Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis participated in a discussion with Enrico Letta, President of the Jacques Delors Institute and former Prime Minister of Italy, as part of an event organized by the Greek-American Chamber of Commerce.
The conversation was moderated by journalist Katerina Panagopoulou. Below is an unofficial English translation of the key points made by Prime Minister Mitsotakis.
In his introductory remarks, responding to a question about the announcements of U.S. President Donald Trump and the future of transatlantic relations, the Prime Minister said:
"First of all, it is a true pleasure to share the stage once again with Enrico, and congratulations once again on an excellent report. We will discuss it further in a moment because I believe it has made a significant contribution to our conversation on further European integration.
It is quite an interesting coincidence that this event takes place one day after the swearing-in of the 47th President of the United States, who also happens to be the 45th. Let me begin by saying that it is important to allow the landscape to clear up, to distinguish those issues that seem to be a repetition of campaign pledges, and to see what the United States' actual policy toward Europe will be.
I believe Europe is facing this new reality much more consciously and much more geopolitically mature. But I must point out that President Trump made similar statements in 2016. The worst, at least regarding a large-scale trade war between Europe and the United States, was avoided. I still hope this will be the case.
However, I want to emphasize that this is a wake-up call for Europe. If it is indeed true that the new global environment will shift more from an international order based on values or rules to a transactional approach to addressing international problems, I believe this obliges us to take the issues we have discussed, the issues Enrico presented in his report, but especially the issue of defence, where we clearly need to do much more and move more smartly in how we protect the security of our continent. We can talk more about this shortly.
If we decide to discuss this, I must point out that we have an extraordinary Summit scheduled near Brussels on February 3, dedicated to this topic. One could argue that these elections are perhaps the last impetus we needed to move from words to actions.
By 'actions,' I do not necessarily mean a confrontational stance toward the U.S. We are traditional allies. We share history. We fought together in world wars. This strong partnership will not be undone, and I am very optimistic about that. But we must explore whether 'the art of agreement' involves solutions that will benefit everyone. Those solutions that are mutually beneficial should be explored."
When asked about Greece's role in transatlantic relations and the potential increase in defense spending within NATO, Mitsotakis remarked:
"First of all, allow me to emphasize that Greece and the United States enjoy excellent relations. I don't believe our relationship has ever been better than in the past five years. We have signed a comprehensive security and defense agreement. Our relationship extends far beyond defense and security. We have seen increased interest from American tech companies to invest in Greece. Of course, we have traditionally strong cultural and educational ties. We see great interest from American educational institutions to come and collaborate with our public universities. This is a very strong and, I believe, resilient relationship.
Certainly, I had the honour of speaking to a joint session of both chambers of Congress. We know that we have very strong ties in Washington, both in the Republican and Democratic parties. This is a very strong partnership, and I do not expect any changes in the way the U.S. views Greece regarding our bilateral relationship. But, of course, I also believe it is important to examine our relationship with the United States not just through the bilateral lens but to ensure that we can reach a unified approach regarding how we will engage with the new U.S. government.
I think President Trump, in 2017 or 2018 – I'm not sure when it was, it was before I took office before I had the privilege of leading the country – spoke directly to the NATO Summit attendees and addressed every country, emphasizing that most of them were not spending 2% of their GDP on defence.
I think he was right. The truth is that the European continent and some of the larger countries have been particularly complacent in outsourcing our security guarantees to the United States without Europe bearing the cost and taking on its fair share.
This has changed. This is now history. It will no longer be accepted. I am convinced that the 2% NATO target will also become a thing of the past. I believe we will agree on a higher threshold. I don't know what that will be. It won't be 5%, but it will be higher than 2%.
Greece approaches this discussion, I believe, from a position of strength because we are already spending over 3% of our GDP on defence. Traditionally, we had spent more than 2% due to our particular geopolitical concerns regarding our neighbourhood, which means that, compared to other countries, we never benefited from the peace dividend many countries enjoyed after the fall of the Berlin Wall when they had the luxury of spending 1% on defence and redirecting the rest of their defence expenditures to other policies. We never had that advantage.
So, we must spend more at the national level, and then we must see how we can spend more at the European level.
One issue I will raise again at the European Council is how we can amend the European Union's fiscal rules to allow greater flexibility for defence spending. Let me explain what I mean. If a country like Greece exceeds the fiscal benchmark for its spending because it is spending more on defence, it will enter the excessive deficit procedure. Likely, after this process occurs, we will receive the green light from the European Commission, as there is a special exemption for defense spending. The problem is that many countries cannot afford to go through this process.
My proposal is very simple: what would happen ex post should happen ex ante. We should have more fiscal space strictly for defense investments beyond the spending benchmark to encourage countries to spend more on defense. This, in my opinion, is the fastest way to encourage countries to increase their defence spending.
It should be reasonable because we all know that markets are watching us, and we do not want to jeopardize our fiscal standing."
The Prime Minister also spoke about the rise of far-right parties and the woke agenda, stating:
"Yes, I believe there are two genders, male and female. This is my personal opinion, and it is dictated by biology.
However, each country is different. Various explanations regarding Donald Trump's loud return to the presidency have been offered. Certainly – I have commented on this – the extreme positions of the woke movement in the U.S. caused the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction. I want to emphasize that these extreme positions, which I believe are widely spread in the liberal university campuses of top U.S. universities, have not appeared in Europe. I do not believe we have this problem in Europe that would justify a backlash against this particular agenda. This was primarily a phenomenon in the U.S.
As for Greece, we have proven that there can be a strong centre-right alliance that pushes fringe parties to what should be their natural space, namely, to be small parties without significant influence on public discourse.
Enrico rightly pointed out that we are one of the few politically stable European countries today. Stability is a very valuable 'currency' in today's world. It allows us to implement our electoral program quickly without losing time in discussions within a coalition government.