Turkey can do more about the flow of migrants across the Aegean Sea, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in New York on Wednesday in an interview to Bloomberg, following his meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Bloomberg Global Business Forum 2019, Mitsotakis said he had "a good meeting with President Erdogan." Both leaders are in New York to attend the 74th UN General Assembly meeting.
"We want to make up an honest restart and improve the state of Greek-Turkish relations," Mitsotakis said of the meeting, which included several ministers on both sides.
As the Greek premier emphasized, "I'm sure that Turkey can do more to implement the EU-Turkey agreement so that we are not faced with a situation that we currently have to address on our islands," referring to the sudden spike in refugee arrivals in recent weeks.
Commenting on the EU-Turkey agreement, Mitsotakis called it "a win-win agreement, provided it is implemented on all sides." He added that the agreement is sensible, "as it was sensible to make sure the EU supports Turkey with funds, as Turkey is managing a complicated situation on its own territory."
In the ten-minute interview that focused primarily on the Greek economy, Mitsotakis said that within the next three or four years he wanted to make Greece the eurozone's success story.
The government had a mandate to bring development, he said, and called growth the most important issue following the country's ten-year crisis. He also reiterated the government's priorities on reducing taxes, facilitating investments by both Greek and foreign companies, and handling banks' NPLs.
In addition, he also said that primary surplus targets were a relic from the past, implemented when there was little confidence in Greece and had to be reviewed. In addition, he said that Greece plans to pay back all IMF loans as soon as possible, and a request is pending on the issue. Greece's loans will be much more viable if the country achieves a high rate of development, he stressed.
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