Asylum freeze shows results, Plevris tells Parliament
Migration Minister Thanos Plevris defended during a speech to Parliament the three-month suspension of asylum applications for migrants entering Greece illegally by sea from North Africa.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1279165/asylum-freeze-shows-results-plevris-tells-parliament
Athens seeks progress in maritime delineation talks with Libya
Greece has extended an open invitation to Libya to resume long-stalled talks on maritime zones, with technical committees expected to meet by October, Greek officials said.
PM Mitsotakis in Thessaloniki for meetings on Thursday, ahead of TIF
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will travel to Thessaloniki on Thursday, ahead of the Thessaloniki International Fair, and meet successively with rectors of public universities, and productivity and scientific agencies of northern Greece.
Androulakis: At TIF, we will propose measures that will make our democracy more robust
Main opposition PASOK-Movement for Change leader Nikos Androulakis stated in an interview with SKAI TV on Wednesday that there is another path for the country, not just the policy pursued by the New Democracy government. He announced that at the Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF), as leader of the main opposition, he will present PASOK-Movement for Change’s alternative proposal.
ADEDY on 24h strike on Thursday
The Civil Servants Federation (ADEDY) has declared a nationwide strike for Thursday, August 28, 2025, expressing its opposition to the introduction in Parliament’s plenary session of the bill concerning the disciplinary law for civil servants.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/928343/ADEDY-on-24h-strike-on-Thursday
KATHIMERINI: The ruckus at Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt’s Sinai and the role of Cairo
TA NEA: The end of livestock breeding: 206,000 sheep vanished in 12 months
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Bank of Greece to accelerate auctions of indebted households‘ assets
RIZOSPASTIS: Bill on migration: suppression for the victims of imperialistic wars intensifies
KONTRA NEWS: Instead of Ukraine, France will be under IMF’s control
DIMOKRATIA: IIlegal immigrants will be jailed
NAFTEMPORIKI: The prerequisites for extra support measures
DRIVING THE DAY: TALKING DEFENSE IN COPENHAGEN
EU TRIES TO TURN SCREWS ON MOSCOW: EU ministers will descend on Copenhagen today with one goal in mind: Putting pressure on Russia via a one-two punch of sanctions and support for Ukraine.
To Russia, without love: Defense and foreign ministers are gathering for their twice-yearly informal meeting, with dinner tonight, a defense ministerial Friday and a foreign ministers’ meeting Saturday.
The logic: An EU diplomat told POLITICO the meetings aim to increase the pressure on Russia, showing Moscow that continuing the war makes no sense. Translation: Europe’s doing its best in the face of a security policy buffeted by which way the wind is blowing in Washington.
Dinner’s not all that’s on the table: Top of mind will be discussions around post-war security guarantees for Ukraine — especially now that the U.S. is reportedly willing to contribute air and intelligence support — and the bloc’s next sanctions package against Russia. Ministers will be briefed and share views on the guarantees, which are formally discussed in the “coalition of the willing” format that includes the U.K. and Ukraine, the diplomat said.
Time to double down: David McAllister, who will attend the foreign ministers’ meeting in his capacity as chair of the European Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told Playbook “this is the moment to double down, not to ease off.” McAllister said Russian leader Vladimir Putin is “a strategist who plays for time [and is] waiting for Western resolve to weaken or for political attention to move elsewhere.”
Resistance isn’t futile: Keeping the pressure on Russia from both Europe and the U.S. is “so crucial,” McAllister said. “Sanctions must be tightened, Russia’s evasion exposed, and military support for Ukraine sustained.”
While we’re on sanctions: My colleague Jacopo Barigazzi scooped the Danish presidency’s discussion paper on the EU’s next round of sanctions. The Danes want ministers’ input on how to “further hamper Russia’s war-financing ability and warfare capability.”
Up for discussion: The Danes are floating fresh sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas export revenues and the finance sector, including crypto. They’re also discussing deploying a never-used tool which can ban exports to non-EU countries deemed to be at high risk of sanctions circumvention. POLITICO Pros can read the full story here.
About those security guarantees: Talks on the contours of post-war guarantees to stop Moscow from invading Ukraine again will dominate corridor chats at the gathering, the EU diplomat said. Topics like which neutral third country could provide peacekeeping troops to patrol a future demilitarized zone are expected during those sideline chats, the official said.
Are guarantees feasible? It’s “too early to make concrete proposals,” but European leaders have been “very clear” on the importance of the guarantees, McAllister said. Washington’s role in determining Ukraine’s future “remains indispensable,” he added, with the recent flopped Trump-Putin summit in Alaska “a reminder of how fragile the situation remains.”
Meanwhile, in Moscow: Russia on Wednesday rejected the idea of European peacekeeping troops serving in Ukraine — contradicting Trump’s claim that Putin would accept them under a peace deal. POLITICO opinion editor Jamie Dettmer unpacks Putin’s reluctance for a summit.
Don’t expect decisions: Because they’re “informal” gatherings, the meetings are more of a talking shop than a place to make concrete decisions, but that doesn’t make them write-offs. This week’s talks will “set the tone for Europe’s security and defense agenda for the months ahead,” McAllister said. “Especially at stake is whether Europe shows it is capable of sustaining support for Ukraine.”
EXPLAINING THE OVAL OFFICE BLOW-UP: Meanwhile, U.S. Vice President JD Vance said his February Oval Office shouting match with Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn’t actually about the Ukrainian president. “What frustrated me far more” than Zelenskyy asking the U.S. for help, Vance told USA Today on Wednesday, “was that the Biden administration had no plan for how to end the war.”
On peace talks, Vance said, “we’re pretty aligned with President Zelenskyy. Even though we have some disagreements, we, of course, want to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity. We don’t want Russia to conquer the entire country.” Well that’s encouraging.
TRADE TURMOIL
EU THREATENS TO TEAR UP TRADE DEAL OVER TECH THREATS: The EU-U.S. trade deal between will “have to be reviewed” if Trump is serious about his latest demand for Europe to deregulate its tech sector, the Commission’s industrial chief Stéphane Séjourné said Wednesday.
Macron goads Brussels on: French President Emmanuel Macron told his ministers at Wednesday’s weekly Cabinet meeting that the EU should consider retaliatory measures against the U.S. digital sector in response to Trump’s threat, according to a senior French government official. My colleagues Clea Caulcutt and Camille Gijs report that a person close to Macron confirmed exploring possible retaliation against U.S. digital players was indeed “his stance.” Read their scoop here.
WILL THE DEAL FLY WITH THE EP? The European Parliament’s support for the EU-U.S. trade deal agreed last week isn’t guaranteed, as my Morning Trade colleagues report. MEPs are waiting to weigh in on the text as the Commission scrambles to present the proposal to remove tariffs on U.S. industrial and non-sensitive agricultural goods this month. (It needs to do that for Washington to retroactively decrease levies on European cars from 27.5 percent to 15 percent from Aug. 1.)
Not so fast: The Parliament’s trade committee Chair Bernd Lange said “there are disagreements about what the exact reduction in numbers should look like, particularly in the agricultural sector,” adding that the issue of how the deal would be implemented and for how long was holding up talks.
French lawmaker Marie-Pierre Vedrenne from the Renew group said the Parliament is “very divided” and “reason” may not always prevail. “Some have said” that MEPs should reject the Commission’s proposal, she added.
EPP on board: But European People’s Party boss Manfred Weber told reporters in Berlin Wednesday that his party “stood by” the “painful but right” agreement struck by Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen with Trump. “The alternative, to start a veritable trade war with the United States in these times, was not an option,” he said.
WHILE WE’RE ON WEBER: He, along with car lobby ACEA, is pushing to overturn the EU’s 2035 ban on internal combustion-engine cars. “The best thing would be to give people an incentive to buy a modern combustion engine car and retire their old one,” he said. More in Morning Mobility.
FRANCO-GERMAN RESET
FRESH START: Friedrich Merz will arrive at Fort de Brégançon this evening for dinner with Emmanuel Macron, ahead of Friday’s Franco-German ministerial council in Toulon. It’s all in the name of improving relations, which got decidedly frosty during Olaf Scholz’s chancellorship, as my colleague Hans von der Burchard reports in today’s Berlin Playbook.
Take that, Olaf: The get-together at the French president’s official summer retreat isn’t just any soirée — it’s what the Elysée called a “special gesture.” It’ll be only the third time a German chancellor has scored an invite, after Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel. The message: Paris and Berlin are besties again after Merz took over from Scholz. Très chic, très diplomatique.
Reality check: But while Merz and Macron make nice over dinner, their negotiating teams are likely to still be grappling over significant issues ahead of the ministerial council. The plan is to come up with roadmaps for energy, industry, space and tech, but nuclear energy, the embattled FCAS fighter jet program and the EU’s long-delayed trade pact with the Mercosur trade bloc are all harshing the good vibes. (On the fighter jets, at least, they’re kicking the can down the road to the end of the year.)
Plus, there’s the tiny point of the French government being on the brink of collapse. If that happens, it would drag France into a dangerous abyss, Prime Minister François Bayrou warned in a TV interview last night, saying “the life of the nation is at stake.” Bayrou called the Sept. 8 confidence vote over his unpopular €43.8 billion budget squeeze, which is designed to bring down France’s massive deficit.
Nothing if not optimistic: Although major opposition parties say they’ll vote to bring down the government, Bayrou reckons he’ll talk some of them around. “The political parties who said they would topple the government, I’m sure that in the next 12 days, they might say we spoke a bit quickly,” he said. Clea Caulcutt has the write-up.
So much for the reset: While Macron isn’t directly affected by the vote, the collapse of yet another government would weaken him further — a prospect that has lowered expectations for the ministerial council.
Right on cue: France’s largest opposition party, the far-right National Rally, is demanding Macron call a new election or resign if Bayrou’s government collapses. Macron’s unlikely to quit, but he’s keeping his cards close to his chest and warning his closest allies to “be ready,” as our Paris colleagues Victor Goury-Laffont and Anthony Lattier report in this story.
MEANWHILE, OVER IN BERLIN … Merz’sCabinet on Wednesday approved a major reform of military service, requiring 18-year-old men to register in a new selection system while keeping actual service voluntary. But the conservatives aren’t giving up on conscription, Chris Lunday reports, with lawmakers plotting to introduce changes when the bill comes before parliament.
VDL’S NOT RUNNING: Ursula von der Leyen is “not available” to run in the German presidential elections in 2027, Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho said, after media reports that she’d be a serious contender. Euronews has more here.
MIDDLE EAST LATEST
EU GAZA LETTER: Some 209 former EU and member state ambassadors and senior officials signed an open letter calling for EU action over Israel’s war in Gaza ahead of the foreign ministers’ meeting in Copenhagen.
ISRAEL SAYS NO TO PALESTINIAN STATE: Asked what the plan was for creating a Palestinian state, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said there would not be one. Reuters has a write-up.
IRAN SANCTIONS: The U.K., France and Germany are likely to begin the process of reimposing U.N. sanctions on Iran today, diplomats told Reuters.
IN OTHER NEWS
MICALLEF IN MOLDOVA: Culture Commissioner Glenn Micallef will meet with Moldovan President Maia Sandu next Tuesday and sign a pact admitting the EU candidate country to Creative Europe, the bloc’s flagship culture and audiovisual funding program, an official told my colleague Seb Starcevic.
EU solidarity: Micallef’s planned trip comes hot on the heels of the leaders of France, Germany and Poland, who converged on Chișinău in a show of European solidarity designed to keep the tiny country from falling under the Kremlin’s sway before it can join the EU fold. More on that here.
BRETON AND FARAGE CALLED IN TO WASHINGTON: You don’t often hear their names in the same sentence, but there you have it: former European Commissioner Thierry Breton and Brexiteer-in-chief Nigel Farage have been called as witnesses to a hearing on free speech by a U.S. Congress committee, Eliza Gkritsi and Océane Herrero report for Pros.
U.S. GREENLAND DIPLO SUMMONED OVER SPYING CLAIMS: Denmark summoned the top U.S. diplomat in Copenhagen on Wednesday after Danish media reported that Americans with ties to Trump carried out covert influence operations in Greenland.
GIRM STAT: One in five Europeans will retire in poverty without urgent reform, the EU’s workplace pensions regulator warns.
GOT A SPARE 500M? Then you might be in luck — Berlusconi’s bunga bunga Sardinian villa is on the market.
TOP READ — HOW OVERTOURISM IS HOLLOWING OUT ITALIAN CITIES.
WHO’S COMING TO XI’S PARADE: Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un will be among 26 foreign heads of state or government to attend a massive military parade in Beijing marking Japan’s surrender in World War II, the Chinese foreign ministry said. Reuters write-up here.