Charitsis: Greece must play a leading role in Euro-Turkish dialogue

"If we had proceeded to demand sanctions against Turkey last September, as SYRIZA was asking, many of the recent developments might possibly have been avoided," he added.

He welcomed references to sanctions for violations of Cyprus' Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) while noting that the corresponding sanctions for violations of Greece's continental shelf were put off until the end of September.

In the meantime, according to Charitsis, initiatives need to be taken on a European level to restart EU-Turkish dialogue and exploratory talks, noting that this cannot be happen when there was pressure and a threat of violence from the Turkish side.

"Greece deserves and must demand the active support of our allies and to play a leading role in Euro-Turkish dialogue. We cannot be spectators in issues that concern us directly," he said, while accusing the government of lacking an overalll national strategy on relations with Turkey.

He defended SYRIZA's stance during the vote on the Greece-Egypt agreement for a partial delimitation of their EEZ boundaries, saying the party "cannot vote for an agreement that contains dangerous points for our country, nor yet adopt the bulldozer opposition we faced from ND in foreign policy."

Charitsis went on to criticise the government's handling of the pandemic and the reopening of schools, saying that essentially nothing was done to adapt schools to the new state of affairs and contrasting this approach to neighbouring Italy, which was increasing the number of teachers, reducing class sizes and introducing individual desks.

He was also critical of the government's handling of economic issues, specifically its failure to match Portugal's performance in drawing funds from the SURE programme, where Portugal designed programmes that will receive 6 billion euros compared to just 2.7 billion euros by Greece.

Source: ana-mpa