The European Realistic Disobedience Front (), or MeRA25 (), is a left-wing Greek political party founded in 2018. Its founder and General Secretary is former

Syriza The Coalition of the Radical Left – Progressive Alliance (), best known by the syllabic abbreviation SYRIZA ( ; ; a pun on the Greek adverb , meaning "from the roots" or "radically"), is a Centre-left politics, centre-left to Left-wing politi ...

MP and Finance Minister

Yanis Varoufakis Ioannis Georgiou "Yanis" Varoufakis (; born 24 March 1961) is a Greek economist and politician. Since 2018, he has been Secretary-General of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), a left-wing pan-European political party he co-founde ...

. MeRa25 is part of the

Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DiEM25, is a left-wing European political alliance founded in 2016. It operates as a pan-European umbrella for subsidiary parties sharing the same name and branding (e.g. MeRA25, MERA25), and runs el ...

(DiEM25), the European Spring, and the

Progressive International Progressive International (PI) is an international political organisation that unites and mobilises Progressivism, progressive Left-wing politics, left-wing activists and groups. The organisation works with over 70 member groups. This comprises ...

. The movement sets the horizon for the year 2025 to draft a democratic constitution that will replace all the European treaties that are in force today. Yet, it failed to elect representatives in the

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

and

2024 European Parliament election The 2024 European Parliament election was held in the European Union (EU) between 6 and 9 June 2024. It was the tenth Elections to the European Parliament, parliamentary election since the 1979 European Parliament election, first direct electio ...

. A party of the same name ( MERA25), allied with the Greek party, was founded in Germany in 2021.

History

MeRA25 was founded on 27 March 2018 by former Greek Minister of Finance

. The party's formation was announced during a special event in

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

. In December 2018, former

member and MEP Sofia Sakorafa joined the party. The party contested the

2019 European Parliament election The 2019 European Parliament election was held in the European Union (EU) between 23 and 26 May 2019. It was the ninth parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979. A total of 751 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) we ...

as part of DiEM25. It narrowly failed to win a European Parliament seat. In the 2019 Greek parliamentary elections, MeRA25 gained nine seats and 3.44% of the vote. MeRA25 stood in the May 2023 Greek parliamentary election as part of the "Alliance for Rupture", a coalition with fellow left-wing party Popular Unity, with "For the first time, rupture" as its primary slogan. The party received less than the 3% vote share required to obtain seats in the Hellenic Parliament, with party leader Yanis Varoufakis releasing a statement blaming Syriza's leadership for the conservative victory and stating that "Our own defeat tonight will be put under the microscope of our rigorous self-criticism". In the following June snap election, MeRA25's vote share declined further, ending with 2.5% of the vote, with Varoufakis releasing another statement blaming the result on the lack of a progressive front, claiming the result was "disproving the narrative that MeRA25 is falling apart" and stating that "Never have our people needed such a Left in Parliament more than they do now. And never will such a Left be missing more from Parliament". Mera25-logo small

MeRA25 stood in the

, where it failed to elect an MEP or reach the 3% mark by an even larger margin than the 2019 election but with a slightly smaller margin than the June 2023 election.

Name

Without capitalization, the letters of ΜέΡΑ25, μέρα (mera), spell the Greek word for "day", mirroring the Latin '' diem'' and thus showing the party's connection with DiEM25.

Positions

The party presents itself as an alliance of "

Left Left may refer to: Music * ''Left'' (Hope of the States album), 2006 * ''Left'' (Monkey House album), 2016 * ''Left'' (Helmet album), 2023 * "Left", a song by Nickelback from the album ''Curb'', 1996 Direction * Left (direction), the relativ ...

Green Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a com ...

, and Liberal Greeks", standing on the grounds of European internationalism, economic rationality, and social emancipation. It plans to introduce a "European

Green New Deal The Green New Deal (GND) calls for public policy to address climate change, along with achieving other social aims like job creation, economic growth, and reducing economic inequality. The name refers to the New Deal, a set of changes and ...

" to solve the

postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...

version of the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

. In Greece, its core seven legislative policy proposals are: *Restructuring the

national debt A country's gross government debt (also called public debt or sovereign debt) is the financial liabilities of the government sector. Changes in government debt over time reflect primarily borrowing due to past government deficits. A deficit occ ...

* Reducing primary surpluses * Creating a public

debt restructuring Debt restructuring is a process that allows a private or public company or a sovereign entity facing cash flow problems and financial distress to reduce and renegotiate its delinquent debts to improve or restore liquidity so that it can continu ...

company * The general reduction of

tax rate In a tax system, the tax rate is the ratio (usually expressed as a percentage) at which a business or person is taxed. The tax rate that is applied to an individual's or corporation's income is determined by tax laws of the country and can be in ...

s * Creating a public digital payment platform * Converting HRADF into a development bank * Respecting paid work and creative entrepreneurship

Election results

Hellenic Parliament

European Parliament

References

External links

*
Official English-language party program

Candidate list for the EU elections 2024

Official DiEM25 website
{{Greek political parties 2018 establishments in Greece Democratic socialist parties in Europe Multicultural parties in Greece Organizations based in Athens Political parties established in 2018 Political parties in Greece Pro-European political parties in Greece Progressive International Progressive parties Socialist parties in Greece Syndicalist political parties