French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Left Party (PG) on Wednesday demanded the expulsion of Greece’s ruling party, SYRIZA, from the Party of the European Left, the leftist grouping at the European Parliament.
“For the PG, and undoubtedly for many other parties in the Europarliament, it has indeed become impossible to co-exist in the same movement with SYRIZA’s Alexis Tsipras,” according to a PG statement. Mélenchon has criticized what he called Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ “policy of austerity for limiting (among others) the right to strike, thereby more slavishly adhering to the diktat of the European Commission”.
The high-profile criticism against once radical SYRIZA, which negotiated and passed through Parliament the third and current bailout memorandum in the country, generated an immediate reaction in Greece and elsewhere, as one SYRIZA-affiliated MEP, Dimitris Papadimoulis, called the PG’s demand “undemocratic, provocative and divisive … the left needs unity and alliances, not new divisions.”
Far-left German politician Gregor Gysi, the president of the Party of the European Left, also criticized the position of France’s largest leftist party.
