Greek politician Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the European Commissioner-designate for sustainable transport and tourism, faced questioning by MEPs in Brussels on Monday, including a direct query over the 2023 Tempi rail disaster in Greece, which claimed the lives of 57 people.

In an opening address before the Q&A session, Tzitzikostas, who served as the elected regional governor of central Macedonia in in northern Greece before being nominated by the Mitsotakis government for a Commission portfolio, said he would put forward a plan to connect EU capitals and large cities via high-speed rail “so that no region is left behind”.

The heightened attention over Tzitzikostas’ confirmation was echoed earlier by the main opposition party in Greece, leftist SYRIZA, which claimed that his nomination was made “to act as a veil to cover up (the current government’s) responsibilities for the mismanagement of the railway network.”

Referring to deadly rail collision in late February 2023, Tzitzikostas said “such an accident should never happen again anywhere in Europe. So, safety will be my number one priority, and I will be strict with all member states, because we have common rules and tools to prevent such accidents today, but they are not always respected or deployed, and this is unacceptable.”

Vehicle Industry

Asked by French liberal MEP Valérie Deveaux over his plan to support car industry workers at plants specializing in sectors that will probably wither with the transition to electric vehicles, such as the “thermic value chain, which is probably going to disappear” according to Deveaux, Tzitzikostas said:

“All transition are difficult… We need to find ways, and we need to find funding that will allow us to help the automotive sector make the transition and be able to obtain the goals that we have set. “It is not an easy task, I know, but we are here.”

Wind energy

When asked, a Green MEP, for his views about energy produced from wind, he said “wind propulsion could save us a lot of money in fuels and bring us forwards on our climate goal.”

Moreover, the Greek nominee said that he’s in favor of wind technologies, while adding, however, that “we still need to assess a little bit more on how this technology works and measure the actual contribution to the goals that we have.”

Shipbuilding

Turning to a sector that is of particular interest to Greece, he was asked about initiatives to keep the shipbuilding sector in Europe competitive.
“We have to learn from our mistakes,” Tzitzikostas said, citing the solar panels sector, where he maintained that 96 percent of the solar panels installed in the EU are produced in China. He said one solution is “better conditions for the European industry and its workers”.
Other nominees queried by MEPs during the sessions included agriculture commissioner designate Christophe Hansen, from Luxembourg, Slovakia’s Maroš Šefčovič, the commissioner-designate for trade and economic security and for inter-institutional relations and transparency, and Malta’s Glenn Micallef, the commissioner-designate for intergenerational fairness, youth, culture and sport.

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