Wiretapping scandal in Greece: early parliamentary return


The Greek government announced on Tuesday August 9 that the return to parliament would be brought forward by a week, accepting the request of the left-wing opposition for a “extraordinary debateto the Assembly on the telephone tapping scandal that is shaking the country.

The government has agreed to bring forward the opening of Parliament to August 22 instead of August 31 as originally plannedGovernment spokesman Yannis Economou told reporters.

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The conservative government of Kyriakos Mitsotakis is under enormous pressure after the revelation of the surveillance by the national intelligence services (EYP) of Nikos Androulakis, an MEP who became leader of the socialist opposition by taking the helm of the Pasok-Kinal, the third parliamentary party. On Monday evening, hours after the prime minister confessed to the surveillance of Nikos Androulakis by the EYP while calling it “mistake“, the leader of the main leftist opposition party Syriza, Alexis Tsipras, claimed “the end of summer vacationof Parliament andan extraordinary debate in the Assemblyon illegal surveillance. “Today no one can say how many and which politicians, journalists or other citizens suffered the lifting of secrecy“, lambasted Alexis Tsipras, former Prime Minister (2015-2019).

This affair led to two resignations last week in the entourage of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, that of the head of the EYP Panagiotis Kontoleon and that of the secretary general of the office of the prime minister, Grigoris Dimitriadis, who is also his nephew. During an address to the nation on Monday, Kyriakos Mitsotakis assured that he was not aware of the EYP’s decision to monitor Nikos Androulakis “between September 2021, when he was an MEP, until December of that year, a few days after his election as president of Pasok-Kinal“. He pointed out that this monitoring was “legal“but that she was”unacceptable“. But the opposition and the media criticized the “disclaimerby the Prime Minister. The EYP was brought under his umbrella under a controversial amendment in August 2019, days after his right-wing New Democracy party came to power.


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