Mitsotakis urges unity and warns against political exploitation ahead of Tempe anniversary protests
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis addressed the upcoming protests marking the anniversary of the Tempe railway disaster on Wednesday, urging respect for the victims’ memory while warning that political exploitation and division pose a risk to domestic stability.
Tsipras defends Tempe anniversary protests, accuses gov’t of suppressing dissent
Former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has defended the mass protests planned for Friday on the second anniversary of the Tempe railway disaster, while criticizing the conservative government for allegedly trying to frame the demonstrations as a politically driven effort to destabilize Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ administration.
Androulakis: The dualism of protests or justice promoted by the government is dangerous
PASOK Movement for Change leader Nikos Androulakis, speaking on Wednesday at an event organised by the party, stressed that “civil society is not protesting against Justice but in favour of Justice. It is not mobilised in favour of the opposition parties but in favour of truth and the rule of law.”
Police on alert ahead of Friday’s Tempi tragedy commemorative protests
The police will be on alert from Thursday across Greece and especially in Athens, Thessaloniki, and other major cities in anticipation of the rallies to be held on Friday on the two-year anniversary of the Tempi railway tragedy.
ATHEX: Local stocks recover some lost ground
The main index of the Greek stock market recovered the psychological 1,600-points mark on Wednesday, as it rose high enough to reclaim that significant milestone, mainly thanks to the market’s largest stock, Coca-Cola HBC.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1262731/athex-local-stocks-recover-some-lost-ground
KATHIMERINI: Trump opens front with the EU
TA NEA: Mitsotakis: There are no impasses in Democracy
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Special edition: The great rage train
RIZOSPASTIS: The people must oppose the system that is causing “asphyxiation”
KONTRA NEWS: Tension mounts throughout Greece in view of the Tempe rallies
DIMOKRATIA: Hellenic Train is hiding a video-document from the prosecutor
NAFTEMPORIKI: War drums from the USA with tariffs 25% on the EU
DRIVING THE DAY
RUBIO BLANKS KALLAS: Trump’s trade threats weren’t the only blow to the EU delivered in Washington Wednesday. An EU spokesperson said “scheduling issues” were to blame for a canceled meeting that was supposed to bring together U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas.
From Kallas to alas: As we reported Tuesday, Kallas had been expecting to deliver the message that no deal about Ukraine’s future will be feasible if it’s done without Kyiv or Brussels. “Therefore the U.S. also needs to work with us,” she said Monday. Apparently not.
When no one dials Europe: The new U.S. administration is trying to divide and conquer the countries of the EU rather than engage with it at the supranational level — where trade policy is formulated. Trump again moaned about a supposedly $300 billion trade deficit with the EU (the Commission says it’s only €48 billion, and leans in favor of the U.S. on services). Trump pointedly said last night he loves the “countries of Europe.”
Poles apart: Here’s a friendly photo of Rubio with Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski last weekend. No such photo op was afforded to Kallas Wednesday, and it took eight days for Rubio to speak to her after Trump’s inauguration. Commission chief von der Leyen has not met Trump yet, nor has she had a call apart from one in which she congratulated him. Trade chief Maroš Šefčovič is the only commissioner apart from Kallas to have traveled Stateside so far. Kallas and von der Leyen met U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Paris … before he made that speech in Munich.
TIME TO RELY ON MEPs: A cross-party bunch from the Parliament’s internal market committee is pressing the flesh in Washington this week to defend the EU’s new social media platform and AI laws — but they’re not exactly hearing positive things. “We don’t like the EU legislation, we think it’s against us,” is how Renew MEP Sandro Gozi summarized the messages he’s hearing from the new administration.
How to talk to MAGA: “We don’t want to be aggressive, we want to be firm,” Gozi told Playbook, about the way he and other MEPs are making their case.
Spit facts: Green MEP Anna Cavazzini told Max Griera: “We have also explained that regulating the EU market is the European lawmakers’ prerogative, as U.S. officials have at times subtly, sometimes more directly, expressed they want us to scrap regulation.”
HERE’S KEIR: British PM Keir Starmer jetted into Washington to have his own crack at convincing Trump he should think twice about abandoning Ukraine and making nice with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. On the flight to D.C., Starmer warned: “If there is a cease-fire without a backstop, it will simply give him the opportunity to wait and to come again.” (Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the EU issued similar warnings.)
JUST “SHUT UP”: One of Trump’s allies in Congress, Republican Dan Crenshaw, has a message for Europeans complaining about the administration’s new approach to Ukraine. He told POLITICO’s Power Play podcast: “Why don’t you take the $200 billion in frozen assets and actually seize them? Europeans are like, ‘Oh well, we can’t do that.’ Then shut up. That’s why you don’t have a seat at the table.” Listen here.
LOOKING FOR OTHER ALLIES: European commissioners will start arriving in India today for a big set-piece meeting with the government that kicks off in earnest Friday.
RUSSIA’S ALLIES: North Korea has sent around 1,000 additional troops to Russia since the beginning of the year, South Korean news agency YNA reporter overnight, citing military officials.
MEANWHILE, IN TURKEY TODAY: American and Russian officials will meet in Istanbul to discuss reinstating missions in each other’s countries, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
CLEAN INDUSTRIAL DEAL
TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE? The EU pitched a €100 billion short-term relief fund for the bloc’s ailing heavy industry on Wednesday, in a bid to help emissions-belchers transition to “clean” manufacturing, Zia Weise reports. (Zia, Marianne Gros and Karl Mathiesen also have this scoopy piece on how a rearguard weekend fight by senior Commission officials prevented the rollback of major green finance rules this week.)
Impact? Teresa Ribera did show up at a Clean Industrial Deal launch event in Antwerp … after Playbook pointed out that her impending absence was strange since she was in charge of the whole thing.
QUIP OF THE DAY: “In order to cut red tape and paperwork in the EU, the Commission today proposed 2 directive[s] and 1 regulation, opened consultation on 1 delegated act, published 2 staff working documents, and pledged to revise … reporting standards,” said MLex’s Jean Comte on Bluesky.
HEAVY INDUSTRY, HEAVY ATMOSPHERE: A year after they first gathered to sign the so-called Antwerp Declaration, Europe’s industrial titans and CEOs again descended on Antwerp on Wednesday to discuss the Clean Industrial Deal with Ursula von der Leyen. The Commission chief listened to a series of two-minute speeches for two hours straight, with the meeting held under Chatham House rules.
Fly on the wall: Polish MEP Michał Kobosko (Renew) was there, and told Playbook that though there were smiles all around, the big bosses “were not fully convinced.” Some industry leaders even said they were making plans to quit Europe and set up shop in Trump’s America. “What I heard was ‘it’s just too little, too slow and a bit too late,’” he said. Von der Leyen offered to return to Antwerp in a year.
BELGIUM’S NEW PM — “HISTORY CAN MOVE QUICKLY”: Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever had a triumphant debut on the EU scene at the event in Antwerp, hosting both Commission and corporate brass in his own city. Playbook’s Sarah Wheaton caught up with him on the sidelines of the Antwerp Declaration follow-up extravaganza and asked about the March 6 Council summit on European security in the Trump era.
Diversity and crisis don’t mix: “Decisions need to be made rapidly,” De Wever said. While Europe’s diversity is usually one of its strong points, it can be a weakness in a geopolitical crisis, he reckons. “But maybe we’re in a period where history can move quickly,” De Wever added. “Sometimes you live in years and nothing happens. And sometimes in a week, 10 years happen. Maybe we’re in such a time.”
CONSERVATIVE DAVOS
RIGHT ON TOP OF THE WORLD: High-level officials from the Trump administration will this weekend jet in to Saint Moritz, the lavish Swiss ski resort, to meet with representatives of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), the party’s President Mateusz Morawiecki told Max Griera over the phone Wednesday.
Who’s coming? Former Texas Governor Rick Perry is co-organizing the event with Morawiecki, the former Polish PM said. Morawiecki wouldn’t disclose other names, but an ECR official said European, American and British figures from the public and private sector will be there. The official billed the event as a “Conservative Davos.”
Sisters from another mister: The U.S. Republicans are an ECR partner party, and the Saint Moritz meeting is one of the ways the Europeans are trying to position themselves as a bridge to Trump’s America. With transatlantic relations at a low point, Morawiecki said it’s his “responsibility” to make his “American friends” understand why Europe needs time to increase defense spending; how the bloc is U-turning on the Green Deal and migration; and “why the decision-making process in Europe is much more complicated” than in the U.S. He said he’s in touch with American lawmakers and government “chiefs of staff” to convey his messages.
But things could get awkward: Trump’s harsh words for Zelenskyy and rapprochement with Putin don’t sit well among the ECR’s Russia hawks. “The form which President Trump is using might be shocking … but this is his negotiating tactic, this is his strategy,” Morawiecki insisted, arguing the Republican would continue to support Ukraine. He added that Europe must put itself “in the shoes of American taxpayers” and start paying for its own security.
BONUS INTERVIEW
THE EU OFFICIAL WHO SPEAKS 30+ LANGUAGES: Ioannis Ikonomou rocks up at the Berlaymont café in a Reebok t-shirt. The 60-year-old from Crete is annoyed that the European Commission — his employer — might ax the Maltese language class he’s taking because there are only four people in it. There aren’t many languages spoken in the EU that Ikonomou, who works as a translator, doesn’t speak. His Finnish is a bit rusty, he admits, and his Estonian and Irish are lacking. But other than that …
Super-polyglot: Ikonomou is one of the — if not the — foremost linguists in the EU civil service. He has his own Wikipedia page. He started his career in 1996, and interpreted the words of the likes of Felipe González, Helmut Kohl and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, before becoming a translator in 2002. In his present role, he transliterates protected foodstuffs known as geographical indications into Georgian and Armenian, among other tasks. “We have to do very exact legalese,” he said. He describes it as a “very good job.”
The Berlaymont as Babel: The Commission relies on him a lot. “I’m one of the few who uses non-EU languages, like Turkish, Ukrainian, Azeri, Russian, Armenian, Hebrew and Persian — and Japanese,” he said matter-of-factly. He also speaks Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish, German, French and Italian; he converses in Polish with his husband … the list goes on. The New Statesman profiled him as the man who speaks 32 living languages — but that was in 2015.
A gentleman never tells: Now Ikonomou is learning Croatian, Maltese, Wolof, Bengali and Aymara (a language spoken in the Bolivian Andes). He talks passionately about lesser-spoken languages that are at risk of disappearing, like Quechua. So how many languages does he speak? He won’t say. “It’s like sex,” he joked. “You don’t look at your watch.”
Language learning tips: “Try to stay first of all very interested in another culture. Fall in love with another culture, travel … and then automatically you’ll want to watch [for example] a French movie.” The trick is to make it a part of your daily routine.” Ikonomou likes to flick between Ukrainian TV channels reporting on Russia and Chinese stations talking about Taiwan. “I want to get first-hand information,” he said.
Not just words: “My life is also about activism,” he said, describing his “militantly humanist” upbringing on tourist-crowded Crete. “I see myself as a bridge-builder across cultures.” He said he often sits in cafés around Brussels Gare du Midi speaking Arabic and “teasing out stories,” or speaking to Afghans in Athens. Finally … he has to leave. He’s going to a friend’s house to practice his Argentinian Spanish.
GERMAN ELECTION FALLOUT
CDU MIMICS EPP: On Monday, just a day after their electoral victory, Germany’s conservatives submitted an inquiry to the Bundestag regarding the funding of NGOs, expressing concerns about their “political neutrality.”
According to the CDU-CSU conservative bloc, numerous NGOs backing and organizing protests against them “raises the question to what extent non-profit associations, which are also supported by tax money, can engage in party politics without jeopardizing their non-profit status.” The EPP, of which the CDU is a part, made similar complaints in January, when their lawmakers accused the Commission of paying NGOs to lobby for the Green Deal.
Activists and opposition parties push back: This move follows weeks of widespread protests over soon-to-be Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s willingness to engage with the far-right Alternative for Germany. Both the Left and Greens slammed the alliance for endangering democracy. Multiple NGOs, such as Greenpeace and a group called “Grandmas Against the Right,” denied the allegations. “This is a dubious political approach,” German MEP Sergey Lagodinsky (Greens) told Playbook’s Šejla Ahmatović. “These methods are not appropriate — especially not for a future governing party.”
IN OTHER NEWS
LISBON ON BOARD: Contrary to what was written in Tuesday’s Playbook, a senior Portuguese diplomat from the permanent representation noted that “Portugal fully supports the new Kallas initiative on military aid to Ukraine as it stands and will of course do its part as soon as the operational details of the initiative are ready for us to move on.”
SEJOURNÉ CLARIFIES RAW MATERIALS COMMENTS: Did the EU offer Ukraine a brand new minerals deal on Monday, or was it just re-upping the memorandum of understanding Brussels and Kyiv signed back in 2021? It was the latter, Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné indicated on Wednesday. “We already have an agreement with Ukraine on raw materials,” Séjourné said. “There’s no new deal, there is already a deal,” which can be used as the basis for more partnerships and projects, for example, one which could lead to 10 percent of the EU’s graphite coming from Ukraine.
Now read this: Trump might end up getting less than he bargained for with his own minerals deal with Ukraine, reports Giovanna Coi.
MR. OZEMPIC ADVISING DENMARK ON HANDLING TRUMP: Facing the threat of Trump tariffs, Danish PM Mette Frederiksen turned to Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, the CEO of Danish pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk — the maker of Ozempic and Wegovy — for advice. Mari Eccles has the inside story.
ROMANIAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE QUESTIONED: Călin Georgescu, the pro-Russian candidate who was favored to win the Romanian presidential election last year until it was canceled, was detained by police in Bucharest Wednesday. Prosecutors said they’ve opened a criminal investigation into alleged offenses committed during Georgescu’s campaign including “incitement to actions against the constitutional order, spreading false information, and false declarations” on campaign financing and asset disclosures. MAGA world is furious.
HOW CZECH-SLOVAK RELATIONS WENT SOUTH: Political relations between Czechia and Slovakia are at an all-time low, estranging the former Central European compatriots, reports my colleague Ketrin Jochecová in this interesting read.