US elections, EU, Middle East, and migration issue at the center of Mitsotakis-Bruckner discussion
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis held a discussion with French author Pascal Bruckner at the American School of Classical Studies, in an event organized by iefimerida.gr at the Cotsen Hall Amphitheater on Thursday.
EU Commission rebukes Greece for climate plan delays
The European Commission has launched infringement proceedings by sending formal warning letters to Greece and 12 other EU member states for failing to submit their final updated National Energy and Climate Plans (NECPs).
Dendias: New Armed Forces Structure with mergers of units and formations, anti-drone dome
In a sweeping overhaul of its military structure, Greece is set to streamline its armed forces with a bold new “Force Structure” plan.
Novartis case: Two former protected witnesses are called to account as suspects
Two previously protected witnesses in the Novartis case are being asked to explain to prosecutors their claims against politicians that were not confirmed by the judicial investigation.
ATHEX: Banks, OTE drag general index down
Selling pressure on banks and telecoms company OTE led the Athens Stock Exchange to close marginally lower Thursday, despite strong gains in other European markets.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1253621/athex-banks-ote-drag-general-index-down
KATHIMERINI: Armed Forces tripled in Evros and on the islands
TA NEA: Which military units are going to shut down
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: 1-billion-euro “rififi” in the pensions piggy bank
RIZOSPASTIS: Simple folks’ rallying cries against imperialism are as topical as ever
KONTRA NEWS: Viability of SMEs and industry threatened due to electricity prices
DIMOKRATIA: Black holes in the wealth origin declaration of Kasselakis
NAFTEMPORIKI: Tax-penalty for the self-employed
DRIVING THE DAY: PFIZERGATE IN COURT
DELETED TEXTS REACH ECJ: For years, Ursula von der Leyen and her Commission have repeatedly brushed off demands to reveal her text exchanges with a pharmaceutical executive during the Covid-19 pandemic. These messages were “short-lived and ephemeral,” the Berlaymont has told journalists, NGOs and even the European Ombudsman. No matter that they could have had implications for how billions of euros of public money were spent.
C U in court: Today, Elisa Braun reports from Luxembourg, the EU’s top court will consider a case whose impact on how the EU executive conducts its business — and how accountable it is to citizens — will likely be anything but “short-lived and ephemeral.”
Closing in: Amid a bruising battle to get her new College of Commissioners in place, von der Leyen faces the fresh indignity of judges and lawyers crawling over her personal phone habits in a public hearing. She won’t physically be there for this new episode of what’s known variably as Pfizergate or Deletegate — the case was brought against the Commission, not von der Leyen herself. Nevertheless, it’s extremely uncomfortable for a president who has pledged to uphold high standards of transparency.
Remember … At the center of the case is the question of whether von der Leyen’s office was right to refuse to release text messages she allegedly exchanged with Albert Bourla, the boss of drugs giant Pfizer, in 2021. At the time, the Commission chief was negotiating a valuable deal to secure up to 1.8 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines from the company. The Commission has been reluctant to confirm or deny whether such texts ever existed or what they did or did not say. In response, the European Ombudsman deemed the Commission guilty of “maladministration” and urged a revamp of the Berlaymont’s document retention policy.
The New York Times is on it. The publisher brought the case in 2023 after the Commission refused a request for access to the texts by Matina Stevis-Gridneff, its former Brussels bureau chief. Stevis-Gridneff first revealed the existence of the messages in a 2021 article.
Why does it matter? The case may ultimately set a precedent for whether cell phone text messages count as official documents and what rights the public and press have to access them. But the bigger political issue at stake is the perception of von der Leyen’s integrity and accountability as she embarks on her second term running the European Union’s executive branch.
What to expect: The EU’s court is hearing the arguments of all parties involved. It’s the first —and possibly only — moment in the procedure when lawyers for the NYT and the Commission will go head to head in front of judges who will then ask questions. We’ll be parsing those judges’ questions for hints about where they stand. Read more from Elisa and Mari Eccles.
PARLIAMENT POLITICS
CATCH YOUR BREATH: Don’t expect major movement on confirming the commissioners-designate until Nov. 20, Max Griera reports.
27 on the 27th? The Parliament has penciled in a Nov. 27 vote on the whole package of 27 nominees. That could make a Dec. 1 start date possible for the VDL 2 Commission. Otherwise, we’re looking at 2025. Read more from Max Griera.
LISTEN TO THIS — WHAT THE HEARINGS REVEALED: On this week’s episode of the EU Confidential podcast, POLITICO’s top policy journalists separate the theatrics from the serious policy discussion. They tease out how Europe is gearing up for Trump’s second presidency (and how it’s not), which of the bloc’s priorities are set to change, and how new alliances in a right-leaning Parliament could reshape the EU. Listen here.
READING THE TEA LEAVES OF THE TREE LAW: The European People’s Party (EPP) has drawn fury from centrist and center-left groups after it joined forces with right-wing and far-right parties in Parliament to dilute anti-deforestation rules that are a key pillar of the European Green Deal, Louise Guillot reports.
Timber! That’s the sound of the cordon sanitaire falling. Yet despite the chaos of the vote itself (with machines malfunctioning) and the far right backing the EPP, the actual changes were limited. What passed was “mostly symbolic and does not change the essence of the law,” German Socialists and Democrats MEP Delara Burkhardt argued, while Renew Europe’s Pascal Canfin said the moderates had “managed to counter the worst-case scenario.”
MORE CRACKS IN THE CENTER? Despite Canfin’s claim about the moderates, the deforestation vote is triggering alarm among Socialist MEPs. Up to this point, the S&D and Renew have stuck together in their bid to avoid any collaboration with the far right. But the Socialists fear that’s fraying.
Defections on deforestation: On Thursday, 29 Renew MEPs sided with the EPP and forces further to the right to pass a modified version of the deforestation regulation. “S&D members are beginning to look with concern at the [possibility of] Renew’s shift to the right,” an official from the group told POLITICO’s Max Griera.
Bristling at perceived false equivalence: The concerns are also fueled by remarks that Renew chief Valérie Hayer made before a meeting with other centrist party bosses and von der Leyen on Wednesday. Hayer scolded both the S&D and EPP in equal measure for being “irresponsible” and urged them to sit at the table to reinforce the centrist coalition to “avoid political collapse.”
Fading in the fight: Up to this point, Renew has locked arms with the S&D to defend the far-right firewall on the Parliament and Commission’s top jobs, including demanding that Giorgia Meloni’s commissioner nominee Raffaele Fitto be demoted below the executive vice president level while the EPP defends his appointment. But amid tough negotiations, some Socialists “see the possibility of the Renew group dividing,” the S&D official added.
Renew has high stakes in the game, as both the EU’s diplomacy chief Kaja Kallas and the Executive Vice President for Industry Stéphane Séjourné belong to the liberal political family.
Reclaiming the kingmaker role? Then again, Renew could just be reclaiming the tiebreaker role it held in the previous Parliament, when it was the third-largest force after the S&D and the EPP. (It’s now down to No. 5 in the rankings.) “By calling on a coalition with centrist forces, Renew made crystal clear where it stands: in the epicenter of a pro-European majority,” said a Renew spokesperson about Hayer’s Wednesday statement.
FAR RIGHT WANTS TRUMP IN BRUSSELS: The extreme-right Europe of Sovereign Nations group is asking Parliament President Roberta Metsola to invite U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to the plenary. “An address by the incoming American president in the heart of Europe would signal a strong commitment to reinvigorating our relationship with the United States,” wrote three ESN MEPs, René Aust, Stanisław Tyszka and Christine Anderson, in a letter dated Nov. 12 seen by Playbook’s Eddy Wax.
DISCLOSURE TEST CASE: The Parliament’s secretive committee in charge of ethics enforcement is looking into five MEPs who didn’t publicly disclose details of a black-tie dinner with Donald Trump. (The MEPs claim they didn’t have to.) Yours truly reports for our sister newsletter, EU Influence.
QUOTED
Trump’s reelection “will reshape our relationship, indeed our relationship to the truth, because the truth has been shown to be malleable. The outcome in the U.S. should not leave us cold … those effects will last through to the generation of our grandchildren.”
— Josep Borrell, EU foreign policy chief, in the European Parliament on Thursday.
“I could not believe yesterday’s news about @MLP_officiel. Marine, please remember we are with you in this battle! And don’t forget: being harassed by the judiciary was a crucial step towards victory for President @realDonaldTrump.”
— Viktor Orbán, Hungarian prime minister, on X, in reference to French prosecutors’ request that Marine Le Pen be banned from running for president.
“Let’s not be naive … Let’s not go to that [trade] conversation without already having a retaliation option. Because if the negotiations fail and if the United States feels that we don’t have a credible retaliation option, then we are not going to go anywhere.”
— Ignacio García Bercero, the Commission’s point person on trade during Trump’s first term, to POLITICO’s Camille Gijs. More for Pro subscribers.
IT’S THE ECONOMY
STATE OF EU ECONOMY: The European Commission delivers its fall forecasts on EU and member country growth, debts and deficits today, amid the threat of a looming trade war.
What to expect: Brussels expects confirmation of its previous forecast of moderate growth (former Italian PM Mario Draghi recently called it stagnation) along with positive employment and inflation trends. Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni will unveil the forecast at a 10:30 a.m. press conference.
BUDGET SHOWDOWN IN BRUSSELS: The European Parliament, national economy ministers and the Commission will haggle today about how to pay back over €2 billion of additional interest on the EU’s post-Covid joint debt in 2025 before a looming deadline on Monday, Gregorio Sorgi reports.
Unintended consequences: The EU has to plug a hole from higher-than-expected interest rates on common debt. Diplomats hope to seal a deal tonight, but talks might stretch until the Monday deadline.
The usual fight: Cash-strapped governments suggested making cuts to EU programs including the Erasmus student exchange scheme, whereas MEPs proposed tapping into unused funds from the central budget that would otherwise be handed back to national capitals.
EQUAL PAY? NO WAY
TRANSPARENCY TROUBLES: Today is “European Equal Pay Day” — that fun point in the year when women symbolically start working for free compared to their male colleagues, thanks to the gender pay gap. Unions are seizing the opportunity to shame big business over the ongoing issue — but big business doesn’t seem all that ashamed.
What’s the problem? Countries that require companies to publish salary data have a 14 percent gender pay gap, compared to a 17 percent gap for those that don’t, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) found, citing OECD data. So the union was incensed when a representative from BusinessEurope complained, during a recent meeting with the Commission and other industry and labor groups, about an upcoming rule that will mandate more pay transparency. ETUC told Playbook this person called the requirement for gender pay transparency “an example of a ‘regulatory burden’ that should be targeted as part of the Commission’s deregulation agenda.”
On the contrary, said ETUC Deputy General Secretary Isabelle Schömann in a press release, gender pay transparency is “an indispensable tool in dismantling the gender pay discrimination which male-dominated board rooms have covered up for too long.”
No denying it: BusinessEurope didn’t identify the individual who made the above comment — and didn’t disavow it. “BusinessEurope fully supports the objective of the pay transparency directive, but the existing directive is overly complex and burdensome for companies — particularly SMEs,” the mega-lobby said in a statement.
TRUMP WORLD
PIC OF THE DAY: Argentina’s President Javier Milei arrived in Florida last night, where he hobnobbed at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump — becoming the first foreign leader to meet the incoming U.S. president in person since his election victory. Tech billionaire/Trump DOGE czar Elon Musk was also there. Pic here.
MUSK IN SECRET TALKS WITH IRAN: Speaking of Musk — he held an hour-long meeting with Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations at a secret location in New York on Monday, the New York Times reported. Musk discussed how to defuse tensions between Iran and the U.S., according to two unnamed Iranian officials.
High tech White House: With Musk deeply ensconced in Team Trump, other top players in Silicon Valley are positioning for jobs in the administration too, the NYT reports. My colleagues Nick Vinocur and Clea Caulcutt have this feature on how Europe is reacting to Trump’s “terrifying” Cabinet picks.
COULD TRUMP ACTUALLY BE GOOD FOR UKRAINE? Jamie Dettmer ponders that prospect.
IN OTHER NEWS
PROTESTS IN LITHUANIA: Some 5,000 people demonstrated outside the Lithuanian parliament in Vilnius on Thursday in protest of the Social Democrats’ decision to go into coalition with a party whose leader is on trial for allegedly making antisemitic statements. Reuters has more on the protests; Jacobin has a good primer.
WON’T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN: The Independent reports the topic of a youth mobility scheme with the U.K. will come up at a meeting of European ambassadors today, as countries seek to firm up a negotiating position. One EU official told our London Playbook colleagues that the U.S. election result gives even more reason for the U.K. and EU to boost each other’s economies, and youth mobility is a key tool to do that. But U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has repeatedly insisted he has no plans for such a scheme.
BARDELLA’S AN OPEN BOOK: Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old president of France’s far-right National Rally party, has written a 324-page political tome. Victor Goury-Laffont read it so you don’t have to.
MIDDLE EAST LATEST: Hamas official Basem Naim claimed on Sky News the militant group is ready for a cease-fire “immediately” … though added it had not received any “serious proposals” from Israel since early July.