Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met on Thursday afternoon (13/2) at the Maximou Mansion with Raffaele Fitto, Executive Vice President of the European Commission responsible for cohesion and reforms.

During the meeting, the high absorption and utilization of European funds by Greece was reportedly highlighted.

There was also a first exchange of views on the proposals presented by the European Commission for the next 7-year budget of the European Union and the financial programs it will contain.

At the beginning of their meeting, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Raffaele Fitto had the following dialogue:

Kyriakos Mitsotakis: First of all, welcome and congratulations. It is a great pleasure for you to visit us. You have a very important portfolio and we have a lot to discuss about the future of European funding, including that for cohesion.

We know that the Greek economy has made significant progress in recent years and, of course, a big part of our success has been our ability to absorb European funds – cohesion funds, but we have also made very good progress in terms of the recovery and resilience fund.

We believe that European funding contributes, as an integral part, to the transformation of our economy, making it more competitive. I stress competitiveness because it is the big issue that the new European Commission will address.

I am very interested to hear your ideas and thoughts and I really look forward to a very fruitful cooperation. Again, congratulations on the important position you have taken up.

Raffaele Fitto: Thank you, Prime Minister. It is a great pleasure to be here, on one of my first trips, because I think it is important to meet with the key member states that are showing great interest in cohesion policies. My portfolio is on cohesion and the first thing I want to point out is that cohesion is for the first time included in the responsibilities of an Executive Vice-President. This is important.

The second: I think it is another good development, in the new governance framework of the European Commission, that we have coordination of other portfolios under cohesion. As executive vice-president, I have the coordination for agriculture, tourism, transport, blue economy, and fisheries. I believe they are the “frame” of development opportunities for your country.

I consider it particularly important to discuss the priorities we are setting at this juncture. This is my mission. It is important to understand the real situation. Your government’s performance is very good in the area of spending.

I think that we need to open a dialogue with the Member States, issues arise in the current Cohesion programs, to see if it is possible to make changes in the context of this evaluation that is taking place in the middle of the current programming period.