Pressure on Androulakis grows after European election setback

PASOK MEP Nikos Papandreou has entered the ongoing debate about the future of the socialist party’s leadership following disappointing results in the recent European elections. 

Several officials, including MPs Nadia Giannakopoulou, Odysseas Konstantinopoulos and Pavlos Yeroulanos, have already challenged Nikos Androulakis after PASOK finished third, behind SYRIZA, on Sunday, missing their target of a second-place finish.

“Responsibilities in politics are objective. The leadership holds responsibility by default, and it was this leadership that was rejected by the political body,” Papandreou, who was the party’s top vote-getting MEP candidate as he was reelected, said in an article in Proto Thema newspaper on Wednesday.

“Petty politics, personalistic, and nepotistic strategies have prevailed in successive elections. This led to divisions that ran through the party from its officials down to the base of its supporters. None of this aligns with the values of PASOK. This is known to the public, which turned its back on these attitudes in the recent elections,” he said.

Sources close to the party leadership on Wednesday rejected the idea of expediting a leadership election scheduled for 2025.