“When we support the rule of law, it means respect for the laws and not their manifest violation,” Justice Minister Giorgos Florides said in his intervention in the plenary session, commenting on the position of the leader of the opposition and president of PASOK-KINAL Nikos Androulakis.
Mr Florides, regarding the reports of Mr. Androulakis on the issue of wiretapping and yesterday’s closed-door hearing in the Committee on Institutions and Transparency of the commander of the National Security Service, Themistocles Demiris, where a part of a dialogue was leaked, he said that this is a “profound violation of the relevant provision governing the meetings of the Committee on Institutions and Transparency, as defined by Article 43A of the Parliament’s Rules of Procedure, which stipulates that these discussions with the NSA are confidential and that the members of the Committee (en. of the Committee) are bound to observe secrecy even after the end of their term of office,” he added: “There are grave political responsibilities because this provision of the CBI concerns the basic core of the democratic constitution as it organises the debate in Parliament which is the basic core of our democratic constitution – it was not introduced by accident but to protect the NIA which acts as a shield for the country. This is its mission.” He pointed out that “if at times one can criticise the operation of the NIS, one should not forget that in critical moments when our country faced a national danger, this service warned in time so that we could avoid it”. The violation of the confidentiality of yesterday’s meeting, Florides said, “primarily and above all creates a huge political problem.”
In his second intervention and in response to what PASOK’s president insisted regarding the wiretapping against him, the minister said: “Mr. Androulakis, within the framework of the rule of law, as was his right, appealed to the Council of State, whose decision was positive for him, as were the subsequent decisions of the judiciary. This means that the rule of law is functioning to the highest degree. So when all this has happened and you even applaud it, where is the rule of law? Tell me so that I can understand you.”
The minister criticized the PASOK president for “today trying to make an early discussion of tomorrow’s plenary session, which is time to set up a Commission of Inquiry into the investigation of the wiretapping. He also described it as a “faux pas” that “with the signatures of 2/5 you remembered and asked for the prosecutor of the Supreme Court to be invited to the relevant committee to discuss with him issues of justice, when in thirty days he is retiring. It is not that you have no right to call him to discuss matters of Justice with him, but what you do not have the right to do is to call him to come and give you reasons for his decisions – because that is what you seemed to want to do, as shown in the statement you issued.”
Regarding the Leader of the Opposition’s references to the solution given to the OPEKEPE, Mr. Florides said that the government “enabled a rotten organization, which could not be repaired with anything, to pass the payment system to the AADE”. “This institutional change that passes the European payments to an independent authority that has guarantees of transparency, PASOK did not vote for it,” he commented, adding that the first payments will be made in June, according to the detailed payment schedule for 2026 presented by the minister responsible for rural development and the governor of the AADE, “and then we will be able to criticize their results.”
