Mitsotakis speaks separately by phone with Blinken, Menendez on Mon

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Monday held separate telephone contacts with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the chairman of the powerful US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Menendez (D-NJ).

According to the Greek side, talks revolved around already close Greece-US relations, as well as the former’s role as a pylon of stability in the wider east Mediterranean and southeast Europe region.

Mitsotakis also appeared in a video-link interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, where he reiterated that his government will not proceed with another pandemic-related “lockdown”. He also cited the same-day economic data from the third quarter of 2021, which showed the Greek economy sporting an EU-best GDP increase of 13.4 percent for Q3 – compared with the same quarter of 2020.

Q3 2021 growth was up by 2.7 percent compared with the preceding second quarter of the year.