Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis participated in a discussion with the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola and young people at the National Gallery, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Europa Experience center in Athens. The discussion was moderated by Minister of Social Cohesion and Family Affairs Domna Michailidou.
The Prime Minister’s remarks follow:
In his introductory remarks, referring to government policies supporting young people, the Prime Minister noted:
First of all, let me repeat what Roberta said: this is the highlight of the day. It’s always such a great privilege to be able to be with young people, listen to their concerns, answer to their questions, and try to do what Roberta did, engage you in civil service in whatever shape or form this may take, in the sense that at the end of the day our future is shaped only through our collective participation. If you don’t do it, rest assured, somebody else will do it. The question is whether you will co-participate in shaping your future or if others will do it on your behalf.
Every time, Roberta, I’m with young people, I realise how difficult it must have been for this generation to grow up in the midst of what was a profound economic crisis for Greece, which started 15 years ago but went on unnecessarily for a decade, and essentially, robbed the future from an entire generation of young people. The ones who participate in our gathering today were probably too young to remember the very difficult years of the crisis. In a sense, they are in a better position because they are growing up, entering education, and the job market at the time the country is doing better.
But you’re right to point out that this is a time of unprecedented upheaval. If I were to draw a comparison, I remember how I felt when I was 22 years old, when I graduated from university. It was in 1990. At the time, the Berlin Wall had just come down. There was a tremendous feeling of optimism, of euphoria, a sense that the future was bright and promising and we could achieve anything. Some political scientists even argue that this was the ‘end of history’ at the time in the sense that all big ideological disputes had already been resolved.
Then I think of what it means to be 22 or even younger today, at a time when nothing is certain, when artificial intelligence is changing everything, when climate change is something that you care a lot about. I think the biggest challenge is to retain a sense of optimism and control at a time when so many profound changes are happening.
For us, our number one priority has always been to offer a better future to young people. This is really about two things: jobs and education. When it comes to jobs, I think the biggest success of our economic policy has been to create half a million jobs over the past six years.
I’m very happy whenever I see young people who decide to return to Greece. They had left Greece at the time of economic crisis, and they come back now because they see a promising future. But it’s not just any job. It’s jobs with good salaries and a professional prospect.
One of the big decisions we took was for anyone under 25, as of the beginning of 2026, you will pay zero income tax. Zero income tax. If you’re between 25 and 30, your income tax is going to be 9% instead of 22%. If you’re a young person entering the job market, you start with knowing that at least the government is thinking about how it can help you during your initial first steps.
And of course, before that, it’s education. How do we connect, especially our public universities, to the job market? How do we offer alternative types of education, especially when it comes to post-secondary education, technical education? And how can we learn our kids to be adaptable and to accept the fact that there will be a lot of things happening in their lives and that their lives are not going to be as predictable as the lives of their parents or their grandparents.
So for us, focusing on the young generation by delivering on very specific policies, but also listening to them and trying to have them engage in politics is important.
And one last point is when I first took over the leadership of the party -you’ll think about it, and sometimes it’s shocking to me, it’ll be 10 years in January-, one of my goals was to open up the party to new people. I’m happy now when I look at my MPs or the ministers, many of them grew up, some of them through the ranks of the party, but opening up the political system to younger voices, offering more young people cabinet jobs, even at a younger age, addressing this fact that politics, not just in Greece, is still dominated by another generation.
I feel this is my responsibility to offer the next generation more opportunities. I’m always trying to do that. And so far, I’m very happy about the choices that I’ve made.
When asked how he would explain the role of the European Union and its work to the younger generation, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said:
First of all, let’s acknowledge that If you don’t fully understand why Europe is important to Greece, it’s primarily our fault, because we’ve done a poor job in explaining why being part of the European Union, part of the European family, is at the end of the day so important, because we took a decision, the country took a decision, the previous generations took a decision many years ago, more than 40 years ago, to join this European family, to give up certain powers that we have in exchange for the benefits of being part of a bigger union.
The truth is that Greece has benefited tremendously from being a member of the European Union. The benefit has been both financial, significant flows of money to help Greece throughout these decades build infrastructure, support our agriculture, support our education. But it has also proven to be a geopolitical safe haven, especially at a time when we are squeezed between the United States and China. We recognise that we need to be part of a bigger whole with whom we share common values and with countries we feel we have a shared affinity.
So on a practical term, I would just point out to the fact that after COVID, just to use, because I think we need to use always specific examples, after COVID, Greece received €36 billion of European support, primarily grants, but also loans of money that helped us recover after COVID, going into infrastructure, going into education.
I was telling the President that you go now to our schools and we have smartboards, and these smartboards are funded by the European Union. You go to our hospitals, to the new emergency rooms, and all these renovations have been funded by the European Union. You see electric buses on the streets funded by the European Union. So let’s remind ourselves how much of what we see around us is European money.
But it also goes beyond that. We should not just look at Europe as a bucket of funds that flow from the richer states to the poorer ones. This is also a community of values. We believe in democracy. We believe in the rule of law. We believe in a government that is focused on improving people’s lives. We look forward to Europe to help us address problems that we cannot address on our own.
If you have a chance, visit the Europa Experience center on Stadiou Avenue. It’s a really great interactive space because it’s important, and especially, I would say for the even younger generation, the kids in school, to understand through the use of technology why Europe is so important to us and why it’s part of our identity at the end of the day. I’m always saying we don’t belong, Greece does not belong to Europe. We are Europe. We are the foundation of the European civilization because this is also a project that has very deep civilisational roots. Greece, historically, is at the centre. We may be at the corner of Europe geographically, but we feel we’re at the centre of Europe from a point of view of our shared values.
(…)
And let me point out, just to complement what you said, there is no such thing as a free lunch, in the sense that we have to be not only compliant with European transparency rules, but we receive the funds also in exchange for reforms which we have to implement in order to improve our underlying competitiveness. It’s not always an easy project to do that.
Ministers know that we have a big challenge. We discussed it at the last Ministerial Council. We need to absorb all the RRF funds by August 2026. Every minister has their homework and their own checklist of things that they have to do in order to ensure that we don’t lose a single euro from the money that we very painstakingly negotiated on behalf of the country.
Regarding the opportunities and challenges presented by artificial intelligence, the Prime Minister noted:
Thank you, first of all, Roberta, for your kind words, and thank you, Angelos, for your question, which I think is at the centre of, I think, every young person’s mind. You’re growing up, essentially, in a parallel world, where the real world is intertwined with a digital world, which is taking over more and more of your time and is offering you unprecedented opportunities, but also presents great challenges which we need to address.
When we think about AI and the opportunities that it offers in terms of gathering knowledge, in terms of broadening our scope, we should also not lose sight of the fact that at the same time, it may also be robbing us of critical skills we need to acquire as we grow up and as we mature.
You mentioned culture, and indeed, technology and culture, we can do wonders in terms of the way we project our cultural heritage in terms of how we recreate an ancient world from fragments of what we have inherited. So certainly, when you think about AI and culture, there are tremendous opportunities. But always, every time I talk to young people, I try to make a point that AI is not a replacement for human relations. Nor should it be a replacement, although this is going to happen, it’s happening already, for humans doing actual jobs. It should be a tool that makes us better.
There are times, many times, when we just need to just set our phones aside and communicate without the use of technology. I mean, you look at how many times you find yourself with young people. They sit next to each other and they’re texting each other.
I mean, to our generation, and again, it’s difficult to imagine, we grew up without mobile phones. I, for the first time, had a personal computer, an early Apple Macintosh -these are historical relics by now-, when I was 19 years old and I went to university, and I experienced this incredible productivity boost.
So the benefits are there. But at the same time, the temptation is: whatever language, LLM, going to write your next university project for you, or is it simply going to help you think through what you want to do? In the second case, it’s going to make you better. In the first case, it will rob you of critical skills which you actually need.
I’m far from a person afraid of technology, plus the genie is out of the bottle now. But we need to ensure that we maintain our humanity and the value of human interaction at a time when digital addiction is becoming a problem for all of us, not just for children. We can just think of how many times we pick up our phone on a daily basis. So please keep that in mind. There are expressions of our humanity which will never be replaced by technology. And art is one of them.
Yes, you may even use AI to produce art. But let’s keep in mind that this technology, which is unprecedented in the sense that for the first time, you have a technology to do something which was the human prerogative to think, to express, to use language to express. This has never happened before. This is transformational. So maintaining our humanity and the beauty of being young and interacting with people, rather than interacting with just a chatbot, is critical.
Regarding the use of social media by children and adolescents, the impact on their mental health, and possible restrictions that should be imposed, Kyriakos Mitsotakis emphasized:
I’m having these discussions because as you know, we are engaged in a big debate, a European debate. What do we do with our kids and teenagers when it comes to social media? Should we ban? Should we put restrictions? We first need to recognise that there is a problem here when we look at the mental health of our younger kids. If this means that we need smart regulation, we probably need to even go down that path. We need to recognise that there is a dark side to technology that we need to contain without robbing ourselves from the tremendous benefits of what is an unprecedented technological revolution.
We need to be very honest that these algorithms have been designed to capture attention, because the more time you spend on your phone, the more money companies make. It’s as simple as that. So once we understand that this is the logic behind the algorithm, then at least we recognise the problem. And when we also look at the data, in terms of the impact that this has on the mental health of children and teenagers, the evidence is worrisome at best, and scary at worst.
Regarding fake news, misinformation, and how they can influence elections, the Prime Minister stated:
Maybe if I may add something. Actually, the younger generation could be better trained. Because imagine if you see something that doesn’t make sense, you know intuitively if something is created by AI, although it’s going to be more difficult, and you know that. That’s why the technology, what we call ‘watermarking’, which is identifying if something has been created by AI, all these tools are so important. But someone who’s 50 or 60 and sees something, they will have difficulties distinguishing if something is artificially created.
There’s a problem in the sense that the more someone has been photographed or filmed, like us, the easier it is for the algorithm to create a good replica of us. So I think what the President said is very true. If something doesn’t click, trust your gut feeling. If you listen to something and almost train your gut feeling to ask and check again, it’s critical for the quality of our democracy.
The upcoming elections all over Europe, in Greece, we’ll have one in 18 months, you’ll all vote, it’s going to be flooded with disinformation. There are armies of AI bots that are being created in Greece, abroad, that can replicate all sorts of conspiracy theories. One does not have time to usually respond to those.
The biggest, there’s nothing more frustrating as a politician than to know something is a lie and not being able to defend yourself and convince people that it is actually a lie. And this is happening more and more because, yes, sometimes there is a distinction between what’s true and what’s a lie. Never confuse opinions with facts. You’re all entitled to your opinion. There is no right or wrong opinion. But there is a fact. Facts are facts, opinions are opinions. And there is such a distinction between what’s right and wrong when we talk about facts, whereas when it comes to opinions, that’s where everybody has their own right to speak their mind.
Regarding the age verification technologies implemented by the government with the aim of ensuring the digital safety of minors, Kyriakos Mitsotakis noted:
One quick point regarding age verification. We now have age verification technologies. Greece is at the forefront of exporting this technology to the European Union. This is not just related to accessing, for the platforms to know what your real age is, because they always tell us: ‘We have no idea’.
Well, if you connect our national registry to the platform, then the platforms can know if you are above or under a certain age. This will also be true if you want to go buy a pack of cigarettes and you’re underage. Now, the new technologies that we’re putting in place, you go to a kiosk, there’s going to be a QR code, you will scan it, and then the mini market or the kiosk operator will immediately know, yes or no. That’s the only thing they need to know. Are you above or below 18? Then, of course, they are bound by law not to sell cigarettes or alcohol. The technology here can really help us.
Regarding brain gain and the opportunities now offered by the country, the Prime Minister emphasized:
But now to the question of Vassilis. First of all, people are returning to Greece, and this is good. Young people, more people are returning to Greece than are leaving. Of course, there will always be people leaving. There are young people looking for opportunities abroad, we’re an open country. But what happened over the past decade was catastrophic. We lost, during the height of the crisis, 500,000 young people left Greece. At the time when we need people to return, now they’re beginning to return because there are better opportunities, because the wages have increased, and because they have more confidence in the long-term future of the country.
When we speak about wages, there are two wages. There’s one wage which is government controlled. That’s the minimum wage. It has gone from €650 to €880, and it will increase further. When you talk about wages in the private sector, this is also a function of supply and demand. As unemployment comes down, there’s more pressure on businesses to pay more to find the right people. And as productivity increases through technology, you can also earn higher wages.
And of course, it’s not just about the nominal wage, it’s about what you take home, which is the wage after tax. So if you reduce taxes, as we’ve done on payroll, that means that at the end of the day, what you see is how much money is in your account, which is after tax. So the fewer taxes, the more money you take back home.
Regarding the value of European programs focused on young people, the Prime Minister noted:
Finally, to the point that Alex made, absolutely agree. Erasmus has been incredible. I went for a weekend to my home island of Crete. And in the Chania airport, I bumped into these young kids, and they were like 16, 17. They were on an Erasmus programme, and they came back from the Azores. And I said: ‘How did you find yourself there?’ And you could tell from the smile on their face and the experience how transformative this has been.
So no matter what we do, Madame President, when we look at the next budget, let’s make sure not only -because there’s always a question in our negotiation- let’s make sure we preserve these programmes which are truly, truly transformative for our young people.
They give you the opportunity to travel in Europe, οpen your minds to new experiences, understand why we’re so different, yet we’re also the same. And there’s nothing, in my experience, more transformative than giving young people the opportunity to travel and experience different countries, different languages, different cultures.
