PM: SYRIZA must be clear about fence

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has called on SYRIZA to take a clear stance about the the construction of the fence on the Evros land border with Turkey. 

“The opposition must take a stand: Will it tear down the fence by returning to open border logic? There is no room for half-truths here,” Mitsotakis said in Evros on Friday, and in the wake of a recent amendment tabled by SYRIZA MEP Dimitris Papadimoulis for the EU to stop the financing of such fences.

The PM also expressed regret “because there are political forces that oppose the fence and go as far as tabling an amendment not to fund the artificial embankment.”

“In other words, Europe should not pay for the project, but you, the taxpayers, should pay for it,” he noted.

He reiterated emphatically what he had said on Thursday, namely that the fence will be completed with or without EU funding.

“If we do not manage to find European resources to finance it, we will finance it with national resources, because it is a national necessity,” he said, while also reiterating that he will be a candidate in the regional unit of Evros.

The issue of the fence is inextricably linked with the migration issue, which ruling New Democracy wants to highlight emphatically in the runup to national elections. 

To this end, after Easter, Mitsotakis is planning a tour of the eastern Aegean island of Lesvos, which has been a gateway of migrants coming from the Turkish coast. 

Government spokesman Giannis Oikonomou was also particularly critical of SYRIZA on Friday, stressing again that “when [SYRIZA was] in government, 75% of migrants in Europe passed through here, and now 5% pass through here.”

He also referred to remarks by government spokesman at the time of SYRIZA’s administration Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, calling the Evros fence “illegal.”