Greece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis sent a message of optimism for the Greek economy, predicting a "very robust” recovery once the vaccine for the coronavirus is found.
His comments were made during the opening of the 5th EU-Arab World Summit on Monday.
"As you know the European Union has signed vaccine agreements with all the promising companies to have the vaccine. In Greece, savings are increasing, which means that people will want to spend when the pandemic is over. And businesses will want to invest. And smart companies are already investing. They know that this pandemic will end. They know that Greece has a credible government, which is in favour of entrepreneurship and is oriented towards reforms. They know the opportunities in Greece. So they are willing to play their cards now, before the pandemic is over. This is what smart investors do," he said in an online discussion with CNN journalist John Defterios.
When asked what opening up the country to tourism for summer taught him, Mitsotakis said that the right decisions were made. "The second wave of the pandemic hit us after the end of the tourist season. There was, therefore, no correlation with our decision to open tourism. We hope that by next summer we will have dealt with the source of the problem. Otherwise people will be reluctant to travel."
He also mentioned Microsoft's plans to build data centre hub for cloud services in Greece and Volkswagen's investment to turn Astypalaia into a “green” and “smart” island.
The pandemic has created investment opportunities at European level as well, he added, as the EU now "borrows as a supranational entity to strengthen the member states."
“The coronavirus pandemic will have winners and some losers. I'm convinced of that. And I am pretty sure that Greece will be on the side of the winners,” he said.
Regarding Greece-Turkey relations, Mitsotakis said that Greece is ready for a discussion aimed at resolving problems in the context of international law.
Responding to a question on whether Greece would be willing to share energy resources with Turkey, he clarified that "this is not something under discussion" and reiterated that the two countries first need to define and delimit maritime zones in a fair manner.
Greece has made repeated efforts to communicate with Turkey, but the response is "a series of particularly provocative actions which have cast doubt on our sovereign rights with unilateral research activities in regions we consider Greek Exclusive Economic Zone," the Greek PM stressed.
