Politics

In a landmark decision on Tuesday, Greece’s highest election court expelled three lawmakers from parliament due to their ties to a jailed far-right figure convicted of leading a violent criminal organisation. The expelled lawmakers, all elected under the far-right Spartans party in the June 2023 elections, were found to be acting under the influence of Ilias Kasidiaris, a former senior member of the neo-Nazi-inspired Golden Dawn party. Kasidiaris is currently serving a 13-year prison sentence for orchestrating attacks against migrants and political rivals, as part of his leadership in what the court ruled was a criminal organisation. The ruling, which cannot be appealed, was welcomed by Greece’s center-right government. It reduces the number of MPs in the 300-seat Hellenic Parliament to 29...

Greece’s supreme court has ordered a probe into a bombshell report that more than 30 politicians, journalists and businessmen were targeted by state surveillance, a justice source said Sunday (6 November). The editor of leftist weekly Documento which broke the story, Kostas Vaxevanis, has said he will testify on Monday. The weekly on Saturday said the list of targets included former premier Antonis Samaras, current members of the cabinet and shipping magnate Vangelis Marinakis, owner of Olympiakos and Nottingham Forest football clubs. Spyware known as Predator was used illegally in collaboration with technology employed by Greece’s state intelligence agency EYP, the newspaper added. Influential members of the conservative New Democracy party, potential rivals in any future leadership chall...

The European Parliament’s PEGA committee is expected to call on the Greek government to protect the independence of the authority responsible for privacy issues (ADAE) and shed light on the so-called “Greek Watergate”, a wiretapping scandal which has shaken domestic politics for months. On Tuesday, the EU Parliament’s Committee of Inquiry to investigate the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware (PEGA) will present its draft recommendation to the Commission and EU Council. Regarding Greece, EURACTIV was informed that the EU Parliament would call on the government to ensure the independence of the authority responsible for privacy issues (ADAE) and particularly its president. The chief of the authority, Christos Rammos, a senior judge whose insistence on shedding light on the ca...

Manfred Weber, the Spitzenkandidat of the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), should stop fantasising about a “financial coup d’état” in Greece and scenarios to overthrow Greek premier Alexis Tsipras, whose leftist government was the one that led the country out of the crisis, S&D President Udo Bullmann told EURACTIV.com. Bullmann’s comment came in response to Weber’s statement on Thursday (7 February), when he said there was a need for a government change in Greece. Weber, who heads the EPP in Parliament, paid a two-day visit to Athens on 6-7 February, where he met Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of New Democracy, the EPP affiliate in Greece. Mitsotakis has established close ties with Weber, especially after New Democracy was the first centre-right party to officially nominate Web...

The Greek government is preparing a plan to ban social media use for under-15s, using an existing parental-control app designed to block tobacco and alcohol sales to minors. However, legal and practical loopholes are already casting doubt on enforcement. The plan had been expected for this week but has been postponed until early March, a source close to the talks said. Three ministries are involved – Justice, Digital Governance and Health – while Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is personally overseeing the initiative. The Greek PM has taken the lead on the file aiming for a cross-party consensus, politically useful for him ahead of the upcoming revision of the country’s constitution, Euractiv understands. How it would work Unlike Portugal’s plan, the Greek social media ban would apply t...

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the government’s priority was to ensure Greece maintained stability and a “steady hand on the helm” amid increasingly uncertain international developments. In his weekly review of government work, the Greek prime minister highlighted Greece’s support for Cyprus when tensions in the Middle East threatened the island. He said Greece acted immediately, while European partners also helped establish an air and naval protection network around the island. Mitsotakis also reported that Greece had organised assistance for citizens located in areas of conflict. Over the past five days, authorities repatriated 1,039 people from Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian territories. On the previous day alone, ...

IntroductionIn an era marked by shifting geopolitical paradigms and the proliferation of non-traditional instruments of statecraft, culture has reemerged as a critical axis of international engagement. Beyond the conventional vectors of economic strength and military capability, states increasingly leverage cultural capital to shape global narratives, assert identity, and cultivate influence. Among these strategies, the diplomatic mobilization of heritage—anchored in the symbolic and historical resonance of antiquity—stands out as a particularly potent form of cultural statecraft.Greece, heir to one of the world’s most storied civilizations, occupies a distinctive position within this landscape. Its ancient heritage—synonymous with the foundational tenets of Western thought, democratic gov...

This year marks the centenary of composer and politician Mikis Theodorakis, who died in 2021 having become, almost accidentally, a national icon. Accidentally? Arrested as a 17-year-old in 1942 by the invading Italian army, he joined the resistance, aligning himself with the communist side. Tortured during the subsequent civil war, he was again imprisoned by the military junta in 1967, which banned all his music.If Theodorakis’s struggle against injustice in any of these oppressions had led to an unmarked grave, we might not have his Epitaphios, set to words by Yannis Ritsos, or his setting of Ritsos’s Eighteen Little Songs for the Bitter Homeland.These are evocations of both sorrow (at the deep left-right divisions in Greek society), and a spirit of debate and radical discourse. Song, wh...

Photo: Pixabay The government of Greece agreed a deal with US artificial intelligence firm OpenAI to make AI tools widely available for use in secondary education and small businesses.  The deal means Greek startups in areas such as healthcare, climate change and education will enjoy access to OpenAI’s technology and support for their projects. It also means Greece is expected to become the world’s first country to integrate a specialised version of the large language model ChatGPT, known as ChatGPT Edu. Announced by OpenAI in May 2024, ChatGPT Edu is said to be able to “reason across text and vision and use advanced tools such as data analysis”, and includes advanced capabilities in interpretation, coding and mathematics, web browsing, and document summa...

NEW YORK – A senior government source responded to questions from journalists regarding a Turkish report that “the meeting between the Greek Prime Minister and the Turkish President was cancelled, as the Greek side violated the agreement and announced the meeting.” (Read also: Mitsotakis-Erdogan Meeting Postponed) “When organising the meeting, our side was clear. We always announce our meetings, Turkiye usually does not announce them. The appointment was completely arranged, it was agreed upon and we announced the meeting in the context of the UN General Assembly. “Beyond that, I do not know if the meeting will actually take place. I see it as very difficult at the moment, also based on the Prime Minister’s schedule, which is extremely heavy on Wednesday. But even if it does not happen, th...