Kyriakos Mitsotakis

Well, thanks for having me, John.

I've been advocating for quite some time about the need to create some joint European borrowing facility to cover what I consider the quintessential European public good, which is common European defense.

And I do sense that there is much more momentum now amongst my colleagues.

Some of the countries that were inherently against the idea of additional further joint borrowing have changed their mind.

And I'm pretty sure that Germany will eventually also agree to this necessity.

And we need to make sure that this facility finances projects of common interest.

And I would put missile defense, drone defense right up there in terms of our collective European priorities.

So I would expect some movement soon.

We have two European councils.

And hopefully we can make progress towards that direction.

We've been producing significant primary surpluses, and I think it's quite possible that we may have a real surplus again this year.

This is a foundation of our economic policy.

We've suffered a lot from not being fiscally disciplined.

This is not going to happen again.

But I think the big success of our policy is to ensure that the economy is growing at the same time, to create jobs.

We've created 500,000 jobs since I became prime minister.

And the real goal is to ensure that this collective wealth is spread equally.

So my focus now is to use whatever fiscal space I can create through growth and tackling tax evasion to cut taxes for the middle class.

It's important for me that this discussion is not just limited to the economists saying good things about the economy.

I want the average Greek to really feel a tangible benefit from this growth story.