Anti-austerity Syriza party supporters celebrating after victory in the election in Athens.

By Alvise Armellini/Rome/DPA


The triumph of the leftist, anti-austerity Syriza party in Greece has emboldened eurosceptic parties around Europe, even if some of them are concerned by demands to renegotiate the loans Athens received from the eurozone.
A disparate collection of protest parties already accounts for about one third of the seats in the European Parliament. In countries like France, Britain and Austria, anti-EU forces are riding high in opinion polls and could one day win power.
“I am pleased because I think that (Syriza’s victory) puts euro-austerity on trial,” Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s hard-right National Front - which wants to close national borders and ditch the euro - told RTL radio.
She hailed the Greek results as “a huge democratic slap in the face” for the European Union, and criticised France and Germany for vetoing a referendum that the Greek government wanted to hold in 2011 on EU-recommended austerity measures.
Anticipating questions on whether the leftist Syriza made a strange ideological bedfellow for her party, Le Pen said: “To be free, is neither right- or left-wing” and “with the European Union we are no longer free”.
Syriza rejects the eurosceptic tag, and wants to keep Greece in the euro, albeit on its terms. The closest ally it has in Europe is Spain’s Podemos, a protest movement that also sees itself as neither left or right, which could win elections due in November.
“You can already hear the ‘tick tock’ of change,” Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias said at a Sunday rally, criticising the austerity policies that the EU forced on Greece.
Elsewhere in the eurozone, anti-establishment politicians were less enthusiastic, fearing the consequences of Greek debt renegotiation demands.
“We must not allow the money of European taxpayers to be used to finance a communist model (in Greece), even if this reallocation philosophy seems to be one of the main skills of Europe’s Left,” said Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPOe).
Its general secretary and chief EU parliamentarian, Harald Vilimsky, relaunched the idea of splitting the European currency into a northern and a southern euro - a plan that has been floated by the FPOe in the past.
“I am very happy about the emerging election result in Greece,” Beatrix von Storch, a European Parliament member for the German anti-euro party Alternative Für Deutschland (AfD), said in a statement.
But she said that EU leaders had to react by offering Syriza leader and new Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras an ultimatum: respect debt repayment commitments and stay in the euro, or default and leave the currency bloc.
AfD leader Bernd Lucke said yesterday: “Syriza doesn’t question the euro now per se, they just want their debt cancelled and to get more credit. These things are incompatible.”
In Italy, Northern League leader Matteo Salvini - an anti-euro, anti-migration ally of Le Pen whose popularity ratings are soaring - welcomed the “slap” to the EU, but warned that Italians were “facing a very grave threat.”
“If Tsipras does what he has promised, which is to rediscuss agreements and renegotiate the debt,” Italy stands to lose the money it has lent Greece by contributing to eurozone bailout funds, he told RAI state television on Sunday.
British eurosceptics also joined the fray.
The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which advocates Britain’s exit from the EU, characterised Syriza’s victory as “a desperate cry for help from the Greek people, millions of whom have been impoverished by the euro experiment.”
In the same Sunday statement, leader Nigel Farage predicted that Tsipras and Merkel would now engage in “an extraordinary game of poker” over the softening of Greece’s bailout loans, which Berlin firmly opposes.
Separately, conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, who has promised a referendum on EU membership, wrote on Twitter: “The Greek election will increase economic uncertainty across Europe. That’s why (Britain) must stick to our plan, delivering security at home.”


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