2014 – A year of opportunity?

On the banks of the magnificent Rhine, in my room on the sixth floor of the Hyatt Hotel, I’m watching the comings and goings of the container boats that ply their trade between the industrialised cities of the Rhineland.

From above it’s as if they’re gliding effortlessly, bearing their cargo without sound, without propulsion. The majestic river, here affected by its confluence with its tributary, the Main, changes its plumage regularly: at one moment grey and sullen; at the next silver-blue, a sliver of light.

Here, far from my duties in Athens, I’m taking it easy and have decided to write my last blog of 2013. I’ve already read every Christmas issue of the Greek and British papers I have to hand: personalities of the year, the best books and films of 2013, who died this year. But now I’m in a quandary. There’s something gloomy in these lists, I find. Instead of reviewing the year now, I think I’ll put off a retrospective piece to the middle of January, when I celebrate the first anniversary of my arrival in Greece.

Yes, I prefer looking forward to looking back. Indeed, I’m greatly looking forward to new possibilities, new ventures, new encounters in 2014.

As ever, New Year’s Eve will be the opportunity for a big, global party. But in the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, it will be a special time of inauguration: for “Thessaloniki 2014: European Youth Capital”.

This party will last all year round. In November, my Embassy contributed to the preliminaries (see the photos on flickr), and the British Council will also play an important role next year. The events promise to be fun, and I’m intending to return to the city myself to take part in some of them. There’s an impressive website: Holocaustremembrance.com.

On 21 May 1864, under the terms of a treaty signed in the same year by representatives of the great powers (with Greece represented by Harilaos Trikoupis, then a young man but destined to become one of the country’s greatest statesmen of that era), the British authorities finally withdrew from the Ionian Islands (lying off the west of Greece), enabling their unification for the first time with the then Kingdom of Greece.

After the Napoleonic Wars, we had acquired a protectorate over the islands, and maintained it for nearly 50 years. In 2014, therefore, we shall be celebrating the 150th anniversary of the cessation of the islands from the British Empire and their union with Greece. Together with the authorities on the islands, we’re planning a suitable event, to commemorate the close ties between us and, of course, British heritage on the island (principally but not only, the game of cricket…).

The year of 1864 was important not only for the enlargement of the Greek state but also for the birth of the most important Greek prime minister of the 20th century, Eleftherios Venizelos. I have the great pleasure of living in the mansion that was built for him by his second wife, Helena Schilizzi-Venizelou. I’m considering how best to celebrate, here in this house, the 150th anniversary of his birth.

Perhaps we might try to answer the question, ‘What does Eleftherios Venizelos mean today?’

Next year, the UK will assume from Canada the chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (see Holocaustremembrance.com/), whose aim is to mobilise the support of political and social leaders on behalf of education, remembrance and research on the Holocaust. I intend to co-operate with the Greek Government, local authorities and the Jewish community, to continue effectively this essential work.

Without doubt, the year will be full of events, full of demands. Politically, we have ahead of us the Greek Presidency of the EU Council of Ministers (see my blog of 22 November) and the European parliamentary elections. Economically, we’re awaiting positive developments here in Greece: a primary fiscal surplus, a current account in balance, perhaps even the long awaited recovery and the concomitant return of growth. All of us certainly hope to see such developments improving the tough social conditions here.

Whatever transpires, it’s clear that 2014 will be an important year, packed with incident. In the meantime and while we await New Year, let me wish all of you a ‘Very Happy New Year!’

Mainz, Germany 26 December