The Prime Minister stood on the challenges that this technological revolution brings, such as the issue of work, entrepreneurship, science, but also on addressing mental health, especially among young people.
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Mitsotakis even sounded the alarm for Europe, saying that it has lagged behind in terms of technology developments. “We are slow in Europe and America is running faster. And China is running much faster in many areas,” he said.
The Prime Minister’s full statement
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First of all, good morning and let me, by way of introduction, also repeat what was said by our Ministers in their very interesting question and answer statements: Is there any other party in Greece today that could or would, in the context of a congressional dialogue, have a debate similar to the one that New Democracy is having today?
Because New Democracy’s gaze is focused on the future, on the challenges, the opportunities and the great, I would say, difficulties that we will face, not only as a country, but also as Europe, to deal with an unprecedented technological revolution that is artificial intelligence.
Because New Democracy’s gaze is focused on the future, on the challenges, on the opportunities and on the great, I would say, difficulties that we will face, not only as a country, but also as Europe, to deal with an unprecedented technological revolution that is artificial intelligence.
As a matter of fact, the New Democracy is focused on the future.
Because, indeed, you have heard from our Ministers and I think you have seen that the country has a concrete and coherent strategy on how it can harness artificial intelligence to provide better, faster, cheaper, friendlier services to citizens and businesses.
And I think the examples you have seen are essentially just the beginning of a major effort to change the culture of the wider public sector as a whole.
Whether we’re talking about applications in healthcare, where the impact of AI will be absolutely staggering and fundamentally positive.
Or we are talking about applications in education, where we are at the forefront of introducing AI tools to help, for example, our teachers to better plan their work, spend less time on paperwork and more time in the classroom.
Whether we’re talking about the core of the artificial intelligence infrastructure that Dimitris told us about, about how we’re evolving gov.gr, about the large infrastructure that we’re building a little bit further down the road here in Lavrion, a state-of-the-art supercomputer that can be made available not only to the public sector but also to the private sector, which needs computing power today.
Whether we’re talking about the impressive applications that Constantine told us about, how artificial intelligence can make things easier for us, make us better, detect human errors and intervene proactively.
All of this is a picture of a world that is already here. The question is which party, which government, which country will be able to harness this power of AI for the ultimate benefit of citizens and collective well-being.
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While, at the same time, it will also take care to control the negative effects of a revolution that is sure to change everything.
Whether we talk about effects on the labour market, how we will talk – and this is very important – in our schools about the professions of the future, what are the new professions that will be required to exploit this technology, how we will – and I will not tire of saying this – direct our children more towards technical education, because technical education professions are less exposed to the risks of artificial intelligence.
We will talk about critical issues like the mental health of our children and adolescents. I am proud that Greece is at the forefront of banning the use of social media for children under the age of 15. It is a basic obligation that we have to protect our children from the negative effects of technologies that are now essentially exploiting their attention and making money from the fact that our children spend too much time in front of mobile screens.
And to bridge the discussion that we’re going to have, how do we make room for the new Greek businesses that use artificial intelligence to be able to grow in Greece, in Europe, I would say, because this is a European challenge. You know, too often we hear that Greek and European companies get to a certain size and then big American companies come in and buy them.
We want Greek businesses to be able to grow, to be funded here, to bring back people from abroad who can work for them. And that’s where I think we’ve taken very important initiatives to create an ecosystem of businesses – you’ll hear three of them today – that can and do create, provide good jobs, produce products and services that are absolutely useful – some of them especially in the defense sector – and critical to the future of the country and to defending this concept of strategic autonomy, how we can be secure on our own without being dependent on others.
So, I’ll close this opening statement by saying that this is a strategy of the utmost importance for our next four years of government. I said it yesterday. The next period, up to 2030, is a period of world-historical changes and a crucial period for Greece to be able to be a leading player in developments. Whether it will be able to make a leap and use this technology to overtake other countries that may be ahead of us, and in many areas we have succeeded.
I was in Germany a few days ago and I have to tell you that there is a huge respect and admiration, I dare say, of Germany for the digital leap that Greece has achieved. Because many of the digital applications that we have and that we take for granted nowadays do not exist in many European countries. This government and this party are credited with that.
Referring to Greece’s excellent human resources and brain gain, Kyriakos Mitsotakis noted:
Two comments to these very interesting things that were heard.
First, human talent. Whichever company, big from abroad, and if you talk to any Greek startupper, whichever Greek startupper you ask why they are operating in Greece, they will tell you, first and foremost: the human potential that is produced by Greek public universities. And in a little while, by the non-state universities that operate in Greece.
In fact, we have people who are extremely well-qualified. These young people have gone through a crisis, they have lived through the crisis of the last decade, they don’t want to go back there, they have ambitions, they have visions, they see that today they can play a creative and meaningful role, participating in companies that in turn have their own ambitions.
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And we have another very big advantage: We still have, because many have returned, hundreds of thousands of Greeks abroad, many of whom left during the years of the crisis and are now interested in returning for the first time.
One of the successes, dear leaders of New Democracy, which we do not talk about enough, is the fact that we have been able to reverse the brain drain. More young people are returning to Greece today than are leaving, precisely because they can see in our country a future which, despite the difficulties, is certainly more optimistic than it was some years ago.
On the second point, let me also insist on the sense of urgency. This is not just about Greece, it is about Europe. I was at Mario Draghi’s award ceremony two days ago, he was awarded the Charlemagne Prize, the most prestigious award recognizing European contribution to the European Union. We are running late in Europe and America is running faster. And China is running much faster in many areas.
So this sense of urgency that must distinguish the European Union as a whole, and I would say Greece as well, I think it is something that should concern us as a party and as a government. And this is something that the Ministers know that I keep asking them: if today we are running at speed X, in the next four years, if the Greek citizens have confidence in us, we will have to run at speed 2X. We cannot delay or watch opportunities pass us by.
And that means a different perception, a different logic, a different war with what we call the “deep state”, Greek bureaucracy.
We have taken steps but we have a lot more to do.
On cooperation between the public and private sectors and the attraction of young executives to the public sector, as well as on the government’s policies in the fields of defence, housing and start-ups, the Prime Minister said:
First of all, to take a cue from what both of you have said, saying that today the state needs to see the private sector as an ally, as a partner and as a supporter and in the implementation of public policies, which in the past may have been seen as the exclusive prerogative of the state itself.
Let me make a reference to what is happening in the wider defence ecosystem. Until recently we thought that defence armament programmes should be limited to buying very expensive armaments from abroad, large platforms, ships, planes, anti-missile systems, usually with little Greek added value.
This is changing dramatically, and it is changing dramatically on two levels. First, because we are no longer willing to spend Greek taxpayers’ money on these big platforms with no Greek value added, which means that in all big projects there must now be at least 25% value added.
I open a parenthesis, I don’t know how many of you know that two of the eight parts that make up a Belharra frigate – think of it like a big lego, in which one part comes and connects to another, there are eight such blogs in the Belharra frigate – two of the eight are built in Greece, in the Salamis shipyards. And it’s not just the sections that go on the Greek Belharra that are being built, the sections that go on the French Belharra are also being built.
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Magnify this, project it to 2030, to understand how the Greek defence industry can acquire a very substantial role of real added value, not only meeting the needs of Greece, but also the needs of Europe and – why not?
The second big revolution is about startup companies, small companies, coming in and providing technological solutions to the Armed Forces, not just the Greek Armed Forces, the Greek state, but it is certainly much easier for a new company to first test a system in Greece, if the Greek Armed Forces are willing to experiment and give opportunities and take risks to test such systems.
We come, then, and say: “we don’t want a specific product, we have a problem and come and give us a solution”. And through the Hellenic Innovation Center now, we ourselves can give opportunities to Greek companies to make products quickly and cheaply, I want to emphasize this, products that will be absolutely useful to us if we want to imagine in 2030 a country that is technologically autonomous and can be in tune with the challenges of the times and with a business theater that is changing dramatically.
Look at what is happening in Ukraine. For those who don’t know, in Ukraine there is now a zone that stretches from 30 to 50 kilometers where virtually no human being can enter. It is a zone in which the war is being fought with drones or with automatic vehicles, because anything that enters that zone will automatically be detected and neutralized. This is not a science fiction picture from the future, it is what is happening today. And we have to be ready for that eventuality.
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That’s why companies that have the ability to offer innovative products that can be relatively quickly integrated, tested by the Armed Forces, we can then also sell those products overseas.
Because if the Greek Armed Forces come in and say, “I like this and I’m giving a first contract,” then it’s much easier for these companies to sell similar products in Europe. And that’s what we want at the end of the day: to be able to tap into a European market as a whole.
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Let me take a second example: we mentioned a little bit about the big problem of roofing. For the next four years the problem of affordable housing will be a central priority for our party.
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But we are a liberal party, in which we do not believe that the state can and should do everything. If anyone in the country today believes that the solution to the housing problem is for the state to come in and build workforce housing, as it did some years ago, on its own, without the involvement of the private sector, I think they are probably thinking in 20th century terms, not 21st century terms.
But we can, as a state, come in and say, we have real estate, a lot of it. We have camps, for example. Come here, private sector. Do a kind of quid pro quo, to put it very simply. Take the land, which would cost you dearly to buy. Build what you’re going to build, with rules that we’re going to set, and keep a piece of the building stock for what we call “social housing.” That’s a solution that comes along and brings the state and the private sector closer together.
These are solutions that have been tried and tested and companies like yours, what can they do? Allow a market to work better.
If there are problems in the property market today – we have, say, a lot of closed apartments that we have to find ways to put on the market – any private intermediary can help a market work better, with the rules that we have set, with issues that we know we have, delays still in the transfer of properties. That actually eases the housing problem, because quite simply it makes it easier to increase supply.
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Because our problem today is not just supporting our young people with demand support policies. Yes, this government, first in Europe, hold that, has returned one rent back to all tenants. And we will do it every year. When I tell my European colleagues this, they are surprised.
This government launched the My House I and My House II program, 22,000 is not a small number. Think about it, 22,000 of our fellow citizens are getting their own home, essentially paying a lower monthly mortgage than they would pay if they were renting a similar level home. And these are policy “pilots” and we can potentially do more in this direction.
So, the Greece of 2030, first and foremost, to conclude, requires a smart state. A state that will not run behind the private sector, but will sometimes be able to innovate and pioneer itself.
I would like to say a big thank you to the services of the Ministry of Digital Governance, because many of the applications you see, gov.gr, have been created by engineers who work for the Greek state. Civil servants built all of these. Obviously we are looking for support from companies as well.
And to say one last thing, it matters: in Greece of 2030, being able to attract capable and deserving young people to the wider public sector is very important. We have a problem today to attract engineers, IT specialists. Quite simply, we cannot easily pay competitive salaries. It’s something we need to look at.
Certainly the public sector will not always be able to compete with the private sector in terms of salaries. But if it provides good quality work and, more importantly, a sense of purpose, because I can assure you that our engineers who have worked to develop these applications can-and do-get paid less than they would receive if they went to a private sector company. They would be hired tomorrow, have no doubt.
But they feel something inside them that is not easily valued in money, and that is the pride of doing something good for their country and changing the image of the public sector.
These are the new civil servants in Greece in 2030, who will be able to negotiate on equal terms with the private sector and who will have been trained. Our teachers, our professors who will have been trained in artificial intelligence, the executives here in the Coast Guard or the Armed Forces, who will be real executives who, in terms of their knowledge of technology, have nothing to envy from the best executives in the private sector.
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And to close with an illustration, again linking what we have said to human resources and to defence. If you go into the heart of a Belharra frigate – you won’t, because you’re not allowed for obvious reasons, nor will you ever see many pictures – but I’ll describe a picture of an operations center, fully digitized, with new Navy cadre, men and women, operating the most sophisticated communications systems, weapons systems, submarine tracking systems, and really feeling that, yes, it’s not just the weapons, it’s the people who are in tune with the times.
So as much importance as we give to systems, we should also give as much importance to the human factor, to a “smart” public sector, to executives who are trained.
I dare to say to MPs and ministers – we have held AI seminars for all our ministers – I have asked all our ministers, not all of them have done it yet, that they should have an AI adviser in their office, because everything is changing. So, as important as policies are, human resources are just as important.
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And this party, New Democracy, has been and remains a party that honours… I said it yesterday: we keep from our traditions what is worth keeping, but at the same time we have the courage to face the challenges of the future, to tune in to the demands of the times and to be very often ahead of our time.
It is our duty, if we are to be leaders, to steer society in a direction that we believe will ultimately be right and for the greater good. And tuning society and the country to the challenges of artificial intelligence, I assure you, will be a central priority for the next four years.
I believe that the Greek citizens, because they have judgment, knowledge and memory and they listen to what they say and they see in the end – we are practical people in Greece – who in the end can meet these challenges, so again in the next elections they will trust New Democracy to continue to lead this great effort of the country.
In his concluding remarks, the Prime Minister noted:
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New Democracy, as I said before, has to move forward, to evolve. And we achieved great electoral victories precisely because we were able to do so and we were able to coordinate with the demands of the times and we expressed, I think, the silent majority of society, which wanted a better Greece than the one it had until at least the days we took office.
But again, the bar of expectations is high. We have to face this with courage and confidence.
I’ve said many times, and I’ll say it again today: I’d rather set the bar very high, and occasionally go underneath and correct ourselves and figure out where our mistakes are, than keep the bar low.
Today you saw three people who I think symbolize what we should have first and foremost: confidence and faith in the potential of our country.
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We can envision and we can implement – I totally agree that we should put more emphasis on implementation and less on abstract visions – but we can really see Greece of 2030, at least compared to the rest of the European countries, to be a homeland, a country that will be in a much better situation than it is today.
This is what we are fighting for and with your support we will succeed.
