Greece: Syriza wins but might need to form a coalition

It was already announced by the time of the first count after the elections in Greece, at 21h30 (19h30 in London) that Syriza, the radical left party, had won the election, but would need to find a partner to establish a coalition in order to get the majority on the Greek Parliament. The results were announced after counting 18.46% of voting sections, with Alexis Tsipras' party getting 35.06%, way ahead of the 29.28% for the New Democracy party of still prime-minister Antonis Samaras. With these results, Syriza can't get the 151 deputies it needs to rule without a coalition partner.

Right-wing, neonazi party Golden Dawn is third, but only with 6.29% of the vote, below what previous polls said. The To Potami party, a possible coalition partner for Syriza is on 5.62%. Another possible coalition partner for Tsipras was Papandreous' new party, but the former PASOK's prime-minister's Movement for Change has so far got less than 3%, which may leave it away from the Parliament.

This result is a major challenge to the European Union, as Alexis Tsipras always promised to demand a debt restructuring and to abandon austerity policies. From Europe's side, Germany (through Chancellor, Angela Merkel; and, Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schauble) sent quite clear alerts to Greek voters, about the need for the Government to abide to the agreements established in the last years, regardless of which party wins the election. Indeed, Angela Merkel stated that the European Union is now more available and prepared to accept an eventual exit of Greece from the eurozone (if the Greeks refuse to pay the debt and to maintain the austerity program) than it was in 2010 or 2011. Accordingly, Syriza's lead in the polls did not lead to the same irrational effect on financial markets, as seen in the years after Lehman Brothers' fall. In the same way, Mario Draghi's leaving Greek public debt outside the quantitative ease program, announced last Thursday, to buy national debts and give an impulse to the European economies, was also a message  about the demand on the Greeks to keep their compromises.