The Greek political scene
Voting is compulsory in Greece for all citizens over the age of 18. The Parliament, the Vouli, is elected for 4 years by universal suffrage: it elects the President of the Republic, whose role is above all representative, for a period of 5 years, renewable once. Executive power is held by the Prime Minister and the Government.
The years of crisis have turned the Greek political scene upside down, and temporarily redistributed the cards of power. The Papandreou (PASOK, socialist party) and Caramanlis/Mitsotakis (New Democracy, conservative party) dynasties had reigned supreme on the political scene since the restoration of democracy: the crisis turned this nepotism-soaked ping-pong game on its head.
The Syriza party, a coalition of the radical left led by Alexis Tsipras, won the January 2015 elections to everyone's surprise. At the height of the economic crisis, it had to deal with a disastrous situation and try to strike a balance between a population pushed to the limit and creditors demanding ever more austerity. Although it was eventually dethroned by New Democracy in the last two elections (2019 and 2023), its meteoric rise remains a landmark event in today's political landscape. Now a crumbling opposition party, Syriza is struggling to form a broad coalition on the left of the political spectrum: since 2023 and the latest electoral disavowal, Alexis Tsipras has resigned as party leader, making way for a young unknown brought over from the USA to give a new social-democratic direction to the former radical movement. Among the highlights of the recent elections was the return of PASOK as a serious opposition party, after having been seemingly buried by Syriza during the crisis years. Local support for the party is strong, and the return of this traditional party could be confirmed in the coming years.
In 2019, the victory of K. Mitsotakis brought the conservative and liberal right back to center stage, a trend confirmed by the 2023 general elections but reversed by the municipal elections in the same year, when the Athens mayoralty held by a member of the Mitsotakis family passed to PASOK, marking the party's return to political life. New Democracy's flagship measures include an economic policy based on enterprise - tourism and construction in particular - but also a very right-wing stance on the status of the Orthodox Church, political nationalism and the protection of refugees. Numerous scandals have marked the years of the Mitsotakis government: the Greeks, disappointed by the management of the health crisis, worried about galloping inflation driven by the energy crisis since the war in Ukraine, are also tired of various politico-media scandals, including the government's wiretapping of opposition journalists and politicians (2022) and the catastrophic management of the massive fires that punctuate every summer.
The humanitarian challenge
One of the major issues at stake in current policy concerns refugees arriving on Greek shores: the Dodecanese islands are the first to be affected, as they are the EU's closest gateway to Turkey and conflict zones. In the summer of 2015, when Greece was experiencing the worst hours of the economic crisis, the humanitarian crisis threatened to implode: negotiations with Turkey calmed the flow of arrivals in 2016-2017, but did not provide a lasting solution to a global geopolitical problem, which picked up again in the summer of 2019 and has continued ever since, further reinforced by the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan in 2021.
After an initial phase of solidarity on the part of the local population, which compensated for the lack of responsiveness and care on the part of Greece and the EU as a whole, the issue of migration "management" is becoming institutionalized. The islands of Leros, Kos and Rhodes received the majority of exiles and set up makeshift camps, rapidly becoming unhealthy and of limited capacity, widely decried by humanitarian professionals. Over the years, these camps were enlarged, regrouped in dedicated areas and gradually transformed into "closed centers", or zones of imprisonment. Following the opening of Greece's first "controlled-access closed center" in Samos (North Aegean), the Leros and Kos centers were inaugurated in 2021.
K. Mitsotakis' Greece has been widely condemned by human rights NGOs, international organizations under the aegis of the UN and numerous investigative inquiries for its inhumane, sometimes even illegal, practices in receiving these men and women who have come from afar. One of the biggest scandals, which also implicates the EU as a whole, concerns the illegal practice of pushbacks at sea, i.e. the illegal return or refoulement of migrants in Turkish territorial waters by Greek coastguards, under the aegis of Frontex, the European body responsible for patrolling the Union's borders. The tragedy of the sinking of a boat full of migrants off the coast of Pylos in June 2023 resulted in the deaths of at least 650 exiles, many of them women and children trapped in the hold of the boat pushed out to sea by the Greek coastguard.
Relationships with neighbors
Despite improved relations, there is no shortage of tensions with Turkey. This is particularly true of the islands bordering the Dodecanese, which remain wary of their big neighbor. Disputes centre on the management of the humanitarian crisis, with Turks and Greeks passing the buck for responsibilities and mistakes, on the backs of migrants. But the most nationalistic issue concerns the sovereignty of certain Aegean islands, in the face of the extension of Greek territorial waters close to the Turkish coast, or the illegal overflights by the Turkish army near the Greek coast. With the war in Ukraine, the port of Alexandroupoli, on the border between mainland Greece and Turkey, has become a new strategic base for NATO. In this way, Greece hopes to become an essential force in the international balance of power, counterbalancing Turkey's central role in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. Finally, the Turkish occupation of northern Cyprus remains a reason for disagreement.
On the other hand, the historically conflictual relations with Northern Macedonia seem to have been pacified at last. Since 1991, Greece has refused to allow this Balkan and Slavic country born of the implosion of the former Yugoslavia to take the name of the dynasty of Alexander the Great. On January 25, 2019, the Greek parliament ratified the historic Prespa Agreement, which renamed the former Republic of Macedonia the Republic of North Macedonia... Two words that hopefully put an end to this thorny dispute forever.
