Syria crisis fuels Greek concerns

The rapidly evolving crisis in Syria will take center stage at the European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council on Monday, with Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis representing Athens. Athens aims to solidify its stance on the evolving dynamics in Syria, which will also be discussed on Friday at a scheduled National Security Governmental Council (KYSEA) meeting.

https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/foreign-policy/1256140/syria-crisis-fuels-greek-concerns

PM Mitsotakis rules out early elections, highlights 900million euros projects for Crete during Rethymno visit

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis during his visit to Rethymno, expressed his satisfaction with the communication he had with stakeholders and with the presentation made by the ministers for the development projects implemented in the region.

https://www.amna.gr/en/article/870132/PM-Mitsotakis-rules-out-early-elections–highlights-900million-euros-projects-for-Crete-during-Rethymno-visit

Androulakis: Our goal is to show that there is an alternative government policy

“New Democracy (ND) is not used to following the opposition’s agenda but in the last month it has followed PASOK’s agenda with respect to the high cost of living, in health and banking issues,” main opposition PASOK-Movement for Change leader Nikos Androulakis stated at an interview with ONE TV.

https://www.amna.gr/en/article/869991/Androulakis-Our-goal-is-to-show-that-there-is-an-alternative-government-policy

Extended shop opening hours from Thursday

Extended shop opening hours for the holiday season began on Thursday, with shops to stay open from 9:00 until 21:00 on weekdays and from 9:00 until 18:00 on Saturdays. They will also be open on Sundays, on December 15, 22 and 29, between 11:00 and 18:00. Shops will be closed on December 25-26 and January 1-2.

https://www.amna.gr/en/article/870034/Extended-shop-opening-hours-from-Thursday

ATHEX: Can energy stocks be the new banks?

The largely expected European Central Bank rate cut by 25 basis points and the mild rise of European stocks led Athinon Avenue to a day of gains on Thursday. Energy blue chips, such as Metlen, led the bourse higher as banks show some fatigue, while mid-caps had a rather weak day. All eyes and ears are now on the speech of the prime minister this Sunday at the end of the parliamentary debate on the state budget for 2025.

https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1256204/athex-can-energy-stocks-be-the-new-banks

KATHIMERINI: HORECA businesses manage to reopen after being shut down by the authorities for various violations

TA NEA: Interest rates decline: “Gift” for 400,000 housing loans

EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Samaras “ousted” Mitsotakis

RIZOSPASTIS: Budget 2025: new sacrifices for simple folks to “secure” the profits of businesses

KONTRA NEWS: Technical Chamber of Greece: Legislative intervention regarding constructions

DIMOKRATIA: The last emperor

NAFTEMPORIKI: Electricity retail market enters a new era

DRIVING THE DAY: FRANCE VS. GERMANY, GOV’T COLLAPSE EDITION

PARIS PROCRASTINATES, BERLIN PLODS: Emmanuel Macron missed his self-imposed 48-hour deadline to appoint a new prime minister Thursday night. But he’s gonna name someone to succeed Michel Barnier this morning. He promises.

Playbook thought bubble: Yeah, Manu, my editor and I could have told you that self-imposed deadlines don’t work.

The contenders: The leading candidates mentioned in French media both come from Macron’s camp: former Industry Minister Roland Lescure and centrist grandee François Bayrou. But it’s hard to see how any Macron ally would have staying power, Victor Goury-Laffont reports. Our Playbook Paris colleagues, meanwhile, have heard former Social Affairs, Health and Women’s Rights Minister Marisol Touraine floated.

SCHOLZ’S ENDGAME: “Few other countries can choreograph a government collapse that’s as painstakingly slow and deliberate as Germany is doing right now,” my colleague Nette Nöstlinger writes in this preview of Monday’s confidence vote in German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. She walks you through all of those slow and deliberate steps, leading up to a likely Feb. 23 snap election.

That’s when something slightly unpredictable could happen. While Friedrich Merz (POLITICO 28’s No. 1 disrupter) and his center-right Christian Democratic Union are likely to get the most votes, the big question is whether either Scholz’s Socialists or the Greens would have enough to be a junior coalition partner. Due to the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany and the new populist-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, three-party coalitions — which are uncommon in postwar Germany and tend to be more volatile — might become the new normal. Read Nette’s full article.

ALSO PREDICTABLE — STILL FRUGAL: Talks for the next seven-year EU budget will begin in Brussels this summer — but a preliminary German report already makes clear what Berlin wants to avoid: significantly higher contribution payments, report my Berlin Playbook colleagues Jürgen Klöckner and Hans von der Burchard.

Empty coffers: “The Member States’ financial leeway is limited for the foreseeable future,” the report warns, pointing out that the debt from the EU Covid recovery fund still has to be repaid.

ON THE SOFA

“The EU has a chance to cease being a geopolitical teenager and progressively assert itself on the world stage alongside America and China.”

— Former Commission President José Manuel Barroso in a Chatham House essay published earlier this week.

REVISITING SOFAGATE: Ursula von der Leyen plans to return to the site of past trauma early next week, calling on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Exact timing is still unclear, but Syria will certainly top the agenda.

One thing looks abundantly clear: There won’t be a repeat of the so-called Sofagate snub, when her male counterpart, then-President of the European Council Charles Michel, took the chair next to their host in Ankara, relegating von der Leyen to the couch off to the side. Of course, there are two obvious ways to avoid repeating this scenario.

Hard way — protocol coordination: Should Council President António Costa join von der Leyen on tour, “the necessary measures will be taken on all fronts,” chief Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho told reporters Thursday.

Easy way — go alone: Why bother with all that when you can just fly solo?

Verdict: Costa ain’t going. “This will be a visit by President von der Leyen alone,” Pinho said.

#NotAllPECs: Costa has been casting himself as the anti-Michel, and ensuring equal seating in Turkey would certainly have been an on-the-nose way to make that point. But in this case, he doesn’t seem to have had much choice about deferring to von der Leyen.

Not invited: The official line is that Costa will be busy preparing for next week’s Western Balkans summit and EUCO. But officials are cagey when asked if he was invited. Pinho, for example, avoided specifically answering a reporter’s repeated questions at the midday press conference about whether she coordinated with Costa or HRVP Kaja Kallas, noting only that von der Leyen would go alone. (Pinho did not respond to Playbook’s texts specifically asking whether he’d been invited.)

How it’s playing on Rue de la Loi: “She simply didn’t think of inviting Costa. It’s the first sign that she’s going to eat him alive,” one EU official mused.

IMITATION IS THE SINCEREST FORM OF FLATTERY: To mark the start of the incoming Polish Council presidency, Prime Minister Donald Tusk is inviting von der Leyen and her College to a retreat in his birthplace Gdańsk on Jan. 9-10, Hans von der Burchard reports. Sound familiar? Costa said he’s inviting EU27 leaders to hash things out at low-pressure retreats, the first planned for Feb. 3.

Warning: “Handshakes with Donalds are usually quite a challenge,” Tusk quipped on social media, alongside a video of him pressing the flesh with Macron.

A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT STORY ABOUT POWERFUL WOMEN AND A SOFA: When the Commission’s new competition chief, EVP Teresa Ribera, received my POLITICO Pro colleagues for an interview, the room was bare — almost. There was just a black-and-white picture of former British “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher’s 1977 meeting with Finn Olav Gundelach, then a Commission vice president.

And then there’s the sofa: The worn out, dark green leather couch and chairs turned out to be the same ones sat on by the former U.K. prime minister for the photo. Ribera said the photo was there when she arrived, joking that she might add a picture of current British PM (and fellow socialist) Keir Starmer, as she was impressed by his plans to re-nationalize the U.K. rail system.

If you’re a Pro subscriber, you’re probably interested in more than Ribera’s decor. Read about her warning to Trump that America’s rivals will take advantage of his turn toward fossil fuels with green energy subsidies here, by Karl Mathiesen and Zia Weise, and her preference to avoid a fight with Big Tech firms by Francesca Micheletti here.

POST-DIPLO LIFE

EX-ENVOYS ON RECORD: Two prominent foreign policy players are leaving their government posts, but in different ways, they’re both looking to the pen as a way to protect freedom.

American Gitenstein’s “beachhead”: Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the EU Mark Gitenstein, 78, plans to devote the rest of his life to media freedom and helping fix the broken business model for news-gathering (aside from spending time with his grandkids, that is).

Keeping democracy on life support: “I want to create a beachhead in the United States where the smartest people in finance and journalism get together and build a case in the United States that the U.S. needs to care about this, about what’s happening in Europe,” Gitenstein told POLITICO Europe Editor-in-Chief Jamil Anderlini in an interview at the ambassador’s residence in Uccle this week. “If media dies in Europe and democracy dies in Europe, it’s going to die in the United States, too.”

Landsbergis’ newsletter: Yes, we feel like every day, we read another exit interview with Gabrielius Landsbergis, the ubiquitous and outspoken former foreign minister of Lithuania. But on Thursday, he gave himself the last word, with a post on the Substack-alternative platform ghost.io. “I cannot fully disclose what my next beginning will be, but I can tell you that the fight of our lives is not over, and victory is within our reach,” Landsbergis wrote. His support will go “first and foremost to Ukraine,” but also Georgia, Belarus, Moldova and even Taiwan.

More words: Landsbergis’ diaries are being edited and he’s compiling his thoughts on “diplomacy in times of war,” he said. “I will drop a preview soon.” Of course, you gotta sign up for the newsletter for that.

VILNIUS’ NEW VOICE: Gintautas Paluckas was sworn in as Lithuanian prime minister on Thursday, with Kęstutis Budrys taking over as foreign minister.

ROMANIA ELECTION

TIKTOK INFLUENCERS FLEE AMID PROBE: TikTok influencers who helped propel ultranationalist Călin Georgescu to the brink of the Romanian presidency have fled the country, pursued by tax authorities investigating their alleged role in swaying the election, Andrei Popoviciu reports for POLITICO this morning. With Romanian authorities raiding Georgescu’s supporters, several TikTok influencers — some with ties to organized crime — have posted images of land borders or airplanes, accompanied by captions like “farewell” and “missing you.”

Beg your pardon? The influencers’ role in the election surfaced after Romanian President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence documents detailing a sophisticated campaign on TikTok last week. Georgescu had said he was “honored” to be supported by organized crime figures and the influencers, and hinted he could pardon them if he became president.

The latest: Iohannis’ term technically ends on Dec. 21. But after the Constitutional Court annulled the presidential election, he’ll remain in office until his successor is sworn in. An election re-run is expected next year.

Who’s running: George Simion, the leader of the hard-right AUR who was much hyped in the run-up to the first round of the presidential election but finished in fourth place, said he wouldn’t contest the ballot and instead threw his support behind Georgescu. On the other side of the political spectrum, pro-Western parties pledged to nominate a joint candidate.

NOW LISTEN TO THIS: POLITICO’s Romania expert Carmen Paun and tech policy guru Pieter Haeck join yours truly in this week’s episode of the EU Confidential podcast to unpack how Bucharest and Brussels are responding to the chaos in Romania. Plus, Jamil Anderlini and POLITICO 28 curator Aitor Hernández-Morales are in the studio to bring us inside the glamorous gala dinner and analyze what the Class of 2025 say about shifting power centers in Europe. (Full disclosure: Your host and some guests were hungover in this day-after recording. We blame the after-party.)

MEANWHILE, IN GEORGIA … the country will get a new president Saturday through an electoral college vote — with the ruling Georgian Dream party set to appoint far-right, pro-Russian former footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili as a successor to pro-Western President Salome Zourabichvili. It’ll be the first time a president isn’t elected via a direct vote in Georgia’s history. More protests are expected on Saturday.

IN OTHER NEWS

GIORGIA MELONI, POLITICAL RINGMASTER IN ROME: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s week-long political festival reaches its peak this weekend. Held in Rome’s Circus Maximus, it features far-right and populist icons including French MEP Marion Maréchal speaking today and Argentinian President Javier Milei delivering Saturday’s keynote.

“The Italian Way: Concrete Answers to a Changing World” is this year’s theme of the Atreju Festival, named for the main character in the novel (and 80s movie) “The Neverending Story.”

Beyond ECR: Though many speakers come from Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists family, a broad range of figures will be there: 5Stars leader Giuseppe Conte will sit for a one-on-one interview, the U.K.’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper (from the Labour Party) will be on a migration panel, while Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati will speak on Saturday.

MOLDOVA EMERGENCY: Moldova’s parliament voted overnight to impose a national state of emergency for 60 days starting on Dec. 16 in anticipation of an expected cut-off of Russian gas supplies from Jan. 1. Reuters has more.

RUSSIA SEEKING DEAL WITH SYRIAN REBELS: Moscow has established direct contact with the Syrian rebels who overthrew the Assad regime, and is seeking to maintain its military bases in the country, per state media.

TRUMP MULLS STRIKES ON IRAN: Donald Trump is weighing options for stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program, including preventive airstrikes, the Wall Street Journal reports.