Turkey warns of potential crisis with Greece over ‘cheap politics’
Turkey’s foreign minister warned on Thursday that tensions with Greece could escalate into a crisis with “geostrategic costs” for Athens if Greek politicians continue what he described as “cheap politics” targeting Ankara.
Mitsotakis visits Thessaloniki ahead of the 89th TIF
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited Thessaloniki on Thursday in the lead-up to the 89th Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF). During his visit, he held meetings with rectors of public universities, representatives of professional and scientific organizations, and New Democracy MPs from northern Greece.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1279227/mitsotakis-visits-thessaloniki-ahead-of-the-89th-tif
PASOK: Thessaloniki needs a unified strategic plan, not more empty promises
Thessaloniki needs a truly Unified Strategic Plan of Infrastructure with very clear priorities, adequate funding, and transparency, PASOK-Movement for Change (KINAL) said on Thursday, responding to earlier presentation by the prime minister of large-scale projects.
Evacuation ordered for Greek Orthodox church compound in Gaza
The Greek Orthodox Church of St Porphyrius and its surrounding compound in Gaza City have been ordered to evacuate ahead of a major offensive by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
Banks lead losses at the ASE
The Athens Stock Exchange went through a second significant correction Thursday, again focused on the banking sector, as Athens, not for the first time, underperformed European markets.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1279278/banks-lead-losses-at-the-ase
KATHIMERINI: Turkish Foreign Minister Fidan is provocative and threatening towards Greece
TA NEA: Contest of strength south of Karpathos: Tension with Turkey ahead
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: “Terrorizing” penalty code for public employees
RIZOSPASTIS: Bill on penalties for public employees: the abomination has been rejected by the workers
KONTRA NEWS: Scandal regarding waste management: The stench of waste drowns the government
DIMOKRATIA: PM Mitsotakis discredits the Thessaloniki International Fair
NAFTEMPORIKI: Regulation of debts according to debtors’ needs
DRIVING THE DAY: DENYING REALITY ON TRADE
RIBERA’S AT IT AGAIN: Fresh from breaking with her boss over the EU’s Gaza policy, Ursula von der Leyen’s No. 2 in the Commission College Teresa Ribera sticks her head above the parapet again today. In an FT interview, Ribera called on the EU to be “courageous” in its response to Donald Trump’s saber-rattling over digital regulations, and “avoid the temptation of being subordinated to others’ interests.”
No more playing “nice”: Ribera said the EU’s negotiators had “tried to be nice to see how we could recover a trustful relationship” with Washington during their trade talks with the U.S. “We may be kind, polite, try to find ways to solve problems and discrepancies, but we cannot accept whatever” the Trump administration demands, argued Ribera. “We cannot be subject to the will of a third country.”
She goes there: Ribera, the competition commissioner, said the EU should be prepared to abandon the trade deal struck with Trump to protect its tech regs. “This is quite an obvious thing that we will defend,” Ribera said. “So if we have got this general approach and there is this attempt to reopen things, of course the question is: ‘OK, there is no [trade] agreement then?’ We cannot play with our values just to accommodate the concerns of others.”
Music to France’s ears: French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said Europe should consider retaliatory measures against U.S. tech companies if Trump carried out his threat, while Europe’s Industrial Strategy Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné said the EU-U.S. trade deal should be reviewed if Trump’s “intentions” turned into “declarations.”
TRADE TRUTH — AND CONSEQUENCES: Ribera’s comments come after the European Commission on Thursday was forced to slap down suggestions it had been strong-armed into an uneven trade pact with Washington for fear of losing U.S. security guarantees — after its own top trade official appeared to say exactly that.
Some context: Trade department Director General Sabine Weyand this week said the European Union essentially had to accept an agreement with Washington over fears “the U.S. would abandon the security partnership with the EU,” in a conversation with Süddeutsche Zeitung Dossier editor (and Playbook alum) Florian Eder at the European Forum Alpbach.
Not a negotiation: When referring to talks with the Trump administration, Weyand said: “You have not heard me use the term negotiation, and you won’t.”
Not (just) about trade: “We’ve had a discussion about this inside the EU, what we are trying to achieve and looking at the broader picture, and not at trade in isolation,” she explained. “The decision was that we needed to hold the U.S. close to us in security terms and to preserve their commitment to Ukraine.”
No appetite for escalating: Given there was “little appetite for countermeasures,” Weyand concluded, “this was the best understanding we could reach.”
Berlaymont strikes back: Asked by TableMedia’s János Allenbach-Ammann whether the deal was indeed necessary to keep those security guarantees, European Commission deputy chief spokesperson Arianna Podestà contended the journo was taking Weyand’s remarks out of context: “We have no fear in this sense. What we’re doing with the U.S. partners is reinforcing our partnership in many areas.”
Erm, maybe it is just about trade? “Our relation with the United States was never put into question in these regards. What we have been discussing with the United States is a trade agreement, and it’s a trade agreement that we have reached,” Podestà said.
Weyand won compliments for her candid comments, including from Thorsten Benner, a Berlin think tanker who said she “doesn’t put lipstick on a pig.” But there’s no sign von der Leyen appreciated them, an EU official told my colleague Jacopo Barigazzi. Per another official who is familiar with the internal dynamics, Weyand’s comments simply haven’t been discussed on the Berlaymont’s top floor.
LISTEN UP — MORE WEYAND: “Nostalgia is not a strategy,” Weyand said in a separate Alpbach panel this week (moderated by your current Playbook author). “So I think that we have accept that we need to adapt to the world we live in and that is more power-based than rules-based at the moment.”
Hear more of the discussion in this week’s episode of the EU Confidential podcast. Plus, thoughts on this new world order from Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Arancha González Laya, a former Spanish foreign minister and Commission trade official, who says Europe is finally learning how to bull-fight with Trump. Listen and subscribe here.
COMING UP — EVEN MORE WEYAND: The top civil servant will field questions from MEPs on Sept. 3 as the European Parliament begins its deliberations on the Commission’s proposal to cut duties on American goods. The legislation — meant to codify Brussels’ end of the trade deal — was unveiled late Thursday. Camille Gijs, Bartosz Brzeziński and Antonia Zimmermann break it all down.
THE NEXT FIGHT: The upshot of all this — and something Playbook has been asking all week — is whether the EU is prepared to make the same economic sacrifices for its digital rules as it did for Ukraine (more on that below).
Game on: Thierry Breton, the digital commissioner von der Leyen ousted, delivered a withering critique of the Commission’s trade deal. “We were told humiliation was the price we had to pay for stability,” he wrote in a Guardian op-ed published Thursday. “But if we don’t push back now, we will get humiliation and instability. Will this latest assault on our digital laws finally be enough to wake us up?”
RSVP Non: Breton publicly declined a call to testify in the U.S. Congress next week about the EU’s digital speech regs. (He referred Rep. Jim Jordan instead to his op-ed published in the “European press.”)
Aw Zucks: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg lobbied Trump on digital taxes late last week, days before the president’s fresh tariff threats, Bloomberg reports.
FACING REALITY ON UKRAINE
STATING THE OBVIOUS: Vladimir Putin is “obviously” not going to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a summit, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told reporters Thursday evening — despite the Russian supposedly telling Donald Trump he would. More here.
PUTIN’S ATTACK ENRAGES, EMBOLDENS EU: It’s also pretty obvious that Putin’s audacity is only increasing, with an attack on Kyiv that killed at least 19 and damaged buildings housing EU and British diplomatic staff on Thursday.
Gallows humor: “Everybody sarcastically refers to the attack as Russian peace, Russian-style peace,” said the EU envoy to Ukraine, Katarína Mathernová. “Nobody believes that Putin is committed to peace,” she added in a telephone interview with POLITICO’s Seb Starcevic.
Trump’s response to all this? Meh. (Our Stateside colleague Eli Stokols has more, but that’s the TL;DR summary.)
New initiative 1 — Putting frozen assets to work: While Putin and Trump seem to have fallen back into their old patterns, there are signs Europe is gearing up to take unprecedented action (at least when it comes to Russia).
One move under consideration: Sending almost €200 billion in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine for eventual rebuilding. As Gregorio Sorgi and Nick Vinocur report, the Commission is feeling out capitals on the idea, and supporters see it as a stepping stone to the even-bolder idea of fully seizing the assets.
New initiative 2 — Buffer zone: European leaders are considering a 40-kilometer buffer zone between the Russian and Ukrainian frontlines as part of a peace deal, five diplomats tell POLITICO’s Paul McLeary and Jack Detsch. But that’s something Moscow would likely be more enthusiastic about than Ukraine because it involves territorial concessions.
French and British forces would likely make up the core of the foreign troop presence, according to two of the European officials, who said those countries are lobbying other allies to help provide military assets.
Bold — or desperate? “They’re grasping for straws,” said Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon official who oversaw Europe and NATO policy under the Obama administration. “The Russians are not afraid of the Europeans. And if they think that a couple of British and French observers are going to deter them from marching into Ukraine, then they’re wrong.” Read the full article.
VDL’S FRONTLINES TOUR: Ursula von der Leyen will leave early this morning for a visit to Latvia and Finland, before going to Estonia on Saturday. The trip is designed to show solidarity with frontline member countries and boost Europe’s defense industry, an EU official said.
What’s on the itinerary: Tours of military and defense facilities, some of which will benefit from the €150 billion of the loans-for-weapons Security Action for Europe, (aka SAFE) regulation adopted last May, per the official. More here.
MEANWHILE, IN BUDAPEST: Hungary said it’s sanctioning the Ukrainian military officer behind an attack on the Russian Druzhba oil pipeline. Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said the commander would be banned from entering the country and the “entire Schengen area.” Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski invited the officer to visit Poland.
MIDDLE EAST LATEST
SWEDES, DUTCH CALL FOR SANCTIONS: With EU27 foreign ministers set to meet in Copenhagen Saturday, their colleagues from Sweden and the Netherlands are calling in a joint letter for sanctions on Hamas leadership and “extremist Israeli ministers,” as well as suspension of the trade dimension of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.
SNAPPING BACK AT IRAN: “The onus is now on Iran to refrain from further escalation, re-engage seriously, and choose a path of constructive diplomacy,” write the foreign ministers of the U.K., France and Germany in a POLITICO op-ed explaining why they’re triggering the so-called snapback process to reimpose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear development.
SHORING UP FRANCO-GERMAN RELATIONS
MERZ-SUR-MER: What better way to combat the late-summer blues than to organize a major Franco-German summit in the south of France? Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz are chairing a meeting of the Franco-German Council of Ministers today at Fort Cap Brun in Toulon, followed by another, smaller meeting devoted to defense and security issues.
What to expect: The two governments will adopt eight strategic documents on topics including industry and space, Macron promised Thursday evening, as he hosted Merz for dinner at another fort — Brégançon. My colleague Giorgio Leali reports from the scene that the two leaders, tanned and tieless, praised Franco-German relations (though as we flagged Thursday, there’s plenty they don’t agree on).
Love language: Merz showed off some fluent French, tutoie-ing Macron with a minute-long, error free greeting — a feat that was beyond ex-Chancellor Olaf Scholz, notes Berlin Playbooker Hans von der Burchard.
MEDIA WATCH
BELGIAN PUBLIC BROADCASTER BOYCOTT: The Belgian Association of Professional Journalists on Thursday said the Reformist Movement’s decision to ignore journalists from RTBF unless the public broadcaster meets certain conditions “resembles a form of blackmail,” Ketrin Jochecová writes in to report.
The dispute … stems from fines issued to MR leader Georges-Louis Bouchez’s driver for illegally parking his car near the politician’s home. RTBF mistakenly said the vehicle was Bouchez’s, Le Soir reports, and has made several corrections to its article. MR says the broadcaster hasn’t adequately resolved the issue; RTBF accuses Bouchez of threatening the author of the article. RTBF said it will continue seeking comment from MR.
Making lemonade: Bouchez, who fired his driver after the incident, released a parody skit taking aim at RTBF, channeling Robert De Niro in “Analyze That.”
ONSLAUGHT AGAINST SERBIAN JOURNALISTS: Over just two months, there have been 34 physical attacks on journalists in Serbia recorded by Reporters Without Borders. The press freedom NGO is calling on the EU to “send a clear message to the Serbian authorities that their passive stance — and potential complicity — in these abuses is incompatible with their goal of joining the EU.”
IN OTHER NEWS
IT’S ABOUT TO GET CHILLY: European Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra warned the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe from becoming frigid during winter, could collapse in a few decades. Zia Weise has more.
IF YOU HAVE TO SAY IT 1: Public spending cuts ain’t austerity, French Prime Minister François Bayrou argued on Thursday. (My colleague Pauline de Saint Remy mulls what might come next after Bayrou almost certainly loses the Sept. 8 confidence vote. Spoiler alert: There are no good options.)
IF YOU HAVE TO SAY IT 2: Europe must assert hard power or become a “hunted animal,” France’s top general, Thierry Burkhard, warned in an interview with POLITICO’s Laura Kayali.
BREAKING UP (GOOGLE) IS HARD TO DO: A U.S. federal judge is expected to decide in the coming days on what to do about Google’s search monopoly. Jacob Parry considers whether Europe might follow suit.
FRIDAY FUNNY: Is London sexy or a dangerous hellhole? Paul Dallison ponders the question in this week’s Declassified humor column.
AGENDA