ATHENS

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Friday that Europe should spend more in the face of major strategic challenges.

Speaking at a discussion on Currency for Change: World Politics on a Budget during the Munich Security Conference, Mitsotakis said “If you want peace, prepare for war.”

“We all need to spend more on defense, but we must also be smarter in allocating resources, in an era of high interest rates, pressure on budgets, and additional spending after the pandemic,” he noted.

About the war in Ukraine, the premier said a war in Europe’s heartland, which seemed unimaginable four or five years ago, now dictates new realities.

Concerning Greece’s high defense expenditure, he argued that “Greece never had a peace dividend. We are constantly faced with geopolitical threats in our neighborhood and, even in difficult times, spent more than 2% of GDP on defense.”