Kyriakos Mitsotakis began his address to citizens in Sparta with greetings to those celebrating today, St. Constantine and Helen.
“And it was no coincidence that we chose the 21st of May, together with the Minister of Culture, to meet later in the afternoon at the Castropolitia in Mistra, to inaugurate the very important restoration works that have been completed on the initiative of the Ministry of Culture. It is another important intervention that we are making to promote the cultural wealth of our country. It is also financed by the Recovery Fund. It is the 29th archaeological site or museum that we have delivered in the seven years that we have been in government, because this party honors our tradition, honors our history, honors our culture and highlights this invisible thread that connects ancient Greece, Sparta with Byzantium, with modern Greece, “noted the Prime Minister.
Mr. Mitsotakis said, speaking about the New Democracy party, that it is a party that keeps alive its principles, values, history and tradition, but at the same time embraces the future with enthusiasm, stands up to the circumstances and faces every major challenge that we may encounter, he added:
“The media will immediately write “Mitsotakis has started touring ahead of the elections”. So I answer them that what we are doing today, I have been doing systematically for seven years. I take strength from your applause, from your support. I am always close to the citizens, to the organised base of New Democracy and to the citizens who joined us in 19 and 23, and I promise and commit myself once again to doing everything in my power to honour your trust and your love”.
Referring to local issues, he noted that he has excellent cooperation with both the regional governor and the mayor and that a number of very important projects are underway that enhance the region as a whole.
“And I am not only referring to Mystras, but I want to focus on a project that is emblematic, which will be delivered in the first half of 2027, and that is none other than the ultra-modern new hospital, Sparta General Hospital, which I will have the opportunity to visit afterwards. We should all be grateful to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which has contributed €1.5 billion through donations to a number of initiatives in the fields of culture and health. But your hospital here will completely change the face of the city. It will enable us to possibly look at some innovative thoughts regarding the nursing faculty which can…,” he said while referring to the announcement made two days ago on the inclusion of nurses in the heavy and unhealthy professions.
“Sparta will therefore acquire not only a state-of-the-art hospital, but also a pole of medical services that can cover not only Laconia, but the entire wider region of the Peloponnese,” he stressed.
Then he spoke about Marietta Giannakou, whose name was given to the iconic school renovation program. “Last year we renovated 431 schools, all funded by the Marietta Giannakou programme. This year we hope to do as many more. We have secured 300 million in funding for three years to intervene to make our schools accessible, fix toilets, repaint them, fix the courtyards,” he noted.
“Because many times, friends, the news as you see it in the media does not meet the daily priorities of citizens and what you talk about every night at your dinner table. You are concerned about whether and how we can deal with the issue of precision, how we can support wages and pensions, whether there will be good jobs for our children the next day, so that they can stay in our country, whether you will have quality health care, whether we will improve education. These are the issues that are of concern to citizens and I have made a conscious choice, as Prime Minister, but also as the president of our great party, not to engage and not to meet, I would say, in the corridors of toxicity with the opposition, but to continue to lean on the problems of citizens, to implement our governmental work and to try every day to make the lives of citizens a little better,” added Mr. Mitsotakis and underlined:
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“Let there be no doubt. We face as a country, the world faces great challenges. I had the opportunity to talk about them at our Convention. By the way, I want to take this opportunity to thank those of you who were at the Conference. We had an impressive Congress. We proved that the members of the New Democracy are our backbone. You give us strength. You will lead us to the next elections. But the world around us, friends, is a troubled world. And the first concern of any responsible Prime Minister is to keep the ship of our country safe in the troubled waters we are currently forced to navigate.”
The Prime Minister assured that on the foreign and defence policy front, Greece has never been stronger, with more alliances, with stronger armed forces. “With the image of our country completely changed abroad. With Greece having increased credibility today, being a bridge country between Europe, the Middle East. Our opinion counts at this moment in Europe in all the important discussions that take place. This is the Greece of which we have every reason to be proud,” he said, while acknowledging that things in everyday life are not easy that we are currently facing a wave of imported price pressures.
“All governments in the world have the same problems. What I can assure you is that the Greek government will stand by the Greek citizens, to the best of our ability, and the surplus of growth, for which we have fought so hard, will always be returned to society, so that it becomes a dividend of individual prosperity.”
We have been able to and have made available an extraordinary €800 million so far in 2025 to be able to support society against the new wave of imported price rises. Next month we will allocate 150 euros to families for each child, because we are the party that believes in the family and we know that there are other needs of a family that has two and three children and another couple that may not have children, so we stand and support families against the precision according to the number of children, “he said and stressed:
“But I want to tell you one thing: you’re going to hear a lot of promises. You will hear a lot of commitments. You will hear a lot of plans or science fiction scenarios. You are going to hear rabbits with rocks, you are already starting to hear them. We heard the same things several years ago and you saw where we ended up.
I have given a commitment to the citizens and especially to the young generation that has come here today and is present, that there is one thing we will never put at risk and that is the fiscal stability of the country. Whatever we do will be to the best of our ability and just as you, being the householders that you are, want to bequeath assets and not debts to your children in the next day – nobody wants to leave debts to their children – we must do the same when it comes to the state.”
He also said he was proud that in the last seven years the government had the fastest reduction in public debt in the history of the eurozone. “Because we cannot bequeath to the next generation a large debt. And this is the legacy of our own party. So you will know that in the coming months we will be able to support the Greek society even more, but we will always do it within our capabilities and always looking to the future. We are not going to undermine and we are not going to mortgage the great efforts that we have made. Because we have achieved a great deal. We have achieved a great deal together. And I had the opportunity at our conference to talk about what we committed in 2023 that we would do and what we have finally achieved. Because, you know, at a time when politicians as a whole are being questioned, when it’s easy to say “politicians are all the same”, “let’s throw them all in the dustbin”, “let’s try something new”, what is the credibility of politicians ultimately judged by? It is judged by the result and it is judged by consistency,” he noted.
In closing his address, the Prime Minister said:
“So I ask you, and we will do this methodically and I ask our party organizations to support this work, to go back and look at what we said in 2023 to the people and what of it we implemented. You will find that a very large part of our programmatic discourse has been implemented. But you will tell me, will the citizens in the next election vote for what we have done or what we will do? They will vote for what we are going to do, but there is one kind of credibility for those who can say ‘despite great difficulties, we have done what we committed ourselves to do’ and another for those who have given us, as a friend of mine said, ‘rabbits and stones’ and we have seen where we have ended up. So I will just say one word since our friends are telling us about unemployment. We delivered unemployment in 2019 at 18%, in the country we are talking about, nationally. Today it is below 8%. We have created a total of almost 600,000 jobs in the country.
For each region, including Laconia, we are preparing a specific regional development plan. We need to go to each region to see what jobs we can create, what investment we can attract, what support we can provide to each region. I was supposed to be there but I didn’t make it in the end to Naples to launch a school, Merchant Marine Academy, which I had committed to and we made it happen.
I can assure you, since you are talking about business, that here we are in an area that is an untapped gem in terms of tourism development. Mystras, Taygetos, Sparta, the archaeological museum that will be built – it is my commitment that the new archaeological museum will be completed – the promotion of the name of Sparta. Sparta is known all over the world.
Look at something interesting: the President of China – get this, there’s an interesting one – speaking alongside the American President, he referred to Thucydides, the “Thucydides trap”. A title of a book based on – the author got the idea from the conflict – the Peloponnesian War, the conflict between Sparta and Athens. See, then, how Sparta in its own way got as far as the Chinese President’s discussions with the American President. So you understand what great power the name of Sparta and Laconia has and how much more we can do. You have every reason to be optimistic. I want you to know that the government will support Laconia. I really feel that I am coming to a region which is a long-standing ‘castle’ of our party – since we are talking about Kastropolitia. And I want you to know that you are always in my heart.
We have a lot of work to do before the ’27 election. But I want you to get out, especially our cadre, to meet again with our friends who supported us in ’19 and ’23. Obviously there may be grievances, obviously there may be dissatisfaction. We are in our eighth year of government, these are to be expected. And mistakes have been made and we have acknowledged them.
But ultimately the dilemma of the next election will be one: which is the party that can steadily take the country forward. Which is the party that can assume the Presidency of the European Union – second half of 2027, I remind you – which is the party that can keep the country safe and which is the party that, despite the difficulties, can guarantee progress, prosperity and well-being to every Greek. That party is New Democracy and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for supporting it in such an emphatic way.”
