“We cannot do more with less”, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told EU partners at the extraordinary meeting of the European Council on the European Union Multiannual Financial Framework for the period 2021-2027. The Greek Prime Minister stressed that the current proposals of the European Council for Greece are far from those of the European Commission and the European Parliament.
It should be noted Greece will reportedly receive 35.5 billion euros in the next seven years. The difference of the planned budget in these proposals exceeds 200 billion euros.
Greece is claiming more funding for development funds, including those form the National Strategic Reference Framework program (NSRF), to create more and better-paid jobs, especially in the regions. At the same time, it needs more funds for policies regarding the border control and the climate change.
Mitsotakis said the national line of Greece was “to guarantee to the best of our abilities the revenues of our farmers and to help them transition to a new model of production that will be environmentally friendly.”
The government would both support traditional policies like the Cohesion Policy and the Common Agricultural Policy, and be more ambitious on policies related to climate change and border control. “If we [the EU] want to be more ambitious,” Mitsotakis said “we will need much more funding.”
The prime minister said he was hopeful that all member states would agree to a commonly acceptable solution on the budget, and expressed regret for the lower funding available than initially expected for the migration issue and the guarding of the borders, although the funding Greece would receive would be higher than that of the previous program period.”
Cuts in the area of the refugee-migration issue are not right and are in the opposite direction to the expectations of the European citizens, he reportedly stressed.
The prime minister made a specific reference to Cohesion Policy, noting that it should not be considered merely as a transfer of resources from rich countries to the poorest.
“Cohesion Policy is a point of reference,” he said. This is because these resources are, for many countries, important in order to implement infrastructure, modernization and human resources projects that enhance employment, growth and prosperity of citizens, government sources noted.
He underlined that while the proposals submitted offer Greece more funds, they are not, in their entirety, sufficient to cover the impact of the crisis. “The Cohesion Fund and the Common Agricultural Policy have helped to keep Greece in the euro,” Mitsotakis added, noting that the Common Agricultural Policy is extremely important for the primary sector in Greece.
sources: amna and others
Mitsotakis appears to have made intelligent and highly relevant comments! Maybe they found some good advisors at last…