EUROPEAN TRADE UNION DIALOGUE TRADE UNIONS AND RIGHT-WING POPULISM IN EUROPE Country Study Greece Giorgos Bithymitris and Argyris Biskinis February 2023 This study is part of an EU-wide cross-country re­search endeavour examining trade union options in dealing with right-wing populist forces. The focus here is on the political processes and trade union ex­periences in Greece, with special emphasis on the practices of the extreme-right party“Golden Dawn” and the responses of the Greek trade unions in the so­called crisis decade(2009–2019). HISTORICAL, INSTITUTIONAL, AND POLITICAL BACKGROUND HISTORY OF TRADE UNIONISM IN GREECE The official history of trade unionism in Greece dates back to the early 20th century. The General Confedera­tion of Greek Workers(GSEE; Genikí Synomospondía Er­gatón Elládos ), which is the only official confederation of unions in the private sector today, was established in 1918, just few days before the founding of the Socialist Labour Party of Greece(originally named SEKE, it be­came the KKE in 1924; Kommounistikó Kómma Elládas ). The weak institutional basis of the Greek polity is re­flected inter alia on the evolution of the state-labour relations, which for the most part of the 20th century followed a highly distinct pattern in comparison with the west-European liberal democracies. Coercive state­led practices on the one hand(i. e., persecution of left­wing trade unionists, shut-down of militant unions), and extensive state interference in the internal union affairs on the other, resulted in a scheme that has rea­sonably been described as Sisyphean: Whereas in the West the dominant pattern was“prohibition → toler­ance → recognition,” in Greece, the industrial relations path was rather“prohibition → tolerance → prohibi­tion”(Liakos 1993). It was the restoration of democracy in 1974 and particularly the rise to power of the Social­ist Party(PASOK; Panellinio Sosialistiko Kinima ) that laid the ground for the democratisation of the Greek trade unions and the integration of the hitherto op­pressed progressive currents. The 60-year-long right-wing hegemony within the Greek trade union movement was built on anti-com­munism and nationalism. These two core ideological elements were articulated through the“official” ideol ­ogy of ethnikofrosini (national-mindedness), which designated both the internal and external threats, and the alleged continuity of the“Hellenic-Christian civili­zation”(Papadimitriou 2006). The combination of co­ercion, and clientelism(mostly directed from the polit­ical elite, but also from the big employers in industry) further consolidated the right-wing hegemony, which was highly consequential for the mobilisation of trade union resources, as far as it tolerated(if not provoked) the exclusion of working-class communities, militant activists, progressive political organisations, under­mining the labour movement unity and solidarity (Koukoules 1994; Kouzis 2007). The era of the military junta(1967–1974) was arguably the heyday of the ideo­logical union of nationalism and anti-communism 1