PM Mitsotakis meets with US secretary of interior in Athens
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis met with US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum in Athens on Thursday to discuss energy cooperation. The meeting came one day after the American oil company Chevron submitted a bid for hydrocarbon exploration in four offshore blocks south of Crete and the Peloponnese.
Inflation tops concerns as Greeks weigh PM’s pledges and Tsipras comeback
Inflation remains the top concern for Greeks at 56.6%, according to a new Opinion Poll survey for Action24, which also measured reactions to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ announcements at the Thessaloniki International Fair and speculation about former premier Alexis Tsipras forming a new party.
Thessaly rail upgrade movesahead; completion set for 2026
Railway restoration works in Thessaly are progressing, with completion expected in the summer of 2026. According to a statement by the Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE), “ the railway infrastructure upgrade projects in Thessaly, which began in April 2025 following the destruction caused by Storm Daniel, are proceeding according to schedule and are now in their most critical phase. Completion is expected in the summer of 2026.”
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/932140/Thessaly-rail-upgrade-movesahead-completion-set-for-2026
Top court ruling puts bird safety above turbines
Greece’s top administrative court has moved to curb wind farm development, ruling that a European directive on bird protection was inadequately transposed into national law, while affirming that renewable energy projects can still be built within Special Protection Areas (SPAs) under strict conditions.
ATHEX: Modest climb continues at Athinon Avenue
The word on the market about upcoming share capital increases and placements, or even corporate bond issues, to draw funds from investors, is helping the Greek bourse continue its modest climb, with Thursday adding another session of small growth for stocks, without any significant support from the credit sector. This time the gains were more widespread, with rising stocks numbering twice as many as losers on the day.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1280604/athex-modest-climb-continues-at-athinon-ave
KATHIMERINI: Athens wants to acquire more F-35 jetfighters
TA NEA: Prisoners go live on TikTok: When prisons become… studios
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Government confesses regarding VAT and price hikes
RIZOSPASTIS: No waiting! We join the Greek Communist Party’s struggle so that the people win
KONTRA NEWS: Extreme poverty hits society
DIMOKRATIA: The government’s handouts do not persuade citizens
NAFTEMPORIKI: GDP boosted by the reduction of direct taxes
DRIVING THE DAY: DRONING PAINS
NATO IS NOT EQUIPPED AGAINST RUSSIAN DRONES: Here’s a harsh truth: Those (at least) 19 drones that flew into Polish airspace on Wednesday? They were made of foam and wood. With the help of fighter jets, NATO took down three of them.
Gulp: Using multi-million dollar weapons systems to shoot down a handful of cheap drones is unsustainably expensive. And the alliance’s response is all the more inexcusable when you consider that Ukraine usually claims an 80 percent to 90 percent interception rate — despite facing much larger attacks.
Gaps exposed: Moscow’s incursion into Polish airspace has starkly highlighted NATO’s lack of preparedness for the threat now confronting it, as my colleague Laura Kayali reports this morning. More than three years into the full-scale war in Ukraine, the allies don’t have cost-effective counter-measures to deal with Russia’s low-cost gear.
Rutte is rattled: NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte held a long-planned meeting with EU ambassadors in Brussels on Thursday — the first time an alliance chief has participated in such a meeting. Everyone seemed to have the same anxiety: that we just showed the Kremlin precisely how unprepared the West is. NATO militaries would not be able to regularly use F-35s to intercept waves of cheap drones.
“Rutte himself concluded that, and no one disagreed,” one of the diplomats told Jacopo Barigazzi.
Add this to the list of problems we know about but didn’t act on: “Are there lessons in terms of how to track and bring down lots of cheap drones that doesn’t involve a multi-million euro missile? Of course, but that’s not a new lesson,” Charly Salonius-Pasternak, CEO of the Helsinki-based Nordic West Office think tank, tells Laura. “What has the European political establishment done about it?”
For now … NATO members have committed troops, artillery and air defence systems to strengthen the alliance’s eastern flank in the wake of Wednesday’s incident. French President Emmanuel Macron said last night his country would send three warplanes to protect Poland’s airspace, insisting: “We will not yield to Russia’s growing intimidation.”
The threat was real: According to WELT, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group, five drones were on a direct flight path toward a NATO base before being intercepted by Dutch Lockheed Martin F-35 fighter jets.
Happening today: The U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting to discuss the drone incursions. Reuters has more.
EU SEES PROGRESS ON TRUMP … U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday that the airspace violations could’ve been a mistake, adding: “I’m not happy about anything having to do with that whole situation. But hopefully it’s going to come to an end.”
The bigger picture: If the president’s responses about Russia’s drones have so far have been somewhat ambiguous, though, diplomats are hopeful that European leaders have finally convinced Trump the Kremlin is not interested in ending its war in Ukraine, my colleagues Camille Gijs, Gabriel Gavin, Koen Verhelst and Antonia Zimmermann report in this must-read.
Now it just needs him to act: A flurry of diplomatic visits over the past week have seen top officials on both sides of the Atlantic talk about how to force Russia to the negotiating table. The problem is that while the EU is into sanctions, Trump’s more into tariffs. The president this week urged the EU to impose 100 percent tariffs on India and China for buying Russian oil, and the U.S. now intends to extend that pressure to the G7, the FT reported last night. But that’s a nonstarter in Brussels.
ALSO DRIVING THE DAY: CARS
VDL ON COLLISION COURSE WITH CARMAKERS: The fate of the contentious 2035 combustion engine ban is at the center of today’s meeting between European auto execs and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Jordyn Dahl writes in to report.
Got 99 problems: While the sector is facing a number of crises, the only topic they want to discuss is creating carveouts in the 2035 ban to allow for hybrids and cars that run on alternative fuels.
How we got here: At the start of the year, executives convened a so-called strategic dialogue — think a formalized lobby-fest — to devise a strategy to help Europe’s once dominant automotive sector become competitive again. Chinese electric vehicles are cheap, high quality and kicking European versions’ butt on their home turf. (Read more on that here.)
Not budging: Instead of giving ground on the combustion engine ban, von der Leyen is doubling down on electric vehicles as the future car for Europe in a concept paper published ahead of today’s meeting. The Commission is putting together a proposal on electrifying corporate fleets, aka company cars that are popular benefits for workers that also give their employers tax breaks.
Bold move: The commitment to EVs puts her at odds with her center-right political family, the European People’s Party (EPP), which campaigned on overturning the ban.
Not in the driver’s seat: However, von der Leyen is buying time, said Jean-Philippe Hermine, a director with the French think tank IDDRI. Because, ultimately, the fate of the combustion engine will depend on the EU capitals where a consensus has yet to take shape. More details for Pros in Morning Mobility.
GAZA CRISIS
PARLIAMENT BACKS VDL PUSH FOR SANCTIONS, TRADE PAUSE: European lawmakers backed von der Leyen’s pitch to sanction “extremist ministers” in Israel and partially suspend the trade elements of the EU-Israel agreement. Winning necessary support in the Council, however, won’t be so easy. Read more.
Israel slaps back: Evidently stung by the once-sympathetic von der Leyen’s change of tune, including her accusations of “man-made famine,” the Israeli foreign ministry accused her of “echoing Hamas propaganda and sending the wrong message that emboldens terror.”
The Thursday evening post on X continued: “What’s missing from the President’s statement is the truth: the suffering in Gaza is caused by Hamas.”
LISTEN UP — URSULA’S FIGHT SONG: Will von der Leyen’s new stance on Israel-Gaza help shore up her centrist coalition? And will regular European citizens feel the effects of her proposals to fight poverty while standing up to Trump and Putin? We’re analyzing the SOTEU in this week’s EU Confidential podcast. Rym Momtaz, editor-in-chief of Carnegie Europe’s Strategic Europe blog; Carsten Brzeski, ING’s global head of macro research; and Sorcha Edwards, secretary general of Housing Europe, weigh in. Listen and subscribe here.
NOW READ THIS: Von der Leyen’s tougher line on Israel sparks Bavarian conservative backlash.
KALLAS VS. BORRELL: After enduring months of harsh criticism from Josep Borrell, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas slapped back at her predecessor’s backseat driving. “Nothing happened with Borrell,” she told journalists from El País and other Spanish outlets. “We managed to get humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
And vs. García: Responding to an article on this by POLITICO’s Aitor Hernández-Morales, Socialists & Democrats group chief Iratxe García Pérez stood up for her fellow Spanish socialist. “What has Kallas done? Announce a phantom ‘humanitarian deal’ with Israel,” the MEP said on X. “So tell us, where is the deal?”
CHARLIE KIRK SHOOTING
FUROR OVER DENIED TRIBUTE: European Parliament President Roberta Metsola rejected right-wing lawmakers’ initiative to hold a minute of silence for slain MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, Max Griera and Seb Starcevic report.
The explanation: Rules that such commemorations can only be held at the opening of the plenary — not the end.
Bad optics: That explanation was nowhere to be found in a flood of frustrated messages from Trump-friendly MEPs that filled up Playbook’s X feed. Indeed, a compromise measure — giving European Conservatives and Reformists Charlie Weimers a chance to make a statement — only created worse visuals, when his effort to then call a moment of silence was shot down by the Socialist vice president presiding over the session.
Playbook irony alert: The Commission and member countries have thus far proved ready to jettison the rules-based order to make a trade deal and ensure a modicum of stability with Trump. Yet the Parliament is holding fast to its rules and procedures in the face of a (let’s be honest, understandable) desire by part of the house to honor a 31-year-old ally the day after his killing — which appears to have left Trump and much of his White House personally distraught.
KIRK FOR HUMAN RIGHTS PRIZE: The far-right Europe of Sovereign Nations party, led by the Alternative for Germany (AfD), has nominated Charlie Kirk for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought, citing “his defence of the right to free expression and the norms of peaceful democratic contestation,” according to a memo circulated internally and seen by POLITICO.
Other nominees: Kirk has little chance of winning the prize posthumously as his backers are rather limited in number. Other groups have nominated the Budapest Pride, Serbian students and Palestinian journalists, as well as dissidents in Georgia and Algeria.
Most likely to win, given the weight of the groups backing him, is Polish-Belarusian journalist and human rights activist Andrzej Poczobut. A key voice against Alexander Lukashenko who remains imprisoned in Minsk, Poczobut is backed by the EPP and the European Conservatives and Reformists.
QATARGATE UPDATE(!)
YES, IT’S STILL A THING: In December — around the three-year anniversary of the European Parliament’s flashy cash-for-favors scandal, a Belgian court will consider the request to review whether the proceedings went by the books. The hearing will be held in the Brussels Court of Appeal’s Chamber of Indictments, the Belgian public prosecutor said Thursday.
In case you forgot: The judge initially leading the case, Michel Claise, resigned in June 2023 over accusations of conflict of interest. The defendants have challenged the legality of the proceedings, which the courts are currently examining. The outcome of that hearing could nuke the whole case and make years of work fall apart.
And in other parliamentary criminal investigations news … The German parliament lifted the immunity of former AfD MEP Maximilian Krah, who’s been accused of dubious connections to Russia and China. Krah, now a German MP, confirmed that his office has since been searched and called the investigation “politically motivated.” Read more.
BELGIUM IN THE WORLD
BELGIUM’S DIPLOMATIC THAW WITH RWANDA: Belgium’s foreign ministry has quietly resumed “informal and discreet contacts” in recent months with Rwanda, spokesperson Laurens Soenens told POLITICO’s Eliza Gkritsi. Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Prévot plans to travel to Kigali on Nov. 19-20.
Context: The two countries with an intertwined colonial history broke diplomatic ties in a public spat in March. Belgium was supporting the Democratic Republic of the Congo as Rwandan-backed rebels took over key Congolese cities.
Local intrigue: The Belgian government also intervened to cancel a book presentation earlier this week because it “would very likely have been misinterpreted as an unfriendly gesture from Belgium towards Rwanda,” Soenen said.
CONTROVERSY OVER CANCELLED CONCERT: The decision to cancel a Munich Philharmonic concert in Ghent because the conductor is Israeli was panned as “ill-considered and irresponsible” by Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, Belgian media report, after the German Ministry of Culture complained of “blatant antisemitism.”
The reasoning: Organizers of the Flanders Festival said there was not “sufficient clarity about [the conductor’s] attitude to the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv.” Ferdinand Knapp has more.
Partisan factor: De Wever, from the Flemish nationalist N-VA, and his federal governing partner, George-Louis Bouchez of the francophone liberal MR, have both condemned the cancellation. However, Flanders’ socialist culture minister, Caroline Gennez, is backing the organizers.
IN OTHER NEWS
TRUMP’S MAN MAKES IT OFFICIAL: U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder presented his credentials to Commission President von der Leyen and European Council President António Costaon Thursday. He’d been keeping a low profile while he awaited the formality.
STAYING PUT: Tony Murphy was re-elected to a three-year term as president of the Luxembourg-based European Court of Auditors.