The Minister of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, Vassilis Kikilias, thanked the ambassadors of the 22 countries who helped our country with aircraft, vehicles and human resources in the recent fires and floods, at a special event held today at noon at the Ministry of the Interior.

The minister referred to the climate crisis that is now also affecting Europe, with large fires and floods that affect the whole world and proposed, in the context of the good cooperation between the states in terms of dealing with natural disasters, to hold a workshop with the object of drawing conclusions and the exchange of good practices, aiming at the active and effective partnership of all like-minded states.

“Last summer, there was no humidity in Greece. We reached levels lower than 10% and combined with prolonged heatwaves, we experienced extreme weather for 16 consecutive days in July and then again in August. And while we were dealing with the devastating fire of Dadia, on the last day, the bad weather Daniel came from Europe, forcing us, without having any margin of time, to reorganize our forces and adapt from dealing with forest fires to floods” he said characteristically Mr. Kikilias.

The ambassadors agreed with the minister’s proposal, whom they thanked, underlined the strengthening of solidarity that has been achieved and emphasized that the strengthening of partnerships, mutual support, the exchange of know-how and the further upgrading of communication are necessary to deal with the natural disasters caused by the climate crisis all over the planet.

They also spoke highly of the huge evacuation operation that took place last summer in Rhodes during the mega fires that hit the island and the exemplary movement of thousands of tourists to safe places.

The event was attended by the following countries with their ambassadors (in alphabetical order)

EGYPT: Omar Amer Youssef

ALBANIA: Joana Zhonga

BULGARIA: Valentin Poriazov

FRANCE: Alexandre Diebolt

GERMANY: Hans-Günter Löffler

SWITZERLAND: Stefan Estermann

USA: George James Tsunis

JORDAN: Zuhair Ensour

SPAIN: Carles Maria Casajuana Palet

ISRAEL: Noam Katz

ITALY: Susanna Schlein

CROATIA: Aleksandar Sunko

CYPRUS: Stavros Avgoustidis

LEBANON: Ghady El Khoury

MALTA: Karl Littlejohn

POLAND: Artur Lompart

ROMANIA: Mioara-Florina Pitut

SERBIA: Dejan Mackovic

SLOVAKIA: Marcela Hanusova

SWEDEN: Johan Borgstam

TURKEY: Cagatay Erciyes

CZECH REPUBLIC: Jakub Karfik K.G.