“You don’t know how happy I am for the opportunity you gave us all to remember again the role ONNED played in our personal path. It is a moment of great joy to meet again with old competitors and to reminisce about the beautiful moments, the difficulties. A party cannot be strong if it does not talk to the youth”, said Kyriakos Mitsotakis at an ONNED event for its 50th birthday.
The prime minister reflected on how a young person today sees the world compared to a young person of his own generation.
“Everything looked promising and I think about how much harder the road is today for a 22-year-old. Today more than ever, engagement with the public is very important,” he said.
Policies for the new generation and private universities
“I believe that many of our policies are primarily about the new generation”, argued the prime minister, that today unemployment is at 9.4% and among young people it has fallen below 20% when the ND found it at 40%.
“The brain drain has largely been reversed. They don’t come back out of nostalgia. They return because there are jobs, opportunities and the feeling that the country is going in the right direction”, added Mr. Mitsotakis.
At the same time, he made special reference to the establishment of “non-state” universities, an arrangement that had caused a storm of reactions. According to the prime minister, the government gave this possibility but “the main thing is the support of the public university. Degrees with merit. Options that won’t just be time management at a university I don’t want. This certainty that in an ever-changing world our education does not end with a degree. The certainty we had in our own generation, in the complex world, things don’t work out exactly like this,” he added.
He said that education is much more than the good education that a university can provide and emphasized the need for continuous education.
Difficult decisions
“The biggest problem is convincing capable young people that getting involved with the public is a worthwhile option. The challenge for your generation, Konstantina, is to have the option of engaging with the public”, said Kyriakos Mitsotakis, addressing a 17-year-old girl, Konstantina Liritsi, who is a student of the 3rd Lyceum and a member of ONNED during the event for ONNED’s 50th birthday.
Our job is to give opportunities. To break the perception that it is not worth dealing with the public”, he said.
“There are decisions that we can take today that will affect people’s lives tomorrow,” added Mr. Mitsotakis and added: “We will hand over to the next generation a public debt much lower than what we received.”
The prime minister also referred to the “piggy bank” for the subsidiary crisis and the policies for the climate crisis.
“If we have to make difficult decisions today in order not to harm the generations tomorrow, these are difficult decisions to find a Greece much better than the one we received,” said Mr. Mitsotakis.
Source: RES
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