ATHENS — "Greece, as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at the unofficial meeting of the leaders of the EU member-states, hopes to play a leading role at a national and European level in the effort to build a new social Europe in which nobody will be left behind," stated government spokesperson Aristotelia Peloni on Monday, at the start of her online briefing to the press.

"The recovery that will follow the ordeal of the pandemic must have different characteristics. It must aim at more and better jobs and less inequality, by fighting discrimination," she said.

Referring to the battle against the pandemic, Peloni said that the prime minister supported the proposal for a temporary waiver of intellectual propterty rights for vaccine patents, as he did in April and May 2020, so that as many vaccines as possible can be produced and close the gap between developed and developing countries.

Peloni said that Mitsotakis "underlined the importance of a fast implementation of the digital green certificate to allow the unobstructed movement of citizens that wish to travel as soon as possible and stressed that the need to not have excessive restrictions when travellers return to their countries of origin".

Referring to the restart of economic and social activities in Greece, she said that the country was following the course outlined in the road map announced by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.