Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was received by the President of the Republic, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, at the Presidential Palace this Tuesday morning as part of the regular monthly briefings. 

Commenting on the US elections, Mitsotakis said that the intense polarisation and toxicity in the US "is a problem for our democracies.". 

"Our meeting today coincides with the holding of the US elections, and let me make three very brief remarks on the event that is currently monopolizing the interest of the entire planet. The first observation is that regardless of the election results in the United States, Greek-American relations are strategic. And I believe that as far as their content is concerned, they will not be affected," the Prime Minister said. 

As a second remark, he stressed that "regardless of the outcome in the United States, the geopolitical maturation of Europe is now absolutely necessary. And on the occasion of the debate that we will have at the extraordinary European Council in Budapest and the Draghi report, in which Mr. Draghi describes the state of European competitiveness in rather dark colours, the time has now come for Europe to get its act together and take very important decisions on how it can make up for lost ground with the United States and China by launching policies that will have to break away from the beaten track.". 

Finally, Mitsotakis observed that "this very intense polarization and the toxicity that we see in the United States to a certain extent is, I believe, a problem for our democracies in its own right. And I say this because on every occasion I never tire of repeating that in democracy we may be adversaries, but we are never enemies. Democracy presupposes a basic respect for each other's point of view. It is by no means a field of agreement between political forces.