Kyriakos Mitsotakis, leader of Greece’s major opposition party New Democracy (ND), underlined that the country was slipping into “an unprecedented institutional degeneration”, during his speech in parliament over the TV licences and the Supreme Court’s ruling on the case that effectively suspended the enactment of the law until its constitutionality was decided upon in a new meeting by the country’s Supreme Court. “The government is adopting extreme methods that insult our State of Justice and undermine the quality of democracy itself”, the leader of the opposition party stressed. In an acrimonious debate in parliament, Mitsotakis blasted the Greek government, characterising its contrivances unacceptable, with no other intent than to exercise pressure on judges in the wake of the Council of State’s (CoS), Greece’s supreme judicial body, next meeting to reach a verdict on the constitutionality of Minister Pappas’s TV license law. Mitsotakis stressed that the law introduced by Minister of State Nikos Pappas would be abolished either by the justice system or when ND came to power. “These machinations are common in ‘deep states’ of lawlessness and not in states of Justice”, he said, commenting on the publication of personal information of a judge in pro-SYRIZA press. He pointed to a statement released by the Association of Judges and Prosecutors that criticised the controversial article about the judge participating in the session examining the TV Licence case in an article in left newspaper “Avgi”, the unofficial mouthpiece of SYRIZA. Mitsotakis said ND had always supported the functioning of powerful independent authorities that would exercise their roles in a responsible and effective manner. Mitsotakis called on the government to refrain from intervening in the judicial process and allow it to reach its verdicts free from pressures. The president of ND dubbed the decision reached by the CoS on the Pappas TV law s vindication for his party on the matter.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s speech in Parliament