“We are meeting here today and at the same time a very important vote is taking place in Strasbourg. I hope that Ursula von der Leyen will be re-elected as President of the European Commission. It is very important in these difficult times to have continuity, stability and experience,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday attending the 4th Meeting of the European Political Community, which is being held in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom.

“The agenda set in relation to the priorities of the EU, the issues of competitiveness, the common European defense, the protection of the European way of life, the migration issues, are important issues and will be discussed at the European political community meeting. These are issues that concern all European countries,” he added.

The Greek premier also referred to the Cypriot issue, saying that in two days from today it will be 50 years since the Turkish invasion of Cyprus which led to the ongoing occupation. “Cyprus is the last divided European territory,” Mitsotakis pointed out.

He also expressed the hope that this issue “will finally be resolved and the talks between the two communities will resume under the auspices of the United Nations as defined by the resolutions of the Security Council for the possible solution to this long-standing issue.”

Finally, he also referred to migration, saying that the EU has focused much more on the protection of the external borders and this, as he underlined, “is a correct priority.”

We have signed the European Pact on Migration and Asylum and we need to work with countries of origin and transit to reduce illegal migration and focus more on legal migration routes, Mitsotakis noted.

“Greece, for example, has worked constructively with Turkiye to ensure that it is not the traffickers who decide who enters the EU but that the member countries have the ultimate responsibility to make these decisions,” he added.