US ambassador to Greece Geoffrey Pyatt continued a mini tour in the northern part of the east Mediterranean country this week, meeting with local office-holders in Thessaloniki on Wednesday, including Macedonia-Thrace Deputy Minister Stavros Kalafatis.

Both men referred to a new Thessaloniki TechLab, an “ecosystem” to be established by US educational institutions in the northern Greece metropolis, in cooperation with US multinationals Pfizer, Cisco and Deloitte’s innovation hubs. The aim is to attract more American investment in the region and to further boost at a transition to “green energy”, according to the US envoy.

Pyatt also underlined that the Biden administration and the Greek government under Kyriakos Mitsotakis are determined to cooperate towards a sustainable economic recovery after the end of the Pandemic, with the work done in Thessaloniki directly promoting this goal.

On his part, Kalafatis said he briefed the veteran US diplomat on his sub-ministry’s transformation into a growth-oriented organization and as an “accelerator” of major projects and works in the wider Macedonia-Thrace region, which includes most of northern Greece.