George Florides: Political exploitation in Tempi is the goal – Strong attack on Konstantopoulou (video)
In Face2Face and Katerina Panagopoulou, George Floridis opens up the whole range of issues that concern the current affairs.
He talks about …
News Room
19 April 2026
On Face2Face and Katerina Panagopoulou, Giorgos Floridis opens up on the full range of current affairs issues.
He talks about the tragedy at Tempi and the attitude of Justice, comments on the climate of tension in the Parliament and responds to crime and changes in the penal system. At the same time, he turns his fire on Zoe Konstantopoulou, while he also comments on developments in PASOK and Alexis Tsipras.
George Florides on Tempi
“In the case of the tragedy of Tempi we had two parallel sides. One was the effort of the Greek justice system to conduct an inquest in the best possible way, so that there were no issues that had not been investigated or that all the evidence was put on the file. And that job was done in an efficient, excellent way. In just two and a half years and immediately afterwards a trial date was set. On the other hand, there was a systematic and organized effort of political exploitation of this tragedy, which ran parallel and at the same time tried to hinder the progress of the investigation in every way. The last attempt to blackmail the judiciary in order to reopen the interrogation and never be able to set a trial date was the famous hunger strike.”
Then George Florides said: “It is true that very few of us fought a battle for the truth. The certainty prevailed, literally over the country, that something was set up here in order to cover up a crime. As the Prime Minister has said, we did not fight the battle at the right time and in the right way to expose this conspiracy so that the people would not be misled. But that is where this whole conspiracy was set up. To what end? To overthrow a government and actually blow up a country? Because a government that would fall on the basis of an accusation that it conspired to cover up a crime that resulted in the death of young people, obviously I don’t know what kind of situation Greece would be in.”
The spikes for Zoe Konstantopoulou and verbal bullying
“Why did Golden Dawn get into Parliament? What was it? It was a group of bullies where those who elected them sent them to the Parliament to go there, to beat up others, that is, to dismantle the Parliament, in fact to degrade and absolutely discredit the main institution of our democracy. The natural continuation of Golden Dawn is Mrs Konstantopoulou. So, at the political level, Golden Dawn had a mission from its voters to bully the Parliament and, if possible, to dissolve it. That is to say, to discredit it. Mrs Konstantopoulou is doing exactly the same thing. The verbal bullying, all this phraseology. I have seen her many times addressing the Members of the New Democracy and telling them ‘you have blood on your hands’. Mrs Konstantopoulou often seems much more dangerous than Golden Dawn, because she also bullies Justice. As far as the institutional function is concerned, but also the judges themselves.”
He went on to say: “There is currently pending, I think, a request from the Larissa prosecutor’s office regarding the commission of felonious acts by Mrs Konstantopoulou. I think that there is a statement by Ms. Constantinopoulos that there are no criminal offences against the President of the Republic of Estonia. It was the videotaping of a judge, not in the Tempi case, in a parallel trial and the publication of this video illegally in the public sphere, in social networks. Those are two felonies. One felony is unlawful videotaping and the second is public disclosure. I repeat, it involves bullying judges on the bench, regular bullying. That is, calling the police ostensibly to come and arrest the judges while they were on trial. No one can permanently want to be perceived as being outside the institutional framework. We are all subject to it. No one gets away with breaking the law.”
“When I first went to Parliament, I have to tell you that I felt a shock after 12 years. I thought that after the painful experience of bankruptcy there would be an understanding of all the causes that led the country to bankruptcy. So the political system would appear more mature overall. Unfortunately, I was proved wrong. Parliamentary democracy can have sharply defined controversies, but these do not go beyond certain limits. Now we are talking here about not just toxicity, but a permanent verbal bullying, so to speak, that has no limits whatsoever. And I think that this leads to the deterioration of a bad feeling that the Greek people have about the political system as a whole.”
The reference to character assassinations and Mylonakis
“The pressure we sometimes feel from all these behaviors is unbearable. For example, one of us, in this case Mr. Mylonakis, sees a headline saying that Mylonakis is a child rapist. The same newspaper then comes out after he has had a stroke and writes ‘yes, what we wrote on the front page we did not write in’. What does that mean? That means actual character assassination. I’m putting you on the front page. A lot of times people stay on the front page. They’re left with the impression that he’s the rapist or whatever. And then the newspaper comes along and says, “you know what we wrote we didn’t write in, we didn’t support it.” But my brother you did your job.”
On tightening and increasing the number of prisoners
“We brought a provision and brought back the so-called recidivism that was in place before and was abolished by SYRIZA. This time all the time those who didn’t notice what was going on were caught by the dozens, by the dozens. In general, the criminal system we have in the country is now starting to pay off. Greek prisons have always had an average of 9 to 10 thousand prisoners. So now, in the year and a half that the new code has been in operation, it’s 14,000. We’re going to 15,000, which is a 50% increase. So what does that show? It shows that the penal system is working and Greek society is beginning to understand. Mainly would-be criminals, even everyday offenders, that the risk of going to jail is high.”
About the reduction of the time it takes for cases to be heard in the Athens Court of First Instance
“About 55% of the country’s cases are heard in the Athens Court of First Instance, as far as civil cases are concerned. In order to get a trial, four and a half years had to pass. What did we do? We made the big change that says we consolidated the first instance. We abolished magistrates’ courts for the justices of the peace. We gained twice as many judges. Right now in the Athens Court of First Instance, where it took four and a half years to get a trial date, it’s now April. If you bring a lawsuit now, you get a trial date in October. The 4.5 years has become seven months, eight months.”
About the European Public Prosecutor and the Supreme Judicial Council
“The European Public Prosecutor has to make a request to the Supreme Court that he wants to renew the term of office and the persons who are serving and whose term of office is expiring have to make an application themselves. The requests were made by the European Public Prosecutor and by the European Prosecutors themselves. So now it is pending the meeting and the decision of the Supreme Judicial Council, which will decide whether to renew the tenure or not. This is the Greek constitutional reality, which cannot be changed.” He then said: “What we changed was the abolition of the Judicial Council in cases of railway accidents, such as Tempe, so that the Prosecutor of the Appeals Court and the President of the Appeals Court could immediately set a trial date. In all other cases what was in force. I categorically say that not a single party has changed. Nothing. Everything that was in force is still in force.
I would very much prefer not to be Minister of Justice. I wish I could talk too. I would, believe me. I’ve been a criminal lawyer for 45 years, but my institutional position dictates that I shouldn’t say a word. I repeat, I would very much like to speak, but I respect my institutional role and I will not do that.”
On the reinstatement of the provision that expedites political cases
“In 2011, a provision was passed which said that serious cases involving political persons should be cleared by the courts quickly and it set certain deadlines in that provision. Surprisingly, on the last day before Parliament closed with the SYRIZA government then in 2019, when they rushed to pass the criminal codes, this provision was repealed among more than 1000 articles. So now it is obvious that we will bring it back.”
About PASOK and the centre-left
“This area has historically been constituted as a pole of power only if it has very strong leadership in founding periods. Now we are in such a period as far as this area is concerned. In order for this area to become a pole of power again, it requires great leadership, programmatic and political discourse. When these are not there, it cannot be done. So they will therefore flounder between decay and incorruption. There is no such person on the horizon who can collect this space we call the centre-left as a whole.”
About Alexis Tsipras and his book
“What should I think? The man wrote a book to denounce all the people he worked with and had in his government. That is, he totally humiliated them and said I failed in fact because I had them. And Andreas Papandreou came to mind. That’s why I say great leadership. Can anybody imagine that he would sit down to write a book to curse Pangalos or Vasso Papandreou or Alekos Papadopoulos or Laliotis and go around the villages presenting his book? That is the difference of a great leader. He has no chance.”
About the resignation scenarios and the Ministry of Justice
“I have no such intention. Nor has it ever crossed my mind. This has been written almost since I took over the ministry. That is almost three years now, every week, and as some people who play the betting game say, there they keep going bucket by bucket. But there’s nothing I can do about it.
When I resigned in ’11, it was no longer in my mind that I could come back into politics and even come back in this way. That would have made sense insofar as it ensured that I could do some things, what I needed to do in one area. Otherwise it made no sense for me to go back into politics and do what? Pretend to be a minister? I then, when I gave up, I left a job. Where you were a boss, all of a sudden you become a politician, where the person who was coming in and putting up the means to pay you comes in, wags his finger at you and says, “Poor guy, be careful here because if it’s not this and that, don’t expect votes in the other elections.” That shift is overwhelming both mentally and psychologically and financially.”
