Greek-Turkish relations, immigration, the pandemic, and the Recovery Fund were the topics of discussion at a press conference given on Monday by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his Portuguese counterpart Antonio Costa after their meeting at the Prime Minister’s Palace in Lisbon, int.ert.gr reports.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis thanked Portugal for its active support to Frontex operations in the Aegean and said that migration flows have decreased significantly in the last year but stressed that we need more European assistance.
Visiting the Greek Prime Minister called for European COVID-19 recovery funds to be made available to the European Union (EU) member states “as soon as possible.”
“We spent several nights awake in July, the (European) Council lasted five days, and it was a great European success, a great step forward for the EU to guarantee loans and grants to the states in need,” Mitsotakiis said.
Greece is set to receive 32 billion euros from the EU Recovery Fund, and the figure for Portugal is similar.
“I do not want there to be any delay in the disbursement of these funds,” he told reporters.
“It has not been and will not be easy, there are some countries hit by the second, even third wave of the pandemic, and of course this creates economic difficulties, not all countries move at the same speed,” Mitsotakis noted.
Portugal took over the rotating six-month Presidency of the European Council on Jan. 1, 2021.
Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa pointed out that it is one of the Portuguese EU Presidency’s top priorities to distribute the first batch of the 750-billion-euro Recovery Fund among the 27 EU member states as quickly as possible.
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