Alleged WWII execution images emerge, prompting calls for state acquisition
Photographs believed to depict moments from the execution of 200 Greek resistance fighters by Nazi occupation forces in 1944 have surfaced for sale on eBay, appearing publicly for the first time 82 years after the event. The images are said to show scenes from the mass shooting at the Kaisariani Shooting Range on May 1, 1944 – one of the most notorious atrocities of the German occupation of Greece. Greek political parties reacted strongly to the publication of the images, with leaders calling for the photos to be secured by the state and treated as part of the country’s historical heritage.
PASOK will run in elections independently, Androulakis says
PASOK will run independently in the next national elections, its leader Nikos Androulakis told the plenary of the committee organizing the party’s congress that met at a central hotel in Athens on Saturday. He also expressed his optimism of winning elections, while he called all progressives to help bring political change in Greece.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/970533/PASOK-will-run-in-elections-independently–Androulakis-says
Biscuit factory owner rearrested after new evidence, charges raised to criminal level
The owner of biscuit factory ‘Violanta’ in Trikala, where five women died after a fire last month, was arrested again on Saturday afternoon and the charges against him raised to criminal level after investigations revealed new facts in the case.
Chevron–Helleniq Energy hydrocarbon exploration agreements to be signed on Monday
A new chapter in hydrocarbon exploration formally opens on Monday with the signing of concession agreements for four offshore blocks south of Crete and south of the Peloponnese, awarded to a consortium comprising US-based Chevron and Helleniq Energy.
ATHEX: Friday the 13th hits the stock market
Superstition matters next to nothing in securities trading, but Friday’s steep decline at the Greek bourse had some observers looking twice at the calendar. Banks led the local stock market to an unexpected nosedive, the biggest daily drop of the benchmark in the last 10 months, with pressure on all but two blue chips (OTE and Coca-Cola HBC) and on increased turnover, too. Lenders are still trying to fathom the impact of the court verdict on the Katseli Law loans, and uncertainty is always a drawback.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1295309/athex-friday-the-13th-hits-the-stock-market
SUNDAY PAPERS
KATHIMERINI: Greek military force in Gaza
TO VIMA: Secret visit in Athens by two special envoys of Trump
REAL NEWS: The PM’s terms for dialogue with Ankara: Starting point for negotiations
PROTO THEMA: Inner turbulence may break PASOK party
MONDAY PAPERS:
TA NEA: Changes in labor: as of today 13-hour working day
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Safeguard the historical memory!
KONTRA NEWS: Which minister was covering for Violanta’s Tziortziotis?
DIMOKRATIA: Historic photos unearthed: Praise and glory for those executed by the Nazis in May 1944
NAFTEMPORIKI: Total makeover for public contracts
DRIVING THE DAY
TUGBOAT DIPLOMACY: On the heels of a summit where EU leaders cautiously embraced the idea of a two-speed Europe, finance ministers from the bloc’s six biggest economies meet this morning in a bid put this vision into action — starting with a unified capital market.
Is this Europe’s Seal Team 6, an elite group assembled to crack the union’s trickiest problems? Not quite — it’s more like a tugboat that can pull Europe in its wake, partly through sheer FOMO. According to a diplomat from one of the countries involved, the idea is “to create a gravitational pull with a few countries that might then pull along the rest.”
Who’s in? France, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. The “E6” is a format that their finance ministers have already used for virtual catch-ups. This time, though, they’ll meet in person, ahead of the Eurogroup gathering taking place in Brussels, our Pro Financial Services team reports.
The Bruno blueprint: It was back in February 2024 that former French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said during a speech in Belgium that EU countries should form “coalitions of the willing” to pursue hard-to-reach reforms. “Since it’s impossible to move forward at 27, let’s start with a few countries,” Le Maire said.
What’s the idea? To break logjams and get things done — starting with the Capital Markets Union (CMU). The thinking is that integrating the EU’s disparate financial markets would make it easier for European companies to grow and compete and help channel trillions of euros of private savings into the bloc’s investment priorities.
CM-what? The CMU was Le Maire’s target back in 2024 and it remains a policy aim of the E6 today. As former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi wrote in his September 2024 tome of recommendations, a CMU would allow EU businesses to raise more money, carry out more research and compete more effectively against Chinese or American rivals.
Road blocks: But efforts to get talks going on the CMU have floundered. A concerted push to move things forward in April 2024 was given the kibosh by a group of EU members banding together against the CMU’s ambitious language.
Here’s the alternative: “If we’re being held back by 15 or 20 of Europe’s smaller countries, maybe the big ones should move forward together to create something that works for us and creates a sense of inevitability for the rest,” added the EU diplomat, who was granted anonymity to discuss preparations for the non-public finance minister talks today.
Skepticism: While participants who spoke to Playbook voiced confidence, it’s hard to ignore that this group (unlike, say, the Germany and Italy axis, or the Nordics and Baltics, or the Germany-Italy-Belgium brotherhood) has yet to produce any sort of discussion paper. Brussels runs on documents — preferably leaked. The E6 has yet to make its mark.
More skepticism: As our FS colleagues point out, a cluster of six countries does not meet the nine-member threshold required to invoke an enhanced cooperation deal under EU law. Even if the six do manage to get enough national governments on board, previous efforts to enact reforms via enhanced cooperation have failed.
Going on your record: There’s also griping from members that aren’t invited to the exclusive meetings, amid fears the biggest European economies will pre-cook decisions to be discussed later by all 27 EU countries. The controversy over last week’s two-speed breakfast before the informal leaders’ summit in Belgium may be a sign of things to come.
But participants are optimistic. More countries could join the E6, the diplomat said, mentioning Sweden, Denmark and Austria as possible add-ons for CMU reforms.
The schedule has changed. This group of powerful EU countries now plans to meet once a month on the sidelines of finance minister meetings. The circumstances are also different: Europe’s push for greater autonomy and stronger economics is now coming from the top.
The bottom line: Some skepticism may be justified. But the E6 concept has the potential to pack a punch. The only thing holding the group back is its political will.
MUNICH SECURITY CONFERENCE
EUROPE STILL WARY OF TRUMP: It was arguably the defining moment of this year’s Munich Security Conference (MSC): Audience members offered Marco Rubio a standing O, after a speech in which the U.S. secretary of state affirmed the transatlantic alliance, saying America “will always be a child of Europe.”
Reset button: As Playbook has reported, Europeans were interested in a reset of their relationship with Washington — something that appeared to be shared by the American side. Before Rubio’s speech, U.S. Under Secretary of War for Policy Elbridge Colby delivered a conciliatory address to NATO. Vice President JD Vance, whose MSC speech shocked Europeans last year, was nowhere to be seen.
Second thoughts: Even so, EU officials who spoke to POLITICO pointed out that Rubio had not mentioned China or Russia in his speech, despite an ongoing war on Europe’s doorstep. Stripping away the smoother delivery, his speech was functionally the same as Vance’s, they said. Paul McLeary and Laura Kayali chronicle how trust between Europe and America has been severely eroded.
The stumbling block. “MAGA means anti-EU,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb told POLITICO in Munich. “It means anti-liberal world order. It means anti-climate change. That’s the undercurrent guiding U.S. policy.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said U.S. leadership on the world stage was “being challenged, perhaps already lost.” He added: “The international order based on rights and rules … no longer exists in the way it once did.”
No turning back: Other EU leaders echoed the skepticism. “I don’t think we will be doing business as usual” after Donald Trump’s threats to annex Greenland, Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa told Victor Jack on the sidelines of the conference. Instead, she argued that something shifted irreversibly in the dynamic between the EU and U.S., as a result of Europe’s unanimity in supporting Greenland and Denmark.
Not going anywhere: Top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas also welcomed the more positive tone from the U.S., but shot back: “Contrary to what some may say, ‘Woke, decadent Europe’ is not facing civilizational erasure.”
EUROPEAN NUKE TALKS: Multiple EU countries are publicly backing talks on a homegrown nuclear deterrent to complement that of the U.S., Laura and Victor report. Both Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron used their Munich speeches to address the potential for a European nuclear deterrent, and Polish President Karol Nawrocki told Polsat television Sunday that Warsaw should start developing its own nuclear capacity.
Talking China. Merz surprised many in the MSC audience by taking a harder-than-expected stance toward Beijing ahead of a trip to the Chinese capital later this month. He warned that China’s power could soon rival that of the U.S. and accused Beijing of exploiting economic dependencies, citing rare-earth export controls that have disrupted German industry.
MUNICH’S BEST AND WORST: Seb Starcevic hands out brownie points (and some demerits) to the participants of this year’s grand security confab. Sneak peek: Wolfgang Ischinger wins the fashion award for throwing on a pair of aviator shades in a wink to Macron’s Davos look. And U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham gets the “most colorful language” award for throwing some four-letter words into his on-stage intervention.
EU-CHINA
FORGET TRUMP … FOCUS ON CHINA: While European leaders pondered their relationship with Trump’s America, China is wreaking havoc on European industry, Macron’s former Europe Minister Clément Beaune warns in an interview with Playbook. The bloc must come up with a better response — and soon, he says.
Flash vs. substance: “Every day Trump makes news with a kind of fireworks. Our attention is focused on Washington, which suggests that the Chinese threat has diminished or stabilized,” said Beaune, a former two-time minister who’s now in charge of France’s High Commission for Planning, which advises the government on strategy and reforms.
T-word: “Two radical responses remain to be prepared and debated as quickly as possible: unprecedented trade protection, equivalent to a general 30 percent tariff on China; or a 20 percent to 30 percent depreciation of the euro against the renminbi [yuan],” reads a report put out by Beaune’s office just before this interview.
Cost of production: “This corresponds to the difference between European production costs and Chinese production costs for the same quality,” said Beaune, referring to the tariff proposal. He said he hoped the report would “put the subject of China back at the center of the agenda.”
Shaking things up: Ahead of Merz’s China trip and a formal gathering of EU leaders in March, Beaune said the debate on how to deal with China was “moving in Brussels and Berlin.”
Sound the alarm: Beaune names Germany as the most obvious victim of China’s ability to export increasingly high-quality goods to Europe. “The alarm bells must be sounded — entire sectors of European industry are under threat,” added the former minister, who belongs to the left wing of Macron’s centrist Renaissance party.
Passing marks: The EU had taken some important steps to protect itself in recent years, including the Anti-Coercion Instrument and the creation of prosecutors focused on commercial matters. But such “sectoral responses” were “too slow and too narrow.”
Beyond red tape: As for the EU’s effort to bolster its economy, Beaune said a focus on simplification wasn’t sufficient. “Europe needs to change its very operating software,” he said. “It will not be able to compensate for a cost gap of 30 to 40 percent via simplification alone.”
BY THE NUMBERS: Friday’s trade numbers published by Eurostat underscored the scale of the problem. The EU’s trade deficit in goods with China widened to €359.3 billion in 2025, up nearly a fifth from €304.5 billion in 2024. Even more worryingly, the growing imbalance was driven by both a surge in imports and a decrease in European exports, Koen Verhelst writes in to report.
ICYMI: The European Commission last week imposed duties on Chinese valine of 31.3 percent to 53.8 percent to stop the food additive being dumped on the market. That was damaging the EU’s valine industry, located in France, the Commission wrote Friday.
IN OTHER NEWS
NAVALNY POISONING: The findings from five European governments that Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was killed with poison are “troubling,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the U.K. said over the weekend that Navalny was poisoned with a toxin from a dart frog, leading to his death in a penal colony two years ago. Moscow dismissed the accusation, Zia Weise reports.
TRADE TALKS: EU and Australian officials expressed confidence that they could finally seal an elusive trade deal after two intense days of discussions in Brussels, our Morning Trade colleagues report. The positive mood is a stark contrast from October 2023, when talks collapsed, and suggests that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s postponed trip Down Under may well go ahead.