No government plan to limit unemployment benefits to two months, Marinakis says
The conservative government has no plans to limit unemployment benefits to two months, government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said Monday, clarifying remarks he made last week that the benefit should be reconsidered and potentially redirected toward employment subsidies. Speaking during a press briefing, Marinakis said his earlier comments reflected his personal view and did not represent government policy or planning.
Leading Golden Dawn figure prepares political comeback
The leading figure of the now-defunct neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, Ilias Kasidiaris, will be released from prison on Tuesday and is preparing for a political comeback. “I return free and with full political rights to the central political arena and to the forefront of the national struggles,” he said. His lawyer said she is certain Kasidiaris will stand as a candidate for a political party in the upcoming parliamentary elections and confirmed that he will hold a press conference in the coming days. Constitutional experts argue that, under current election law, Kasidiaris will be permitted to run in elections as part of a coalition or as a member of a political party’s leadership only after October 2033. Others, however, argue that he could run as an independent candidate.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1315198/leading-golden-dawn-figure-prepares-political-comeback
Charge of homicide with possible intent brought against the two doctors for the death of popular singer Mazonakis
The two accused doctors are facing charges that carry a penalty of up to life imprisonment, as they prepare to give their statements regarding the death of Giorgos Mazonakis. The couple, at whose private clinic the popular artist collapsed during a medical procedure, are facing a more severe charges after judicial authorities decided on Monday to upgrade the charge, now attributing homicide with possible intent.
Bank of Greece: Inflation at 3.5% in 2026
Inflation is estimated to rise to 3.5% in 2026, up from 2.9% in 2025, according to the relevant bulletin published on Monday by the Bank of Greece. As stated in the latest Inflation Monitor, harmonised inflation (HICP) in Greece will increase to 3.5% in 2026, driven by higher energy prices and continued persistence of inflation in the services sector.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/1022919/Bank-of-Greece-Inflation-at-35-in-2026
ATHEX: Stocks slide on global oil worries
The Euronext Athens (ATHEX) general index closed at 2,694.96 points, shedding 1.16% from Friday’s 2,726.49 points. The large-cap FTSE-25 index contracted 1.11% to end at 6,926.92 points.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1315257/athex-stocks-slide-on-global-oil-worries
KATHIMERINI: The nightmare of the fuel tank
TA NEA: 15 SOS questions for when you want to visit a doctor’s office
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: “Stalking horse” games or government degradation?
RIZOSPASTIS: We do not forget! Rally against fascism and the system that gives birth to it
KONTRA NEWS: Lending cost for households and businesses skyrockets
DIMOKRATIA: “Macedonian language” in Greek schools!
NAFTEMPORIKI: 5+1 steps to boost investments
DRIVING THE DAY
HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE (IN PARLIAMENT): Ursula von der Leyen will walk a razor’s edge in her State of the Union speech, balancing tough talk on migration and pledges to maintain green rules as she tries to hold her fragile European Parliament coalition together, lawmakers and officials told Playbook and Max Griera.
Or as Bernd Lange, chair of the Parliament’s International Trade Committee, put it: “This year’s speech will be a tightrope walk on a volcano.”
Parliament matters: The Commission president relies on a delicate entente between the center-right and center-left power blocs to pass legislation and stay in power. That coalition has shown signs of strain lately — and critics on either side of the hemicycle will be scrutinizing her speech for signs of betrayal.
The stakes: An angry center-left camp could yank support if von der Leyen reneges on commitments to green rules or fails to take a stand against working with the far-right, Socialists and Democrats group leaderIratxe García warned in a letter ahead of the speech.
“You can use your address to tell us unequivocally where you stand,” García wrote, referring to deals between centrist and far-right parties. “The time to choose is now.”
Meanwhile, European People’s Party lawmakers have drawn red lines on the need for further deregulation, strong measures against migration crises (like the one that hit Spain’s Ceuta exclave), and even a stance that favors AI development over further regulation.
AI rears its head: Referring to recent calls from industry chiefs to slow AI development, Dutch EPP lawmaker Dirk Gotink said: “I expect quite some attention [in the speech] to AI and the slowdown: Yes or No?” He added: “If you want to slow down, then move those companies to Europe.”
It’s hard to please everyone.Von der Leyen may seek to strengthen her coalition by tossing out a few wins to each camp.
What to look out for: Her gesture to the left could take the form of a commitment to propose suspending trade with illegal Israeli settlements, following a petition organized by Irish lawmaker Barry Andrews (backed by 114 MEPs at the time of writing) and bilateral moves by several EU countries.
For the EPP, the key things could be proposals to beef up EU border agency Frontex, offer capitals new legal tools to deal with Ceuta-style migration crises and double down on AI development.
A resolution on the Ceuta crisis, to be voted on later this week, will be a test of whether the EPP and S&D are able to make peace after months of acrimony, Max reports. The EPP recently bypassed the center-left by joining forces with far-right parties to pass the bloc’s Return Regulation.
This time, there are signs the EPP wants to make friends. “We are going to work with the other groups to try to join a text because I think the text shouldn’t focus on who was to blame,” EPP spokesperson Pedro Lopez de Pablo said.
The bottom line: Von der Leyen has faced bigger challenges in Parliament, like last year when she shrugged off a series of failed censure motions. But the current threat to her support base is more insidious: increasing cooperation between centrists and the far-right. It may prove harder to extinguish.
GO DEEPER: Seb Starcevic lays out the main policy priorities von der Leyen will cover in her State of the Union, from climate-proofing Europe to catching up with China and the U.S. on artificial intelligence.
VON DER LEYEN U-TURNS ON CARNEY: The Commission president will attend Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Thursday — reversing an earlier decision to skip the speech, Max reports.
The U-turn comes after Commission chief spokesperson Paula Pinho told POLITICO on Monday morning that von der Leyen would miss the address because of “prior commitments” in Brussels that day, including the presentation of a new child online safety law.
Speaking of which … The Commission’s proposed EU KIDS Act will restrict minors’ access to social media and video-sharing platforms before the age of 15 and require products to be safe by design, Pieter Haeck and Eliza Gkritsi report.
BIG AND BREAKING
BALTIC BREACH: NATO fighter jets shot down a drone that entered Lithuanian airspace late last night, likely from Belarus, the BBC reports.
FRUSTRATION AT THE FRENCH: EU diplomats were surprised and angry that France moved to lift sanctions against Uzbek-Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov, with one suggesting Paris had acted as part of a deal to secure the liberation of a French prisoner in Azerbaijan. Ambassadors will meet to discuss Russian sanctions again in a week, Koen Verhelst, Gabriel Gavin and yours truly report.
TRADE TALKS: European Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič will hold a videoconference with his Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao on Thursday, Camille Gijs reports.
TRUCE TESTED: Volodymyr Zelenskyy poured cold water on Donald Trump’s claim that Ukraine and Russia have agreed to stop striking each other’s energy infrastructure, saying Kyiv isn’t confident Moscow would abide by such a truce, Veronika Melkozerova reports.
Meanwhile: Russia is upgrading its attack drones by powering them with fast turbojet engines, making them much more difficult to intercept and forcing Ukraine to develop technology to knock them down, Veronika writes.
BUDGET BATTLES
EUROPE FIRST: France has opened a new front in negotiations on the bloc’s next seven-year budget by pushing for stronger “Made in Europe” rules for defense companies, two EU diplomats with knowledge of discussions told Gregorio Sorgi.
EU capitals are split over the size of the proposed budget and new EU-wide taxes to fund almost €2 trillion in spending. The EU’s 27 ambassadors will indicate where they want to save money during a meeting on Wednesday, with the Irish Council presidency — which is steering the budget talks — signaling that Eurocrat staff numbers will likely face the chop.
Officials were taken aback when France’s ambassador to the EU, Philippe Léglise-Costa, pushed during a meeting of envoys last week to make it tougher for non-EU companies to gain access to Brussels’ defense and space funding, worth around €106 billion. “We have made clear that a defense fund in the EU budget without a European preference would have no added value,” a French official wrote in a statement to POLITICO. “That is what we will continue to demonstrate in the coming weeks.”
France has traditionally backed a stronger preference for EU companies to reduce the bloc’s military dependence on the U.S., and French MEPs proposed tougher rules during budget negotiations in the Parliament. Léglise-Costa’s intervention signaled that this “is no longer a Parliament problem, it is also a Council problem,” said one of the diplomats.
Message to Berlin: The French move comes amid major disagreements with Germany, which opposes stricter EU preference criteria in defense. Berlin is lukewarm about new EU taxes, known as own resources, and supports cutting farmers’ subsidies — two points of tension with Paris.
France harbors misgivings about allowing non-EU countries to participate in defense programs as a last resort. As a workaround, Léglise-Costa suggested applying tougher budget rules that were introduced in the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP), said one of the diplomats. Under the EDIP, defense projects are required to source at least 65 percent of their components from the EU.
20-SECOND PLAYBOOK PRIMER
The European Union’s cyber agency, ENISA, announced that it has launched a single platform for companies to report software flaws. That’s part of the EU’s Cyber Resilience Act … but what is that? It’s a law that requires makers of digital products to report certain software flaws to authorities within 24 hours. The new platform allows manufacturers to report just once instead of to multiple national agencies.
SOVEREIGN SWITCH
SWEEPING TECH AUDIT: The European Parliament’s leadership on Monday evening discussed a sweeping internal audit of the technology it uses, with an eye to “gradually diminishing reliance” on foreign tech providers and replacing them with more “sovereign” alternatives, according to an internal document seen by POLITICO. The document says the reason for the review is the “intensifying technological competition between global powers” — a reference to souring EU-U.S. relations, Max Griera reports.
European path: The Parliament’s top administrative body held its first discussion of a draft plan by Secretary-General Alessandro Chiocchetti to reduce reliance on technology owned by non-EU companies. No final decision on the plan was taken. It follows Parliament’s switch from Google to Qwant as its default search engine and restrictions on some AI features on MEPs’ tablets.
The draft timeline, seen by POLITICO, calls for “a detailed assessment of digital sovereignty risks” facing the Parliament and their potential impact by the end of this fall. It calls for the administration to seek open-source or European alternatives, citing risks of a “switch off” of the tech the Parliament relies upon in episodes of “geopolitical tensions” or cyberattacks.
On the target list: By the end of the year, the Parliament plans to include sovereignty requirements in IT public tenders, and to assess (and in some cases deploy) permanent or fallback “sovereign” alternatives across its tech infrastructure. That includes its cybersecurity and anti-malware software; its printing hardware and software; its AI models; its cloud infrastructure, including that provided by Amazon, Microsoft and IBM (American); its identity and access management, including that provided by Microsoft (American); and its corporate devices.
By the end of March, it also plans to implement European fallback videoconferencing and internal chat tools, currently provided by Cisco’s Webex and Jabber (American).
Top secret: Two lawmakers who deal with the issue declined to give further details when POLITICO attempted to speak to them after the behind-closed-doors meeting. “It’s about sensitive business decisions, including money and tenders,” Vice President Martin Hojsík said. But he added that “we need to be certain on our own, we cannot be in a position where outside players, outside of Europe, that are threatening us, can just turn off the switch.” Vice President Christel Schaldemose said “no decisions were made,” but that everyone wants “to protect the EU and the Parliament.”
DASHBOARD
Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union may not be followed by many of the bloc’s 452 million citizens, even if it is a highlight for the Brussels bubble. But that doesn’t mean citizens don’t think the bloc matters. In a June poll, carried out by Public First for POLITICO, about half of respondents in Germany, France and Spain said that the European Union has more influence over the future of their country than their own government, Hanne Cokelaere writes.
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5 MORE THINGS GETTING US TALKING
STOCKHOLM’S NEW POWER BROKER: Sweden’s deadlocked election result has turned rookie leader Elisabeth Thand Ringqvist — whose centrist party holds just enough seats to clinch a coalition — into an overnight kingmaker, Tim Ross reports.
FRENCH CONNECTION: Mark Carney will cap his week-long effort to pull Canada closer to Europe by meeting Emmanuel Macron in the tiny French territory of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, near Newfoundland, on Sunday.
DOMINO EFFECT: Democratic backsliding in Washington is increasing the risk of conflict worldwide, per a report from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.
ONLY BAD CHOICES: Yemen’s Houthis are stepping up attacks on Saudi Arabia, further squeezing world energy markets — and narrowing the Trump administration’s options in the Middle East.
WEDDING REVEAL: Donald Trump Jr.’s new wife, Bettina, confirmed on Instagram that their wedding celebration in May was partially funded by a businessman with ties to Vladimir Putin, the Associated Press reports.