Kyriakos Mitsotakis

I'm disappointed by the fact that when I look at the Draghi report, we have not made significant progress.

And I think it's time that, you know, in Europe, we usually wear two hats at the Council.

We wear our European hat and we wear our national hat.

And it seems to me that for some countries, the European hat seems to be shrinking.

So we have to look at the big picture.

Some of the decisions that we need to take require more funding.

It's pretty clear.

And we need to put our European interests not necessarily ahead of our national interests, but to realize that some difficult decisions need to be taken at the European level.

If we really mean what we say about creating scale in banking union, we should be open to these types of transactions.

I see value.

when an important foreign bank wants to acquire a stake in a Greek bank.

It means they believe in the potential of the Greek economy, and it means that the bank could possibly do better.

I'm pushing my banks to extend more credit to mortgages, to small, medium-sized enterprises.

The stronger their balance sheet is, the more likely it is that they will lose.

So, yes, in principle, we are in favor of these transactions, and I'm happy that Unicredit has decided to look at one of our Greek banks and take a significant stake.

I think most of the important... If you want to understand what's happening in Brussels, look at the national capitals.

I think there's...

The council has become more complicated in terms of taking decisions.

But on the other hand, you know, in the past, we took a moment of decision when we had to address COVID.

Is Ukraine a geopolitical COVID moment?