“I highly appreciate the fact that every summer we have pre -installed firefighters from European countries in Greece, ready to help.”
The prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakishe met with the European Commissioner for Equality of Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management, Hadja Lachbib, at Maximus Palace.
At the start of the meeting, the Prime Minister and the Commissioner had the following dialogue:
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Thank you again, Mrs. Commissioner, We are very pleased with your visit to Athens. Thank you very much for sharing the scene with me a few minutes agoin a ceremony that I believe emphasizes the importance of Europe’s support for Greece In terms of upgrading our preparedness in civil protection issues. This is a very important priority for the government and for me personally.
The country has been marked in the past by natural disasters that have resulted in a completely unnecessary loss of human lives. Since 2019, strengthening civil protection and readiness mechanism has been a top priority for our government. As you know, we now have a responsible ministry and a minister responsible That’s why this portfolio. As a country that is largely affected by the climate crisis, we consider it to be an indispensable investment.
Of course, I also praise your initiatives and the fact that we are part of a European family, not only economically, which is important, but also in the sense that we think in the same way, understanding that we have to share resources. I highly appreciate the fact that every summer we have pre -installed firefighters from European countries in Greece, ready to help. We hope that they will only be here for vacation, but if necessary, they will help us. A few days ago we mobilized some of our friends from Moldova for a fire we had in northern Greeceand this is always an excellent example of European solidarity.
Of course, I believe it is also important, and I have noted it many times in the European Council and the President of the European Commission, that in terms of our overall reaction to the climate crisis, it is also concerned. We have to start focusing more on adaptation. I would not say less on mitigating the effects because it is critical, but we must focus more on adaptation because climate crisis is here. It’s a reality. Temperatures will rise. We will have more forest fires. We will have more extreme weather events. It is a reality that we should not just prepare, but we must be ready to deal with it in the best possible way.
One last point I want to hurt, which is very important to us, is about the use of technology. In our case, the drone monitoring system has proven to be completely critical for the timely detection of forest fires, which facilitates and accelerates timely intervention, Something that makes a big difference, but also in the way we use technology, artificial intelligence, to predict weather conditions.
This is very important: predicting the behavior of forest fires. Using information from satellites, The Copernicus system is a service for which we must be very proud of as Europeans. Therefore, technology, especially when it comes to a small scale weather, could be a European platform and It should be a European project, because, especially in cases such as floods, it can make all the difference. Thank you again.
Hajja Lachbib: Thank you, Mr Prime Minister, for the warm welcome. And indeed, just yesterday I arrived in Greece and I am very impressed by what I saw. I visited your center to address emergency. I even met members who had been placed in Brussels in all ERCCs, the emergency centers. And as you rightly mentioned, we are all in the same worldwe live on the same planet, we are confronted with the same threats. This risk landscape is only dramatically evolving. We have to deal with it. We have to be prepared and so we presented the readiness strategy on March 26th.
Two days ago we adopted a very ambitious budget. Financing has increased because we have to deal with, develop, as you rightly said, technologies. We need to invest in research and development. It is important to be prepared to avoid the next pandemic. All scientists say it will happen, we just don’t know when. It is important to avoid the scenarios we encountered during Covid and to have strategies of strong medical countermeasuresbecause these are not only forest fires, unfortunately, but also hybrid threats and so on.
I visited Sweden, where they are very clearly perceived that the biggest threat is not forest fires, but hybrid attacks and cyberattacks, and perhaps the tooling of immigration and so on. We need to have an integrated strategy. This is exactly what we do with this new readiness strategy. I hope to secure your support because we actually voted on a very ambitious budget with 10.7 billion intended for the integrated readiness strategy. It is important, therefore, to have the support of the European Council.
We will also discuss this, how we can adapt our rules for our civil protection so that we can better respond to complex judgments with chain impacts, Because we know that when they start, for example, with forest fires, other threats can be developed, such as hygiene, floods sometimes. As we learned yesterday, we sometimes had flooding and dramatic forest fires in different parts of the country.
In the new multiannual budgetary framework -it is important to discuss it because it was just published Two days ago- we reinforced our flexibility because we need more resources and to be more flexible to follow the various scenarios and dangers we are about to face. It is preferable to be prepared in advance than to finance the recovery afterwards. It’s a smart investment.
We will also discuss humanitarian aid, because I am a commissioner for crisis management and regarding this area. And here we are facing an increasing financial gap. It is important to deal with it because it is about the deeper causes of immigration.
You know that the situation is dramatic in Sudan, but also, for example, in Gaza. I just reached In an agreement we presented to the Foreign Affairs Council. I informed ministers on the current situation regarding the agreement with Israel on humanitarian aid access. This agreement is a step in the right direction, but it is far from being implemented and must be implemented immediately. We will continue to monitor it and provide information on compliance every two weeks, and Member States will also have to decide what the next steps will be.
Finally, with regard to equality issues, it is also important to enhance gender equality. We have also increased the budget for this purpose with a new fund, called Agora Fund, to increase our competitiveness, because from one point onwards gender equality It is also a matter of competitiveness, to make use of all the skills we have in our society and essentially to include half of humanity in it. Thank you very much.