PM Mitsotakis, former PM Samaras at signing of W. Peloponnese axial road project

The signing of the agreement to build the road linking Kalamata, Rizomilos, Pylos, and Methoni along the southwestern section of the Peloponnese was held at the airport of Kalamata on Friday.

The event was addressed by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and by former PM Antonis Samaras, under whose government the project began.

“A decades-long unmet expectation comes now to be implemented by the government of New Democracy (ND), so that we may within the next few years have a modern and safe road,” Mitsotakis said of the project in the region of Messinia. He said the project was a dream of shipowner Vassilis Konstantakopoulos, who envisioned and funded the Costa Navarino complex, and was planned by Samaras, “who under very difficult circumstances moved the preliminary reports.”

Speaking on the background of the project (formally the Road Axis of Southwest Peloponnese), former PM Samaras referred to the vision of Konstantantakopoulos, noting that the International Airport of Kalamata is named after him for his contributions to the development of the region of Messinia.

Samaras also spoke of the region’s develoment and of the road project that began under New Democracy. “It was our government that auctioned the project in 2014 and the completion of the Patra-Pyrgos highway, which in an irrational way the government of SYRIZA-ANEL annulled, with the well-known catastrophic results that delayed the project by a decade,” the former PM and ND leader said. New Democracy, he added, is a party of large-scale projects and large-scale decisions, a party that leads Greece to growth and prosperity.