PM comes under fire from predecessors

Two former conservative prime ministers, Kostas Karamanlis and Antonis Samaras, expressed their dismay with the government on a wide array of issues, not least foreign policy and same-sex marriage, during a book launch at the War Museum in Athens on Monday.

Samaras, who served as 14th prime minister from 2012 to 2015, unleashed a no-holds barred criticism of the government over same-sex marriage, the model of governance and foreign policy. Regarding same sex marriage, he said the objections of former leader were not heeded, bemoaning “the celebrations of ministers, cuddling with LGBTI people… while a third of our party’s MPs did not vote for it.”

On foreign policy, he said Greece has received “one humiliation after another,” from North Macedonians, the Albanians “and, of course, our… friends the Turks,” calling on the prime minister “to return to the historical legacies of the party,” to veto Albania’s EU course, and to disengage from the “nationally dangerous Prespa Agreement” and “veto every step of Skopje, whose irredentism we must reject.”

He described the result of the European elections as a “strong slap in the face” for New Democracy, arguing it has become the “smallest and most fearful” it has ever been.

He also took issue with the EU, which he said is caught up in the “vortex of a destructive agenda” of political correctness and rights taken too far.

Unlike Samaras, Karamanlis, who served as the 10th prime minister of Greece from 2004 to 2009, did not mention the government or Mitsotakis by name but he was also very critical of it and the EU, as well as foreign policy.

“No Greek government would be prepared to give way on major national issues and accept arrangements to the detriment of national interests,” he said, “because it would be faced with the unanimous and vigorous opposition of the Greek people.”

Referring to Greek-Turkish relations specifically, he said, “It is impossible and unthinkable to conclude a compromise that would artificially and cunningly conceal, under the pretext of an appeal to the Hague Tribunal for the delimitation of the EEZ and the continental shelf, the granting, in vague and diplomatically inventive terms, of a right to the court to rule on the extent of territorial waters or even the territorial sovereignty of islands and islets.”