Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas told the press that Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis raised Turkish provocations at the EU Summit. He said that Mr Mitsotakis raised the issue of Turkey’s efforts to challenge the sovereign rights of Greece and Cyprus but also spoke about the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a mosque.
The summit is viewed as critical. “It was proved how valuable it is for the country to regain its credibility. This fact is being used by the prime minister,” Mr Petsas said.
During the summit, EU leaders haggled over the size of the recovery fund with Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden wishing to scale back grants from 450billion euros to 350 billion euros, coupled with another 350 billion euros in a recovery package to help fight COVID-19, but Spain and Italy could not accept plans on the table.
On the sidelines of the summit, Mr Mitsotakis met with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Portuguese Prime MInister Antonio Costa as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday.
European diplomatic sources said European Council President Charles Michel submitted a revised version of his proposal to aid a broad consensus on the EU recovery fund and the meeting focused on this.
