E. VENIZELOS: Mr. Consul General, I thank you very much for the reception and the opportunity you are providing for the representatives of the Greek American community, to me, to my wife, and to the members of the Delegation to meet today here in your very hospitable residence.
I convey to you, my dear friends, the warm patriotic greetings of the President of the Hellenic Republic, Karolos Papoulias, of the Prime Minister of the Hellenic Republic and of the whole of the Greek government. Allow me to add, in my parliamentary capacity, the greetings of the whole of the Hellenic Parliament, because here I speak on behalf of the whole nation, not just the governmental majority.
I wanted to ask of you once again – I do this every time I address the Greek community here in the U.S., as in the other countries we visit, where there is a flourishing Hellenic element, including, naturally, Cypriot Hellenism – not to take up, at all, the domestic political conflicts in Greece. Hellenism must be unbroken and unified, rallying together, because our goal here is to promote the name of Greece: the symbols, the successes, the vast cultural heritage, and of course the modern face of a Greece that is emerging from the crisis after five very difficult years of adjustment, recession. To be precise, after seven years of recession, since 2008. But, thanks to the sacrifices of the Greek people, the very tough sacrifices, Greece is now ready to emerge from the crisis and the Memorandum, to turn the page, to return to the status of an equal, robust member state of the European Union and the eurozone. This is of very great importance, because the choice we made was a difficult, painful choice that came with a huge political, social and emotional cost. We chose the difficult path of remaining in the eurozone, because that was the safest path for the country: the path that, in the end, allowed Greek men and women to hope again that Greece would very, very quickly return not to its previous position, but to a much better, more competitive position within Europe and the global economy.
There was no other choice. The myth of an alternative plan proved dangerous, and when you have before you the dilemma of a disorderly default for the country, which would have meant the evaporation of assets, incomes and opportunities, or the choice of difficult adjustment measures, you are obliged to opt for those difficult measures. But, as I have had the opportunity to say before, as the Deputy Prime Minister, and especially as the Foreign Minister, I want to assure you that throughout these years of the crisis, our national policy has not been altered and has not yielded in the slightest. The country’s foreign policy was not impacted by the economic crisis, the borrowing, by the fact that we needed and need the economic support of our European partners. And even of the International Monetary Fund, which found itself at the epicenter of the European crisis, playing a role that, until then, it had not played, because it had focused on developing countries, mainly of the third world.
Our stances on all the issues, as I had the opportunity to set out for the UN Secretary General a short while ago, are very clear, and my meeting tomorrow morning with the President of the Republic of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, is an opportunity to reiterate our common national line on the Cyprus issue. But of course the same holds true for the issue of the name of our neighbouring country, FYROM. The same holds true for Greek-Turkish relations, for our stance on the Western Balkans. The same holds true for Greece’s positions on all the regional and international crises that are simmering. Because rarely, over the past 25 years, have we had so many crises. Never perhaps, in the past 30 years, have we had so many open crises in the southern and eastern neighbourhood of the European Union, very close to us. Very close to Greece. Very close to regions of particular interest for Hellenism.
In Ukraine we have a very significant community of Greek origin. In the Middle East we have our Patriarchate in Jerusalem; we have our special relations with Egypt, we have the Patriarchate of Alexandria, we have the Monastery of Saint Catherine in Sinai; we have our special interest in Lebanon; we have our special interest in Libya, which greatly impacts our presence, generally, in the Eastern Mediterranean. And of course, as you can see, we are now facing new challenges like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, new forms of terrorism, a questioning of the notion of the State, major security issues that bring us face to face with tragic dilemmas regarding the relationship between democracy and security in the world.
Within this turbulent region, Greece is always a pillar of stability. Together with Cyprus, in fact, we have the potential to develop triangular relations, as with Israel and Egypt, that can help overcome the crises, which threaten regional stability and regional peace. We are implementing a line that reflects our national interests. The stance Greece shapes on all the major issues, on the Ukraine crisis, on the crisis in the relations between the West and the Russian Federation, on Syria, on the Middle East, Libya, Iraq, Iran – everywhere – these stances are reflected in the Aegean, in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Greek-Turkish issues – mainly the Cyprus issue – in our interest in the Western Balkans. Our choices must be those that protect our national interests; that don’t weaken our arguments; that to do no change the balance of power for the worse. So everything is interrelated.
It is also very important, here in the United States, for the Hellenism of the Diaspora – of the business world, the academic world, the world of American society and life – to overturn unfair and unfounded stereotypes against Greece. We often see the repetition of views about Greece that are unfair and unfounded. And your pride in your Greek identity is what convinces our collocutors in American society, in the American economy, in the American media.
Tomorrow I will have the opportunity to meet with Archbishop Demetrios, with whom we maintain very close relations, a personal friendship, as with the Ecumenical Patriarchate, who is currently visiting the Metropolitans of Thrace. We will have the opportunity, once more, to talk about joint initiatives that bring us very close together with other Christian communities, because we have to face a very major issue, which is the threat to Christian and other ethnic and religious communities in the wider region of the Middle East and North Africa. I was particularly pleased because the Ecumenical Patriarchate referred to these issues today, setting out positions that are identical to those of the Greek government.
We also need your help to support the effort towards the recovery of Greece’s real economy. The investments we need are those that will create jobs, that will allow us to overcome the major problem of unemployment – and youth unemployment, in particular – in Greece. Greece has vast potential. The crisis made us more mature, and it has to make us all much more responsible. The truth is, the only path is to implement a national reconstruction plan and a new production model in Greece, based on the work of Greeks. Based on our labor, our intellect, our land. We have two indigenous development resources: our people and our land. Everything starts from there. And Greek tourism – its performance and potential – is the best example. An equally good example is Greek agricultural production and the Greek food industry. And I need no other example than you of what Hellenic intellectual capital means: It excels everywhere, wherever it finds itself, throughout the world.
With these thoughts, I would like to thank you for your presence. I would like to encourage you – you who represent organized Hellenism in New York and the U.S. And on behalf of my wife and on behalf of the Greek delegation, I would like to thank the Consul General once again, our Ambassador in Washington, our Permanent Representative to the UN. And I wish each of you health and family prosperity. And let us all share in the wish that our homeland take the position it deserves in Europe and the world.
September 22, 2014