Mitsotakis: Europe needs more resources to tackle climate change
Europe is a global leader in green transition but needs more resources to tackle the impact of “unprecedented climate shocks”, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Wednesday, addressing the United Nations COP29 climate summit in Baku.
Poll finds ND’s lead over PASOK narrows to 7.5 points
A new opinion poll has found that the ruling New Democracy’s lead over socialist PASOK is now down to a single digit, with SYRIZA ranking fifth.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1253478/poll-finds-nds-lead-over-pasok-narrows-to-7-5-points
Plenary approves Greek Parliament budget for 2025; expenditures to rise 6.62%
The Greek Parliament’s budget for fiscal year 2025 and the report on expenditures of 2023 were approved by an overwhelming majority in the plenary on Wednesday.
A new list of 523 products with reduced prices from 5% to 24%
Greece’s development ministry announced a new list of 523 products with reduced prices from 5% to 24%. It is recalled that the aim of the initiative is to have at least 600 codes added to it by the end of the month, while in the following period supermarkets are expected to place special tugs so that the products are clearly visible on the shelves.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/862737/A-new-list-of-523-products-with-reduced-prices-from-5-to-24
ATHEX: Banks lead profit taking on bourse
The 2% decline of the banks index following eight straight days of advance pointed to extensive profit taking at the Greek stock market on Wednesday and led the market’s benchmark to notable losses, while turnover remained at a relatively high level. The effort to cash in recent gains accelerated in the second half of the session at Athinon Avenue, partly due to the losses recorded on several other eurozone bourses.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1253486/athex-banks-lead-profit-taking-on-bourse
KATHIMERINI: Programme worth 650 million for Greek Police equipment
TA NEA: Secret service declassifies Cyprus 1974 files
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: We are paying dearly for PPC’s profits
RIZOSPASTIS: EU increases war expenditure to 400 bln euro
KONTRA NEWS: Secret service declassifies all Cyprus 1974 files
DIMOKRATIA: Heating subsidy: who are the beneficiaries
NAFTEMPORIKI: Greece is a champion of arrears
DRIVING THE DAY: TRUMP’S AMERICA
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: It’s official: Donald Trump and his Republican Party have achieved the U.S. government trifecta — keeping control of the House of Representatives as well as winning the Senate and the presidency, delivering a huge amount of power to the GOP. My Stateside colleagues have more.
NICE WHILE IT LASTED: Brussels, Berlin, Paris and Kyiv breathed out when Trump started naming members of his incoming administration. They could live with the relatively safe picks of Marco Rubio as secretary of State and Mike Waltz as national security adviser. The relief was short-lived.
“LEFT TURN AND OFF THE BRIDGE”: Trump named Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence. A former Democratic member of Congress from Hawaii who has no formal intelligence experience, she’s famed for her sympathetic views on autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. One senior former intelligence official told our colleague John Sakellariadis that by choosing Gabbard, Trump took a “left turn and off the bridge.” Russian state media is delighted.
At least he didn’t pick Ric? The surprise appointment offered only slight relief to those who feared the job could go to Ric Grenell, Trump’s combative former ambassador to Germany who had briefly served as acting director of national intelligence in his first administration.
FROM FOX NEWS TO THE PENTAGON: Eyebrows are also being raised over Pete Hegseth’s lack of experience, after Trump tapped the Fox News host as his defense secretary. “It is a massive bureaucracy, you have to understand how that works to support national security around the globe,” one official told POLITICO’s Jack Detsch. “It is not at all related to getting on Fox News and pontificating.”
GAETZ GUT PUNCH: As his attorney general, Trump tapped the widely loathed Matt Gaetz, a grandstander who has himself been under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. Gaetz previewed his approach to the job, tweeting (and then deleting): “We ought to have a full court press against this WEAPONIZED government that has been turned against our people. And if that means ABOLISHING every one of the three letter agencies, from the FBI to the ATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives], I’m ready to get going!”
The Gaetz appointment shocked even Republicans, with our Stateside colleagues quoting a senior official who described the decision as an “absolute gut punch.” Department of Justice staffers are also freaking out, with one senior DOJ lawyer telling POLITICO: “This is completely wild. It’s so out of bounds, it’s just shocking.” The Justice Department under the Trump and later Biden administrations investigated but did not charge Gaetz over alleged sexual encounters with teenage girls.
AND THEN THERE’S ELON: It’s clear the man dubbed “America’s most powerful private citizen” has Trump’s ear. And given he’s in the midst of grudge matches with both the EU and U.K., his position as the president-elect’s “first buddy” bodes ill for both Brussels and London. More here from Esther Webber and Dan Bloom.
SO WHAT’S TRUMP PLAYING AT? These rapid-fire appointments have quashed hopes a second Trump administration would be more professionalized than his first, my POLITICO colleagues report. And they could bring about a constitutional crisis, as Trump may come up against resistance to his picks in the Senate.
MACRON AND DRAGHI: GET READY FOR TRADE WAR. All this is ringing alarm bells in Europe. French President Emmanuel Macron and Mario “Draghi Report” Draghi delivered a sharp wake-up call in Paris on Wednesday, warning Europe must prepare fast for the impending second round of a trade war with the U.S.
But as Trump ramps up and EU leaders urge action, you can kiss goodbye any notion that Brussels is responding to the U.S. election with a show of unity …
COMMISSION DEADLOCK
TOXIC FUMES, BUT NOT MUCH WHITE SMOKE: There’s still no agreement on the next team of European commissioners, after another day of high-octane clashes between the European People’s Party (EPP) and Socialists and Democrats (S&D).
Getting out the big guns: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday called a meeting in her Berlaymont HQ with three senior MEPs — EPP chief Manfred Weber, the Socialists’ Iratxe García and Renew’s Valérie Hayer. But things are only growing more tense.
Digging in: A deal is now unlikely to materialize before the middle of next week, people involved in the talks told me and Max Griera. The Commission’s wished-for start date of Dec. 1 could now easily slip, perhaps even into next year, giving Team VDL less time to prep for Trump.
AND THEN THERE WERE 7: MEPs gave the provisional green light to 19 out of von der Leyen’s 26 commissioners, but Hungary’s Olivér Várhelyi and all six of the executive vice presidents (Teresa Ribera, Raffaele Fitto, Kaja Kallas, Stéphane Séjourné, Henna Virkkunen and Roxana Mînzatu), are still awaiting approval. For the December start date, the whole roster of 27 commissioners needs to be voted on by Nov. 28 at the latest.
EPP ups ante on Ribera: The EPP now not only insists that Várhelyi gets through and no one touches Fitto’s EVP role, but also that Ribera promises to resign from the Commission if she’s indicted in a Spanish court case relating to her role as ecological transition minister when the Valencia floods killed 215 people. That’s a trap that leaves her at the mercy of Spain’s judicial system. And it comes on top of a preexisting EPP demands that she show up at the Spanish parliament next week, presumably to face another volley of personal attacks, like she did in her Brussels hearing Tuesday.
Spanish infighting continues: “The minister in charge is going to be rewarded when there are still bodies to be recovered from under the mud? Am I the only one who sees how immoral this is?” said EPP lawmaker Esteban González Pons in a particularly vicious European Parliament debate Wednesday. Iratxe García, the Socialists’ leader, accused Pons’ Popular Party — which governs the Valencia region — of responding to the flooding crisis with “disinformation, hate, insulting scientists and disdain for public services.” She noted that under Spanish law, regional authorities are responsible for disaster management.
That’s a new one: Portuguese EPP lawmaker Sebastião Bugalho described Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez as “an Iberian Orbán,” in the same debate.
Ropey coalition: The Socialists want Ribera to go through unscathed, Fitto demoted, and for Weber’s EPP to return to the center-ground coalition that got von der Leyen reelected in July. “When a rope gets too tight, it breaks,” a Socialist warned last night, adding that the EPP is “humiliating” the S&D by making deals to the right.
Nuclear threat: “The vote on the next European Commission college is today at stake,” the Socialists said in a press release, effectively threatening to derail von der Leyen’s Commission. That is, in essence, the Socialists’ biggest — some would say only — card to play. Depleted among European governments, their remaining influence in Brussels stems from being the second-largest group in Parliament.
Meloni wades in: While the Spanish domestic debate encroaches further into EU politics, another leader piped up: Giorgia Meloni. The Italian PM attacked the S&D for, as she put it, implying “Italy does not deserve to have a vice presidency of the Commission.”
THE MEDIATORS: It’s no secret the relationship between Weber and García is strained, to put it mildly. Alongside von der Leyen, Renew leader Valérie Hayer and Parliament Chief Roberta Metsola are acting as mediators, with the latter holding one-on-one meetings with several group leaders last night.
Don’t panic (yet): “There is still time,” Metsola said. “This House is fully committed to getting the new Commission in place. This is our responsibility and we take it very seriously. Especially when we look at what is happening around the world.”
WHAT THE OTHERS ARE UP TO: Renew is trying to gut Várhelyi’s already paper-thin portfolio further and stop Fitto from getting a senior role … Greens are backing the Socialists … Patriots are pushing for Várhelyi to get through … ECR — Meloni’s tweet aside — is pursuing its greenlighting-everyone strategy, to sweeten the road for Fitto. Example: Meloni’s Brothers of Italy MEPs said they would vote for the whole College.
LAST-CHANCE SALOON? If Weber, García and Hayer fail to agree on a common approach to the EVPs, Parliament’s rules allow for committees to hold secret votes where MEPs will choose to either accept or reject them.
Some now seriously consider this an option, but it carries risks for the EPP as Weber would likely have to rely on a very far-right coalition to squeeze Fitto through. And that could make him look bad in Germany, where his center-right forces will clash with the AfD in February’s election. The up side? The numbers are there and Fitto would keep his shiny EVP title.
Last word: German Social Democrat Tiemo Wölken told Playbook: “We are in a delicate international situation and Europe cannot afford to be without a Commission.”
COP29
COPOUTS: The decision by U.S. President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Scholz and the EU’s von der Leyen to skip COP29 in Azerbaijan has led to a diminished gathering in Baku, my colleague Suzanne Lynch reports in today’s Global Playbook. Plus, Trump is hanging over events, with his rapid-fire personnel moves dismantling Joe Biden’s climate legacy (more on that here). But it’s not just Trump and the absentee list that’s overshadowing COP …
Aliyev throws a hand grenade: This year’s U.N. talks on sending climate cash to poor countries were already charged over matters of global unfairness, write my colleagues Karl Mathiesen and Zia Weise. Then came an explosive moment from Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Wednesday. The COP host used a meeting dedicated to small island nations to take France and the Netherlands to task over their “neocolonialism,” and slammed Paris over its role in last year’s riots in New Caledonia. (Paris earlier this year accused Baku of murky activity in New Caledonia.) It prompted French Ecological Transition Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher to boycott the COP talks.
Reminder: Azerbaijan is a petro-state and Aliyev a repressive dictator who has shown little regard for matters of high-minded justice when it comes to dissidents at home, nor the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, where he is accused of perpetrating ethnic cleansing.
MEANWHILE, THERE’S ONE EU PRESIDENT WHO DID GO TO BAKU — outgoing European Council chief Charles Michel. But his decision to travel to Azerbaijan instead of attending a debate on the October European Council summit in the European Parliament (which had already been rescheduled once at his request) has MEPs fuming.
Boo-ku! “This debate now cannot take place due to the absence of the president of the European Council who I am informed is in Baku,” Parliament President Metsola told MEPs on Wednesday. She added that Michel had offered to provide a written statement — sparking boos from MEPs.
A spokesperson for Michel said the Parliament hadn’t consulted his team when it set the new time for the October EUCO debate. The spokesperson added that a written report complies with Treaty obligations.
No fond farewell: “We cannot accept this from a man who is earning a wage that the average European can only dream of,” said far-left Belgian MEP Rudi Kennes. German Green MEP Hannah Neumann told Playbook: “Baku is today? I think it still goes for a while so [it’s a] very stupid excuse.” German Social Democrat Udo Bullmann’s take? “Incredible.” A Parliament official said Michel hadn’t been in the Parliament since early February.
HEY ELON, WE LIKE YOU TOO: How do the Biden officials representing the U.S. in Baku feel about Elon Musk’s appointment to the Trump team? “He’s a force for American innovation, for a pursuit of this massive economic opportunity that sits on the other side of climate ambition,” White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi told Power Play’s Anne McElvoy, calling Tesla a “proof point of the economic upside that you can get by chasing a clean energy future.” Listen here.
IN OTHER NEWS
POLITICAL FOOTBALL: Top officials will be out in force at today’s France-Israel UEFA Nations League match at the Stade de France, my Playbook Paris colleagues report this morning. Following violence against Israeli fans in Amsterdam last Thursday, Emmanuel Macron announced he would attend today’s match “in solidarity,” with Prime Minister Michel Barnier, multiple MPs and local officials also expected to attend.
Security also out in force: Some 4,000 police officers have been mobilized for the event, which has been deemed “high risk.” More on the security measures here.
ORBÁN OPPONENT FACES NEW LAWSUIT: Center-rightMEPPéter Magyar, who is a key challenger to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, is facing a new private libel case after calling a Fidesz politician a common criminal. Roberta Metsola announced Wednesday that Hungarian authorities had asked the Parliament to lift Magyar’s immunity. The Parliament has previously been asked to lift Magyar’s immunity in a separate case relating to scuffles at a nightclub.
DON’T BYPASS FRANCE ON MERCOSUR, BARNIER WARNS: Don’t do the Mercosur-EU trade deal over our heads, French PM Michel Barnier told the European Commission in a series of meetings in Brussels Wednesday, my agri colleague Alessandro Ford reports. The deal’s agricultural chapter is particularly sensitive for France.
SCHOLZ ON UKRAINE: In a speech to parliamentarians on Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he stands by his decision not to supply Kyiv with long-range missiles that could be used to strike Russian territory, claiming the approach helped avoid escalating the war. Nette Nöstlinger has the story here.