PM Mitsotakis: We are seeking a third term to transform Greece
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that he was proud the first exploratory drilling operation in decades is expected to take place within the next few months by a consortium involving Exxon and a Greek company, with the aim of extracting natural gas. The Greek premier was addressing a Greek diaspora event in New York held on Wednesday evening.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/1025533/PM-Mitsotakis-We-are-seeking-a-third-term-to-transform-Greece
Greek PM dismisses Bayeux Tapestry-style arrangement for Parthenon Sculptures
Greece “cannot accept any arrangement that would require it to recognize the British Museum’s ownership of the [Parthenon] sculptures, or a scheme that would mean we ‘borrow’ parts of our own monument,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday. In an op-ed published in The Guardian, Mitsotakis was expressing Athens’ “surprise” at the recent suggestion by the director of the British Museum that the French loan of the famed Bayeux Tapestry could serve as a template for the Parthenon Sculptures. “I do not believe it does,” he said.
Tsipras: Only ELAS can beat Mitsotakis
Alexis Tsipras said in his first television interview since the Thessaloniki International Fair that voting for his ELAS party is the only path to toppling Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ New Democracy government, intensifying his rivalry with PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis ahead of elections. Speaking to Skai, Tsipras, a former prime minister, said he has regained leadership of Greece’s center left and framed the choice: “Either we or nobody, that is the reality.”
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1316105/tsipras-only-elas-can-beat-mitsotakis
Ankara insists on advance briefing on Cyprus power cable
The French-flagged vessel that will undertake research for laying the GSI power cable linking the networks of Greece and Cyprus will have to contact in advance and cooperate with Turkish authorities, according to Turkish diplomats quoted by Hurriyet daily. The paper said that Turkey “does not oppose projects involving undersea cables and does not propose to hinder the development of international connectivity networks.” Nevertheless, as it notes, Ankara objects to preliminary research or cable-laying work in marine regions where Turkey claims sovereign rights and jurisdiction.
ATHEX: Blue chips take a dive on local bourse
The Euronext Athens (ATHEX) general index closed at 2,651.07 points, shedding 0.76% from Tuesday’s 2,671.50 points. The large-cap FTSE-25 index contracted 0.88%, ending at 6,788.24 points.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1316108/athex-blue-chips-take-a-dive-on-local-bourse
KATHIMERINI: Mykonos Urban Planning Office: Vanished autopsies and fines that are not being paid
TA NEA: Double protection for heirs
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Athens neighborhood Kypseli to be evacuated due to metro works
RIZOSPASTIS: Massive, youthful, rebellious message for alignment with the Greek Communist Party (KKE)
KONTRA NEWS: “Either us or no one else” is the elections dilemma set by Alexis Tsipras
DIMOKRATIA: The Turks are still sad about the fall of Tripolitsa which took place 205 years ago
NAFTEMPORIKI: Inflation set on fire
DRIVING THE DAY
PUMPING THE BUDGET BRAKES: If European Council President António Costa can’t persuade Friedrich Merz to soften his push for budget cuts, maybe Germany’s state premiers can. That’s the hope in Brussels as the chancellor meets the powerful leaders of the Länder in Berlin today, I report with Gregorio Sorgi, Zoya Sheftalovich.
Pressure from Germany’s regions may be one of the few remaining checks on Merz’s drive to shrink the EU’s next seven-year budget, three officials familiar with the talks told Playbook, granted anonymity to speak frankly about the expectations. Merz is pushing to cut hundreds of billions of euros, complicating the European Council president’s effort to secure a deal by year-end — before a string of European elections makes a compromise even harder to achieve.
Germany’s state premiers want to preserve funding that flows directly to their regions, particularly EU cash for poorer areas and agricultural support — a position that may temper Merz’s hardline approach at the negotiating table. North Rhine-Westphalia, led by Hendrik Wüst — often touted as a future CDU leader — is calling to preserve “the strong role of the regions in cohesion policy and the use of European funds” in a statement seen by Playbook.
Merz’s meeting today with the premiers and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil is “absolutely essential,” a senior German government official told POLITICO’s Nette Nöstlinger. He needs their backing, the official said, and the meeting should show him how much room he has to negotiate in Brussels. “Germany needs to step forward with a unified position.”
Merz is under pressure: The chancellor heads into the meeting after bruising regional elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. In the latter, Merz’s center-right CDU fell below the 5% threshold for entering parliament — a historic first for the party. Both are in eastern Germany, where public investment is seen as key to modernizing industry, cutting emissions and spurring growth.
“Many German regions understand this challenge very well,” Committee of the Regions President Kata Tüttő told Playbook. Asking them to manage that transformation with less EU funding risks “turning transition into divergence,” she said — in other words, widening the economic gap.
Don’t expect the Länder to declare war on Merz, one EU official warned. They want more cohesion money but are wary of weakening the chancellor’s hand in the wider budget talks. The fight is also about more than the cohesion cash, according to a second EU official. “It’s not about dividing the cake, but about the size of the cake.”
The calculation: Brussels will be watching whether Merz’s election setbacks harden his stance as he seeks a budget win to take home — or whether pressure from the Länder opens room for compromise at the Council table.
BIG AND BREAKING
COSTA TAKES THE STAGE: The EU’s main event at UNGA comes this evening (Brussels time) when António Costa is expected to address the plenary and defend multilateralism as “the only realistic way to address the problems of today” — while calling for a better system to tackle challenges such as AI and the climate crisis.
Don’t retreat: Costa will urge world leaders to “reform, renew and reinvest” in the strained rules-based order, with the U.N. still at its center.
XI ARRIVES: Chinese leader Xi Jinping has arrived in Washington for two days of meetings. Shortly after he touched down last night, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said China and the U.S. had agreed to extend their trade truce for another two months, my stateside colleagues report.
AI WATCH: World leaders calling for global oversight of artificial intelligence will have to do it without Donald Trump, judging by the talk at UNGA … Aussie PM Anthony Albanese revealed that OpenAI agents autonomously hacked into an Australian government website … but European tech leaders are pushing back against the doomsday warnings.
PARIS IN THE SPOTLIGHT: French presidential hopefuls Gabriel Attal, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon will take the stage at our first Playbook Paris Live from about 2 p.m. Details of the event here and you can follow it on our English-language live blog.
Speaking of Mélenchon … The left-wing leader’s economic advisers are scrambling to explain his controversial plan to write off billions of euros worth of French debt, though he’s not tamping down his language.
RUSSIA SANCTIONS
TWO OFF, TWO ON? The EU created a risky precedent by lifting sanctions against prominent Russian businessmen Alisher Usmanov and Mikhail Fridman, but it could win back credibility by sanctioning two other billionaires who have so far not been listed, Kyiv’s commissioner in charge of sanctions policy told Playbook.
Tale of two Vlads: Vladimir Lisin and Vladimir Potanin control big companies in the steel and nickel industries that are beneficial to Russia’s war economy. Their inclusion in the next batch of individual sanctions would effectively cut off their enterprises — NLMK and Nornickel — from trading in the EU, said Vladyslav Vlasiuk, who advises Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on sanctions.
“Everyone is aware about these guys but avoiding any action against them,” Vlasiuk said. “But now arguably there is leverage to push this forward.”
Too big to sanction? The size of the businesses owned by Lisin and Potanin — and their substantial footprints in Europe — have so far kept them off the sanctions list. Lisin’s NLMK operates steel processing facilities in the Belgian region of Wallonia, leading the Belgian government to oppose his listing. The company also has production sites in Strasbourg, France; Verona, Italy; and Frederiksvaerk, Denmark.
As for Potanin, Europe’s ongoing dependency on Russian nickel and palladium, particularly in the car industry, has kept him off the list — enabling the billionaire to grow his empire during Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Too many exceptions: Vlasiuk linked the cases of Lisin and Potanin to the ongoing debate about whether to sanction Aughinish Alumina, an Irish exporter that supplies Russia. “It’s always the same story. You can have 20 countries for whom [sanctioning] is an obvious decision and one who opposes,” he said. “These alumina exports should really be banned. It’s obvious for us, and we have plenty of ideas for what to do next.”
A spokesperson for Lisin wrote to Playbook: “This information campaign is unfair competition, where the sanctions-related agenda is leveraged as a way of pressure to eliminate a competitor from the market and to inflict further substantial harm on the European economy. It is well established and has long been recognized that neither Mr. Lisin nor NLMK cooperate with the enterprises of the Russian military-industrial complex. NLMK manufactures exclusively civilian products.”
Representatives for Potanin did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
20-SECOND PLAYBOOK PRIMER
The big decision this week on Russia sanctions was taken at a Coreper meeting, but what is that? It’s the Committee of the Permanent Representatives, the main preparatory body for Council of the EU meetings, which means it’s where envoys try and reach compromises before ministers get together. There are two types of meeting: Coreper I is deputy permanent representatives and Coreper II is permanent representatives (that’s “permanent” because they are based in Brussels and “representative” as they represent national capitals. They have the status of ambassadors to the EU).
PROTECTING POLITICIANS
NOT SAFE TO SPEAK: Increasing threats, intimidation and violence against politicians, candidates and others who participate in public life are affecting democracies around the world, the EU’s Democracy Commissioner Michael McGrath will tell ministers and U.N. officials at the General Assembly in New York. The Commission is due to propose a recommendation on the safety of political representatives later this year.
Targeted: One of Ireland’s best-known politicians, Michael Healy-Rae, was assaulted in Dublin last week. Former British MEP and MP Ann Widdecombe was killed in her home in July. In Germany, MEP Matthias Ecke was badly beaten while putting up campaign posters in 2024. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico survived an assassination attempt that year. The list also includes the murders of British MPs Jo Cox in 2016 and David Amess in 2021, and the 2025 assassination of former Ukrainian parliament speaker Andriy Parubiy.
“If people are afraid to stand for election or speak openly because of threats and abuse, our democracy is weakened,” McGrath said in a statement to Playbook. “People who choose to participate in political life must be able to do so safely and without intimidation.”
Court in the crosshairs: McGrath will also attend an International Criminal Court ministerial meeting and reaffirm the EU’s support for the court as Washington steps up pressure on it, including by imposing sanctions on court officials.
5 MORE THINGS GETTING US TALKING
EINS, ZWEI, EUROPOLIZEI: German police official Jürgen Ebner has been picked to lead Europol after weeks of horse-trading among EU capitals.
CLIMATE CALL: Austria wants Brussels to reform its Emissions Trading System so that “private investment becomes profitable again,” according to a discussion paper obtained by POLITICO. “We want to protect the climate without driving our industrial jobs out of Europe,” said Economy and Energy Minister Wolfgang Hattmannsdorfer.
STANDING FIRM: EU capitals are warning London not to make its Brexit reset conditional on guarantees for British firms as Brussels’ protectionist push gathers pace.
MADAME SECRETARY-GENERAL? Teresa Ribera wants to see a woman leading the U.N. for the first time, as the race to succeed António Guterres heats up.
SKIP THE THREATS: The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, told The Economist in an interview to be released later today that Washington could have gotten its Greenland deal without Donald Trump’s public pressure campaign.