A lot, as it turns out. Even if the changes aren’t always rapid enough to catch the eye, don’t necessarily conform with the criteria or the moment, or are set in motion by circumstances we simply cannot grasp.

The conference To Vima organized in partnership with the Delphi Economic Forum and the Council on International Relations did not, it must be said, shake our convictions or assessments about what is underway in the wider Eastern Mediterranean region (King George hotel, 4-5/12).

But it did confirm that our ancient neighborhood is changing. Indeed, that it is navigating a crucial constellation of changes.

Clearly, everyone more or less agrees that the US currently most of the cards. Especially since the new Trump administration opted to play a more active and transactional role in the region.

Still, Washington may hold most of the cards, but not all of them. In Gaza, for example, we are still in a first stage of a peace process, but it will be followed by a second and a third.

What is certain is that the major tensions and humanitarian disasters of recent years seem to be on the wane.

And that energy issues are becoming increasingly important, which opens the door to collaboration, trade and partnerships.

Will such cooperation be the first step toward a broader defusing of tensions, or lead to new conflicts instead? No one really knows.

The Prime Minister shared a somewhat reassuring view of developments in general, and those that concern Greece in particular.

Greek-Turkish relations may have left the “honeymoon period” of the Athens Declaration (December 2023) behind, but there is no sign that the two nations are ready to start dogfighting over the Aegean again any time soon.

Armaments have certainly played their part in this lull.

Which has been sustained, too, by the near absence of airspace violations and a substantial weakening of migratory flows. In other words, both sides have shown restraint.

On the other hand, however, we are sufficiently aware of the realities to know the current calm is precarious, and that certainties have a habit of dissolving before the onslaught of events.

After all, in this region things are never either simple or self-evident. Like it or not, though, the Mediterranean is changing.