Emmanuel Macron will make Greece the launchpad for a major policy speech on the future of Europe as he starts his first official trip to the country on Thursday.

From the dramatic setting of the ancient Pnyx in Athens, the French president is expected to outline his vision for the continent in what is being called his most important overseas address since taking office in May.

Amid the rocky hills of the Pnyx beneath the Acropolis, the speech will focus on the virtues of democracy as the European Union – and Greece – finally show signs of economic revival.

“It will be a message of confidence in Greece but also a European symbolic message, given that in many ways Greece has been a symbol of Europe’s crisis,” said an Élysée Palace source. “The restart of Greece is the restart of the eurozone.”

It is a measure of the significance the Greek government is attaching to the visit that Macron is making the address from such an august setting. From the earliest days of Athenian democracy, the Pnyx was a meeting place for popular assemblies.

In more modern times its use has been limited to the rare photo op. The young president will be the first French leader to speak from it, in what Greeks are also calling a subliminal message of hope.

Macron has been criticised at home for his carefully choreographed media appearances evoking the grandeur of eras past, and has seen his approval ratings drop dramatically.

But officials say the rich symbolism of Macron’s Athens speech will underscore the argument that, despite its battle to stay in the eurozone and keep bankruptcy at bay, Greece remains at the heart of Europe’s tradition and history.

“We see it is as a very important visit,” the deputy minister of economy and development, Stergios Pitsiorlas, told the Guardian. “We are very much hoping it will not only deepen economic cooperation but also herald a change in the political dynamic in the EU which for so long has been dominated by a single state, Germany.”

France has stood by Greece, often defending it in fraught negotiations, since international creditors, led by Berlin, were forced to come to the debt-stricken country’s rescue issuing the first of three bailouts in return for tough reforms in May 2010.

Macron, a former economy minister, has long advocated debt relief for Athens – echoing the view of its leftist-led government that without it the Greek economy can never fully recover. At almost 180% of GDP, Greece has the largest debt load of any EU member state.

With the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, insisting the Greek economy has turned the corner after years of punishing budget cuts and tax increases – measures that have resulted in record unemployment and poverty – officials are keen to focus on growth and see European integration deepened.

A revitalised France under Macron would not only offer a counterbalance to Berlin, but help shift the debate away from the austerity it has so enthusiastically embraced. In a tour that has included meetings with 12 EU leaders in the space of two weeks, the emphasis has been on what French officials described as “reorientation”.

Pitsiorlas said: “Further integration wouldn’t be bad for Greece, which hasn’t been making its own decisions anyway,” referring to the years it has been under close international surveillance.

Macron, 39, is the second French president to visit Greece since Tsipras won power. Barely a month after being catapulted into office for a second time in September 2015 – after agreeing to apply the neoliberal policies he once railed against to keep Greece in the single currency – the Syriza leader hosted François Hollande.

Amid difficult negotiations with creditors, Athens said the two-day official visit confirmed the “special relationship” between the two countries.

This time Macron is expected to be given a near hero’s welcome. “There is an undercurrent [of understanding] between Greece and France that is embodied in the slogan Ellada-Gallia symmachia [Greece-France alliance]”, said the senior Syriza cadre and former education minister Nikos Filis. “Every so often it manifests itself … in the Greek subconscious France is seen as a force of good in Europe. We have never fought the French.”

Under president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, France played a pivotal role in persuading hesitant allies in the then EEC to allow Athens into its ranks, arguing that as the birthplace of democracy, it was the seat of European civilisation. Although much less developed than Spain or Portugal, Greece joined the bloc in 1981, five years earlier than either country.

Macron will fly in with a retinue of businesspeople, representing more than 40 companies. France has signalled that, in a country where assets are selling at rock-bottom prices, it is keen to invest in infrastructure, energy, construction and the service sector.

Analysts say Greece is vital to Paris’s long-term goal of forming alliances in Europe’s southern periphery that would ultimately enhance its leadership role in the Mediterranean and recalibrate the Franco-German axis. “France will at some point talk to Germany about the division of labour inside Europe,” said Dr Thanos Dokos, who directs the Greek thinktank Eliamep. “It is the only EU country with the capacity to project military power outside Europe, which gives it a comparative advantage in Europe’s southern neighbourhood.”