Mitsotakis: The government remains committed to the target for 950 euro minimum wage
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited the Labour and Social Security Ministry on Thursday. The discussion focused on labour and insurance issues, such as the increase of the minimum wage, the reduction of insurance contributions, while particular emphasis was placed on the tourism sector.
Results of Albanian census stir tensions in the region
The 2023 census in Albania not only showed alarming demographic data but stirred a fresh round of tensions with the Balkan nation’s neighbors. The data drew reactions in Greece and North Macedonia, who consider that their minorities are undercounted. The director of the Albanian Institute of Statistics (INSTAT) rejected accusations of manipulation.
Internal disputes resurface in SYRIZA’s political secretariat
Seven of the 21 members of SYRIZA’s political secretariat expressed their disagreement with party leader Stefanos Kasselakis during Thursday’s meeting. Kasselakis spoke of a positive outcome in the European elections and outlined a blueprint for the party’s future.
Covid-19 infections continue to rise, including deaths and intubations
SARS-CoV2 infections continue to rise in Greece, based on the weekly report of the National Public Health Organization (EODY) for June 24-30, including related deaths and intubations.
S&P upgrades rating of five Greek banks
Standard & Poor’s upgraded the long-term credit rating of the four systemic banks and Aegean Baltic Bank on Thursday, placing National and Eurobank one step before investment grade and, respectively, Alpha Bank and Piraeus two notches below investment grade.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1243247/sp-upgrades-rating-of-five-greek-banks
ATHEX: Stocks grow on the year’s lowest volume
The anticipation of more interest rate cuts by the European Central Bank appears to have boosted stocks at the local bourse on Thursday, on a day with the lowest turnover in 2024, owing to the holiday in the US. Banks outperformed and remained the market’s driver, though this time the rise was universal among the various sectors of listed companies.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1243210/athex-stocks-grow-on-the-years-lowest-volume
KATHIMERINI: Reduction of employers’ contributions, pressure for salary increase
TA NEA: PASOK leader elections: battle for the signatures needed to ratify the participation in the race
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: SYRIZA political secretariat: mild tones but deep schism
RIZOSPASTIS: The government must implement substantial fire protection measures immediately!
KONTRA NEWS: Dark Ages for workers in large businesses
DIMOKRATIA: In search of Justice for pensioners
NAFTEMPORIKI: Athens Stock Exchange is a magnet of investments worth 2,7 bln
DRIVING THE DAY — TORIES TROUNCED
UK ELECTION ENDS IN LABOUR LANDSLIDE: The Labour Party is on track to win a massive majority in Britain’s general election. Keir Starmer will become British prime minister, replacing Tory Rishi Sunak. (Good joke here from Private Eye.) POLITICO’s ace team has been live-blogging all night to bring you the latest results, shocks and upsets — follow along here. Here’s what you need to know this morning …
Britain’s new PM: Read Tanya Gold’s essential profile of Starmer here.
Farage breaks through: Reform UK was predicted by the exit poll to win 13 seats — with leader Nigel Farage elected to the British parliament on his eighth attempt.
Jeremy Corbyn’s in, too: The former Labour leader was reelected MP in Islington North, where he stood as an independent.
The mighty who’ve fallen: A slew of Conservative big beasts have lost their seats, including Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan and Veterans Minister Johnny Mercer,plus ardent Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg and sword-carrying former leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt.
But Labour was not immune, with Shadow Culture Secretary Thangam Debbonaire and Shadow Paymaster General Jonathan Ashworth also unseated.
The (other) big losers: The Scottish National Party.
Quote of the night … comes from POLITICO’s watch party, where one of Sunak’s top advisers, Sheridan Westlake, was asked whether there would be any more scandals to come from the Tory campaign. “I think they got it all,” he said, ruefully.
Fun fact — Orbán outlasts the Tories: Thus end 14 years of Conservative rule in Britain — the same period that Viktor Orbán has been prime minister of Hungary. Speaking of which …
ALSO DRIVING THE DAY — ORBÁN ON TOUR
ORBÁN SPARKS FURY WITH PUTIN TALKS: Hungary’s peace-loving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has immediately tested the outer limits of his prestigious Council of the EU presidency, after news broke that he would be meeting Vladimir Putin in Moscow today.
Bombshell in Budapest: Playbook is coming to you today from Hungary, where the new Council presidency has been escorting 50 journalists down the Danube on a riverboat and into swanky venues around the city to be papped by government photographers. The Hungarians sought to play down widespread concerns about the rollback of LGBTQ+ rights, the weakening of the rule of law and crackdowns on NGOs — but then the news of Orbán’s visit to Moscow stunned the assembled journalists.
Riddled with rage: Though the reports weren’t publicly confirmed by Hungary or Russia last night — and as of the early hours of this morning still hadn’t been — senior EU politicians reacted immediately with anger and scorn.
A steppe too far? European Council President Charles Michel appeared to accuse Hungary of overstepping the mandate of its five-day-old rotating presidency of the Council. “No discussions about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine,” Michel wrote. Polish PM Donald Tusk reacted with disbelief, Finnish PM Petteri Orpo said it was “disturbing,” and Estonia’s Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said it “would not be in line” with Hungary’s presidency.
Viktor the peacemaker? Orbán’s solo Moscow trip comes after his surprise visit to Kyiv Tuesday where he called for an immediate cease-fire and peace talks in a three-hour sit-down with Ukraine’s president — calls which Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly ignored. It also comes at a strange juncture in the EU’s cycle when its leadership is changing over, and after a year when the war in Gaza exposed just how confusing it is to work out who speaks for the EU on foreign policy.
A MEGA pretext: Orbán appears ready to spend the next six months of legislative downtime in Brussels pushing the presidency into things that aren’t strictly related to the Council of Ministers, for instance by cramming in a mention in a post about a call that Hungary’s foreign minister held with his Iranian counterpart. On the other hand: Other EU leaders have embarked on diplomatic missions overseas in and around their presidencies, not least the Belgian and Spanish leaders going to the Middle East, as EU law professor Peter Van Elsuwege pointed out.
Wiggle room? “The prime minister knows that he has been negotiating with Mr. Zelenskyy on his own behalf, [and that] he was not entitled to talk in the name of the Council,” Orbán’s combative international spokesman Zoltán Kovács told us journos in Budapest. Nonetheless, Orbán immediately sent a summary of his Ukraine trip to the Council, demonstrating his “room for maneuver,” the Orbán spin doctor said.
Hello facilitator! “As presidency of the Council of course we don’t have neither the institutional nor the political mandate to negotiate with anybody … relating to war and peace, between Ukraine and Russia,” said Hungary’s European Affairs Minister János Bóka (more from him below). “How the Hungarian prime minister sees his role in the process is a facilitator, to understand and clarify the positions of the interested parties.”
Chronicle of a trip untold: Speaking beforereports of Orbán’s Moscow voyage emerged, Kovács did not rule out the possibility such a trip could happen. He said Orbán was “off the grid” and hence unable to see the assembled Brussels press pack — a meeting many of us had hoped for. “Sadly he prefers Putin to Brussels journalists,” László Andor, a former Hungarian EU commissioner, quipped to Playbook late last night.
Did no one suggest meeting in Moscow? All 27 EU commissioners were also meant to visit Budapest this week, as is customary in Week 1 of any Council presidency. A draft calendar for the presidency from May showed the commissioners’ trip was penciled in for Thursday and Friday — which would have clashed with Orbán’s (reported) visit to Moscow. The Guardian reported that the Moscow trip was planned before his Kyiv visit.
“Don’t try to read into what is happening,” said Kovács of the fact the Commission College wasn’t going to Hungary for the traditional Week 1 jaunt (before reports of Orbán’s trip to Moscow emerged). “This time slot was too short for a meaningful visit,” he added. The Commission said on Tuesday that it will happen after the summer.
Curious definition of honest broker: “Being an honest broker doesn’t mean you have to give up your own position,” said Kovács.
Ban Orbán: The Greens sent an email at around 10:30 p.m. last night to the EU’s three presidents — the Council’s Michel, Commission’s Ursula von der Leyen and Parliament’s Roberta Metsola — saying Orbán’s possible visit to Moscow “massively damages the Union’s reputation,” and breaches the principle of sincere cooperation in the EU treaties. “We ask you to use all the tools at your disposal to prevent this from happening,” wrote MEPs Terry Reintke and Bas Eickhout.
Playbook reality check: What “tools” exactly do the presidents have at their disposal to stop Orbán going to Moscow? Answers on a postcard — don’t all write in at once.
FRANCE VOTES
MACRON’S MOMENT OF TRUTH: French voters will cast their ballots on Sunday in the crucial second round of what has been a turbulent legislative election. The key question is whether embattled President Emmanuel Macron and the French center succeed in their desperate efforts to see off the threat of a far-right government — or if voters rip up the postwar norm and usher in the age of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN). Make sure you’re glued to the POLITICO live blog.
The latest polls offer (some) comfort to centrists: After hundreds of candidates withdrew to decrease the likelihood of the far right taking power, the latest projection based on polling shows RN now falling short of the 289-seat threshold for an absolute majority. On that basis, France looks set for a hung parliament, rather than a far-right one.
Le Pen’s detoxification efforts are complete: Victor Goury-Laffont has this dispatch about the Jewish voters who are backing RN this Sunday. Presented with a choice between hard-left France Unbowed and National Rally, 88-year-old Serge Klarsfeld, a Holocaust survivor who spent his life hunting down former Nazis, said he would vote for the latter “without hesitation.”
Will Le Pen do a Meloni? That’s the question everyone’s been asking in recent weeks as Le Pen’s party gets closer to power. The French and European establishments have found a way to avoid panic: hoping that Le Pen will take inspiration from Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who quickly turned her reputation as a dangerous post-fascist to that of a respectable conservative leader. But that might be wishful thinking, my colleague Giorgio Leali reports.
Celebrating Macron’s demise: Meanwhile, as Macron faces electoral disaster, France’s influence over EU trade policy is about to loosen — and some countries sense an opportunity, reports Camille Gijs.
BUDAPEST’S DREAM EU
HUNGARY’S EUROPEAN MINISTER SAYS HE’S NOT ANTI-EUROPEAN: “What we are offering is a European alternative and not an alternative to Europe,” said Hungarian European Affairs Minister János Bóka, 45, the somewhat-corporate face of Hungary’s MEGA presidency. He seemed a tad flustered when journalists pressed him on what this meant, exactly, but warned us it would take “several days and several beers” to fully unpack his sense of European identity. Here’s Playbook’s 30-second summary …
Make countries great again! “My European alternative relates to an institutional structure where the political initiative and the strategic political decisions are taken by representatives of member states,” Bóka said. While he can’t unconditionally support the EU’s policy choices, he said he feels “European by definition.” And his criticism of the EU is “always made by the intention to improve the quality of the European cooperation.”
What he wants: Change from within. Clip the wings of the Commission and Parliament, and let countries take charge, like the good old days. Turn the Parliament back into its pre-1979 self — when MEPs were not elected and were mere delegates from national parliaments. In essence, take the EU institutions out of the EU.
Brexit hurt Viktor: Speaking about Brexit, Orbán’s political director Balázs Orbán (no relation) said in a webinar about his new book Thursday: “I think it was a disaster for us.” “Because they were a big power, they [could not] be neglected, they were always on the sovereignist side.” He praised the EU as an “effective stabilizing force,” a “great process” and a “good tool” — but one which can “blow up” if countries start meddling with each other’s sovereignty, and Brussels continues to fail to take notice.
HOW PUTIN’S BRAIN WORKS
HE AIN’T HORSIN’ AROUND: “Imagine a horse race,” Lithuanian author Kristina Sabaliauskaitė told Playbook’s Nick Vinocur. “You’re mistakenly thinking that Russians are betting on one horse to reach the finish line first. That’s not true. They are doing everything they can to make sure all the horses are limping, ill and can’t run properly. Their aim isn’t to have their horse finish first. It’s to disqualify the horse race.”
As a Russian-speaker who grew up bang on the border with Russia, Sabaliauskaitė — whose “Peter’s Empress” trilogy of historical fiction books was hailed by Le Monde as a “hurricane” of a story — knows what she’s talking about.
What Russians are saying in Russian: Europeans aren’t paying attention to Russian-language content, Sabaliauskaitė said. “It’s just too awful for the West. For example, they are saying on social media, ‘We will march into Berlin but this time we’ll stay there. No wonder the Germans are not resisting us that much — our boys did such a good job in 1945 that they are half-Russian now.’ You have to listen to this stuff and believe it.”
Russia’s approach to time: “There is no looking forward, only a cyclical repetition of history. It’s always looking backward to the former greatness of Russia, to the former Soviet Empire. Even now … if you look at Russian propaganda, they are actively trying to convince us this repetition of history is inevitable.” Sabaliauskaitė’s Peter’s Empress is available in en français here.
MORE LITERARY POLITICS — WHAT KALLAS IS READING: Estonian PM Kaja Kallas, who’s fighting to become the EU’s next chief diplomat, revealed the 14 books she’s read this year, which run the gamut of the world’s hot-button conflicts and diplomacy. Among those that caught our eye: “Destined for War” about U.S.-China military tension and “The Struggle for Taiwan.” She also found time for a biography of Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady — an epithet sometimes used to describe Kallas herself.
NATO
KYIV WANTS “IRREVERSIBLE” NATO COMMITMENT: Ukraine is eager to ensure President Zelenskyy’s attendance at the NATO summit in Washington next week will be a success. The key to that lies in one word: “Irreversible.” That’s the term Ukrainian diplomats want used to describe Ukraine’s path to NATO membership, in the absence of a formal invitation to join. “We would like to see [allies] fixing an irreversible path of Ukraine at NATO membership,” Ukraine’s Ambassador to NATO Nataliia Galibarenko told our colleague Stuart Lau.
Fear abounds: Galibarenko spoke as dozens of foreign policy experts called on NATO to avoid advancing toward Ukrainian membership at the summit, warning it would endanger the U.S. “This idea of not trying to escalate the situation more, for me, is very short-sighted,” Galibarenko said.
Not feeling Trumped: The Republican presidential candidate’s team is reportedly drawing up plans to negotiate with Putin to end the war by forcing Ukraine to give up some of its territory — as well as its prospects of NATO membership. Galibarenko said she’s not panicking. “We know that, sometimes, political leaders during the electoral campaign, they are saying certain things, and then after being elected, they do other things,” she said.
2 must-reads: 1) How Trump Republicans really feel about NATO … 2) Europe has avoided the nuke question for decades. No longer.
LATEST PARLIAMENTARY MATH
GROUP SIZES UPDATE: Thursday was the deadline for groups in the European Parliament to communicate their official sizes internally so that the big division of juicy jobs can begin, based on the famous D’hondt method. Here’s how things stand …
EPP: 188
S&D: 136
ECR: 84
Renew: 76
Greens/EFA: 53
The Left: 46
TBD: Identity & Democracy is still being considered at the 57 members it had on election night because it has yet to hold its constitutive meeting. It has already lost several members to the Patriots, which hasn’t been formalized yet either (with the FT reporting this morning that National Rally is in talks to join Viktor Orbán’s group).
LAST-MINUTE CHANGES …+1 EPP: German lawmaker Manuela Ripa quit the Greens and joined the European People’s Party, an EPP spokesman confirmed. Ripa made it to our list of the 23 most kooky MEPs.
5STARS in left … for now: The Italian 5Star movement joined the Left but will start with a six-month “observer” period before the group will decide whether it works.
Anti-nature law MEP to join Renew: Former journalist Ciaran Mullooly — who said he was disgusted when the Council recently passed the nature restoration law — raised questions when he joined the European Democratic Party, a party caucus inside the Renew grouping, meaning he will almost certainly become a Renew member.
Now read this: Right-wing MEPs loathe the Green Deal — but they have no plan of attack to stop it.
OTHER NEWS
FINNISH COMMISSION NOMINEE: Helsinki has nominated EPP MEP Henna Virkkunen to be its next European commissioner, local media reported. Virkkunen, recognized for her work on the industry committee, is an ultra-marathon runner who loves horses.
GUESS WHO (PROBABLY) ISN’T INTERVIEWING ZELENSKYY: Still Tucker Carlson.
HOW BAD WAS THE ELECTION DEBATE FOR JOE BIDEN? My colleague Steven Shepard lays out the polling here.
On that topic: This week’s edition of the EU Confidential podcast is all about the panic Biden’s debate performance is causing in Europe, with special guests Tony Gardner, the former U.S. ambassador to the EU, and the German Marshall Fund’s Sudha David-Wilp joining host Sarah Wheaton. Clea Caulcutt dials in from Paris with a final French election update, and yours truly has a quick dispatch from Budapest about the Hungarian presidency. Listen here.
TODAY’S OTHER ELECTION — IRAN: The second round of Iran’s snap presidential election kicks off today, with reformist Masoud Pezeshkian and hardliner Saeed Jalili in the runoff to replace Ebrahim Raisi. CNN tees it up.