 I hope to try to come to some conclusions in this brief speech. Of course, for Greece, maybe helpful in comparing some of what we've done with what you have done in this adjustment, this difficult adjustment process, but also to talk about some of the wider European issues. Of course, Europe is facing a new tragedy recently with this Paris terrorist act. We all are in solidarity with those that have victims, and of course the French people and those living in France. And of course Greece is also at the forefront of the refugee crisis, which is another big issue that has been occupying the discussions of where Europe is going and future identity of Europe. Are these issues and the financial crisis linked? Well, maybe not directly, but indirectly the European response I think I would like to at some point say what I think has been lacking. And in that way there is an indirect link, but I'll get to that. When I was elected in 2009, I immediately realized that the previous government had not been telling the exact truth about the deficit. They had reported to Brussels that it was 6.5%. I realized after my finance minister informed me that it was upwards of 12.5%, almost more than double, and in the end it ended up 15.6%. I decided to be very open, very honest. Euripides uses the word very often in his plays, a Greek word which is parisia or parisia, which means not only the right to speak the truth freely, but also the obligation to speak out and tell the truth even at your life's own risk. So I did know in deciding to be very open about our problems that there was a political risk, but I did feel that this was the only way we would be able to create a momentum for change in Greece, because in the end the deficit which we had was not simply by overspending. It was a deeper structural problem of Greek governance. Governance in Greece, as Brendan was saying earlier, the need that we actually complete a process of becoming a modern functioning democracy. And I say that because, and this I think is in contrast with even though your difficult history also, but we have in the previous century gone through two world wars, Nazi occupation and a famine at the time, two civil wars, Balkan wars, dictatorship in the 60s, in the 70s, a war with Turkey over Cyprus, now Northern part being occupied by Turkey continually. So Greece's history is a one of a state which was went through many authoritarian and critical stages where only seven years after the dictatorship, six, seven years after the dictatorship, Zskardis then very much in favor of the birthplace of democracy helped the then Karamalis, Prime Minister of Greece, become a member of the European common market then. However, we did not as other countries in later enlargements such as the ones in Central and Eastern Europe, we did not really have any prerequisites such as the so-called Copenhagen criteria. As a matter of fact, possibly because we were on the winning side of the Cold War, it was seen that it was very logical that Greece would just go in without major reforms of its structures. So how the state was run, how the fact judiciary was run, how the tax system was run, these were not issues when we entered the European Union. However, the structures were highly politicized, highly centralized, highly opaque, non-transparent, clientelistic in a way which I believe at some point papered over by resources that were coming from the European Union and then in the Eurozone, but when the crisis hit in 2008, these fault lines were revealed. I'll give you just a few examples because I think it's quite a stark difference from the experience you've had. I mentioned this earlier at the lunch we had before. I said to my colleagues when we first met when I became Prime Minister and they were very, of course, astounded by the fact that our statistics had changed and that the deficit was double than the actual number that had been reported by the previous government. Immediately they said, well, you have to cut, cut, cut wages and pensions and so on. I said, well, that is part of the symptom and you can die from the symptoms and we may need to do something there, but we really need to go down deeper and see why it ended up where Greece basically doubled its debt in five years and its deficit so high. And I said the basic issues were structural of governance. So deeper reforms in governance will allow us to deal both with the deficit but also make our country much more transparent and functioning. I said, for example, when I became Prime Minister I asked for the number of civil servants that we had. Nobody could tell me. Nobody knew how many civil servants we had. I had to, with my ministers, be very imaginative, creative. We decided that no civil servant would get their salary unless they registered online so we knew how many civil servants existed. Then we finally found out how many civil servants we had. We had a medical sector where we knew that there was corruption. It was not, of course, just our doctors. It was the multinational pharmaceutical companies also involved with this that would give kickbacks to our doctors if they overprescribed treatments. And they did, many of them, and that was then billed to our public pension system. So our public pension system all of a sudden ballooned in costs over the past years. And again, I decided that we'd use technology and we put a software program for electronic prescriptions. The doctors reacted. They said they don't know how to use computers. I said I will sever the contracts of doctors that don't know how to use computers in two weeks. 95% of the doctors learned how to use computers and we cut the cost by 50%. 2.5 billion, that's as much as we make in property taxes today in Greece. So that was the type of reform we needed. I could add the example of the tax system. Many people talk about tax evasion in Greece. That is a Greek problem but of course it's a wider issue of tax havens, offshore companies and so on. So it's a global issue. But I will just make a distinction between Greece and Ireland. You have a very independent revenue service which is non-politicized. In Greece the revenue service has highly politicized which meant that the political decisions and therefore friends of the government could have special benefits by not paying certain taxes. Others who may not be friends would be found always something wrong with their tax credits. This would also be tickled down to some of the local tax services where, unluckily, a lot of craft which created a very unjust tax system but also one which people didn't trust. So we needed these types of reforms and they were difficult ones. Again we had to use our imagination to find out what certain properties were not being reported. For example we taxed swimming pools. People were not reporting their swimming pools so we had to go on to Google Earth to see where swimming pools were. Some people tried to cover them up with canvases and so on. So this was some of the difficulties in reform. I want to compare it with Ireland. I'm not an expert on Ireland but from my conversations, from my meager knowledge, I think what the difference between your program and the way you dealt with it and ours were a number of things which I think were quite important. First of all, when you had the banking problem and you took on an unfair burden as citizens of paying the demeanors of the banking community, however in the end you said, well let's get on with it and there was a wider consensus in the political elite of your country. Let's move on. Let's do what is necessary to get through with this. Secondly, that did show not only a political consensus but it created a sense of stability, a sense of credibility, a sense of continuity. And of course the structures, your governance structures may be one of the positive legacies of colonial rule. I know Cyprus compared to Greece, they are very negative from the colonial rule but that one possible positive is the public administration, which we don't have in Greece compared to Cyprus. Ambassador of Cyprus is here. So you had these structures which made it much more credible. So even though you have the advantage of the tax structures which brings in foreign direct investment, I believe that that is not the only reason why your economy is moving forward, you have a much more organized public sector and a sense of stability, a sense of credibility, which is very important for the economy. And in the European Union when we had this program of adjustment these types of issues were overlooked. It was sort of a blanket policy of an adjustment program without looking at some of the underlying causes of why we reached these difficult positions. Secondly, Greece was the first country to have to deal with this sovereign debt issue and truly the European institutions and members were not, we were not familiar with how you dealt, how you deal with a country which is possibly facing bankruptcy within a currency zone. So yes, there was a lack of knowledge, there was a lack of understanding and many mistakes were made. Amongst them was the sense that well this, you know, countries had to be punished for their bad behavior. So there was a bit of a moralistic discussion about this and talking with many of my American counterparts or finance ministers or former federal heads of the Fed, they often said, well, you know, if we were in the U.S. we would not put too much time around the moral problem. We would deal that at some point, but we would just save the day and we could do it in a few days or weeks. Why are you dragging on so long? The EU response was very, very slow and fearful, I would say. I say that because I think we have underestimated the capacity that the European Union has if it wants to work in unison. I'll just give you one example. I remember I was in the presidency as Foreign Minister of the European Union in 2003. That was the time of the Iraq War, a very divisive time for the European Union, as you may remember, a split. And we had very big difficulties in coming up with common statements, but in any case we got through it. A traditional meeting with the United States at the end of our presidency was in Washington. We met with President Bush. Mr. Simites was there, of Greece, and I was there, of course, the Commission. And the first issue he put on the agenda was not the Iraq War and our relations, his relations with Europe. It was, are you going to change your policy on GMOs? Because we want to sell GMO products to Europe. Well, whatever side you may take on the GMO issue, pro or against, what it showed is what an academic called Anu Bradford, she's actually finished, calls the Brussels effect. The fact that when we have a unified policy and we do have it in the single market, people listen. We have influence around the world. And that was a big issue. So issues on whether it's on our markets, whether it's having to do with, you know, recently Microsoft or Google or whatever, or air pollution for airplanes and so on. These are issues where when we have a united stance, they will listen to us. We didn't have this strong stance vis-a-vis the markets at that time when it hit, when the sovereign debt crisis hit. The, what, when I went to Angela Merkel very often as being the major player in this, obviously, her stance was, I'll use a German word, you must do your house alfgaben. You must do your homework, basically. And what she was saying is you have to put your own house in order. And I said, yes, we do. There is a Greek problem. Obviously it was an Irish problem, a different character, maybe a Portuguese problem of a different character. But I said there are flaws in the Eurozone and there are also markets that are very risk-averse. We have to show, you have to somehow together protect us from these market fears and these risks. And this is what Europe could have done. We underestimated, therefore, our potential. And the sense of pooling our strengths was maybe seen by some in Europe as pooling risk. But when you do pool risk, you actually create a strength. That's what insurance companies do. We could have done that. That's what the credit union, the banking union is supposed to do. And to prove my point, both in 2009, early on before the sovereign debt crisis, the spreads were going up in the periphery. Then Finance Minister of Germany Steinbrook came out and said to the markets, don't worry, we're here. We will guarantee bonds, basically in so many words. And the spreads went down. In 2012, when it seemed that the Euro was going to fall apart, Draghi came out and he said, we will do whatever it takes. We will actually buy bonds on the secondary market. He didn't need to buy bonds. He may have done so, but he didn't. He just said that. Had Europe at the very initial stage come out and told the markets, don't worry, we're here. You know, they have a program. They have, and I had already begun a program in Greece of major changes before I had to access this mechanism. Had they done that, I think we would have been in a much better position and Europe would have avoided, and our countries such as Greece and Ireland possibly may not have needed to get into this bailout program. I'll add another element to the problem I faced and Greece faced, and I think it's a lesson for us, but it's also, I think, interesting to contrast with Ireland. The lack of consensus in Greece was very, very different. It was characteristically different than what you had in Ireland. I'm sure people bickered. I'm sure people had criticism in Ireland too, but down deep there was a sense that there was the major political currents were saying, well, let's get through with this. We didn't have that in Greece. As a matter of fact, there were many in opposition, both on the right and the left, that cultivated in the public a populism that, oh, we don't have to do anything. There were alternatives. We didn't, and you know, this is all a conspiracy. Why don't you go to the Russians and have them buy the debts? Why don't the Chinese? And so on which I actually did, the Chinese bought 6 billion. We needed something like 110 at that first bailout, so it was something. But the Russians, when I talked to Putin, deferred me to our bilateral discussions about buying weapons. So it wasn't exactly what I had expected. When I reached the point when we came out, we needed the second bailout, and the second bailout I believe we needed because there was a prediction that Greece would be coming out into the markets in 2012. The IMF realized we wouldn't be on the markets in 2012. We had to renegotiate a new bailout program. The blame was put more on Greece for that, but it was actually the Eurozone that was going into a crisis at that time with contagion, with Italy and Spain possibly needing to access the mechanism. That's when Draghi came out, of course, a little bit later. But I decided that I needed a consensus. I needed a sense of ownership. I talked to the opposition. They didn't want any cooperation. So I called up for a referendum, as Brendan said earlier. I had a negative reaction from leaders in the European Union, which, of course, reverberated inside Greece, and I ended up at least creating a coalition which then pushed the program further. But we lost a chance there to own the program, and I think move forward for reforms more quickly and getting Greece out of this problem. Actually, the two opposition parties, both on the right and the left, the one now in government, the Sirica or Tsipras' party, both campaigned in elections on an anti-memorandum agenda and won the elections on an anti-memorandum agenda. The problem with that is that they didn't have much of else as a program. It was very easy to win elections on an anti-memorandum agenda, but then if you don't have more of a program than you don't have much else to do, then simply follow the memorandum. So, in fact, the reform dynamic that we had started, I think needs to be rebooted, needs to be restarted in Greece, and I do hope I've supported both governments because I've supported my country, and I hope this government will move forward to deeper reforms rather than simply following a third and very difficult austerity program. After five years of austerity, we've lost 25% of GDP. We are number one in OECD as far as fiscal adjustment is ever in OECD's history, with huge unemployment, youth unemployment up to 50%. We were moving into some slow growth. Now we went back into recession, but hopefully if this government can create a sense of stability and move forward, then we will regain confidence. But I just wanted to, before I conclude, talk a little bit about the European Union and what some conclusions I would come to. Well, first of all, it was easy to put the blame on separate countries. So, the Irish are to blame, yes, we had our responsibilities, the Greeks are to blame, whatever. Maybe less the Spaniards, they were within the Amastric Treaty, but they had a construction bubble. In any case, what happened was there was a narrative which developed, and I want to get to that because I think that's core and key to where Europe is today. The narrative that developed was not that this is a common problem we have to solve, but it was the bad Greeks or the lazy Greeks. I saw that number of times and I looked up statistics. We actually work more hours than any other European in OECD, or amongst the OECD statistics have that. But there were other problems, of course. But this narrative was very easy. What it meant also that it said, it was a convenient truth that allowed for others to say, we really don't need to make reforms in the Eurozone, we really don't need to make major changes. If each country does its job, its homework, then everything will be fine. That's not true because, first of all, we had, Ireland was spared of this, but we had the continual rumors around Brexit and not only rumors, but even real threats or preparation in some countries. You know what that means. If you feel you're going to lose your currency and go to another currency, you won't spend, you won't borrow, banks won't lend, and foreign direct investment won't come because they will just wait. That's what happened. So we had a positive economic activity, and that was a recurrent theme even recently. That could have been stopped, but that was catastrophic. That could have been stopped at the European level. We cut that story, and that would have been much better. We had, of course, six years of lack of liquidity in banks, very slow progress in all these stress tests, only recently have we sort of gone through that. There is a disparity in competitiveness within the Eurozone, deflationary policies, making our debt more difficult to service, very slow movement on the banking union. I do hope we do move to a credit guarantee. QE came, very important, from Draghi, but something like seven years after the 2008 financial crisis, very, very late. And, of course, we have the disparities between surplus and deficit countries. These are some of the structural problems of the Eurozone, which, if we do not address, will continue to bog us down and will find them sooner or later again. So, but what I want to say about the... Europe did move ahead, of course. I can't... There is a question of whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. Europe did move ahead. We did create this mechanism. Draghi did move on NECB. We are slowly moving to a banking union. We're talking about more fiscal coordination and monitoring. So that has been positive. But the narrative still behind this became very much a national one. Very much a stereotype between the core and the periphery, the lazy and the austere. And from both sides, very, very negative. How can you create a union, a family, when you start mistrusting each other at this level? And I think that has been fodder to populism. It's been fodder to a resurgent nationalism in Europe. It's been fodder to extreme groups, whether they are on the right or on the left. It's blended in with xenophobia and racism. And that has just been fed by the refugee crisis, of course. It's just been multiplied by the refugee crisis. So what I am saying here is that Europe has had an opportunity, but it has also a huge challenge. To conclude, we are in a globalizing world. If I look at Ireland and compare it to Greece, I would say countries that have more stable democratic, transparent functioning structures are able to be more adaptable to the major changes we are facing in our globalizing economy. So that's one conclusion. We need to get our act together in each country and help create the types of structures that will make our countries. You have countries in the Nordic countries that are able to combine social welfare on the one hand, innovation on the other, and be very competitive in the global economy. But they are able to adapt, and they do that through democratic means, through deliberation, through consensus, and so on. These, I think, are what a functioning democracy is, and I think that is one very important point. However, the types of problems, the types of challenges we are facing cannot be in the end only through national policies. Whether it's the financial crisis which I live through, whether it's now the refugee crisis which Greece is facing, whether it is climate change, of course, or other similar types of problems, we need further cooperation. So at a time when we need more and more integration and cooperation, unluckily what we are seeing is a narrative in many of our societies of going back to the tribes, going back to our, you know, huddling into closing down, putting our walls, closing our doors, thinking that the problems will stay outside if we build walls of one sort or another. So I think we need to think of how the eurozone moves ahead on issues like economic and fiscal coordination and integration, mutualization of debt, the very controversial issue of the euro bond, but we need to open up these issues, tax policies, financial transaction taxes, as I said, the banking union. These are things that the eurozone needs to move and of course some form of governance of the eurozone will have to be further discussed. I would also say that we need to revive what politics should be and has been if we go back to the ancient times, ancient Greece. Again, I'll come to Ireland. I would say that what you've been able to do is create a sense of stability, but also innovation. You're both innovative. I'm not talking about business, I'm not talking about science. I'm talking about politics. The idea of politics in ancient times was basically a revelation that, you know, we human beings don't have to accept our fate. We can actually change our fate. We can actually take our fate into our own hands and make something of it. We don't have to listen to tyrants, the kings, we don't have to bow down to the high priests or magicians. We, as human beings, can actually change our fate. Well, when you have that, then you start investing in people, you start investing in education, philosophy, games, athletics, and whatever. Theater, arts, and democracy then becomes an innovation where, on the one hand, you humanize power so that you make sure that it's not usurped, the concentration of power was hubris for the ancient Greeks, but also you allow for a creation of a trust, a collective trust to work together to be able to effect change. Now, that was politics. Politics was and has and should be using imagination to innovate to see how we can make our world better. Politics today is very much constrained. One of the reasons, there are many other reasons, is that we are still national politicians, but the problems are more and more global. And so we need to see how we, how democracy will move beyond borders. And otherwise, people will start moving towards a sensible, we're helpless, we can't really solve these problems. Why aren't these politicians solving these problems? Why can't they, and we aren't that powerful in this global world as national politicians? But that frustration will somehow come out. That would be a renationalization, would it be populism, would it be fundamentalism? Will it be violence? Will it be simply a passivity of our citizens? Well, the European Union, the European Union has the potential to be a different model in this globalizing world. That's what I want to include with. We are nations, different nations, different histories, even wars and so on, but we have been able to create a sense of, this is the basis of this, of common values going beyond these national differences. And that's a seed of what possible regional or even global governments could look like. And this, I believe, goes to a concept which needs more thought, to think of the fact that we need a sense of what global citizenship, whether you're a refugee from Syria or whether you are in Silicon Valley in Berkeley or outside here near the airport where you have your big industries, there should be a sense that everybody has some basic rights around the world and basic protection. But why don't we try doing that at the European level? I throw out a few ideas that have been talked about at different times, which is democracy beyond borders. We've talked about unemployment, whether it's been this idea of erasmus for the unemployed, that would mean something like a European voucher for the unemployed where you wouldn't have a transfer economy from one country to another, but you would have actually a transfer from a central European bureaucracy to a citizen. It could be in Germany, it could be in Greece, it could be in Ireland, it could be anywhere else. A youth would then decide to go and study wherever for training to become employed again. Why not the European asylum? We're talking about refugees. The idea that we should register each and every person that comes through our borders and then see of course what he or she is, asylum seeker or migrant or need to be repatriated or whatever, but some kind of an idea and maybe in the future some sense of an integration with the European citizenship. It's not a Greek or an Irish or German citizenship, but maybe we should consider a European citizenship. Maybe our migrants and refugees could become the first true European citizens. So let's think of it in a very different way. There has been a lot of discussion about election of a president, direct election from our citizens. We need some kind of a symbolic sense that we have a European and not a dominant one country or other country or something, but some European leader, woman or man that has the, at least if not the power, at least the status, the legitimacy of democratic being democratic elected. Other ideas of European wide referendum and so on. I say this because I think, again, if we want to bring politics back to our citizens and make the European Union a European citizen project, we have to think in an innovative way, think somewhat out of the box. Final conclusion, Europe has been a peace project and has been very, very, very successful despite the difficulties of the recent years, Ukraine and so on. But it has to rethink its mission statement. And I think from peace project, it has to be one of humanizing globalization. I think, Rory, I remember you many years ago using this term of humanizing globalization as we social democrats talked about humanizing capitalism. We need to be a humanizer of globalization. We will face as humanity in a globalizing economy and interdependent world crisis after crisis and sometimes very, very swift ones and very, very, very difficult ones, complex ones. Europe, if it works together, can help adapt to the changes. It can help mitigate crisis. So it slows down the crisis so that we have time as politicians, as democracies, to deal with them. And thirdly, also to lead change around the world. We can actually lead, and that's what I would want to see Europe doing in democratizing, equalizing, and sustaining in a sustainable way the world. Maybe in Paris again, despite its terrible wounds these past few days, in two weeks there is a conference, a summit, global conference on climate change. Why not Europe being at the lead, not simply about certain legislations, but invest in a model, a vision for our younger generation of an alternative sustainable economy where we not only stimulate our economy, but we train our youth in these new technologies, we create the infrastructure, whether it's energy infrastructure, whether it's the grids, whether it's the technological and communications infrastructure, the alternative types of transportation which are needed, which will make us a real single market, not simply on paper, but to create the necessary infrastructure so that we can be competitive and at the same time creating a new vision for Europe, but also leading in the world. So thank you very much.