Greece’s political parties have shifted into full campaign mode, with party leaders launching regional tours, candidate lists being announced and new parties scrambling to build organizational structures, even as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis maintains that elections are not scheduled until 2027.
Mitsotakis, who told his own party this week that “we are, let’s stop kidding ourselves, in the final stretch,” has signaled electoral readiness from within his own New Democracy party while publicly holding to the 2027 timeline. The party has begun announcing candidates, including Digital Governance Minister Dimitris Papastergiou in Trikala, Deputy Education Minister Nikos Papaioannou in Thessaloniki A, and party spokesperson Alexandra Sdoukou in Athens A. The prime minister is set to travel to Rhodes on Saturday as part of his own regional tour.
Alexis Tsipras, who launched the Greek Left Alliance (EL.A.S) in May, is also picking up the pace, building up EL.A.S.’s organizational structures. On Monday he will address an open party rally in Nikaia, a working-class district in the greater Piraeus area. Next week, the former PM is expected to announce the party’s National Council, which will hold its inaugural session on June 27, along with a Political Committee whose secretary has been named as Miltos Chatzigiannakis. Sokrates Famellos, speaking at a conference organized by the economic weekly Oikonomikos Tachydromos, defended the decision to back Tsipras’s new formation and called on dissenters within SYRIZA, including former ministers Nikos Pappas, Pavlos Polakis and Rena Dourou, to respect the decision of the party’s central committee and what he described as “the demand of the base.”
PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis, whose center-left party had positioned itself as the main opposition until the arrival of Tsipras and Karystianou, addressed an open event for young people Thursday evening at the former fertilizer factory complex in Drapetsona, Piraeus, a venue that has become a cultural hub. At a conference marking the centenary of Oikonomikos Tachydromos, Androulakis made clear he intends to maintain what he has called a “two-front” strategy, refusing alignment with either New Democracy or Tsipras’s left.
Maria Karystianou, the activist turned politician who this month announced her own party, Hope for Democracy, is also beginning regional campaign activity. She visited Attiko Hospital on Friday morning, and is scheduled to visti the port town of Perama on Saturday, and Thessaloniki on Sunday.
New Democracy faces a separate headache in the form of a party-in-waiting being assembled by former prime minister Antonis Samaras, who has publicly attacked Mitsotakis, his handling of relations with Turkey. He also recently accused New Democracy of having lost its “soul.” Mitsotakis has responded sharply to those barbs. The party’s new secretary-general, Kostantinos Kyranakis, declined to rule out an attempt to smooth relations with both Samaras and former prime minister Kostas Karamanlis.
All five political actors launched or are launching their regional tours from roughly the same starting point: the constituencies of western Athens and Piraeus B, a bellwether area that parties have long treated as a barometer of broader electoral sentiment.
