(Athens) Summoned to act in the face of criticism of his management deemed hazardous to the fires and floods which hit Greece this summer, the Prime Minister committed to increasing the resources allocated to the fight against the effects of climate change.
“In the space of two weeks, the country experienced the biggest fire and the biggest floods in the history” of Greece, underlined Kyriakos Mitsotakis during a back-to-school speech on Saturday evening in Thessaloniki (north).
“The climate crisis requires the mobilization of the whole of society,” he added on Sunday during his traditional press conference on the sidelines of the Thessaloniki International Fair.
Because “we are in a kind of war in peacetime” while floods devastated the fertile plain of Thessaly, in the center of the country, in early September.
These bad weather left 17 people dead and submerged cotton crops and fruit trees under water and killed hundreds of thousands of animals on these vital agricultural production lands.
They devastated a country hit just before by the largest fire ever recorded in the EU, in the northeast bordering Turkey, Evros.
PHOTO THANASSIS STAVRAKIS, ASSOCIATED PRESS
A helicopter drops water on a forest during a fire in the suburb of Stamata, northern Athens, Greece, September 4, 2023.
Twenty-six people were killed while already in July, violent fires had ravaged the tourist islands of Rhodes and Corfu where thousands of evacuations had been ordered in the confusion.
Faced with these scourges, the conservative, comfortably re-elected in June, promised to double to 600 million euros (866 million Canadian dollars) a special reserve for natural disasters from next year.
Anger
It also promises a 10% rebate on housing tax to those who insure their homes against natural disasters and plans to make this insurance compulsory.
The leader did not hide a certain “confusion of responsibilities” between the state services responsible for intervening during these torrential rains.
“In Thessaly and in Evros, I heard the anger of the citizens,” assured the Prime Minister, whose New Democracy (ND) party won an absolute majority during the legislative elections.
PHOTO VAGGELIS KOUSIORAS, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
The region of Thessaly covered by water, September 7, 2023.
His government has come under harsh criticism from the opposition and residents affected by the floods.
Many denounced the slowness of relief and the unpreparedness for this bad weather when Thessaly had already been affected in 2020 by torrential rains. Failures in cooperation between the army and Civil Protection in the hours following the disaster have been singled out.
But the leader brushed aside the arguments of his detractors.
Anyone who thinks that another country would have better managed the storm and the gigantic quantities of water that fell is “totally wrong”, according to him.
“All the experts have admitted it,” he insisted, saying he “does not understand” the criticism of a lack of coordination.
The images broadcast by the media of residents taking refuge on the roofs of their homes desperate for help to arrive have damaged the image of the government, as have the angry testimonies of locals saying they have been left to their fate.
Specialists have also denounced the lack of fire prevention in Greece in the face of fires which repeat themselves every summer.
No rework
In barely three months of government, the Prime Minister has seen two of his ministers resign, including one, responsible for Citizen Protection, because he was on vacation on an island in the Aegean Sea in the middle of fires.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis, however, insisted on Sunday that he “does not intend to carry out a reshuffle” of his team although the press is buzzing with rumors to this effect and the Minister of Civil Protection and Climate Crisis, Vassilis Kikilias, is on the carpet.
The Mitsotakis government bears “enormous responsibilities” in these bad weather, denounced Effie Achtsioglou, former Minister of Labor and presidential candidate for the left-wing Syriza party.
She criticized the fact that “no serious flood prevention work has been done”.
According to a survey for the private television channel Mega, 61% of those questioned have a negative image of the government.