“At the European level, Greece is now viewed, having passed a lost decade, indeed as a country that has achieved many things, thanks to the enormous endurance of its people”, said the Minister of National Economy and Finance, Kyriakos Pierrakakis at the 4th Maritime Economic Conference.

“Greece at this moment, given its outstanding issues, given the conquests on the one hand, but also all that it must be able to continue to achieve on the other hand, must utilize its presence in Europe even more. And so what we are trying to do is to create, to contribute to the creation of what we call European Champions”, pointed out Mr. Pierrakakis.

The Speech of Kyriakos Pierrakakis

“Ladies and gentlemen,
I begin with the obvious congratulations to Naftemboriki and the excellent work it does, as well as for its conferences and for this particular conference, which has now become an institution. I had prepared some thoughts from text, but I will avoid them. Instead I’ll try to talk a little bit about the big picture and comment on some of the things that were heard before.

I will start first from the title of the conference, saying, on the one hand, that the dimension of competitiveness for all of us, both at national and European level, is the No. 1 goal. The whole spirit of the Draghi report and the Leta report is precisely to enable Europe to gain the competitiveness it has not had and does not have to the extent it could have. And all this has to do with a series of observations that we see at a pan-European level.

Mario Draghi, what he mentions, and he mentioned it very characteristically when the debate about tariffs with the United States and with the new policy of the Trump administration had risen too much, was that we are talking about tariffs, we are talking about barriers, that is, which will exist in international trade in our relationship with the US, but in practice we, the EU member states, have invisible tariffs between us. We have invisible tariffs, which the IMF has calculated at around 110% of a corresponding tariff in the area of ​​services and about over 45% in the area of ​​manufacturing.

This all reflects the fact that even now there are things that we could have achieved as Europe and have not. And this is reflected in the rate of development of the member states of the European Union. We are talking about the Savings and Investments Union, that is, the Capital Markets Union, the Banking Union. Because we need to be able to give an extra push to growth.

Because, to start commenting on some of the things heard before, the reality is that at the moment at the European level, Greece is now viewed, having passed a lost decade, indeed as a country that has achieved many things, thanks to the enormous endurance of its people.

One only has to look at the data of the ten-year bond of Greece and compare it with that of Italy or France. To see the rapid de-escalation of the Greek public debt after Covid-19, it had reached about 210%. The projection in the draft budget is that we will be at 137.6% of our GDP. Unemployment is decreasing, we are now at the bottom, compared to the numbers we had before the financial crisis of 2008.

The growth rate is considerably higher than the average of the European Union and the Eurozone. This is all good. All this is acquired. We now have primary surpluses. In the morning we were with the Prime Minister, Mr. Serafin, the responsible financial commissioner for the budget, had come. He said “I’m glad to be in a country of economic success.”

These are called. However, these do not hide the fact that there are also many problems and many challenges, which even now we must overcome. It is clear that we still have a range of pending issues ahead of us. Mr. Ktenas mentioned in his introductory statement, the data of productivity. Yes, productivity still needs to be able to increase and to be able to increase faster. Yes, in order to be able to achieve even faster growth rates we should be able to have conquests at both European and national level. And here will be my deviation from the title to the other term, the term of self-sufficiency. I will replace the term self-sufficiency with the term sovereignty.

And the term sovereignty is not absolute. The term sovereignty arises in the international literature from the Treaty of Westphalia, in 1648. And it says that we have complete external autonomy and complete internal hierarchy in our states. This has never been absolute. Especially for us Europeans, we have chosen to share elements of our sovereignty with other European countries, especially in the area of ​​the economy, to be able to achieve this great push.

Greece at this moment, given its outstanding issues, given the conquests on the one hand, but also all that it must be able to continue to achieve on the other hand, must exploit its presence in Europe even more. And so what we are trying to do is to create, to help create what we call European Champions.

We used to talk more about national champions. But the reality is that in Europe we do not need 27 successful economies. We need a single market in fact to be able to gain the scale of competitiveness, as your conference says, to enable European businesses to compete internationally with American, Chinese, businesses from all over the world. And this means that in Greece we have companies that can upgrade themselves even more to compete in this global spectrum of international competition.
All this comes and is related to our national policy. The obstacles that even we now have to remove from the national economy, the utilization of public property that we have been talking about for many years. In the next period, among other things, we will bring a law like the Ministry of Finance to Parliament, which will talk about those institutions that have existed in our country since the 19th century, whose property even today has not been valued, so that we can utilize their property. To be able to utilize, that is, the housing stock, which we may have. I remember this conversation from the memo years. We will now come to give an institutional solution to this issue. And of course, among other things, we must be able to make policies at the sectoral level, which will release the development goal.

You mentioned, Mr. Ktena, the mineral wealth, you mentioned a number of things which are the potential of our country and the country has not utilized them. I typically remember when we were passing the law on Non-State Universities or – rather – on the establishment of foreign universities in Greece, something that was left pending only for us and Cuba, that a study was done by Deloitte, which said that the development impact, the development impact of this study, will be about 1% of GDP, that is, what? The obvious. The glaringly obvious, for Greece to be able to have foreign students over here and for fewer Greek students, in proportion to our population, to go abroad to study. The absolutely obvious for decades had not been done. And this absolutely obvious, could give an extra growth boost of 1%. The utilization of mineral wealth respectively. We have many such, if you like, obvious ones, which in a world, which is changing frighteningly fast, can come and give an extra development boost to our economy. I used to use the analogy from the years of the digital transition that Greece always had the hardware but not the software. That is, that it had the raw material but it didn’t have the right policies, the right strategies to unleash that potential. Well, now he has them. And to comment on the last point of your reference before, in relation to the production model that has to change, I will tell you that the production model is indeed changing, it’s just not completely changed yet. Why? Because we have a great financial achievement, which is recognized internationally. We also have a great digital conquest, which is clearly experienced by every Greek woman and man in the field and is reflected in contrast to what the official opposition leader said in the international indicators.

I will only mention the network of digital public services of the European Union, where Greece was the last in 2019 and passed above the average in 4 years. And I will also mention a poll, which says that the creation of gov.gr is considered the second most popular reform in Greece after the establishment of the National Social Security System. And at the end of the day I will call on the individual experience of each and every one of you as to whether Greece has managed to make a very big digital leap, which of course was not yet complete.
It is very important to be able to disagree on the interpretations, but not to disagree on the data, especially when these are based on the experience of every Greek woman and every Greek man. I close this parenthesis to say that we have the fiscal conquest, we have the digital conquest, but even now we have two pending changes in the production model.
Exports, when we entered the crisis, we were at 20% of GDP and now we are at 42%. The European average is 51%. We’re not there yet, but we can. We are on this path.
And of course, the second pending issue is investments to GDP. When we took over in 2019 we were at 11% of GDP and based on the draft budget in 2026, we will reach 18%. The European average is 21.2%. So we’ve covered most of the route, but we haven’t covered it all yet. We still have work to do, we still have to achieve conquests and improvements in productivity, but I assure you with firmness, with faith that the country can conquer more and more things and with the conviction that Greece and the Greek economy actually have these enormous potentials in the field and that we can utilize them, we can achieve this very great qualitative change that will reach every household, every Greek woman, every Greek man.

I close with the following observation: If one looks etymologically at the term truth, truth means not forgetting. There is memory with forgetting. We must not forget where these memories began. Because I remember very well, especially when I meet the Director General of the International Monetary Fund, what Greece was with the International Monetary Fund a few years ago, when the previous generation has passed the bill to mine, and what Greece is today, with the sweat and blood of the Greek people first and foremost, transcending politics in any government.
We have achieved a lot. We can achieve much, much more, much more needs to be done. But we will not undo and tear down all that we have already conquered. All of us, regardless of the political spectrum, regardless of color, position and belief, we must build on what has been achieved. We owe it to ourselves and to those who have.
Thank you very much.”

FROM THE PRESS OFFICE