Kyriakos Pierrakakis, Minister of National Economy and Finance and President of the Eurogroup, criticized Alexis Tsipras’s new party and its presentation at Thiseio on SKAI TV, arguing that he heard nothing truly new from the former prime minister.
“When you want to stage a new play, it’s not enough to just change the lighting and the music. You also have to change the script,” he remarked, noting that what Alexis Tsipras presented was “a series of soundbites one after another” and “a repetition of many things that had been said in the past.”
The minister also addressed the name of the new party, “Greek Left Alliance” (ELAS), noting with humor: “The nicest thing someone told me is that if the party is called ELAS, then its youth wing will be called EPON.”
“These civil war-era associations aren’t exactly pleasant. It’s 2026; we don’t need that. Every time the country has been divided, it has paid for it with blood—literally in the past, figuratively since then,” he remarked.
According to Mr. Pierrakakis, the former prime minister’s speech referred more to the past than to a new political proposal.“I didn’t hear a speech from him yesterday. I heard rhetoric, politics, and logic from the day before yesterday coming from Alexis Tsipras’s lips. And in my opinion, that doesn’t belong in 2026,” he noted.
The minister specifically referred to one of the commitments presented by Alexis Tsipras, that of “digital democracy and sovereignty with national technological infrastructure and sovereignty clauses, ” saying that neither he nor officials in his ministry understood it.
“I haven’t understood what it is. I asked my team at the ministry—a dozen or so people who have worked on digital issues—and none of them understood it either,” he commented.
However, he clarified that he does not underestimate any policy initiative and that he looks forward to hearing specific proposals.“Under no circumstances do I underestimate any policy proposal. I look forward with great interest to hearing the proposals. But I’m waiting to hear the substance, what we have to say,” he concluded.