H.R. McMaster: Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, welcome to “Today’s Battlegrounds”. Thank you for making time for me and our international audience. It’s great to be with you.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Well, thank you so much for having me. Really looking forward to this discussion.
H.R. McMaster: I’d like to begin logically, I guess, you know, in Greece and really the striking story of your prime ministership. I mean, since you’ve been there, almost like seven years now, and you have organized a fantastic recovery in the economy. In a recent interview in Bloomberg, you talked about how Greece is producing a sustainable surplus, you’re growing the economy, and you’re outpacing the rest of the eurozone. And it’s been a fantastic turnaround. Can you maybe share with our viewers the biggest lessons you’ve learned over the course of this transformation effort and what advice you might have for other leaders who are facing situations like you were with kind of a debt crisis? It’s been a fantastic turnaround. Congratulations. And we’re anxious to hear how you did it.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Well, first of all, thank you so much for your kind words. It certainly was a fascinating and rather bumpy journey. As you pointed out, I’ve been in power now for seven years, and when the Greek people first placed their trust in us back in 2019, we inherited a situation where the reputation of the country was still to a great extent tarnished by the big financial crisis.
I should remind your viewers that Greece during the second decade of the 21st century suffered the biggest decline in GDP in the history of any OECD country. Essentially, the country went bankrupt. We went through three stabilization programs and our society paid a very, very heavy price. Back in 2015, we almost crashed out of the Eurozone.
So my first mandate when I came into power was to return Greece to a sustainable growth path while at the same time stabilizing our public finances and ensuring that Greece would never again be faced with a situation of significant macroeconomic imbalances.
And indeed, if you look at our public finances now, seven years since we made our first commitment, it has, I think, been a very, very interesting story of fiscal discipline combined with a very, very healthy growth.
If you look at our debt-to-GDP ratio, it has declined at the fastest pace in the history of any OECD country. By the end of 2026, we probably will no longer be the most indebted country in the eurozone, and for a country that has been plagued with high debt for many, many decades. I consider this probably to be my most important legacy, not to inherit to the next generation an unsustainable degree of debt.
Of course, you can only reduce your debt as a percentage of GDP if you produce primary surpluses and if you grow the economy significantly, and we’ve been able to do both. We’ve created close to 600,000 new jobs over the past seven years, we brought down unemployment from 18% to 8%. When we first came into power, investment as a percentage of GDP was at 11% when the European average was at 21%. We’re now anywhere between 17% and 18%.
So this has been an investment-led growth that is bringing in both foreign investment but also at the same time mobilizing domestic investment. Of course, there’s still a lot of work to be done. My main goal is true convergence with Europe when it comes to disposable income and GDP per capita.
So we know that we need to continue to keep on growing the economy at a much faster pace than the rest of the Eurozone for the foreseeable future. But I think we’ve laid the foundations, because unless you have fiscal discipline, eventually macroeconomic imbalances are going to come back and bite you.
And for me, restoring our credibility in the markets, ensuring that the capital markets place their trust in Greece, knowing that you have a competent government that is not going to succumb to populist temptations to return to a policy of unsustainable handouts, I think is very, very important. And it’s probably a good lesson for other governments which are currently struggling with their own debt and deficit problems. There are quite a few countries in Europe now that are under supervision by the European Commission because they cannot bring their deficit under control. Thank God Greece is no longer one of them.
H.R. McMaster: Well, that applies to the United States, as you know, Prime Minister, Japan, others. I mean, I think what you’ve done is, I think restored hope among many citizens that “hey, this can be done”. And so I also admire what you’ve done to take on the issues of government reform and to fight against clientelism, corruption. You uncovered some fraudulent EU subsidies and other activities that were also a drag on growth and productivity and diverting resources. Could you talk about how you took on that problem of corruption and clientelism and self-dealing and so forth?
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: First of all, I would say that the two are to a certain extent connected. If you continue to sustain clientelistic practices, the chances are that you will spend more than you actually have to, because essentially you are buying off votes using sort of unsustainable handouts, and I’ve never believed that this is the right way to do policy.
So what we’ve done essentially is completely reform the software of the government, establish a much stronger center of government at the Office of the Prime Minister, make sure there is proper accountability when it comes to managing the affairs of the government and the coordination with all different ministries, setting very clear annual targets, have very, very clear reporting systems.
All this may not sound like rocket science, but I can tell you that in the business of government, it is not always obvious that you can run a government using these sort of fundamental principles. At the same time, we went all in when it came to the digital transformation of the state. We were a digital laggard. Αctually, we celebrated our six years since we implemented our www.gov.gr initiative.
What is that? It’s essentially the central portal for all government affairs. It has been a smashing success. It has allowed us to cut bureaucracy, to allow people to interact with the state from their mobile phone. It has been truly, truly transformative. Not only because we respect people, we don’t want them to wait in queues, we don’t want them to sort of waste time dealing with the bureaucracy, but also because we managed to save a lot of money, but also uncover various sort of points of corruption which are always hidden in complex bureaucratic processes.
I remember during COVID, visiting the States, you had these sort of handwritten vaccination sort of proof of vaccinations. In Greece, everything was done digitally. We have a digital ID. If you want to book an appointment with any physician in Greece, you can do it through your MyHealth app. So you just log in and you do it. It does help that we are not a federal state. We’re a country of 10 million. So being able to run these initiatives from the government center, is actually something which is doable.
You mentioned the question of the agricultural subsidies. We’ve had perennial problems in terms of making sure that the right farmers receive the right amount of EU money. And it took us a lot of time to actually reform the system, and for the first time I’m confident that we are moving in this direction. It’s very, very complex. You’re talking about hundreds of thousands of farmers that have to declare their own plots of land. You have to register the true number of animals and goats that exist in all Greek mountains.
No one really bothered to look at the problem from a purely managerial point of view, but we did. Every transition is painful. Of course, in every transition there are people, and in every reform there are people who are gonna be unhappy because they have been used to doing business in a certain way, but this has never been my mantra. Government is about change. It’s about driving an ambitious change agenda, and you know that every sort of big change is going to make some people unhappy.
For example, one of the big successes of our second term has been going after tax evasion. Everyone would tell you that this cannot be done in Greece. I mean, we had a perennial tax evasion problem. It’s actually pretty common for many of the southern European countries. You go to a taverna, you probably won’t be issued a receipt. I’m giving the most simple example. Well, this is no longer the case. We use a combination of sophisticated AI analytics, a lot of digital payment systems. So we’ve tackled tax evasion.
This is fair because whoever tax evades at the end of the day is free riding at the expense of those who are paying their taxes. But it also brought in a lot of money into the public budget, so it helped us with our primary surpluses. And at a time when we’re faced with the big affordability crisis, being able to at least use some of the surplus to target those who are in greater need is, I would say, almost a luxury.
Most European governments are forced to cut their budgets now. I at least have some money at my disposal, so it’s a question of how I will distribute it in the most efficient way, always respecting social fairness. So we’re in a good position and we’ve proven that administrative reform and tackling what I call “the deep state” is something that can be done.
Of course, there’s still lots of battles to be fought, but I think the overall culture and attitude of Greek citizens towards the state has changed. I think there’s a greater respect by the state towards citizens because in the past it was almost a given that you had to succumb to bureaucracy. You had to play by its own rules. I think we turned the tables and we said, “no, we’re going to look at the citizens’ problems and if I can make the citizens’ interaction with the state simpler, I should go out of my way to do it because that’s the way I respect taxpayers’ money because at the end of the day they’re paying for the government”.
H.R. McMaster: You know, Prime Minister, I’ve often heard you talk about the false promise of populism and how important it is to be pragmatic. And I think, you know, as people lose confidence in government, they’re prone to these sort of populist messages and false promises. You’ve turned things around, I think, in terms of transparency, accountability, confidence in government. But one of the problems you had, besides the debt issues and the governance issues, you had the problem of mass migration and still do it in many ways, centered on the ongoing war in Libya that’s now, you know, decades old and of course until recently the serial episodes of mass homicide in the Syrian civil war and the refugee crisis that that created, the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Could you maybe talk about the issue of mass migration, illegal immigration, because it’s driving so much of the populism across Europe.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: I think you’re right to point out that the big surge in right-wing populism in Europe is to a great extent driven by illegal migration. And Europe was not open about the scale of the problem.
We, from the very beginning of my term, took a very, I think, tough but fair approach when it came to migration. To a certain extent, it was also a product of our own experiences. Back in March 2020, we essentially were faced with an organized sort of attempt to weaponize migration and to send tens of thousands of desperate people across our border from Turkey, because that was the way Turkey at the time felt it could pressure the European Union. And we made it very clear that this is not going to happen. So we used all means at our disposal to protect our borders.
At the time, Europe was primarily focused about what we call secondary migration. So what happens if someone enters the European Union, whether he should be in Greece, what happens if he comes to Germany. And I made it very clear to my European counterparts that unless we look at what we call the external dimension of migration, protecting our borders, making sure that it’s not the smugglers who decide who enters the European Union, we will not be able to solve the problem of migration because we will simply be overwhelmed by numbers.
So we protected our borders, we built a fence on our land border with Turkey, we supervised our maritime borders much more effectively. We’ve saved tens of thousands of people at sea. I want to be very clear about that. But the job of my Coast Guard…
H.R. McMaster: This is an important dimension of this, right? I mean, it’s a humanitarian crisis.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: It is also, but it’s also very clear that my Coast Guard is not a welcoming committee for smugglers. So I will make it difficult for people to come into Greece and I’m unapologetic about this. And if you’re not entitled asylum, I will send you back. I will do whatever I can to send you back to your country of origin.
Europe has changed its approach and has come much closer to this Greek position vis-à-vis migration. We now have a new European legislation. We’re focusing on returns. We need to communicate to people who are not entitled asylum that they should not try to come to Europe because we will do whatever we can to send you back.
But of course, for those people who make it into Europe and who are entitled asylum, we will welcome them. And we’ve done so for tens of thousands of people. And if they want to choose to make Greece their home, we will welcome them. But this does not mean that we will have an open border policy.
At the same time, I think if you’re tough on migration, on illegal migration, you should also be open about legal migration. So this is an analogy of having sort of a, you know, a big fence and a big door. I want a big “fence” for illegal migration, but I want a big “door” which I control when it comes to legal migration.
I mentioned before the figures regarding our employment numbers. We are already faced with employment shortages, in the agricultural sector, in basic manufacturing, in services. So why not do bilateral mobility agreements with countries with whom we have a good relationship and bring in these people legally and safely? Let them work in Greece, register them, have them pay their social security. It’s a win-win proposition. But in order to do that, I need to sort of make sure that I tackle the problem of illegal migration. So I think we found a decent balance.
Yes, we are always faced with challenges. For example, you mentioned Libya. We have a problem in Libya now. There’s a new route that’s sort of opening up from eastern Libya to Crete. We’re working with our Libyan counterparts. We offered, for example, to train their coast guard. We want to work with these countries. These people should not leave the Libyan shore because they’re actually boarding boats which are completely dangerous and certainly not seaworthy.
So we want them not to leave the coast, or if they leave the Libyan coast, I want the Libyan Coast Guard to pick them up and return them to Libya. So we need to work with the countries of transit. We’re doing so. I’m still not happy with the results, but we will, of course, continue to address this challenge. But if I look at the overall numbers, they are significantly down compared to what they were some years ago.
H.R. McMaster: You mentioned setting an example for the European Union on these changes to the approach to illegal migration. And another area is in the area of regulation. I’m thinking of the Draghi report on European competitiveness and how Europe does appear to be overregulated in a way that is stultifying economic growth and hindering Europe’s ability to compete, especially in the area of new technologies associated with artificial intelligence, for example, and advanced manufacturing. Could you share with our viewers your assessment of some of the changes the EU needs to make in the area of fostering economic growth and competitiveness?
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Well, first of all, I’m happy you mentioned the Draghi report. For those of your viewers who don’t know exactly what it is, it was an interesting document written by the ex-Prime Minister, which basically highlights what Europe needs to do to become more competitive and points out the fact that we’ve been essentially faced with a gradual but quite significant erosion in our competitiveness over the past 20 years.
You mentioned overregulation. The truth is that we’ve clearly erred on the side of too much regulation when it comes to business environment. This is a big priority for the Commission, essentially getting rid of unnecessary regulation. This is a big topic for us and for me. We have what we call the European single market. This is 27 member states. Theoretically, you can do business in all of those without any impediments. In practice, it’s not really happening.
So let’s look at how we can turn this market of almost 500 million customers into a true single market in the same way that you can do business between California and Nevada and no one’s going to ask you for lots of unnecessary paperwork.
The same needs to be true if you want to do business between Greece and Italy or Greece and Estonia. So for example, creating a new legal entity, what we call “EU Inc.”, registering a startup in any European country and being able to operate seamlessly in all of the European countries would be a game changer for our new tech companies.
Energy. How can we be competitive in energy? It’s a big factor of production, especially when it comes to manufacturing. Europe has a very strong tradition of high-quality manufacturing, but it’s been eroded. Not just by high energy, but also by issues of unfair competition. For example, massive imports from China. So all these issues are very much at the forefront of the European agenda.
So if you think about Europe, what are our two priorities? The first is competitiveness. The second is defense. These are the two issues we’re really focusing on as a European Union and a topic which we will discuss at the next European Council which will take place in a week from now, where we need to take some important decisions, not regarding the direction – I think the direction has been agreed – it’s really the speed and the sense of urgency that we need to embrace to really move fast in a direction that will make Europe more competitive again.
Because, for example, look, we are big savers in Europe, but we’re sending our savings to the US. Because we don’t have what we call Savings and Investments Union. We don’t have capital markets union. If you want to list your company, you’re much better off going to the NASDAQ rather than to any European stock exchange. These things need to change because it’s not just about public money or European money. It’s also about mobilizing private capital. And unfortunately, the smart money right now is not placing too many bets on Europe, and this is something that needs to change.
H.R. McMaster: Prime Minister, everything you talked about here in terms of the importance of collective defense within Europe and NATO, energy security, growing our economies, countering Chinese economic aggression – you mentioned the overproduction and dumping of Chinese goods in a way that drives European and U.S. and other firms out of business as just one form of economic aggression. This sounds like a positive agenda for the US and Europe, and what kills me these days is how we’re at each other, in terms of gratuitous insults and tensions, which have been exacerbated, I think, to a certain extent over the war with Iran. Could you maybe outline what your positive agenda would be for transatlantic relationship, which you’re on the record saying “hey, I’m a committed fan of the transatlantic relationship”.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Look, I studied in the US. I was just back at Harvard for my 30th HBS reunion. I do believe that the transatlantic relationship has set the blueprint for a rules-based world order that not only provided stability and growth potential, but also worked well both for Europe and for the US. So I’m not one of those who discounts the relationship in spite of the current turbulence. I’m a realist, but I do believe that there are sort of win-win propositions.
For example, when it comes to trade, there has been a rebalancing as a result of the recent tariffs, but at the end of the day, we need to find more opportunities to trade with each other, but also respect our respective rules. I do want the US tech companies to be active in Europe, but if Europe takes, for example, the protection of children and adolescents when it comes to access to social media seriously, these companies need to respect that this is a priority for us.
When it comes to defense, President Trump was right – and you know something about defense – to point out that Europe was essentially a free rider when it came to defense -not Greece, because “little” Greece always spent 2% of our GDP on defense because of our special circumstance when it comes to Turkey – but now we are spending more on defense.
And if Europe builds its own strategic autonomy, this is going to be good for NATO. The US shouldn’t be threatened by that. And yes, we will also develop our own domestic defense ecosystem. But if we spend more on defense, NATO as a whole is going to be stronger.
So I do believe that at the end of the day, there is a profound bond that ties us together. And when we look at also the big issues regarding global governance, I mean the big challenges, the benefits and costs of AI… AI at some point cannot be just sort of a “wild west” of innovation, without understanding that this is a technology that will have profound implications, which is unfortunately I think the way the US is looking at it.
So we’ll continue to try to work with the US, both as a European but also as a Greek.
We have a very strong bilateral partnership with the US, which I respect, that goes beyond defense and security. And yes, and I do also believe that when it comes to also issues such as managing China, especially the fact that China now has 30% of the world’s manufacturing capacity and has essentially the ability to destroy industries across the globe and certainly in Europe, this is a topic that we need to take very, very seriously. We cannot just allow our industrial base to be completely annihilated simply because we’re always in search of the cheapest product, especially when it comes to unfair trade practices.
So there’s a lot of sort of thought that needs to go into this, and I’m speaking here as a European who’s, you know, and I’m a free trader, Greece is a shipping nation. We control 25% of the global merchant ships. We live off shipping to a great extent. But free trade does not mean trade without any rules, and certainly establishing some sort of level playing field is important for trade to properly function.
H.R. McMaster: Well, Prime Minister, I see this threat as based on China’s economic aggression, but this coalescing that we’ve seen in recent years of what I would call an “axis of aggressors”, the two revanchist powers on the Eurasian landmass of Russia and China, who pulled into the fold other authoritarian regimes. And we’re talking on the day that Xi Jinping is visiting Pyongyang, and North Korea has North Korean troops, 15,000 of them, fighting on European soil. And the kind of material support that we’ve seen China provide Russia in its onslaught against Ukraine, the support that China and Russia provide to Iran in its long-running wars against its Arab neighbors, Israel, and the United States and others. How do you see this axis of aggressors, and what more could the United States and Europe do together and pulling in others into the effort to prevent these cascading crises from cascading further? What more can be done to restore peace at this point?
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Well, first of all, I think the Ukraine war, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, I think was a watershed moment for Europe. War returned to the European continent. We thought that this would never happen. For those of us at least who grew up with the fall of the Berlin Wall, it seemed completely inconceivable that we would ever be faced with a war that is longer than World War I and with a huge number of casualties.
So it was a reality check for all of us, especially for us Europeans, and the fundamental premise that you cannot change international borders by force. This was one of the lessons of World War II. And that if this happens, you need to defend yourself and you need to support the country that’s defending itself from an aggression.
And we did that in Europe. And of course, the US also did so, and rightly so, because at the end of the day, we don’t want to return to an environment where might makes right and we’re just, you know, the strong do as they wish and the weak succumb to the wishes of the strong.
So the fact that Ukraine is currently in a position to defend itself, has developed completely innovative technologies with a lot of European support, both military and financial, I think is an important statement to any aggressor. And in that sense, Ukraine has put itself at least in a position to be able to make it very clear that this war has a big cost for Putin. And the more he continues, the bigger the cost, because it doesn’t seem to me that there’s any real progress on the military front. So I think this was an important precedent.
And again, it forced us in Europe to take our security seriously. And when I speak about security generally, it’s not just Ukraine. It’s the Middle East, it’s Africa. We are in the southeastern corner of Europe. We are very concerned with what’s happening in the Middle East. If there’s a crisis in Sudan, which there is, if there’s a war in Sudan, a humanitarian crisis, inevitably it will spill over into Europe through migratory flows. So becoming more, I would say, pragmatic and more realistic about the fact that we live in a complicated world and developing our own capabilities to even deploy hard power if necessary, I think it’s an important stepping stone for Europe.
For example, we have ships in the Red Sea protecting the sea lanes against Houthi attacks. Greece has a ship there. These are the sort of initiatives that we should be able to support. If ever there is, and hopefully there will be soon some sort of solution when it comes to Hormuz, and if there’s a need for a peacekeeping, not a peacemaking, a peacekeeping force, we should be able to step up.
If our Arab, and I’m speaking again as a European, if our Arab friends are attacked, we should be able to support them, materially support them, not just say nice words, being able to really step up and say, “okay, we stand by you”, because at the end of the day this is not just a question of principle, this is also in our self-interest to do so.
So I’m really pushing Europe to take its security more seriously. This will require committing more resources and it should not just be national budgets, it could also be European money that could be directed towards projects of common interest. Security is the quintessential common good. So if there are European projects of security, of common security that make us all safer, they could be funded by the European budget. I should say they should be funded by the European budget.
H.R. McMaster: Well, Prime Minister, we’ve already talked about a lot of the complex challenges to your security and prosperity, but we haven’t talked very much about a pretty big one, which has to do with Greek-Turkish relations and the contested, I guess, arena of the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, and this sort of approach that Turkey’s taken for a long time of this “Blue Homeland” doctrine, that they have expanded maritime jurisdiction across much of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, and tensions have been on the rise. I think initially, as you came in as Prime Minister, there was a bit of a – I’m going to call it détente between Turkey and Greece, but it seems like tensions are rising. Can you maybe share with our viewers how you’re balancing engagement with Ankara at this time over issues like sovereignty in the Aegean? And what is your perspective on the Mediterranean security regime and what should it look like?
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Well, Greek-Turkish relations have always been complex, and I’m looking to, I would say, a functioning and why not a constructive relationship with Turkey. We’re destined by our geography to live side by side. This is never going to change. Having said that, it is true that Turkey over the past decade has become a revisionist power when it comes to its projection of its sea ambitions in particular. And this is something that collides with international law. So all I’ve said is to make it very, very clear that Greece’s sovereignty and sovereign rights will never be challenged. And our sovereignty and sovereign rights emerge from international law and from international treaties and these cannot be questioned and should not be questioned under any circumstance.
We have one big difference with Turkey, which is the delimitation of maritime zones in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean. If Turkey has other claims, we don’t recognize them. They are completely unfounded, and no Greek Prime Minister would ever be willing to enter any discussion or any negotiation regarding these claims.
I’ve made these points very clear to President Erdoğan, with whom I have a functioning and I would say good relationship. I’ve seen him, met him many times, and I’d say that over the past two to three years, there has been a reasonable détente. You know, we see spikes sometimes of activity and rhetoric. We saw one over the past month. I hope that it can again be contained, but I’m also not naive.
I will strengthen my Armed Forces. I’ve done so systematically. They’re probably in the best position that they’ve ever been. We need a strong deterrence capability. We need to invest in qualitative superiority wherever we can. And of course, we need strong alliances. We’re members of the European Union. There is a mutual assistance clause in the European Union treaties, which I want to operationalize and make it real, not just something we talk about theoretically. We have a very strong partnership with Israel. We have strong partnerships with the Gulf countries.
So strong economies, strong defense, strong alliances, but at the same time a willingness to engage with Turkey, but setting very, very clear red lines in terms of what can be discussed and what cannot be discussed seems to me to be the right approach in managing Turkey.
H.R. McMaster: Prime Minister, I’d like to talk a little bit more too about the US-Greek relationship. I mean, it’s quite strong, as you know. There is a fantastic Greek-American community here in the United States, and these kinship ties lead, I think, to really deep affection between our countries. I see our bilateral relationship strengthening from a defense perspective. What is your agenda for US-Greece relations going forward?
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: I think the relationship has never been stronger. And again, this is, I believe, a relationship that transcends governments and administrations. Because at the end of the day, it’s founded on, I think, two pillars. The one you mentioned. I mean, there is an amazing Greek-American community, which is a natural bridge between our two countries. And the second is common security interests, especially when it comes to the Eastern Mediterranean. And that is why Greece has lots of friends across the aisle in the US Congress, and this is a sort of a bipartisan approach which is not just shared by the administration.
And we need, and we can, and we will do more. For example, I mentioned shipping. If the US wants to export more LNG, which is a big priority for the current government, and Europe wants to buy LNG, who’s gonna transport this LNG? Αgain, 25% of the global LNG ships are owned by Greeks. So this gives us leverage. If the US wants to export natural gas into Europe, why not use Greece as an entry point? We’ve done so. We have this concept of the Vertical Corridor supplying our northern neighbors and going up to Ukraine.
So if you want to focus on IMEC, this notion that there’s a connection between India, the Middle East, and Europe, Greece, just look at the map, is your natural entry point when it comes to continental Europe.
Even when it comes to just sheer business opportunities, I mean, we’re open for business and there’s lots of interesting investment opportunities for American capital to invest in Greece. So this is a very broad relationship, I would say, that goes beyond security and defense.
But I do want to focus on the Greek-American community, because for the first time we gave the right to vote, you can actually vote by mail, which didn’t happen in Greece. It will be done for the first time in the next election, so we also want the Greeks who have a right to vote to participate in our elections. They will be able to do so for the first time in the upcoming 2027 elections.
And of course, historically, when you’ll be celebrating your 250th commemoration of the Declaration of Independence, just look at how much the Founding Fathers were influenced by ancient Greece and…
H.R. McMaster: I have a book right here, Prime Minister, that I’ve been reading, “The Pursuit of Happiness”.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Oh, I should read this. Who has written it? Let me see.
H.R. McMaster: It’s Jeffrey Rosen. It’s a fantastic book. The subtitle is “How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America”.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: So there you have it. There you have it. But then, of course, our founding fathers were inspired by your independence struggle back in 1821 when we fought for our own independence. And it’s interesting that our founding fathers were actually communicating. There are letters sent between Jefferson and Adamantios Korais, who was our sort of the intellectual brainchild behind Greek independence. So it’s a fascinating story, and of course we fought together numerous times in two wars. America was there to help with our reconstruction after the Second World War when Greece was ravaged also by a civil war. So these are very strong ties, and we need to speak about them openly and leverage them.
H.R. McMaster: Absolutely. And celebrate them. You’ve been so generous with your time. I have one last question I’d like to ask you. Could you share with our viewers what drew you to service and maybe a bit about your philosophy of leadership?
I’ve heard you speak about – you said it one time, I think you said there’s a big advantage in people underestimating you. And you’ve also talked about the need for a leader to be a unifier, to have what you call “a broad church”, you know, that you’re leading. But I know our viewers would benefit tremendously from hearing what drew you to service and your philosophy of leadership.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Well, my path was, essentially, rather bumpy in the sense that I come from a political family. My father was, you know, Prime Minister. I was always fascinated by public service, but at some point, rather disappointed by the fact that my father lost an election, I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in the private service and for almost a decade didn’t want to hear anything about politics. So I cut my teeth in business and in venture capital. It was a fascinating lesson also for me.
At some point I realized that sitting on the fence and just expressing views about how your country can change is not a very constructive approach. So I did take the plunge and at some point I decided against the odds – I was a complete outsider – to run for leader of my party. I ended up winning and ended up winning two national elections. I changed my party, made it more of a big-tent party, making it very clear that I am a modernizer and I will seek change rather than continuity. And I’m still sort of fascinated when I sometimes look back.
It’s been a long journey. Time does fly when you are in this job, but the energy is there to continue because you know that it’s actually quite easy to backtrack as a country. So I will be running for a third term, and there are no term limits in Greece. Usually there are no term limits in parliamentary systems, but I do want to run for a third term because I still think there’s work to be done and because I want to make sure that the changes we put in place are going to be irreversible.
We’ve, as I’ve told you, we’ve sacrificed a lot as a country. We’ve made great progress, but there’s still issues. We are still faced with a big affordability issue as we speak today. There’s still people who are struggling, lots of reforms to implement.
You need to be comfortable with the fact that there’s so many problems you have to deal with, you need to prioritize, but I think we got the big things right in Greece: strengthen the economy, strengthen our defense, digitize the state. These are important reforms that we can build upon.
So, I’d say every leadership story is different, but I think that what unifies them is sort of a profound need, that sort of desire that you can make a change and basically accept the burden of responsibility with grace, because you have to be responsible and you have to take decisions. Our job is to take decisions on a daily basis, tens of decisions every day. So you’re not going to get them all right, that’s for sure. But the one thing you cannot afford is not to take decisions in our job.
H.R. McMaster: Well, I can’t thank you enough for being with us. I’d like to give you any final word, any last message you would have for our viewers.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Well, thank you so much for offering me the opportunity. I’m a big fan of your podcast, so I hope that your viewers enjoy this.
H.R. McMaster: Well, Prime Minister Mitsotakis, I cannot thank you enough for joining us on “Today’s Battlegrounds” and I want to thank you for your steady and strong leadership in support of Greece’s democracy, the U.S.-Greek partnership. And I really do think you’re a model of the kind of leadership we need to bring people together and reverse some of this kind of polarization we’ve seen in our political worlds these days. So thank you for joining us. It’s been a real pleasure.
Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Thank you so much. Take care.
