Androulakis welcomes court decision on wiretapping data

PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis has welcomed a decision by the Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, that a law forbidding independent privacy watchdog ADAE from informing him about the data collected during his surveillance by the National Intelligence Service (EYP) was unconstitutional.

Describing the decision as “historic,” Androulakis told MPs that it would put a stop to the “violation of the rule of law and of human rights,” by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

“With this particular decision, the para-state of [the Prime Minister’s Office] has suffered a great defeat in its attempt to cover up the wiretapping case and my surveillance,” he said.

Sharpening his criticism of the government and the prime minister personally, the PASOK leader said that “this would not happen in any European country. But you are not the government of a European country … You are a party of shame on the separation of powers.”

He said Mitsotakis “had the audacity to use the EYP to the detriment of his political opponents and members of the cabinet. I was put under surveillance when I submitted my bid for the leadership of PASOK.”

He added that that he will find out on Monday why he was monitored.

In a unanimous decision announced on Friday, the Council of State stated that the provision included in a 2021 law, which prohibited informing the affected party after the expiration of the lifting of confidentiality of communications, even when there is no risk to national security that was seen as warranting the imposition of the measure, “constitutes an excessive limitation of the inviolability of communication, which is not justified within the framework of the rule of law.”

Following the decision, the ADAE is obliged to address Androulakis’s request for the data in light of the new facts.