Athens News Agency: News in English, 05-06-24

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From: The Athens News Agency at <http://www.ana.gr/>

CONTENTS

[01] EIB President meets with PM, industrialists, outlines strategy on European economy

[02] Euro-Med Partnership seminar to be held in Athens

[01] EIB President meets with PM, industrialists, outlines strategy on European economy

Specifically, Maystadt focused on the opportunities the two major EIB financing programmes create particularly in the sectors of research, technology and innovation as well as for the Trans-European Networks (TEN) projects.

According to Maystadt, these sectors are each expected to absorb roughly â¬50 billion until 2010, providing significant opportunities for small-scale, as well as large-scale public private partnerships (PPP).

The EIB president also referred to the EU's current economic situation, citing it as one of the main causes of the region's political crisis.

On his part, Kyriakopoulos referred to EIB's institutional role and provided an outline of the institution's contribution to Greece's development.

SEB's president noted that over the past five years, EIB has provided more than â¬7 billion in funding to Greece for the financing of major infrastructure works such as the Attiko Metro, Athens International Airport "Eleftherios Venizelos", Attiki Odos ring road, the Rio-Antirrio Bridge and others.

Currently, a large share of EIB funding has been targeted at strengthening the competitiveness of Greek industry through loans given to small and medium-size enterprises in cooperation with other banks.

Earlier, Maystadt met with Greek prime minister Costas Karamanlis, with whom he discussed cooperation between Greece and the EIB, the European Union's central bank.

Speaking to reporters, after the meeting, attended also by Economy and Finance Minister George Alogoskoufis, Maystadt said he discussed the cooperation of EIB with Greece and stressed that the bank was offering loans totalling 1.8 billion euros to fund major infrastructure projects in the country, such as parts of national road network in central Greece, Egnatia Road and the Thessaloniki Metro.

EIB's president said low economic growth rates in Europe affected smaller countries like Greece.

Economy and Finance Minister George Alogoskoufis said the meeting also discussed the supply of funding and know-how by EIB to support joint projects between the public and private sectors and noted that a draft legislation promoting such projects would be tabled to parliament in next few weeks. The Greek minister underlined that a draft law on banks' supplementary pension funds would not lead to more financial burdens. Commenting on Social Security Fund governor's forecast that a full introduction of existing laws on pension funds would burden IKA by around 9.0 billion euros, Alogoskoufis said he did not know of any study leading to this forecast.

[02] Euro-Med Partnership seminar to be held in Athens

The seminar is an exercise taking place in the framework of the EU's common foreign policy and seeks to promote dialogue, mutual understanding and cooperation between Europe and Mediterranean countries in the handling of crises through military and non-military means.

One of the goals of the seminar/exercise is to acquaint the southern Mediterranean states taking part with the relevant European procedures.

Organisers expect all 25 EU member-states to be represented, as well as the 10 Mediterranean countries participating in the Euro-Med Partnership. The 10 Mediterranean partners are Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey.

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