Athens, 29 November 2022

Meeting of National Defence and Foreign Affairs Committee with Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament of Spain

An online meeting between the members of the National Defence and Foreign Affairs Committee of the Hellenic Parliament and the members of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Spanish Parliament took place on Tuesday, 29 November. Both sides discussed at length the new geopolitical situation as it takes shape after the war in Ukraine and the challenges, old and new, that emerge in the Mediterranean basin.

The Chairman of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Parliament Konstantinos Gioulekas, on the initiative of whom the meeting was held, referred to the common direction of the two countries regarding the condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, while stressing that in the Eastern Mediterranean region, another revisionist power, Turkey, systematically questions the international conventions and threatens the sovereignty and territorial integrity of two EU member states. Referring to the refugee issue, he pointed out that it is not possible for the host countries, such as Greece and Spain, to bear the entire burden of managing the refugee problem and asked for the proportional distribution of the volume of refugees among the Member States of the Union.

The Greek MPs informed thoroughly the Spanish side about the ongoing provocative rhetoric of Turkey, as expressed by the country's leadership, noting that this tactic creates dangerous tensions in the wider Southeastern Mediterranean region. All together, the Greek MPs condemned, unequivocally, the Turkish revisionism and confirmed Greece's commitment to engage in a dialogue, which, however, does not include, by any means, any negotiation of its national and territorial sovereignty. In addition, they noted Turkey's continuous efforts to instrumentalise the migration issue in order to gain benefits from the European Union.  

The Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Spanish Parliament Pau Mari Klose, after thanking Mr Gioulekas for the initiative, pointed out that Spain and Greece share, to a great extent, common challenges in the Mediterranean. He pointed out however that the tensions experienced by each side on the two shores of the Mediterranean, east and west, are not always clear, stressing the importance of these inter-parliamentary contacts in promoting, among other things, common points of interest in the European agenda and NATO's geopolitical strategy.

      

 

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