Press remarks by President António Costa following the meeting with Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis 12:30 Press remarks by President António Costa following the[...]

These visits are very important not only for me, but also for the European Union. Because first of all, it's important to bring the European institutions closer to their citizens, to engage with all the leaders. We are a Union in diversity and all the voices, all the leaders, all the member states, matter. We need to work with all to build our unity, because our unity is our strength. Thank you very much for this opportunity.

I use also this opportunity to commend very warmly, what Greece has done over the last decade. It is very impressive how you have managed to recover and to reach very sound macroeconomic fundamentals.

Now we have clearly two priorities: competitiveness and security, but nothing is possible without sound macroeconomic fundamentals. And what you have done is very impressive and very important for Europe and for the euro area.

We focus now on these two main priorities, security and competitiveness. And both are very interlinked because we cannot provide confidence to investors and boost our economy without security. It is very difficult to sustain what we need to invest in security and defence without a stronger economy.

When we talk about security, of course, our first idea comes to the Eastern flank and the threat coming from Russia. But we can never forget that we need to have a 360 degree approach to our security. Of course, Russia is a clear threat: this invasion of our airspace in Poland and in Romania is the clearest example. But we have other borders that we need to protect, from Cyprus to Finland, from Portugal to Romania. And for these, it is very important to work together.

We need to improve our border management to face illegal migration, to fight smugglers of human beings, and we need to have a strong European political migration policy. I fully agree with Prime Minister Mitsotakis when he said that if we want to have an effective European defence, we need to have common capabilities, and for common capabilities we need to have common funding.

The European Commission made a very important step with the SAFE program, but we need to continue on this path because we need to do more and we need to do it together.

The member states, at least 23 out of our 27 member states that are NATO allies, and NATO agreed to increase significantly military expenditure. But this is not only about spending more, it is also about spending better. To spend better we need to ensure that we have not only interoperability, not only joint procurement, but also common goods funded by common defence. It is very important to have a rational approach to this huge effort.

And to sustain this, we need to have a stronger economy, an economy which produces, which allows our companies to scale up and to create better and more jobs. And for this, we need to use this investment also to improve our defence industry. This is a great opportunity to develop common projects, flagship projects, to improve our competitiveness also in this domain.

Finally, Greece is in a very important geostrategic position. It is in the bridge between Europe and the Middle East. We cannot forget that what is happening in the Middle East is challenging for Europe, for our peace, our stability, the capacity that we have to manage migration flows. And for this, we need to be very engaged in the region asking for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, asking to stop illegal settlements in the West Bank and to create conditions for an effective two states solution to become possible. We also need to look to our partnership with Egypt and at the situation in Syria and in Libya.

This is one of the great advantages of our Union, we are 27 with different regional approaches, with different regional ways to look at the world, and different regions to engage with our neighbours in the East, in the North and in the South.

Thank you very much dear Kyriakos for this opportunity to work once again directly with you here Athens.