Trump nominates Kimberly Guilfoyle to be the new US Ambassador to Greece
US President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former prosecutor, Fox News TV host and steadfast supporter, to be the new Ambassador to Greece.
Poll highlights public discontent with government
An ALCO poll for Alpha TV released Tuesday reveals widespread dissatisfaction with the Greek government’s handling of key issues, including inflation, crime, education, healthcare, transparency and foreign policy.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1255928/poll-highlights-public-discontent-with-government
Mitsotakis and Doukas agree to cooperate on critical issues for Athens
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis received the Mayor of Athens, Haris Doukas, on Tuesday at the Maximos Mansion to discuss issues concerning the municipality.
Rania Thraskia marks ninth exit from SYRIZA, party left with 26 MPs
SYRIZA lawmaker Rania Thraskia announced on Tuesday she is leaving the party to become an independent MP. In a letter to Parliament President Konstantinos Tasoulas, she distanced herself from the recent developments in the party.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1255872/ninth-mp-leaves-syriza-party-shrinks-to-26
ATHEX: Moderate profit-taking on bourse
Greek stocks ended their rising streak on Tuesday, after six sessions of growth for the benchmark, though the profit-taking appetite of traders was quite moderate. Despite the rather high turnover, most stocks contained their losses and a few continued to grow, as the end-of-year period when traders try to close their books with the best possible balance has local prices remain firmly in positive territory this month.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1255935/athex-moderate-profit-taking-on-bourse
KATHIMERINI: Military hospitals and their chronic ailments
TA NEA: Military hospitals: the backstage regarding the ousting of their managements
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Hellenic Metro S.A. to return 12,8 mln euros after Staikouras’ “presents “gifts”
RIZOSPASTIS: Budget 2025 debate: taxheist and war expenses are the two sides of the antipopular budget
KONTRA NEWS: Far-right in Northern Greece garners 30% in polls
DIMOKRATIA: Minister of Defense drops the axe on military hospitals’ managements
NAFTEMPORIKI: Price hikes lead the cost of services to spike
DRIVING THE DAY: DICTATOR DOMINOS
BELARUSIAN OPPOSITION LEADER WAITS FOR HER MOMENT: First Assad, next Lukashenko? At last night’s POLITICO 28 event, the exiled opposition leader of Belarus Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya called on her fellow citizens to be ready to hit the streets at the right moment to topple dictator Alexander Lukashenko, who will hold yet another rigged election next month.
Finger on the trigger: “It’s not time for Belarusian people to go to the streets to uprise visibly because, you know, repressions are too high,” Tsikhanouskaya told our Editor-in-Chief Jamil Anderlini last night. “I really want people to be ready to use a real moment of opportunity to be on the streets and dismantle this regime … But we have to feel this trigger, this moment, when we really can dismantle it.”
Seize your chance: Lukashenko, who’s been in power for as long as your Playbook author has been alive, will inevitably “win” the presidential poll in January. He’s already cracking down hard on pro-democracy campaigners ahead of the election. Mass protests, and brutal reprisals, followed the last presidential vote — deemed illegitimate by the EU — in 2020. “It’s such a luxury not knowing who will be your next president,” Tsikhanouskaya said dryly, to dark laughter and applause.
“I don’t know if he’s alive.” Tsikhanouskaya, a self-described “housewife,” was thrust into front-line politics when her husband, the pro-democracy activist Sergei Tikhanovsky, was arrested and imprisoned soon after announcing he’d contest the 2020 election. Last night, she said she didn’t know whether Sergei was still alive, or if he may have suffered a similar fate to Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny, who died an arctic penal colony earlier this year. “Maybe it sounds strange, but I think pain is my biggest motivator,” Tsikhanouskaya said.
Unravelling like a bowtie: Still, Tsikhanouskaya is hopeful. “Dictators are not invincible, they are very fragile, including Lukashenko,” she told the room of hundreds of tuxedoed guests, many of whose minds will have turned at that moment to Syria’s deposed dictator Bashar Assad — like Lukashenko, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I believe in democracy. Democracy has teeth. But you have to have courage to use all your instruments, to use all your tools, to fight dictators,” Tsikhanouskaya said.
VLADIMIR PUPIL: How to fight dictators was a theme of last night’s event. The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas, interviewed by my fellow Playbooker Sarah Wheaton, likened dealing with Putin and his ilk to raising a child: “Anyone who has children … if you don’t follow your words, you’re going to have more of [what you didn’t want].”
Kallas-nikov: She used that argument as she doubled down on her maxim that Ukraine must win and Russia must lose the war, projecting bemusement that her clarion call for Kyiv’s military victory could be considered newsworthy. “How can you really argue with that goal? Is somebody really saying that Russia should win this war?” she asked.
Quick sidebar: That Ukraine should win the war isn’t quite the radically new stance some are presenting it as. Iratxe García, the leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament, said so, for example, when meeting Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv Tuesday, as well as in 2023.
Russia’s spider’s web: Kallas, whom some accuse of focusing on Russia’s brutal aggression against Ukraine to the exclusion of other topics, argued that the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria showed the merits of that level of focus. “If you handle Russia then you could solve so many issues at the same time,” she said, listing Russia’s malign influence in Ukraine, Georgia, Africa, Iran and the Middle East.
TikTok is a joke: Kallas also pointed to Romania and warned that Russia has “cracked the code” on using cutting-edge tech to influence elections and destroy trust in democracy. She scored points in the room when she noted that the POLITICO event’s afterparty was sponsored by TikTok. (As Sarah pointed out, we’re editorially independent.)
Caddie Kallas: Sarah asked Kallas who her closest contact in Trump’s orbit is. “I play golf actually,” the high representative parried back. “My handicap was quite good.” Quick, send in the bulldozers and turn the EEAS into a golf course!
One for the Christmas stocking: Kallas — a self-described “total bookworm” — had this book tip: “Very Bad People” by Patrick Alley, one of the founders of anti-corruption organization Global Witness.
€1B FOR DEFENSE: In another on-stage interview last night, European Investment Bank President Nadia Calviño said she expects to officially announce a €1 billion program to support small- and medium-sized businesses operating in security and defense. This comes even as the EIB acknowledges it is “not a defense ministry,” she told Aitor Hernández-Morales.
EU INSTITUTIONS
CHRISTMAS PRESENT FOR EU STAFF: EU officials in Belgium and Luxembourg are looking forward to an over 8 percent salary rise, according to information sent to Commission staff. EU civil servants will get a 4.1 percent bump backdated to July, which comes on top of a 3 percent boost they got in June. They will also get 1.2 percent more next April.
Dinner’s on me: “The combined effect of these updates will be positive for all staff members in Brussels and Luxembourg,” the Commission wrote to officials in an internal note seen by Playbook.
How it compares: For regular Belgian employees, salaries rise roughly in line with inflation. This year, the expectation is of a 3.3 percent bump.
The Santa Commission: “We are not complaining,” said Cristiano Sebastiani, president of the Renouveau et Démocratie Union. “We are just ensuring the parallelism with the salaries of our civil service in the member states,” he said. The EU calculates salary adjustments for its staff around the EU using a metric based on national civil service salaries and the local cost of living.
Commission’s view: Commission spokesperson Balazs Ujvari said EU officials’ pension contributions will also increase, meaning the 4.1 percent Christmas rise won’t be so high; he also said that over the past two decades EU staffers’ “real purchasing power” has dropped by almost 13 percent and that the June rise of 3 percent took place amid “high inflation levels” in Belgium and Luxembourg late last year.
4 NEW PARLIAMENT COMMITTEES: Top MEPs will today sign off on four new parliamentary committees, Max Griera and Josh Posaner report. Two of them are upgrades, turning the junior health and defense committees into fully fledged ones. The other two are brand new special committees that will draw up recommendations on interference in democracy and the housing crisis. Defense and Health Care Pro subscribers can read about the committees’ mandates here.
POLISH PRESIDENCY GOES ONLINE: With the Polish Council presidency just around the corner, Poland launched its official website on Tuesday. The logo was designed by none other than Jerzy Janiszewski, creator of the Solidarnošć/Solidarity symbol. You can also follow the Poles on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and even Flickr — but not on Bluesky (yet). The presidency also links out to accounts on Instagram and Threads, but Playbook got an error message for those accounts this morning.
WAR REPORTS
US AID FOR KYIV: The U.S. Treasury has given $20 billion to Ukraine, funded by profits from frozen Russian assets. The money, administered through the World Bank, can’t be used for the military but will help provide Ukraine “the resources it needs to sustain emergency services, hospitals, and other foundations of its brave resistance,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said. Bloomberg reports the Biden administration is also considering ramming through new Russian oil sanctions before Trump returns to the White House next month.
Fico backs China-Brazil “peace plan” for Ukraine: Slovak PM Robert Fico said he “supports” the joint proposal drawn up by Brasília and Beijing for peace talks involving both Russia and Ukraine. On a visit to Brazil, Fico said: “I am convinced that Brazil, together with China, but also other major countries, will play an extremely important role and military operations on the territory of Ukraine will be stopped,” according to Slovak news agency TASR.
Reminder: Volodymyr Zelenskyy has lambasted the proposal, saying Brazil and China consulted Moscow but not Kyiv when drawing up the plan.
Calling in the cavalry: Russia is preparing to deploy its new hypersonic Oreshnik missiles in Belarus in 2025, Alexander Lukashenko said Tuesday.
AFTER ASSAD: Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani has recently undergone a makeover, going from sporting a long, unkempt beard and a style of turban favored by jihadis to green fatigues or preppy blazers and chinos with neatly trimmed facial hair. But does this change in appearance signal a shift in ideology — or should Syrians be worried that someone who once made a pledge of allegiance to al Qaeda is now the most powerful man in their country? Jamie Dettmer reads the runes.
MORE FALLOUT: Israel conducted at least 350 airstrikes in the past 48 hours on targets in Syria as its military seeks to neutralize potential threats following Assad’s ouster. Meanwhile, Russian vessels have deserted the Tartus naval base. More here.
IN OTHER NEWS
HAPPENING TODAY — SCHOLZ CONFIDENCE VOTE: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set today to submit a request to parliament to hold a vote of confidence, a step required to hold a federal election. Reuters has more.
WHAT’S NEW IN MERCOSUR: POLITICO’s top-notch trade team has gone through the trade agreement between the EU and the Mercosur bloc and put together a list of all the new elements.
Lula in intensive care: Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is recovering “well” in intensive care after undergoing emergency surgery for a brain bleed, according to his personal doctor. The Guardian has more.
EXIT READ: U.S. Ambassador Mark Gitenstein and former European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová have written a blog post together on two years of transatlantic cooperation on media freedom.
TRUMP’S NEW ENVOYS: Donald Trump has tapped Kimberly Guilfoyle, a former Court TV anchor and Fox News host who was engaged to Donald Trump Jr., as the next U.S. ambassador to Greece. Trump also announced he’d picked private equity executive Tom Barrack, a longtime ally who faced legal scrutiny for his work on behalf of the United Arab Emirates, as the next U.S. ambassador to Turkey.
(Not) feeling the Bern : U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, a former presidential candidate, said his term starting in January would likely be his last in an interview with POLITICO.