Opposition parties explore joint action following mass protests for Tempi crash victims
Sunday’s mass protests in over 100 cities across Greece and abroad, demanding justice for the victims of the 2023 Tempi rail crash, prompted left-of-center opposition parties to consider joint action against the conservative New Democracy government – a rare development, as unity among them has remained elusive.
Greece president vote inconclusive after first round
The Greek parliament has failed to elect a new president in the first of four rounds of voting. The conservative government’s nominee, Konstantinos Tasoulas, received 160 votes, falling 40 short of the 200 needed for an outright win.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1259728/greece-president-vote-inconclusive-after-first-round
Archbishop Anastasios of Albania dies
Archbishop Anastasios of Albania, who revived the country’s Orthodox Church after the fall of the communist regime in 1990, has died in Athens. He was 95.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1259719/archbishop-anastasios-of-albania-dies
Bank of Greece: Greek economy’s growth to peak in 2025, then converge toward potential growth
Growth in the Greek economy is expected to peak in 2025 and converge thereafter toward potential growth, the Bank of Greece (BoG) said in its “Note on the Greek Economy” released on Friday.
ATHEX: Fifth week of growth for stock index
The momentum of the Greek stock market is clear to everyone and traders rushed on Friday to ride it once again, taking the benchmark to a new 13.5-year high at the end of the fifth consecutive week of growth for Athinon Avenue. This week’s successful IPO of Alter Ego Media, that will start trading on the ATHEX on Monday, and the general trend for growth in European stock prices helped the local bourse secure more gains that were spread across most blue chips.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1259685/athex-fifth-week-of-growth-for-stock-index
SUNDAY PAPERS
KATHIMERINI: The world upside down
TO VIMA: Crete enters Chevron’s “radar” as well
REAL NEWS: Trump “typhoon” threatens Europe
PROTO THEMA: What is Trump’s plan?
MONDAY PAPERS:
TA NEA: Rally for the Tempi rail crash: Burst of rage
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: The people said “no” to the cover-up of the Tempi rail crash
KONTRA NEWS: Tempi rail crash: punishment, liability, memory, pain, ethics
DIMOKRATIA: Breath of oxygen causes asphyxiation to the government
NAFTEMPORIKI: The plan to provide electricity to data centers worth 5 billion
GREETINGS. This is Nick Vinocur. We’ll get into the big story of the day in Brussels shortly, but first a quick detour to Germany, where Economy Minister and Chancellor candidate Robert Habeck has warned about a possible resurgence of the far right in the upcoming election after Elon Musk appeared on a giant screen to voice his support for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) over the weekend.
Austria’s footsteps? Speaking at the Green Party convention in Berlin Sunday, Habeck said Germany’s federal election on Feb. 23 could produce the sort of result for the far right that put the hardliner Herbert Kickl on the brink of power in Vienna. “If it can happen in Austria, it can also happen in Germany,” he said.
Just like us: “Austria is very close to us in culture and political tradition,” Habeck continued. “In Austria, it has not been possible for a coalition of conservative Social Democrats and a progressive, liberal party to form a government, although they knew that a right-wing extremist party could then take over the government.” (Read the full story by my colleagues Jürgen Klöckner and Chris Lunday here.)
Let that sink in. According to a YouGov poll from last week, the conservative CDU leader Friedrich Merz is still on course to win the most votes in next month’s election and to become chancellor. But polls can be wrong, especially when measuring support for controversial candidates.
Adding to the tension, tech mogul Elon Musk is going all-in to support AfD leader Alice Weidel, telling her supporters at a campaign event via video link Saturday that she was “the best hope for Germany,” and urging them to “preserve German culture” and “protect the German people.” In an apparent reference to the country’s Nazi history, Musk added: “Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great-grandparents.”
Odd timing: Coming two days before the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp, Musk’s AfD outreach has set alarm bells ringing. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk described the rhetoric from the rally as “all too familiar and ominous.” Add to that the ongoing controversy about Musk’s arm gesture after Donald Trump’s inauguration — which some German commentators believe was a Nazi salute — and anxiety is running high.
The bottom line: Noone yet knows the true extent of Musk’s impact on European politics. In the U.K., he put an old story — the grooming gangs scandal — squarely back on the agenda, forcing Prime Minister Keir Starmer to address it. But X has fewer users in Germany than it does in Britain, and there is a language as well as a cultural barrier.
DRIVING THE DAY: HUNGARY SANCTIONS DEAL
SCOOP — DEAL LIKELY TO AVERT HUNGARY SANCTIONS THREAT: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is once again keeping Brussels on edge with a threat to block the rollover of sanctions against Russia, including the freezing of its financial assets in the EU. It’s a move that would jeopardize the bloc’s economic pressure campaign against Moscow.
Not taking this lightly: Hungary’s threat has prompted high-level warnings, including from Polish PM Tusk, who wrote on X: “If [Orbán] really blocks European sanctions at a key moment for the war, it’ll be absolutely clear that in this big game for the security and future of Europe, he is playing in Putin’s team, not in ours. With all the consequences of this fact.” One EU diplomat said that Hungary was “playing with fire” and “putting a bomb in transatlantic relations” if it blocked the sanctions.
The solution: According to two EU diplomats, a last-minute deal to avert Hungary’s threat is now in sight. Budapest is expected to back down in exchange for a statement addressing Hungary’s concerns about “energy security.” EU ambassadors are set to huddle during an emergency Coreper at 9 a.m. and the deal is expected to be formalized during a gathering of foreign ministers that kicks off at 10 a.m. in Brussels, one of the diplomats said in a text to Playbook.
Just a hunch: The scenario of Hungary blocking the sanctions rollover today “is not the baseline scenario,” Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys told journalists on Sunday. “That would leave all the EU and Hungary in a position of weakness … That would also limit the U.S. in [terms of] options seeking a long-term sustainable peace in Europe.”
Other options: Over the weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv would be willing to sign off on a deal to pump Azerbaijani gas to Hungary and Slovakia, provided the Kremlin didn’t profit from the arrangement. “We’re not going to extend the transit of Russian gas,” he said before the agreement with Moscow expired in January. “We won’t allow them to earn additional billions on our blood.”
Erdoğan to the rescue? Turkey has also weighed into the standoff, with its EU Ambassador Faruk Kaymakcı telling my colleague Gabriel Gavin on Sunday that Ankara stands ready to help replace Ukraine as a transit country.
Behind the scenes, EU diplomats are groaning. “They [the Hungarians] like the drama,” said a third EU diplomat, who added that the measures would be rolled over one way or another.
FOREIGN POLICY
DID YOU GET OUR EMAIL, MARCO? Foreign ministers are also set to discuss the EU’s relationship with Washington, amid growing concerns that the new Trump administration just isn’t interested in engaging with the bloc’s representatives.
Come whenever: Kaja Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, has gone so far as extending an “open invitation” to Trump’s new Secretary of State Marco Rubio to attend the foreign ministers’ gathering. It’s not unusual for foreign ministers from non-EU states to appear at or dial into the gathering, but offering an “open invitation” is unusual. She has yet to receive a reply.
EU-who? Rubio’s lack of response points to a larger concern — that the EU is being frozen out by Trump’s administration in favor of national leaders and ministers. No high-level EU representative was invited to the presidential inauguration, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was the only EU leader there.
Anyone but EU: Since then, Trump has had a phone call with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, which the FT reported went “very badly” for the Danes as the president pressed his determination to take control of Greenland. Rubio has had calls with more than a dozen foreign ministers, including four Europeans — Poland’s Radosław Sikorski, Latvia’s Baiba Braže, Lithuania’s Budrys and Italy’s Antonio Tajani — but no representatives of the EU.
Cold shower: It’s a radical shift from the friendly relationship that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and other top EU figures had with Joe Biden’s administration.
Playing it cool — sort of: Von der Leyen used her speech in Davos last week to tout potential trade deals with several countries that weren’t the United States. But as the bloc’s largest trading partner, Washington looms ultra-large for the EU. At some point, the elephant in the room will have to be addressed.
EU PREPARES TO LIFT SANCTIONS ON SYRIA: Foreign ministers are also due to discuss lifting EU sanctions against Syria following the fall of dictator Bashar Assad’s regime.
Lifting sanctions: In briefings, several EU diplomats said it was likely that member countries would agree on a “political signal” in favor of lifting sanctions in some areas — namely transport, energy and banking. “I think they will agree a change in the sanctions regime,” one of the diplomats said.
Why it matters: The EU is fast-tracking changes in its relations with Syria, with French and German foreign ministers flying out to meet with the country’s new leaders earlier this month. But the EU has insisted that its outreach is conditional on Syria’s new rulers respecting minorities and women’s rights. The sanctions relief would come with a “snapback” mechanism enabling them to be reapplied should Damascus fall short.
ITALY RESUMES ALBANIA MIGRANT PLAN: Italy resumed its policy of sending migrants to a processing center in Albania on Sunday after a two-month pause prompted by magistrates questioning the legality of the scheme. Italy’s interior ministry said that 49 people, mostly from Bangladesh and Egypt, were being transferred to the processing center in Albania, Euronews reported.
Controversy: The plan has come under fire from human rights groups and legal advocates in Italy. The European Court of Justice is set to hear a legal challenge on Feb. 25. But has also been praised by EU leaders who want to make such third-country “migrant hubs” — holding centers where migrants are kept before being deported — a linchpin of the bloc’s new migration policy.
ANOTHER BALTIC SEA CABLE DAMAGED: An undersea fiber optic cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged Sunday, adding to concerns among NATO allies about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure in the region. Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa blamed “external influence” and said her country had launched criminal proceedings, and Sweden’s government seized the ship suspected of having damaged the cable. Reuters has the details.
Could it be a coincidence? There’s a view among American and European intelligence officials that the recent Baltic Sea cable cuttings were accidental, not a result of sabotage, as the Washington Post reported this month. But the suggestion that this evaluation reflects an “emerging consensus” on both sides of the Atlantic doesn’t sit well with local leaders.
“The number of incidents exceeds the normal statistics that we can see in seas around the world,” Lithuania’s Kęstutis Budrys told journalists on Sunday. “We hope that this recent event will also be investigated and that it will provide clear answers. Then we’d be in a position to discuss response measures.”
IN OTHER NEWS
LUKASHENKO WINS “SHAM” ELECTION IN BELARUS: Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko won the presidential election for the seventh time with 87.6 percent of the vote, according to an official exit poll. Writing on X Saturday, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the election was a “sham” and a “blatant affront to democracy.” POLITICO’s Leonie Cater has the details.
Don’t forget us: Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya told Playbook’s Sarah Wheaton she’s worried her country will somehow become collateral damage as President Trump pushes for a deal with Russia’s Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. “What people are afraid of is that Belarus can be given as a consolation prize to Putin,” she said, leaving it “in the sphere of influence of Russia.”
CLAUSS TO BERLIN? Germany’s likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is vowing to bring new unity and leadership in Brussels — and to do that, he may well rely on a well-known diplomatic insider. German EU Ambassador Michael Clauss is frequently mentioned in the Merz camp as a candidate for EU adviser in the Chancellery, reports my Berlin Playbook colleague Hans von der Burchard.
Clauss, who isn’t politically affiliated, was sent to Brussels by Angela Merkel in 2018. Before that, he gained China experience during his five-year term as German ambassador to Beijing (which could help Berlin in the light of the EV duties dispute). Olaf Scholz, when taking office in 2021, decided to keep Clauss in his post, considering his experience there indispensable.
TRUMP CLAIMS VICTORY IN TARIFF STANDOFF: The U.S. threatened punitive emergency tariffs and sanctions against Colombia on Sunday after Bogotá turned away two American military aircraft full of deported migrants. Overnight, Colombia appeared to back down and agreed to take deportation flights. “Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. My colleagues in the U.S. covered the dispute here.
MIDDLE EAST LATEST: President Trump proposed a “clean out” of Gaza by sending Palestinian refugees from the territory to Egypt and Jordan. Both countries rejected the idea, the Associated Press reports. It came as international negotiators scrambled to preserve the fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. The militant group agreed to release three more hostages on Thursday, and Israel said that it would allow displaced Palestinians to begin returning to their homes in the north of Gaza starting today.