ANA – MPA — A team of eight MEPs from several countries and parliamentary groups visited Greece as part of a finding mission organized by the European Parliament‘s Committee on Budgetary Control.
The team of MEPs appealed to Greek authorities on Friday to speed up the completion of large projects which have lagged behind and which will change the image of Greece, during a press conference at the offices of the European Parliament in Athens.
The MEPs visited seven major projects which have been described as “problematic” by the EU’s Task Force to Greece and which are extremely important for the country’s growth.
These include the Land Registry, whose completion is important for investments and environment interventions, the restoration of Karla Lake, which was described as the largest environmental project in the Balkans and for which the aim must remain to turn it into a drinking water reservoir. Another problematic project is the construction of the E65 highway, which the MEPs described as the cornerstone of European transport networks, as well as the rail project Tithorea – Domokos in central Greece.
The automatic fare collection system and the electronic Registry face no particular problems, but Thessaloniki’s metro is seen as deadlocked, with all MEPs expressing the view that a solution needs to be found noting that “a city the size of Brussels cannot be without public transportation”.
And while some problems are expected due to the economic crisis, the MEPs said, some others are unrelated and could be sped up by Greek authorities by “embracing them”.
