The political rupture between Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Antonis Samaras has escalated into an open confrontation at the heart of Greece’s governing center-right.
Responding on camera to remarks made by Mitsotakis during his press conference at the Thessaloniki International Fair, the former prime minister did not simply defend his political record.
He launched a sweeping attack on the current leadership of New Democracy and ended with perhaps his most politically consequential line:
“This is not the party, Mr. Mitsotakis. This is the Mitsotakis party.”
The exchange takes the dispute well beyond a personal feud. It is increasingly becoming a battle over who represents the political and ideological identity of Greece’s traditional center-right.
“The Mitsotakis Family Does Not Decide Who Damages the Party”
Samaras’s first response directly targeted Mitsotakis’s suggestion that the former prime minister has considerable “expertise” in damaging New Democracy.
“Who has the expertise to damage the party is not decided by the Mitsotakis family, but by the people of the party,”Samaras said.
He then invoked his own election as New Democracy leader:
“Just as they did then, when 800,000 Greeks elected a leader with real expertise in saving the country from bankruptcy. These are the people Mr. Mitsotakis is showing contempt for.”
The political significance of the wording is clear.
Samaras is challenging the idea that the current leadership has the exclusive authority to determine who legitimately represents New Democracy.
Instead, he is appealing directly to the party’s grassroots and its traditional conservative electorate.
“He Should Worry About His Own Legacy”
Mitsotakis had earlier said that he hoped Samaras would think carefully about his political legacy.
Samaras turned that argument directly back on the prime minister.
“He should therefore worry about his own legacy.”
What followed was an unusually sweeping indictment of the Mitsotakis government.
Samaras said the prime minister would go down in history, in his view, as the leader associated with “the cost-of-living crisis, corruption, arrogance, direct public contracts, the impoverishment of the provinces, the woke agenda, taxes, the targeting of the middle class” and the deterioration of conditions facing farmers, livestock breeders, fishermen and the hospitality sector.
These are Samaras’s political allegations and characterizations, not established findings. But their breadth demonstrates that the former prime minister is no longer challenging Mitsotakis on one or two individual policies.
He is challenging the government’s overall record and ideological direction.
Samaras Targets Mitsotakis on Foreign Policy
The confrontation has an increasingly important geopolitical dimension.
Samaras accused the government of pursuing what he called a “foreign policy of appeasement and bowing.”
That directly answers one of Mitsotakis’s strongest remarks earlier at the Thessaloniki International Fair.
The prime minister said Samaras “directly challenges the core of the government’s foreign and defense policy” and concluded that he could see “absolutely no room for an understanding.”
The two former allies are therefore no longer merely arguing about political tactics.
They are publicly challenging each other over the direction of Greek foreign policy itself — particularly at a time when relations with Turkey, defense modernization and developments in the Eastern Mediterranean are once again moving to the top of Athens’s agenda.
Tempi, Surveillance and OPEKEPE Enter the Attack
Samaras broadened his criticism further by invoking some of the most politically damaging controversies that have confronted the government.
Among them, he referred to the Tempi rail disaster, the surveillance scandal and OPEKEPE, while also attacking the government’s migration policies.
Again, these references were presented as part of Samaras’s political indictment of the prime minister.
But their inclusion is strategically important.
Rather than positioning himself exclusively as a critic of Mitsotakis from the traditional conservative right on national issues, Samaras is attempting to construct a much wider anti-government narrative encompassing living standards, institutions, the countryside, migration and foreign policy.
The Line That Changes the Political Meaning of the Clash
Samaras saved his strongest political message for the end:
“This is not the party, Mr. Mitsotakis. This is the Mitsotakis party.”
That sentence moves the confrontation onto fundamentally different terrain.
Samaras is no longer simply saying that Mitsotakis is making the wrong decisions.
He is arguing that New Democracy itself has been transformed under its current leader and distanced from what Samaras regards as its historical political identity.
This distinction matters because it potentially provides the ideological argument for what could come next.
The Question of a New Samaras Party
During his TIF press conference, Mitsotakis was directly asked what would happen if Samaras created a new political party, entered parliament and New Democracy subsequently needed a coalition partner.
The prime minister refused to engage in the hypothetical scenario, pointing to the number of conditions that would first have to materialize.
But on one issue he was unequivocal: given Samaras’s current positions, he sees no room for political accommodation.
That leaves a major unanswered question hanging over Greece’s center-right.
Will Samaras remain an influential critic outside New Democracy, or will he eventually seek to provide an organized political home for conservative voters who believe the governing party has moved too far from its traditional identity?
His latest statement did not announce a new party.
But the language he chose makes that scenario increasingly difficult to dismiss.
From Personal Feud to Battle for the Greek Center-Right
The significance of the confrontation lies precisely here.
Mitsotakis is effectively arguing that Samaras has moved so far from the government’s strategic direction — particularly on foreign policy — that reconciliation is currently impossible.
Samaras is answering that Mitsotakis, not himself, has moved away from the political tradition of New Democracy.
These are two fundamentally different claims to political legitimacy.
And with Greece moving toward national elections in 2027, the dispute could have consequences well beyond the personal relationship between two former party leaders.
For Mitsotakis, even a relatively small electoral leakage on New Democracy’s right flank could complicate his stated objective of securing another parliamentary majority.
For Samaras, however, creating a separate political vehicle would carry its own enormous risk: he would have to prove that his criticism represents a meaningful constituency rather than simply a high-profile internal rupture.
That is why the final line of his statement may matter more than all the accusations that preceded it.
“This is not the party. This is the Mitsotakis party.”
If that becomes more than rhetoric, the confrontation that exploded at TIF could mark the beginning of a much larger battle over the future of the Greek center-right.
Source: pagenews.gr