PM: US cooperation welcome, pacts upheld
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Friday that Greece welcomes cooperation with the US but stressed that international agreements must be respected, including those involving past Chinese investments in Greek ports. Speaking at the New Economy Forum in Singapore, Mitsotakis addressed the growing US-China rivalry and its impact on strategic infrastructure in Greece. “We have already signed agreements… that prove we can shape win-win arrangements without questioning investments that were made in the past and whose structure must be respected,” he said.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/foreign-policy/1287552/pm-us-cooperation-welcome-pacts-upheld
Farmers decide to blockade roads, ports
Farmers gathered in the central Greek city of Larissa have decided to attempt blockades on national roads, customs points and ports, starting on November 30. The blockades will gradually put in place until December 5, they said Sunday.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1287680/farmers-decide-to-blockade-roads-ports
Eligible farmers receive sums totaling 46 million euros from OPEKEPE
Greece’s national Agency for the Payment and Control of Guidance and Guarantee Community Aid (OPEKEPE) on Saturday announced that it has made additional payments amounting to 46 million euros in total to 82,870 farmers for subsidies applied for in 2024. The money was paid directly to the bank accounts of eligible recipients.
Pierrakakis: State support package starting on Monday to amount to 2.5 billion euros over the coming months
Payments of around 600 million euros in state support will begin on Monday, covering 2.4 million citizens, the national economy and finance ministry announced on Sunday. As per an earlier announcement by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, from November 24 the government will distribute a permanent 250-euro allowance to more than 1.4 million pensioners, uninsured elderly people and disability-benefit recipients. Couples in which both partners meet the criteria will automatically receive 500 euros.
ATHEX: Week ends marginally positive
Banks were unable to push the main index of the Greek stock market higher on Friday, but a number of other index-heavy blue chips ensured the weekly result at Athinon Avenue swung from negative to positive right at the end of the week. Trading volume may have eased, but overall it has managed to maintain a very satisfactory level that until one or two years ago would have been considered exceptionally high.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1287540/athex-week-ends-marginally-positive
SUNDAY PAPERS
KATHIMERINI: Cold war regarding ports and infrastructure
TO VIMA: Electoral dilemmas and post-election concerns
REAL NEWS: New “cutter” ahead for AirBnB
PROTO THEMA: Seven great changes regarding wills and inheritances
MONDAY PAPERS:
TA NEA: Tsipras’ book: retrospective
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: What Tsipras is writing in his book about his former comrades
KONTRA NEWS: National roads, ports and customs offices to be blocked by farmers
DIMOKRATIA: Wage increases of 13% to 53% for servicemen
NAFTEMPORIKI: “Storming” rhythm for the payment of state debt
DRIVING THE DAY: RED LINES ON UKRAINE
EU LEADERS HUDDLE IN AFRICA FOR URGENT UKRAINE TALKS: European Union leaders are set to be briefed this morning on the state of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine after a weekend of fast-moving talks in Geneva, Switzerland, that were light on specifics but left officials feeling more upbeat about the prospects for peace.
Getting on the same page: European Council President António Costa said Sunday he was calling EU27 leaders to a special meeting about Ukraine on the sidelines of an EU-Africa Summit that kicks off today in Angola (more on that below). Fifteen leaders will gather in Luanda while the rest tune in via videoconference for a download on what was discussed during the weekend in Geneva, per an EU official on site in Angola. It follows an emergency Coreper gathering last night in Brussels.
Let’s recap: Ukrainian and American officials huddled in Geneva on Sunday with national security advisers from France, Germany and the U.K. to discuss the American peace proposal that has alarmed Kyiv and its European allies. Bjoern Seibert and Pedro Lourtie, the heads of cabinet for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Costa respectively, were also there. (A Commission spokesperson confirmed their presence after it was first reported by POLITICO’s Tim Ross.)
Productive day: After a head-spinning array of statements and leaks — including differing reports of a European counter-proposal — the U.S. and Ukrainian representatives declared in a joint statement that they had made “meaningful progress toward aligning positions and identifying clear next steps.” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday was “probably the most productive day we have had on this issue” — although details were scarce.
Europe feeling buoyed: Several EU diplomats said Ukraine and Europe emerged strengthened from the talks in Geneva, having often been left out of the loop during Trump’s attempts to broker an end to the conflict. Now they’re at the negotiating table and being heard, the Europeans are feeling more upbeat about the course of discussions. Rubio told EU and NATO counterparts their security concerns would be taken into account in any peace deal, per an EU diplomat who spoke to my colleague Hans von der Burchard.
Another positive: Rubio indicated that Trump’s deadline of Thanksgiving (Nov. 27) for Kyiv to accept the peace plan was flexible. “Obviously we’d love it to be Thursday,” he told reporters. “Whether it’s Thursday, whether it’s Friday, whether it’s Wednesday, whether it’s Monday of the following week — we want it to be soon.”
Taking, not asking: An EU diplomat told Playbook that Europe’s voice is being heard more now because the bloc’s leaders are taking a more assertive stance and because Europe is now footing most of the bill for Ukraine — and holds the key to its financial future. “You don’t get a seat at the table. You take a seat at the table. That’s what we’ve done,” the diplomat said.
Red lines: Underscoring this new approach, Ursula von der Leyen didn’t wait for a consensus position from the Council to lay out her red lines for ending the war in Ukraine. In a statement Sunday, she insisted that Ukraine’s borders not be changed by force, that Kyiv shouldn’t be made to reduce its armed forces in a way that leave it open to attack, and announced a conference on returning abducted Ukrainian children to their homes.
In case it wasn’t clear, von der Leyen also emphasized “the centrality of the European Union in securing peace for Ukraine.”
View from Berlin: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also sought to draw a hard line, telling DW in an interview Sunday that Europe wouldn’t support a plan that compromised Ukraine’s sovereignty and that Trump’s Thanksgiving deadline was unrealistic. “We are now trying to implement an intermediate step until Thursday,” Merz told the German broadcaster.
Meanwhile … an EU official and diplomats contacted by Playbook declined to endorse the 28-point “counter-proposal” prepared by the E3 powers (Germany, France and the U.K.) published by several media outlets on Sunday. The document was “already outdated,” one EU official texted Playbook. Rubio professed ignorance when asked about it by reporters: “What counterplan? I haven’t seen any counterplan.”
THE LOAN ANGLE: A crucial point for the Europeans is what becomes of plans to use Russia’s frozen assets to finance Ukraine next year. Washington’s original 28-point plan reported by Axios essentially demanded that the assets be put to use for American profit. The European official cited above rejected that idea, saying “nothing can be done on assets or sanctions without the EU.”
Pressure makes diamonds: The pressure from Trump could spur the Europeans to reach a decision on the frozen assets. “Sometimes the really hard decisions are only taken when your back is against the wall,” said the EU diplomat.
EU-AFRICA SUMMIT
CHINA RIVALRY, COLONIAL HISTORY LOOM OVER EU-AFRICA SUMMIT: The seventh EU-Africa Summit, which kicks off in Luanda today with multiple European leaders and the heads of the Commission and Council in attendance, is taking place amid an intense rivalry between the EU and China for influence and access to raw materials in the region.
With Beijing already well entrenched and the EU grappling with its members’ history of colonial exploitation, the Union is eager to portray itself as a partner, not an exploiter. In comments shared with Playbook ahead of the gathering, Council President António Costa leant heavily on the words “multipolar,” “cooperation” and “partnership” to signal that Europe has truly overhauled its approach.
“The challenges we face today — climate change, digital transformation, migration, security — know no borders,” Costa said in the written remarks. “The prosperity and security of Europe and Africa are intertwined … The EU is Africa’s first trading partner, contributing one third of Africa’s total trade,” he said in the written remarks.
A new approach: Speaking to reporters ahead of the meeting, a senior EU official doubled down on that theme, insisting that the bloc wants “to focus on the sustainable development of value chains. This is not about extraction only.”
What to expect: Commission President von der Leyen is expected to announce in Luanda that the EU is on track to exceed a target of investing €150 billion in Africa via the Global Gateway initiative — a world-spanning investment push that aims to rival China’s Belt and Road.
But the colonial overhang will be hard to ignore. The African Union, whose president, Angolan leader João Lourenço, is hosting the EU-Africa Summit, has made reparations for slavery and colonial crimes its working theme for the year.
Addressing history head-on: Asked about reparations, a second EU official said that it was “absolutely not the issue at the core” of the summit. A third official said the claims didn’t concern the EU as an institution, but that the bloc “acknowledge[s] that slavery and the slave trade, including the transatlantic slave trade, are appalling tragedies … Slavery and the slave trade are crimes against humanity.” They said the EU is committed to “supporting concrete measures to advance reconciliation.”
Ghost of the past: In this must-read primer today, Antonia Zimmerman describes how a project touted by the EU as the crown jewel of its Global Gateway initiative in Africa has a colonial history. The flagship Lobito corridor project — an EU-U.S.-funded push to modernize a stretch of railway infrastructure stretching from the Angolan port of Lobito into the Democratic Republic of Congo — overlaps with a rail line backed by the colonial governments of Belgium and Portugal. The EU still has plenty of work to do to convince the hosts that the project is a win-win, Antonia writes.
TRADE TALKS
PEACE TALKS LOOM OVER TRADE MINISTERS’ HUDDLE: U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer are in Brussels today for a meeting with EU trade ministers that will likely be overshadowed by Trump’s Ukraine peace plan, Camille Gijs writes in to report.
Common cause: The invitation to Lutnick and Greer initially aimed to give a fresh lift to the transatlantic talks, amidst heightened tensions with China over its rare earth export curbs. For the EU, the goal is to persuade Washington to remove tariffs on outstanding sensitive sectors and map a way forward on U.S. steel tariffs. Morning Trade on Friday scooped the 27-page list of goods that Brussels wants Washington to shield from higher tariffs. It should be shared with the U.S. officials today.
For Washington, the meeting is an opportunity to air grievances on the EU’s regulations and its slowness in scrapping tariffs on U.S. industrial goods. Digital issues will also be on the table, with Lutnick meeting Commission Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen.
Overshadowed? Several diplomats dismissed the notion that today’s meeting with Trump’s top trade officials would be overtaken by the controversial peace plan. Still, getting Washington to agree to exempt the list of sensitive EU goods from U.S. tariffs will be a tall order amid the fraught peace negotiations — which strike at the very heart of European security.
“Washington will probably link the trade and Ukraine topics to extract concessions from Brussels,” said Agathe Demarais, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
UNDER LARGE-SCALE REVIEW
TROUBLE AT THE TOWN HALL: A staff call with the group carrying out a large-scale review of the European Commission, led by former Commission Secretary-General Catherine Day, got off to a rocky start on Friday as officials struggled for more than 20 minutes to join. It prompted some cutting remarks in the chat, per a transcript of the call obtained by Playbook.
“What a joke, streaming restarts only to crash again after two minutes,” said one employee, according to the transcript. “I don’t have the feeling we’re missing much though. The two minutes I heard were all about how great things are.”
“Before doing large-scale reviews perhaps we should try to manage small basic stuff?” said another.
“Large-scale review of the IT and comms infrastructure of the EC also needed ;-)” said a third.
Bigger concerns: Among the key points of contention for staffers is that the institution will look to slash tasks — and even whole policy areas — as part of the internal rejig. “We will have to have the political courage to say also on bigger things that we are not going to do it anymore,” Commission Secretary-General Ilze Juhansone said, per the transcript. “It is really about functionalities that then we say, ‘Okay we are not doing it anymore at European level.’”
Hires, not fires: Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin said the Commission would aim to create some 2,500 administrative posts over the next budgetary period (2028-2034), although the Berlaymont would remain laser-focused on efficiency.
Time was also devoted to assuaging fears about AI being used to cut jobs, with Juhansone repeating that AI would not replace staffers … and officials repeatedly underscored there would be no change to the Commission’s staff regulation, the byzantine document that covers discipline and ethical guidelines for all staff.
Step back: A key theme in questions from staffers was trust, with one employee saying it was “the real thing we are lacking … information is hoarded, because we’re not trusted … most people have completely checked out emotionally and intellectually.” Her response received lengthy applause, according to the transcript.
Timeline: The results of the large-scale review are expected to be presented to the College of Commissioners at the end of this year, with implementation starting in 2026. Playbook reached out to the Commission for comment on the transcript but did not hear back before publishing.
COP30 ROUNDUP
THE BRICS COP: This year’s climate talks in Brazil held some hard truths for the western countries that remain engaged in the U.N. effort to stop global warming, Karl Mathiesen writes in to report. Without the U.S. at the talks — or engaged in the way it once was — the balance of power shifted toward emerging economies that refused to have their economic decisions dictated by rich countries that have had decades longer at the pinnacle of fossil fuel development. “This is a BRICS COP,” said one European diplomat. Read more in our summit wrap.
Europe and U.K. rearguard: The final deal was, in these circumstances, as good as could be hoped for. A reference to a past deal on cutting fossil fuels was inserted in the early hours of the morning Saturday, after the U.K. and EU threatened to storm out of the summit. “We thought that we were quite potentially looking at no deal. And then just before seven o’clock in the morning, that opened up,” U.K. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband told POLITICO immediately after the talks closed.
Finally, at the last minute, the EU found a bit of climate mojo, Zia and Karl write. France was particularly close to walking away and at the G20 in South Africa, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the French and Brazilian leaders Emmanuel Macron and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva huddled to avoid complete collapse, according to an EU official.
Don’t miss these pieces from the summit:
— Deal or ‘meh’ deal? Climate summit ends on a deflating note
— A Test Drive Through Brazil in Donald Trump’s Worst Nightmare
IN OTHER NEWS
DANISH NEGO-BOX EMBRACES BUDGET FUDGE: The Council embraced concessions that were offered to stem a budding revolt by the European Parliament to its negotiating document on the EU’s next seven-year budget, Gregorio Sorgi writes in to report.
New target: The so-called negotiating box drafted by the Danish Council presidency — which details the most sensitive issues in the EU’s 2028-2034 common budget — states that a yet undefined proportion of EU payments to national governments should be “dedicated to rural areas.” This reflects the Commission’s offer to create a new “rural target” worth 10 percent of total payouts in response to pressure from MEPs. The full “nego-box” will be discussed by the EU’s 27 leaders during their December gathering in Brussels.
In a further concession: The Danish text also empowers the Common Agricultural Policy that governs farmers’ subsidies, and gives more weight to socio-economic factors in calculating payments to poorer regions — a response to mounting pressure from farmers, regional leaders and several governments. But while these concessions were enough for Parliament to back down, they have been privately dismissed by many national government officials as small fry.
TIGHTENING UP: The Commission is considering stricter rules on foreign investment to stop Chinese companies gaining an advantage, the FT reports.