Greece must move ahead with the immediate establishment and approval of a 15-year programme for the construction of Hellenic Navy ships and submarines in Greece.
“Greek shipyards have the infrastructure, know-how, technology, ecosystem and all the necessary support to immediately begin building warships and submarines in Greece,” Panos Xenokostas, President of the Hellenic Shipyards Association (HSA), said in a speech at the EDIP Info Day and Greece-Cyprus Defence Industry Day.
The HSA president presented a plan that both Greece and Cyprus should jointly adopt in order to achieve the necessary level of autonomy within a short period and make the transition to a new era. The proposal regarding Cyprus includes:
– strong commercial cooperation, with Greek shipyards among the preferred options for Cypriot shipowners;
– joint government initiatives under the umbrella of the 15-year programme; and
– 70% technology transfer to the Cypriot shipbuilding ecosystem.
Xenokostas said in his speech that “every country that has sought to establish a sustainable shipbuilding defence industry has done so in one and only one way: through an approved, binding, 15-year domestic shipbuilding programme. A programme that will provide predictability, enable investment in infrastructure and human resources, and create the critical mass needed for competitiveness.
“And this 15-year programme, from the outset, will explicitly provide for exports to third countries. We are not designing only…
