Greek PM reshuffles government after poor EU election showing

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has reshuffled his government, his spokesman announced on Friday, following disappointing results for his right-wing New Democracy (ND) party in last week’s European Parliament elections.

The posts of interior, migration and labour ministers changed hands, as did the agriculture and rural development portfolios.

But the heavyweights in the government formed one year ago after Mitsotakis’s comfortable re-election stayed in post.

They include Foreign Minister Giorgios Gerapetritis, Defence Minister Nikos Dendias and Finance Minister Kostis Hatzidakis.

Theodoros Livanios takes over the interior portfolio after a stint as secretary of state in the same ministry.

The new migrations and asylum minister, Nikos Panagiotopoulos, was defence minister during a row over asylum seekers between Greece and Turkey in 2020.

New Democracy, which has been in power since 2019, won most votes in the European Parliament ballot on Sunday but the prime minister acknowledged the result was not what he had hoped for.

ND’s 28 percent was lower than the 33 percent it obtained in the previous European election and well below the 40 percent it won in the Greek parliamentary elections in June 2023.

Mitsotakis told Bloomberg TV that Greeks were feeling “a degree of discontent", particularly over the cost of living.

Sunday’s low turnout was “also a political message for us”, he said.

More than 58 percent of Greek voters shunned the ballot box at the weekend.

Mitsotakis pledged to do more to combat inflation, which has particularly affected food prices.

He said social reforms allowing same sex couples to marry and to adopt children, had “put off some traditional voters” but the parliament would not revoke these historic changes it approved in February.