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Syriza election reaction Italy
An Italian student celebrates Syriza's victory, holding a sign that reads 'Change Greece, change Italy, change Europe.' Photograph: Nicolas Koutsokostas/Demotix/Corbis
An Italian student celebrates Syriza's victory, holding a sign that reads 'Change Greece, change Italy, change Europe.' Photograph: Nicolas Koutsokostas/Demotix/Corbis

Syriza’s election victory in Greece – how Europe reacted

This article is more than 9 years old
Leftwing anti-austerity parties hail result that saw Alexis Tsipras sworn in as prime minister after forming alliance with Independent Greeks, while some ruling parties also give news a cautious welcome

Germany pledges to work with new Greek government

Spain

Unemployment rate (% as of November 2014): 23.9

Debt as % of GDP (as of Q3 2014): 96.8

Deficit (+) and surplus (-) as % of GDP (2013): -6.8

The Greek campaign was closely followed in Spain, where many drew parallels between the electoral battle being waged between anti-austerity party Podemos and the governing right-wing People’s party.

Barely one year old, Podemos has quickly become a dominant player on the Spanish political scene, with polls consistently suggesting that the party could put an end to the bipartisan political system that has ruled Spain since the death of Franco. General elections are expected to be held by the end of 2015 in Spain.

As Greece announced it would hold snap elections, Pablo Iglesias of Podemos seized on the opportunity to label the widely-anticipated Syriza win as the beginning of power for the citizen-drive response to austerity. “2015 will be the year of change in Spain and Europe. We will start in Greece. Let’s go Alexis, let’s go!,” he tweeted.

Alexis Tsipras, left, with Pablo Iglesias, the leader of the leftwing Podemos party. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

With Iglesias campaigning for Syriza, Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, became one of the many leaders outside of Greece whose campaign stood to be weakened by a Syriza victory. The realisation sent Rajoy to Athens during the campaign, where he rallied behind his Greek counterpart Antonis Samaras. “We are starting to emerge from the crisis. We need stability, not instability,” he told Greeks earlier this month, echoing his oft-repeated message to Spaniards.

On Sunday night, in the party’s first reaction to the Greek results, People’s party spokesman Rafael Hernando sought to downplay the links between both countries. “Spain isn’t Greece. I know a lot of people want to make comparisons. I insist you can’t extrapolate,” Hernando told the La Sexta news channel.

The victory of Syriza will provoke something new in the political panorama of Greece – they’re going to have a real Greek president. Not a delegate of Angela Merkel whose interests will rank above those of the country and its people.”

Pablo Iglesias, Podemos

The results were worrying for the Spanish government, he said, because “radicalism had triumphed, in this case radicalism from the left.”

Iglesias painted a very different picture of the results. “The victory of Syriza will provoke something new in the political panorama of Greece – they’re going to have a real Greek president. Not a delegate of Angela Merkel whose interests will rank above those of the country and its people,” he told La Sexta.

With analysts warning that the links forged between the two anti-austerity parties could leave Podemos vulnerable if Syriza fails to make headway in Greece, Iglesias took a step back on Sunday, slightly distancing his party from Syriza. “We’re not uncorking bottles of champagne. We understand the difficulties that lie ahead. We’re going to continue supporting Syriza, but we’ll continue our work in Spain knowing that it is a country with a very different political and economic reality.”

Ashifa Kassam in Madrid

Ireland

Unemployment rate (% as of November 2014 ): 10.7

Debt as % of GDP (as of Q3 2014): 114.8

Deficit (+) and surplus (-) as % of GDP (2013): -5.7

Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Féin, has said Syriza’s victory “opens up the real prospect of democratic change not just for the people of Greece, but for citizens right across the EU”. He spoke to Alexis Tsipras by phone on Friday to wish him good luck.

And he wasn’t the only one welcoming the news: the veteran anti poverty campaigner Fr Sean Healy described the result as “the politics of hope”, saying that the austerity politics of “business as usual” was not an option.

Both Sinn Féin and a mixed group of Independents – including parties with long links to the left in Greece – hope Syriza’s victory will act as a reminder to the Irish electorate of the pain they had to endure from the crash of 2008, the bank bailouts and the humiliation of going to the IMF and ECB to stop the country going bankrupt.

They will attempt to portray Enda Kenny’s government, in its willingness to accept EU driven austerity cuts, as the poodle of Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin. Prior to the Greek vote, the Taoiseach had warned that a drift towards populism could damage Ireland and Europe’s economic recovery.

Enda Kenny’s government is likely to be portrayed as Berlin’s poodle by anti-austerity parties such as Sinn Féin. Photograph: Laurent Gillieron/EPA

But one commentator in the Irish Independent newspaper had a stark message for the government in Dublin: “Few politicians,” wrote Thomas Molloy, “have more to fear from yesterday’s Greek elections than Enda Kenny.” Coming from a newspaper that has by and large backed cost cutting austerity measures in the Republic, it is an apposite warning to Kenny and his Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

Ireland heads to a general election in 2016, an historically resonant year given that it is also the centenary of the Easter Rising against British rule.

However, despite the frisson brought by Syriza victory, with just over 12 months before the election, the latest opinion poll gives some hope for Fine Gael and even Labour Fine Gael are up 3 percentage points to 24% while Labour are up 2 percent to 9% after flatlining in the polls over 2014. Sinn Féin is down 3% to 21%, with the Independents (the largest political bloc according to opinion polls) down slightly as well.

This minor improvement in the polls may in part be due to the improving economic picture in Ireland with unemployment falling to around 10% and growth estimates up to 4% for this year.

Henry McDonald in Dublin

Italy

Unemployment rate (as of November 2014): 13.4

Debt as % of GDP (as of Q3 2014): 131.8

Deficit (+) and surplus (-) as % of GDP (2013): -2.8

The government of the centre-left Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi has sought to convey the Greek election results as a win for Italy and its resistance against austerity measures, saying Tsipras will be an ally in Brussels. A top aide to the prime minister, Sandro Gozi, congratulated the leader of the Syriza party and said Italy was ready to work with him.

The results will force the premier into a balancing act, however, because he will not want to be seen by the international community as being in lockstep with Greece and risk creating a nervous market reaction.

The Greek results were not a clear cut victory for Renzi in another respect: they could worsen simmering tensions between the prime minister and the leftwing populists who are dissatisfied with him and think Italy ought to have its own version of the Greek leader.

Matteo Renzi is unlikely to want to be seen as being too close to Syriza, but must also cater to dissatisfied leftwingers. Photograph: Alessandro Di Meo/EPA

Any hint of a widening rift between Renzi and the more liberal forces within his Democratic party could not come at a worse time for the prime minister, given that Italy will begin rounds of voting this week for the Italian president.

A revolt within his party would force Renzi to turn to his unlikely but necessary political ally, Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister and head of the conservative Forza Italia party, for support to get his own presidential candidate across the finish line, according to Francesco Galietti, an analyst with Policy Sonar. This, in turn, could trigger an abrupt schism, Galietti says, which risks obliterating the Democratic party’s status as the nation’s leading party.

The Greek results were hailed as a rejection of the European Union and the euro by Matteo Salvini, the leader of the rightwing Northern League. “Now it’s our time,” he said. He was not the only politician who saw it as an opportunity to put pressure on Renzi. Nicola Vendola, of the Left Ecology Liberty party, said Renzi’s celebration of the Tsipras victory was ridiculous because of the wide gulf between the Greek’s ideas and the Italian Democratic party and said that the results would boost the LEL’s popularity.

Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome

Portugal

Unemployment rate (% as of November 2014 ): 13.9

Debt as % of GDP (as of Q3 2014): 131.4

Deficit (+) and surplus (-) as % of GDP (2013): -4.9

In Portugal, where elections are due to be held in the autumn, reaction to the Greek election results was muted. The governing right-wing Social Democratic party released a statement on Sunday that, while never mentioning Syriza by name, expressed their hope that the elections would be “another positive step in the long and difficult journey taken by Greeks and their institutions in their efforts to find financial stability as well as economic and social prosperity.” Touting the benefits of the “common project” of Europe, they hoped that “this common path remains a shared project in the future”.

Supporters of Portugal’s anti-austerity Left Bloc wait for results from the Greek election. Photograph: Rex/Rex Features

Portugal’s People’s party, who prop up the governing coalition government, said it respected the results of the elections in a statement. In comments aimed at the many analysts who had drawn links between Greece and anti-austerity campaigners across southern Europe, it listed key differences between Portugal and Greece, adding that it was very important to stress that the situations of Portugal and Greece were fortunately substantially different.

One Portuguese party, however, was celebrating the Greek results: the anti-austerity party Left Bloc, which holds eight seats in the Portuguese parliament. “The elections are Greek, they concern the sovereignty of the Greek people, but also that of the Portuguese, Spaniards and Europeans,” the Left Bloc MEP Marisa Matias told a rally in Greece earlier this week. “We were with you yesterday, we are with you today and we will be with you tomorrow. A victory for Syriza is a victory for all of Europe.”

Ashifa Kassam

France

Unemployment rate (% as of November 2014 ): 10.3

Debt as % of GDP (as of Q3 2014): 95.3

Deficit (+) and surplus (-) as % of GDP (2013): -4.1

In France, both the Front National and the far-left scented a political windfall for their eurosceptic parties on Monday as they hailed the news from Greece.

The French political activist Voltuan going to a Syriza party gathering, holding a placard reading: ‘The guilty Troika must pay’. Photograph: Jean Marmeisse/Jean Marmeisse/Corbis

Marine Le Pen, whose far-right party wants to ditch the euro and cancel the Schengen free movement pact, saluted “the start of the trial of euro-austerity”. She expressed delight at the “giant democratic slap in the face by the Greek people to the European Union.”

The jubilant leader of the radical Parti de Gauche, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, meanwhile, predicted a collapse of the ruling Socialist party which he said would mirror the demise of its sister party in Greece, Pasok.

Mélenchon urged a leftwing alliance in France to replicate Syriza’s success. But the suggestion was dismissed by Green politician Cécile Duflot, a former housing minister, who warned against making such a “huge mistake”.

François Hollande, who has pleaded unsuccessfully in the past for a loosening of eurozone austerity policy, reacted cautiously in a statement, apparently fearing possible political contagion from Greece. He expressed a desire to continue close cooperation with Athens in the service of growth and the stability of the eurozone.

Presidential aides said that for Hollande there was no question of Greece quitting the euro.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the leader of the centre-right UMP who was in Berlin on Monday for a meeting with Angela Merkel, also said that “everything should be done” to prevent Greece exiting the European currency. He urged both the future Greek government and European leaders to show responsibility and restraint.

The newspaper Le Figaro, reflecting centre-right opinion, warned that European leaders should avoid making concessions to the Greek electorate that would benefit eurosceptic parties in Europe, including those led by Le Pen and Mélenchon.

Anne Penketh in Paris

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