Mitsotakis back as Greek premier after election landslide

Conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis embarked on June 26 on his second term as Greece’s Prime Minister with a vow to accelerate institutional and economic reforms, after voters handed him a huge election victory for the second time in five weeks.

Conservative leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis embarked on June 26 on his second term as Greece's Prime Minister with a vow to accelerate institutional and economic reforms, after voters handed him a huge election victory for the second time in five weeks.

Crediting Mr. Mitsotakis and his New Democracy party for bringing economic stability to the erstwhile EU debt laggard, voters gave the conservatives their widest winning margin in almost 50 years on Sunday.

"No adversary, absolute dominance of Mitsotakis," headlined centrist newspaper Ta Nea.

Holding 158 seats in the 300-seat Parliament, Mr. Mitsotakis was sworn in as Greece's Prime Minister after officially receiving the mandate to form a government from head of state, President Katerina Sakellaropoulou.

"It is an honour to take on the responsibility of a new mandate of four years," he told the President, adding that "we will begin working hard on the major reforms".

"We will begin working hard for big reforms," he told the President, underlining that he had pledged to "put in place major changes during the second four-year mandate".

Among his campaign pledges is pouring money into the country's public health system — which was stretched to its limits by the COVID-19 pandemic — and improving railway safety after the deaths of 57 people in a February train collision that was Greece's worst rail disaster.