Sunak thought he played tough.

He actually did the campaign for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles a favor.

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This is our weekly round-up from Greece.

The week's surprise topic was the unprecedented row between Greece and the UK, as the British PM Sunak canceled his meeting in London with his Greek counterpart Mitsotakis at the 11th hour. The cause? Mitsotakis talked to the BBC about the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures. So, what?

Sunak and Mitsotakis could both be blamed for having used the issue of the Parthenon Sculptures to distract their constituencies from their grievances. Even if this is the case, the issue is timeless and far from ‘nationalistic.’ It’s about art, its decolonization, democracy, and civilization.

This week, the Greek PM also announced they will proceed with institutionalizing the postal vote for the European elections. Opposition parties expressed fears of breaching the vote's secrecy and election rigging.  

Bring them back

We cannot recall a recent similar diplomatic incident for a cultural issue. It was all over the international and the Greek Press: On Monday, British PM Rishi Sunak canceled the meeting with his Greek counterpart in London at the 11th hour.

The reason lay with the issue of the Parthenon Sculptures Reunification.

“Downing Street is understood to believe that assurances were given that there would be no comments about the sculptures from the Greek side in advance of Mitsotakis meeting Sunak,”

the Guardian reported (Öffnet in neuem Fenster). Greek officials who traveled with Mitsotakis to London strongly denied (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) any suggestion that a pledge had been made to ignore the issue of the sculptures.