Weber’s Greek connection casts shadow ahead of elections in Athens

A network of influential Greek political consultants working for the European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber and boasting impeccable links to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has emerged ahead of next week’s Greek elections.

The changes at the top of the centre-right party, the oldest and dominant force in the EU institutions, came in the weeks after Manfred Weber, the Bavarian leader of the EPP group in the European Parliament, was elected on 31 May 2022 as leader of the EPP party, which brings together centre-right parties from across Europe.

Thanasis Bakolas, a former senior adviser to Mitsotakis, was appointed as EPP Secretary General at the same Congress in Rotterdam.

Meanwhile, after Weber took over, a team of four “experts” was brought in to evaluate the then-EPP staff. According to a well-informed EPP source, two of them – Greek-American digital media consultant Eric Parks, and Jerry Zagoritis – obtained contracts following a series of staff changes at the EPP’s Brussels headquarters.

The consultants are close associates of Mitsotakis. The Greek premier, who is running for re-election in a tight race against the left-wing Syriza party on 21 May, is one of Weber’s closest allies in the European centre-right family.

He was one of the three centre-right leaders who were signatories to Weber’s candidacy for the EPP leadership. For his part, Weber has publicly supported Mitsotakis, despite recent reports about the wiretapping of journalists and political opponents by the Greek state.

Sources have told EURACTIV that another Greek, Giorgos Botsis, has been involved in organising recent meetings of the EPP assembly in Lisbon, Helsinki, and Munich. Greek media have reported that Botsis is considered to be a trusted associate of Mitsotakis.

Two independent EPP sources have told EURACTIV that Parks notified EPP staff on 24 February that it would be the last daily meeting “until further notice”, indicating that something was amiss.

Zagoritis, meanwhile, is a veteran of a series of EU and national campaigns and was a member of the digital war room of Jean-Claude Juncker’s successful Spitzenkandidat campaign for the European Commission presidency in 2014.

A list of participants of an event seen by EURACTIV refers to Zagoritis as the ‘director of communications’ for the EPP, although that was formally not his role.

Senior sources in the European Parliament have told EURACTIV that the Parliament’s department responsible for political party finances has recently questioned the terms and contents of contracts relating to the two companies to which the EPP party had outsourced activities.

“The companies are not based in Greece, but the owners are Greek”, one Parliament source told EURACTIV.

An EPP source added that “one of them is also offering consultancy services to Greece’s ruling New Democracy party in Athens”.

The EPP party budget for 2022-23, seen by EURACTIV, points to spending of over €1 million on website and digital publications as the party gears up for next year’s European elections due in May or June 2023.

Asked about the contracts, EPP Secretary General Bakolas told EURACTIV that “we consider that any questions regarding EPP staff and employees are essentially a private matter and that the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation guarantees that “everyone has the right to the protection of personal data concerning him or her”.

Bakolas added that “the EPP is submitted to very strict scrutiny of all contracts and tenders. All contracts are being reviewed and cleared by accredited auditing firms, internal auditors, as well as the financial authorities of the European Parliament”.

Since the European political parties became independent in July 2004, when new EU regulations allowed them to receive annual funding from the European Parliament, total EU funding available to them has increased from €6.5 million in 2004 to €46 million in 2021.

Although the parties are allowed to raise a small portion of funding from their member parties, the vast majority of their revenue comes from the EU budget and the parties are therefore obliged to justify the amounts annually.

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]