It’s more of the same in Greece following two rounds of elections held in May and June. After a campaign that emphasised the ruling party’s economic credentials, Kyriakos Mitsotakis remains prime minister with his New Democracy party, the country’s established centre-right party, the majority government.

Continuity isn’t good news for the migrants and refugees finding their way to Greece – and the civil society that defends their rights.

Enter the extremists

New Democracy returned to power in 2019, defeating the left-wing Syriza party. It performed better than expected this time, with a wiretapping scandal and a devastating train crash that sparked angry protests making no dent in its support. But its majority government is also down to an unusual feature of the Greek electoral system: if no party wins an outright majority and no coalition is formed, a second round of voting is held, with the winning party awarded bonus seats.

It’s a system intended to encourage majority governments on the assumption that these are more stable, but it has its critics: the process was eliminated in 2016 but New Democracy restored it in 2020, soon after it regained power. So in May, when it took 40.8 per cent of the vote and 146 seats – just short of the 151 needed for a majority – New Democracy knew its best bet wasn’t to negotiate a coalition but seek merely to replicate its performance in a second round of voting. That’s pretty much what it did, taking 40.6 of the June vote – with bonus seats increasing its share to 158.

New Democracy has profited from a divided left and centre-left, with Syriza, in government from 2015 to 2019, faring worst. It went into the elections with 86 seats but after the June vote has just 47. PASOK-KINAL, successor alliance to the centre-left PASOK party that was part of Greece’s two-party system until its support evaporated over its management of the country’s 2007-to-2008 debt crisis, did better. It ended the election up from where it was in 2019 although, thanks to the workings of the bonus seats system, down on the number of seats it had after the May vote.

Those making headway came from the political margins. The far-right Spartans party hadn’t existed until a few weeks earlier and wasn’t part of the May election, but it picked up 12 seats in June. Alongside it, Victory, an anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQI+, pro-Russia party, which didn’t clear the threshold in May, took 10 seats in June, while another ultranationalist party, Greek Solution, increased its representation compared to 2019. An anti-establishment left-wing nationalist party, Course of Freedom, also failed to win seats in May but finished with eight seats in June.

That means the election saw the renormalisation of the parliamentary presence of extremist parties. That first happened several years ago, when the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party became one of the beneficiaries of the political disaffection that followed the debt crisis. At its peak, Golden Dawn finished third in the 2015 election, before being banned in 2020 as a criminal organisation. Many of its leaders ended up in jail for serious crimes, including murder.

Rather than entirely dissipating, far-right sentiment shifted to another party, Hellenes. The party was set to enter parliament, but just before the election, the supreme court found it to be the obvious successor to Golden Dawn and banned it from standing. Several of its candidates then switched to the Spartans, which also won the endorsement of a jailed former Golden Dawn leader.

What’s changed is that anti-migrant rhetoric, once the preserve of a far right unpalatable to most, has been embraced and made mainstream by the established centre-right party. Mitsotakis has adopted hardline policies on migrants and refugees while presenting an otherwise moderate image, appealing to centre-ground voters. But as seen in this election and across Europe, stealing the far-right’s clothing doesn’t make far-right parties go away. It merely emboldens and enables them to further drag the political centre rightwards.

Ultimately, Mitsotakis’s calculation to go for a second vote paid off for his party – but it also provided the opportunity for extremist parties to win parliamentary representation they didn’t have in May. The consequence is the country’s most right-wing parliament since it transitioned from military rule to democracy in 1974.

Refugees and civil society under attack

For many migrants and refugees, Greece is a point of entry into the European Union (EU). They mostly used to cross Greece’s land border with Turkey, but tightening controls have increasingly forced people to make dangerous crossings across the Mediterranean Sea in inadequate and overcrowded boats. Those who make it to Greece risk being kept in crowded, prison-like conditions. Meanwhile illegal pushbacks of migrants and refugees continue, with the government boasting about ‘blocking’ people at its border.

People who try to help migrants and refugees and expose wrongdoing are being criminalised. Mary Lawlor, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, has identified that humanitarian workers, volunteers, journalists and human rights lawyers are being targeted with attacks, threats, smear campaigns, the misuse of criminal law and restrictive new regulations.

Civil society workers face trials on charges such as espionage, fraud, money laundering and people smuggling – crimes that can mean prison sentences of up to 25 years. A law passed in 2021 criminalises search-and-rescue operations at sea unless approved by the coastguard, which means people can end up in jail for saving human lives. This law has forced some civil society organisations to stop search-and-rescue operations. Another law tightened registration requirements for organisations that work on migration and asylum issues, barring unregistered organisations from working.

Civil society activists who defend the rights of migrants and refugees have also increasingly been subjected to surveillance – and they’re far from the only ones. The wiretapping scandal that broke last year revealed that alongside civil society workers, opposition politicians, military leaders and journalists have been targeted with Predator spyware. The Greek government is under investigation by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office for granting illegal export licences for Predator spyware to states in Africa and Asia. In January, the scandal prompted a no-confidence vote, which the government survived.

Journalists don’t just risk surveillance. Greece is by far the lowest-ranking EU country on Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index. Journalists have been subjected to verbal attacks and legal action and news sites have been targeted with cyberattacks from unidentified sources. Restrictive media laws are another concern: a December 2022 regulation established a committee to monitor compliance of online media with journalistic ethics, giving the state powers that could be used to deny state financial support or advertising.

As a result of these increasing restrictions on civic freedoms under Mitsotakis, in March Greece’s civic space rating was downgraded to ‘obstructed’ by the CIVICUS Monitor, putting the country on a par with regressive states such as Hungary, Poland and Serbia.

A continuing reality of migration

The human impacts of the Greek government’s anti-migrant policies were laid bare to the grimmest possible extent on 14 June. A trawler overloaded with perhaps 750 people, trying to reach Italy from Libya, sank off the coast of Greece. There were over 80 confirmed deaths with around 500 more people missing and feared dead, many of them children. Those on board came from Afghanistan, Egypt, Pakistan, Palestine and Syria, having already made the dangerous journey to Libya and faced desperate conditions there.

It still isn’t clear what happened, but the Greek coastguard is accused of having ignored offers of help from Frontex, the EU’s border agency, when the ship was in distress – and is even alleged to have caused the ship to sink by trying to drag it out of Greek waters.

Those on board were among rising numbers of people forced to flee to escape conflict, political repression, poverty, economic strife and, increasingly, climate change. It’s significant that many were from Pakistan, one of the countries worst hit by climate change, where last year devastating floods, made far more worse by climate change, uprooted lives and destroyed livelihoods.

Migration, like climate change, is a global reality, but it’s being met with futile state-centric responses. Fundamental human needs are being offered inhumane responses. The current focus on securing borders and trying to deter migration only diverts the flow. Because measures don’t address the conditions that drive people to flee, they don’t stop people moving. They only increase danger and suffering.

And yet there’s nothing inevitable in the harsh treatment migrants and refugees such as those who end up in Greece receive – as the largely welcoming reception given by European states to refugees fleeing war in Ukraine shows. The hostility afforded to refugees from the global south is a political choice.

For now, the choice in Greece has been made. More repression of civil society is to be expected and more human lives will likely be lost at sea. In deteriorating conditions, it will fall on civil society to keep trying to foster solidarity.