Amidst the continuing bad news regarding local tourism, main opposition PASOK party leader George Papandreou recently outlined the three priorities constituting the party's integrated plan on "Green Development."

The plan, which comes in the wake of some officials claiming an improved environment would help tourism, was unveiled in the presence of European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, the President of the European Renewable Energy Sources Council Arthouros Zervos and local administration, agency and organisation representatives.

Mr. Papandreou stressed that the current crisis "is related directly to the end of an economic model that promoted growth without guaranteeing the viability and prosperity of our society."

He added that the crisis is an opportunity to reverse a growth model that is breathing its last, "an opportunity to tell those who are smothering the possibilities of the country and of our people, to those who are preventing progress and are cultivating inertia and pessimism, to those who are restricting the right for a life of quality and dignity: make way for Greece to pass."

Analysing his party's three main priorities, Mr. Papandreou underlined that the first priority is the climate and energy. The transition to an economy that reduces carbon emissions by 2020 and that can ultimately rid itself from mineral fuel by 2050.

The second is radical restructuring in all of the economy's production sectors, in agriculture, fisheries, tourism, culture and processing.    

The third priority, he noted, is economising with natural resources, with forests and protected regions, waters and refuse, as well as with green infrastructures, transportation, coastal shipping and the public environment.

Mr. Papandreou concluded that the transition to the green development model will take place with economic and institutional tools, with a green taxation reform, with strong public investing in research in the development of new technologies, with the creation of the "Green Fund," and with the participation of the public and private sectors that will finance the improvement of the environment's quality.