Thought

A reveller is checked by police on his arrival for a Neo-Nazi rock concert in Apolda, eastern Germany on Oct. 6. The event was closed down by the police after the gathering turned into a riot when extreme right wing and Neo-Nazi attendees attacked the police leaving several police officers injured. (Photo by Sebastian Haak / dpa / AFP)

Yiannis Boutaris will be missed from Greek politics. Whatever one's ideological preferences - Thessaloniki's outgoing mayor defies easy political catagorization - few would disagree that Boutaris is one of the few (in fact very few) politicians who dares to speak the truth, unpleasant as it might be. He never hesitated to express his opinion, even if it went against that of the mainstream.

Exclusive research shows how populists tripled their vote over the past two decades, The Guardian reports.

Populist parties have more than tripled their support in Europe in the last 20 years, securing enough votes to put their leaders into government posts in 11 countries and challenging the established political order across the continent.

The Union of Centrists was left with five MPs in Greece's 300-seat Parliament after deputy Aristidis Fokas announced his departure from the party led by Vassilis Leventis.

In a letter submitted to the speaker of the House Wednesday, the Thessaloniki deputy complained about the party's political direction.

Germany's Social Democrats on Sept. 13 demanded the resignation of the country's top spy, as he faced fresh accusations over his allegedly proximity to the far-right party AfD.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras lashed out against the democratic shortcomings of the European Union on Tuesday, warning of an impending "intense battle" between the forces of extreme neoliberalism and extreme-right populism. 

The families of neo-Nazi murder victims slammed what they called "light sentences" handed down to far-right extremists by a German court, accusing authorities of trying to cover up the unresolved killings of Turkish immigrants.

Harlem Desir said this in his report to the OSCE Council, covering his first year in the job, the Association of Jounralists of Serbia (UNS) reported on its website.

Leaders of the center-right European People's Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament met in Munich over three days recently to hammer out a common strategy ahead of Euro elections in May 2019. The main rival of Europe's conservatives is no longer the Social Democrats or the Socialists, who have seen political support plummet in recent years.

Europeans with populist views believe less in the media than other citizens and are much more critical of media coverage on key topics such as immigration, the economy and crime. This has found a study by the Phu Research Center, conducted among 16,000 people in 8 West European countries quoted by the Guardian.