Panos Kammenos

Panos Kammenos (2015)

Panagiotis "Panos" Kammenos ( Greek Πάνος Καμμένος , born May 12, 1965 in Athens ) is a Greek politician. He began his political career with the Nea Dimokratia . He was dismissed from the party in connection with the Greek debt crisis and founded the Anexartiti Ellines (ANEL) party, of which he is chairman. Kammenos was Minister of Defense in Alexis Tsipras' cabinet from January 27, 2015 to August 28, 2015 and again from September 23, 2015 to mid-January 2019 .

Kammenos studied economics and psychology at the University of Lyon . He is married and has five children.

Political career

In the parliamentary election of October 10, 1993 , Kammenos was elected for the first time as a member of the New Democracy in the Greek parliament . On November 16, 2011, he was expelled from the ND parliamentary group by the “Mandatory Code” commission set up by Andonis Samaras after he had voted against the coalition government of Prime Minister Loukas Papadimos in a vote of confidence . On February 13, 2012, he and 20 other MPs were dismissed from the party because they too had voted against “Memorandum 2”, which was a prerequisite for the EU's second aid package. On February 24, 2012, he founded a new party called “ Anexartiti Ellines ” (Independent Greeks), which sought to end the Troika in Greece. The party motto was: “We are many, we are independent, we are Greeks.” ( Greek “Είμαστε πολλοί, είμαστε ανεξάρτητοι, είμαστε Έλληνες” ).

Before the election in May 2012 , Kammenos affirmed that he would “not even dead” participate in a government that would submit to the “austerity mania of the Troika”; He ruled out any form of collaboration between his party and the Nea Dimokratia, PASOK and LAOS .

One day after the early general election in January 2015 , his party formed a coalition government together with SYRIZA under Alexis Tsipras . Kammenos received the office of Minister of Defense.

Kammenos' party again formed a coalition government with SYRIZA after the early parliamentary elections in September 2015 ; he was reappointed Minister of Defense. In June 2018, Kammenos declared that his party rejected the compromise previously found in the dispute over the name of Macedonia . Two days after the Macedonian parliament approved the renaming of their country to the Republic of North Macedonia with the necessary two-thirds majority , he resigned as Defense Minister on January 13, 2019. The designated successor is the previous Chief of the General Staff, Vangelis Apostolakis .

Honors

He was awarded the "Order of Honor" of the Jerusalem Greek Orthodox Patriarchate .

Positions

Kammenos presented the founding declaration for his new party in February 2012 in Distomo , a village where parts of the Waffen SS committed a massacre in 1944 . Kammenos used the memory of Germany as an enemy. He demands that Germany pay reparations and repay the war credits that were enforced during the Second World War . In this context he accused the government of the time of treason, called the Troika an occupier and promised to “ drive out the Nazis again”. He believes Greece is occupied by the EU and the banks and that the new loan agreement with the Troika is unconstitutional. He wants to repay only 110 billion euros of the Greek national debt. Kammenos is calling for a non-partisan committee to be given emergency powers to clarify how Greece was led into the economic crisis. He proclaims a “national awakening and rising” and suspects that Greece has fallen victim to an “international conspiracy”. The EU wants to keep the member states like “ courtesans ” and deliberately drive Greece into poverty so that it can then exploit its natural resources. The states of the European north would wage a "war" against the southern states. The latter should band together in their defense.

According to journalist Niels Kadritzke, Kammenos would like to restore the Christian-Orthodox identity of Greece, which was believed to be threatened, and therefore rejects the naturalization of migrant children born in the country. He is suspicious of other religions such as Judaism and Islam and speaks out against the legal equality of homosexual couples . In terms of economic policy, he tends to represent neoliberal ideas; in terms of foreign policy, he hopes for an orthodox alliance with Serbia and Russia .

Web links

• Biography on the website of the Greek Parliament

Footnotes

1. ^ Revocation of Kammenos' mandate
2. ^ Farewell to the party
3. ↑ slogan
4. ↑ FAZ.net: Tsipras sworn in as Prime Minister. January 26, 2015, accessed January 26, 2015
5. ^ Giorgos Christides: Greco-Macedonian unification: Victory of the West, debacle for Russia. In: www.spiegel.de. June 13, 2018, accessed January 13, 2019 . 
6. ^ Because of Macedonia Agreement: Greece's Defense Minister resigns. In: www.spiegel.de. January 13, 2019, accessed January 13, 2019 . 
7. ↑ Wassilis Aswestopoulos: Athens: Government coalition breaks up. Telepolis , January 13, 2019, accessed the same day.
8. ↑ Christiane Schlötzer: Panos Kammenos - Greek right-wing populist in league with the Left, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 22, January 28, 2015, p. 4.
9. ↑ ^{a b} Kammenos Introduces Independent Greeks. (No longer available online.) In: Athens News. March 11, 2012, archived from the original on March 14, 2012 ; accessed on April 23, 2012 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ↑ Zinovia Lialiouti, Giorgos Bithymitris: "The Nazis Strike Again". The Concept of "The German Enemy", Party Strategies, and Mass Perceptions through the Prism of the Greek Economic Crisis. In: The Use and Abuse of Memory. Interpreting World War II in Contemporary European Politics. Transaction, New Brunswick NJ 2013, p. 168
11. Jump up ↑ for Greece's opponents of the austerity policy. In: NZZ . April 16, 2012. Retrieved April 23, 2012 . 
12. ↑ Zinovia Lialiouti, Giorgos Bithymitris: Implications of the Greek crisis. Nationalism, Enemy Stereotypes, and the European Union. In: The European Union beyond the Crisis. Lexington Books, Lanham MD / London 2015, pp. 262–263
13. ↑ Niels Kadritzke: Greece on the ground of facts. In: Le Monde diplomatique , February 2015, p. 6