Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos met today, Thursday, 30 October 2014, with the Minister for National Defence, Dimitris Avramopoulos, a few days before the latter takes up his new duties as the Greek Commissioner in the European Commission. Below is the transcript of their statements to the news media, following their meeting:
E. VENIZELOS: The Minister of National Defence, Dimitris Avramopoulos, visited me today to bid me farewell, as he is taking up his duties as Commissioner of the European Union, responsible for an extremely important portfolio. A portfolio that is among our national priorities. As I had the opportunity to tell my dear friend and colleague, Dimitris Avramopoulos, his personality, his career, his experience have made him more than ready to meet the challenges of his new position in the European Commission with complete success.
It is also obvious that, beyond his portfolio in the College of Commissioners, Mr. Avramopoulos always expresses the positions of the Commission with independence, but he is the Greek Commissioner. And this means a great deal, not just for the government, but for the country, because he is always part of the national negotiating team, of which I am always speaking, and which deals with all the major issues: From the completion of the effort to exit the economic crisis and the memorandum, to the upgrading of our country’s international presence on all levels.
We will obviously keep the channels of communication open on a daily basis. We also had the opportunity to discuss issues that we have shared competency for until today, until tomorrow, which are issues of foreign, security and defence policy. We are moving in complete coordination, on the same wavelength, and this is an opportunity for me, with a sense of collegiality, affection and friendship, as well as with a sense of patriotism, to wish him every success in his new mission.
D. AVRAMOPOULOS: I thank the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, my friend Vaggelis Venizelos, for those wishes with all my heart. I am, in fact, departing. I am departing a few hours from now. I must say that it is perhaps rare, but I am exhausting my very last seconds in Athens to begin the next, the day after tomorrow, in Brussels.
As the Deputy Prime Minister very correctly just stated, the mission is very, very important. I undertook it with a keen sense of responsibility, aware of its peculiarities, of its difficulties, but also of what I have taken upon my shoulders, because I really am taking on responsibilities that are defined clearly by the European regulations, but I do not cease to be the Greek Representative, the Greek Commissioner in the European Commission.
A European Commission with an enhanced political element – as Mr. Juncker has stated repeatedly – which gives us the potential to undertake initiatives in a very difficult period for Europe, because much is at stake at this time.
Meanwhile, we are also doing battle here in Greece. The Greek government has taken on a heavy burden, a huge responsibility, to lead the country out of and far from the crisis, and we all hope that everything we have been through will soon belong to the past.
From my perspective, I have undertaken this commitment as well, in the context of my new responsibilities, to support to the best of my abilities the initiatives the Greek government takes and the programmes it has adopted and is moving ahead with.
The meeting, as the Deputy Prime Minister said earlier, had another purpose, as well. To look at the current developments. I must say that the Foreign Ministry and the Defence Ministry enjoy superb cooperation. The stances we adopt are carefully studied and fully serve our national interests and send a message to Greek society that it should feel safe and secure. Nothing of what is happening in our wider neighbourhood – and to be specific, I am not referring only to our proximate neighbourhood, but also to the arc of instability that extends from Ukraine to Tunisia, where our country has a central role to play.
In fact, the Deputy Prime Minister met today with the Secretary General of NATO, whom I will be meeting with in a short while, and who is impressed with the level of our national defence system, always in the service of international legality and every mission that we undertake jointly to promote peacemaking policies in our region.
In concluding, I would like to thank Vaggelis Venizelos for the excellent cooperation we had throughout this time. And so I, in turn, wish him every success in the duties he has been assigned by the Greek state and the Greek people. May everything lead to the result we all want to see. And in Brussels, I want the government itself and all of you to know that there will be the vigilant eye not of the European Commissioner, but of the Greek politician.
E. VENIZELOS: Thank you very much.
D. AVRAMOPOULOS: Thank you very much.
October 30, 2014