Greek Justice Minister Giorgos Floridis (right) welcomes European Chief Prosecutor Laura Kovesi at the ministry in Athens on Wednesday, April 22, 2026. [John Liakos/InTime News]
This happened in the news last week: Greece’s farm subsidy scandal was pushed aside for a day to give way to the comments of the European Public Prosecutor who brought it to light. The spotlight focused exclusively on Laura Kovesi, who was at the center of the 11th Delphi Economic Forum. Does she have the right to speak or not? Her comment that OPEKEPE – the Greek state-run agency at the center of the scandal – “is an acronym for corruption, nepotism and clientelism” is, however, a bit jarring, even though she stressed that there is no “corruption-free country.”
“[There is] corruption everywhere, fraud everywhere.” One cannot say, she declared, that Greece is very corrupt, nor does she accept the mentality that “this is how we do things in Greece.” She also praised us for our “very good prosecutors, judges, police officers … We see this every day, there is support from the national authorities,” she said.
It would be difficult to find in what she said anything that did not reflect a sense of justice and a considered commentary on the issue, while also venturing into the minefield of politics. She treaded carefully but courageously, having traced the path ahead of her. “Let her do her job silently,” her critics argue, charging her with interference in the independence of the Greek judiciary and the legislature, exceeding her powers, and pursuing a personal agenda.
According to Kovesi, “the noise is an attempt to divert attention from the essence of the issue. And the essence is what happened to OPEKEPE.” Again, her assessment does not seem to be wrong. The “essence” she invokes is difficult to manage politically, especially in a period that has acquired a preelection momentum. And the reactions to her work do not seem to be far from the mentality of “this is how we do things in Greece.” In other words, when parties begin to prepare for the upcoming elections, nothing rallies the troops better than the “exploitation” of an external “enemy.”
But whomever the government tries to vilify, the opposition quickly deifies. The party says one thing when it is in control of the game and another when the waters become muddy.
Kovesi’s answers to the questions she received do not align with the preelection manual. The language she uses is her job. She does not indulge, and she does not back down either. The hypothetical dilemma of being “pleasing to the audience or being consistent in her role” does not seem to concern her. And the truth is that we are not used to doing things this way in Greece.