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ROME. The need to keep schools, factories and offices open places a greater responsibility on people to prevent and limit infections. Freedom is not an exclusively individual fact, but is carried out together with others, requiring responsibility and collaboration. The European Union should equip itself with its own resources. The Head of State receives the President of the Greek Republic and asks for greater European cohesion. “The progress of the health emergency caused by Covid requires the European Union to be very fast in implementing all the necessary measures. So I hope that the slowdown attempts will soon be overcome.
Sergio Mattarella received in the Quirinal the new President of the Hellenic Republic, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, with whom he shared the vision of a European Union that has an increasingly strong, cohesive and authoritarian role in recent months, of course, at the front pandemic, but also in the management of migrant flows, their reception and their repatriation. During the meeting between the delegations and the subsequent lunch, the two presidents reaffirmed the old and strong friendship between the two respective peoples and the convergence on the main issues of the moment. The Greek president’s visit to Italy is the second abroad, after Cyprus, since he was elected. In the first weeks of the confinement, Katerina Sakellaropoulou telephoned the Head of State to express her solidarity and also in the interview this morning, we learned, she recognized the seriousness of the behavior of Italians, like Greeks, in the fight against the pandemic. Bilateral relations but also and especially the epidemic covidity and the consequent economic crisis, the role of the EU, immigration and the eastern Mediterranean were some of the main topics covered in the interview. For all these issues, Italy and Greece agree on the need for an increasingly strong, cohesive and authoritarian role for the European Union and, with regard to regional crises, for NATO and the UN. Regarding the strategies to stop the Covid, Mattarella stressed that the need to keep schools, factories, offices and other public places open implies a greater responsibility of people in the prevention and limitation of infections. “Freedom – reiterated the president – is not an exclusively individual fact, but is achieved together with others, requiring responsibility and collaboration.”
Responsibility
In this regard, the Greek president cited Mattarella’s sentence directed at Boris Johnson that had put Great Britain and other European countries in opposition: we love freedom but we also love seriousness, the president replied. His guest also praised the great seriousness of Italians and Greeks in tackling the pandemic, and during the visit they also spoke of the need for Europe, which has shown an important response after the pandemic, to equip itself with its own resources and deal with possible emergencies. Finally, the two presidents agreed that the issue of Mediterranean migrants cannot be left alone in the hands of the Mediterranean countries, but that it is a matter of strategic importance that must affect the entire EU. Mattarella, on his visit to Greece, had visited the Eleonas refugee camp and then had asked the Union to apply rigor towards the Member States also in terms of reception; while this morning he reiterated his solidarity with Katerina Sakellaropoulou for the fire in the Moria refugee camp. For the two presidents, whose countries are among the first frontiers towards migratory flows, only the European Union as a whole has the strength to manage this problem. Both through the activation of a global policy also towards the countries from where the largest migratory flows occur, and to manage the issue of repatriation.
