German MEP begins campaign in Athens after Alexis Tsipras claims he is ‘anti-Greek’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Manfred Weber has launched his campaign to become president of the European commission in Athens, but faced excoriating criticism from the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, before he had even arrived in the Greek capital.

In a tweet intended to cause maximum embarrassment for the German leader of the conservative European People’s party group in the European parliament, Tsipras insinuated that Weber harboured racist and authoritarian tendencies. He said that at the height of Athens’ debt crisis, Weber had pushed for “Grexit” and thus proved himself to be “anti-Greek”.

“A vote for Mitsotakis’ ND [New Democracy party] means a vote for anti-Greek Weber,” the prime minister wrote on Twitter, taking aim at his centre-right opponent, Kyriakos Mitsotakis.

“It means a vote for the transformation of democratic Europe into an authoritarian and racist Europe, which will close the door to the oppressed, but also to a deeply neoliberal Europe.”

The tweet, written in Greek and posted on 20 April, set the stage for an inauspicious start to a campaign that was meant to luxuriate in the symbolism of Athens’ glorious past. Like Barack Obama and Emmanuel Macron, Weber chose the Greek capital for a key speech because of its powerful legacy as the birthplace of democracy.

Greece’s role on the frontline of Europe’s debt crisis also provided the perfect backdrop for a politician who was formerly among Athens’ sternest critics, to send a message of unity from the bloc’s fiscally straightened south.

Under Mitsotakis’s more centrist stewardship, New Democracy has had the edge on Tsipras’s Syriza party for the past two years. Ahead of a general election later this year, polls have shown the party leading by as much as 15 points.

As close political allies who regard themselves as anti-populist reformists, Mitsotakis and Weber made the “battle against populism” a key message in speeches later on Tuesday at the neo-classical Zappeion Megaron, where Greece’s EU accession treaty was signed in 1979.

Opening his speech to rapturous applause, Weber said there was no better place to convey his ideas for a future Europe than Athens, and lambasted the “empty answers and sweet promises of populists”, in reference to Syriza.

Tsipras, who was elected in January 2015 as Greece’s first leftist prime minister, has openly called for a progressive front to be formed to prevent Weber – whom he calls “the ultra-right Bavarian” – from taking on the EU’s top job.

But at a time of deepening political polarisation in Greece, his combative language has been met with cool disdain and, some have said, may even be welcomed by Weber in a pan-European arena that has become ever more toxic and pugilistic.

The fact that Weber is no friend of Tsipras, calling the leftist leader a “populist” while lambasting his economic policies, is a source of delight for Greek conservatives.

Speaking in December about Tsipras’s anti-austerity rhetoric and his government’s handling of negotiations over Greece’s third EU bailout, Weber said: “Tsipras lied to the Greek people, who had to pay the bill for his government [actions].

“I believe in New Democracy’s programme and Mitsotakis has a strong voice in Europe … New Democracy will push populists aside and restore the credibility of this wonderful country.”

But Tsipras, by far the country’s wiliest politician, also has his admirers. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, once an ardent critic, has praised his unexpected economic pragmatism, refugee policies and courage in resolving the decades-old dispute with the country’s newly named neighbour, North Macedonia.