«The Greek Presidency succeeded because it had good cooperation with all and because we had all realised in Europe that we must move forward, because otherwise there was a danger of falling back,” the outgoing President of the European Council, Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis, said while addressing the plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg...
“Relations between the EU and China are particularly important,” Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou said after talks with his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing, in the framework of contacts between the Union and the People’s Republic of China, which also marked the last activity of the Greek Presidency.
Talks at the EU-US Summit in Washington were described in glowing terms by the participants – US President George Bush, the President of the European Council Costas Simitis and European Commission President Romano Prodi – who used terms such as “constructive”, “fruitful” and “excellent”.
EU Council of Ministers for Agriculture, presided by the Greek Minister, Georgios Drys, adopted a fundamental reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), early Thursday morning, in Luxembourg.
At the Thessaloniki European Council, the Greek Presidency attained the three key targets it had set, while at the same time, as noted by the President of the Council, Prime Minister Costas Simitis, the Presidency scored an important victory in “the struggle for consensus within the EU”.
