PM Mitsotakis from Lebanon: Ceasefire implementation vital for the wider region
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met on Monday in Beirut with his Lebanese counterpart Najib Mikati and the Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament Nabih Berri. According to government sources, during the meetings Mitsotakis expressed Greece’s support for stability and peace in Lebanon. He also stressed the importance of implementing the November 27 ceasefire for peace and stability in the wider region. He reiterated Greece’s readiness to assist in strengthening state institutions in Lebanon and in the implementation of the ceasefire, as well as in strengthening the economy.
Greek Armed Forces to decommission 10 military camps in restructuring plan
The Hellenic National Defense General Staff (GEETHA) announced on Monday the planned decommissioning of several military camps across Greece as part of Defense Minister Nikos Dendias’ initiative to reorganize the armed forces.
ADAE’s Rammos declines presidential candidacy, cites political calculations and personal attacks
Christos Rammos, head of Greece’s independent privacy watchdog ADAE, announced on Monday that he will not run for President of Greece when the term of the current President, Katerina Sakellaropoulou, expires in March 2025.
State budget execution January-November 2024: Primary surplus at 12.012 billion euros, exceeding 9.912 billion euro target
A primary surplus of 12.012 billion euros is recorded in the state budget execution for the period January – November 2024, according to the data announced on Monday afternoon by the Ministry of National Economy and Finance, compared to a target for a primary surplus of 9.912 billion euros and a primary surplus of 5.826 billion euros for the same period in 2023. At the same time, for the same period, tax revenues are reported to be increased by 106 million compared to the target included in the explanatory report of the 2025 budget.
Bank transaction charges to be slashed
Greek citizens are set to benefit from significant reductions in banking transaction fees as a sweeping legislative package, designed to ease financial burdens, comes into effect in January. Announced by National Economy Minister Kostis Hatzidakis, the reforms are expected to deliver annual savings of €150 million, addressing long-standing frustrations over excessive banking charges on everyday transactions.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1256473/bank-transaction-charges-to-be-slashed
ATHEX: Measured reaction by bank stocks
Greek stocks had a mixed session on Monday, with banks showing a rather contained reaction to the government measures expected to cost them over 300 million euros, according to estimates. The benchmark lost some ground, but mid-caps saw their index advance, with rising stocks narrowly outnumbered by decliners. Metlen posted gains as it starts the process of its listing on the London Stock Exchange.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1256503/athex-measured-reaction-by-bank-stocks
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DIMOKRATIA: EU slap regarding the safety of trains
NAFTEMPORIKI: Bank deposits are the “mirror” of taxpayers
DRIVING THE DAY
WATCHDOG FIGHT IN PARLIAMENT: In choosing a new European Ombudsman today, MEPs will decide what they want EU accountability to look like in an era of growing polarization, mistrust and threats to the rule of law. Six candidates are vying to field citizens’ complaints and peek behind the curtains at how the legislative sausage is made, to ensure everything is up to code.
Irony alert: For a post that’s supposed to be fiercely independent, actually getting the job is highly political.
Buckle up: The role itself is also getting more difficult, according to the current European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly. In an interview, she described an approach to transparency by the European Commission under President Ursula von der Leyen that is “quite controlling, and to be honest, wrong.”
CONTEXT: The European Ombudsman post was created about 30 years ago to weigh in on how the institutions were doing at administration. (The jargony “maladministration” is ombudspeak for “guilty.”)
Sunlight and shame: Its recommendations are non-binding, but the idea is that the institutions will embrace the opportunity to adjust their practices and better serve the public — especially after they’ve been named and shamed for falling short.
Seeking heat: Three people have served in the post since 1995. O’Reilly, the incumbent, brings to the job the crusading instincts of a journalist (she used to be one). Officially, the Irishwoman is looking at whether the institutions are following their own rules. But her strategic choices to seize on hot-button issues — Martin Selmayr’s promotion, von der Leyen’s texts, the deaths of 600 migrants off the coast of Greece — have made O’Reilly a lightning rod. Some of her would-be successors want to dial down the heat; others want to grab her baton.
PARLIAMENT’S CHOICE: The Commission and Council don’t nominate the Ombudsman aspirants; each had to get on the ballot by finding 39 MEPs to back their candidacy. Today at around 12:30 p.m., the plenary will vote on the six who made it. The eventual winner will need a majority; if no one reaches that point after two ballots, the top two will go to a runoff.
Partisan preferences: Euronews has a breakdown of which groups’ MEPs backed each candidate. The three with core backing from the traditional centrist coalition — Dutch Ombudsman Reinier van Zutphen, OLAF supervisory committee member Teresa Anjinho (from Portugal) and U.N. human rights expert Claudia Mahler (from Austria) — tend to take a more activist approach. (My colleagues over at EU Influence rounded up their campaign pitches.)
But we’re not counting out Estonian jurist Julia Laffranque, who has heavy support from the center-right European People’s Party and the far-right Patriots for Europe. She lost to O’Reilly in 2019, when the incumbent ran for reelection in what became a political proxy war after the Selmayr controversy angered some in the EPP.
Silence is golden? Laffranque has signaled she wants to roll back the Ombudsman’s remit; for a taste of her approach to transparency, we note that she appears to be the only candidate to have blown off a civil society survey of the candidates.
Also running: Italians Emilio De Capitani, a former European Parliament official, and Marino Fardelli, the Ombudsman of the Lazio region.
EXIT INTERVIEW: “What I found difficult was the irrationality of it,” O’Reilly recalled of having to campaign for the post, rather than apply based on credentials. “The irony is that you’re supposed to be independent and you sign an oath of independence and you do all that stuff and then you’re thrown into a highly political mix.”
Advice to MEPs: O’Reilly said lawmakers are constantly asking her advice for how to get the Commission to be more accountable. “That is concerning,” she said — because that’s the MEPs’ job. “If the Parliament starts to think, start to internalize this idea that we can’t exercise proper oversight over the Commission … well, that’s the way it’s going to go. I don’t know how they’re going to regain their mojo,” she said. “But I hope that it does because if it’s down to little me or my successor to hold the Commission to account, then, yeah, it’ll be a challenge.”
Advice to her successor: “Keep the faith,” O’Reilly said. Politics is likely to play an “even bigger role in the next Ombudsman’s time than it did in mine. Try and try and resist that.”
Hear more: For more of O’Reilly’s reflections on the politics of transparency (or lack their of), from Pfizergate to the Tunisia migration deal, look out for Thursday’s edition of POLITICO’s EU Influence newsletter and Friday’s episode of the EU Confidential podcast.
SYRIA
EU’S ASK: CLOSE RUSSIAN BASES. The EU’s emissary to the new rebel government in Damascus — announced Monday morning — already has a big assignment. EU foreign ministers want to see Russia’s military bases in Syria shut down, said the bloc’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas following her inaugural Foreign Affairs Council meeting on Monday.
Red-ish line: “Many foreign ministers took this up to say that … it should be a condition for the new leadership,” Kallas told reporters, noting that Moscow uses its two outposts in Syria to launch operations in Africa and southern neighbors. Read more from Nicholas Vinocur and Jacopo Barigazzi.
Who’s going: Sandra De Waele, the EU’s ambassador to Lebanon, has been assigned to lead this initial contact, Jacopo reports.
VDL IN ANKARA: Commission President Ursula von der Leyen makes a (solo) return to Turkey today, where Syria will top the agenda in her sit-down with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Possible discussion point 1: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said on Monday the rebels who overthrew Bashar Assad are “controlled by Turkey.” The Wall Street Journal reports that senior U.S. officials are warning that Turkey and its militia allies are building up forces along the Syrian border potentially in preparation for a large-scale incursion into territory held by American-backed Syrian Kurds.
Possible discussion point 2: Assad claimed the Kremlin forced him to leave Syria after the rebels took Damascus. In his first statement since fleeing to Russia, Assad said he’d left Damascus and traveled to a Russian air base on Dec. 8 to “oversee combat operations,” but after drones targeted the base, Moscow ordered him to evacuate. “At no point during these events did I consider stepping down or seeking refuge, nor was such a proposal made by any individual or party,” he claimed in the statement, published on Telegram.
Possible discussion point 3: The International Federation of Journalists and more than 50 other civil society groups called on von der Leyen to condemn an “agent of influence bill” introduced last month in the Turkish parliament, saying it would stifle freedom of expression.
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — RENEW’S CORDON-JUMPING GUIDELINES: The European Parliament’s centrist Renew group — a former kingmaker now relegated to the EP’s fifth-largest force — has laid out a detailed set of instructions for when it’s OK to collaborate with lawmakers on the left and right extremes, and when it’s not. Max Griera got an exclusive look, and it turns out the cordon sanitaire is pretty permeable.
Said/unsaid: While the far-right Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations groups are generally verboten, there are some “acceptable” members of The Left and European Conservatives and Reformists, per the “non-paper” Max obtained. And while Renew doesn’t explicitly say so in the doc, the centrists have indicated Belgium’s Flemish nationalist NVA is acceptable, while Poland’s PiS is off limits.
ALSO FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — EURO PARTIES IN DEBT: Parliament bookkeepers are worried about the European umbrella parties’ accounts, according to a note signed by the secretary-general and also seen by Max. Four parties posted negative accounts at the end of 2023 ranging from €373 to around €370,000, “indicating a very weak financial situation,” the note reads, and raising “questions about the financial viability of some beneficiaries.” The Parliament press service did not clarify which parties the note referred to.
Ouch! The note also says there are “some shortcomings regarding the professional competency of certain beneficiaries to implement the funding.”
Opening the spigot anyway: Parliament has the right to withhold the parties’ allowance if their books are a mess. Nonetheless, the institution gave the green light on Monday to disburse the €45.4 million for 2025 to the 12 European parties.
Top 3 earners: European People’s Party with €12 million, the Party of European Socialists with €9.1 million and Patriots for Europe with €5.4 million.
HUNGARY GAMES
VDL HAS NO CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR ORBÁN: The Commission dashed Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán’s hopes of unblocking some of his country’s frozen funding in time for a pre-Christmas meeting of EU leaders, Gregorio Sorgi writes in to report.
What Budapest wanted: The Hungarian government hoped funds for the Erasmus student exchanges and Horizon research grants would be released after it proposed a law seeking to address risks of conflicts of interests in the boards of “public interest trusts” — bodies that control public universities.
Coal for Orbán’s stocking: The Commission announced on Monday that the Hungarian proposal was “not sufficient” and the cash will remain frozen in the Berlaymont’s vaults for the time being.
Won’t somebody please think of the children? The Hungarian government accused the Commission of using its students and researchers as pawns. “The motivation behind the decision is purely political,” the Hungarian government claimed in a statement, railing at what it described as “a discriminatory situation.”
That was the easy part: The research funding was supposed to be the lower-hanging fruit. The Commission continues to withhold a more consequential regional and post-Covid payout over Hungary’s breaches of the rules of law. Around a billion euros will be gone for good by the end of the year if Budapest doesn’t play ball.
SCANDAL SNACKS
REYNDERS DREW DOUBLE SUSPICION: Both the National Lottery and the Financial Information Processing Unit, an independent administrative authority under the Belgian justice and finance ministries, reported suspicions of money-laundering by former EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders, reports RTL.
NEW QATARGATE JUDGE: Judge Aurélie Dejaiffe, who took over the Qatargate probe from Michel Claise in 2023, is likely to step down from the case in the coming weeks as she prepares to join the Brussels court of appeals, according to Le Soir.
POLITICAL PERSONNEL
NO MERZY: Friedrich Merz, the frontrunner to succeed Olaf Scholz as German chancellor, launched a series of scathing attacks on the center-left Social Democratic Party and the Greens on Monday, accusing their leaders of humiliating the country and causing its economic decline. The twist: They’re the very people with whom he will likely have to govern, suggesting the next ruling coalition may be as incompatible as the last. James Angelos has the story.
Also running: The liberal FDP will announce its candidate for chancellor at 11:30 a.m. today. Our Berlin colleagues reckon Christian Lindner has it in the bag.
MEET THE ANTI-MACRON: François Bayrou, the founder of centrist party MoDem, couldn’t be more different from President Emmanuel Macron, report POLITICO’s Victor Goury-Laffont and Clea Caulcutt in a profile of France’s new prime minister.
Top tidbit: Macron was poised to appoint someone else as his PM last Friday, and invited Bayrou to the Elysée to inform him of the decision. But Bayrou threatened to stop supporting the president if he wasn’t given the job — and the weakened Macron had to cave. Read the story here.
MEANWHILE, IN SLOVAKIA … The love affair between Prime Minister Robert Fico and President Peter Pellegrini is over, reports Ketrin Jochecová.
A SPANIARD AS FRONTRUNNER TO LEAD EEAS? SpaniardBelén Martinez Carbonell has emerged as the frontrunner to replace Italian Stefano Sannino as secretary-general of the EU External Action Service, three diplomats told my colleagues Barbara Moens and Jacopo Barigazzi. She is currently EEAS’ managing director for global affairs.
The southern woman: Kaja Kallas wants a woman for the sec-gen job, diplomats say. Installing a Spaniard is also seen as a way for the EU’s new top diplomat to have the south represented in a defense-foreign affairs department that’s largely run by Balts (Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius is from Lithuania, Kallas is from Estonia). An EU official denied a decision has been taken, saying the “competition is ongoing.”
FREELAND BOMBSHELL: Canada’s Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland resigned from Justin Trudeau’s government on Monday, just hours before she was due to deliver a major speech. In a letter addressed to Trudeau, Freeland wrote: “For the past number of weeks, you and I have found ourselves at odds about the best path forward for Canada.”
Out of Cabinet — but not out of parliament: Freeland, who is well known in Brussels for her leading role in negotiating the EU-Canada trade deal as well as her time at the Financial Times, made clear she is not resigning her seat in parliament, and that she intends to seek another term. More here.
IN OTHER NEWS
2 MORE MIGRATION DEALS IN THE OFFING: Brussels is close to signing deals with Jordan and Morocco to reduce migration to the EU, Mediterranean Commissioner Dubravka Šuica told the FT. An agreement with Amman is “almost ready” and will be signed by Jordanian King Abdullah in Brussels at the end of January or early February (Commission President von der Leyen traveled to Jordan on Monday). Rabat will be the next cab off the rank, with Šuica saying that deal “is one of the most important ones.”
CONGO COMPLAINT: The Democratic Republic of Congo has filed criminal complaints against Apple in France and Belgium, accusing the tech firm of using conflict minerals in its supply chain, Reuters reports.
TIKTOK CEO MEETS WITH TRUMP AHEAD OF U.S. BAN: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew met with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Monday — the same day the social media firm asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the fight over the app’s federal ban. CNBC has the story.
NOW READ THIS: A Chinese spy scandal has engulfed the British establishment.
MILEI MILESTONE: Argentina’s economy emerged from a severe recession in the third quarter of 2024, after President Javier Milei implemented a series of controversial reforms. The FT has the story.