President Pavlopoulos stresses Greece's European orientation in message for July 24 anniversary

Especially, he added, "when this criminal deviation came at the cost of deep - and as the tragedy of Cyprus shows, still unhealed - injuries to our nation's core."

"Our concomitant debt, especially at this crucial time for our future and the country, is to also defend the rights acquired from the restoration of democracy and from our later alignment, one fully compatible with our democratic and cultural roots, with the other democratic European peoples in the framework of the European Union, even more so in the framework of its inner core, the eurozone," he said.

Since the founding of Greece's new constitution under Constantine Karamanlis in 1975, Pavlopoulos said, all Greek governments had worked to make Greece a part of the "great European family," leading to economic and social prosperity but also to security from external threats.

"Today, in the vortex of an unprecedented social and economic crisis and with our gaze fixed on the valuable lessons of the foremost historic anniversary of July 24, 1074, we are once again called to fight united to the greatest possible degree, to fight with all our strength for Greece to remain in the EU and the eurozone, to continue the natural and self-evident national course," he said.

Any other course would be contrary to the recent popular mandates but also clearly disastrous on a social, economic and national level, he pointed out, warning that there must be no illusions on this score.

"To all of our fellow citizens that are genuinely troubled about the future and essence of European unification, this must be pointed out: it is infinitely better, while remaining steadfastly and determinedly in the inner core of Europe, to contend with its peoples so [Europe] correct its mistakes and rediscovers its fundamental values and principles...In any case, it is inconceivable to choose the lonely and clearly dead-end path of social and economic impoverishment and of an extremely corrosive, even fatal, national adventure," he said.

Greeks owe this to their history, to the victims of the dictatorship and those that struggled against it, as well as to themselves as modern Greeks and Europeans, but chiefly to the coming generations, Pavlopoulos said.

"Our mistakes, especially the mistakes caused by our failure to resist as we should the sirens of populism, should on no account be allowed to mortgage their future and prospects," he stressed.