Exactly five years later, finding that nothing has changed, or maybe, all……
"Open Letter to Frau Angela Dorothea Merkel
Your Excellency Madam Chancellor,
"Europe, which gave birth to all ideas, she is the only one who can renew them and humanize them again. It is enough not to set material prosperity as the primary goal of the union of Europe.
Equally fundamental to Europe's survival is its gradual economic integration, which will ensure the utilization of a huge potential of natural and human resources. He will organize the economy around man, instead of man around the economy. It will realize the concept of multidimensional development and promote the quality of life, while at the same time it will serve on an international scale the idea of economic justice and the promotion of less developed countries.
Greece comes to Europe with the certainty that in the context of European solidarity national independence is consolidated for all parties, democratic freedoms are guaranteed, economic development is achieved and with the cooperation of all, social and economic progress becomes a common fruit".
As a Greek and European citizen, these days, that my country is being tested and the edifice of the European Union is threatened, I thought it appropriate to remind you of the above excerpt from the speech, delivered by the great Greek and European leader Konstantinos Karamanlis on 28 May 1978, day of signing the treaty "on the accession of Greece to the European Economic Community, in which the visions and hopes of the peoples from the European Unification are recorded...
Today, 32 years later, we find how hopes were dashed, how the visions faded, how much the role of an Organization has changed, which he aspired to- and I believe he still aspires- to give Europe and the world a new lease of life....
She, Nevertheless, the new breath, Madam Chancellor, it does not come with accusing the Greek People of any errors or omissions made by a minority of citizens or politicians.
This new breath does not come with statements and events that insult the honor and touch the history of a People, who founded the European idea and from the "golden gate" of his country, Macedonia, Christianity entered Europe.
Sincerely, we would expect a different treatment from the descendants of those great Hellenists and Philhellenes, who studied ancient Greek culture in depth, they fought alongside the rebel the 1821 Greek People, grafted their art with the ancient Greek artistic tradition and gave the first Supreme Lord to the reborn Neohellenic State.
Generalizations are always dangerous… That is why "there is no need to add here how much our archaeological knowledge owes to leading German Hellenists, to agree how unjust and ahistorical it is to lump peoples or countries under absolute and abhorrent characterizations ("the anti-Greek Germans", "the lazy Greeks")», as Pantelis Boukalas wrote in "Kathimerini" of 25.03.2010...
We do not abdicate our responsibilities as a country and as citizens for the current situation… Besides, Greece has always been a small and poor country, with poverty as a constant companion, as Herodotus had established centuries before.
The only thing we are asking and waiting for is not so much the activation of the famous support mechanism for the Greek Economy, but mainly the activation of European solidarity in dealing with the current crisis, which we hope will be a lesson and also a springboard for Europe, that we all want and dream of…..”
† Dorotheos II of Syros and Mykonos
("DEMOKRATIA" newspaper, Saturday, 13 June 2015)
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