The organizational format of the state preparation for the Olympic Games can be used 18 years later to deal with various crises effectively with a more typical example of what is called Civil Protection, said, among others, the former Deputy Prime Minister, former Minister Evangelos Venizelos. during his speech at the web event organized by the Circle of Ideas with the theme, “Memory and continuity. The state organization for the 2004 Olympic Games as a crisis management model “.
This scheme proved to work and yielded results, Mr. Venizelos underlined.
“The crisis is the new regularity. To deal with any natural or man-made disaster you need coordination. Our life is a constant crisis and nothing works anymore under normal conditions of temperature and pressure. Crises are very much predictable either a long time ago or a few days or a few hours before. “There is time for reaction, so that there is preparation”, said Mr. Venizelos and added.
“Our constant contact with the crisis has highlighted a new role of the state, at a time when there should have been anti-statist perceptions. It turns out that without a state, in cooperation with the private sector that can offer significant assistance to civil society, in the context of European and international cooperation, you have nothing. You can not mobilize your forces. “So when we say state, we mean an organizational structure that operates effectively with enforcement, legislates and executes, has a plan and mobilizes forces.”
Speaking specifically about the period 1998-2004, he said that “what happened was that we created a form of inter-ministerial cooperation, with the greatest possible flexibility and speed.
The big state is heavy. It is a difficult case that you have to mobilize, but you also need an internal “bearing” which is functional, it is “oiled” very well and so we came to the result of managing the crisis that was the Olympic Games themselves “.
Continuing, he stressed the need for a specific protocol.
“There must be an international protocol. Know what to do. If we do not have it, we are wasting a lot of time when the stimulus comes. This means that there is a real staff state and not a staff state that is the prime minister and his advisers at the Maximos Palace. “A staff state that has a central nervous system is subject to the prime minister and an inter-ministerial committee with a minister who coordinates it, has branches everywhere.”
“This scheme has proven to work and yield results and it is a pity that we do not use this scheme even now, when we need a permanent mechanism of continuous and effective crisis management with a typical example of Civil Protection”, stressed Mr. Venizelos.
“The Olympic Games as a fact is a crisis in itself. “The country has managed to respond to this crisis, despite the fact that it is the smallest country that has organized the Olympic Games”, said the former Secretary General of Olympic Preparation, Costas Kartalis and added.
“What the crisis requires is to clone the state. We need a flexible state within the big state. The flexible state must be fast but it needs the big state. Thus structures were built in all the productive ministries and bodies. Many problems were solved when two key questions were clarified, which concern every aspect of this crisis event. “Who do you call when you have a problem and who makes the decision?”
“The structural problem of the country is that there is no institutional memory to keep, to keep the positives to enrich and evolve them or to keep the negatives so that it does not repeat them in the future,” he said. The elements that made up the model of crisis management, ie the organization of the Olympic Games, can be transferred as a form of organization and operation of the country that can serve any form of crisis. Major crises are dealt with by an overall coordination that starts with the prime minister coordinating the key ministers and below there is a permanent structure. The structures of the Greek state face the problem of who is leading, how it organizes its interior each time and mainly with permanent plans.
“Very often in our country, while we speak in big words, in fact we are unaware that there is a need for realistic and feasible plans”, said the former Deputy Minister of Culture, Nasos Alevras and added.
“Many times solutions are found out of the ordinary and this has additional costs, administrative, financial and political, while society itself usually deals with a Manichaeism. The experience of the Olympic Games gave us the opportunity to create a legacy in the institutional field of the country, which unfortunately was lost and we find the loss of this legacy as a problem in the coming years “.
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