From the wreckage, a ray of hope for Greek politics

The European election brought dissapointment to almost everyone in Athens, except to the far Right and the far Left. The overall turnout fell significantly from 58% (5.9 million votes) in June 2019, to 41.39% (4 million votes) in June 2024. This was most likely because the 2019 European Election came in the last few months of the then government’s term so it was seen as an opportunity to hasten Alexis Tsipras’ departure (which it did). The 2024 European Election has come one year into Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ second four year term. The turnout was the lowest ever recorded.

The parties of the far right, however, powered by hatred against migrants and indiscriminate anger against ‘Europe’, the ‘West’ and against vaccines – and some of them by love for Russia and Putin – did very well, scoring almost 16% of the national vote. The various leftist and communist parties also scored well with a similar share of the vote. The once radical Left Syriza – now led by Stefanos Kasselakis, an unpredictable political novice with a radical populist agenda – continued its demise, having collapsed from 23.75% to 14.92%. The Socialist PaSok, with serious but uninspiring leadership, rose again from 7.72% in 2019 to 12.79% in 2024, but fell well below its target of winning second place.

The new Green Party, ‘Kosmos’, led by the former Syriza and later Green MEP Petros Kokkalis, united almost all the green grassroots movements and activists and presented a serious policy platform and a strong team of candidates but scored a disappointing 1% of the vote. It was the best result for a Green party in a very long time, but well below the electoral threshold of 3%.

The collapse of the vote for the governing New Democracy

Yet, the most striking result was the collapse of the vote for the governing New Democracy. Its share of the vote dropped from 33.12% in 2019 to 28.31% in 2024. This was the second worst result for New Democracy in its fifty year history, second only to the 18.85% of Antonis Samaras in the parliamentary election of 2012. This result was very suprising because only a year ago New Democracy received 40.56% of the national vote in the June 2023 parliamentary election, or 2.1 million votes, with an overall turnout of 53% (5.2 million people having voted in that election). A year later New Democracy’s votes were reduced to just 1.1 million. This is the most important fact of the election. Ten percent of the registered electorate, one million people, abandoned Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ party in one year.

Where did they go? A detailed analysis of the exit poll suggests that these votes were mostly centrist votes who decided to stay at home. The numbers tell the same story, with the drop of turnout between 2023 and 2024 being 1.2 million voters. The share of the far right rose, but its absolute numbers by much less.

Mitsotakis losing the centre ground is perfectly understandable. The government’s record has been very disappointing both on matters of competence and on matters of direction and leadership.

First, the economy is not growing fast enough. Greece is producing much less than it did in 2010. The rates of growth are now similar to the other members of the Eurozone, but these countries did not experience a 25% drop in GDP ten years ago. Greece is not catching up. Poverty is a real concern for millions of families who face an unprecedented cost of living crisis.

Second, with one exception only (the same sex marriage law), Mitsotakis has governed from the Right. The government has failed to bring about or indeed argue for major institutional or social reforms or explain the benefits of aligning the Greek economy with that of the Eurozone, by modernising its institutions and opening up competition in goods and services or actively pursuing a green transition. There have been few attempts to explain the benefits of the single market to the electorate, nor any attempt to revisit and reflect on the reasons for the financial crisis of fifteen years ago. It is signficant in my view that the head of the Greek Competition Commission, Professor Lianos from University College London, who is a world expert in competition law and policy, left his post in 2023 after only one term in office. He was replaced by a recently retired senior judge with no experience in competition law. Lianos had been regularly attacked in the press by government ministers who did not like the way he sought to challenge powerful domestic oligopolies, for example in telecommunications.

Hostile language against migrants, poor relations with the neighbouring countries

Nevertheless, the most alarming aspect of this government is not its inaction on structural reforms, but its rhetoric on immigration, which is often indistinguishable from that of the far right. The government says that Greek borders are under ‘attack’, that immigrants are a threat to our ‘national security’, that Greek citizens are threatened by crime coming from abroad and even that respect for human rights is a ‘naïve illusion’ (according to the immigration minister). This is hugely alarming while international organisations and the press (and EU’s Frontex) report that masked men place hundreds of migrants each week on life rafts in order for them to drift back into Turkey – if true, these are criminal ‘pushbacks’. The government shows no interest in asking prosecutors to investigate these apparent crimes (which are also alleged to have resulted in the awful shipwreck outside Pylos one year ago, when five hundred people drowned). Instead, the Government denounces NGOs that assist refugees at the border and urges the courts to prosecute them for ‘spying’, ‘treason’ and other serious offences such as ‘people smuggling’. The judicial authorities have brought various prosecutions against rescuers, even against the Aegean Boat Report, a monitoring and reporting service which operates out of Norway. So far all the cases against rescuers that have reached a hearing have been thrown out by the courts. Still, supporters of migrants work under a climate of fear.

The hostile language against migrants has had an impact on public opinion at large, which is routinely told that Greece faces various ill-defined ‘geo-political’ or ‘asymmetrical risks’ from Turkey but also North Macedonia and Albania. Relations with these countries are now poor. The largest media companies – almost all of them owned by wealthy businessmen close to the government – cultivate the ‘threats from the East’ agenda. This is not necessarily opportunistic. Some leading government ministers, such as the senior cabinet minister Makis Vorids, who joined New Democracy from an extreme right wing party in 2012, have throughout their political careers pursued anti-migrant and nativist political positions. A large part of New Democracy shares these views and considers national ‘identity’ far more important than integrating the Greek economy to the rest of the Eurozone or to the global economy. Unfortunately the Prime Minister occasionally endorses this language. Centrists will find this disappointing and miss the self-assurance of the reformist Prime Minister Costas Simitis, who twenty years ago spoke of Greece’s robust place at the heart of Europe and showed real optimism about its economic and social potential in the region.

The wiretapping scandal

The government has also been damaged by a wiretapping scandal. Independent news outlets – not the mainstream media – have established that while it was being run by the Prime Minister’s nephew, Mr Grigoris Dimitriadis, the national security agency wiretapped the phones of political opponents, including the leader of PaSoK, but also of government ministers and journalists. It is well documented that someone tried to trap the same people with the illegal spyware ‘Predator’ by infecting their smartphones, so as to turn those into live microphones and cameras. The same spyware was approved for export to various developing countries by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. As soon as the press published the first findings about these mysterious but apparently coordinated operations, Mr Dimitriadis resigned from his post, without however, accepting responsibility for any of them. A parliamentary committee of inquiry, mostly by members of the governing party, did not interview Mr Dimitriadis or Mr Mitsotakis about what they knew but nevertheless found no wrongdoing whatsoever. The judicial investigation into the scandal is currently proceeding at a snail’s pace, while senior judges removed the case from the original prosecutors allocated to it in order to ‘speed it up’.

Worse was to come. When the independent body on the security of communications (‘ADAE’) investigated the scandal, the Prime Minister accused its president, Christos Rammos a highly respected former judge, of improper personal motives and called him an instrument of the leader of the Opposition. Given Rammos’ impeccable profile and distinguished record these unseemly attacks schocked the centrist public. Later the government used its super majority to appoint new members to the board of ADAE – using the votes of a far Right party in parliament. The new members of ADAE have slowed down the investigation. Interestingly, when being interviewed by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart a few weeks ago Mitsotakis accepted for the first time that he bears responsibility for the wiretapping scandal and that there were ‘systemic failures’, but he did not elaborate on them nor did he explain why he fired Dimitriadis.

An endless list of government’s failures

These skirmishes, if this is what they are, have been very damaging to the overall picture of the government’s record. It is now generally accepted, at least by centrist commentators, that the Mitsotakis government is not the reformist government it promised to be. There is no strategic plan for creating a more open or more transparent society or economy, no intention of breaking up with failed practices of the past and, significantly given the circumstances, no admission of responsibility for the disastrous New Democracy government of 2004-2009. The current government appears to continue in the ways of the then government, promising great reforms but allowing the crony capitalism of the past to go on.

Here is my own list of this government’s failures (there may be others): there is no serious reform in the senior civil service (which is usually sidelined by 3500 party appointed special advisers who literally take over all government departments – the UK Government allows only 140), no reform of the judiciary (the slowest in Europe and the only one with a highly politicised trade union), no reform of the appointment of the heads of the senior Courts (currently by the cabinet on the basis of the judge’s real or presumed political affiliation), no reform of universities so as to allow them to be more independent from the government and more outward looking (they are incredibly insular), and no reform of the secondary schools (the worst in Europe according to the PISA tests).

I should add here that one of the worst areas of the government’s record is in the protection of environment and in climate mitigation. Although a notionally green agenda started well in 2019, this agenda has now stalled, having been replaced by an active programme of extracting fossil fuels in the Aegean and the Ionian Seas and investing billions on gas fired power stations and associated infrastructure. Instead of creating or updating national and regional plans for land use around the country, decisions on planning and the environment remain ad hoc, centrally made by the ministers with minimal local consultation or involvement. At the same time the Government is looking to extend a longstanding permission for any landowner to build ‘Outside the Plan’, often in the most beautiful and sensitive parts of the country, including the islands, freely creating new private roads, spoiling landscapes and destroying habitats in the name of ‘development’. That the government would take such an indifferent position to the protection of the enviornment has been truly shocking to people at both sides of the political spectrum.

A small window of opportunity for the opposition

Why did the parties of the opposition not do better? They are nowhere near offering a credible alternative for government. The Greek electorate has proven to be highly pragmatic and relatively non-ideological. The financial crisis of 2010-2015 destroyed the old partisan allegiances but also reduced the voters’ appettite for risk. After the catastrophic tenure of Alexis Tsipras and Yanis Varoufakis, very few people want to return to the years of experimentation. The electorate appears grateful to have stability under a pro-European government, however ineffective and however many secrets it may have. After all, the younger generation still has the option of going abroad to work in the European Union, an option which young people exercise in great numbers. Greece may well be turning into a place good enough for those without ambition or those with family money and connections.

This interpretation opens a small window of opportunity for PaSoK, Kosmos and, perhaps, for Syriza (if that party chooses to transform itself into something less populist). The voters are looking for an alternative, but they are no fools. If any progressive party wishes to challenge New Democracy, it must put together – alone or in alliance with others – a pragmatic and credible programme of government that opens up a path for growth which promises real change without threatening stability. This also involves choosing the personnel, a new set of leaders that can serve in positions of responsibility and inspire confidence and trust. Can such a programme be put forward in a realistic way? Having been disappointed by the government’s record, centrist voters appear to be receptive. But at the moment they are staying at home, waiting.