ATHENS – “Greece is on the right side of history,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in his opening remarks to an online cabinet meeting on Wednesday. The main message from Tuesday’s parliamentary debate, he said, was that the country is determined, along with its allies in the EU, to uphold international law and stand by a country facing invasion.

“Faithful to international law and determined with its allies, with the European family, to not allow Europe’s borders to change, nor the world to once again know violence and zones of influence,” he said.

Freedom and democracy must not become hostages to authoritarianism and this message had the support of all Greeks, the premier added.

Mitsotakis noted that the developments vindicate the government’s policy choices, which serve the national interest but also the need to manage the economic repercussions of the crisis that is unfolding.

“We must deal with them and we will deal with them,” he underlined and referred to Greece’s proposal for European support to absorb the rise in prices.

The premier also noted the continuation of government policies to ease the burden from taxes and contributions.

Mitsotakis started by announcing that the cabinet meeting will be split into two sessions due to the large number of items on the agenda, with half covered on Wednesday and the rest at an extraordinary session at the start of next week.

The prime minister highlighted the perils of revisionism for Greece and Cyprus, noting that a policy of equal distances ultimately legitimised crime and amounted to complicity.

“Policy is to propose, as we have done systematically and methodically, the strengthening of national defence and the building of strong alliances. Policy is to make European strategic autonomy a priority in response to the complex new geopolitical environment of the future,” he said.

He also noted that the war in Ukraine, apart from testing international stability and legality, the principles of democracy versus those of autocracy, was also a test of which sides truly expressed progress and which sides express regression.

On energy policy, Mitsotakis reiterated that the “convenient myth of supposed cheap lignite coal” did not apply and promised to continue supporting households in the face of rising energy prices.

On the changes to ENFIA property taxes, he said Greek property owners would pay 30 pct less tax than in 2019 in total.

He also referred extensively to reforms in justice, which are to be presented to the cabinet on Wednesday.