John Micklethwait

Thank you very much, Prime Minister, for talking to us.

And thank you very much for hosting us here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You certainly ask interesting questions.

We have Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Prime Minister of Greece, here with us.

We'll jump straight in.

A lot of movement on Ukraine this week.

You've had Trump saying stuff about it.

You have various NATO allies getting cross about the fighter jets incursing into their territory and warning Russia about it.

You even had Germany coming forward and saying, let's use the 140 billion euro strategy.

frozen assets to help Ukraine.

Now, you have always been a kind of champion of this idea of having a common European fund for defense.

And you've always had pushback from the Germans on that.

Do you think now it stands a chance of going through?

Just looking at the economy at the moment, the Greek economy has been doing very well, as no doubt you will tell me.

But in 2024, you forecast a deficit and then you ended up with a surplus.

And this year, you're again forecasting a deficit.

But it's quite close to the end of the year.

I wondered if now you're close enough to say this year you'll end up with a surplus again for the government.