The hardest part of the summer is still ahead of us, PM Mitsotakis notes in weekly review
The difficult summer ahead as regards the risk of dangerous fires but also the progress Greece has made in fighting corruption and improving the implementation of the rule of law were touched on in the weekly review posted each Sunday by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
Two to challenge Androulakis for PASOK leadership
The current mayor of Athens and an MP and former Culture Minister announced Sunday they will challenge current PASOK leader Nikos Androulakis in an October contest.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1242821/two-to-challenge-androulakis-for-pasok-leadership
SYRIZA turmoil: Kasselakis throws down gauntlet to Tsipras
Main opposition SYRIZA was plunged into further turmoil at the weekend after its leader, Stefanos Kasselakis, whose tenure at the helm has been challenged by party cadres, took his predecessor, Alexis Tsipras, to task in a social media post late Friday asking for support “without games.”
Large wildfire breaks out in Keratea, evacuation ordered for several settlements
Firefighters were battling a series of wildfires near the Greek capital, Athens, on Sunday evening, as the country braces for another scorching summer.
ATHEX: Bourse up 8.6% in January-June
Greek stocks posted a moderate rebound at the end of a week that overall showed a decline. The benchmark had a promising start to the day, but buyers soon ran out of fuel and most stocks had to settle for only a small recovery after three consecutive days of price declines. The session also brought to a close a month when the main index conceded 1.93%, and the year’s first half when the bourse enjoyed growth amounting to 8.59%.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1242681/athex-bourse-up-8-6-in-january-june
SUNDAY PAPERS
KATHIMERINI: Macron and Biden in vertigo
TO VIMA: The threat of the Greek political scenery splitting into many small parties just like in Italy
REAL NEWS: Clash of the titans in SYRIZA
PROTO THEMA: SYRIZA is being abandoned by party cadres and executives
MONDAY PAPERS:
TA NEA: French elections: Oh, mon Dieu!
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Democratic front against the far-right in France
KONTRA NEWS: They burned Attica again: Incompetent and dangerous mayors and ministers
DIMOKRATIA: PASOK leader dragged to party president election
NAFTEMPORIKI: Time for decisions regarding the “suspended tax”
GOOD MORNING and welcome to Brussels Playbook. I’m Nick Vinocur, here to get the week started. We’ll get to the French election results shortly, but first: Happy Hungarian Presidency Day!
That’s right. Today marks the start of Hungary’s six-month presidency of the EU, under the banner of Make Europe Great Again.
Totally normal: As Barbara Moens notes in her guide to the MEGA presidency, Hungarian diplomats want to make it seem as normal as possible. “We are aware of the fact that we will be watched very closely whether we cooperate sincerely with member states and institutions and whether we will be honest brokers,” Hungary’s EU Minister János Bóka told POLITICO.
Can’t pull that on me: But Brussels ain’t buying the line from Budapest, as Barbara notes. OK, let’s dive in …
DRIVING THE DAY: FRENCH ELECTION
LE PEN’S NATIONAL RALLY STOMPS TO VICTORY: Less than a month after its victory in the EU election, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally pulled off another stunning show of force Sunday, scooping up more than one-in-three votes in the first of the two rounds of France’s legislative election. Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old party leader, inches a step closer to becoming France’s next prime minister — although that outcome remains far from certain.
Bloodbath: President Emmanuel Macron’s party was eliminated outright in nearly half of its electoral districts, POLITICO’s Paris team reports. Other notable results included Fabien Roussel, a powerful communist and former presidential candidate, being knocked out by the National Rally candidate.
Macron, deflated: The president appeared on Sunday almost incognito in a leather jacket, sunglasses and baseball cap. According to François Hollande, Macron’s socialist predecessor who is running for a seat and finished first in his Corrèze district on Sunday, Macron looked “deflated” and his parliamentary majority is now “in shambles.”
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT ROUND 2: In the French system, any candidate who wins the backing of more than 12.5 percent of registered voters in their district in the first round of the parliamentary election makes it to the second round. Usually, that means the top two candidates from the first round face off in the second. But because turnout was so high in this election, inup to an estimated 315 constituencies,a third candidate has qualified for the second round. Now, the question is what those third-placed candidates will do.
Only bad options: Macron called on voters to elect a “broad, clearly democratic and Republican coalition” next Sunday. But my colleague Clea Caulcutt writes that the president faces a bitterly painful choice between throwing everything he’s got at stopping the far right (by telling some of his candidates to drop out of the runoff), or fighting to save what remains of his once dominant movement before it dies.
Defiant Le Pen: Speaking to supporters in the hardscrabble northern district of Hénin-Beaumont, where she won reelection outright, Le Pen urged voters to “mobilize to make the people win,” promising that “no French person will lose rights” if her party emerges victorious on July 7. (Nearly 7 million foreigners lived in France as of 2020, per the INSEE statistics office.)
A safe distance: Bardella chose to appear far away from Le Pen and used his speech to attack the far left, calling the New Popular Front an “existential danger for our nation.” He added: “The time has come to give power to leaders who understand you, who care about you.”
Mood: In what may be a taste of what’s to come, street protests against the far right kicked off in Paris, Lille, Lyon, Strasbourg, Marseille — some including clashes with police. Hundreds gathered on Place de la République in Paris.
WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN? Macron is humiliated. National Rally has made a historic advance. Bardella has a much better chance of becoming PM. Europe’s second-biggest economy faces real risk of political instability.
But there are no certainties. On Sunday night, a poll by Ifop, IPSOS and Elabe projected that the National Rally and its allies could win between 230 and 310 seats in the National Assembly. (An absolute majority is 289 seats.)
That’s a vast bracket. The uncertainty involved in those three-way races is huge. Playbook checked in with political consultant Julien Hoez, who wrote: “I’m not sure that the RN will necessarily win [an absolute majority], considering the fact that they only seem to have won outright in a small number of seats.”
Two options loom large: Bardella could gather enough votes to cross the 289-seat threshold, or — more likely — no party will emerge next Sunday with an absolute majority and France would be thrown into a governance crisis. There is much talk of cohabitation, but little focus (yet) on the effects of a hung parliament and potential deals within parties to back a PM, although this looks like the most likely outcome.
WHAT NOW? Sauve qui peut. The editor of Le Figaro, the country’s main conservative newspaper, called on voters to back the National Rally in the second round next Sunday, arguing that even though Bardella’s plans could be “worrying,” a far-right government would be preferable to the far left. Meanwhile, the left-wing daily Libération told its readers, in giant white letters over a sinister black-and-white photo of Bardella, to “form a bloc” against the far right.
Party leaders rushed to give voting instructions to their supporters. Here’s where they stand:
— Left-wing leaders including Jean-Luc Mélenchon called for their third-place candidates to pull out in districts where the National Rally has a chance of winning.
— Raphaël Glucksmann, a socialist European lawmaker, had the same message, asking “Are we ready to give our country, the country of Victor Hugo, of Rabelais, to the Le Pen family?”
— Former PM Edouard Philippe, leader of the Horizons party, urged third-place finishers to withdraw unless they are up against Mélenchon’s France Unbowed.
— Clément Beaune, a former transport minister under Macron and current candidate for MP in Paris, told his supporters to back anyone but the far right.
— The much-diminished conservative Les Républicains party gave no instructions as of last night.
RAGE AGAINST MACRON: As attention turns to the three-way battles, there’s growing fury at Macron outside of France. Thorsten Benner, a think tanker based in Berlin, blasted the French president’s “utter recklessness” as he recalled Macron’s words to a French business leader on the day after his shock announcement of a snap election. “I’ve been preparing this for weeks, and I’m delighted. I’ve thrown my grenade at their legs,” Le Monde quoted Macron as saying. “Now we’ll see how they deal with it.”
Europe is watching: Asked how Macron’s gamble looked after Sunday’s results, one diplomat texted Playbook: “Crazy.”
ORBÁN’S FAR-RIGHT BLOC
ORBÁN SEEKS TO RALLY EUROPE’S FAR RIGHT: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said he was launching a new right-wing populist political group in the European Parliament, based on a common understanding with Andrej Babiš’ Czech ANO party and Herbert Kickl’s Austrian FPÖ that the EU has “turned against Europeans.”
Outsiders unite: Fidesz has been out in the cold since leaving the center-right EPP in 2021; Babiš took his MEPs out of Renew last month; and the FPÖ now looks poised to leave the Parliament’s far-right Identity & Democracy grouping, Eddy Wax writes in to report.
Shake-up on the far right: Orbán has long dreamed of uniting Europe’s far right behind him. At a press conference in Vienna Sunday, the Hungarian PM said he believes his new “Patriots for Europe” will soon be the strongest right-wing group in the Parliament — though, as things stand, it is still four national parties short of the requisite seven needed to create a new group.
Le Pen and Salvini in the wings? Italian paper Domani said Le Pen’s National Rally and Matteo Salvini’s League had already made a pact to leave Identity & Democracy and join the Patriots. If that happens, it would likely see ID morphing into the Patriots and the rebranded outfit rivaling the hard-right ECR of Giorgia Meloni for the third spot in the European Parliament. Salvini welcomed the new group but did not make any comments about joining.
Eyes on the Poles: Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS), which said it was 50/50 on quitting ECR and joining the new group last week, was “observing” developments, a party official said late on Sunday. If Orbán convinces the 20 PiS MEPs to join, it would almost certainly put the group ahead of ECR. An FPÖ press officer declined to comment on who was involved in ongoing negotiations.
Deadline looming: New groups must form before July 4 to have a shot of benefiting from the carve-up of prestigious parliamentary jobs. ID has already requested an extension of an informal deadline until after the French election on July 8, according to a senior official from the group. Could that be a sign Le Pen wants to join?
Too little, too late? Czech European Commissioner Věra Jourová announced Friday she was leaving ANO, just moments before it teamed up with Austria’s extreme right. ANO’s anti-EU populist turn is nothing new, though. European Parliament Vice President Dita Charanzová quit the party a year ago. What took Jourová so long?
US PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN
BIDEN OR BUST: Despite his startlingly bad performance in the TV debate against Donald Trump on Friday, Joe Biden is likely to be on the ballot running for reelection in November. After the Holy Trinity of top Democrats — Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama — came out in support of Biden over the weekend, it’s clear the party sees no alternative to the incumbent to face Trump in November.
Cognitive trouble: That’s despite a staggering 72 percent of registered voters saying Biden does not have the “mental and cognitive health” to serve as president, according to a CBS News-YouGov poll after the debate. Forty-nine percent said the same of Trump.
Look a little closer: Is this lunacy? While David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, called it an “act of vanity” for Biden to stay in the race, the apparent decision by top Democrats to stick by him may be down to cold calculation. No other Democrat who would run enjoys the level of name recognition Biden does. And all of them, from Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg to California Governor Gavin Newsom, polled worse than Biden against Trump, even after the debate debacle.
MEDIA-GENERATED HOT AIR? Despite a media meltdown over the weekend with everyone and their editor calling for Biden to step aside, a Morning Consult poll on Friday showed Biden polling at the same level against Trump after the debate as he did before — 45 percent to 44.
BLAMED FOR BIDEN’S PERFORMANCE: Top Democrats (and the family Biden) are pointing to other factors beyond president’s age or cognitive abilities to argue that he isn’t to fault for his debate debacle, my colleague Mia McCarthy reports. So far that has included: that he was over-prepared, that CNN moderators didn’t adequately fact-check Donald Trump and that his most senior aides and advisers are responsible for his weak showing.
NOT CONVINCED: One person not buying the TINA narrative is Republican Nikki Haley. “They are going to be smart about it: They’re going to bring somebody younger, they’re going to bring somebody vibrant, they’re going to bring somebody tested,” she told the Wall Street Journal in a weekend interview.
My question: Does Haley know something we don’t?
COSTA CONCILIATORY
COSTA’S COOL WITH MELONI’S ‘NO’: European Council President-elect António Costa was in Brussels on Friday, Aitor Hernández-Morales reports, meeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the candidate to be the bloc’s top diplomat, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.
Water under the bridge: After posing together on a sofa — (an inadvertent dig at Charles Michel and the infamous Sofagate scandal?) — Costa spoke with the press and said he had no hard feelings toward Giorgia Meloni, who voted against his nomination at Thursday’s Council summit.
Soothing words: “Italy’s government, and that of the other 26 member countries, is the result of the vote and democratic expression of that nation’s people, and that’s something that has to be respected,” Costa said. “I fully understand [Meloni’s] vote, and as Council president, I will work as closely with her as I will with the other 26 heads of government.”
No favorites: Costa said that although he belongs to the Socialist party, as Council president he will not make distinctions based on political backgrounds. “The president of the Council must be the president of all those who sit on the European Council,” he said, adding that it was key to overcome fundamental differences among the bloc’s leaders, even those who belong to far-right parties.
Costa is set to take over from Michel when his term ends on December 1. In the meantime, he said he is looking forward to taking a long vacation.
IN OTHER NEWS
WEF SCRUTINY: The World Economic Forum, the organization behind the annual Davos gathering, has been accused of behavior that would violate workplace policies at its corporate partners, including sexual harassment and discrimination against women and Black people, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation. A spokesperson told the paper that its reporting would “mischaracterize our organization, culture and colleagues, including our founder [Klaus Schwab].”
NGOS BRING BUDAPEST FIGHT TO BRUSSELS: Civil society organizations, including Transparency International and Amnesty International, have called for “immediate and decisive action to protect civic space in Hungary” following investigations into two Hungarian watchdog groups, according to a letter sent to von der Leyen and Commission VP for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová.
What’s happening: Transparency International Hungary and investigative reporting outlet Átlátszó are both facing inquiries under Budapest’s new “defense of sovereignty law.” The government says it’s meant to protect voters from undue foreign interference, but the European Commission has already launched infringement proceedings over the measure, citing concerns that it violates rights to privacy and expression.
GREEK LEFT IN TURMOIL: Greece’s socialist Pasok party will hold a leadership election in October, after a disappointing performance in the EU vote in June, it announced on Sunday. Leader Nikos Androulakis faces a challenge by Athens Mayor Haris Doukas and MP Pavlos Geroulanos. Meanwhile, friction deepened in the left-wing Syriza party after its leader Stefanos Kasselakis publicly lashed out at his predecessor Alexis Tsipras. “Come take over and I will be a soldier, otherwise support me without games,” Kasselakis challenged the former PM.
UKRAINE — ZELENSKYY WANTS UKRAINE UNSHACKLED: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on his allies to relax their rules about Kyiv’s use of Western-supplied arms to strike Russia.
Now read this: A crowd-funded Ukrainian satellite is allowing the country’s military intelligence to watch Russians from space, spot their troops and destroy their weapons, report Veronika Melkozerova and Joshua Posaner.