Mitsotakis on CNN on immigration: The solution is not to unilaterally violate the Schengen Treaty

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was interviewed by CNN and journalist Christiane Amanpour.

Referring to his meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Mitsotakis said it was their sixth meeting in the past year and this is progress in the bilateral relationship between the two countries.

“We have had some friction in previous years, it is useful to have open channels of communication and on issues where we disagree we should do so in a concrete way, all issues can be resolved on the basis of international law and we should cooperate on issues such as migration,” he explained.

On illegal immigration, he stressed, among other things, that “it is important for the EU to defend its external borders. It is important for the EU to defend its external borders, but also to form legal channels for migrants in an organised way, for humanitarian and economic reasons.”

“We have humanitarian sensitivities, but we also want to send a message to countries like Egypt that people can come legally without making a dangerous journey across the Mediterranean. The solution is not to unilaterally violate the Schengen rules. We have a European agreement, nobody is completely satisfied, but we have to implement it,” he said.

“The Coast Guard in Samos showed up to save people,” he said of the recent incident with dozens of shipwrecked people and four dead. “We reserve for ourselves the right to stop vessels from sailing to the islands. But the most important thing is to keep boats out of the water and only the Turkish authorities can help us with that. We want the boats to be stopped before they go into the water. Of course, in cooperation with the Turkish authorities, we have made progress in the last year, we have better communication channels. We don’t want to leave it to the traffickers to decide who gets into Europe,” he underlined.

He also said that “the climate crisis is here. We need to invest in short-term adaptation. We are using drones, artificial intelligence to deal with fires. The forests we lost were less than other summers, in the hottest summer in years. The Green Deal cannot take place at the expense of European industry and the well-being of citizens. Some adjustments would be helpful.”

“It is important for world cultural heritage that the Sculptures are where they belong. We are talking in good faith with the British Museum, perhaps the new British government will be more open to a joint arrangement to reunite the Sculptures. We have strong arguments and we will continue to push. We have waited 200 years, but it is high on my personal agenda,” he also said, responding to a question about the Parthenon Sculptures.

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