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☆ As Greece Votes, Leader Says Blocking Migrants Built ‘Good Will’ With Europe
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( Jason Horowitz | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece has been accused of illegally pushing asylum seekers back at sea. He has acknowledged that the state’s intelligence service wiretapped an opposition leader. He has consolidated media control as press freedom in Greece has dropped to the lowest in Europe. It is the sort of thing that the guardians of European Union values often scorn in right-wing populist leaders, whether it be Giorgia Meloni of Italy or Viktor Orban of Hungary. “I’m helping Europe on numerous fronts,” Mr. Mitsotakis said in a brief interview on Tuesday in the port city of Piraeus, where, in his trademark blue dress shirt and slacks, the 55-year-old rallied adoring voters on crowded streets.

☆ Greece’s election rivals cast their votes
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( Reuters Editorial | ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

PoliticsGreece’s election rivals cast their votesPostedGreece's Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and main opposition party leader Syriza party Alexis Tsipras cast their vote on Sunday (May 21) as the country went to the polls in a general election unlikely to produce a clear winner.

☆ Greek conservatives win parliamentary election
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/6] Supporters of New Democracy conservative party react at the party's main election kiosk after the announcement of the first exit polls, in Athens, Greece, May 21, 2023. REUTERS/Alkis KonstantinidisATHENS, May 21 (Reuters) - Greece's conservative New Democracy party achieved a crushing victory in a national election on Sunday, official results showed. New Democracy had a lead of 40.8% of the vote based on 94.3% of the votes counted versus 20.1% for the leftist Syriza party, but fell just short of the threshold needed to form a government on its own. Following are the official results released by the Interior Ministry. Source: Interior Ministry data, with 94.3% of votes countedND: Conservative New Democracy party, leader Kyriakos MitsotakisSyriza: Leftist coalition party, leader Alexis TsiprasPASOK: Socialist party, leader Nikos AndroulakisKKE: Communist party, leader Dimitris KoutsoumbasEL: Right-wing Elliniki Lysi (Hellenic Solution), leader Kyriakos VelopoulosReporting By Athens BureauOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Greece's ruling Conservatives win vote but fall short of majority
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Greece's ruling New Democracy party stormed to a crushing victory in a parliamentary election on Sunday but fell just short of the threshold needed to form a government on its own. Greece's interior ministry projected that New Democracy could win 145 seats in parliament, six short of an absolute majority. On Monday, Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou will give the top three parties — New Democracy, Syriza and the Socialist PASOK — three days each in turn to form a coalition government. Prime Minister and New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis said he believed he was given a clear mandate. Tsipras telephoned Mitsotakis to congratulate him on his win, a Syriza official said.

☆ Greeks head to polls, no outright winner seen
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

While opinion polls have placed the ruling conservative New Democracy party in the lead, a change to the country's electoral system means it is likely to fall short of an absolute majority. New Democracy, headed by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, is polling between 31-38%, followed by opposition leftist Syriza, trailing by 4-7 points. Should no party win outright, Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou will give the top three parties a three-day mandate each, in turn, to form a government. If they all fail, Sakellaropoulou will appoint a caretaker government that will lead the country to new elections roughly a month later. Reporting by Renee Maltezou, Writing by Michele Kambas, Editing by Clelia OzielOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Greek PM Mitsotakis says has won decisive mandate to govern
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: 1 min

ATHENS, May 21 (Reuters) - Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis claimed victory in a parliamentary election on Sunday, saying he had a mandate to form a strong autonomous government. Early official results indicated on Sunday that Mitsotakis' conservative New Democracy party was set for a big win in Greece's election, but was short of the majority needed to form a one-party government. "The ballot results are decisive. They show that New Democracy has the approval of the people to rule, strong and autonomous," Mitsotakis said. Reporting by Renee MaltezouOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Greek conservatives lead in national election-exit poll
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/4] Supporters of New Democracy conservative party react at the party's main election kiosk after the announcement of the first exit polls, in Athens, Greece, May 21, 2023. REUTERS/Alkis KonstantinidisATHENS, May 21 (Reuters) - Greek conservatives were leading over the leftist Syriza in elections on Sunday, a joint exit poll by six polling agencies showed. The exit poll gave the conservative New Democracy party between 36-40% of the vote versus 25-29% for the leftist Syriza party, which governed the country in 2015-2019, at the peak of Greece's financial crisis. The projections suggested that New Democracy was not likely to win outright. EXIT POLLExit poll conducted by: ALCO, Marc, Metron Analysis, MRB Hellas, Pulse and GPO* ND: Conservative party, leader PM Kyriakos MitsotakisSyriza: Leftist party, leader Alexis TsiprasPASOK: Socialist party, leader Nikos AndroulakisKKE: Communist party, leader Dimitris KoutsoumbasMera25: Leftist party, leader Yanis VaroufakisEL: Right-wing Elliniki Lysi (Hellenic Solution), leader Kyriakos VelopoulosPlefsi Eleftherias, leftist party, leader Zoe ConstantopoulouReporting by Athens newsroomOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Take Five: More drama on the horizon
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

LONDON, May 19 (Reuters) - There's no shortage of events, data and high drama for markets in the days ahead. 1/ USA WATCHCritical U.S. inflation data will allow investors to gauge whether the Federal Reserve will be able to pause its interest rate hiking cycle, as many on Wall Street expect. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, tracked by the Fed, is due on Friday for April. That was the smallest rise since July and, with the consumer price index slowing in April to below 5% on annual basis, hope for peak rates has grown. Yet this narrative could lose steam if Wednesday's April inflation data shows price rises are moderating.

rules governing how asylum seekers must be treated. We showed the video in person to three senior officials from the European Commission in Brussels, describing how we had verified it. asylum rules and international law, including ensuring access to the asylum procedure,” said Anitta Hipper, the European Commission spokeswoman for migration. Greece and the European Union hardened their attitudes toward migrants after the arrival in 2015 and 2016 of more than one million refugees from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Poland, Italy and Lithuania have recently changed their laws to make it easier to repel migrants and to punish those who help them.

☆ How Will the Greek Election Affect the Parthenon Marbles?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Alex Marshall | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Since November 2021, Greece’s prime minister and the British Museum have been holding back-room talks about the potential return of at least some of the Parthenon Marbles, a collection of antique treasures that once decorated the famed pillared temple in Athens. The collection, which includes statues of Greek gods and carved friezes, was taken from Greece in the early 1800s by Lord Elgin, a British aristocrat. The prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has met several times with George Osborne, a former chancellor of the Exchequer who is now chairman of the British Museum.. The rapport between Mitsotakis and Osborne has widely been seen as one reason the talks have progressed so far. But on Sunday, Greece holds an election and the talks have been postponed until the result of the vote is clear.

Ahead of an election on May 21, a cost-of-living crisis that is eroding earnings is foremost in voters' minds. For Klaoudatou it means voting for anyone but the incumbent conservative New Democracy or the opposition leftist Syriza. Reuters GraphicsThree international bailouts saved Greece from toppling out of the euro zone during a decade-long debt crisis that peaked in 2015. "Εven during the crisis - and this is the joke - I didn't think so much before spending a single extra euro," Klaoudatou told Reuters. Reuters GraphicsPAYCHECK BARELY GETS TO PAYCHECKOne in two Greek households could barely get by on their monthly income last year.

☆ Greek president approves PM request for May 21 election
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-22 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/5] Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis meets with Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou to discuss snap elections at the Presidential Palace in Athens, Greece April 22, 2023. REUTERS/Louiza VradiATHENS, April 22 (Reuters) - Greece's president approved a request by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Saturday to dissolve parliament and hold elections on May 21, as the country gears for a vote that is unlikely to produce an outright winner. Mitsotakis announced the election date during a cabinet meeting in late March, a few months before his term officially ends in July. On Saturday, he told President Katerina Sakellaropoulou that parliament will be dissolved on April 23. "I hope we have a calm and fruitful pre-election period, for the good of the country," Sakellaropoulou told the conservative premier, kicking off a four-week political campaigning period.

[1/4] Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis leads a cabinet meeting at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece, March 28, 2023. Mitsotakis's New Democracy Party has held a comfortable lead over opposition leftist Syriza since it came to power in 2019, opinion polls show, but a Feb. 28 rail disaster which killed 57 people has stirred public anger and seen that gap narrow. The rail disaster on the Athens-Thessaloniki route, Greece's deadliest on record, sparked mass protests over the safety shortcomings of an underfunded and poorly maintained network, the legacy of a decade-long financial crisis which ended in 2018. Mitsotakis said the 'painful and traumatic' experience of the rail disaster highlighted deficiencies the state still had. "On May 21, Greek citizens will choose if the country will continue to seek winning the bet of reforms".

Since the crash, rail workers have staged rolling strikes demanding that the government takes action to revamp the sector. REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov 1 2 3 4 5PUBLIC OUTRAGEPeople laid flowers and candles at the Athens central train station. "We want safe railways that operate," the head of a railway workers union Nikos Tsikalakis told state television. "We will not allow a lack of transparency, a cover-up, a renunciation of responsibilities and any delays to lead to oblivion," private sector union GSEE said in a statement. "The culprits must pay regardless of their rank," read a poster by public sector union ADEDY.

☆ Parthenon Marbles return possible without ownership accord, campaigners say
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-12 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, March 12 (Reuters) - The return of the British Museum's Parthenon Marbles to Greece is possible even if the two sides cannot come to an agreement over who owns the sculptures, a campaign group working to resolve the long-standing dispute said on Sunday. Greece has asked for others to imitate the Vatican Museums after they agreed this month to return three 2,500-year-old pieces of the Parthenon. London and Athens are in talks over the Parthenon Sculptures held by the British Museum. The Parthenon Project, which has been backed by British politicians from different parties, said the British Museum's Parthenon collection could be returned to Greece under a long-term cultural partnership agreement. That would mean the arrangement sidesteps the requirement for a change in the law to allow the British Museum to dispose of its artefacts.

[1/5] Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visits the site of a crash, where two trains collided, near the city of Larissa, Greece, March 1, 2023. Rail workers, on strike since March 2, have extended their walkout until Friday. "We could have been there, we could have been on that same train," Aria Laska, 23, told Reuters. Three more railway workers were detained and accused of disrupting public transport leading to deaths, the semi-state Athens News Agency reported. "We are together in this trial," Mitsotakis said, adding that young people and their parents had "every right to be angry".

☆ Greek workers join walkout over deadly train crash, call protests
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( Karolina Tagaris | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

ATHENS, March 8 (Reuters) - Thousands of workers will join a nationwide strike on Wednesday in protest over Greece's deadliest train disaster that killed 57 people, and mass demonstrations are expected to culminate outside parliament in Athens. Wednesday's strike, to be joined by various public sector workers, is expected to disrupt metro, tram and bus servives, and ferries will remain docked in ports as seamen join the walkout. "We will impose safe railways so that no one will ever experience the tragic accident at Tempi ever again," the main railway workers union said in a statement. ADEY, the umbrella union representing hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, also called for a day-long strike and protest over the "murderous crime". Greece sold its state-owned railway operator, now called Hellenic Train, under its international bailout program in 2017 to Italy's state-owned Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane.

☆ Thousands protest in Athens after Greece's deadly train crash
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

REUTERS/Alkis KonstantinidisATHENS, March 5 (Reuters) - Clashes erupted briefly between police and a group of demonstrators in central Athens on Sunday on the fringes of a protest by thousands of students and railway workers over Greece's deadliest train crash in living memory. A small group of protesters hurled petrol bombs at police, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades. The train, travelling from Athens to the northern city of Thessaloniki, was packed with university students returning after a long holiday weekend. Railway workers' unions say safety systems throughout the rail network have been deficient for years as a remote surveillance and signalling system has not been delivered on time. Greece would soon announce action, he said, adding that Athens would seek expertise from the European Commission and other countries on improving rail safety.

ATHENS, March 5 (Reuters) - A Greek railway employee was jailed on Sunday pending trial over a deadly train crash that killed at least 57 people, as Greeks seethed with anger over the worst rail disaster in living memory. Clashes erupted between police and demonstrators in Athens on Sunday, after thousands rallied to protest over the crash. The 59-year-old Larissa station master faces multiple charges of disrupting transport and putting lives at risk. REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis 1 2 3 4 5Railway workers say the country's rail network has been creaking under cost-cutting and underinvestment, a legacy of Greece's debilitating debt crisis from 2010 to 2018. Mitsotakis said on Sunday that if there had been a remote system in place throughout the rail network "it would have been, in practice, impossible for the accident to happen".

☆ Greek Train Crash Death Toll Rises, Prompts Calls for Government Accountability
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Cristina Roca | Eric Sylvers | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

A day after Greece’s worst train crash in at least 60 years, protesters demanded the government take responsibility for the disaster that left at least 46 people dead. Protesters and labor unions on Thursday pushed back against Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis ’s assessment that human error was the main cause. They said a lack of technology embedded in the railway network, poor railway maintenance and staff shortages were to blame.

☆ Greek rescuers comb through train crash wreckage as hopes fade
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Lefteris Papadimas | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/5] Rescuers operate on the site of a crash, where two trains collided, near the city of Larissa, Greece, March 2, 2023. The high-speed passenger train with more than 350 people on board crashed head-on with a freight train near the city of Larissa late on Tuesday, and hopes of finding anyone still alive in the wreckage more than 34 hours later appeared slim. The station master of Larissa train station was arrested on Wednesday as authorities probed the circumstances that led to the passenger train, en route to the northern city of Thessaloniki, colliding with another train carrying shipping containers coming in the opposite direction on the same track. Nikos Tsouridis, a retired train driver trainer, said drivers involved in the crash had died "because there were no safety measures. The Italian operation has responsibility for passenger and freight, and the Greek state-controlled OSE for infrastructure.

☆ Hours after deadly train crash, Greece agonises over what went wrong
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-01 | by ( Angeliki Koutantou | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/7] A general view of the site of a crash, where two trains collided, near the city of Larissa, Greece, March 1, 2023. There have been widespread media reports electronic signal software was not working, meaning signalling was done manually. OSE, the country's state-owned operator for rail infrastructure, did not respond to calls requesting comment nor did it issue a statement. Within hours, Greek police had arrested the station master at a provincial train station, accusing him of death through negligence. Hellenic Train, a unit of Italy's Ferrovie dello Stato which acquired passenger and freight operations, said it was working with authorities on the investigation.

The collision occurred as the passenger train, heading to the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki from the capital Athens, emerged from a tunnel near the central town of Larissa. Our thoughts today are with the relatives of the victims," Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at the site of the crash, looking shattered. [1/15] The site of a crash, where two trains collided, is seen near the city of Larissa, Greece, March 1, 2023. REUTERS/Giannis Floulis 1 2 3 4 5'MUM, I'M HURT'The passenger train was carrying 342 travellers and 10 crew, while two crew were on the cargo train, according to Hellenic Train data. Greece's ageing railway system is in need of modernising, with many trains travelling on single tracks and signalling and automatic control systems still to be installed in many areas.

☆ Turkey and Greece have a centuries-long feud that has come close to war. But when earthquakes hit, they still come to each other's aid.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Sinéad Baker | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Greece and Turkey have decades of animosity, repeatedly moving towards the brink of war. Turkey is currently dealing with the aftermath of a devastating earthquake, and Greece is helping. Last December Greece's foreign ministry said that Turkey was making "repeated threats of war," as Turkey responded angrily to what it said was Greece militarizing the Aegean islands. Nicholas Burns, the then-United States Ambassador to Greece, described what happened as "earthquake diplomacy" to The New York Times. Greece was previously under the control of Turkey, leading to a bitter independence fight that ended with Greece gaining independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830.

☆ Greece bans parties with convicted leaders from running in elections
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

ATHENS, Feb 9 (Reuters) - The Greek parliament paved the way for banning political parties whose leaders have been convicted of crimes from running in elections, ahead of national polls in spring. Golden Dawn has been linked to the murder of an anti-fascism rapper and a spate of violent attacks on political opponents, immigrants and left-wing activists. The appeal trial of convicted Golden Dawn members, including Kasidiaris, began last June and could last up to two years. Greece's constitution bars an individual with a criminal record from running in elections, provided that person's guilt has been affirmed at all stages of the legal process and is exhausted in appeal. A top court decides if parties meet the conditions to run in elections.

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