New Democracy MP Thanos Plevris will be the new Migration & Asylum Minister, the government spokesman announced on Saturday. Plevris will replace Migration minister Makis Voridis who resigned on Friday after the case file of the European Prosecutor revealed that his name was involved in the EU agricultural subsidies fraud through the OPEKEPE.
Plevris, Voridis and health minister Adonis Georgiadis are the three high-ranking of far-right LAOS party who joined New Democracy in 2019 and there are always at least two of them holding a ministerial post in Mitsotakis’ conservative government.
Plevris is known for his extreme positions regarding migrants and after his new appointment many media recalled his racist statements from 2011, when still in LAOS he was promising “the hell” for migrants and dead refugees.
“Border security cannot exist if there are no casualties and, to be clear, if there are no deaths. Hell should seem like heaven” in the face of what the refugees will go through here,” Plevris had stated at a far-right gathering, daily efsyn.gr recalled, adding that he has not modified his positions since then.
The return of Plevris and his strict, right-wing line on immigration marks a clear political choice by the Prime Minister in a period of political pressure and intra-governmental instability. In addition, his appointment to a ministry that assumes a crucial role in the management of refugee flows, asylum policy and the European negotiation of the new Migration and Asylum Pact confirms the government’s shift to a stricter approach to immigration, daily tovima.gr noted.
After the resignations of three deputy ministers due to their involvement in the OPEKEPE scandal, PM Mitsotakis selected former Tourism minister Harry Theoharis for the post of deputy Foreign Affairs minister, Yiannis Andrianos as deputy rural development and foods minister and Christos Dermentzopoulos as the deputy minister of digital governance.
The new minister and deputy ministers will be sworn in on Monday morning.
