Athens seeks more EU funds for migrants, climate
The European Union needs to commit more resources to controlling migration and tackling the impact of climate change, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in comments as he arrived for an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.
As anticipated, the meeting between EU leaders was characterized by intense negotiations, primarily on enlargement and the revision of the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF).
Before the summit, Mitsotakis stressed that we “support the European Commission’s proposals on enlargement, with particular emphasis on the need to start accession negotiations with Ukraine, and I hope and pray that we can overcome any opposition so that the European Council unanimously sends a clear message that Ukraine’s future is within the European family.” In the preceding days, the discussion surrounding enlargement and the commencement of accession negotiations with Ukraine had been eclipsed by the position taken by Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban, who threatened a veto.
Regarding the revision of the MFF, which sets out the maximum annual amounts that the EU can spend each year in various policy areas, over a period of years, Mitsotakis stressed that additional resources must be secured for critical political priorities of the EU.
It is a fact, he asserted, that when the funding decisions were taken under the previous multiannual financial framework, they did not take into account the increase in migratory pressures. It is “absolutely necessary,” he insisted, to add resources for the protection of the EU’s external borders.
Mitsotakis also called for additional funding to tackle the impact of the climate crisis.
“Greece has always been one of the leaders in the effort to convince all European countries that we need more resources, more money to tackle the effects of the climate crisis,” he noted.
As regards the revision of the MFF, the proposal on the table at the beginning of Thursday’s debate was to allocate €2 billion for migration and €1.5 billion for natural disasters.
