With great pleasure, I welcomed today in Athens the President of Lithuania, Gitanas Nausėda, at a particularly critical juncture for Europe.
I want to express Greece’s absolute solidarity with Lithuania, which has already faced successive hybrid attacks.
Regarding the ongoing negotiations for the Multiannual Financial Framework, on which we will also focus in a few days in Brussels, our positions are essentially common: the resources that are initially proposed do not, unfortunately, correspond to Europe’s increased ambitions.
And everyone must understand that Cohesion is essentially not an enemy of competitiveness; rather, it is a prerequisite for European competitiveness, with the deepening of the single market becoming necessary, but also with leadership going hand in hand with geographical balance.
The same, of course, applies to an issue that concerns both of us equally: the financing of the protection of the external borders of the European Union.
As countries of the borderlands, we know very well what the weaponization of migration flows means.
We must protect our borders, while keeping our values intact, with the implementation of the new Pact on Migration and Asylum now being judged in practice.
: Prime Minister of the Hellenic Republic (Greece)