“The most difficult moment for me was Tempi” said the prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in the discussion with the director of Kathimerini Alexis Papachelas and the professor of Economic and Social History of EKPA and director of the Educational Foundation of the National Bank Kostas Kosti, in the context of the “Transcolonization: 50 years later” conference.

In fact, there accumulated the bad side of the way the state operates, perceptions he emphasized.

Only justice can give her the answers. Let us have no illusions about this, noted the prime minister.

From the moment the issue enters the millstone of the party confrontation. It is very important, even if justice takes a little more time, to answer all the rumors that may be circulating today. Because these rumors can be toxic, corrosive.

In Tempi, human errors collided with chronic pathologies of the Greek public administration, said Mr. Mitsotakis.

The railways were the most problematic part of the Greek public organizations

We bow our heads in respect to the pain of people who never saw their children again.

The partisan instrumentalization of this tragedy is infuriating. We have had other tragedies in the past. With dead people, with responsibilities of the state apparatus. I never thought of using them for whatever temporary party benefits he mentioned yet.

“The geopolitical challenges are important”

To the question “what keeps you up at night?”, Mr. Mitsotakis answered:

In the last decade we were concerned with economic issues, now we are concerned with major geopolitical issues, such as the war in Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, the Sahel, etc.

Also, Europe is called to turn its attention to the issues of competitiveness, because geopolitics is linked to the economy, as China and the USA have shown.

There is also the issue of farmers. We put a lot of pressure on them and we need to review our direction.

Rule of Law and bureaucracy

I am the first to recognize mistakes that have been made and we have tried to correct them. With legislative interventions that corrected weaknesses. Presenting a Greece that roughly resembles other authoritarian regimes is a funny, unfair, insulting country and does not correspond to reality at all.

The final judge of the rule of law, according to the rules of the European family in which we participate, is the European Commission because it is more depoliticized than the European Parliament.

Bureaucracy

  • We have arrived at an organization of the public administration that makes a greater distinction between the political superiors and the service hierarchy of the public administration.
  • Political superiors stop at the secretary-general level.
  • The process for selecting managers of national organizations.
  • Gov.gr is a revolution. Technology simplifies the citizen’s contact with the state and reduces bureaucracy.
  • For the assessment in the public sector, I fought as Minister of Administrative Reform. Now it is a much more established concept, difficult to implement.
  • We still have issues. ASEP is finding it difficult to complete recruitment of regular staff with the speed required.

“We will continue the reforms at the same pace”

In the second four-year period, we do not surprise anyone when we do what we said: that we want to implement many reforms, especially at the beginning of the four-year period. The parameter of the European elections never determined the timing of the implementation of the reforms. We will continue at the same pace, noted the prime minister, stressing that weight must be given to the lost opportunities of the Post-colonial period.

The jumps must be made. Twenty years later we are still talking about non-public, non-profit universities. They will be done now.

Where is the infamous political cost anyway? Society proved that it is much more ready for big changes that some thought were too difficult to implement

“Governability forced the rulers to act with realism”

Even with Turkey, where no government has been able to resolve our core difference, the arrangement of maritime zones, continental shelf and EEZ with Turkey, the way we have dealt with that difference, has not been very different.

That is, governability, this in itself, the confrontation with the responsibility of power and the management of important national issues, obliged the rulers to face the issues with a large dose of realism.

“Realism prevailed in foreign policy”

Overall, the country’s foreign policy from 1974 onwards, with some fluctuations, showed a basic consistency and continuity and when we were called to make difficult decisions, the realism of populism prevailed. And Andreas Papandreou was elected with the slogan “Out with the bases of death” and finally kept the bases by doing a very clever “pirouette”.

Until 2015, when we came to the brink of absolute disaster and Alexis Tsipras did the infamous “butt somersault” and Greece was kept in the European Union.

Therefore, overall, realism and adherence to the western orientation of the country finally prevailed.

“Andreas Papandreou cultivated early populism”

Konstantinos Karamanlis restored democracy and put Greece in Europe. This legacy alone makes him, in my opinion, the most important politician of the Post-colonial era.

Andreas Papandreou was a very special personality, undeniably charismatic, he expressed expectations of what he called the underprivileged at that time. In my view, however, it is largely responsible for the fact that the country’s fiscal situation deteriorated significantly in the 1980s.
And of course I believe that he is also responsible for the fact that he cultivated the mentality where he placed much more emphasis on rights and not on obligations.

This basic imbalance between rights and obligations is a flaw in our political system. For this he is responsible, I believe, to a considerable extent through the early populism which he cultivated.

At the level of social policies – family law – but also in issues such as the establishment of the National Social Security System, the legacy of Andreas Papandreou was undeniably important

His decision, in 1993, not to engage in politics

In 1993 when my father lost the election, then I made a personal decision not to get involved in politics and spent ten years in the private sector until I finally made the decision to enter politics.

It was an advantage, because it allowed me for ten years to see Greece from abroad and for another ten years not to deal with active politics and to experience the advantages and disadvantages of the national economy through my involvement in the private sector.

“For 50 years, our economic progress has not been the desired”

The problems we have to highlight are mainly in our financial inability to take advantage of important opportunities for progress such as our joining the European Union.

Taking an overall account of the country’s economic course, comparing it with corresponding courses of other countries, we find that our progress was not desirable.

“The political system is not the generative cause of the problems”

We have a strong democracy, with strong institutional counterweights. I believe that the political system as it has been formed is not the generative cause of the country’s problems.

In a 50-year review I would not focus on the possible weaknesses of the parliamentary system to highlight the advantages and disadvantages.

In this period, our country progressed in terms of strengthening the institutions through a series of constitutional interventions and certainly has the best democracy it has had since the establishment of the Greek state.

Kathimerini, the Educational Foundation of the National Bank (MIET), the Delphi Economic Forum and the Hellenic Observatory of the London School of Economics are co-organizing a three-day conference on the theme “TRANSFORMATION: 50 Years Later”, from today 29 February to 2 March at the National Gallery.