Ahead of the Greek vote, the leader says blocking migrants has built “good will” with Europe
Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is accused of illegally driving asylum seekers back to sea. He has acknowledged that state intelligence wiretapped an opposition leader. He has consolidated control of the media as press freedom in Greece has fallen to the lowest in Europe.
It is something that the guardians of the European Union’s values often despise in right-wing populist leaders, be it Italy’s Giorgia Meloni or Hungary’s Viktor Orban. But with Greece holding national elections on Sunday, Brussels has instead praised Mr Mitsotakis, a pro-European conservative, for bringing stability to the Greek economy, for sending military aid to Ukraine and for providing regional stability at a time of potential turmoil in Turkey. .
Above all, European Union leaders seem to have slacked Mr Mitsotakis for the continent’s unpleasant job of keeping migrants at bay, a development that shows how much Europe has shifted, with crackdowns formerly associated with the right wing that drifted into the mainstream.
“I help Europe on many fronts,” Mr Mitsotakis said in a brief interview on Tuesday in the port city of Piraeus, where the 55-year-old, in his trademark blue shirt and slacks, adored voters on the streets. “It’s given us reasonable goodwill.”
With Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, who called Greek border enforcement the “shield” of Europe, Mr. Mitsotakis that after the arrival of more than a million migrants and asylum seekers destabilized the continent’s politics by entering through Greece during the refugee crisis of 2015 and 2016, Europe had come to take a harder line on Greece.
“We have managed, I think, to change the European approach to migration somewhat,” said Mr Mitsotakis, a self-declared progressive, who challenged the idea that the policy – which critics say was illegally pushing asylum seekers back – was hard-right.
“Right or a central policy,” said Mr. Mitsotakis, the leader of the nominal center-right New Democracy party, “I don’t know what it is, but I have to protect my borders.”
In turn, Europe seems to have protected Mr Mitsotakis.
“It’s the Mitsotakis exception,” said Alberto Alemanno, a professor of European Union law at HEC Paris business school. Mr Mitsotakis’s special treatment is due to his political affiliation with Ms von der Leyen, Mr Alemanno said, and his willingness to build – with funding from the bloc – an extensive network of migrant centers that have proved politically popular in Greece.
Mr Mitsotakis argued that some “left-wing Illuminati in Brussels” failed to see that he was saving lives with his policies, something he said European leaders appreciated.
“We’re no longer the kind of billboard for problems in Europe,” he said, adding that what he had done “brings relief to a lot of people.”
Greeks included. Before Sunday’s election, Mr Mitsotakis had a comfortable lead in the polls against his main rival, Alexis Tsipras, from the left-wing Syriza party, even though the prime minister still didn’t seem to have enough support to win outright. A second round of elections seems likely in July.
Near where Mr Mitsotakis campaigned, people talked about how he made their original Greek islands once overrun by migrants livable, how he was the first Greek Prime Minister invited to speak at a joint session of Congress in Washington, and how he had opposed Turkey’s strong president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who himself faces an election next weekend.
Greeks across the country appreciate the way Mr Mitsotakis has reduced taxes and debt and increased digitalisation, minimum wages and pensions.
For ten years Greece was the throbbing migraine of Europe. The country’s catastrophic debt crisis in 2010 almost sank the European Union. Humiliating bailouts followed, and a decade of severe austerity measures – led by Germany – slashed pensions and public services, shrunk economic output by a quarter, increased unemployment and drove thousands of young and professional Greeks to flee.
In 2015, the Greeks led by Mr Tsipras voted to reject Europe’s comprehensive aid package, nearly expelling the country from the eurozone. Social unrest and talk of a “Grexit” intensified, but Mr Tsipras eventually made the required revisions and moderated in subsequent years, arguing that Greece was on a path to recovery.
But in 2019, he lost to Mr. Mitsotakis — the son of a former prime minister, educated at Harvard and Stanford, comfortable in Washington — who seemed the personification of the establishment. He promised to right the Greek ship.
“This was always my bet,” Mr. Mitsotakis said. “And I think we delivered.”
His government has boosted growth to twice the eurozone average. Large multinationals and start-ups have invested. Tourism is skyrocketing.
The country is paying back its creditors ahead of schedule, and Mitsotakis expects that if he wins, international rating agencies will lift Greece’s bonds out of junk status. Migrant arrivals have fallen by 90 percent since the crisis in 2015, but also significantly since Mitsotakis took office four years ago.
“A European success story,” The Economist called Greece under Mr Mitsotakis.
But he says he needs another four years to get the job done. Greece, which still has the highest public debt in the European Union, is also the second poorest country in the bloc after Bulgaria. Tax evasion is still prevalent and the country’s legal system is so slow that it deters investors.
Critics of Mr Mitsotakis say that apart from the economy, he poses a threat to Greece’s values, and that Europe is distracting its eyes by focusing on finances and the dwindling number of migrants.
Humanitarian groups have accused Mr Mitsotakis of illegally pushing back migrants by land and sea. Barely running away from the issue, he recently visited Lesbos, the Greek island that became synonymous with the appalling conditions of his Moria camp, which was packed with 20,000 refugees before it burned down.
“Moria is no more,” Mr Mitsotakis said in the interview. “It just doesn’t exist. I mean, you have olive groves and we have a state-of-the-art reception facility built with European money.” Critics have denounced the prison-like conditions in the new camp, but Greeks overwhelmingly support his hard line.
Europe is “less like Greece for pushbacks and all that stuff,” said Camino Mortera-Martinez, head of the Brussels office of the Center for European Reform, a think tank.
The leeway given to Greece, she said, was in part an acknowledgment that the country had endured a decade of brutal austerity. But it also reflected that Europe as a whole is “basically incapable” of helping Greece and other countries on the frontline of the migration crisis, and is therefore “letting these governments do what they do”.
Aside from migration, there are other more immediate concerns at home. In February, a train crash killed 57 people, exposing Greece’s rickety infrastructure and the limits of Mitsotakis’ talk of modernization. Reporters Without Borders named Greece the worst country in the European Union for press freedom in its 2023 index.
Over the summer, Mr Mitsotakis’ top intelligence officer was caught eavesdropping on journalists and politicians, including Nikos Androulakis, the leader of the opposition Pasok party and member of the European Parliament. Mr. Mitsotakis, to the disbelief of many, denied knowing anything about it. Some people tapped by his intelligence agencies were also found to have illegal malware on their devices. The government has denied placing it there.
But Mr Mitsotakis admitted in a televised debate this month that Mr Androulakis should not have been wiretapped. The espionage was a particularly bad idea, it turns out, because Mr Androulakis’ support could be crucial to the final outcome of the election.
Yet the scandal is way down on voters’ priorities, as is Mr Mitsotakis’s treatment of migrants.
John Vrakas, 66, who was handing out flyers for Mr Tsipras across from the square where Mr Mitsotakis was due to speak, shrugged that Europe didn’t really seem to be bothered as long as the prime minister eases their concerns about the economy and Ukraine. . “It’s a kind of trade,” he said.
It’s one that Greek voters seem happy with.
As Mr. Mitsotakis walked through the streets, a bus driver reached out the window. “Supporters to the end,” a group of men chanted in front of a cafe. “We trust you,” a woman shouted from her jewelry store.
What “resonates in Europe,” Mr Mitsotakis said, was that he was an “anti-populist government” who had brought much-prized stability back to Greece in a rough region.
He got up from the interview in a small and otherwise empty restaurant and shook more hands on his way to the square, where he began a short mute speech interrupted by the ringing of church bells.
“I’m not sure who they’re spinning for,” exclaimed Mr. Mitsotakis, “but not for us.”
Niki Kitsantonis contributed reporting from Athens.