The former Vice-President and professor at AUTH, Evangelos Venizelos, in his speech last night tried, among other things, to provide answers for the intense criticism he has received recently regarding his participation in the event “We stay in Europe, intercepted rights and the rule of law”. .
He responded to the reactions to his participation in the event “We stay in Europe, intercepted rights and the rule of law”, organized by the Department of Political Sciences of the Pantheon and the Hellenic Union for Human Rights, he gave speaking on Thursday night in the auditorium of the Institute Goethe, in Athens, the former Vice-President and professor at AUTH, Evangelos Venizelos.
“It is paradoxical that this move, even if it hides some political expediency, is the occasion for intense criticism and political questioning from my like-minded people, supposedly,” said Mr. Venizelos.
“The title “Are we staying in Europe?”, with a question mark, about which I was not asked, is obviously provocative and politically incorrect because it gave the occasion to attempt to shift the field of discussion from the eavesdropping of the current period to the experience and conflicts of the 2015 period -2019, mainly in the period of the first half of 2015 and the memory of the July referendum that led, in a way that exceeded any constitutional theory, from the overwhelming victory of “no” to the full acceptance and implementation of “yes”.
Who has in his hands the prototype of the pro-European and anti-Syrian consistency measure? Do I have to give assurances or prove anything with my “war record”? Should I be scientifically silent about wiretapping in order not to “benefit” SYRIZA? Is PASOK, whose president is a victim of wiretapping, entitled to invoke what I say, or is the relationship with the party of which I was leader and which was crippled by carrying a tragically disproportionate burden to deal with the crisis also suspect?
Who has the right to say on the one hand that I am working with Mr. Mitsotakis because the government proposed my participation in the High Level Group for the Future of the Council of Europe set up by the Secretary General of the Council of Europe with seven members selected individually and not with representatives member states. And the other that I will cooperate with Mr. Tsipras because he invoked my scientific position on wiretapping in response to the disagreement with my scientific position stated by Mr. Mitsotakis,” Mr. Venizelos questioned and emphasized.
“I am politically and party liberal, I enjoy the realm of post-politics, but I defend my scientific conscience, seriousness, reliability and above all persuasiveness.
We are staying Europe” period, but also colon. There is no Europe without democratic values, without the rule of law, without fundamental rights, without independent justice, without independent authorities, without the jurisprudence of the CJEU and ECtHR, without the acquis of the institutional and legal culture of European liberal democracy. If I counted enemies and friends and sought to have more friends at all times we would not “Stay in Europe”. Already in 2011. So the debate about a semicolon or a full stop would be redundant” added Evangelos Venizelos.
Referring to the issue of wiretapping, he argued that there is a “major issue of national security on the one hand, the functioning of the rule of law and respect for the Constitution on the other.”
“Was this surveillance legal or illegal? An act does not become legal when it bears the external elements of a legal act but violates the Constitution and the law, lacks justification and does not respect the principle of proportionality. The surveillance of the troop leaders was therefore illegal. If they were legal, the specific persons should not have remained in the leadership of the army, and indeed for a long time.
Who heard or read the surveillance footage? Who was the recipient of the newsletters? Who gave and what explanations to these persons? What was the motivation and purpose of the long follow-up?’ asked Mr. Venizelos and emphasized.
“This cannot be the institutional treatment of the wiretapping issue. It is not enough to answer, “illegal or dubious legality surveillances, even of ministers, took place before.” It is not enough to answer that “in terms of public opinion, the issue has lost its interest and does not affect electoral attitudes”. The answer is not enough, “Mr. Dimitriadis and Kontoleon resigned and took responsibility”. What responsibility and at what institutional level. It is not enough to refer to the preliminary examinations that the Athens District Attorney’s Office has been conducting for months without an obvious result and a known timetable. It is not enough for the HRD to be undermined and defamed in an extreme way. It is not enough that the APDPH has already issued its first decision on the Predator. Parliamentary control at the level of the European Parliament or the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe is not enough. Even the smooth and intensive operation of the Institutions and Transparency Committee would not be enough.
The question of the leadership of the Armed Forces, its prestige and the secrecy of its communications which are essentially military communications requires that the Prime Minister himself immediately formulate a reasonable evidence-based response and reliably inform at least the party leaders.”
In response to a question from APEMBE regarding the procedure followed by the Authority, he expressed the opinion that the Authority could make a special report with all the data and send it in accordance with the procedure provided for in Article 138 A of the Parliament’s regulation
The dean of the School of Political Sciences of Panteio, Dimitris Christopoulos, characterized the invocation of national security by the Greek state as an “accordion” and argued that it was invoked for reasons related to financial payments.
“There is a need for an institutional overhaul of the moldy closets of the Greek state, which did not happen in 1974, nor in 1981, nor, unfortunately, later. In his submission he argued that five steps should be taken. Suffocating control of the secret services, the activation of parliamentary control The Greek democracy must be able to place a framework of guarantees of the removal of privacy which will weigh the defense of privacy completely differently from what is done until now”, he said.
“Wiretapping likely allows the government to control some of its political opponents by rigging the political game. The role of the prosecution of the Supreme Court shakes even more the confidence of citizens in the Judiciary, which has the responsibility of organizing a free and unadulterated electoral process. It deprives the rights holders of effective guarantees. The media lacks credibility especially due to their selective funding by the government and also their attitude towards the pandemic. We remain in Europe as a quiescent democracy that finds it difficult to ensure respect for its Constitution and does not respect the minima of the European rule of law”, said AUTH professor Ifigenia Kamtsidou, among others.
“The way the EYP operates resembles a deep state, which is embedded in the so-called staff state in the context of a plan to overconcentrate power in the center of government. The responsibilities for the parastatal practices of the EYP are objective and should have been assumed by its political head with his resignation. The most important counterweights, namely the independent authorities and the Judiciary, proved to be ineffective or came under extreme pressure. Parliamentary control was completely discredited. The combination of all this puts us in front of a dystopian state reality, in what international organizations and independent organizations point out regarding the retreat of the pluralist democracy of the despotic institutions and rights in Greece”, argued for his part, the professor of Panteiou, Xenophon Kontiadis.
“Greece belongs to the liberal democracies of Europe,” stressed Nikos Alivizatos, professor of Constitutional Law at the EKPA.
“It’s not Orban, it’s not a democratic democracy. We are and remain in liberal democratic Europe and the great achievement of our country for which both the current government of our country and the previous one are responsible is that we had a change of governments in 2015 and 2019 in a velvety way. Few countries have achieved this, it is an achievement of the post-colonialism that we must guard.”
Continuing, he referred to issues of respect for human rights in Greece under the weight, as he mentioned, of the 948 convictions by the European Court.
“There is a problem of independence of the press but the press is not manipulated in any way, as it is manipulated in Orban’s Hungary. After 1974 we had eighteen electoral contests and all were flawless. None were contested even at the height of the violence in 2012. Since the 19th century, we have had a total of 67 elections. We must safeguard the authenticity of the election as the “apple of an eye”. All the divisions in modern Greece started from questioning the outcome of the elections. Let’s not get into this process. Please take care of it, each in his own way.
Concluding, he spoke of insufficient institutional counterweights and criticized the functioning of the Parliament, which he said operates in terms of the 19th century, while referring to the functioning of the Judiciary he said characteristically.
“The great failure of our generation as university professors is that we did not make good judges. There are very few judges who understand the world we live in.”
The event was attended by the former president of the Parliament, Nikos Voutsis, former and current MPs, academics, etc. The discussion was moderated by the president of the EESDA, Andreas Takis.
RES-EMP
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