During her tenure as
Speaker of the Greek Parliament, Zoe Konstantopoulou used her office to set up three legal processes: a Greek Debt Truth committee, a committee to oversee Greek war reparations claims against Germany, and a pipeline of high-level corruption cases targeted around public sector contracts with German firms.[30] After the agreement for the
Third Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece by the first government of
SYRIZA-ANEL, Zoe Konstantopoulou dissociated her views from the party in opposition to this, and raised a number of procedural questions and objections to delay the bailout bill when it was brought for approval in the Parliament; voting against it along with rebellious
anti-austerity and
far-leftSYRIZA MPs, she resigned as
President of the Hellenic Parliament as part of a breakaway of a
nationalist,
Eurosceptic,
hard left Syriza faction (which contained the pro-
Grexit "Left Platform" of
Panagiotis Lafazanis) and participated in the following
legislative elections as a "collaborative independent" candidate of the pro-
drachmaPopular Unity party formed from said breakaway faction.[31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] However, the party did not manage to achieve the
electoral threshold for representation in the legislature.
On 19 April 2016, she announced the founding of Course of Freedom. According to its founding declaration, the party's purpose of action consists of democracy, justice, transparency, rights, debt cancellation and claim for
World War II reparations.[39]
Konstantopoulou, along with the party, had attended and called for support of the "Macedonia name" anti-
Prespa Agreement mass protests of 2018 and 2019, with the slogan "I'm not ceding my homeland", having been the only political figure of the
Greek left to openly do so.[40][41][7][5]
Konstantopoulou and the party have also launched a "Don't Pay"
movement and a campaign of "
general disobedience" towards debts, taxes and insurance contributions since 2017.[66]
The party's program includes
confiscation of property of bankers and politicians who will be deemed responsible for the country's
inclusion in the
Memoranda, and also shutting down all
media accused of "propaganda and entanglement" and doing away with the riot control known as
MAT, replacing the last two with citizen collaboration/participation alternatives.[72][73]
^
abThe Macedonia Question"...they also touched a chord on sectors of a "patriotic left"...the rally was also supported by Zoe Konstantopoulou, the former president of the Greek parliament and founder of the "Course of Freedom" movement",
Jacobin.com by Stathis Kouvelakis March 2018, Retrieved 24 June 2019
^
abc"Populist parties in Central and Eastern Europe: Regional trends in comparative perspective". Poliarchie/Polyarchies (Special Issue 2023). Trieste: EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste: 63. 2023.
doi:
10.13137/2611-2914/35183.
ISSN2611-2914. Among them, the top performer was Greece (28.4%) thanks to the combined result of three left-wing populist parties (see Tsatsanis et al. 2021): SYRIZA (23.8%), the European Realistic Disobedience Front (3.0%) and Course of Freedom (1.6%).
^
abUğur Ekinci, Mehmet; Yusufoğlu, Yusuf (31 July 2023).
"Why the Left Fell and the Right Rose in Greece". Politics Today. There is fierce competition among left-wing parties to fill the vacuum left by SYRIZA's decline. The Course of Freedom (PE) party, led by Zoe Konstantopoulou, a former SYRIZA member, managed to enter the parliament with a program close to the radical views that SYRIZA advocated before it came to power.
^
ab"Minister Christos Stylianides causes a stir with "Cyprus is half Turkish" comment". Neos Kosmos. 22 February 2024. This comment garnered reactions from Greek and Cypriot politicians and parties, with far-right Ελληνική Λύση (Greek Solution) party MP Kostas Hitas saying he had been "left speechless" and left wing Course of Freedom party leader Zoe Konstantopoulou demanding a retraction.
^
abMessinis, Aris (26 June 2023).
"Conservatives win Greek elections". Azərbaycan24. Another newcomer in the legislature is the left-wing Course of Freedom party, whose leader Zoe Konstantopoulou briefly served as speaker in 2015.
^
abMaltezou, Renee (22 June 2023). Frances Kerry (ed.).
"Explainer-Greece's election on Sunday: how the system works". SWI swissinfo. Opinion polls suggest that up to seven parties could enter parliament, including the leftist Plefsi Eleftherias, founded by former Syriza lawmaker Zoe Konstantopoulou, and a newly set up far-right party called Spartans.
^
abcZoe Konstantopoulou: Mr. Tsipras is destroying the country : "Precisely how would Plefsi Eleftherias describe its political identity? Some critics say that you do not belong to the Left [...] We are a force that aims to overturn the establishment, and we are appealing to all democratically active citizens, without the walls of old-party divisions. We look neither to the Left nor the Right" in.gr 21 October 2018, Retrieved 24 June 2019