Government Vice-President and Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos addressed the AHCC conference yesterday and referred to the new economic and production model of Greece, underlining the importance of its comparative advantages, namely its land and its human capital. He also pointed that the private sector, at an international level, sees Greece as a country of investment opportunities, a trend also reflected in the recent favourable upgrades of international rating agencies. He also stressed the need to pursue fiscal consolidation without compromising Greece’s macroeconomic prospects for growth, since Greece has already engaged in unprecedented fiscal and structural adjustments.

Addressing the same AHCC conference, Deputy FM Kourkoulas referred to the priorities of the Hellenic EU Presidency that will be called on to "contribute to restoring the credibility of the European vision" and offer a "new narrative" to counter not only the rising tide of neo-Nazism but also that of euro scepticism.

On his part, speaking at the AHCC conference, Deputy FinMin Christos Staikouras said that “(...) that the country will record a primary surplus of €812 million euros this year, while the programme’s target was a zero surplus. This estimate does not take into consideration the positive impact of a retrospective reduction of the interest rate on loans offered to Greece and the transfer of returns from Greek state bonds held by European central banks. With these figures included, excluding the one-off support of financial institutions, the country’s primary surplus is expected to reach 3.9 billion euros this year.”