Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs Miltiadis Varvitsiotis today attended a working luncheon hosted by the Ambassador of the Czech Republic, Jan Brody. Diplomatic representatives of the Visegrad countries – the Ambassador of the Republic of Slovakia, Iveta Hricova; the Ambassador of Hungary, Erik Haupt; and the Chargé d'affaires of the Polish Embassy, Tomasz Wisniewski – also attended.
During their meeting, Mr. Varvitsiotis made extensive reference to the migration issue, stressing the need to create a common European asylum system and calling on the Visegrad countries to submit their proposals for reshaping the European asylum framework. Mr. Varvitsiotis noted that European solidarity cannot be limited to matters of economic nature, but is required on all of the issues being dealt with by the European Union.
The Alternate Minister also underscored that it is unacceptable for the European Union to discuss but not be able to reach an agreement on the reception and hosting of 100,000 refugees on a continent of 500 million people, particularly when Greece is shouldering a disproportionately large share of the burden. He also raised the issue of the hosting of unaccompanied minors.
The discussion then turned to the Union’s new budget, with the Alternate Minister of Foreign Affairs noting that Greece shares the Visegrad countries’ positions on the amount of funding for the CAP and Cohesion Policy, as ascertained at the recent “Friends of Cohesion” summit in Prague.
Finally, special mention was made of EU enlargement in the Western Balkans and, specifically, the French proposal for a change in the methodology of the accession process – an issue discussed at the latest meeting of the EU General Affairs Council.
November 26, 2019