Parliamentary preliminary investigation into Triantopoulos ends with ND proposal for an indictment
The ad hoc Parliamentary Preliminary Investigation Committee looking into the accusations against the former deputy minister Christos Triantopoulos, in connection with his handling of the crash site in the wake of the Tempi rail crash of 2023, formally concluded its work on Monday with the adoption of a report supported only by ruling New Democracy MPs, which made up the majority.
Internal disputes threaten Tempe report
A month after the release of the report by the Hellenic Air and Rail Accident Investigation Authority (HARSIA) on the deadly Tempe train crash of February 28, 2023, disagreements over the findings – particularly concerning the “fireball” phenomenon – are threatening to undermine the investigation’s credibility.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1266455/internal-disputes-threaten-tempe-report
Supreme Court prosecutor orders investigation into accident investigation agency’s report on Tempi
Supreme Court Prosecutor Georgia Adilini on Monday ordered the Athens First-Instance Court Prosecutors’ Department to conduct an urgent inquiry “into the conditions under which the Hellenic Aviation and Railway Accidents and Transportation Safety Investigation Agency’s (HARSIA) report on the Tempi rail crash, announced on February 27, 2025, included the conclusion which considered (citing the assistance of the universities of Ghent and Pisa) an unknown flammable liquid of at least 2.5 tonnes….as a possible cause of the fireball created immediately after the collision of the two trains.”
PM Mitsotakis: Greece is ready to face the new challenges
The Greek economy is ready to address the challenges arising from the sudden “change in the rules of the game” by the United States, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis underlined on Monday, while chairing the Government Economic Policy Council.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/895539/PM-Mitsotakis-Greece-is-ready-to-face-the-new-challenges
IMF praises Greek economy’s momentum, warns of inflation risks
The International Monetary Fund has lauded Greece’s robust economic recovery and the strengthened resilience of its banking sector, while cautioning that inflationary pressures, particularly from rising wages and service sector prices, remain a concern.
ATHEX: Biggest daily drop in over five years
The perfect storm in the global money markets has hit the Greek bourse hard, with Athinon Avenue suffering its biggest daily losses since the outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1266456/athex-biggest-daily-drop-in-over-five-years
KATHIMERINI: “Shadows” and chaos regarding the fireball scenarios linked to the deadly Tempe train crash
TA NEA: Total confusion in the USA: The 15 minutes of chaos
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Tempe case: The government cemented the crime scene and is burying its liability
RIZOSPASTIS: KKE amendments to restore bonus salaries and pensions for public employees and pensioners alongside debt relief measures for households
KONTRA NEWS: Turkey threatens with “hot incident”
DIMOKRATIA: Government propaganda: What Tempe tragedy? It never happened?
NAFTEMPORIKI: Investors’ trust collapses
DRIVING THE DAY: TRUMP’S ENERGY ENDGAME(?)
CONFUSED YET? U.S. President Donald Trump quickly dismissed Brussels’ offer for “zero-for-zero” tariffs. But in the Oval Office late Monday, he resurrected a different idea, one that the EU was already game to embrace: buying U.S. energy.
He makes it all sound so easy: “We have a deficit with the European Union of $350 billion and it’s gonna disappear fast,” Trump said. “One of the ways that that can disappear easily and quickly is they’re gonna have to buy our energy from us … they can buy it, we can knock off $350 billion in one week.” Zoya has the overnight write-up.
Didn’t we try that already? As my colleague Gabriel Gavin reported a week ago, Trump had already threatened the EU with tariffs if the bloc didn’t buy more American oil or gas. And Brussels took him seriously, with Commission President Ursula von der Leyen quickly proposing that the EU buy more American LNG. But those talks never got off the ground.
Back where we started: The question remains: Does Trump want to fundamentally change the economy, or just claim credit for scaring everyone into giving him great new deals?
A hint may lie in these two Trump comments from last night …
— “A lot of people say, ‘Oh, it doesn’t mean anything having a surplus.’ It means a lot, in my opinion. It’s almost like a profit or loss statement.”
— “Our country was the strongest from 1870 to 1913. You know why? It was all tariff-based. We had no income tax. Then in 1913, some genius came up with the idea of let’s charge the people of our country, not foreign countries that are ripping off our country.”
BEEF BEEF: In a FT op-ed, Trump trade guru Peter Navarro is still angry about the EU not accepting hormone-treated beef from the U.S. He also lamented “the use of ‘lawfare’ in places like the EU to target America’s largest tech firms.” (Reminder: The Commission is expected to announce its Apple and Meta fines any day now.)
Trump also took aim at the EU’s standards on Monday. “They make it impossible for you to sell a car … they make it so difficult, the standards and the tests,” Trump said, referring to the EU. “They come up with rules and regulations that are just designed for one reason: that you can’t sell your product in those countries. And we’re not gonna let that happen.”
Maybe Giorgia Meloni can kickstart negotiations. The Italian prime minister plans to visit Washington next week, Corriere della Sera reports — more on her in a bit. For now, a closer look at what the EU is cooking up in case this gas gambit is just more hot air from Trump.
TRADE WARCRAFT
WRITING THE RETALIATION LIST: The European Commission is considering slapping tariffs of up to 25 percent on a broad range of exports from the U.S. in response to tariffs imposed on steel and aluminum, according to an internal Commission document seen by POLITICO (first reported by Reuters and MLex).
The details: The EU executive wants to impose a 25 percent duty on a wide range of U.S. exports, including soybeans, sweet corn, rice, almonds, orange juice, cranberries, tobacco, iron, steel, aluminum, certain boats and vehicles, textiles and certain clothes, and various types of makeup. Camille Gijs and Giovanna Coi stayed up late translating long lists of product codes into this breakdown.
What’s not there: Bourbon and whiskey, as we noted above, in a political victory for France and Italy.
What happens now: National experts will have been poring over the list ahead of a technical meeting later today. The tariffs are likely to take effect in three phases:
— April 15 is when the first round of steel and aluminum countermeasures would take effect, Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told reporters, pending a Wednesday vote by EU capitals.
— May 16 is when most of the tariffs are expected to take effect.
— December is when duties for some goods (including almonds) kick off.
TRIGGER SHY: As Camille Gijs, Jakob Weizman and Giovanna Coi explain, the EU wants to create the impression of negotiating from a position of strength — while hoping that the financial market turmoil unleashed by Trump’s tariff broadside will sap his fighting spirit.
But EU capitals are divided over when, or even whether, to bust out the so-called trade bazooka. Read the full article.
CHINA VOWS “FIGHT TO THE END”: Beijing overnight said it “resolutely opposes” Trump’s threat of escalating tariffs, and pledged to “fight to the end” if the U.S. president follows through. The warning from China’s commerce ministry came after Trump said he would impose an additional 50 percent duty on American imports from China Wednesday if Beijing imposes its own 34 percent counter-tariff on the U.S. Write-up here.
Elon Musk personally asked Trump to scale back his plans for China tariffs, the Washington Post reported overnight. No such luck. But Trump administration officials are considering creating a new tax credit, issued at the end of the year, to offset the effects of other countries’ retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exporters, Bloomberg reports.
NOW READ THIS: “How ugly is this going to be?” POLITICO’s top policy reporters weigh in on where Trump’s tariffs may be headed.
EYE ON ITALY
INSIDE MELONI’S MIND: Among the EU countries most reluctant to hit hard and fast back at Trump is Italy. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani even went so far as to float delaying the rollout of the EU’s countermeasures on steel and aluminum, suggesting pushing them to April 30 instead of April 15.
Against the tide: As Ben Munster writes in to report, that’s hardly the only area where Giorgia Meloni and her ministers are upending Europe’s efforts to present a united front. Most prominently, Meloni recently distanced herself from EU calls for bloc-wide rearmament, insisting that U.S. security guarantees still carry water.
Demise, greatly exaggerated: As Ben reported last week, the push for reconciliation by Rome reflects a deep skepticism — or, as one diplomat put it, “naïveté” — around claims by other European nations that the transatlantic alliance, and the old economic world order undergirding it, are not long for this world. Speaking to POLITICO, Italian officials appeared to sincerely believe that the alliance could still be saved, and played down the severity of the rift with the U.S.
“Unstoppable” NATO: “We believe in NATO: the strongest military alliance that exists and with an unstoppable ability to deter,” Nicola Procaccini, a leading MEP in Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, told Max Griera last month.
Special co-dependence: Even more so than France and Germany, Italian officials point out, Italy’s economy and military are inextricably integrated with those of the U.S. Italy has Europe’s second-largest trade deficit with the U.S. (and far less economic might than Germany).
It also has the second-largest number of American military bases on its soil, as well as U.S. nukes (unlike the more strategically independent France).
Anti-French insurance: “Italy needs this to keep the U.S. onside, and to not be in hands of France,” said one senior official. “We know as Italians that we are far away from the strength of being a credible force.” Given that Italy “depends so much on” the U.S., the official added, European rearmament plans are “not realistic” for the short and medium-term.
BOTTOM LINE: All European leaders agree that a breakup with the U.S. would be a phenomenal blow to EU prosperity and security. But in Rome, the true extent of the fallout doesn’t appear to have yet sunk in.
CIVIL SOCIETY UNDER FIRE
COMMISSION FAULTED FOR WEAK MONITORING OF NGO FUNDING: The European Court of Auditors’ latest audit slams the Commission’s “opaque” monitoring of how EU funds are distributed to NGOs.
Killer timing: It’s adding fuel to a raging fire as players on the political right in Brussels, Berlin and Budapest aim to cast a harsh glare on the work of civil society. In the European Parliament, a push to overhaul the way EU money is doled out to NGOs is fueled by concerns the funding lacks transparency and is often used to lobby EU institutions — criticisms echoed in the report.
Executive summary: The ECA looked at EU funding awarded to 90 NGOs over 2021-2023, worth over €7 billion. Its determination: The EU is doling out billions without conducting proper due diligence to check how the money is being spent and if the entities getting it even qualify as NGOs (it found some groups with government ties classified as NGOs, for example).
No problems — yet: The ECA found no evidence of NGOs using EU funds in a way that breached Union law or values — including via advocacy or lobbying work paid for with EU money — but warned the risk of this happening was higher because of the lack of transparency. Full coverage from Louise Guillot here.
RIGHT ON CUE: The nonprofit sectors’ top critics in Brussels seized on the findings. Dutch EPP MEP Dirk Gotink said the auditors’ complaints, which he outlined in an X thread, would be “important input” for an investigation by the Parliament’s budgetary control panel. The chair of that committee, the German EPP MEP Niclas Herbst, highlighted the Commission’s failure to verify NGO details in the Financial Transparency System in his statement.
Team Orbán vs. the auditors: Frank Furedi, head of the Hungarian think tank MCC Brussels, said in a statement the findings are “yet another indication of how power and resources are monopolised by a few favored players.” Then MCC’s press release went on to attack ECA’s “perfunctory and lethargic” recommendations for improvement, noting that things like “risk-based certification of recipients’ values” aren’t called for until 2028, and key improvements to the Financial Transparency System aren’t due until 2029.
Worth noting: The ECA member in charge of this report, Laima Andrikienė, is herself a former EPP MEP.
NGOs ON DEFENSE: Ahead of the auditors’ report, Civil Society Europe published a statement signed by 570 NGOs decrying the “unprecedented attack” coming from “certain” MEPs and “fuelled by disinformation.”
“This renewed offensive on funding for CSOs and on our legitimacy in the democratic process risks not only shrinking European civic spaces further but weakening democracy as a whole,” the statement reads.
Claiming vindication: “The bottom line is that there is no scandal. Only a clear need to strengthen transparency,” said Patrizia Heidegger, policy director at the European Environmental Bureau, one of Brussels’ largest environmental NGOs. Heidegger will be among the participants in a press conference where civil society groups will launch their defense today.
MORE FIREWORKS: The issue could be a factor in the budgetary control committee’s vote today to discharge the Commission’s 2023 budget.
MORE TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS
WILL ANYONE MEET WITH THESE VISITING AMERICANS? That’s the question, as the European Parliament’s administration is scrambling to find MEPs available to get together with a bipartisan delegation of 10 American lawmakers later this week.
The problem: The members of the U.S. House of Representatives are in Brussels on a Friday before a so-called green week when the Parliament isn’t in session.
Caught short: The visit was announced on such short notice last week that many lawmakers will either be gone for the Easter holiday, visiting their constituencies or on other official missions.
Brussels reality: Officially, the green week runs from April 14-18. Unofficially, it starts on the evening of Thursday, April 11, when lawmakers close up shop.
Notable timing: This marks the first visit of its kind since Trump took office, much less since he launched a full-scale trade war. The delegation from the House Democracy Partnership — a group of lawmakers promoting democracy worldwide — also comes at a time when the U.S. has curtailed funding to key independent media and NGOs devoted to that very mission in Europe and across the world.
Closed for holidays: The only heavy-hitter confirmed is European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, according to a program seen by POLITICO. The co-chairs of the Democracy Support and Election Coordination group (the U.S. delegation’s natural counterparts), Barry Andrews and David McAllister, can’t host the Americans since both are out of town.
Ships passing: McAllister, ironically, is on a mission to Washington to salvage transatlantic ties. Also the chair of the foreign affairs committee, he joins trade committee Chair Bernd Lange and Brando Benifei, chair of the parliamentary delegation to the U.S., on a three-day trip to Washington starting Wednesday. They will meet with their counterparts and officials from the State Department.
U.S. guest list: Republicans Vern Buchanan, Neal Dunn, Anna Paulina Luna, Kevin Hern and Claudia Tenney; Democrats Dina Titus, Lloyd Doggett, Robin Kelly, Ted Lieu and Ilhan Omar.
HOPE THEIR VISIT GOES BETTER THAN THIS ONE: The Washington Examiner reports that a senior member of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s security detail was arrested in Brussels last week after becoming aggressive with Hotel Amigo staff when they refused to extend their bar’s opening time, and fighting with police who arrived to deal with the ruckus, Joe Stanley-Smith writes in to report.
Pro tip: Motel One’s bar is open 24 hours.
PARTY POLITICS
GROWING UNEASE WITH EPP’S FAR-RIGHT FLIRTATION: Andrzej Halicki, head of the powerful Polish EPP delegation in the European Parliament, has a message for group chief Manfred Weber: Pursuing cheap thrills with the far right is putting our centrist marriage at risk. Read the full article from Max Griera on how the existential debate within the EPP is bursting out into the open.
UNITY BEHIND WEBER, IN ANY CASE: Even as MEPs second-guess Weber’s leadership, he remains unchallenged as head of both the EPP group and the pan-European political party of the same name. Halicki told Max he expects to support Weber for another term as EPP president when the party gathers later this month in Valencia. “I don’t see any alternative,” Halicki said, adding that the congress should “show our unity, strength.”
Subtext: Though hardly heartfelt, that expression of support for Weber from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s man in Parliament might explain why EPP Secretary-General Thanasis Bakolas, isolated in his effort to discredit Weber, told the FT he’s starting a consulting firm rather than looking to keep his job in Valencia.
**The Copenhagen Democracy Summit, happening on May 13/14, will address these dangerous times and develop new ideas to strengthen Europe’s ability to protect and project freedom and democracy. Freedom is not free, but the cost of inaction is unthinkable. Join us – in the defence of democracy.**
IN OTHER NEWS
SHE’S FIRED: Donald Trump fired Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield, one of the top U.S. military officers at NATO headquarters in Brussels, my Stateside colleagues report.
THEY’RE FIRED: Huawei fired two employees and suspended a third for their alleged involvement in the bribery investigation surrounding the Chinese technology giant and the European Parliament, my colleague Mathieu Pollet reports.
AI PLANS: The European Commission will launch a new “AI Continent” plan on Wednesday, in which it will seek to make its artificial intelligence rules more palatable to companies as they scramble to adapt to the new U.S. tariffs, Pieter Haeck reports.
BABIŠ WARNING: Czech election front-runner Andrej Babiš is a European security risk who’s promoting Russian propaganda, the country’s Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský told Ketrin Jochecová and Jakob Weizman.
NO HONEYMOON FOR MERZ: German chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz has yet to begin his new job, but he’s already in trouble, reports James Angelos. The incoming leader is facing slumping approval ratings and a barrage of criticism from conservatives who say he’s caved to the center-left Social Democratic Party during coalition talks.