PM defends government amid political tensions
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has strongly defended his government against opposition criticism, accusing rivals of fostering political instability following the deadly Tempe train disaster.
Androulakis: The government invests in toxicity and division
Main opposition PASOK-Movement for Change leader Nikos Androulakis is visiting the island of Samos on Wednesday. His first stop was at the University of Aegean’s School of Sciences. Androulakis referring to the non-public universities legislated by the government, spoke of the hypocrisy of New Democracy, which was trumpeting that prestigious universities would come to Greece.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/885143/Androulakis-The-government-invests-in-toxicity-and-division
New scientific meeting to assess seismic activity between Santorini and Amorgos
A new meeting will be held on Saturday by the two scientific committees to examine seismic activity in the sea area between Santorini and Amorgos.
BoG: Budget shows 1.8 billion euros surplus
The budget showed a higher primary surplus of 1.8 billion euros on a cash basis in January 2025 from 945 million euros last year, according to the Bank of Greece.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/885124/BoG-Budget-shows-18-billion-euros-surplus
ATHEX: Bourse snaps five-session rising streak
The rising sequence of five sessions ended on Wednesday for the main index of the Greek stock market, as a number of traders chose to cash on recent gains and ignore the impact from certain business deals such as those involving Metlen and Titan Cement in the previous 24 hours. This, after all, was the prevailing trend across European markets, while Athinon Avenue came off yet another 14-year high registered on Tuesday.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1262099/athex-bourse-snaps-five-session-rising-streak
KATHIMERINI: Trump “bombs” Zelenskyy
TA NEA: Hard poker game between Greece and France
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: They are auctioning houses of small value
RIZOSPASTIS: Large rally sends message that the fight will escalate
KONTRA NEWS: Extreme polarization is an act of despair on behalf of the government
DIMOKRATIA: Behold who ordered the cover-up of the Tempi crime scene!
NAFTEMPORIKI: 4 skeleton keys to eliminate objective tax criteria
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SOCIALISTS’ FIGHT PLAN
Parliament lurches right: “There is an extremely worrying trend emerging from the day-to-day business, where Coordinators are increasingly facing hostile right-wing majorities,” the S&D document states. This new reality will come to bite when legislation finally starts to properly land in the Parliament — the first big test of this new political landscape is likely to be a package for slashing red tape known as the omnibus.
THE S&D’S PLAYBOOK TO THWARTING FAR-RIGHT SURGE: A five-page document marked “confidential” but seen by Playbook reveals how 136 Socialists and Democrats MEPs are plotting to thwart the growing power of the far right in the European Parliament. Now that the center-right European People’s Party can build majorities with MEPs to its right without the S&D, the Socialists must maneuver to keep the Parliament on a centrist footing.
Bardella bugbear: “From the Patriots side they are acting more professional and that means reacting to this,” said one S&D lawmaker. The Patriots for Europe group, led by National Rally star Jordan Bardella, is more proactive in Brussels than its precursor, Identity and Democracy, and is also openly courting and taunting the EPP at every opportunity.
How to counter “Venezuela“: Be “more assertive,” call out and ridicule the far right, “drive a wedge” between it and the EPP, work more closely with the liberals and Greens, and translate a toothless agreement between the centrist groups into “implementing measures” that could create more stable coalitions.
On the EPP: “We should identify and leverage all those issues which can drive a wedge between the extreme right and the EPP,” per the S&D document. Manfred Weber’s center-right group “must know there will be consequences to looking both ways” — but without being “overly aggressive,” to avoid alienating “more mainstream” voices in the EPP.
On the ECR: The S&D says it should maintain its “case-by-case approach” to dealing with the European Conservatives and Reformists because it’s hard to agree on a single stance on a heterogeneous group that contains both “mainstream” and “anti-European” politicians. It notes that the EPP is increasingly demanding the involvement of the ECR as a quid pro quo for the Socialists to involve the Greens or Left group.
You can’t sit with us: S&D MEPs should refrain from interrupting far-right MEPs with questions in the plenary to avoid giving them more oxygen; maintain an automatic cordonsanitairefor the Patriots and the even more right-wing Europe of Sovereign Nations; and try to stop far-right MEPs coming on parliamentary trips abroad.
Flexible red lines: The S&D lawmaker quoted above said that the best strategy for the group would be to play “a double game, being clear [on] your red lines, but making your red lines in such a way that compromise is still possible.”
A spokesperson for the group downplayed the strategy’s importance and said it was discussed at a retreat among senior Socialists in Belgium this month.
THERE ARE TOO MANY COMMS PEOPLE IN PARLIAMENT, Secretary-General Alessandro Chiocchetti told lawmakers on Wednesday, as he announced he had set up a task force to streamline the administration by June 2026.
Cut-chetti: “We have more than 60 staff scattered around the administration taking care of internal communication … we need to reassess this and many issues to eliminate redundancies and overlaps,” argued the top administrator, dubbed “Cut-chetti” because of his penchant for pruning excess spending.
UKRAINE CRISIS
HAPPENING TODAY: U.S. Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg has arrived in Ukraine ahead of a meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy today. In his address Wednesday night, Zelenskyy said “it is crucial for us that the meeting and our overall cooperation with America be constructive.” Which is easier said than done, given Kellogg’s boss just called Zelenskyy a “dictator” and claimed Ukraine “started” the war with Russia, while cozying up to the Kremlin.
Putin’s president: Trump’s rhetoric has shocked America’s allies, with diplomats fearing the White House now aligns more closely with Moscow than with Europe, Tim Ross and Jacopo Barigazzi report. Speaking with POLITICO’s Power Play podcast, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton said the president’s Ukraine plan is “close to surrender” and would weaken European security.
Leaving EU behind: Bolton also predicted that a hasty end to the war in Ukraine could swiftly open the door to the U.S. exiting NATO. “I thought Trump would withdraw from NATO and he hasn’t done that yet, but you can hear the music begin to play,” Bolton said. “There’d be a cease-fire in place, a militarized zone would be created, negotiations would begin, Ukraine would agree not to join NATO — which is a settlement that really, they could have written in the Kremlin.” Read the write-up here and listen to the full interview here.
FORGET NATO. To address the escalating security crisis, Western leaders are forming a new coalition, my colleagues Nicholas Vinocur and Victor Goury-Laffont report. On Wednesday, Emmanuel Macron convened a meeting with the leaders of the group — most of whom beamed in via video link — about how to respond to the new Trump world order.
On the invite list: Leaders of Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Croatia, Finland, Estonia, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia and Canada (who joined via video), and Romania’s Acting President Ilie Bolojan and Luxembourg’s PM Luc Frieden (who attended in person), per the Elysée.
Broad church: Macron convened the wider meeting after several of Ukraine’s staunch backers vented their frustration at not having been invited to the Ukraine summit in Paris on Monday, per Le Monde.
HOW TRUMP’S COMMENTS ARE LANDING: Ukrainian politicians, officials and soldiers leaped to Zelenskyy’s defense, while Putin’s lackeys rejoiced.
4 tribes: My POLITICO colleagues over at the National Security Daily newsletter have grouped the reactions to Trump’s comments into four categories: The Panickers, the Subtweeters, the Pro-Ukraine Trump Defenders and the Ukraine Skeptic Trump Defenders.
So that’s where they’re getting their ideas: A senior U.S. State Department official visited Budapest on Wednesday and discussed the war in Ukraine with a Hungarian official, per Washington’s readout.
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
VON DER LEYEN 2.0 TIGHTENS HER GRIP: On Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration, European commissioners received instructions via their comms advisers: They must only repost Ursula von der Leyen’s message of congratulations to Trump on social media, and under no circumstances add words of their own.
Presidential system: The anecdote is typical of the way the Commission president has commenced her second five-year term: more top-down control, more streamlined messaging and much more evidence that her close circle of trusted advisers know exactly how to make the Berlaymont beast function.
Buck stops at 13: But the ruthless centralization of control by the 13th floor, where von der Leyen works and sleeps, has riled up critics. “Covid and the Ukraine crisis have proven to this woman that this is the way to go. You crush every procedure, law and rule that there is in the book, concentrate all the fucking power that you can and they will still applaud you for it,” a diplomat said.
Read more: Another took a more pragmatic stance: “Can you run the Commission any other way?” they asked. Read the full article by me and Nicholas Vinocur.
COMM-CLAVE: Clearly it didn’t cross any minds at the famously open and transparent Vatican to hide the news that Pope Francis has been hospitalized (there’s been a “slight improvement” in his condition, per the Vatican). Unlike the hush-hush way the Commission’s spokesperson’s service — known as the SPP — handled the news of von der Leyen’s hospitalization last month …
VDL’S 2 COMMS ADVISERS IN ONE: Jens Flosdorff, executive communications adviser to von der Leyen since 2019, has been moved into the administrative part of the Commission, technically as part of the SPP, according to the DG Communication’s organigram. However, Flosdorff is still working for von der Leyen on the Berlaymont’s 13th floor.
One theory doing the rounds is that the move will allow von der Leyen to hire an extra person in her cabinet without falling foul of her own rules.
Doppelgänger? The Commission’s new internal working rules state that there are now two separate top comms jobs close in von der Leyen’s orbit: the executive communications adviser, and the president’s communications adviser. Since Flosdorff is doing both jobs, is he coordinating with himself?
COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS
SOCIALISTS TO LEAD REGIONS BODY: Hungarian Socialist Kata Tüttő will be voted in as president of the Committee of the Regions, the consultative EU body, at a plenary today, per a deal reached between political factions.
Tutto a posto: Tüttő,a former deputy mayor of Budapest, will lead the EU institution for 2.5 years, and then hand over to the EPP’s Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, president of the Spanish region of Andalusia, who will serve as vice president until then.
COHESION FUNDING FOR DEFENSE: Political pressure is developing in Brussels for cohesion funds to be spent to boost Europe’s defense industry. The Committee of the Regions (CoR), famously protective of the way that EU regional funds are spent, appears to be open to the idea of diverting cash to the defense industry as long as it can still sell it as being truly regional-focused funding.
Opinion: “Increased funding is essential to bolster the EU’s defence industry, particularly as the European Commission prepares its next long-term budget beyond 2027,” is the main message of a document expected to be adopted today that was prepared by Fernando López Miras, president of the Spanish region of Murcia, where a Rheinmetall site is based.
Trying to win over the regions: “New investments into defense can also create jobs and develop our regions, our cities, our communities,” European Council President António Costa said in a speech to the CoR Wednesday.
Back of the sofa: The FT reported Wednesday that the Commission is considering freeing up billions of unused pandemic recovery funds for defense.
TRUMP’S NEW WORLD ORDER
EU CARROTS: The EU is ready to negotiate lowering its 10 percent tariffs on cars with the Trump administration, Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič said at an event on Wednesday, responding to a question from POLITICO’s Ari Hawkins. Asked specifically about the EU’s tech regulations, the DMA and DSA, he said: “We are to, of course, have a dialog on this, and to talk about the Big Tech.”
And the stick: But it wasn’t all sweetness and light. Šefčovič name-checked the EU’s trade bazooka, the anti-coercion instrument, in his opening remarks. With this instrument, “the range of countermeasures is broad and can be deployed swiftly, including import and export restrictions, limitations on access to the EU market, and more.” Ari and Doug Palmer have the story.
U.S.-CHINA DEAL: Meanwhile, Trump is eyeing a new trade deal with China, the New York Times reports. Trump said he expected Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit the U.S., though he didn’t provide a timeline.
READING MAKES YOU STUPID: U.S. embassies and missions across Europe — including here in Brussels — have been informed via a memo (seen by POLITICO) that subscriptions to six leading publications are being terminated. The six outlets named are POLITICO, the New York Times, the Economist, the Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg. “The Department is conducting a broad review of spending to ensure resources align with the Secretary’s highest priorities,” the memo states, referring to U.S. Secretary of State Mario Rubio.
Reminder: Trump has falsely claimed that the U.S. government paid POLITICO and other news outlets billions of dollars for “creating good stories” about Democrats. In a statement, POLITICO Editor-in-Chief John Harris and CEO Goli Sheikholeslami said POLITICO has “never received any government funding.”
MORE GEOPOLITICS
VON DER LEYEN’S OVERTURE TO THE CARIBBEAN: “In this world, Europe’s offer is clear, let’s have a look for shared values for mutual interests and work together,” Ursula von der Leyen said last night in Barbados at a summit of Caribbean nations, where she spoke just before U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres. She offered to work together on fighting climate change, while praising the Caribbean nations’ support for Ukraine. “You are a principled, like-minded and trusted friend,” von der Leyen said.
Sisters: The Commission launched a new partnership to help Caribbean nations turn to renewable energy, money for developing a pharma industry and investing in more digital infrastructure and AI. Barbadian PM Mia Mottley referred to von der Leyen as “my sister.” “This is a special day for our country and represents another step in the mature relationship between Barbados and the European Union,” Mottley said.
MONEY FOR MOLDOVA: EU negotiators last night agreed on a deal to provide €1.9 billion in grants and loans to Moldova, to encourage its path to joining the EU. “We are ensuring greater immediate support to help Moldova reform, advance its European integration, and counter the economic and energy impact of Russian aggression,” said lead negotiator MEP Siegfried Mureșan. It needs to be voted on by MEPs next month and approved in Council.
IN OTHER NEWS
GERMAN ELECTION LATEST: The Left is back! With Germans heading to the polls on Sunday (wearing thermal underwear to deal with the cold), Die Linke has surged back above the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in the Bundestag, report Johanna Sahlberg and Chris Lunday.
SLIDING DOORS: Kamala Harris’ running mate Tim Walz could have been vice president of America, and perhaps would have delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference last week instead of JD Vance. Instead, he’s in the Netherlands drumming up business for Minnesota.
MELONI VISITS THE POPE: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited the pontiff on Wednesday and said he was “alert and responsive” and “hasn’t lost his proverbial sense of humor.” The BBC has more.