Mitsotakis reshuffles cabinet as EU farm subsidies scandal engulfs ruling party

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has moved to reshuffle his government after three cabinet members resigned amid a widening scandal over fraudulent European Union farm subsidies, a case that is rapidly escalating into one of the most politically damaging corruption affairs facing his administration ahead of next year’s elections.

Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis announced the cabinet changes at a press conference, confirming that former deputy minister for climate crisis and civil protection Evangelos Tournas will replace Ioannis Kefalogiannis as civil protection minister. Former European Commission vice president Margaritis Schinas is set to take over the rural development portfolio from Kostas Tsiaras, while Makarios Lazaridis, New Democracy’s representative on the parliamentary investigative committee on OPEKEPE (Greece’s former EU farm subsidies payment agency), was named deputy rural development minister in place of Christos Kellas.

Kefalogiannis and Tsiaras had resigned earlier on Friday after being named in the European prosecutors’ investigation into the farm subsidies affair, while Dimitris Vartzopoulos also stepped down as deputy health minister after being implicated in the same probe. Marinakis said the mental health responsibilities previously held by Vartzopoulos would be redistributed internally within the ministry. The swearing-in ceremony is scheduled for Saturday.

The resignations came after the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) announced this week that it is investigating 20 figures linked to the ruling New Democracy party, including current and former MPs, over an alleged organised fraud scheme involving agricultural funds.

At the centre of the probe are suspicions that subsidy recipients filed false declarations in order to obtain EU payments, with Greek authorities estimating that the network caused at least €23 million in losses since it began operating around 2018.

The political fallout intensified after the European Chief Prosecutor Laura Codruța Kövesi formally requested the Hellenic Parliament to lift the immunity of 11 sitting MPs over acts allegedly committed in 2021. Five former MPs are also under investigation, while the EPPO in Athens has separately transmitted information to parliament concerning the alleged involvement of a former Minister of Rural Development and Food and a deputy minister.

Constitutional shield stalls European Prosecutor’s probes in Greece

The investigation concerns suspected felonies and misdemeanours against the EU’s financial interests, including instigation of breach of trust, computer fraud and false attestation aimed at securing unlawful gains for third parties.

EPPO has not officially named the suspects, but their identities have been widely circulated in the Greek media, adding to mounting pressure on Mitsotakis’ government.

According to reports, part of the prosecutors’ case relies on telephone recordings in which politicians allegedly sought to secure subsidy payments for their own constituencies, fuelling accusations that the scheme was politically protected.

The main opposition socialist PASOK party seized on the resignations as evidence of systemic corruption at the heart of government.

“The removal of the current leadership of the Ministry of Rural Development underlines widespread corruption, whose centre and heart lies deep inside the government and the prime minister’s office,” the party said, while accusing Mitsotakis of having only recently praised the same leadership for restoring order to the subsidy system.

From the left, SYRIZA used even harsher language.

“The wolves were guarding the flock,” said Konstantinos Barkas, the party’s parliamentary representative, in remarks to lawmakers as the scandal deepened.

The case is especially politically sensitive because of the procedural protections afforded to ministers and MPs under Greek law.

In Greece, ministers cannot be independently prosecuted by the courts. Any investigation involving serving or former ministers for acts committed in office must first pass through parliament under a cumbersome constitutional procedure that is frequently criticised for allowing governing majorities to obstruct judicial scrutiny.

EPPO highlighted this institutional obstacle, noting that Article 86 of the Greek Constitution forces prosecutors to split the investigation whenever evidence points to possible criminal liability of ministers. In practice, this limits the office’s ability to pursue a unified inquiry into the full fraud network.

The scandal has its roots in long-standing weaknesses in Greece’s land registry and in the way Common Agricultural Policy payments were recalculated after 2014, when subsidies shifted from livestock-based calculations to land-based entitlements.

At the time, incomplete land records left ownership of large areas of Greek territory unclear, allowing applicants to declare land located elsewhere in the country in order to qualify for payments.

European prosecutors first laid out details of the scheme in May last year, accusing recipients of claiming land they did not own and inflating livestock numbers. In some cases, beneficiaries reportedly had no connection to agriculture at all.

Among the most striking cases under investigation are grazing land claims filed over archaeological sites, olive groves declared inside a military airfield zone and banana plantations allegedly registered on Mount Olympus.

The accusations triggered a wave of raids and arrests in October last year and fed prolonged protests by farmers whose legitimate subsidies were delayed as authorities sought to untangle the system.

Much of the focus has since turned to Crete, where roughly 80% of pasture subsidies granted between 2017 and 2020 reportedly ended up.

The island is politically sensitive territory for Mitsotakis, whose family has exercised influence there for more than a century.

Greece: justice à la carte – The OPEKEPE scandal and systemic impunity

While the number of livestock breeders across Greece has been falling, Crete reportedly registered 13,000 new farmers between 2019 and 2025. Over the same period, the number of declared sheep and goats on the island doubled, intensifying suspicions that subsidy declarations were being manipulated on an industrial scale.

To conceal the illegal origin of the funds, suspects are believed to have issued fictitious invoices, transferred money through multiple bank accounts and mixed it with legitimate income streams, according to the EPPO’s earlier findings.

Mitsotakis has stressed that the fraud scheme began before he came to power in 2019, but he has pledged to jail the “thieves” responsible and recover the lost money.

The timing is politically delicate. With elections due next year, New Democracy remains ahead in opinion polls, but the conservatives are not expected to secure an outright majority.

Sources: EPPO, Reuters, BGNES, Ekathimerini, Athens News Agency

Caption: Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis arrives for a formal meeting of the European Council in Brussels, Belgium, 19 March 2026. EPA/OLIVIER MATTHYS