Defence Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos’ article in the newspaper “TA NEA”
National agreement for modern Greece
Establishing a new constitutional, institutional and political architecture.
The eighth European elections take place in crisis conditions which have changed the perception and significance for European integration, as comprehended by the peoples and the citizens. There are three purely European issues that need to be answered immediately:
First, how can our common currency survive the crisis without actual financial and monetary union?
Second, how can financial union survive without political union?
Third, how can political union exist without common foreign policy and defence and security policy?
Within Europe, there are serious attitudes which suggest that the Eurozone should take steps forward: which suggest the institutionalization of the Eurozones’ European Council; individual procedures in the European Parliament amongst eurozone countries. In other words, the euro union should become the locomotive that will draw Europe forward.
Greece should participate equally in all procedures and decisions to be made. The Greek presence in the European Parliament should be active, with utterance and views for European affairs. Therefore, the criterion for our vote should be our country’s representation by MEPs that can decisively contribute to Europe’s future, with their knowledge and experience, and defend with arguments and plans Greece’s faster disengagement from the Memorandum.
Do the candidates respond to the aforementioned criteria? Are they principally people with European orientation, who do not want to see the current condition eternalize, just like the rest of us? We should not lose the advantage gained by the efforts of the two past years, which upturned the country’s negative course, changing its image worldwide.
We should only look forward: our “bilateral” relations with the European Union, through the course of Europe itself; the future of European citizens, which is also our concern, since we are, as a country and as a nation, an inextricable part of this evolution. “New Democracy” party is the political party which is purely European, historically and institutionally.
As far as the country’s next steps are concerned, the Prime Minister recapitulated them in his presentation of the growth program: stability, growth, cash flow. Greece possesses wealth and, under the conditions of political stability and hard work, can reclaim in the future whatever she has lost during the last years of the crisis.
The first signs of recovery are tangible. A new growth policy begins by calling attention to competitive sectors of Greek economy: tourism, agricultural production, energy and environment, research and technology, pharmaceutical industry, marine industry. In this way, unemployment, taxation and high costs will be reduced, thus ensuring cash flow, while also promoting healthy reforms.
It is obvious that Greek citizens will give a double vote on Sunday; For Europe’s better quality and for Greece’s exit from the emergency situation we have experienced over the past years. We vote for a reliable Europe; politically, socially and financially united; with solidarity for the countries and the peoples; with upward and not downward harmonization of national economies, as it applied over the last years; a strong Europe in global affairs, with common foreign policy and defence and security policy.
At the same time, we open the way that leads to the 4th Hellenic Republic, through radical proposals for the revision of the Constitution, with which the “New Democracy” party hastens the developments, setting government stability as a necessary prerequisite. Thus, we will ensure the reconstruction of the political scene.
Government stability is an issue that regards the political system as a total. Greece cannot go back, nor can it diverge from the European course which was drawn by Konstantinos Karamanlis’ political discernment and vision and which was consolidated with so much difficulty. The role and national duty of the New Democracy, right after the European elections is to take the initiative and set the outline and the objectives for a national pact for the new Greece, for the future of the country, so that strong and firm fundaments can be set for the new constitutional, institutional and political architecture, as required in our times. A standard with clearly European character.
It is through the level of national understanding that our country’s political system will be finally judged, which at these times is required to show maturity, prudence and national responsibility, so that it will be able to restore its lost image.