From the start, the prime minister focused on speaking time rather than substance. ‘We must impose on ourselves a framework of self-commitment, to respect time. I consider it a profound contempt when time limits are not respected,’ he said, complaining that opposition leaders had exceeded the 20-minute limit. ‘It is an absolute contempt for the institutions of parliament.,’ he added.
He then announced, ‘I will not be able to follow the entire debate because if you had respected your time we would have lost two extra hours. From now on, if you want me to be present, you must respect your allocated time. I have no obligation to listen to you use twice your allocated time. You will respect the parliament so that I can respect you too.’ Pointing his finger at opposition benches, he accused them of ‘insulting the parliament and myself’.
Justice ‘will not be a sideshow’
Turning to policy, Mitsotakis referred to SYRIZA’s withdrawal from the roll-call vote on the labour bill, accusing the opposition of ‘partisan theatrics’. ‘From what was said, one would think that the labour Middle Ages had arrived,’ he said. ‘Yet 47 articles of the bill were voted for by over 180 MPs. SYRIZA, in order not to be exposed, withdrew.’
He also commented on the upcoming Tempe trial and responded directly to statements by Zoe Konstantopoulou, leader of the Course of Freedom party: ‘The Tempe trial has finally been set to begin in March 2026. That is where I, and Greek citizens, truly believe that justice will be served. We do not make justice a sideshow like SYRIZA, and we have proven it.’
Gaza and the ‘humanitarian catastrophe’
Mitsotakis again avoided condemning Israel for the ongoing genocide in Gaza, insisting that the ‘genesis of the humanitarian catastrophe’ was ‘the attack in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered by Hamas’. He accused opposition MPs of not speaking enough about that event, despite two years of relentless Israeli bombings targeting civilians, hospitals, schools and refugees seeking aid. ‘None of the speakers mentioned that the root cause of the humanitarian disaster was the attack in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered by Hamas,’ he said.
He repeated that Greece would not recognise a Palestinian state ‘until the right conditions exist’, arguing that even France’s decision to do so ‘has made no difference’. Mitsotakis reiterated his claim that he had told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ‘the military response exceeded all limits’, a phrase he often cites to suggest moral balance while maintaining full cooperation with Israel’s occupation regime.
Defence spending and Trump
The prime minister went on to praise Greece’s high military expenditure and defend his friendly stance towards US president Donald Trump. ‘President Trump’s manner and style may be strange, but he is an elected president and the US is a strategic partner of our country,’ he said. When PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis retorted, ‘Are you the president of the US?’, Mitsotakis replied: ‘I am the Prime Minister of Greece and I defend its interests. I make sure that Greece is not the fringe of Europe like it was under SYRIZA.’
He added, ‘We spend 3% of our GDP on defence, and we are doing well.’
Nationalism and migration
Responding to criticism from the right over the postponement of his meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in New York, Mitsotakis asked why Italy’s opposition had not reacted when ‘the same thing happened with Ms Meloni’. He also evoked nationalist language, saying that during the 2020 border crisis ‘we were fighting the difficult battle in Evros’, describing migration as an ‘invasion’.
‘Be sure that I will meet Mr Erdogan again,’ he said, presenting himself as a guarantor of Greek-Turkish stability. He argued that Greece was implementing ‘the Helsinki policy’, and that ‘if Turkey wants to enter the SAFE programme, it must renounce the threat of war and end the grey-zone provocations.’
On European defence and migration policy, Mitsotakis said: ‘When everyone was talking about secondary flows, we said the first thing that should be implemented is the guarding of external borders. Europe must now see its defence differently. We were the first to talk about the escape clause. We are not in danger if we spend more on defence, and we do not risk being stretched fiscally. We spend 3% of our GDP on defence, and we are doing well.’
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