‘Greece cannot be threatened, nor blackmailed…it is ready to face any challenge’ Economou says

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“Greece cannot be threatened, nor blackmailed. It is not a country that threatens, it is a factor for international stability, but at the same time, we are unyielding in whatever concerns our sovereignty and our sovereign rights,” government spokesperson Yiannis Economou said on Sunday, in a televised interview on SKAI.

He stressed that Greece was fully ready to face all challenges and threats absolutely effectively, while referring to Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he commented: “I don’t know what Mr. Erdogan has in mind…our planning is proceeding. We have a plan based on international law, which is well thought-out and weighed, which will allow the country to make use – on the basis of international legality and its sovereign rights at all times – of all possibilities, all prospects that exist in order to increase our wealth.”

Greece was now a very strong country as a result of the political choice made by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to increase its deterrent capacity and “due to the fact that he increased Greece’s international prestige through his presence,” Economou said, adding: “It is a country that does not accept suggestions, much less threats, on how it should exercise its foreign policy and what policy it should adopt, especially as regards sovereignty and our sovereign rights.”

He noted that the scope of Greece’s positions and influence had grown in recent years, while the country presented absolute readiness and a united front at home, had self-confidence, allies at its side and was fully capable of facing and handling any threat – including hybrid threats, such as the instrumentalisation of migrants and refugees but also threats in the field.

The spokesperson then referred to the measures taken by the government to support society, stressing that it was using all economic margins to help people but without jeopardising fiscal stability and that this was unrelated to the timing of the elections. He said the goal was a policy that was capable of generating wealth and distributing it fairly among people, without creating impasses and bigger problems down the line than those it was striving to solve.

He particularly highlighted the upcoming increase of the basic wage in April, noting that the government’s aim was a convergence of Greek salaries and incomes with the EU average, after having successfully lowered taxes and social insurance contributions.

Regarding the upcoming elections, Economou repeated that these will be held toward the end of the government’s four-year term, from April onward, as the prime minister had originally pledged. Noting that the elections will be held in two rounds, he said there was nothing to indicate that Kyriakos Mitsotakis will not prevaile in the second round of ‘enhanced’ proportional representation and once again form a government with a single-party majority.

Source:ANA – MPA

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