Read the speech of the former Prime Minister and founder of the Symposium of Symi, during the opening ceremony of the 27th Symposium which took place in Bourtzi, Skiathos, on Sunday, July 13, 2025.
“Dear Friends,
Welcome to the beautiful island of Skiathos.
Welcome to this year’s Symi Symposium — a journey, a friendly Odyssey, not just a gathering.
Let me begin with heartfelt thanks to our host, Mayor Thodoris Tzoumas, whose partnership, energy, and vision have helped make this experience possible.
Thanks to him and the people of Skiathos, we will not only engage in deep conversations, but also explore the natural beauty and rich history of this island — a land where myth and memory still breathe.
Let me also thank our Volunteers, here on stage, who will do their best to accommodate you, inform and facilitate our daily activities.
And I also want to welcome our fellows and team of the Agora Project. Young Chinese fellows from around the world here on Skiathos, to be part of our learning and our conversations.
Symi is not a typical conference. It never has been.
The Symi Symposium is something much older — and perhaps something more urgent today than ever before.
It is a symposion — in the ancient Greek sense.
A space where equals gather — not to compete or perform, but to listen, think, dream, and question together.
We avoid hierarchies as we also avoid ties.
Yet, every voice matters. Every silence too.
We walk, we talk, we reflect.
We allow the sea breeze, the light, and a good question to spark our imagination.
We allow poetry, music, dance — and even laughter — to say things our policy papers never could.
And perhaps above all: we connect.
Perhaps the most profound experience of the Symi Symposium are the friendships, new and old, the deeper bonds we build.
In a world torn by division and distrust, being and imagining together is one of the most hopeful acts of our time.
Each year the Symposium is different.
New islands. New participants. New historical crossroads.
When we began this journey 27 years ago, the world was brimming with optimism.
The Cold War was over. Walls were falling.
Global cooperation seemed not only possible — but inevitable.
It was a time of possibility — a time when we believed we could shape the future with our shared values:
democracy, peace, human dignity, social justice, sustainability.
A time of unbounded hope.
Have we lost hope?
Or is there still a glimmer left inside Pandora’s box — waiting, urging us to open it once more?
That is why we are here. Together.
Because we refuse to let possibility die, imagination fade, or our shared spirit disappear.
We gather here because we believe — deeply — that a better world is possible.
And even in the darkest times, we still hold faith in something powerful:
The ability of people to act. To care. To change the course of history — together.
Yet we are also here, this year, because we are deeply concerned.
We are concerned about the climate crisis — driven by a fossil fuel economy that is literally setting our planet on fire. Here on this island, we feel its effects: droughts, fire warnings, a fragile ecosystem under stress.
We are concerned about soaring inequalities that corrode our democracies and societies.
Where economic power has become political power.
Where transnational corporations are mightier than states, and public debate is distorted through private, algorithmic platforms.
Where a new oligarchy captures our institutions, erodes trust, spreads disinformation, and silences dissent.
We are concerned about technology without ethics.
Whether AI, quantum computing, biotechnology, or autonomous weapons — we face a stark choice:
Will we use these tools to empower humanity, or to control it?
To liberate, or to surveil?
To equalize opportunity, or to entrench power?
To deepen democracy, or militarize our fears?
We are concerned, horrified, repulsed, by the brutalities, the dark side of humanity, degrading fellow human beings, their dignity, their lives, their future, in the Middle East, daily in Gaza, the civil war in Sudan, the incessant night-time drones over Ukraine.
This year’s Symposium takes place amid a global tide of authoritarianism — subtle or blatant, creeping or crashing.
Across the world, rights are under siege.
Freedoms are rolled back.
Dissent is criminalized.
And scapegoats are everywhere — migrants, minorities, the vulnerable — blamed for crises they did not cause.
Unfortunately even here in Greece, our government has taken measures, unconstitutional, unacceptable, thinking that the refugee problem can be solved by denying rights and militarizing borders.
This is not new. We have lived it.
My own family were refugees. I come from a family of refugees. My father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather, myself, and many of us here have been refugees.
We carry that memory.
We also carry the responsibility.
Because what we are witnessing is not a random set of events.
It is a systemic failure — the consequence of unregulated global capitalism, extreme wealth concentration, the erosion of the public good, and the weakening of civic institutions.
And in the face of this authoritarian drift, the answer cannot be less democracy.
It must be more democracy.
And more humanity.
So let this week be our collective act of resistance — and renewal.
Let us not only analyze the world’s problems, but rekindle our ability to act on them — together.
In search of actionables, Let us rekindle hope — not as naïveté, but as a choice.
Hope, not as escape, but as a commitment to justice, to solidarity, to reinvention.
Let us remember:
The most powerful force against tyranny is not just laws or treaties — but people who care.
People who dare to come together and say: We can build another future.
In a fragmented world, one where disillusionment, frustration, fear, insecurity, even hatred, and anger blast out loudly, seem to overwhelm us, what we will do these days, here on Skiathos, may be one of the most vital, radical acts of all:
To think together.
To feel together.
To imagine anew.
Welcome to the Symi Symposium 2025.
Let us begin.”
