Helena Smith
speaker
59 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard 7 Jul
Helena Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
of the EU yet.
It's a frontrunner, as we know, in its candidacy to become a member, and Edi Rama, the Prime Minister, has made joining the EU his central policy in his fourth term in power.
But Albanian officials, and indeed Rama is saying
We are going to go ahead with these controversial developments and we will make sure that they're in line with EU environmental laws and standards.
And what the EU MEPs are saying and many in the European Commission are saying is, no, you have to stop construction now.
Then we'll talk about it and then we'll continue with those EU accession negotiations.
No, not at this stage because it's been stopped.
And that was the trigger, the fact that the heavy machinery bulldozers went in
bulldozed their way through ancient dunes, forests in this highly fragile ecological zone on the peninsula opposite Cezanne.
That was the trigger for, and indeed private contractors then erected a fence stopping the public from accessing the area.
All of that was the spark that led to the first protests that then
just spread across Albania and have become a much wider thing about rule of law, about disaffection with cronyism, alleged corruption, etc.
in government.
We've seen extraordinary scenes here in Athens today. First of all, an incredible demonstration in the square that is the site of the Greek Parliament. Tens of thousands of people gathered there. In a first, they weren't chanting themselves hoarse. They were silent, most bending their heads in honour of the dead.
This is the anniversary, the second anniversary of the country's worst ever rail disaster that saw 57 mostly young students die in an accident that many in Greece believe was entirely preventable and is down to systemic failures, the failure of the state to provide even basic services like a modern railway system.
That's absolutely right. Barely had the relatives of the victims finished addressing the crowds when clashes erupted across the square in what appears to have been a very well-coordinated plan to disrupt an otherwise peaceful protest with black But much of Central Athens has been turned into a war zone, pitch battle between riot police and these rock lobbying youths.
There have been extraordinary scenes even around the Greek Parliament today. The report on Thursday, which suggested there are still a lot of failures, haven't been rectified.
Well, the government has said that it will act on this, that its plan is to create a modern railway system, but it's been very slow. What has stoked so much of this public outrage here in Greece is this sense of a government cover-up and that
In the days after the state moved very, very quickly to clean up the scene of the tragedy, removing what could have been very vital evidence, including, if you can believe it, human remains from the site of the crash by gravelling and cementing it over. None of that has helped assuage this public sense.
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