Kotzias: Europe’s future depends on the stability in the wider region

“In a world that tends to lose its coordinates and march towards chaotic situations, Europe has not understood in depth the changes, or the fact that the EU’s future depends on the stability in the wider region,” he said.

Kotzias said he had predicted two years ago that in time, globalization, the open borders and free movement would come face to face with the tendency for fragmentation. [...] There is a shift from geopolitics to geo-economy,” he said, adding that the US, unlike the EU, understands the importance of the emerging new powers and the retreat of the West.

Continuing his criticism of the EU, he said the Union “cannot develop into a tool for punishment, without vision”, adding it has strayed from the values of solidarity. “We want a social Europe, using man as a measure,” the minister said.

“The EU doesn’t have a vision and orientation. It tends to become a sort of empire, like the new Rome and cannot respond to the multiple crises: the financial, the debt crisis, the submission to the markets, the lack of institutions, the rise of nationalism, the refugee crisis, Brexit, its relations with Turkey. And the most important part: the EU is facing a crisis at handling crises,” he told attendants.

Kotzias also criticized the way the EU handled Greece, saying it “cultivated a peculiar nationalism” by peoples and countries instead of policies.

Concerning Turkey, he said it is a “nervous power” and that statements that question the value of the Treaty of Lausanne conceal a tendency for revisionism.

On Cyprus, the minister reiterated his position for a solution without guarantees, a withdrawal of the occupation army, a solution with respect for international law and without international negotiators “behaving like lobbyists”.