PM keeping tone low after predecessors’ criticism
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis remained steadfast in his choice to keep his tone low despite the harsh criticism of government policies and choices by his conservative predecessors Kostas Karamanlis and Antonis Samaras on Monday night at an event at the War Museum in Athens.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1242996/pm-keeping-tone-low-after-predecessors-criticism
FM lays out the path for Albania, North Macedonia
Underscoring Athens’ unwavering stance, Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis said on Tuesday that Greece’s objections to Albania and North Macedonia are not bilateral in nature, but touch on the European acquis.
Kasselakis denies knowledge of ‘black money’ under Tsipras leadership
Main opposition leader Stefanos Kasselakis clarified in an interview with Alpha TV on Tuesday that he does not know if the previous SYRIZA leadership had made use of shady funding sources.
PASOK leader Androulakis defends record, explains decision to call election
PASOK president Nikos Androulakis defended his leadership record and explained his decision to call an election for October in an interview with Mega TV on Tuesday.
Kos, Chios, Geraki fires out; high risk of fire on Wednesday
Firefighters remained on alert at the islands of Kos and Chios to ensure fires are not rekindled, the Fire Brigade said late on Tuesday.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/831578/Kos–Chios–Geraki-fires-out-high-risk-of-fire-on-Wednesday
ATHEX: Monday’s stock gains reversed
On a day of reduced turnover, the Greek stock market recorded losses on Tuesday following two days of growth, in what seemed like a full reversal of Monday’s rebound. More than just cashing in on recent gains, traders sent bank prices into a nosedive, partly due to the downgrade of JP Morgan’s guidance on Greek stocks from “buy” to “neutral.”
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1243001/athex-mondays-stock-gains-reversed
KATHIMERINI: The civil engineer’s files and the Mykonos mafia
TA NEA: Real estate asset transfers: Landmines
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Citizens trapped in “green” power bills
RIZOSPASTIS: The stretching of working time and the 6-day working week constitute a “casus belli”
KONTRA NEWS: PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis is a hostage to the traditional right
DIMOKRATIA: Shameful ruling on the Siemens case
NAFTEMPORIKI: Report on state contracts worth 6,2 bln
HOWDY. It’s Sarah Wheaton with you again today. Eddy Wax will be in the driving seat for the rest of the week. We’ve written an entire edition of Brussels Playbook for you this Wednesday, but honestly, everything can be pretty much summed up in a few numbers:
350 — The number of MEPs committed to voting for a second term for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen from the centrist coalition of the European People’s Party, Renew and the Socialists & Democrats, according to former ALDE boss Jacob Moroza-Rasmussen. Von der Leyen needs 361.
43,252,003,274,489,856,000 —The number of permutations of a Rubik’s Cube, according to a New York Times piece marking the 50th birthday of the puzzle Hungary has chosen as a symbol of its Council presidency. We figure it’s also roughly half the number of ways Prime Minister Viktor Orbán could antagonize the Ixelles intelligentsia.
45 percent to 47 percent: How U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris would fare against Donald Trump in a presidential election, according to a new CNN poll — compared to 43-49 for the incumbent, Joe Biden.
DRIVING THE DAY: POLITICAL SACRIFICES
TACTICAL RETREATS: Politicians in France and the U.S. are facing calls to sacrifice their ambitions and/or egos to reduce the chances of right-wing populists taking power. In France on Tuesday, hundreds of left-wing and centrist candidates dropped out of the second round of the high-stakes legislative election in a coordinated attempt to stop Marine Le Pen’s National Rally winning an outright majority (more on that below). In Washington, the calculation is much more complicated …
IS THE BIDEN DAM BREAKING? The White House’s damage-control efforts appear to be failing, with more and more Democrats publicly pushing Biden to step aside after his disastrous debate performance, our Stateside colleague Jared Mitovich reports. More than two dozen Democratic governors are seeking a meeting with Biden as soon as today, Elena Schneider writes.
No taboo in Europe: While Dems in the U.S. have long been hesitant to break ranks, liberal and left-leaning allies on the Continent haven’t felt so restrained. “Changing horses is a duty for everyone,” tweeted ex-Italian PM Matteo Renzi a day after the debate, and Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski said it’s “important to manage one’s ride into the sunset.”
Disillusioned activists abroad: “There’s a high level of concern,” said Trip DuBard, chair of Democrats Abroad Belgium. Members’ feelings run the gamut, DuBard told Playbook. Some blame Biden’s staff and the debate moderators or brush it all off as a bad day. Some think it’d be downright dangerous to swap candidates this late in the game. Others say it’s time for the president to step aside so someone else can run.
“Up until this weekend”: Speaking solely for himself, DuBard said Tuesday that he’s fallen into the latter camp: “I was totally behind him, all up until this weekend. The debate — it took me a while to sort of digest it and think about it, and look at his reactions to some of the questions. And yeah, I don’t think he’s our guy.”
View from a distance: A South Carolina native who moved to Belgium in 2016, DuBard said the stakes feel different from this side of the Atlantic Ocean. “We’re a lot closer to Ukraine and Russia” than Stateside voters, he said. The rise of the far right in the U.S. doesn’t seem like “such a far-fetched idea” after watching what’s happened in Hungary, France and the Netherlands.
Frustration boiling over: “I’m sort of disappointed in our party’s leadership. I think we need to change,” DuBard said. Again, he was speaking as an individual — not as the chair of Democrats Abroad Belgium — and he stressed that he’ll keep working to elect Biden and defeat Trump. But if this is how the activists responsible for driving turnout are feeling, it’s safe to predict that Biden has more bad nights ahead in his future, including November 5.
WHAT WASHINGTON’S TALKING ABOUT TODAY: The New York Times published a big piece overnight on Biden’s condition which claims that the confusion and lethargy he displayed in last week’s TV debate was evident on his recent trips to Europe for the D-Day commemorations and G7. Although Biden was at times sharp, the report says, there were also moments when he seemed disoriented. An unnamed senior official at the G7 said there had been a “noticeable decline” in Biden’s physical state since previous meetings, which “shocked” the Europeans.
ANTI-NATIONALISTS RALLY IN FRANCE: Meanwhile in France, at least 200 candidates from both the left-wing alliance and the centrist coalition of President Emmanuel Macron pulled out of local races ahead of last night’s crucial deadline to rally behind their best-placed rivals and block the National Rally in runoffs, according to estimates from AFP and Le Monde. Their decisions could determine the outcome of the second-round vote on Sunday — and whether France will have a far-right government for the first time in the modern republic’s history, Giorgio Leali reports.
Pitching out the spoilers: After the wave of tactical withdrawals, less than 100 districts will see three candidates in the second round. A party needs 289 seats for an absolute majority.
URSULA 2024
VON DER LEYEN’S 4-LETTER WORD: “Good” was the only word Ursula von der Leyen had to describe her closed-door meeting with the European Parliament’s political groups as she left the meeting and was doorstepped by Playbook’s Eddy Wax on Tuesday. She then swiftly got into a lift — which had been blocked so that it would stay open and waiting for her — with her chief aide and bodyguards. A two-week countdown for von der Leyen to get the numbers she needs is now starting before a vote in Parliament tentatively scheduled for mid-July.
Social-lists: Von der Leyen set out her broad policy priorities to the heads of the political groups at that one-hour meeting. Speaking to a huddle of journalists after leaving the room, a beaming S&D President Iratxe García said: “The music sounds OK but now we have to go into the details.” The Spaniard said she insisted on social and gender equality policies in her speech, and a “clear commitment” about the Green agenda.
A Green fourth pillar? Greens Co-President Bas Eickhout popped out from behind a pillar to speak to the same huddle of journalists: “If you just do the counting, if S&D and Renew are saying don’t do it with ECR, then there’s only one possibility to get to a stable majority, and that’s with the Greens. That’s no rocket science.”
Math lesson: He warned von der Leyen off from the ECR, where Giorgia Meloni’s MEPs sit. “She is playing a dangerous game the moment she starts to shop a bit around in ECR because you might win 25 from, for example, the Italian delegation and you lose 20 from the S&D delegation, potentially,” the Dutchman said. “If she is building on a broader majority with more political groups, then I think she has a good chance,” he added.
PRIORITIES: Von der Leyen will not attend the NATO summit in Washington next week, Commission spokesperson Eric Mamer said, “instead focusing on her work to build a majority for a strong Europe in the European Parliament.”
UKRAINE
SPLITTING THE $50B LOAN: You know that friend who heads to the toilet just as the waiter brings the bill? That’s how Uncle Sam is behaving with the G7’s $50 billion loan to Ukraine, outspoken EU diplomats would say. There’s no agreement on how much the U.S. should contribute, and the topic is set to dominate talks today among treasury chiefs from G7 countries, Gregorio Sorgi reports.
Who pays what? G7 leaders agreed in June that they would each channel their own loan to Ukraine — to be repaid by the annual profits generated by Russia’s immobilized assets by the end of the year. But Washington still has to make up its mind over how much it can contribute, said an EU official who was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive talks.
The tricky part: The U.S. needs Congress’ approval for an operation that carries a risk to its taxpayers. But there’s little appetite to involve lawmakers because opposition among Republicans might drag the process out beyond the end-of-year deadline.
Bottom line: The EU floated several options to limit Washington’s exposure to risk. Yet there’s only so much technocrats can do — their political masters have the final say over how much each country can give to Ukraine.
POLL — EUROPEANS MORE PESSIMISTIC: This type of wrangling over Ukraine aid is clearly affecting Europeans’ expectations about how the war will end. Results of a survey of 14 EU countries published today — conducted in May after Washington finally passed a crucial Ukraine funding bill — found a dour outlook about Kyiv’s chances.
Expecting a settlement: Europeans tend to believe that Ukraine won’t defeat Russia on the battlefield, with roughly a third to half of those surveyed believing the war will end in a negotiated settlement, and up to 31 percent in some countries (Greece) seeing a Russian victory as most likely.
Compare that to Ukraine, where 58 percent remain confident their troops can win, and that they can continue to count on the support of their international allies. Elena Giordano has more on the European Council on Foreign Relations poll.
NO POLL NEEDED: Viktor Orbán’s visit to Kyiv on Tuesday might have been a surprise, but his stance wasn’t. The Hungarian PM reiterated his proposal for an immediate cease-fire, an idea that was immediately rejected by his host, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Csongor Körömi reports for POLITICO.
ANTI-NATO SUMMIT IN ASTANA: Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Beijing bestie Xi Jinping are in Astana, Kazakhstan today for the annual meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, aka the anti-NATO summit. The Guardian has a curtain-raiser.
GOING DUTCH
GRAB YOUR STROOPWAFEL AND GET COMFY: Two marathon debate days await new Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof today and Thursday in the parliament, Koen Verhelst writes in to report. Schoof (pronounced like “oaf” not “aloof”) is the first new Dutch prime minister in 14 years.
Wait, remind me: Schoof is an independent PM leading a four-way coalition in the hardest right government the Netherlands have ever seen. Geert Wilders’ radical-right Freedom Party, center-right liberal VVD, centrist NSC and farmers’-right party BBB make up the new kabinet Schoof.
Carpaccio and goals: The new governing group of 16 ministers and 13 deputy ministers were all sworn in Tuesday. They met the Dutch and international press in The Hague, enjoying carpaccio with truffle mayo, salmon steak and white chocolate cream desserts. As the ministers trickled into a tent set up in the garden of the Catshuis — potentially Schoof’s residence — the gathered crowd watched the Dutch soccer team score three goals against Romania at the European Championships in Germany.
In the morning, reality hits: It’s now up to them to turn the short political agreement reached by the four party leaders into actual policy that works in the Netherlands and in Brussels. Eva Hartog and Koen explain how we got here.
FAILED DIPLOMACY DEPT.
FROM BAD … Germany’s Olaf Scholz fails to announce compensation plan for Polish survivors of Nazi crimes
… TO WORSE: Poland’s Donald Tusk rails at fractured defense planning in jibe at Germany’s Scholz
AROUND EUROPE
SORRY, MAMI: In Spain, Socialist MEP-elect Alicia Homs — who replaced Spanish deputy prime minister and presumed commissioner candidate Teresa Ribera on the list — might not be seated in the European Parliament, Aitor Hernández-Morales reports. Homs’ pregnancy has prevented her from traveling to Madrid to take the vow to uphold the Spanish constitution this week. And as we reported in Tuesday’s Playbook, that’s a must in order to be confirmed by Spain’s Central Electoral Board.
Rules are rules: They also apply Catalan separatist MEP Toni Comín, who was reelected last month. On Tuesday, the European Parliament said it would not allow Comín to take his seat until his election was confirmed by the Spanish board. He’s been on the run from authorities since 2017, following the Catalan independence referendum, so Comín’s not goin’ to Madrid, either.
Priorities: Playbook will acknowledge we’re maybe comparing apples and oranges a bit. Nonetheless, we’d just like to point out that while apparently there are no accommodations for pregnant women to take office without traveling to the capital, Spanish lawmakers have developed an accommodation to help platforms verify that pornography viewers are over 18 — known as the “porn passport.” Perhaps Madrid can come up with some sort of virtual passport for Ms. Homs, as well. (More on the porn passport for Pros in Morning Tech.)
UK ELECTION EXPLAINED: Britain braces for a pivotal election clash between the Conservatives and Labour. Matt Honeycombe-Foster created an American’s guide to the upcoming U.K. election.
FAREWELL TO RISHI SUNAK: His tenure was marked by turmoil and missteps. How will the fifth Tory prime minister in eight years be remembered? Tanya Gold looks back at Sunak’s rise and leadership style.