The local EPP affiliates of New Democracy are among the few ruling parties in the EU that are topping the polls in the European elections.
ADVERTISEMENTAhead of the EU elections, the current centre-right government in Greece maintains its popularity one year after the national elections.
However, Prime Minister Kiriakos Mitsotakis' Nea Demokratia, the European People Party's political affiliate in Greece, leads the polls among Greek citizens, according to the Euronews superpoll. It comes ahead of the EU elections in June, predicting that the current centre-right government will maintain its position
It is an exception in European politics as almost all ruling political parties are set to see losses, the opinion polls report.
The moderate conservatives are far ahead of their leftist and centre-left opponents, from Syriza and the PASOK, respectively, positioned at the second and third places by the Superpoll.
The distance between the centre-right and Syriza candidate Stefanos Kasselakis is more than 20%. The two moderate leftist forces, Syriza and PASOK, struggle in a fratricidal electoral competition.
The early May Superpoll shows that PASOK has lost the second position compared to 1 March, yet the struggle with its leftist rivals is not over. The two political forces are still running a nip-and-tuck political race.
The communists of the old Greek Communist Party, the KKE, are also taking part in the left's internecine battle as a minority dark horse.
The Greek conventional left spectrum (from the more centrist forces to the radical ones) is fragmented at EU parliament-level representation, too. Syriza is a member of the European Left group, PASOK is affiliated with the Socialists and Democrats group, whereas the KKE (the historical Marxist-Leninist Hellenic Communist Party) is a component of the Non-Attached group.
In Strasbourg, the Kyriakos Mitsotakis' party is to provide the EPP with one more seat. Siryza and the Greek communists could confirm their four seats in the European Left benches, and PASOK is to provide three MEPs to the Social and Democrats group after the forced departure of the former vice-president of the EU Parliament, Eva Kaili, involved in the scandal of the Qatar-friendly lobbying.
The Greek Solution party is supposed to grow even further and contribute to the European Conservatives and Reformers Group with two MEPs, one more than the outgoing legislature. This fast-growing right-wing Greek traditional conservative political bloc has surpassed, according to the polls, the KKE.
As for the far-right, the Spartans movement, who have been endorsed by a leading jailed member of the legally banned neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, have recently been excluded from the ballot for June’s EU election by Greece’s high court.
The votes of the judicially disbanded Nazism apologist political forces could fractionally (by default) beef up the Greek Solution (ECR) and the moderate conservative Mitsotakis` party.
Better than expected for EPP's Nea Demokratia?
Some observers expected the ruling party to suffer political damage due to the alleged involvement of some of its members in the mismanagement that contributed to the train crash in Tempi valley.
A peculiarity of the Greek part of the European elections is that the ruling party's success could be boosted by the candidacy of Fredi Beleri, an ethnic-Greek Albanian mayor detained for corruption in the neighbouring country.
If Beleri gets enough votes, he will have parliamentary immunity. His case has become a popular patriotic cause that could result in a contentious tug-of-war between Greece and Albania.