Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis's speech kicked off the Parliament's debate on the agenda, which aimed to update the House on the government's efforts to assist those impacted by this year's fire season, restore infrastructure, and bolster civil protection. 

At the beginning of his speech, the Prime Minister stressed that it is good and useful to take stock of the fire season every year so that the positive aspects of the effort can be highlighted and useful suggestions can be made on how to improve.

"Let's take a look at the actual data, what happened in this period, and what statistics we need to keep in mind. First fact: this year has been the most difficult in the last 40 years. We have had consistently higher than average temperatures, extremely long droughts, strong winds after a period of drought, and little snow in the mountains," Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in his first words in parliament.

The prime minister said that we were in danger levels 4 and 5 earlier than in other years, and we had the state mechanism on standby for six months. Mitsotakis thanked all members of the state mechanism. He noted that we had 9,101 fires this year compared to 7163 last year. He also said that 1,754,000 acres burned last year and 440,000 acres burned this year, with an average of 500,000 acres burned in recent years.

The benchmark cannot be that we won't have any fires, he noted. He stressed that it is important to be below average. He added that we have had fewer acres burned per fire and much less forest land burned.

"Obviously the problem is not only Greek. Look at what happened in Portugal in September. Look at the US. It's a reality that accompanies the climate crisis. Attacks will be more and more frequent. The Mediterranean is a region at the heart of the climate crisis and will be tested more and more often," he stressed.