Supreme Court gives go-ahead to 36 parties and party coalitions for elections

A total of 36 parties and party coalitions will run in the May 21 national elections, following the Greek Supreme Court’s decision released on Tuesday.

Of the initial 50 parties, coalitions, and independent candidates that had submitted applications to Section A1 of the Court, 14 parties were rejected, including that of jailed neo-Nazi Ilias Kasidiaris, who founded ‘National Party – Hellenes’ (by a 9-1 vote).

In the same decision, the Court unanimously approved the ‘EAN’ party, whose founder and former Supreme Court vice-president Anastasios (Tassos) Kanellopoulos initially collaborated with Kasidiaris.

Last week, the Supreme Court had rejected the party ‘Patriotic Union’ including businessman Prodromos Emfietzoglou and Independent MP Constantine Bogdanos (on name and logo copyright grounds), as well as the party ‘Patrida’ of Afroditi Latinopoulou and the ‘Greek Christian Democrats-Christian-Democrat Party of Greece’ of Nikos Nikolopoulos (the latter for incomplete application material).

The parties that made the list and will run in elections include the last Parliament session’s participants: ruling New Democracy (Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis), main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance (Alexis Tsipras), PASOK- KINAL (Nikos Androulakis), Communist Party of Greece (Dimitris Koutsoubas), Greek Solution (Kyriakos Velopoulos), and MeRA25 (Yanis Varoufakis).

Some of the lesser-known parties the Supreme Court approved include the Greek Vision, Dare, Free Again, and Chickens.