With Rafael Filo, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met at the Maximus Mansion in Maximus in the afternoon.

During the Mitsotakis – Fito meeting, the high absorption and utilization of European resources on the part of Greece was highlighted.

There was also a first exchange of views on the proposals presented by the European Commission for the next 7 -year budget of the European Union and the funding programs it will contain.

At the start of their meeting, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Rafael Feto had the following dialogue (informal translation from English):

Kyriakos Mitsotakis: First of all, you also welcome congratulations. It is a great pleasure for me to visit us. You have a very important portfolio and we have a lot to discuss the future of European funding, including cohesion.

We know that the Greek economy has made significant progress in recent years and, of course, much of our success has been our ability to absorb European funds for cohesion but we also have very good progress in the recovery and resilience fund. .

We believe that European funding contributes, as an integral part, to the transformation of our economy, making it more competitive. I emphasize competitiveness because it is the big issue that the new European Commission will face.

I am very interested in listening to your ideas and thoughts and I am really looking forward to a very fruitful collaboration. Again, congratulations on the important position you took.

Rafael Filo: Thank you, Mr Prime Minister. It is my great pleasure to be here, on one of my first trips, because I find it important to meet with the basic member states that show great interest in cohesion policies. My portfolio concerns the cohesion and the first thing I want to point out is that the cohesion is for the first time in the responsibilities of an executive vice president. This is important.

The second: I believe it is yet another good development, in the new European Commission’s governance framework, that we have the coordination of other portfolios under consistency. As
Executive Vice -President I have coordination for agriculture, tourism, transport, blue economy and fishing. I believe they are the ‘frame’ of development opportunities for your country.

I find it particularly important to discuss the priorities we set at this juncture. This is my mission. It is important to understand the real situation. Your government’s performance is very good in the field of spending.

I think we need to open a dialogue with Member States, issues arise in current cohesion programs, so that we can see if it is possible to make changes in the context of this evaluation in the middle of the current programming period.