Greece names new ministers after high-level resignations over farm scandal

ATHENS — Greece’s center-right New Democracy government announced Cabinet changes on Saturday following a wave of resignations in a massive scheme to defraud the EU’s farm budget.

Thanos Plevris, a hardline MP, was appointed migration minister. He succeeds Makis Voridis, the highest profile official to resign on Friday after the European prosecutor implicated Greek ministers in the multimillion-euro scam involving EU agricultural funds.

Other changes in the government of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis include the appointments of Haris Theocharis as deputy foreign minister; Yiannis Andrianos as deputy minister for rural development and food; and Christos Dermentzopoulos as deputy minister of digital governance.

Opposition parties were quick to criticize the appointment of Plevris.

“The far-right line of Mitsotakis continues unabated with the choice of Thanos Plevris, an inhumane, dead-end and frightening line overall for the refugee issue and the image of the country,” the Syriza party said in a statement.

The New Left party called his appointment "a message of hatred, racism, authoritarianism.” In a statement, the party recalled comments by Plevris in the past that “border security cannot exist if there are no casualties and, to be clear, if there are no deaths.”

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) is pursuing dozens of cases in which Greeks received EU agricultural funds for pastureland they did not own or lease, or for agricultural work they did not perform, thereby depriving legitimate farmers of the funds they deserved. The fraud was the subject of a POLITICO investigation earlier this year.

The hefty case file was referred to the Greek parliament as it included information regarding the alleged involvement “in criminal offenses” of two former ministers overseeing the rural development and food portfolio.

According to Greek law, only the national parliament has the authority to investigate and prosecute current or former members of the Greek government. This means that, despite its broad mandate to investigate the misuse of EU funds, the EPPO lacks the power to pursue such cases in Greece. The agency has called this a violation of its founding EU regulation.

Earlier Saturday, two more New Democracy officials stepped down after their names appeared in the case file. Andreas Karasarinis, secretary of the ruling party’s agricultural organizations, and Yiannis Troullinos, a member of its political committee, submitted their resignations.