Libya criticizes Greece over hydrocarbon tender ahead of minister’s visit
Tensions have emerged in Greek-Libyan relations just days before Greek Foreign Minister George Gerapetritis is scheduled to visit Libya with Tripoli issuing a strong statement accusing Greece of violating its sovereign rights.
EPPO implicates ex-ministers in OPEKEPE fraud, refers the case to Parliament
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) has announced that it has submitted evidence to the Greek Parliament concerning the alleged involvement of two former ministers of agriculture in the misappropriation of European Union funds via OPEKEPE.
PM declines to comment on reported transfer of air defense systems to Souda base
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declined to comment on reports concerning the transfer of air defense weapon systems to the Souda base, following an emergency meeting held on Wednesday by Defense Minister Nikos Dendias and the leadership of the armed forces. According to reports, the Greek Armed Forces have transferred Patriot missile batteries to the Souda base, which is also a major hub for the American military, as a precaution in the event of a potential missile strike by Iran. Mitsotakis noted, however, that such a scenario is currently not under consideration. “Let me state clearly and categorically that such a possibility is neither visible nor exists on the horizon,” he said.
Bank of Greece: Greek economy to grow by 2.3% in 2025
Greece’s economy is expected to grow 2.3% in 2025 and 2% in 2026, according to the Bank of Greece’s Monetary Policy Report, submitted to Parliament on Thursday.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/912300/Bank-of-Greece-Greek-economy-to-grow-by-23-in-2025
ATHEX: Sixth session of stock drop in succession
Stocks on the Greek bourse continued their slide for one more session on Thursday, as the benchmark at Athinon Avenue declined for a sixth day in a row – a sequence not seen in three years. The market is weighing the possibility of a further escalation in the Middle East conflict with the possible participation of the US, and its effects on the Greek and European economies. The day’s turnover was actually fairly high, in spite of Wall Street being closed due to the Juneteenth holiday.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1272888/athex-sixth-session-of-stock-drop-in-succession
KATHIMERINI: The new map regarding prisons in Greece
TA NEA: OPEKEPE scandal: The investigation “stumbled upon” 2 ministers
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: These two New Democracy ministers were doing their job well as well…
RIZOSPASTIS: The other side of war economy: “Drafting” with 13 hours of work and fast track support for business groups
KONTRA NEWS: “Hot” judicial file on former ministers Voridis and Avgenakis
DIMOKRATIA: Former agriculture ministers Voridis and Avgenakis to stand trial
NAFTEMPORIKI: BoG: “Erosion” of tax injustice
DRIVING THE DAY: GENEVA CONVENTION
EUROPE’S SWISS PLEAS: EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas plans to join foreign ministers from Britain, France and Germany in Geneva today to persuade their Iranian counterpart to go back to the nuclear negotiating table.
That’s nice, but … It’s not Tehran that needs persuading to avoid a global conflagration. It’s U.S. President Donald Trump, who’s weighing whether to use American bunker-busting bombs to help the Israelis destroy Iran’s Fordo enrichment plant. (“He believes there’s not much choice,” one source told CBS News last night.) The so-called E3 would really prefer that Washington stay out of the fight and seek diplomatic solutions to the week-long war.
Hungry for TACO Trump: Like with his tariff threats, Europeans are cheered by signs that Trump will chicken out and procrastinate. On Thursday, the White House announced that Trump would decide within the next two weeks whether to order U.S. military action, as he believes “there’s a substantial chance of negotiations.”
Glass half full: Trump said the U.S. is ready to join Israel’s military strikes, but “nothing is happening — there’s an opportunity here,” said a European diplomat. “We must not underestimate how much Trump hates war,” they added.
Glass half empty: We must not underestimate how much Trump hates Iran. After all, perhaps the most daring act of belligerence in his first term was the assassination-by-drone of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the influential commander of Iran’s proxy forces. And the possibility of boasting that he ended Iran’s nuclear program — realistic or not — might be too tantalizing.
WHO WILL BE THERE: In addition to Kallas, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy (fresh from talks with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington) and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Read the full trans-European preview piece by Tim Ross, Clea Caulcutt, Dan Bloom and Nette Nöstlinger.
ISRAEL’S ENDGAME: Israel isn’t trying to take out Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, “nor do we have a goal on regime change,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog told the Axel Springer Global Reporters network Thursday. Someone should probably pass that along to Defense Minister Israel Katz, who delivered quite the opposite message hours earlier.
Warning from Moscow: Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told Sky News overnight that Russia would react “very negatively” if Khamenei were killed, and that it would trigger a massive backlash in Iran: “They will open the Pandora’s box.”
MORE PRESSURE ON EU-ISRAEL TRADE: The Commission’s review of the EU-Israel Association agreement is likely to find that Israel did indeed violate the human rights and international law clauses, according to reports from several news organizations, including Middle East Eye and RTÉ. Kallas is set to brief EU ambassadors on the findings Monday.
Eyeing settlement trade: Belgium and eight other member countries want the Commission to look into how trade with Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territory “can be brought into line with international law.”
NOW READ THIS: Rima Hassan, the 33-year-old former Palestinian refugee-turned-MEP, is making waves across Europe after the Freedom Flotilla’s attempt to reach Gaza was blocked by Israeli authorities. “I’m neither a hero nor a monster. I just want to stay true to myself,” she tells POLITICO’s Victor Goury-Laffont.
NATO SUMMIT
CRACKS EMERGE IN 5 PERCENT CERTAINTY: Leaders at next week’s NATO summit in The Hague have basically one job: Sign off on a plan to more than double alliance members’ national defense spending to 5 percent of GDP. But at the 11th hour, cracks in the intended spending unity are getting increasingly visible. Spain is a confirmed no, and split governing coalitions in Germany and Belgium show it will be hard for some capitals to actually keep the promises they make on Wednesday.
This is what it sounds like when doves cry: “Spain cannot commit to a specific spending target,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez wrote to NATO sec-gen Mark Rutte on Thursday. Given that Spain is only spending 1.2 percent of its GDP at this point (compared to the 2 percent goal agreed in 2014), the request for a Spanish carve-out is a setback but hardly a surprise. Nor is the invitation by ex-Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, leader of Italy’s 5Star Movement, to leaders opposing rearmament for a counter-summit at the Dutch parliament on Tuesday, hosted by Dutch Socialists.
Flemish center-right leader calls it “crazy”: But it’s not just the predictable peaceniks who are getting sticker shock. Take Belgian MP Sammy Mahdi, the leader of the Flemish Christian Democrats (CD&V), who was vocal in the past about Belgium’s need to meet its 2 percent target. Today, his party is a member in good standing of the center-right European People’s Party and a part of Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s government, which has already backed the 5 percent target. Yet Mahdi said that spending boost would be a “crazy direction,” in an interview for this week’s EU Confidential podcast, out today.
Mahdi’s argument, in a nutshell: Europe could spend its existing investments more efficiently — Mahdi backed the idea of a European army — rather than making citizens foot the bill for each nation to defend itself.
Guns vs. butter: Citing a headline suggesting the bigger defense budget allocation would mean €6,000 less in purchasing power for Belgian families annually, Mahdi warned that the mainstream could “lose a lot” of voters to “extreme parties, especially extreme left.”
Threat assessment: That point was echoed by a senior Social Democrat in Germany, Ralf Stegner — though, of course, he warned that cuts to welfare for warfare would empower the extreme right in his country. Stegner, an MP, co-authored a provocative “peace manifesto” calling for spending on humanitarian aid instead of arms. Even more so than Mahdi’s, Stegner’s party is a player in the governing coalition, and in this week’s episode of EU Confidential, both argued that their allies were steamrolling over the public debate to embrace the 5 percent target. Listen and subscribe here.
FUZZY TIMELINES: A big sign of unease — capitals are likely to pitch 2035 for reaching the new target, Laura Kayali reports for Defense Pro subscribers.
Playbook math: That’s three years later than Rutte’s 2032 pitch. And 10 years from now.
Fuzzy math: Technically, just 3.5 percent of GDP needs to go to military stuff, while the rest can go to related investments like infrastructure and cybersecurity. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation and bookkeeping adjustments. Between that and the drawn-out deadline, who knows if Trump will even notice whether countries actually follow through?
Let’s be real: “I don’t know if that’s the most strategic choice to make, maybe it’s nicer to cover up what you think,” Mahdi said. “But we should have an honest debate” about what countries are actually prepared to spend — and how to pay for it.
SWAN SONG FROM A HAWK: “The external threat is real — and will be with us for decades to come. Much more remains to be done [on defense],” Poland’s Deputy Finance Minister Paweł Karbownik wrote in an email to fellow deputy finance ministers. Karbownik, who played a key role in steering the economic agenda of the Polish Council presidency, will be returning to his job at the Bruegel think tank as the Danes take over.
COMMS DEPT.
GOVERNMENT TRUST IN TROUBLE: A survey across OECD countries found just four in 10 trust their national government. The report urges action on key challenges, including fiscal strain, youth unemployment and the green and digital transitions.
Recommendations include adopting forms of deliberative democracy (such as citizens’ assemblies and public dialogues); implementing spending reviews and AI-driven tools; better aligning policies with climate goals; and making services, including justice and education, more accessible to all.
A CERTAIN JE NE SAIS QUOI: The U.S. Mission to the EU posted on X late Thursday: “The ‘disinformation industry’ is a scam to monitor, censor, and demonetize Americans.” Your Playbook author is a native English speaker who spent most of her life in the U.S., and yet she has no idea what this is talking about. She’d ask at the mission’s annual Independence Day reception, but once again, Playbook wasn’t invited.
NOW HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF CLEAR MESSAGING: The agriculture lobby is threatening more protests this summer if the Commission proposes cutting farm subsidies in its summer budget plan, Bartosz Brzeziński reports for Agri Pros.
“We are ready,” Massimiliano Giansanti, the Italian president of Europe’s powerful Copa farming lobby, told reporters at a press conference in Brussels. “I’m a farmer. I have my tractor in my house … You see me with my suit, but I have the tractor and I’m ready.”
BUREAUCRACY BOOST
EU Parliament creates official body to probe NGO funding, from POLITICO.
European Research Council makes bid to become a ‘permanent standalone’ EU body, from Science|Business.
BELGO-BRUSSELS MEETS EU
FLEMISH EPP MEMBER RULES OUT ROOM FOR DE WEVER: Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s Flemish Nationalist Party (N-VA) sits with the European Conservatives and Reformists at the European level. But he looks increasingly aligned with the dominant European People’s Party — and bringing De Wever into the fold would offer EPP chief Manfred Weber a luscious new seat at the European Council table. Meanwhile, the Flemish Christian Democrats (CD&V) increasingly find themselves with smaller minorities of voter support, and on the left wings of the EPP’s big tent, as our EU Confidential podcast interview with party boss Sammy Mahdi illustrated.
So we had to ask: Is there a world in which the N-VA and the CD&V could co-exist in the EPP? Mahdi replied without hesitation: “No, I don’t think so.”
ANOTHER MICHEL IN THE HEADLINES: Mathieu Michel — son of a European commissioner, brother of a European Council president and Belgian MP — is facing calls for disciplinary action after allegedly casting a vote in the name of another lawmaker who was absent from the chamber. Michel told Le Soir merely that the other MP had been present during the debate.
IN OTHER NEWS
MEHA MEETS MAHA: European Health Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi met his vaccine-skeptical U.S. counterpart Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and signaled readiness to work together in several areas. Mari Eccles has more.
THERE’S A WORLD RECORD FOR EVERYTHING: Between 500 and 3500 people will sing the European anthem to the European Parliament President Roberta Metsola during her visit to Łódź, Poland. The event is an attempt to set a record for the largest number of people to collectively sing the “Ode to Joy” in Polish, accompanied by nearly 100 musicians and the choir of the University of Łódź.
FUDGING THE NUMBERS? Izabella Kaminska examines whether Bulgaria has slashed key state-controlled prices to lower inflation numbers and help it qualify for euro membership.
FARM FRAUD: The European Public Prosecutor’s Office alleged that two Greek government ministers were complicit in a major scheme to defraud the EU farm budget and said it had referred the matter to the national parliament. Nektaria Stamouli has the story.
KIDS AND SOCIAL MEDIA: Denmark’s digital affairs minister criticized Meta for an advertising campaign promoting regulations on age checks for social media. POLITICO’s Eliza Gkritsi has more.