Written statement by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nikos Dendias, following the videoconference of Foreign Ministers of the Alliance for Multilateralism (Athens, 26 June 2020)

Today I participated in the videoconference of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Alliance for Multilateralism, an initiative launched by my French and German colleagues, Jean-Yves Le Drian and Heiko Maas. Our meeting today also coincided with the 75th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter.

The main topic of today’s discussion was the strengthening of multilateralism in a rapidly changing international environment.

The outbreak of the pandemic is a stark reminder of the need for more international cooperation and more multilateralism, as it showed the limits of the existing system and the need for us to start working together towards a new global health architecture.

Greece firmly supports multilateralism as the most effective path to responding to indiscriminate challenges whose management transcends national borders.

It is evident that we should respond to the repercussions of the pandemic through synergies on a global level, so that we can ensure access for all states to the necessary funding and to vaccines that are developed in the future.

At the same time, we need effective international cooperation in order to respond to disinformation, which increased sharply during the pandemic.

Finally, I stressed that, during the effort to respond to the pandemic, protection of human rights, our freedoms and the rule of law should remain a priority for all of us.