Venizelos, Avramopoulos on Migration Flows in The Mediterranean

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The handling of migrant flows in the Mediterranean was one of the central topics discussed in Monday's Foreign affairs Council held hre jointly with the union's Defence ministers, Government vice-president and Foreign minister Evangelos Venizelos said after the end of the meeting. Venizelos added that "a key priority of the Greek presidency of the EU in the first half of 2014 will be the horizontal policy on the sea and the Mediterranean, which also includes security issues."

     "Migration flows are a humanitarian problem but also a security issue for Europe," especially for southern European countries like Greece, he added.

In this respect, said Venizelos, a European initiative on Libya was regarded as especially significant.

Discussion also touched upon the Eastern Neighbourliness, as it is especially important to Greece that countries such as Azerbaijan -owing to the TAP pipeline - be included in that policy.

Venizelos said that discussion focused on the major pending issues, "such as the situation in Syria, and the prospects of the Common Security and Defence Policy - a basic element of which is the European Defence Industry, and hence the Greek defence industry, which should be retained at all costs as a component in our defence policy."

Also attending the EU Council was Greek National Defence Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos, who said that mapping out and implementing a Common Defence and Security Policy would confirm Europe's common pursuits, enhancing European solidarity, which suffered during the debt crisis. Faced with common risks, Europe is formulating its own policies, its own "firewall," Avramopoulos remarked, listing the protection of sea routes against piracy, the development of cyber security, European defence infrastructure and dealing with illegal migration as the top themes and action fields.

(ANA-MPA/M. Spinthourakis)