Greek PM rules out snap election over phone tapping scandal

Athens, Aug 27 Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has rejected opposition parties' calls for a snap election over the recent revelations of the phone tapping of an opposition leader by the Greek National Intelligence Service (EYP).

"We will get through this difficult winter together," he said during Parliament's first plenary debate after the summer break, Xinhua news agency reported.

The conservative government's four-year term ends next summer.

Earlier in July, the Greek leader had accepted the resignations of the EYP's chief and the secretary general of his office in the wake of revelations that Nikos Androulakis, European Parliament member and president of the Movement for Change (KINAL) and the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), was under surveillance in 2021.

On Friday, Mitsotakis reiterated that he had been unaware of the surveillance until this August and it was "a legal action, but unacceptable on political terms." He pledged to revamp the secret service, agreeing to a parliamentary investigation of the case.

Citing national security concerns, Mitsotakis insisted that the reasons behind the surveillance could not be publicly revealed. Androulakis has demanded full transparency on why he was under surveillance.

Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor