Meeting of the President of the Hellenic Parliament with the President of the Austrian Parliament

The President of the Hellenic Parliament, Mr. Constantine Tassoulas, met with the President Speaker of the Austrian Parliament, Mr. Wolfgang Sobotka, in the framework of the bilateral meetings that took place on the occasion of the European Conference of Presidents of Parliament of the Council of Europe member states. 

At the end of the meeting, the two Presidents made the following statements:

C. Tassoulas: "It is a great joy and honour to welcome a very worthy friend and colleague, the President of the Austrian Parliament Mr. Sobotka, one of the main speakers of the Conference in Athens.

Mr Sobotka and I shared experiences during the pandemic period, the period of restrictions, and ways in which our parliaments had to respond to this crisis. Today, having carefully opened our lives and our institutions, we had a very fruitful discussion. We also talked about bilateral issues and about issues related to the European Union's ability to meet new challenges.

We discussed about Western Balkans and we share the same feeling that Western Balkans countries should be led toward a european perspective, under the terms and conditions that are set. We believe that the crisis we went through and are going through, strengthened us and brought us closer to decisions on new topics, such as sanitary and environmental ones, to which we will jointly respond.

I welcome him again to Greece, a great politician and good friend of our country and I thank him for the cooperation ".

W. Sobotka: "First of all, I would like to congratulate Greece and convey my wishes on the 200th anniversary of the Greek Revolution. In particular, however, I would like to congratulate my colleague, the President of the Hellenic Parliament, Mr. Tassoulas, on the organization of this very important Conference, given those 47 parliaments from the member states of the Council of Europe have convened. It is very important that it takes place in Athens, exactly on the 200th anniversary of the Greek Revolution, which was the beginning of the formation of modern Greek identity and since then, democracy has spread all over Europe.

We discussed many issues in this meeting, especially about how we will proceed now, in the post-pandemic era, that is, how our parliaments, our societies and our economies should proceed. It is very important, when such conferences are taking place, to meet your colleagues closely and discuss issues of mutual interest.

Austria has a very close friendship with Greece; we also have traditions that connect us. I will give you an example. The building of our parliament is built following the ancient Greek architecture. The architect who built it is a Danish, who came to Greece, studied and has adopted this ancient Greek style. In fact, now we are renovating the building and we gladly invite you to come and see it.  Therefore, we are closely connected politically, but we also have relations in the field of tourism, as well as economic ones. We are friendly countries and I believe that now, in the post-pandemic era, we need to further strengthen the rule of law and return to normality, strengthening democracy and human rights, and  in order to do that, we need close cooperation. For these reasons, we particularly appreciate the fact that the Conference of Presidents of Parliament is running in person, because we have been doing a lot of teleconferencing lately and it’s enough with the web distance.”