ATHENS — Turkey needs to respect human rights if it wants to remain on a European path, European Parliament President David Sassoli said in an interview to national broadcaster ERT late on Friday.

Sassoli, who was in Athens for the 40th anniversary of Greece's membership in the EU, said that the Europarliament has explicitly stated it has not seen an effort by Turkey to support basic human rights and freedoms. The EU official called on Turkey to change its policy and attitude and respect human rights in order to facilitate dialogue between the two. He also expressed concern about the security of European countries' borders, as these are EU borders as well.

In terms of the Recovery Fund, he said that although the plan is very important, Europe may need more interventions to deal with the extent of the crisis created by the pandemic. Tools such as SURE could possibly become permanent one day.