ATHENS — "You steered the ship onto the rocks long before the pandemic arrived. Your failure in the economy, which is absolute, precedes the coronavirus," said main opposition SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Friday. He was speaking in parliament during the Hour of the Prime Minister.

Tsipras said that the figures published by Greece's independent statistics authority ELSTAT "show something that has not been highlighted by the thousands of small and big news websites and media that have gorged on state money, unlike the real economy and businesses." He demanded that the government release a list of those that have received state money, implying that this went chiefly to ruling New Democracy party cronies.

What was not presented, Tsipras added, was that the government took over an economy with positive growth rates and in six months led it to recession.

"This was not achieved by the coronavirus, it is your 'success' – the people that in preceding years knew how to tank the economy because they had done it before," Tsipras said.