German, Greek PMs stay tough on migration
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz broadly agreed on several issues Tuesday, such as defense, Ukraine and migration, with some small, but significant differences.
NTUA: Fireball caused by Tempi collision attributed to silicone oils
Εngine oils, specifically silicone oils, could have created the large explosion and fireball that followed the deadly train crash at Tempe, central Greece, in February 2023, according to a new expert report on the accident published on Tuesday.
Tempe victims’ families criticize expert report on deadly train collision
The president of the Tempe victims’ relatives association, Maria Karystianou, has strongly criticized the findings of a new expert report that engine oils could have created the large explosion and fireball that followed the deadly train collision in February 2023.
IELKA: Price continues to be the main criterion for consumers when purchasing food
The changes in consumer buying behaviour in supermarkets were recorded by a survey conducted by IELKA (Institute for Research on Retail Trade of Consumer Goods), using a sample of 1,500 consumers from all over Greece in February 2025.
ATHEX: Index posts an intra-day rebound
While Tuesday’s bourse session started with some profit-taking following the recent rally that had taken the benchmark to highs unseen in 15 years, certain blue chips resisted the pressure and turned things around at Athinon Avenue later in the day, sending the main index to even greater heights by the closing. Still, Alpha continued to see traders take profits till the end.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1269631/athex-index-posts-an-intra-day-rebound
KATHIMERINI: The 5 keys of the Athens Polytechnic School’s report on the Tempi disaster
TA NEA: Professor Karoni’s report on the Tempi disaster: No conclusion
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Report on the Tempi disaster: Contradictions, ‘alchemies’ and gaps
RIZOSPASTIS: Unionists who protested against the transfer of dangerous NATO cargo suffer imprisonment rulings
KONTRA NEWS: Athens Polytechnic School provides report full of speculations regarding the Tempi disaster
DIMOKRATIA: The government is provocative and shameless regarding the Tempi fatal crash
NAFTEMPORIKI: The cost of constructions’ reboot
DRIVING THE DAY: PFIZERGATE — THE VERDICT
MESSAGE HISTORY: Five years after the coronavirus pandemic first overwhelmed businesses, politics and daily life for hundreds of millions of people, some of the EU’s most senior judges will deliver their verdict on one of the weirdest details of the entire period.
The question before the court is essentially one of transparency: Was Commission President Ursula von der Leyen right or wrong to refuse to release private text messages she exchanged with the CEO of Pfizer at a time when she was negotiating a multibillion-euro vaccine contract?
The question for everyone else is about VDL’s authority — and the viability of what her critics regard as a distant and somewhat regal leadership style. Defeat threatens to dent her reputation and perhaps make it a little harder to carry out the most powerful role in the EU’s institutions in the largely unrestrained way to which she has become accustomed.
Not pre-judging but … “The Pfizergate case is the most illustrative example of the consistent discrepancy between the president’s application of transparency and her rhetoric,” Nick Aiossa, head of Transparency International Europe, told POLITICO’s Elisa Braun for our essential preview piece today. “This has resulted in a culture that has placed obstruction above accountability.”
Scroll back. The case was instigated by the New York Times, which first revealed the messages in an interview with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla and the paper’s former Brussels bureau chief Matina Stevis-Gridneff. The NYT brought an action against the Commission’s decision not to release the text messages in 2022.
Deep and special: In the April 2021 New York Times interview, Bourla described the exchanges with von der Leyen as fostering “deep trust.” The vaccine deal, finalized in May 2021, involved the EU committing to buy up to 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, the largest by far of all the agreements Brussels signed.
Airplane mode: For a long time, the Commission wouldn’t even admit the texts between VDL and Bourla existed. The president herself has apparently never commented on what they contained. Eventually, the Commission’s legal team made a peculiarly tortured statement saying they did not deny that messages were exchanged.
Just bantz, honest: The point, they argued, was that the texts were not important, so did not count as official documents. If they had contained vital information, they would have been properly recorded and potentially made available.
Muted: The Commission won’t make any official comment until the ruling is made. But behind the scenes, there is clearly some anxiety. First, Commission officials want to make clear that this case is not about whether von der Leyen was wrong or right to go about negotiating vaccines in the way she did. It’s not a judgment on her methods, they say.
Even so, the Commission wants to remind everyone of the fraught context, in which there was “immense demand” for vaccines, according to sources. When it came to securing supplies of the vital Covid shots at the height of the pandemic, the EU was “three months behind” other countries like the U.K. and the U.S., one official said. Negotiations with drug firms were “ferocious.”
Maybe not the best defense? The process of negotiating with drugmakers was “very, very, very intense,” another Commission official recalled (clearly still scarred by the experience). “It basically had to be invented as we went along.”
What next? If it loses the case, the Commission will have to either carry out the judgment and reassess the request for access to von der Leyen’s text messages to Bourla. Or it could decide to appeal.
Notifications on: The European Court of Justice’s lower-tier General Court will deliver its verdict at 9:30 a.m. It will be streamed here. And POLITICO Europe will have all the coverage you could need during the day.
TRADING PLACES
SORRY, UKRAINE: The European Commission is preparing to reintroduce pre-war tariff quotas for some Ukrainian farm products sold into the EU.
In the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion, the EU adopted special rules to keep Ukraine’s big farm sector afloat by waiving import duties and quotas on a wide range of farm produce.
SCOOP: But a draft plan circulated this week, and seen by POLITICO’s Camille Gijs, sets out the Commission’s aim to reinstate pre-war levels of import caps from June 6 on sensitive commodities such as eggs, maize, poultry, dairy, beef, pork and wheat.
Politics got too hard: Granting this favorable access became politically impossible in the last few months, Camille reports. Several governments, including Poland and France, urged stricter controls under pressure from their farmers. Poland’s upcoming presidential election has also gotten in the way of extending Ukraine’s broad tariff-free access to the EU market.
MACRON TALKS UP SANCTIONS: French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that the EU is drawing up more sanctions to hit Russia if Vladimir Putin doesn’t move on peace talks soon. The plan would be to coordinate fresh measures with the U.S., potentially hitting financial services and oil “on secondary sellers,” Macron said in a long TV interview last night.
MEANWHILE, IN TURKEY (OR NOT): It’s still not clear whether Putin will make it to Istanbul for face-to-face talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy. On Tuesday, the Kremlin spokesman said, effectively, we’ll know when we know. (More below.)
THE TECH BRO TOUR
HELLO AMERICA: Tech Commissioner Henna Virkkunen is in Silicon Valley, where she’ll make a speech on Europe’s AI future and chat to the bosses of Apple and Google as part of her U.S. tour.
Not a snub: Virkkunen currently has no top-level meetings with Trump team officials planned — but that won’t surprise anyone who’s watched the new White House studiously avoid meaningful interactions with Brussels.
700M reasons to be mad: Big Tech has its grudges against EU regulators. In April, the EU announced plans to fine Apple €500 million for breaching rules for app stores, while hitting Meta with a penalty of €200 million for its “pay or consent” ad model.
Think of the kids: Even though some of her meetings with tech types may not be all smoothies in the sun, Virkkunen aims to make progress on “shared values and challenges,” a Commission spokesman said. These include: “Protection of our kids online and the protection of our democracies and elections.” More for Tech Pros here.
COPENHAGEN CALLING
PUTIN “WON’T DARE” MEET ZELENSKYY, SAYS KALLAS: Vladimir Putin won’t have the courage to meet his Ukrainian counterpart face to face in Turkey this week, the EU’s top diplomat told Playbook’s Nick Vinocur, after the Ukrainian president challenged Russia’s ruler to direct peace talks. “I think it’s a good move if they sit down, I think it should be between Zelenskyy and Putin, but I don’t think [Putin] dares, I guess,” Kaja Kallas said.
Trump-psychology: Speaking on Tuesday at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit (for which POLITICO is a media partner), Kallas also said she understood why the American president had yet to put much pressure on Russia to end its war against Ukraine: Trump’s trying to “keep the door open, so that Russia would come to the table,” she said.
Time’s up: “But now it has been over 60 days and we need to see some other steps, so that you would see Putin around that negotiation table,” Kallas added. Csongor Körömi has the full report.
MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM: There were plenty of hard-hitters taking to the stage at the summit, organized by ex-NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen and held on Copenhagen’s sun-bathed Playhouse overlooking the North Sea (hardship assignment, we know). Stay tuned for more today, and check out these highlights from Day One …
Boris talks balls: Former U.K. PM Boris Johnson said Western powers hadn’t had the “balls” to fully back Kyiv in the war, but instead gave Ukrainians just enough to “stop them from losing.” The former U.K. leader held off directly criticizing Trump, instead saying he was “anxious” about the U.S. president’s position toward Russia. But he added: “I don’t think that Donald Trump’s instinct will be to let Ukraine be crushed. And I don’t think that he has the political space to allow it to happen.”
Denmark’s Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen told POLITICO Europe’s Defense Editor Jan Cienski he didn’t think the United States would actually try to take Greenland by force — and declined to comment directly on a Wall Street Journal report that Trump asked intelligence agencies to bolster surveillance of the country.
Greenland’s Deputy PM Múte Egede said his country was “ready to talk with the Americans [about their plans for the island]. But we are not a property.”
Bend till it breaks: Trump has “significantly weakened” the West, former NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen told Jan in an interview.
European Commissioner Michael McGrath, in charge of democracy and rule of law, told Nick that Brussels was looking into ways to ensure Hungary abides by EU law following Budapest’s move to ban Pride parades. “We will look now in the context of the upcoming MFF [the long-term EU budget] how we can build a closer link between rule of law and access to EU funding,” he said.
AND RIGHT ON CUE: Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party overnight submitted to the Hungarian parliament a bill “on the transparency of public life.” Csongor Körömi writes in to tell us the Russia-inspired bill takes aim at civil society, independent media and possibly even the political opposition. Telex has more.
MONEY TALKS
SEVEN-YEAR ITCH: The 27 European commissioners will lock horns today over what the EU’s next seven-year budget for the years 2028 to 2034 should look like, POLITICO’s Gregorio Sorgi reports. The EU’s funding pot includes everything from agricultural subsidies (more below) to foreign aid, and is as politically sensitive as it gets. The Commission’s proposal is due in July and backroom bartering is getting fierce already.
Be realistic. “We cannot allow the MFF negotiations to consume all of the Union’s political energy,” the Commission wrote in a presentation for today’s meeting seen by Gregorio. “That is why we need a balanced proposal.” Translation: We can’t propose something national capitals won’t swallow.
Slim down: The Commission’s big idea is to cut the number of programs and link payments to the fulfillment of reforms.
Five more years? Another key discussion is whether the budget should cover seven years, as it currently does, or be brought back to a five-year duration. The first option offers predictability, the second more flexibility — and crucially aligns the budget with the mandate of the Commission president.
SPEAKING OF AGRI SUBSIDIES: Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen will today unveil a plan to cut paperwork and requirements under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy — the massive subsidy scheme that supports farmers while encouraging them to adopt more climate-friendly practices. Louise Guillot and Lucia Mackenzie have a preview.
ALSO TODAY
MERZ ADDRESS: Germany Chancellor Friedrich Merz will deliver an address in the Bundestag this afternoon from 1 p.m. Our Berlin Playbook colleagues have a full preview, and report he’ll be delivering a mission statement from the new government, covering everything from global politics to Germany’s economic turnaround.
FRENCH PM IN HOT WATER: France’s centrist Prime Minister François Bayrou will testify under oath this afternoon in a snowballing scandal over decades of child abuse at a Catholic school in his constituency that his children attended.
Did he know? Bayrou has repeatedly said he did not know the extent of the abuse when allegations first surfaced in the 1990s, but testimonies from a judge, an investigator and his own daughter cast serious doubt on his version. With his polling numbers in the gutter, Bayrou’s minority center-right government is hanging by a thread, POLITICO’s Marion Solletty reports.
Now read this: Victor Goury-Laffont has a profile of Bruno Retailleau, who has gone from a medieval role player to French presidential hopeful.
IN OTHER NEWS
SHOWING SOME BOTTLE: European Council President António Costa defended his decision to meet Aleksandar Vučić in Belgrade, saying at a joint press conference Tuesday that he wanted to keep dialogue open and obtain assurances from the Serbian president that his country remains committed to EU membership. “We need to talk always, in a friendly way,” Costa said — but he also told his host that hanging out with Putin in Moscow on “Victory Day” last week wasn’t a great sign that Belgrade is ready to align with EU foreign policy in preparation for joining the bloc.
There’s got to be a metaphor in here somewhere: Costa’s water bottle toppled off his lectern mid-press conference, hitting the floor with a thud. The towering Vučić — he’s 6ft 6in tall — bent down to retrieve it for his guest.
METSOLA’S MOMENT: European Parliament President Roberta Metsola gave a lengthy speech last night warning that Europe is no longer “at a crossroads.” Her point was that the EU needs a relaunch as a “global power” with more ruthless stripping back of red tape and a focus on why the political center is apparently under siege from populists everywhere.
VALENCIA LATEST: Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday met with victims of the deadly Valencia floods for more than an hour and a half and promised to visit the site of the catastrophe. Rosa Álvarez, whose father drowned in the floods, told POLITICO’s Aitor Hernández-Morales the Commission president was visibly moved by the victims’ testimonies.
COMMISSION SG SHAKE-UP: The European Commission’s secretariat-general will be restructured on Friday, Euractiv reports, with a new team for external economic policies and more power for Secretary-General Ilze Juhansone.
TRUMP TO DITCH SYRIA SANCTIONS: Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the U.S. will lift sanctions on Syria. The president, who is on a trip to the Middle East, said Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan convinced him to make the move. Reuters has a write-up.
WHAT THE DAVOS SET IS READING: “The Unraveling of the King of Davos,” with the Wall Street Journal reporting on Klaus Schwab’s “stunning fall from grace.”