Turkey EU defense bid tied to casus belli
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis stated that lifting Turkey’s long-standing casus belli against Greece could be tied to Ankara’s participation in European Union defense programs. In a radio interview, Mitsotakis said he plans to raise the issue directly with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, potentially during the NATO summit in The Hague in late June.
Public sector permanency to come under review, says PM
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday indicated that the government is mulling constitutional changes that will overturn civil servants’ right to job permanency, and called on support from the opposition for such a revision.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1270497/public-sector-permanency-to-come-under-review-says-pm
PASOK’s Androulakis: Ethnic cleansing taking place in Gaza, Greek gov’t response comes late
What is happening in Gaza is ethnic cleansing, not lawful defense, and the reaction of the Greek government on the tragic conditions has come late, PASOK-Movement for Change (KINAL) leader Nikos Androulakis told Mega TV on Thursday.
Bank of Greece: Inbound traveller rate rose 5.4% during first quarter of 2025
The number of inbound travellers to Greece approached 2.5 million in the first quarter of the year (January-March 2025), registering an increase of 5.4% over the same quarter in 2024, the Bank of Greece (BoG) said on Thursday.
ATHEX: Bourse takes a breather after rally
The Greek stock market appears to have paused for a breather on Thursday after the rally of previous days that saw the benchmark climb to highs unseen since May 2010 and several stocks register record prices. This time the rise in bond yields internationally put pressure on stock prices, and the closing auctions did not provide a turnaround in the buyers’ favor, leaving the main index in the red.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1270545/athex-bourse-takes-a-breather-after-rally
KATHIMERINI: Disciplinary boards for public employees will convene and reach rulings swiftly
TA NEA: Lifting of civil servants’ right to permanency
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: The government is subservient regarding the genocide in Gaza; the opposition is united against it
RIZOSPASTIS: Thousands rallied asking for the massacre in Gaza and the support for the murdering state of Israel to cease
KONTRA NEWS: The government is playing games with civil servants’ right to permanency
DIMOKRATIA: PM talks nonsense in interview
NAFTEMPORIKI: Counter-incentives for closed appartments
DRIVING THE DAY: MIGRATION CRACKDOWNS
THE BORDER CONTROL BOOGIE: Illegal migration into the EU is down by 25 percent so far in 2025. Yet its political salience remains sky-high, with politicians getting increasingly creative when it comes to cracking down on a diminishing problem.
BOOTING THE CRIMINALS: Foreigners fleeing war and starvation can be pretty sympathetic. Foreigners committing crimes? Not so much. A fresh fervor to expel them is uniting Italy’s hard-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Denmark’s Socialist PM Mette Frederiksen.
Decrying conventions: In Rome on Thursday evening, the two leaders called for a reinterpretation of the European Convention on Human Rights to make it easier to expel migrants who commit crimes, reports Yurii Stasiuk.
Incomprehensible: “It is beyond our comprehension how some people can come to our countries and get a share in our freedom and our vast range of opportunities, and, indeed, decide to commit crimes,” reads a joint statement, suggesting that sometimes the rules have elevated the rights of perpetrators over victims.
Who’s in for getting them out: Spearheaded by Meloni and Frederiksen, the statement is signed by the leaders of seven other countries: Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Belgium and the Baltics.
Reality check: Migrants do tend to encounter legal issues at a proportionally higher rate than the overall population. But researchers caution that other things — like the fact migrants are more likely to end up in urban areas, where crime rates are generally higher — explain those stats better than origin. A recent analysis in Germany of data between 2018 and 2023 found “no correlation between an increasing share of foreigners in a district and the local crime rate.”
Court of public opinion: “We believe that we are strongly aligned with the majority of the citizens of Europe,” the nine-country statement argues.
GERMANY’S MIGRATION THEATER: Berlin’s efforts to boost border checks appear to be more about performance than results, reports Nette Nöstlinger in this must-read piece.
Political stagecraft: Shortly after being sworn in, center-right Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said he was sending thousands of extra police officers to the German border to beef up ongoing checks and turn more migrants away. Instead, he’s just causing traffic jams at the Polish border while raising alarm about a professed breach of EU law.
Prime example: Days after Dobrindt announced the increased checks, two Afghan asylum-seekers tried to enter Germany from Poland. The German police attempted to return them, according to a Spiegel report that cited police documents. But the Polish authorities refused to take the Afghans, so the German police took them to a reception center in Germany.
“I will be ready to close the border” if Germany keeps pushing asylum-seekers back into Poland, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in an angry interview this week.
Missing Merz: Given Merz’s stated ambition to hold off the extreme-right Alternative for Germany by easing voters’ migration concerns, you’d think he’d have signed the Meloni-Frederiksen letter on deporting criminals.
Then again, Italy’s collaboration with Denmark is defined by its “concreteness,” Meloni told reporters Thursday evening. Maybe that explains why Germany didn’t make the list.
TRUMP TARIFF TAROT
FOR PESSIMISTS — HOWARD LUTNICK: While the Trump administration expects to sign deals with “most” key countries before the end of summer, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said during an Axios event in Washington, “there are some countries that are impossible, like the European Union. It’s just very difficult.” (Yes, Playbook knows the EU is not a country, please spare us your demands for a correction.)
FOR OPTIMISTS — LEO VARADKAR: It might not happen by July, but former Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar predicted an eventual EU-U.S. deal would be struck in an interview with POLITICO’s EU Confidential podcast. “And the deal mightn’t be particularly favorable to the U.S., but is presented as a great deal,” he added.
This week’s shameless podcast plug: Varadkar, now a global adviser for the consultancy Penta Group, swung by the EU Confidential studio to reflect on life after electoral politics, the rise of “identity politics” globally and the EU-U.K. rapprochement. Plus, Carnegie Europe’s Rym Momtaz on the tipping point for EU-Israel relations. Listen to this week’s episode and subscribe to EU Confidential.
KALLAS BALKAN TOUR
HRVP’S TOUGH LOVE FOR SERBIA AND KOSOVO: EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas is wrapping up her two-day Western Balkans swing in North Macedonia. It’s her second visit to the region in two months.
On today’s agenda: A planned meeting with North Macedonia’s Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski and the kick-off of the first security and defense dialogue are likely to be relatively chill after her more pointed exchanges earlier in the trip, Playbook’s Šejla Ahmatović reports.
First, the positive reinforcement: In Pristina on Thursday, Kallas announced that the EU has begun lifting punitive measures imposed on Kosovo following the flare-up of violence in the Serb-majority north in 2023.
But but but: While the decision would allow closer collaboration with Europe, “it’s conditional on sustained deescalation,” Kallas clarified. She also urged Kosovo’s political parties to finally form a new government three months after the country’s February election. A working dinner with acting Prime Minister Albin Kurti was added to Kallas’ agenda at the last minute.
Hard truth: “Although Kosovo’s caretaker government seems to be in denial, the country has an EU problem on its hands,” write a group of think tankers in a new paper from Carnegie Europe. Naturally, they have some advice about how to solve it.
SERBIA SERMON: Before that, Kallas met in Belgrade with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, as well as the opposition and, notably, representatives of the youth movement that has shaken Vučić’s hold on power.
Highlights of her speech in Serbia, with Playbook’s less diplomatic translations …
What Kallas said: “This [accession] process has been going on for quite some time. But there’s always a political momentum and this political momentum is right now.”
What she meant: Get yourself together, guys, you’ve been a candidate for more than 10 years.
What Kallas said: “Serbia faces a strategic choice, where it wants to be.”
What she meant: It’s either at Putin’s parade in Moscow, or it’s around the Council table in Brussels.
What Kallas said: “Reforms need to be real, not just ticking the box on the paper.”
What she meant: Your streets are full of people demanding the real thing.
What Kallas said: “It is time to overcome the past and focus on the common future.”
What she meant: It’s 2025. Recognize Kosovo and get over it.
LOOKING AHEAD: Kallas said she would invite reps of Belgrade and Pristina to Brussels “as soon as possible” to sort out their differences.
METSOLA MARKS DAYTON ACCORDS’ 30TH IN U.S.: European Parliament President Roberta Metsola is in Dayton, the midwestern U.S. city where the eponymous Bosnia peace agreement was negotiated in 1995, for this weekend’s NATO Parliamentary Assembly meeting. In a major address on Sunday, she’ll look ahead to next month’s NATO summit and stress the need for Europe to invest more in defense, her office tells Playbook.
Oh, and if she can pigeonhole a few American members of Congress on the sidelines, all the better.
HUAWEI LOBBYING SCANDAL
TRULY BRILLIANT POLICE WORK BY BELGIAN AUTHORITIES: Belgium bugged the Anderlecht football stadium to spy on Huawei MEP lobbying, Max Griera reports.
… ACTUALLY, WE TAKE THAT BACK: Police rescinded their request to withdraw the immunity of Italian Giusi Princi after she protested that she wasn’t even an MEP at the time of the meeting being investigated, and, furthermore, she was in Italy when the get-together allegedly occurred.
“I am still shocked at having been involved on the basis of objectively non-existent elements,” Princi said. Read more from Max.
RULE OF LAW LETTERS
FIRST IN POLITICO — NGOs TO VDL: KILL HUNGARY’S “TRANSPARENCY IN PUBLIC LIFE” BILL. A whopping 329 civil society groups have signed a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath asking for Brussels’ help blocking a measure in Hungary that could punish a broad swath of government critics with harsh fines and bans on political action. Spearheaded by the Civil Liberties Union for Europe, a Berlin-based umbrella NGO, the letter lays out how the EU could use new and existing infringement proceedings to stymie the law.
Looking ahead: The letter also indirectly targets capitals, which will consider suspending Hungary’s voting rights when the General Affairs Council meets on May 27. Press release.
FIRST IN POLITICO — SOCIALISTS TO VDL: SAVE THE ICC. In light of U.S. sanctions against the International Criminal Court, top Socialists and Democrats MEPs want the Commission to activate its so-called blocking statute. The measure protects European businesses from third-country laws like sanctions that defy international law.
IN OTHER NEWS
BLAME ASSIGNED IN PARLIAMENT BRAWL: A Parliament assistant from a Swedish party in The Left group is responsible for the brawl with Swedish EPP lawmaker Alice Teodorescu related to a Gaza debate in Parliament, the institution’s authorities have determined.
Details: After talking to witnesses and looking at security footage, Parliament services determined Wednesday’s altercation was “initiated and escalated” by the assistant, Metsola’s office told Playbook, adding that he “was notably taking pictures of or filming” the MEP without her consent.
HAPPENING TODAY: German Chancellor Merz will have his first call with Chinese President Xi Jinping at noon, my Berlin Playbook colleague Hans von der Burchard reports.
Happened Thursday: Merz was in Vilnius, where he inaugurated a permanent German brigade in Lithuania that’s meant to help protect NATO’s eastern flank. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys described it as a “historic day.”
HOW RUSSIA GETS ITS HANDS ON EU TECH: A German-based tech firm exported restricted tech to Russia despite EU sanctions, Mason Boycott-Owen reports in this investigation. Kontron, a company with operations across the EU, Britain and the U.S., used its Slovenian subsidiary to export over €3.5 million in sensitive telecoms tech to its Russian arm in late 2023, Mason reveals.
GEORGIA’S BACKSLIDING: A Georgian court placed Zurab Japaridze, a leader of the country’s largest opposition party the Coalition for Change, into pre-trial detention on Thursday. The ALDE party, of which the Coalition for Change is a member, slammed the move. “Convicted in a sham trial, closed court, without representatives of diplomatic missions permitted to be present, and only the Georgian Dream-controlled state broadcaster able to film the hearing,” ALDE said in a statement.