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Greece: Press remarks by High Representative/Vice-President Kaja Kallas after the meeting with Foreign Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis

European External Action Service (EEAS)

06.11.2025
Athens, Greece
EEAS Press Team

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Kalimera, dear Giorgos,

Thank you for your hospitality, and it is really great to be here and discuss all these issues you pointed out as well.

Greece is a very important country because of your geostrategic position that you have in the Eastern Mediterranean. It is a bridge between Europe and the Middle East, and it is also close to the Black Sea. Greece is a regional actor that can support also peace building initiatives that we talked about today. It also plays a very important role in the ongoing work in the Black Sea strategy.

Your support to Ukraine is highly appreciated. Greece is providing diplomatic, financial and military support. We all see that Russia has no genuine interest in engaging with peace talks, and that is why we need to continue with helping Ukraine to defend themselves and putting pressure on Russia. We also need to continue with our transatlantic efforts on accountability and sanctions, as such. Your support there is crucial.

Russia only understands strength. That is why the 19th package of sanctions was adopted two weeks ago. But we need to do more to combat Russia's circumvention of sanctions, that we also discussed today. More Russia's revenues come from oil, and this comes from their shadow fleet. So, we can all do more to close down the networks of the shadow fleet as well.

It is clear that Europe faces an unprecedented security threat. We need to be able to defend Europe, and we have the capabilities to do so. We have a clear vision, and we have also a clear plan on defence. With the ambitious Defence Readiness Roadmap and concrete objectives to reach that defence readiness by 2030. We have four pan-European flagship projects: Eastern Flank Watch, Drone Defence, Air Shield and Space Shield, and we need to do more to secure peace.

We discussed many other worries around our neighbourhood, including Africa. What more can we do together there. I think there is a lot of room where we can play a role. We also discussed Türkiye. The improvement of Greece's relationship with Türkiye is good news. Peaceful settlement of maritime delimitation issue and respect of international law is needed. I just arrived from Cyprus. We had also discussed Cyprus' priorities when it comes to their Presidency. We also discussed the efforts to pave the way to formal settlement talks.

Middle East, it was something that we exchanged views on. The EU continues to play an important role. We are still the main financial contributor to humanitarian aid, by far. European Union has also been consistently supporting Palestinian Authority as we are discussing about the two-state solution: we are supporting that. In order for having that, you also need to have Palestinian Authority that is able to provide services.

Coming closer to our neighbourhood, we also discussed enlargement. On Tuesday, we presented the Enlargement Report with the Enlargement Commissioner Kos. It is a political priority and a choice. For both of us, this is extremely important that we have success stories. When it comes to the Western Balkans, Moldova and Ukraine, the EU can also be a major security guarantee when they are in the European Union. If we look at the map, this is where they belong, and we have to do our homework.

Dear Giorgos, thank you very much for your cooperation, the warm hospitality and the nice weather.

Link to the video: https://audiovisual.ec.europa.eu/media/video/I-280238