ATHENS — Kicking off a meeting of his the SYRIZA party's Central Committee on Sunday morning, main opposition leader Alexis Tsipras stressed that the SYRIZA "must stand by the people and prevent the worst, raising a barrier to the advance of barbarity that some are trying to pass off as normalcy, keeping open the path to a progressive solution for the country."

SYRIZA's president predicted that "an even harder winter" will follow a difficult summer and he attacked the government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, saying that "every day that passes it is demolishing instead of building," and rapidly returning Greece "to the difficult years of 2010-2015."

According to Tsipras, the government was leading Greece to the "greatest recession the country has ever seen" and preparing to address this "with the prescriptions of the harshest memorandums" by cutting wages and pensions, restricting labour rights, dismantling state education, health and social services, increasing inequality and offering cut-price privatisations.

"Every day that passes, the Mitsotakis government confirms that it cannot manage the crisis but also that it doesn't want to," Tsipras said, accusing the prime minister of an "ideological fixation" that everything will be solved by the market.

He also accused the government of poor planning, a frivolous approach and lacking a cohesive response to the challenges, while criticising the changes in structure of the government as an attempt by Mitsotakis to control the workings of power for his own benefit, while his ministers spent their time helping out their cronies and currying favour with economic barons.