Politics of Greece

Tens of thousands of people marched in Athens and cities across Greece on Wednesday to protest the deaths of 57 people in the country's worst train disaster , which exposed significant rail safety deficiencies.

BRUSSELS - The EU special envoy for the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue Miroslav Lajcak has announced the next meeting in the dialogue would be held in Ohrid, North Macedonia, later this month.

In a Twitter post, Lajcak wrote he had met with North Macedonian Deputy PM Bojan Maricic and thanked him for North Macedonia's strong support to the dialogue.

Bulgaria's parliament on Thursday adopted a declaration condemning the recent attack on a Bulgarian activist in neighbouring North Macedonia, an alleged "anti-Bulgarian campaign" in the country and warning that this could derail Skopje's EU integration.

A new poll conducted by Marc on behalf of ANT1 TV gives ruling New Democracy a 7.5-point lead over SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance.

More specifically the survey of voter intention gave the ruling conservatives 32.7% against 25.2% for the main leftist opposition SYRIZA, ahead of third-placed socialist PASOK (9.8%), communist KKE (5.3%) and nationalist Greek Solution (3.9%).

"Recently, we have witnessed the escalation of tensions between North Macedonia and Bulgaria with regrettable incidents and provocations," he emphasized on the occasion of the meeting in Brussels with Bujar Osmani, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of North Macedonia."

Main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras is engaging in "extortion" and "degrading the institutional pillars of Greek democracy," government spokesperson Giannis Oikonomou has said, following SYRIZA's announcement that it will abstain from all parliamentary procedures until the prime minister announces a general election date.

Greece's main opposition party on Tuesday demanded the dissolution of Parliament and immediate elections, accusing the conservative New Democracy government of being "morally and politically compromised."

With elections looming, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras are seeking to rally their traditional voters and hunt for the undecided ones who will largely shape the final correlations in the first ballot of simple proportional representation.

So much controversy has been stirred by a recent event titled "Are We Staying in Europe? Wiretaps, Rights and Rule of Law," that the discussion about it actually began before it even took place.

SKOPJE- Serbia is committed to develop friendly relations with North Macedonia and countries in the region in line with mutual interests at regional and global level, Serbian Defence Minister Milos Vucevic said during a conversation with North Macedonian counterpart Slavjanka Petrovska in Skopje on Friday.