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General view of the city of Athens, the capital of Greece, and its Acropolis (illustration image). Ludovic MARIN / AFP

It is this Thursday that ends the ultimatum of the Conservative government, which requires the evacuation of all squats in the country, including those of the capital Athens. Particularly targeted, the district of Exárcheia, traditionally contentious and close to the city center, which hosts the most emblematic of them.

With our correspondent in Athens, Joël Bronner

Exárcheia is in the viewfinder authorities in more ways than one. Since the election campaign that preceded his election, Prime Minister Mitsotakis initially promised to " clean up " him. To justify this rhetoric and a daily police presence in the heart of the district, the authorities rely in particular on the argument of drug trafficking, which has also developed there.

But in the Greek capital, the district with facades covered with countless graffiti has especially the image of a stronghold for the representatives of anarchism and the extreme left. In short, political opponents in power.

With an ultimatum for evacuating squats, the government seems to have wanted to kill two birds with one stone. To dislodge, on the one hand, some asylum-seekers against whom the Greek law has just hardened and to try, on the other hand, to put down a neighborhood with a reputation that is uncompromising, which houses symbolic squats, such as the Notara 26 or the K- Vox.

It also seems to announce an imminent police action of scale in a district already in the process of gentrification. The question now arises as to whether Exárcheia the rebel still has the means to resist.