. Thank you everyone.
January 28, 2015