Independent Greeks

The Independent Greeks – National Patriotic Alliance (Greek: Ανεξάρτητοι Έλληνες (ΑΝΕΛ), Anexartitoi Ellines, ANEL) was a national conservative political party in Greece.

The party was the junior coalition partner to the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) in the first and second Tsipras governments, from January 2015 until the June 2019 parliamentary election, in which the party did not participate.

History

The party was created on 24 February 2012 by Panos Kammenos, a former Member of Parliament (MP) for the conservative party New Democracy (ND). Kammenos had been expelled from the New Democracy parliamentary group after voting against Lucas Papademos' coalition government in a vote of confidence. The party's founding declaration was issued on 11 March 2012. Ten former ND deputies were founding members of the party, namely Elena Kountoura, Christos Zois, Kostas Markopoulos, Dimitrios G. Stamatis, Spyros Galinos, Mika Iatridi, Maria Kollia-Tsaroucha, Panagiotis Melas and Michalis Giannakis

On 17 April 2012, the small left-wing anti-bailout party Panhellenic Citizen Chariot reached an election cooperation agreement with the Independent Greeks.

Prior to the May 2012 legislative election, the party had 11 MPs: 10 defectors from New Democracy and one from Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK).

The party won 10.6% of the vote and 33 MPs in the parliamentary election in May 2012. In the snap June 2012 legislative election, ANEL received 7.5% of the vote, which reduced the party's representation to 20 MPs.

In the 2014 European Parliament election held on 25 May 2014, ANEL received 3.5% of the vote, electing a single MEP who sat with the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group.