E. VENIZELOS: It is with great pleasure that I welcome to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, a European figure who has also served as Prime Minister of our friend Norway.
Indeed, Greece is one of the oldest and most faithful members of the Council of Europe, and we are indeed grateful to this great institution for the support that it provided us with during the time of the dictatorship and in order for the junta to fall.
We support the Secretary General’s initiatives. We also support the CoE initiatives and everything that pertains to what has been decided in both the European Court of Human Rights and all relevant support mechanisms. After all, the Council of Europe is the guardian of all great European principles and values, such as democracy and the rule of law.
Moreover, the Council of Europe brings together all of Europe, and this is quite important when it comes to shaping and preserving a sense of historical conscience in Europe, but also in terms of preserving and supporting values such as peace, democracy, social cohesion and human rights.
The Secretary General is here to work with us, and, indeed, in view of the upcoming Greek European Union presidency in the first semester of 2014, we will be working together with the Council of Europe, the Secretary General himself, but also his staff, with a view to achieving the set goals, in order to eventually work in the direction of bringing to fruition objectives, pan-European objectives, to protect democracy and human rights.
T. JAGLAND: Well, first of all, ladies and gentlemen, it’s great for me to be in Greece, one of the oldest and very solid members of the Council of Europe. I am coming here not to impose anything on Greece. I am coming here to discuss how we can work together on some of the challenges that the country is facing, in particular relating to extremism, xenophobic entities and also violent political action.
And the Council of Europe in this respect has some very important expertise, know-how to contribute to the process that Greece is in now.
Let me say briefly that I fully support the line that the Greek government has taken, to crack down on this party, Golden Dawn. You cannot be allowed to commit crimes under the cover of a political ideology or a political party. And I think it is very right to do this based on rule of law, and the Greek government will have our full support in that respect.
I also appreciate that one is now looking into how one can modernise legislation related to hate speech, open racism, which actually the Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has said that it would be in full compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights to have laws that are banning those kinds of things, like, for instance, as I said, racism, open racism, in the open space, and also incitement to violence.
I think it’s extremely important that authorities set the limits of what one can say and do, by law. Thank you.
October 23, 2013