Mitsotakis in the US for the UN Security Council
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is travelling to the US on Thursday, where he will chair a high-level open discussion on maritime security being held next Tuesday, May 20, in the context of the Greek presidency at the United Nations Security Council.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/904201/Mitsotakis-in-the-US-for-the-UN-Security-Council
Mitsotakis, Erdogan to meet by early July
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are expected to hold a bilateral meeting in Ankara by early July as part of the next Greece-Turkey High-Level Cooperation Council (HLCC), diplomatic sources said.
Ministers of Greece, Israel, and Cyprus invite US to join next 3+1 meeting
The foreign ministers of Greece, Israel and Cyprus have jointly invited the United States to participate in the next ministerial meeting of the 3+1 format, aiming to further deepen regional cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Budget shows surplus of 1.866 billion euros in January-April
Greece’s state budget showed a surplus of 1.866 billion euros in January-April, the Ministry of National Economy and Finance announced on Thursday.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/904008/Budget-shows-surplus-of-1866-billion-euros-in-January-April
ATHEX: Stocks ease, coming off 15-yr highs
The Greek bourse dropped a gear on Thursday after the consecutive days of gains that had sent the benchmark to a 15-year high. Blue chips eased and turnover declined, but mid-caps continued to attract buyers’ attention and closed with small gains. The psychological level of 1,800 points, unseen since May 2010, remains within reach, while traders are also keeping an eye on the Fitch Ratings verdict on the Greek economy, expected late Friday.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1269847/athex-stocks-ease-coming-off-15-yr-highs
KATHIMERINI: Fog over Bosporus: low expectations regarding talks on the Ukrainian issue
TA NEA: No more trials regarding real asset disputes between the state and citizens
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Tempi rail crash: Cover-up nr. 5
RIZOSPASTIS: They are draining the people in favor of business groups’ profits and armaments
KONTRA NEWS: SYRIZA to sign a “civil partnership” agreement with the New Left
DIMOKRATIA: Applications for free camps for children
NAFTEMPORIKI: Listed companies’ profits prove durable
DRIVING THE DAY: ELECTION (RO)MANIA
SIMION’S CERTAIN OF HIS VICTORY. SHOULD HE BE? Call it superstition, humility or simple caution — even candidates without serious competition usually avoid acting too confident in the days before an election.
Not Romania’s George Simion.
“Quite settled,” is how the hard-right nationalist presidential contender described the race in Romania ahead of Sunday’s final, two-way vote. “I think it will be a landslide,” he said, speaking to POLITICO reporters on record in our Brussels newsroom on Thursday.
Let that sink in: Simion was in Brussels talking to a bunch of reporters four days before Sunday’s race in Romania. And before that, he was in Italy and Poland. And this is a guy running a Romania-first campaign.
Good reason for that 1: Much of the campaign is being waged online. Simion has skipped most of the formal debates, and hob-nobbing with the elite — whether it’s the MSM in Brussels or Giorgia Meloni, Mateusz Morawiecki and Marion Maréchal in Rome — gives him some legitimacy back home as he aspires to be head of state with no governing experience.
Good reason for that 2: The expat vote is a massive factor — about one in five voters live abroad — and Simion, of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), cleaned up in the first round. His recent stops in the U.K. and Italy (not to mention Belgium) were meant to target those voters.
Race tightens: Polling in Romania is notoriously dicey. Nonetheless, surveys show the other candidate, Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan, apparently closing the gap as voters seeking a more conventionally pro-Western candidate coalesce around their only alternative. Read more on the state of the race from Tim Ross, Andrei Popoviciu and Max Griera.
Trump (impersonator) endorsement: Dan is even making inroads with the expat vote. Sebastian Stan — the Romanian-American “Avengers” star who played Donald Trump in last year’s biopic “The Apprentice” — endorsed Dan on Thursday.
WHY CAN’T WE BE FRIENDS? Speaking to POLITICO, Simion did not rule out forming a coalition with any Romanian parties — even the Save Romania Union (USR), the party most closely associated with Dan. “They’re quite reformist,” he said, praising Dan’s anti-corruption platform.
Anti-establishment momentum: No matter who wins on Sunday, voters have already flatly rejected more established parties. Indeed, Simion’s complaints that Brussels is propping up the Romanian deep state by letting Bucharest skirt some rules reminded your Playbooker of an interview last year with the head of USR, who made a similar point.
Reality check: Even if there are some points of common ground, Simion’s vision of a “big union government” is a long shot. Max Griera explains.
SCOOP — BEHIND ROMANIA’S LOST VISA WAIVER: An internal White House memo obtained by POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman shows that the annulled election — seen as a betrayal of democratic norms — was a factor in the administration’s decision to reverse hard-won visa-free entry to the U.S. for Romanians. Read more in the NatSec daily newsletter.
WATCHING — VANCE IN EUROPE THIS WEEKEND: Amid completely unsubstantiated rumors that U.S. Vice President JD Vance might show up in Romania or Poland to campaign for right-wing candidates this weekend, his office offered up this grist: the Catholic convert will travel to Rome on Sunday for Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural mass, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Mass gathering: EU luminaries, including Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Parliament President Roberta Metsola, will also be there.
ELECTIONS, CONT’D
POLAND TO THE POLLS: Among Simion’s international stops was Poland. There, he was boosting the candidacy of Karol Nawrocki, an independent candidate backed by the arch-conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) ahead of Sunday’s first-round presidential elections.
Last chance for PiS: While the presidency doesn’t hold a lot of power in Poland, it does have veto power, which outgoing president Andrzej Duda has wielded to stall Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s overhaul agenda. Sunday’s vote could be the last chance for PiS to keep a foothold in Warsaw.
Big picture — regional realignment: Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski of Tusk’s Civic Platform is projected, at this point, to beat Nowrocki in an eventual two-man race that would be held on June 1.
Goodbye Visegrad … While the Polish race features a centrist battling against a MAGA-friendly populist, the dynamics in Poland are different from those in Romania, the Czech Republic and other countries in the region, said Andrzej Bobiński, managing director of Polish media outlet Polityka Insight, on this week’s edition of POLITICO’s EU Confidential podcast.
Goodbye Visegrad, hello Weimar: IfTrzaskowski wins, look for Poland to “start edging away” from the Central and Eastern European region, Bobiński said. Not only will Tusk flex his relationships with France and Germany through the Weimar triangle configuration, he said, but Poland’s posture will also increasingly resemble those of Baltic and Nordic countries. Listen and subscribe to EU Confidential here.
DON’T FORGET ABOUT PORTUGAL: Aitor Hernández-Morales has this guide to watching Sunday’s snap election like a pro.
POLITICO POLL OF POLLS LATEST AVERAGES: Romania | Poland | Portugal
EUROPEAN POLITICAL COMMUNITY, ALBANIA EDITION
EUROPE EYES THE E-WORD TO CRIPPLE PUTIN: A full-blown trade embargo against Russia is among the options as EU countries and their neighbors (including the U.K. and Ukraine) gather in Albania today for the sixth edition of the European Political Community.
Maximizing leverage: After Vladimir Putin ignored their pleas for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, EU and U.K. leaders are looking into ways to deliver a knockout blow to the Russian economy that would eclipse any previous round of sanctions, according to diplomats who spoke to Nick Vinocur, Clea Caulcutt, Esther Webber and Koen Verhelst.
Inspiration from a key Trump ally: The plan under discussion draws inspiration from a proposal by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has suggested hitting Russian exports with 500 percent sanctions if Putin doesn’t stop his attacks on Ukraine. He’s been in touch with European counterparts, including French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, in recent days.
The full Monty: The potential measures against Moscow could include tariffs against Russian exports going all the way up to a full trade embargo, two of the diplomats said.
With or without you: While some on the continent are skeptical that Graham will win President Trump’s support for sanctions against Russia, two of the diplomats said that Ukraine’s backers could move ahead with their own mega package without the U.S. Read more from Clea and Nick.
ALSO ON THE AGENDA, as 47 heads of state or government are expected in Albania:competitiveness and migration, comme d’hab.
WARNING SHOT: “Without reform, the European Political Community risks becoming irrelevant,” is the headline of an email from the European Policy Centre, a think tank, promoting a paper about enlargement and its discontents from last month.
Conflict of interest: Beyond the substance, it’s understandable that the 28-year-old think tank (EPC) would root against the three-year-old informal political configuration (EPC). In the Brussels equivalent of trying to make fetch happen, the EPC wants us all to abbreviate the conference as the EPoC, but it ain’t happening.
WILL TRUMP FINALLY SEE THROUGH PUTIN? Ukraine hopes the Russian president’s no-show at the peace talks in Turkey will convince the White House that Moscow is not serious about negotiating an end to the war it started three years ago, Jamie Dettmer writes.
SOFTENING SYRIA SANCTIONS: EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas is pushing a plan to loosen sanctions against Syria to allow aid for reconstruction and migration, Reuters reports.
TRADING BLOWS
GETTING AN IDEA OF WHAT WASHINGTON WANTS: The EU and U.S. have something to talk about, finally. After weeks — or, rather, months — of trying to find out what President Trump wants to achieve with his global tariff war, a letter landed in the European Commission’s inbox earlier this week.
Still vague: Several EU diplomats told my colleagues over at the Morning Trade newsletter that the document is still quite unspecific.
Happening today: That document is to be discussed at a technical level today by EU countries, as the Commission consolidates its response to the Trump administration. More for Pro Trade subscribers here.
WHAT THE EU DOESN’T WANT: Brussels won’t accept a U.K.-style tariff deal with Trump, ministers say.
PRIDE WEEK
RACE TO A MILLION: A petition calling on the Commission to outlaw so-called conversion therapy has a serious chance to reach the necessary threshold for consideration under the EU’s direct democracy program, thanks to a celebrity boost.
Under the wire: The campaign under the European Citizens’ Initiative has experienced a last-minute surge this week ahead of its May 17 deadline to reach the 1 million signatures (including a minimum number from at least seven states) required to compel the Commission to formally consider it.
Like an Angèle: “We thought we were screwed,” the petition’s organizer, Matteo Garguilo, a 21-year-old French university student, told Playbook’s Seb Starcevic. The petition had around 200,000 signatures at the start of the week and showed no signs of reaching its goal. But then Belgian singer Angèle shared it with her 4 million followers on Instagram, and it “exploded,” Garguilo said.
Make or break: Since then, the petition has hit minimum thresholds in the required seven countries and (as of writing) is nearing 700,000 signatures. Saturday — which is International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia — will be critical, Garguilo said. “Our goal is to focus this day on our campaign, make sure everybody talks [about] it, make sure everybody signs it … and make sure Angèle shares it again.”
PRIDE IN BRUSSELS: As Brussels pride week culminates on Saturday, a guide to the festivities, including the Belgian capital’s first dyke march, is here.
Special appearance: Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony will participate in Brussels Pride to protest Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s ban on the LGBTQ+ celebration in the Hungarian capital.
IN OTHER NEWS
GERMAN COALITION SPLIT ON DEFENSE: German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul’s surprising support for a dramatic increase in defense spending to 5 percent of GDP — in line with Donald Trump’s demands — is aggravating tensions in the new federal government in Berlin, with members of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) uneasy about the scope and speed of Germany’s rearmament. Chris Lunday and Jasper Bennink have the details.
WHILE YOU WERE DISTRACTED BY THE PFIZERGATE RULING: A right-wing majority, led by the center-right EPP, brought down an internal reform to allow the Parliament to participate in the EU ethics body. Read more in the EU Influence newsletter.
TRUMP’S PICK FOR EU ENVOY RESPONDS: Thursday’s Brussels Playbook mentioned U.S. Ambassador-designate Andrew Puzder had faced allegations of domestic violence — which he has consistently denied. In a letter, Puzder’s team argued those claims were said by his ex-wife to have been used “to gain leverage in [her] divorce proceedings,” and have been “repeatedly and forcefully retracted.” The team added that, despite European Parliament members complaining about the time taken for him to enter office, the nomination is proceeding “on a historically normal timeline with full White House support.”