Opposition Leader meets with EU member ambassadors in Athens

The leader of Greece’s main opposition party, Mr Kyriakos Mitsotakis held a working brunch on Tuesday with EU member-state ambassadors in Athens, organised by the ambassador of Romania, which currently holds the rotating EU presidency.

During the meeting Mitsotakis outlines his party’s policy platform, ahead of the upcoming European elections and the Greek national elections scheduled to take place within 2019.

According to party sources, Mr Mitsotakis answered a series of questions that were put to him regarding the economy, ND's reform plan, foreign policy and European affairs and stressed that the next ND government will implement a policy mix that will permanently extricate the country from the crisis and "allow the citizens respite from the excessive taxation imposed by the SYRIZA government."

Mitsotakis also declared his intention to turn Greece into a "real success story" and said that the current 2% growth rate was not sufficient to meet this goal. His government's top priority, he said, will be to boost economic growth and create many and well-paid jobs.

Talking to the ambassadors, Mitsotakis indicated that he expected EU member-states to display the same flexibility towards an ND government "with a clearcut reformist stamp" as they had toward "a government that in 2015 nearly pushed the country over a cliff" as regards the parameters of the agreement negotiated by the current Prime Minister, Alexis Tsipras.

Referring to the Prespes Agreement, Mitsotakis repeated that he intends to do his utmost to mitigate its repercussions, emphasising the protection of Greek company brand names using the term 'Macedonian' and establishing the 'Greekness' of Macedonian civilisation.

He predicted that Greek voters will send a strong message of support for New Democracy in the upcoming European elections, which he said will be "the first round of the national elections to follow".