Businessman Mytilineos awarded honorary doctorate by Piraeus University

Evangelos Mytilineos, chairman and CEO of Greek industrial group Mytilineos, was awarded on Wednesday an honorary doctorate from the Department of Business Administration and Management at the University of Piraeus.

"I have been working all my life, I do not know how to do anything else," he said during a ceremony held at the Piraeus Municipal Theatre.

Speaking at the ceremony, Mytilineos referred to current conditions for enterprises and the challenges they face. "Looking at you, I see the Greece of the future. A Greece that has not only returned to normality after the crisis, but also a competitive Greece and is truly equal in Europe. I see the citizens of a modern, democratic state capable of providing security and justice in conditions of regional stability and peace."

He described the students as Greece's brain gain. "Your success," he said, "is the powerful message and invitation for the return of those who sought a better future outside our country. We achieved successes primarily abroad but we became people in Greece," he said.

"The crisis and the difficult course of the last 10 years will hopefully make us all wiser. The high cost paid by society must not go to waste, we owe it to the country and to younger generations."

Mytilineos also said that demands from businesses are increasing, much more when citizens find that the state is unable to meet basic needs in critical areas, such as health and education.

"We have been through some difficulties, but every crisis has an opportunity. We realised that we had to leave behind the Greece of minimal effort, relaxed rules, parasitic consumption and an opportunistic approach."

[ANA-MPA]