Following a brief summer respite, this year’s political season will not kick off as it has over the past decades with the speeches and news conferences of the PM and opposition leaders at the Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF), as Parliament will open earlier, on 22 August [due to the National Intelligence Service wiretapping affair].

That by no means suggests, however, that the government and political parties are not feverishly preparing to present their political programmes in Thessaloniki.

The 2022 TIF is expected to be held in a polarised and perhaps toxic political environment.

That is not only because this is the party leaders’ last appearance at the TIF before the next general elections – even if the Kyriakos Mitsotakis serves out his term and calls elections for June, 2023.

It is also because the PM and main opposition party leader Alexis Tsipras will address the nation there in the midst of the major political clash triggered by the wiretapping by the National Intelligence Service (EYP) of the phone of the head of the country’s third largest political party, PASOK-KINAL leader Nikos Androulakis.

Hence, the PM and the main opposition leader must be exceptionally cautious in deciding what promises they intend to make there.

The government must not fill its basket with popular measures that are designed to counterbalance the major political blow it suffered from the EYP surveillance affair

It has a duty to carefully weigh its pledges in such a way that they will not in the slightest threaten the country’s fiscal course, especially given the harsh winter that lies ahead due to the energy crisis.

For his part, the main opposition leader should not use TIF’s podium to exclusively address the wiretapping affair.

The main opposition’s institutional role mandates that it present budgeted proposals that can improve the daily lives of citizens.

These are tough times for all of Europe, and Greece’s economy will be no exception.

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