Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 14-02-07

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

CONTENTS

[01] PM Samaras opens Nouvel Observateur conference at Athens Concert Hall

[01] PM Samaras opens Nouvel Observateur conference at Athens Concert Hall

Samaras pointed out that the European Union is looking for balance, with freedom and justice being the core ingredients of democracy.

The premier also attacked all who he said wanted to return to the past and follow a false growth on loans, stressing that the government has opted to stand on its feet in order to achieve the greatest fiscal health the country had ever seen.

"The country is finding its path again, it is entering growth, and we achieved this because we believed in Europe, we did not believe in the detractors of extremism and populism," he said.

Asked whether democracy was in danger by the rise of the extreme-right Golden Dawn (Chryssi Avghi), he said there are no Greeks who fall in line with Nazi principles, and expressed the belief that its voters are mostly people who are angry about unemployment.

FM Venizelos: Europe needs to change or lose its significance

Europe's ability to present a European narrative of a different type is being judged through Greece, which is serving as a laboratory of the crisis, Government Vice President, Foreign Minister and PASOK party leader Evangelos Venizelos stressed in his address at the conference.

Venizelos added that in light of the European Parliament elections, Europe must find new, more integrated and more original things to tell its citizens by May and European Parliament elections.

Criticising the way the EU operated, Venizelos said that "there is no rational discussion" and that "every time, there is an urgent issue on which discussion focuses, solely for ideological and political reasons". There is a problem of mutual understanding, he pointed out.

European politicians warn that EU needs more growth, less bureaucracy

The European Union must take a leap forward to convince younger people of its worth, by using more policy and less bureaucracy, Internal Markets and Services Commissioner Michel Barnier said, addressing the congress.

Priorities in Europe's growth should focus on industrial policy, energy, research and education, the commissioner said, adding that people must stop denigrating Europe, because its decisions on the crisis - which arrived from the United States - were right. He also strongly defended the actions under his jurisdiction on bank union, saying that banking activities will be made distinct, and the goal is to manage them with transparency and ethical rules. "We have learned our lesson," he added.

Former Italian President Massimo D'Alema spoke about unbelievable inequality and unemployment in Europe in recent years, and called for a deep change in European policy, the only way he saw to support European citizens.

Guy Verhofstadt, head of Alliance of Liberals and Democrats group in the European Parliament and candidate for the presidency of the European Commission, seconded the Italian president in that Europe is being ruled intergovernmentally by its 28 members. It is as if the United States were to be ruled by representatives, one each, from its 50 states, without US President Barack Obama. Continuing this will give the lead to Eurosceptics, he warned, and said that young people are not content with the idea of peace alone, we must exit the crisis.

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