Greece
Dendias asks shipowners for a €250 million donation for new Fleet assets
Defence Minister Nikos Dendias said he signed a letter asking the Union of Greek Shipowners for a very large donation of €250 million, to be spent exclusively on operational assets for the Hellenic Navy’s Fleet.
A donation of €250 million, to be used exclusively to acquire operational assets for the Greek Fleet, is being requested by Defence Minister Nikos Dendias from the Union of Greek Shipowners. He announced the request on Thursday, November 5, speaking at the ceremony presenting the renovated north facade of the building that houses the ministry in Holargos. He said he signed a letter to the Union of Greek Shipowners (UGS) the same day, in which, in his words, “I ask and expect a very large donation”. The UGS is the body representing Greek shipowners.
The €130 million already given
The minister said the Ministry of National Defence has so far gathered about €130 million in donations, which, he said, were used mainly to improve armed forces infrastructure. The building’s new face was funded by Piraeus Bank with a €10 million sponsorship. Dendias publicly thanked the bank and its chief executive Christos Megalou. The designs for the north facade are by the sculptor Kostas Varotsos.
Donations to the Navy have come from the shipping sector before, such as the general support ship “Perseus”, a donation of the Aikaterini Laskaridi Foundation. The €250 million, however, is almost double the roughly €130 million the ministry has received so far in donations and, unlike those, would go to operational capabilities rather than infrastructure.
The old building “aesthetically repulsive”
For most of his speech the minister dwelt on the building itself. He said the armed forces never had the chance to design a monumental headquarters from scratch, but inherited “one of the most impersonal and, if you will allow me to say, aesthetically repulsive public buildings”. He called its transformation into monumental architecture a “miracle”, as well as the conversion of the “energy-hungry concrete mass” into a bioclimatic building.
To support the logic of sponsorship, Dendias went back to ancient Athens. He recalled that the great works of Athenian democracy, even the Athenian fleet itself, rested on the institution of sponsorship, the donation by those with the means for the common good. The request to the shipowners comes as the ministry implements the new force structure, with the aim of modernising the three branches.
