Greece has been elected a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council by collecting 182 votes from the total of 188 countries that participated in the electoral process
The 193-member world body voted to elect five countries to serve two-year terms on the council.
“Today is a historic day for Greece, for the imprint of our country on the world. The UN General Assembly voted in favor of our country. This is a great success. This shows the important capital that Greece has in the world, in the international environment,” said the Minister of Foreign Affairs after the end of the vote.
“We will work together with the member states of the UN to strengthen peace and security and to ensure that global governance can effectively address emerging challenges,” the Foreign Ministry wrote in a post on X in which he informed that Greece was elected as a member of the UN Security Council for the period 2025 to 2026.
Apart from Greece, the four countries to get a non-permanent seat are Denmark, Pakistan, Panama, and Somalia.
The 10 non-permanent seats on the 15-member council are allotted to regional groups who usually select their candidates. This time, the regional groups put forward Somalia for an African seat, Pakistan for an Asia-Pacific seat, Panama for a Latin America and Caribbean seat, and Denmark and Greece for two mainly Western seats.
The five council members elected Thursday will start their terms on January 1st, replacing those whose two-year terms end on December 31st—Mozambique, Japan, Ecuador, Malta, and Switzerland.
They will join the five veto-wielding permanent members—the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom, and France—and the five countries elected last year—Algeria, Guyana, South Korea, Sierra Leone, and Slovenia.
Greece’s priorities in the UN Security Council
Greece is a country firmly based on the idea of International Law as a landmark that allows the world to move ahead and peace to prevail among countries and states, Greek Foreign Affairs Minister George Gerapetritis said on Tuesday.
In an address at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAF) in New York, Gerapetritis analyzed Greece’s priorities if it was to win a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council.
In a world of multiple global challenges, Greece can play the role of a bridge, he said, running on the motto of 3Ds: Dialog, Diplomacy, and Democracy.
“We truly must reexamine the whole idea of a peaceful resolution of differences, which is in reality enshrined in the UN Charter,” the Greek FM said. “We are very willing to develop a new idea on the compliance to International Law and to exert some pressure on the United Nations. It is true that the United Nations and other international organizations basically had to deal with several concurrent crises.”
Referring to the global challenges in terms of wars and climate change, ahead of the vote, Gerapetritis said that “it will be a difficult yet more demanding period, but we very much look forward to that.”
Referring to Greece’s role as a bridge, the FM said that Greece lies in a region that has seen a lot of conflict, in the junction of three continents—Europe, Asia, and Africa—and also lies within the Balkan peninsula, which has seen a lot of conflicts in the past.
“I believe it is important for a country like Greece to try and become a bridge for many nations, many countries. Our hope, if elected to the Security Council, is that we become the synthesis of the South and North, of the West and the East. We can do it, because Greece has the privilege of speaking with all its neighboring nations.”
Greece launched candidacy in 2023
In March 2023, Greece officially launched the campaign to become a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.
The then-Foreign Affairs Minister Nikos Dendias launched the bid at an event organized by the Permanent Mission of Greece to the UN in New York.
In the presence of dozens of heads of permanent delegations from around the world, the Greek Foreign Minister noted that “Greece always supports dialogue and diplomacy as the only viable means to achieve the main goals of this Organization: international peace, development and the promotion of human rights.”
Dendias focused on the words democracy, dialogue, and diplomacy, which formed the road map for Greece’s candidacy.
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