Foreign policy guidelines of Greek political parties (2015-2023): the birth of a new reality

A series of economic, financial and debt crises that engulfed Greece during 2008-2010 and negatively affected the socio-economic situation of broad strata of Greek society have predetermined the development of the political parties in the country during the second decade of the 21st century. The previously existed two-party system, represented by center-left and center-right forces, has collapsed after 2012. This peculiarity of Greece’s new reality paved the way for two main approaches in the country’s parties outlook, namely: either broad participation in the Euro-Atlantic community and, first of all, in the European Union with the prospect of blocking with friendly party-political forces in it, or a sharp rejection of this community with an emphatically harsh and even confrontational emphasis on the national interests of Greece, and its rights to joint new foreign policy alliances. The main struggle unfolded not so much and not only along the line of division between the right-wing and the left-wing politicians, but rather according to the degree of radicalism of these political forces, which at certain stages of the electoral cycles of 2015-2023 formulated their foreign policy programs in accordance with the national agenda, the main problem of which was the problem of European participation in solving the Greek crisis. During 2015-2018, when this assistance turned out to be significant, radical public sentiments began to fade and accordingly a gradual decline in the popularity of far-left and far-right parties and organizations began obvious. Moreover, a gradual return to the previous two-party system has begun. That is why foreign policy questions were increasingly woven into the fabric of socio-economic programs, in which special attention was paid to integration processes within the European Union and based on the European guidelines of Greece.