Δημοσιεύτηκε στο περιοδικό «Current History» (Μάρτιος 2026)
For those worried about the rise of rise of political extremism in Europe and beyond, the tale of Greece in the 2010s seems to indicate that a different trajectory is possible. The official version of that tale goes roughly as follows: economic failure discredits mainstream political parties, illiberal populists exploit discontent to win power, once in control they prove clueless, incompetent, and at least as corrupt as their predecessors, voters punish them and restore to power one component of the old establishment under a new leadership. The latter promptly goes on to rule from the centre, revive the economy, modernise public administration, end geopolitical ambiguity, and extend the rights of sexual minorities, thereby dominating the political scene, and pushing their opponents to irrelevance and near oblivion.
It is hard to deny that the official version contains a lot that is true. As some readers might recall, a chain of events in the first half of last decade in Greece attracted the attention of the international media: fiscal recklessness leading to virtual bankruptcy, followed by a bailout on punitive terms, sponsored by the US and the EU, causing deep recession, social strife, and political polarisation. In a few miserable years, as the national economy shrank by over a quarter, unemployment rose to nearly 29%, and living standards collapsed, mainstream political parties were in disarray, and extremists advanced at both ends of the spectrum.
Matters came to a head in January 2015, as a rather unlikely anti-austerity coalition, led by the radical left but including the nationalist right, came to power dislodging an equally unlikely coalition of conservatives and socialists – the two parties that had dominated Greek politics alternating in power since the restoration of democracy in 1974. For a few heady months, the new government negotiated with European leaders in an atmosphere of mutual incomprehension: one side demanded the abolition of austerity and access to credit, no strings attached – all in the name of democracy, as the people had voted for it; the other side pointed out that financial aid was conditional on the recipient’s agreement to balance the books and reform the economy. After all, democracy cut both ways: European electorates had never voted in favour of indefinitely bankrolling Greece. In fact, Alternative für Deutschland, the German far right party currently riding high at the polls, had been founded in 2013 precisely in protest to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s belated commitment to the Greek bailout.
In July 2015, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called for a referendum on the new bailout agreement on offer by the EU, then campaigned for a “No” vote. In the meantime, rather than talking things over with the country’s European partners, he flew to St. Petersburg to meet Vladimir Putin. That came to nothing: Russia lacked the wherewithal to fund Greece, and Tsipras was more valuable to Putin from within the EU, opposing sanctions and promoting Russian gas. At that point, Tsipras was left with no option but to perform an undignified U-turn. And this he duly did: a new bailout agreement was signed, things calmed down, and Greece’s nominally anti-austerity government spent the following four years ruling with a level of ineptitude, cronyism, and contempt for checks and balances, that was exceptional even by Greek standards. In July 2018, the rot at the heart of government became obvious for all to see, when a forest fire about 20 miles from Athens was allowed to rage unchecked for days, killing more than 100 persons.
In July 2019, the electoral pendulum swung the other way, bringing to power a revamped conservative party led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis. In 2023, the conservatives extended their lead, as their share of the vote inched up to over 40%, while their opponents’ crumpled to 20%. When Tsipras resigned, a new party leader was chosen by the party faithful: Stefanos Kasselakis, a 35-year old with little political experience, unless one counted the years he spent in the US, as a registered Republican. In September 2024, he was forced out, but not before the party he had briefly led fragmented and sank lower at the polls. It looked as if Greece’s nearly fatal infatuation with populism was over, the body politic emerging in rude health from a near death experience, at least for the time being.
To a very large extent, the recent dominance of Greek politics by New Democracy, the country’s conservative party, is the work of its leader. A scion of a centrist political dynasty (his father was prime minister in 1990-1993), himself well on the left of his party, Mitsotakis would almost certainly have never been chosen by the rank-and-file to lead it. His elevation to party leader in January 2016, at the age of 48, was due to a rare constellation of factors: the demoralization of the party after the twin defeat of 2015; the decision to hold a primary, rather than have MPs or congress delegates elect the new leader; the botched first round of the primary “for technical reasons”, symbolizing the incompetence of the old guard; the spontaneous mobilization in his support of thousands of pro-EU moderates and progressives, never before associated with the conservatives, attracted to his social liberalism; all these combined to give Mitsotakis a narrow victory at the second round of the primary. In opposition he outsmarted Tsipras, and matched his youth and energy. At the polls, he defeated him with a clear margin in 2019, and an even larger one in 2023.
In government, Mitsotakis led a team of ministers and advisors, typically young, highly educated, more liberal than conservative, often with centre-left sympathies (and, on occasion, a past in the socialist party PASOK), focusing relentlessly on economic revival. At home, the animal spirits of businesses were given free reign; abroad, foreign investors were assiduously courted. After the deep recession of the early 2010s, and the economic stagnation of the second half of that decade, growth began to take off. Life under Covid was as grim as everywhere, yet ordinary Greeks surprised themselves by sticking to lockdown and vaccination rules with a lot less fuss than the Dutch, and the government seized the chance to put in place an efficient, user-friendly digital infrastructure better than Germany’s.
More good news were to follow. Pfizer’s decision to create a research centre in Thessaloniki (Greece’s second largest city, where Albert Bourla, the company’s CEO, was born and raised), and Microsoft’s and Google’s to invest in cloud computing, not to mention the unlikely emergence of Athens as a film industry hub (as seen in Tehran, the Netflix series, shot entirely on location), cheered Greeks and added to the sense that the country was out of the woods. So did the inflow of billions, courtesy of the Recovery and Resilience Plan and other EU programmes. In 2022, the economy bounced back faster than other European economies, while GDP growth in 2023-2025 was twice as strong as the Eurozone average. In 2023, Greece led The Economist’s annual ranking of rich-world economies. In September 2025, the unemployment rate (8%) fell to pre-crisis levels. Social benefits have been protected. Minimum wages have been raised above inflation.
In foreign policy, Mitsotakis charted a prudent course. On Ukraine, he positioned the country close to the EU mainstream. To Erdogan’s Turkey, he proposed dialogue and respect of international law. On the Prespa Accord, ending Greece’s dispute with North Macedonia, one of the few real achievements of his predecessor, he opted for continuity, quietly resisting pressures to repeal it. On all these issues, he infuriated nationalists within and without his party, including the strong cross-party pro-Russia consistency.
On gender issues, his government sponsored progressive legislation, extending women’s rights in the workplace, and recognising same-sex marriage in 2024, building on the introduction of civil partnerships in 2015.
All well then? Not exactly. For all his recent success, Mitsotakis remains something of an outsider in his own party, his leadership tolerated by grandees and rank-and-file only as long as he delivers access to power. His insecurity has already cost him a number of unforced errors. To pacify the party’s conservative instincts, and to pre-empt a far-right challenge, he gave the hard right of his own party carte blanche on immigration. A “pushback” policy was officially denied but a number of fatal incidents ensued, culminating to the 2023 migrant boat disaster, when the Coast Guard made a botched attempt to tow Adriana, and then looked on as the vessel capsized and sank off the coast of Pylos, drowning up to 650 people, many of them women and children.
In 2022, a phone-tapping scandal broke out, revealing that his chief of staff, who happened to be the prime minister’s nephew, also overseeing the country’s intelligence survey, had been involved in the installation of malware used for covert surveillance in the mobile phones of government ministers, opposition figures, businesspeople, judges, journalists and others. Predatorgate, as the scandal became known, raised serious questions, still largely unanswered, about the rule of law and respect for civil liberties in Greece, and tarnished Mitsotakis’s liberal image.
While the government managed to contain the damage caused by Predatorgate, possibly because ordinary Greeks saw it as a case of rival factions of the political and possibly business elite settling their accounts, that was not the case with the devastating train crash of 1 March 2023, in which 57 people lost their lives. The inquiry into the causes of the disaster revealed that automated safety systems worth hundreds of millions were left to rot, that railway traffic control on the country’s main rail artery was conducted manually, and that controllers went about their cushy job with a shocking lack of concern for the lives at stake.
In May 2025, an investigation led by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office brought to light a large-scale scandal, in which Greeks received EU agricultural subsidies totalling hundreds of millions for pastureland they did not own or lease, or for farming work they did not perform. The investigation, still in progress, has already revealed that the operation was coordinated by local conservative party chiefs, that government ministers were in the know, that whistleblowers within the organisation allocating EU farming subsidies were ignored, marginalised, and even threatened, and that Greek judges disdained to consider the issue until forced to by European prosecutors.
If that were not enough to contradict and complicate the upbeat story Greece’s new ruling elite like to tell, most ordinary Greeks continued to live a mundane existence. Public hospitals, schools and buses remain underfunded and neglected. House prices and rents in Athens and tourist areas have risen beyond the reach of many, driven by lax regulation of online platforms such as Booking.com and Airbnb, and by the Golden Visa programme, selling Greek (and hence EU) citizenship to foreign investors for as little €250,000 (since raised to €800,000), who swiftly proceeded to buying real estate. Real average wages in 2024 remained 5% below their 2004 level. The government’s own economic forecasts paint a picture of GDP growth slowing down after 2026, when lavish EU funding under the Recovery and Resilience Plan is due to dry out.
Part of the problem is excess dependence on tourism (‘our heavy industry’ as government ministers and business spokesmen like to repeat), estimated to contribute almost half of all exports, as well a quarter of all jobs and a fifth of GDP. This is problematic in the short-term (as most of the jobs it provides are low-skill and low-pay), and unwise in the longer-term (as the tourism industry is highly vulnerable to geopolitical risk, not to mention climate change).
On the contrary, productive investment is a fraction of what it was pre-crisis. Adult skills are incredibly low, even as formal qualifications proliferate. Public administration, though digitalised, remains unhelpful in all other respects. Justice remains excruciatingly slow, and less impartial or independent from government than it should be.
All in all, most ingredients of sustainable growth are missing. The Greek economy seems trapped in a low-productivity low-wage trajectory. In a country still smarting from the sudden collapse of living standards in the early 2010s, a lot more is needed to ensure that the economic recovery and political stability of the last few years persist in the near future.
