Syriza
시리자
A left-wing Greek party whose full name is the Coalition of the Radical Left; Syriza is its Greek acronym. It began in 2004 as an electoral coalition of left-wing parties led by Synaspismos and became a single party in 2012. Campaigning against austerity in the eurozone crisis, it won the January 2015 election and Alexis Tsipras became prime minister, but in July of that year it accepted a third bailout. It lost the 2019 election to New Democracy and went into opposition.
In depth
Syriza's roots lie in the Space for Dialogue for the Unity and Common Action of the Left of 2001, through which left-wing organisations worked together on the Kosovo War, the privatisation of state businesses and social rights in the late 1990s. Before the 2004 election its largest member Synaspismos, a splinter group of the Communist Party of Greece, Manolis Glezos's organisation and others formed the Coalition of the Radical Left in January 2004. It won 3.3 percent and six seats at its first election; all six were Synaspismos members, which caused much tension within the coalition.
In February 2008 the Synaspismos congress elected Alexis Tsipras, an Athens municipal councillor, as party president; he entered parliament in the 2009 election and led Syriza's parliamentary group. Amid the backlash against the bailouts and austerity, Syriza polled over 16 percent in the May 2012 election, quadrupling its seats to become the second party. Because a coalition could not receive the 50 bonus seats given to the largest party, it re-registered as a single party for the June re-run, won almost 27 percent and became the main opposition with 71 seats. The July 2013 congress decided to dissolve the member parties into a unitary party, and Panagiotis Lafazanis's Left Platform, which wanted to leave the door open to quitting the euro, took 30 percent of the central committee seats.
Syriza came first in the European Parliament election of May 2014 with 26.5 percent and unveiled the Thessaloniki Programme in September. In the election of 25 January 2015 it became the largest party with 36.3 percent and 149 of 300 seats, and formed a coalition with the Independent Greeks, with Tsipras as prime minister and Yanis Varoufakis as finance minister. When the government accepted the third memorandum, 25 MPs who rejected it left with the Left Platform to found Popular Unity. Tsipras resigned on 20 August and won the election of 20 September with 145 seats, renewing the coalition with the Independent Greeks.
Syriza lost the 2019 election to New Democracy and went into opposition; after heavy defeats in May and June 2023 Tsipras stepped down as leader. His successor Stefanos Kasselakis tried to move the party to the centre-left, and the party's left wing and a number of MPs left in succession; in November 2024 Sokratis Famellos was elected leader.