PM targets PASOK as main opposition
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made a pointed political statement during a parliamentary session on the country’s wildfire response on Wednesday, walking out as main opposition SYRIZA’s parliamentary leader Nikos Pappas began his speech.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1251731/pm-targets-pasok-as-main-opposition
Alexis Tsipras at conference: The imbalance of the political system should be restored to the left
The great national issue is “the reversal of the impoverishment and divergence process with an economy that is based solely on tourism and real estate,” former prime minister Alexis Tsipras said during an intervention at an event of his eponymous Institute on Tuesday evening.
European Commission approves 40 mln euros for flood prevention works in Athens
The European Commission approved 40 million euros from the Recovery Fund for antiflood works in Athens, it announced on Wednesday. It “will help the city of Athens better prepare and prevent future flooding and protect people’s homes and businesses from the devastating impact of flooding,” the Commission said. The funds will be used to improve 4.83 km of the upstream part of the Eschatia stream, which poses a significant flood risk to the local community as it flows through densely populated urban areas, with many buildings located on its banks.
IMF forecasts Greece’s public debt to drop by nearly 30 percentage points by 2029
The Greek bourse recorded a third straight day of price decline on Wednesday, led by banks that suffered from the concerns reigning across Europe as the day of the US presidential election approaches and the prospect of a rapid decline in interest rates that could compromise banks’ profits. Thursday will see the publication of the third-quarter data by Metlen.
ATHEX: Stocks yield more ground
The Greek bourse recorded a third straight day of price decline on Wednesday, led by banks that suffered from the concerns reigning across Europe as the day of the US presidential election approaches and the prospect of a rapid decline in interest rates that could compromise banks’ profits. Thursday will see the publication of the third-quarter data by Metlen.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1251729/athex-stocks-yield-more-ground
KATHIMERINI: Turn to fixed electricity billings
TA NEA: Samaras-Mitsotakis: Heading for frontal collision
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: “Business” at the expense of 800,000 SMEs
RIZOSPASTIS: Uprising with thousands of strikers hitting the streets
KONTRA NEWS: “Missiles” by Samaras against Mitsotakis
DIMOKRATIA: Provocation by Turkey with new NAVTEX
NAFTEMPORIKI: The new mix of policies to cover the funding gap
DRIVING THE DAY
EPP BEDS DOWN WITH ECR AS HEARINGS APPROACH: Over the summer, it seemed unthinkable that the relationship between the European People’s Party (EPP) and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) would be as cozy as it is now, two weeks away from the parliamentary bonanza of the commissioners-designate hearings.
Cast your mind back to late July: ECR chief and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni angrily abstained from supporting Ursula von der Leyen for a second term as European Commission president … Meloni’s Brothers of Italy MEPs said they’d vote against her … and then von der Leyen triumphed thanks to the support of the Socialists, liberals and Greens, as well as (most of) her own EPP. But von der Leyen’s backers said they wouldn’t tolerate the ECR’s formal involvement in dealmaking, and the Socialists in particular opposed a fancy job title for an Italian commissioner in the new Commission administration.
How things have changed: ThepowerfulEPP is now charging into the hearings treating Italy’s Raffaele Fitto (an executive vice president, despite the Socialists’ reservations) almost like one of their own. The protective shield being thrown around Fitto can be partly explained by the fact he’s a former EPP politician.
Still, a glaring fact is worth stating: Fitto’s current political affiliation now ties him much more to Poland’s Law and Justice party, the sworn enemy of the most powerful current national EPP leader, Polish PM Donald Tusk. So what gives?
Manfred in the Middle’s double majority: EPP chief Manfred Weber, who leads by far the largest political group in Parliament, knows he can now look left to the so-called von der Leyen coalition — or right. And, with 14 EPP commissioners to guide safely home into the Berlaymont, like little technocratic ducklings, he’s flexing those muscles in a particularly showy way on hot-button topics like migration, as the power battle over new commissioners looms.
Based or brinkmanship? In recent weeks, the EPP has repeatedly gotten its way in the European Parliament largely thanks to the ECR, but also to some extent groups on the far right including the Patriots for Europe. Examples include a controversial resolution about Venezuela, the Parliament’s debating agenda, and the scheduling of the hearings(where the EPP made sure Fitto would face MEPs before the Socialist Teresa Ribera, giving the ECR leverage).
ALTERNATIVE FOR THE EPP: The latest example of the EPP’s flirtation with the far right, according to my colleagues Gregorio Sorgi and Max Griera, came at a vote on the EU’s 2025 budget Wednesday. The EPP, including Weber himself, tore up a deal it had made with its traditional centrist allies and backed extreme-right amendments, proposed by the Alternative for Germany (AfD), calling for EU money to be spent on border infrastructure and so-called return hubs for deporting migrants. The AfD celebrated “demolishing” Parliament’s anti-far-right firewall.
Quick reality check: The ideas aren’t any more extreme than what the European Council discussed last week — which says a lot in itself — but this is as much about the political signal sent by EPP lawmakers.
Risky strategy? “If this is the new playbook for how the European Parliament should work then it doesn’t work at all … because you have no majorities in the end,” said German Green MEP Erik Marquardt.
Dancing Patriots: “The EPP needs to make a decision: do they want to drop the cordon sanitaire and will they fully cooperate?” asked Dutch Party for Freedom lawmaker Auke Zijlstra (part of the Patriots group), who told Playbook he celebrated the budget vote with port and a little dance.
Remember when we mentioned Tusk? The maneuver didn’t go down that well with all parts of the EPP. “Personally, I thought it was a mistake,” the EPP’s lead MEP on the file, Andrzej Halicki, told Max. “We should not give space to the enemies of Europe and have a naïve view that they act in good faith.” Halicki, though, voted for both far-right amendments. “Because as vice chair of the EPP, I respected the decision taken by the group,” he explained. “However this does not mean I personally agreed with it.”
INSTITUTIONAL BICKERING
TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT? Ambassadors in the Council of the EU were furious on Wednesday over a recent joint pledge by von der Leyen and Metsola to strengthen the relationship between their institutions — a move that could boost the Parliament. With the Commission in a tight spot ahead of the all-important commissioner hearings and von der Leyen facing a make-or-break vote from MEPs on her team, Parliament is pressing its advantage for new powers.
But the love-in has hit a snag: There was “unanimous” criticism from EU ambassadors, who argued that what’s being proposed is “not in line with the balance of powers between the EU institutions as laid down in the treaties,” one diplomat said. “There was something we finally agreed on,” quipped another. “Everyone was kind of outraged.”
The French ambassador was the first to speak, but those from Germany, Poland, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Ireland, Luxembourg and Slovakia also criticized the Parliament for grabbing more powers for itself, according to Playbook’s intel.
Who wants what: Parliament wants new muscles for initiating legislation and limiting legal moves by the Commission to circumvent it. But the Council argues circumventing MEPs (for example when procuring Covid-19 vaccines) has allowed some of the biggest EU success stories in recent years. The Parliament’s and Commission’s cozy relationship outlined in the deal now being renegotiated has led to ructions ever since it was created in 2010.
Who will win? “We are rebalancing the imbalances,” said a senior Parliament official. “It can’t be too much to ask for the Commission to be fully accountable,” they said. But another EU diplomat said about the Parliament: “If it ends up as it normally does, they will ask for 100 points and get five.”
BUILD-UP TO HEARINGS
EX-MEP ORDERED TO REPAY €250K TO PARLIAMENT: Judges in Luxembourg in a ruling released Wednesday ordered Crescenzio Rivellini, a former EPP MEP from Italy, to pay back around €250,000 of public money.
Don’t kiss and tell: Last year, POLITICO broke the story that EU fraud investigators found Rivellini had funneled parliamentary office funds to a company secretly owned by Bianca D’Angelo, who was his assistant for a time, and also his lover. He denied they were an item — despite having literally written in a book in 2009 that she had been his life partner for a decade. Oh and also neither D’Angelo nor the company ever actually did any real work for Rivellini, investigators found.
Refusing to pay, while getting an EU pension: An MEP between 2009 and 2014, Rivellini for years resisted all efforts by the Parliament to claw back the money, after an investigation began in 2017. He repeatedly appealed to the Parliament’s authorities, who still haven’t disclosed that they want the money repaid. Meanwhile, his €1,600 monthly parliamentary pension began being docked, but due to Italian law, it couldn’t be reduced below €1,000. Eventually, he took the case to the EU court, where he lost.
HUMAN RIGHTS
ALSO PISSED AT PARLIAMENT — AZERBAIJAN: A war of words is igniting between the petrostate that is set to host the next global climate change conference and the European Parliament, my colleague Gabriel Gavin reports.
After blunt criticism of Baku’s human rights record from an EU commissioner and MEPs this week, Azerbaijan’s foreign policy chief Hikmet Hajiyev blasted the European Parliament. “The world has seen the shameful practice of corruption at this institution,” he said. “Azerbaijan doesn’t have any obligations in front of the European Parliament, let alone the European Union.” Apart from making good on that gas deal with the bloc, signed by Ursula von der Leyen in 2022, that is. Read Gabriel’s full piece here.
VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION WINS SAKHAROV PRIZE — AGAIN: It seems inevitable that the winner of the Parliament’s annual human rights prize will be Venezuelan opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia after the far-right Patriots swung behind him. (The EPP and ECR had nominated him.) That would be a relief for Azerbaijan, which was facing another humiliation from Parliament after the Greens got Gubad Ibadoghlu, a jailed Azerbaijani dissident and critic of the fossil fuel industry, into the final three. Venezuela’s democratic opposition won the Sakharov Prize in 2017.
COMMISSION’S TUNISIA DEAL SECRECY CRITICIZED: EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly called out the European Commission for not being open about the human rights information it relied on before signing a funding deal with Tunisia for border management. Despite worries about how migrants are treated in Tunisia, the Commission hasn’t shared details of its risk assessment, an inquiry closed on Monday found. And although it did look into human rights issues informally, a formal assessment would have been better, O’Reilly pointed out.
Criteria for sanctions: The Ombudsman wants the Commission to clearly outline when it would stop funding due to human rights violations — and to set up ways for people to report these issues.
ALARMING SCALE OF ANTI-MUSLIM RACISM: A new report from an EU human rights agency reveals troubling levels of racism and discrimination faced by Muslims across the Continent. Nearly half of Muslims in the EU experience racial discrimination, according to a survey of over 9,600 Muslims from 13 different countries between October 2021 and October 2022. That’s up by 8 percentage points from the last survey by the Vienna-based European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in 2016.
Born European — but not accepted: The findings show that young Muslims and women wearing religious clothing are particularly affected, with many facing bias in job hunting and finding housing. “These are Muslims who were born, raised and educated in the EU,” agency spokesperson Nicole Romain told Playbook reporter Šejla Ahmatović. “They are very much aware of their rights and they speak the language, and yet the high levels of discrimination suggest they cannot enjoy the same rights as the general population.”
Next steps: The report calls for the renewal of the EU’s anti-racism plan beyond 2025, specifically targeting anti-Muslim racism. “The EU and EU countries need to take anti-Muslim racism and discrimination seriously — enforce existing non-discrimination laws, properly identify, record and investigate hate crimes.”
RUSSIAN WAR
NORTH KOREAN TROOPS LATEST: The U.S. and NATO have both now confirmed that there’s “evidence” of North Korean troops in Russia, though they haven’t concluded whether they’ll be fighting alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin’s forces as he wages war on Ukraine.
Berlin is “quite worried” about that prospect, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Wednesday in London, where he’d traveled to sign a new Germany-U.K. defense pact. It is a “new quality and a kind of escalation,” he said.
Belarusian take: President Alexander Lukashenko said Wednesday that the reports are “rubbish” — but conceded that if true, “It would be a step towards the escalation of the conflict.” Asked whether Putin is ready to use the nukes stationed in Belarus, Lukashenko insisted his ally would “never” use the weapons without the Belarusian leader’s consent — before adding that he was “completely ready” to give the green light, though “only if the boot of one [foreign] soldier steps into Belarus.” Reassuring. My colleague Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing has the write-up.
South responds: South Korea said it’s considering upping its support for Ukraine, including by supplying weapons and sending training personnel to the country.
HAPPENING TODAY — PUTIN-GUTERRES MEETING: Putin will meet U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia today, in their first face-to-face for over two years. A U.N. spokesman said Guterres would use the meeting, which Kyiv has slammed, to “reaffirm his well-known positions on the war in Ukraine.” Guterres is also expected to deliver a speech at the summit.
UKRAINE AND NATO: Meanwhile, Germany and the U.S. are among the major powers slow-walking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s call for an immediate invitation to join NATO, several U.S. and NATO officials and diplomats told my colleagues. While Zelenskyy pushes membership as crucial to his so-called victory plan, key alliance members remain worried about getting ensnared in a wider war with Russia.
NOW READ THIS: The West only listens to what it wants to hear from Moscow, writes Ivan Krastev.
IN OTHER NEWS
HAPPENING TODAY — MACRON’S LEBANON SUMMIT: French President Emmanuel Macron hosts the Lebanon support conference in Paris today. My Paris Playbook colleagues report Macron is expected to deliver a speech at 10 a.m., in which he may set out once again the French position on the war in the Middle East, at a time of heightened tensions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
What Macron wants to achieve: To unlock financial support for the 1.2 million displaced civilians in Lebanon who are fleeing the Israel-Hezbollah war. An adviser to the Elysée told reporters on Wednesday that the organizers aim to reach the U.N.’s estimated target of at least €400 million in funding for Lebanon.
Guterres is also expected to attend … fresh from meeting Putin at the BRICS summit.
WHY TRUMP WENT TO WAR WITH U.K. LABOUR: U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s efforts to court former President Donald Trump before November’s presidential election went up in flames when a Labour staffer posted on LinkedIn that “nearly 100” party staff were traveling to the U.S. to campaign for his rival Kamala Harris. With Trump’s campaign threatening legal action, my colleague Emilio Casalicchio examines the diplomatic bust-up and what it could cost Starmer’s new administration.
Hoping they’re still friends: One of Starmer’s Cabinet ministers, Defence Secretary John Healey, spoke to Anne McElvoy about the bust-up on this week’s POLITICO Power Play podcast. Asked if he’s worried about upsetting the Trump campaign, Healey said: “The U.S.-U.K. relationship is so deep and that has survived the ups and downs of political cycles on both sides of the Atlantic.” Listen here.
TOP READ — THE MAN WHO BOUGHT A COUNTRY: Georgia’s richest man, Bidzina Ivanishvili, is tilting his country toward Moscow ahead of an election on Oct. 26. Dato Parulava and Eva Hartog have an essential profile of the 68-year-old tycoon out this morning.
Why does it matter? 8 things to know about Georgia’s “existential” election.
TURKEY STRIKES PKK: Turkey’s air force hit Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets in northern Syria and Iraq late Wednesday night in retaliation for a deadly attack on the headquarters of a defense company near Ankara earlier in the day. The assault on Turkish Aerospace Industries Inc. killed five people and injured 22 others, according to the state news agency. Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing has a write-up.