Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Monday evening emphasized that the coronavirus pandemic “interrupted” the Greek economy’s dynamism, speaking at the annual general assembly of the Hellenic Federation of Employers’, the country’s largest employers’ group.
He spoke two days after using the Caldera off iconic Santorini as a backdrop, and before dozens of foreign reporters, to essentially inaugurate the country’s all-important tourism season in the wake of nearly three months of “lockdown” in the country and its traditional tourism markets.
On Monday, however, he said his government’s priority is to put a brake on firings, due to the effects of the lockdown, as well as to back employment in the country.
In a bid to deflect criticism that his government oversaw a return to recession even prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, given that Q1 2020 recorded a slump of 0.9 percent in annualized GDP – Mitsotakis merely noted that the downturn was milder than forecast, and four-times less than the drop in the Eurozone average.
