Trade

Greek priorities

Agriculture

Safeguarding the reformed Common Agricultural Policy

On Green Box, keeping the existing criteria, especially concerning the decoupled payments and the structural adjustment payments.

Even though Greece is a net importer of most of the animal products (for which high tariffs are applied) we are worried of the domino effect that a big tariff reduction could have in other sectors of our interest, such as grains. Offensive interest concerning processed fruits & vegetables (especially canned peaches).

Greece is the main cotton producer in the EU (almost 80% of EU’s production). The new cotton regime stipulates that only 35% of the payments will remain coupled (Blue Box), while the majority of the payments (65%) are classified as Green Box payments.

Establishment of a legal binding multilateral register for Geographical Indications of wines and spirits and the extension of the enhanced protection of wines and spirits to other products, in order to succeed enhanced protection for geographical indications.

Services

Our main priority is the liberalization of the maritime services.

NAMA

We support EU’s proposal concerning Swiss formula with two different coefficients (10 for developed and 15 for developing countries) as well as the paragraph 8 flexibilities as stipulated in the framework agreement. During last 2-3 years, we have increased both our intra and extra EU exports as a result of an export oriented strategy.

In this regard, on NTBs, we also support the horizontal mechanism which – in our point of view – can lead to important market opening.