A battle to maintain the initiative of moves and to set the pre-election agenda itself is being waged by the government. At every opportunity, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the top officials emphatically present to citizens the tough dilemmas of the ballot box and highlight the sectors and achievements for which they believe the Maximos Mansion is graded positively.
The prime minister did so on Friday, speaking to citizens in Pieria, and he will keep insisting on doing so in his -increasingly frequent- tours around the country and in his upcoming television appearances.
However, the equation the government is called upon to face is becoming extremely complex, with the prolonged energy crisis as the dominant “thorn”, intensifying the already major problem of high prices and the cost of living.
At the same time, the case of the Tempi tragedy returned to the top of public debate with the referral of Christos Triantopoulos to the Special Court and Antonis Samaras “strikes again” pending the announcements about his new party, while internal party “off-key notes”, with discussions about the arrogance of officials and the different blue voices on a series of issues, raise the degree of difficulty in managing the situation.
On the major problem of inflationary pressure, the Eurostat figures for September are indicative: inflation in the Eurozone rose to 3.8%, while in Greece, according to the preliminary figures, it reached 5.1%, from 3.7% in August, mainly due to energy.
In the prime minister’s staff, they know that the issue is now also deeply political, with high fuel prices being passed on to transport, the supply chain, businesses and ultimately the disposable income of households. In this context, a web of interventions is being attempted, from expanding the subsidy on diesel fuel to strengthening the heating allowance and facilitating businesses with debt settlement arrangements.
The government’s argument is that the country now has fiscal room to deal with a difficult energy environment, but this will be done without fiscal derailment and with steady -every fortnight- monitoring of the situation and the taking of the corresponding initiatives.
With this as a given, the Maximos Mansion is trying to show that the interventions are targeted and will not turn into uncontrolled pre-election handouts, of which it accuses the opposition parties.
At the same time, wanting to highlight the… half-full side of the glass, it describes it as “important” that on the food front prices in Greece in September fell by 0.2% compared with the corresponding month of 2025 and by 0.4% compared with August. “This shows that the National Price Reduction Initiative worked positively, as for yet another month food inflation is negative, despite the adverse broader international environment and the problem of the cost of living in many other sectors”, government sources note.
“Absolute confidence”
In the Triantopoulos case, for the government the aim is for it to remain within its institutional framework, with Justice having the final say and for Tempi not to once again turn into a permanent field of political confrontation.
As they state at the Maximos Mansion, “The Government is following, in the Tempi case as well, the path of institutional responsibility, allowing Justice to carry out its work unhindered. We have absolute confidence in it, as does Mr. Triantopoulos, who himself asked to be judged by his natural judge, for omissions which it will become clear whether he had committed”. And this, while the judicial decision is also pending for former Transport Minister Kostas Ach. Karamanlis, also regarding his referral to the Special Court.
Behind the individual issues, the Maximos Mansion has already begun to unfold the basic electoral narrative. Its core is based on political, but also fiscal, stability. According to this, in an environment of international upheavals, geopolitical risks and energy uncertainty, the country needs a stable government that can make decisions and implement its commitments.
The discussion about security is also part of this specific framework. The government will try to bring into the pre-election agenda the argument that Greece must have a strong voice and self-confidence at a time when geopolitical balances remain fragile.
At the same time, it will try to present the country’s presence in Europe as political capital. This narrative focuses on Greece’s participation in shaping European policies, on claiming European resources and on the effort to turn national priorities into European initiatives, most recently with Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s letter to Brussels on the need for European intervention on the issue of energy.
And within this equation, the bet of the Greece–Cyprus electricity interconnection plays a pivotal role. The project remains on the government’s agenda as a strategically important European energy infrastructure, while its geostrategic footprint is also intense.
It is linked to Cyprus’s energy security, Greece’s position in the Eastern Mediterranean and the European strategy for the interconnection of member states, at a time when Turkey insists on reacting and demanding to have a say in the matter.
“The Greece - Cyprus electricity interconnection cable will proceed normally based on the plan and the original schedule. It is a European project, on which there has never been any retreat whatsoever and for which no permission will be sought, except that of Greece, in accordance with what is provided for by International Law”, is the message being sent from the prime minister’s circle.