Madam Speaker of the House,
Ladies and Gentlemen Members of Parliament,
I am addressing you today in this historic meeting not merely for symbolic reasons, but for substantive reasons as well.
I do so first and foremost in order to pay tribute to the victims of the Second World War.
But I do so, as well, in order to honour all those fighters from all over the world who sacrificed or risked their lives for the freedom of their homelands.
All those who gave their lives to defeat Nazism: a plague that had cast its long shadow over the whole world.
I am also addressing you today in order to honour the soldiers of the Greek national resistance who gave their lives to put an end to the Nazi occupation and atrocities in Greece.
They died so that we may live today in a free and sovereign country.
Some may say that there is no reason to revisit these issues; that we should only look to the future.
But how can a country and its people look to the future without honouring the past? How can a country move forward by erasing its collective memory and by ignoring its historic sacrifices and struggles?
After all, it has not been that long since then.
The generation who lived through the Nazi occupation and the National Resistance is still alive.
The torture and executions that took place in Distomo and Kessariani, in Kalavryta and Viannos, are still fresh in the collective memory of our people, as are the crimes perpetrated and the damage inflicted by the Third Reich all over Greece and throughout Europe.
These memories must be preserved for the younger generations.
It is our historical, political, and moral obligation to preserve them.
We do so not to foster suspicion or enmity between our peoples, but so that we will not forget the devastation caused by Nazism and fascism.
We do so in order to remember and to remind everyone that when solidarity, friendship, cooperation, and dialogue are displaced by a sense of superiority and manifest destiny, when respect is supplanted by intolerance, either racial or social, then war and darkness prevail.
And Europe has lived through this darkness.
It experienced it and it came to hate it.
This is one of the main reasons why European countries came together in 1957, so as to never again let the sirens of war blare.
We should not lose sight of the fact that the German people also suffered at the hands of the Nazis. And we should not lose sight of the fact that Nazism in Germany prevailed due to the humiliation to which the German people had previously been subjected.
This is, of course, not an excuse; it is an explanation.
This is one of the lessons we must learn from the short 20th century—one that brings Eric Hobsbawm to mind, indeed.
After the First World War, hatred and revanchism prevailed, along with the shortsighted view that those defeated should suffer humiliation for their transgressions, that an entire society should face misery as the rightful consequence of defeat.
This reasoning led to the spilling of so many young people’s blood around the globe, including in Germany.
The peoples of Europe, and their leaders, ought to remember that and draw the necessary conclusions from modern European history.
Europe cannot and must not be allowed to make the same mistakes.
Following the end of the Second World War, some of history’s lessons were learned.
Despite the crimes of the Third Reich and the mass destruction wreaked by Hitler's soldiers, despite the pure evil of the Holocaust, Germany was given the chance – and rightly so – to benefit from a series of interventions by the international community.
Major such interventions include Germany’s First-World-War debt write-off by virtue of the London Debt Agreement of 1953, and of course the huge sums provided by the Allies so that Germany could rebuild and progress.
The London Debt Agreement, however, recognizes that Second-World-War reparations are still outstanding and will only be settled by or following the final peace treaty, which, however, could not be signed while Germany was still divided. A peace treaty of sorts, the Two Plus Four Treaty as it became known, was signed in 1990 to enable German reunification—but it mentioned nothing of war reparations.
The reunification of Germany, however, created the necessary legal and political conditions for resolving this matter. Yet all German governments to date have opted to remain silent, to make use of legal tricks, to postpone, and to delay.
And I ask you Ladies and Gentlemen Members of Parliament:
Is this a morally sound stance?
And since I referred to legal tricks, and since these issues are of critical importance, I would like to fully explain what I mean in order to avoid any misunderstandings.
When Germany even deigns to express an opinion concerning the issue of its debts towards Greece stemming from the Second World War, it refers to our Bilateral Agreement of 1960.
At that time, Germany voluntarily paid 115 million marks as reparations, and the then Kingdom of Greece agreed that there were no further relevant claims.
The 1960 Agreement, however, provided reparations only for the victims of Nazism in Greece, not for the damage inflicted on the country itself.
And of course the 1960 Agreement did not relate to the coercive loan levied by the Occupying Power, nor did it relate to the claims for damages due to war crimes and due to the almost total destruction of Greece’s infrastructure and to the complete disintegration of its economy during the war and the occupation.
I am aware of the fact that all these matters are both highly technical and highly sensitive, and this is perhaps neither the best forum nor an opportune moment to elaborate further.
The necessary clarifications and technical work will not be carried out by me, but by the experts, both lawyers and historians.
I wish to assure both the Greek and the German people that we will approach this matter with the sensitivity that is required, with a sense of responsibility, with honesty, and with an attitude that supports understanding and dialogue.
However, we expect the same from the German Government – for political, historical, symbolic, and moral reasons.
In response to the overly moralistic tone that seems to have prevailed in public discourse in Europe in recent years, we will not accept the role of the student who lowers her gaze when confronted with ex cathedra moral teaching. But neither do we seek the role of the moral teacher who wags a finger at the supposed transgressor and demands that she pay for her sins.
On the contrary, we opt to follow the path of negotiation and dialogue, of mutual understanding, and of justice.
We do not pretend to mete out divine justice; but we cannot give up our inalienable claims either.
We will neither give – nor accept – lessons in morality.
Because of late we have heard a number of inflammatory statements that bring to mind the famous passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: They behold the mote in their brother's eye but do not consider the beam in their own eye.
In concluding this brief intervention I want to assure you that the Greek Government will work tirelessly, through dialogue and earnest negotiations, in order to find solutions to the complex problems that Europe is facing.
We will work hard in order to fully honour our obligations.
But at the same time, we will also work hard to resolve the issues raised by the non-fulfillment of obligations towards Greece and the Greek people. Just as we are committed to fulfilling our obligations, we expect this stance to be followed by all others.
Because morality cannot be invoked à la carte, only when it conveniently serves one’s purpose.
The new Greek Government will truly and fully support the initiative concerning the reconstitution, restructuring, and upgrading of the Committee for the Pursuit of German Debts owed to Greece.
We are ready to offer all political and legal assistance so that the efforts of the Commission will bear fruit.
We expect that the Commission will produce results within the framework of its mandate and that this will facilitate a solution to this longstanding issue.
This will be done in order to vindicate the unfulfilled moral as well as material debt, not solely towards the Greek people, but towards all those in Europe who fought, shed their blood, and defeated Nazism.
We owe this to our history.
We owe this to the fighters of the National Resistance.
We owe this to the victims of the Second World War.
We owe this to Europe and its peoples, who have the right to preserve their history and to hope for a future free from totalitarianism of any kind.
Thank you.
March 11, 2015