Members of Greece’s coalition government have reportedly agreed to shelve their differences over whether Migration Policy Minister Yiannis Mouzalas should resign until after the crucial EU refugee summit in Brussels.
The decision followed two days of acrimony sparked by demands by coalition partner and nationalist Independent Greeks leader Panos Kammenos for Mouzalas’ dismissal for referring to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), as “Macedonia” during an interview on Skai.
However it was revealed that Kammenos himself, in another interview, called FYROM “Macedonia” and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras also signed a document with French President François Hollande referring to the neighbouring country as “Macedonia”.
Parliamentary groups of both goverment parties met Thursday in a bid to iron out differences and reportedly agreed that the crisis, which threatened the cohesion of the coalition, would only weaken the hand of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, and Mouzalas for that matter, during the Brussels negotiations.
The Prime Minister’s Office has also asked ministers to refrain from public statements that could further fuel tensions. Kammenos met at his home late Wednesday with State Minister Nikos Pappas and agreed, after talks that lasted two-and-half hours, to tone down the rhetoric.
However, several leading Independent Greeks officials insisted on Thursday that the Mouzalas case is not closed.
At the same time, government officials in Brussels Thursday reportedly said that time was working on Mouzalas’s side and that the demands for his resignation would soon be outweighed by decisions made at the EU summit.
Main government coalition partner SYRIZA expressed on Thursday its “full support and confidence” in Alternate Minister for Migration Policy Yiannis Mouzalas, following calls for his resignation by junior coalition partner ANEL.
“With his work on this portfolio and in extremely difficult conditions due to the sharp increase in refugee flows and migrants, and the unacceptable attitude of the Visegrad countries which have chosen the policy of closed borders, Yiannis Mouzalas proves that even in the most difficult circumstances there are ways to implement policies based on the values of humanism and solidarity,” the party’s political secretariat said in a statement.