Communiqué du ministère des Affaires étrangères concernant les résultats du référendum organisé en Suisse. -MAE Hellénique

MAE, Dimanche, 09 février 2014

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La Présidence hellénique du Conseil de l’Union européenne regrette les résultats du référendum intitulé « Contre l’immigration de masse », organisé en Suisse.

L’introduction de quotas à l’immigration des citoyens de l’UE est contraire au principe de la libre circulation des personnes, entre l’Union européenne et la Confédération helvétique, telle que décrite dans l’accord bilatéral en vigueur qui constitue un facteur clé du développement harmonieux de nos relations.

La libre circulation des personnes est un principe essentiel du Projet européen et un droit fondamental de tous ses citoyens, Suisses et ressortissants de pays membres de l’UE, qui devra être conservé et promu.

L’Union européenne devra examiner les conséquences de ce résultat et est prête à œuvrer de concert avec le gouvernement de la Confédération helvétique dans le but de trouver des solutions aux questions dorénavant soulevées.

La Présidence hellénique du Conseil de l’UE suivra de près ce processus, en coopération avec les institutions et les Etats membres de l’Union européenne.

 mfa.gr

9/2/14

La Grèce éclopée prend pour six mois les manettes d'une UE abîmée

La Grèce prend mercredi la présidence de l'UE au cours d'une cérémonie à Athènes en présence de plusieurs dirigeants européens, une étape à la dimension symbolique plus de quatre ans après le début de la crise et à quelques mois des élections européennes.

"C'est une grande responsabilité pour la Grèce d'occuper la présidence de l'UE pendant le semestre qui va mener aux élections de mai", a souligné mercredi le ministre des Affaires étrangères, Evangelos Venizelos, lors d'une rencontre avec la presse.
Les présidents du Conseil européen et de la Commission, Herman Van Rompuy et José Manuel Barroso, ainsi que tous les commissaires européens, font le déplacement dans la capitale grecque et rencontreront dans l'après-midi le gouvernement en place, comme ils le font pour chaque présidence de l'UE.

Une conférence de presse est prévue à 15H15 GMT avec M. Barroso et le Premier ministre grec, le conservateur Antonis Samaras.
Des mesures de sécurité renforcées ont été prises et tout rassemblement est interdit dans le centre-ville, bouclé à la circulation dans l'après-midi.
Cette visite, dans le pays qui a été l'épicentre de la crise et a dû consentir de lourds sacrifices, risque de prendre une dimension particulière.
Pour la Grèce, l'enjeu est de redevenir un pays "comme les autres", selon l'expression de son Premier ministre. Lors de la présentation des vœux de fin d'année, il avait promis que 2014 marquerait la fin des plans d'assistance financière UE-FMI qui, depuis 2010, ont placé le pays sous perfusion financière.
Cette année doit aussi être celle où la Grèce tourne le dos à six années de récession. Le pays devrait enregistrer une modeste croissance de 0,6%, selon les prévisions du gouvernement et de la Commission européenne.
Pour l'Europe, cette visite sera certainement l'occasion de rappeler que les prédictions les plus sombres, comme la sortie de la Grèce de la zone euro (le fameux "Grexit"), ne se sont pas réalisées et que les sacrifices du peuple grec n'ont pas été vains.
Avant les élections européennes fin mai, les dirigeants de l'UE se doivent présenter un front uni afin de contrecarrer une poussée des eurosceptiques de tous bords. "Il va falloir montrer de quoi empêcher la progression du populisme", résumait récemment un éditorialiste du quotidien grec Kathimerini.

Horizon encore sombre
Si le pire de la crise est bien passé, l'horizon reste encore sombre pour la Grèce, sous tutelle de ses créanciers. Athènes est confronté à un trou budgétaire qu'il va falloir combler et sa dette reste à des niveaux insupportables (autour de 175% du Produit intérieur brut), rendant difficile son retour sur les marchés de la dette à long terme.
Le pays espère obtenir un allongement du délai de paiement d'obligations grecques et une nouvelle baisse des taux d'intérêt, après un effacement de dette de 107 milliards d'euros consenti en 2012 par ses créanciers privés.
Mais ce scénario a été fermement rejeté mardi par le patron du fonds de secours de la zone euro, Klaus Regling, dans un entretien avec l'hebdomadaire allemand Der Spiegel. Les créanciers de la Grèce ont toutefois promis d'aider une nouvelle fois le pays et de se pencher sur la viabilité de la dette s'il enregistrait un excédent primaire budgétaire, ce qui devrait avoir été le cas en 2013.
Des discussions sur ce sujet sont attendues à partir du mois d'avril, mais la présidence grecque n'entend pas se résumer à cela et veut également promouvoir, sur le plan économique, la coordination des politiques à dimension sociale et le financement des PME, un sujet qui concerne de près la Grèce, a souligné mardi le ministre des Finances, Yannis Stournaras.
Athènes veut également profiter de sa cinquième présidence de l'UE pour compléter le grand chantier de l'union bancaire et avancer sur les questions d'immigration et de politique maritime.

AFP
 http://www.rtbf.be/info/monde/detail_la-grece-eclopee-prend-pour-six-mois-les-manettes-d-une-ue-abimee?id=8171336
8/1/14 
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À lire aussi:

• Hellenic MoFA: Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Venizelos presents the logo of the Greek Presidency of the Council of the European Union

• Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Venizelos: We want substantial, not just rhetorical, acknowledgement of the sacrifices and great achievements of the Greek people.

Hellenic MoFA: Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Venizelos presents the logo of the Greek Presidency of the Council of the European Union

 

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MFA, Monday, 25 November 2013 
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E. VENIZELOS: We now come to the presentation of the logo. The Presidency’s logo is very important, because it is the Presidency’s hallmark.

This hallmark will accompany and certify our every action. It will accompany every event that happens within the framework of our Presidency. I think it sets out in a very clear manner our basic communication strategy for a Greek European Presidency.

More specifically, we want this logo to be simple, spare and comprehensive. Simple in design, but rich in substance and messages, as entailed by the Hellenic sense of proportion, as well as by our relationship to symbolism.

Simple and substantial, just as we want the Greek Presidency to be, to the benefit of all European citizens.

Second, we wanted a logo that is European and has a clear Hellenic hallmark. A logo that points up the European Union in what we like to believe is a creative manner.

You will be the judge. Hellenic, which alludes to Hellenic forms, to Hellenic colours. Always with reference to the sea. The sea as the fundamental element of the Hellenic identity, as well as of European history.

The sea as the horizontal priority of our Presidency, but also as a factor for growth, for the creation of new jobs and prospects for European peoples, for European economies.

Third, we want a logo that reminds everyone of the European narrative that united us after World War II, after disasters and reversals. The narrative that says – because we have to remember the fundamental things – that in this European family, it benefits us all to move ahead together, sometimes under normal, calm conditions, sometimes in conditions of crisis.

The European Union and the Eurozone in particular are institutionally designed for normal conditions of temperature and pressure. The latest experience of the crisis, from 2008 on, showed that we need European institutions capable of reacting in a timely and effective manner to the challenges of crises.

So it is very, very important that this be expressed by the Greek Presidency’s logo.

Fourth, we wanted a logo that points up the semi-circle. The semi-circle that represents Parliament and the ancient theatre. The conservatory. The semi-circular symbol of the womb that gave birth to democracy, free thought, the conflict of ideas, but also, in the final analysis, European institutional culture.

The semi-circle is also a bridge linking yesterday with today, the ancient with the modern. So the semi-circle is very important as an element of the complex European identity, given that it evokes democracy, freedom of thought and speech, and thus a fundamental element of European legal and political culture: representative democracy and parliamentarianism. Especially now, when we are talking about the need to redress the democratic deficit; now, when we are talking about the need for the re-legitimization of the European Union and the course towards European integration, the semi-circle is of very great significance.

Fifth, we wanted a logo that is optimistic; a realistic note of optimism that we all need in Greece and in Europe in general, as well, without ignoring what has happened or the problems that exist or the difficult path we have before us.

But a note of optimism is needed. The Greeks must exercise the right to optimism. This means that we can gain the position that is our historical right, but mainly based on the potential of the Greek economy and Greek society.

So it is in our hands – the hands of every citizen individually, as well as all together – to do better. Better for the coming generations, and mainly for the young throughout Europe, and particularly in the European south, because, as I said earlier, they are suffering disproportionately from the repercussions of the crisis.

So into this logo we want to compress all these messages and at the same time have it be spare and easy to ‘read’. We loosed this Gordian knot with the help of our technical advisers, and thus we present to you today the solution we arrived at.

It is important that I tell you that this solution was found with the least possible expenditure, with great assistance from the Foreign Ministry’s services, with the assistance of the company Beetroot, which helped us design the Greek Presidency’s ‘brand’. But mainly through the hard work and thought put in by public administration personnel.

Ladies and gentleman Ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen, we can now watch a video on the Greek Presidency’s logo.

[VIDEO]

E. VENIZELOS: Thank you for your positive reaction. As the Presidency’s motto says: Our common quest, notre quête commune.

Because Europe, is everything we said in terms of notions of principles, everything we want: democracy, culture, enlightenment, tolerance, rule of law, social state, prospects for prosperity.

But these things are not a given. They have to be gained anew every time, perhaps every day. So our goal is to once again fight for these things; fight so that Greece can gain its position in the European Union, so that we can give the potential to every young Greek to fight to win a place in the sun of our homeland.

Let me take this opportunity to give you some of the basic elements of the Greek Presidency’s cultural identity. The Presidency, as I said earlier, will be accompanied by a programme that expresses its spare, effective and realistic nature. This also holds true for the Presidency’s cultural activities.

Naturally, we cannot avoid the cultural dimension of the Presidency, because Greece is identified with culture. But we want to do this in a focused manner; a manner that respects the current state of Greek society.

At the same time, we must celebrate the European perspective, point up the Presidency, and fuel the public debate ahead of the elections for the new European Parliament.

A programme was prepared in close collaboration with the Ministry of Culture. This programme includes, primarily, the opening ceremony of the Greek Presidency, which will take place on 8 January 2014 at the Athens Concert Hall, and the main content will be a show entitled “Journey to Eternity”, with the orchestra and ballet from the National Opera and music by Eleni Karaindrou.

An exhibition entitled “Nautilus, Navigating Greece,” dedicated to the sea and its diachronic relationship with Greece, will take place at the Bozar Museum of Brussels. Part of the exhibition will include and highlight eight key concepts associated with the sea. One hundred works of Greek antiquity will be exhibited alongside 11 works of contemporary Greek art. Collaborating at this exhibition will be 29 public archaeological museums, the New Acropolis Museum (which is also public), the Museum of Cycladic Art, as well as artists and private collectors of contemporary art.

The curators of this exhibition will be Culture Ministry personnel, under the supervision and coordination of the Secretary General of the Ministry, Lina Mendoni. The opening will take place in Brussels on 24 January, and the exhibit will run until the end of April.

Our embassies in Europe and other parts of the world will carry out thoughtful yet simple cultural activities, to the extent that they are necessary. I will, however, mention one activity that connects us with the Italian Presidency of the Mediterranean year of 2014. In collaboration with the Presidency of the Italian Republic, a jointly organized cultural event will take place at the Presidential Palace, the Quirinale, for the duration of the last two months of the Greek Presidency and the first two months of the Italian presidency, with significant archaeological items from four different periods in Greece and Magna Graecia, as well as a simultaneous presentation of Greek and Italian contemporary visual artists.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Greek Presidency account has already been activated on twitter, and our website has been launched. I would also like to publicly express my gratitude to the Research Institute of Communications and Computer Systems of the National Technical University of Athens, as well as to the administrative and political leadership and members of the Secretariat General of Information and Communications, who worked tirelessly for the high quality and aesthetically pleasing presence of the Greek Presidency on the web, and of course the spokesperson of the Presidency, Mr. Koutras, who, beyond the duties of the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will bear the duties of the spokesperson of the Presidency.

Thus, we are very well prepared for this Presidency, and I believe the logo and the motto confirm this. Thank you once again for your presence, and please allow Mr. Kourkoulas, Deputy Foreign Minister for European Affairs, to give us some technical details concerning the preparations for the Presidency.
 mfa.gr
25/11/13-