EU Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos may have resigned as deputy prime minister of the conservative New Democracy (ND) party but he is still keeping a watch on his party’s developments. Despite his post in Brussels he believes that it is only a matter of time befoe a “government of national reconstruction” is created. Sources within his environment point to his belief that the Radical Left Coalition (SYRIZA) government and its junior coalition party, right-wing anti-austerity Independent Greeks (ANEL), are unable to meet the demands of governance. He expects that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will be obliged to widen the government so that it includes other forces to steer the country towards a new “European realism”.

The Greek commissioner believes that Greece’s European future, stability and social cohesion will be judged in the near future. He feels that the time has come for a government collaboration that would marginalize extremists that are, in his view, “keeping the country hostage.”

Those close to Avramopoulos state that he has always worked towards the goal of political collaboration and cohesion and that was the reason that motivated him to take part in the provisional government of economist Lucas Papademos from 2011 to 2012. He had also been opposed to the departure of the Democratic Left (DIMAR) from the government of former prime minister Antonis Samaras in June 2013. He believes that this rift had reduced the political legality of all that followed. His close coworkers state that this was the point that he had “discreetly withdrawn” from his post as defence minister as he had been opposed to the “strategy of fear” that had been followed by the conservative government prior to the January 25 elections that had led to the defeat of the ND government.

Avramopoulos’ resignation as deputy prime minister during the ND political committee meeting placed pressure on Samaras to point out that the matter of a change of leadership had ended. Samaras rushed to announce the appointment of a new informal 15-membered body to act as shadow opposition government.