Greece celebrates New Year as country enters 2020

Greece has officially entered the new year and the new decade with pomp and show, as well as calls for unity.

Celebrations are in full swing across the country with fireworks and music shows taking place in major cities.

Party-goers gathered at Syntagma Square in central Athens as they awaited the final countdown which was attended by new city mayor Kostas Bakoyannis.

Greece ushered into the new decade with a new conservative government in place after New Democracy conservatives unseated leftist SYRIZA in elections on July 7.

In a New Year’s message a few hours earlier, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed his confidence that Greeks will be able to overcome any obstacles that will come in their way in 2020, including any challenges to the country’s territorial integrity – a reference to continuing Turkish provocations in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean.

“Geopolitical challenges do not intimidate us. The right is on our side. We have strong allies. We have the deterrent capability to fend off any claims to our sovereign rights,” Mitsotakis said.

In his own message, main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras also addressed the country’s security conundrum, issuing a call for “unity, determination and a national strategy.”