Pierrakakis: The prime minister and his team are metabolizing crises into progress and movement

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Mr. Pierrakakis noted that Greece is now becoming an example, and from where we were asking “How did you do it?” the Estonians the English the Israelis”, now they ask us.

The dilemma of the next elections, in a year’s time, will be whether Greece will go forward or backward, emphasized the Minister of State and Digital Governance, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, in his speech at a New Democracy event, in Ampelokipi, Thessaloniki, on the topic of “Smart Cities : Cities of the present. Not of the future”.

Mr. Pierrakakis noted that Greece is now becoming an example, and from where we were asking “How did you do it?” the Estonians the English the Israelis”, now they ask us.

“We haven’t come a long way, but the needle is moving. And it’s moving at the fastest speed it’s ever moved, as a result of the vision of a prime minister who wants to change the country and a team that can make it happen,” he added.

He referred to the “Smart Cities” program, through which 320 million euros will be allocated for the country’s 332 municipalities, and gave credit to the Deputy Minister of Digital Governance, Theodoros Livanos, for its planning. He pointed out that his goal is to serve the strategy of each mayor

“The strategy belongs to the mayors, because the mayors are the sensors of democracy. They are the first line. And what did we do? We defined a menu of options. Things that we more or less wanted each municipality to serve. But, from there on, the financial tools are not the project. The project is the mayor’s vision and strategy. And that is exactly what this program sought to serve,” he said.

In addition, he referred to the infrastructure built by Constantinos Karamanlis with the Marshall Plan, and to Eleftherios Venizelos, who “founded the territorial integration of the country and reformed the country, while at the same time there were geopolitical developments everywhere and the state had to cover outstanding issues that did not had covered, and to respond to crises that no one could foresee”.

He estimated that the current situation is similar, as “New Democracy has implemented more than 90% of its program and at the same time the prime minister and his team have been called upon to manage the biggest pandemic of the last 100 years, the biggest energy crisis of the last 50, water crisis in the Evros and the islands, financial implications of all of the above and things that no one could have predicted would happen”.

As he said, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his team are metabolizing crises into progress and movement. “We are setting the country in motion, unleashing its talent, unleashing possibilities that exist in every corner,” he stressed.

He referred to the investments that have been made in Thessaloniki, by companies such as Pfizer, Cisco, Delloite and Deutsche Telekom, pointing out that “these investments may sound general, married with amounts, but they are jobs for our children for the our people that we keep in the country, or we bring some back from abroad and it is a great economic result, they are taxes for the state, it is a Greece that goes where it deserves in the end, because that is where it should have been in the first place. Kyriakos Mitsotakis is trying to succeed”.

“Eleftherios Venizelos, when he was asked once ‘what is it you want to achieve’, he basically said ‘to make Greece unrecognizable’. Let’s do it again”, concluded Mr. Pierrakakis.

Answering questions from journalists before the event, the Minister of Digital Governance emphasized that “we have the feeling that other investments are coming in Thessaloniki and more widely in the country”, which will be announced when they are fully mature.

RES-EMP

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