As fellow EU Member States, the UK and Greece have a shared commitment to ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, as agreed in Brussels in 2007. 

Experts are in regular contact on the issues not just in Brussels, but also bilateraly.  In the past the British Embassy in Athens hosted visits to Greece by officials from the UK Office of Climate Change, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) and the Prince of Wales' Business and Environment Programme for talks with Greeks about how Europe can meet the challenges of a transition to a low-carbon economy.

We have also hosted seminars on the key issue of how to take our economies through this transition:  The Economics of Climate Change conference in November 2007 featured a range of top speakers, including the Senior Economist from the Stern Review on the Economics of Climbate Change, Dimitris Zenghelis, and the then Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs' Special Representative for Climate Change, Theodoros Skylakakis.

Also in 2008 eminent UK environmentalist Jonathon Porritt talked us through sustainable development issues at another seminar at the Ambassador's Residence, entitled Sustainable Development: From Theory to Practice. 

Although at opposite ends of the continent, both Britain and Greece have had recent examples of extreme weather events, which climatologists predict will increase in frequence as global warming takes hold; in summer 2007 at the same time that the UK was under feet of water owing to some of the worst flooding in recent times, Greece was experiencing severe and tragic forest fires.  So both countries understand the dangers of severe climate change and the need to act fast to prevent it.