Education minister unveils draft bill for non-state, non-profit universities in Greece
Greek students enrolling at private branches of foreign universities founded in Greece will be required to go through the Greek university entrance examination system and to meet some minimum requirements in order to be offered a place, Education Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis said on Wednesday.
European Parliament resolution expresses concern over rule of law in Greece
The European Parliament expressed concern on Wednesday regarding developments in Greece MEPs said were threatening the rule of law, and they called on the Commission to act.
Government issues warning as escalation looms
As farmers announced on Wednesday that they will intensify their protests and blockades of national highways, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mistotakis hinted that the government may part with its, so far, conciliatory tone.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/news/1231154/government-issues-warning-as-escalation-looms/
Greece to allow fans at top league soccer matches, with strict rules
Greece will allow its top league soccer matches to be played with fans from February 13, two months after top clubs were ordered to play behind closed doors following the severe injuring of a police officer in violence during a volleyball match.
ATHEX: EU scare ends stocks’ rising streak
After six sessions of gains in a row for the benchmark, which took it to a 13-year high, the Greek stock market endured moderate losses on Wednesday, in spite of the spectacular entry of Athens International Airport. The news about the European Commission investigation of monopolistic practices by PPC appeared to scare traders, though the utility stresses that this concerns the previous decade and a market that no longer exists.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1231115/athex-eu-scare-ends-stocks-rising-streak/
KATHIMERINI: The “keys” to private universities
TA NEA: National exams for the entry into private universities
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Two-gear university students
AVGI: Degradation: Greece condemned by the EU parliament
RIZOSPASTIS: It must be heard louder today: Take back the bill on private universities!
KONTRA NEWS: Temboneras and Achtsioglou attempted to wall in Tsipras
DIMOKRATIA: National exams for the entry into private universities
NAFTEMPORIKI: 4 out of 10 professionals cannot pay their contributions to social security fund EFKA
MIGRATION VOTE
EU COUNTRIES VOTE ON HISTORIC MIGRATION OVERHAUL: The 27 EU governments vote today on a historic overhaul of the EU’s border and migration rules.
Prison-like centers at the border: Representatives will vote on a total of 10 files that will tighten migration rules — including plans to set up prison-like reception centers for people arriving at the EU’s borders seeking asylum.
How it works: The new “border procedure” will become mandatory “if the applicant has a nationality with a recognition rate below 20 percent” or if they provide “false information or by withholding information.”
Humanitarian exemptions: Unaccompanied minors will be excluded from the border procedure, unless they pose a security threat.
**A message from Equinor: Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is one of the solutions needed to achieve our global climate goals according to the IEA and the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).**
What to expect: As of Wednesday night, diplomats from four EU countries said they had not yet received all texts, and therefore could not confirm whether they would back the package.
‘Technical work’: After the Spanish presidency reached a deal with Parliament in December, the Belgian presidency has been doing “technical work” to clean up the legal texts and to make sure that countries will back them. But as everyone in Brussels knows, what is technical is political.
Stumbling blocks: According to five diplomats, one of the remaining issues is whether France will back the screening regulation, in particular the question of how people who have not been processed at a reception center should be screened.
How’s it looking: While most diplomats told Playbook and my ace colleague Jacopo Barigazzi that it was unlikely an agreement would be blocked, the Belgian presidency was more circumspect, saying a deal today is not guaranteed. “We hope that it’s going to be finalized and agreed [today], but if not we are still on track” and it would be put back on the agenda “at the next Coreper,” a diplomat told Playbook.
Instrumentalization: It’s also unclear whether the Baltics will be fully satisfied with the measures in the “crisis regulation” covering the “instrumentalization” of migrants — something both Russia and Belarus have repeatedly been accused of.
Anyone’s guess: It “sounds like everyone [is] keeping their cards close,” one of the diplomats said on Wednesday evening. If EU countries do back the pact today, Parliament will seek to give it a final blessing at April’s plenary.
GERMANY
BERLIN COALITION BICKERS OVER SUPPLY CHAIN LAW: EU countries are set to vote on the EU’s due diligence law, which would force companies to screen their foreign suppliers to avoid products that are a result of inhumane working conditions and forced labor.
So much drama: But in Germany, the law has triggered another major fight between the ruling coalition of the social democrats (SPD), Greens and liberals (FDP), forcing Berlin to abstain at Friday’s vote — which could in turn kill the law.
FDP reaches out to EU countries: The FDP are warning the law would add too much paperwork for businesses. On Tuesday, FDP Justice Minister Marco Buschmann wrote to his EU colleagues arguing the law would fail to achieve its objective and could hurt EU competitiveness.
SPD fires back: SPD Labor Minister Hubertus Heil is having none of it. In an email to my colleague Antonia Zimmermann, a spokesperson for Heil said “the letter from the Federal Minister of Justice was not coordinated with the Federal Ministry of Labour and is a highly unusual procedure that has also caused astonishment among our European partners.”
Three is a crowd: Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, from the Greens, was critical of a German abstention on the vote. “If we break our word once given in Brussels, we will lose trust,” Baerbock said in a statement.
SCHOLZ HEADS TO A WASHINGTON UNDER TRUMP’S SPELL: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz today leaves for the U.S. capital — which, when it comes to Ukraine aid, is already under former President Donald Trump’s spell, as my colleague James Angelos notes in this piece out this morning.
On the agenda: Tonight, Scholz will meet U.S. lawmakers for dinner at the German ambassador’s residence and on Friday he’ll meet President Joe Biden for an hour-long discussion focused on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.
THE ECR GROUP
FRENCH FAR-RIGHT PARTY JOINS ECR: Reconquest, the far-right party of Eric Zemmour, confirmed Wednesday that it will join the European Conservatives and Reformists group in the European Parliament, Eddy Wax reports.
Immediate impact? Not much, given that Reconquest has only one MEP. But that could change after the EU election in June, as the party and its lead candidate Marion Maréchal could win five seats, according to polls. In addition, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has also said his Fidesz MEPs will seek join the ECR.
A right transformation: The ECR used to be the softer of Parliament’s two right-wing Euroskeptic groups. But the group already shifted right with the addition of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy. However, it has remained pro-Western on issues like NATO and Russia, and continued to support EU unity.
Divided group: With the addition of Reconquest and Fidesz, the ECR would suddenly have Russia-friendly and extremely far-right members among its ranks. Still, party lines are often fluid in Parliament, meaning members of the same group sometimes vote in different ways.
Ripping up the cordon sanitaire? The bigger consequence may be that that ECR’s new members may mean the beginning of the end of the “cordon sanitaire” — the principle that pro-democratic forces won’t cooperate with anti-democratic forces in Europe.
AROUND PARLIAMENT
PRESSURE ON GREECE OVER RULE OF LAW: Parliament on Wednesday decried what it said were “serious threats to democracy, the rule of law and fundamental rights in Greece.” MEPs cited “intimidation and harassment [of] officials who are scrutinising the government” and government spying on opposition politicians and journalists.
Conditionality mechanism: A majority of MEPs voted for a resolution calling for a Commission assessment under the Rule of Law Conditionality Regulation. In a move similar to the case against Hungary, the resolution also calls on Brussels to assess whether Greece is complying with fundamental EU norms before granting it EU funds.
PARLIAMENT TO VOTE ON SERBIAN ELECTION FRAUD: MEPs will today vote on a resolution condemning Serbia over accusations of election irregularities and voter fraud that were reported by independent election observers.
**Brüssel, London, Paris… und jetzt kommt Playbook nach Berlin! Our expert reporters are bringing their stellar journalism to another hub of European politics. We won’t be hiding out in Mitte – from the Bundestag and key institutions all the way to each of the Bundesländer, Berlin Playbook has got you covered for your daily dose of deutsche Politik. Hier anmelden und lesen.**
NATO
NATO PUSHES WASHINGTON TO UNBLOCK UKRAINE AID: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has urged the U.S. Congress to get its act together and finally approve its own aid package for Ukraine.
Time’s pressing: Standing next to Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan at a meeting Wednesday, Stoltenberg said: “It is vital that the United States Congress agrees on continued support for Ukraine in the near future.”
Washington in defense: Sullivan, reiterating Biden’s efforts to try to get the funding through Congress, also insisted that NATO allies needed to provide various “types of practical support” for Ukraine. “We are going to stay the course, and we are going to point out that walking away from Ukraine at this moment … would be fundamentally wrong,” Sullivan said.
Bashing Budapest: Almost all of the national security advisers present at the meeting, starting with Sullivan, took turns criticizing their Hungarian counterpart, as Budapest continues to block Sweden’s NATO accession.
Totes awks: According to a senior European diplomat, “everyone was very explicit. Hungary promised not to be the last one to approve Sweden, and now it is the last one.” The Hungarian representative “said that the Swedish prime minister is expected to come to Budapest,” the diplomat added.
NOW HEAR THIS: David Quarrey, the U.K.’s ambassador to NATO, sat down with POLITICO’s Power Play podcast, and urged European politicians to abandon talk of creating autonomous defense capabilities outside of the alliance. “We do not want to see Europe and the U.S. spinning in different directions … I think it’s about what we do together, Europe and the U.S., rather than thinking in terms of there being a kind of separate European security identity,” he said. Listen here.
IN THE COURTS
EU JUDGES STRIKE DOWN ANOTHER SUBSIDY CASE: The EU’s General Court on Wednesday overturned the Commission’s decision to allow Dutch government help for airline KLM. The Commission had erred by excluding Air France-KLM and Air France when it checked the effects of the €3.4 billion rescue package, the court decided.
Background: During the pandemic, the Commission faced enormous pressure from EU countries — especially France and Germany — to allow them to subsidize some of their biggest companies. That’s now coming back to bite the Commission.
Ryanair cheers: Ryanair — whose legal challenge sparked the court ruling — said the Commission’s “spineless approach to state aid” allowed states to write “open-ended cheques to their inefficient zombie flag carriers.”
BRUSSELS TACKLES HUNGARY’S ‘SOVEREIGNTY’ LAW: The Commission Wednesday opened an infringement procedure against Hungary over its new “sovereignty” law, arguing Budapest was violating EU law and fundamental rights.
Another brick in Hungary’s wall: The sovereignty law establishes a new agency, without clear judicial oversight, that can go after Hungarians that have contact with or receive funding from foreigners — including opposition politicians, NGOs and journalists. Critics in Hungary say Orbán’s regime could use the law to further crack down on dissent.
What’s next: The penalties in infringement procedures can be steep. If Hungary does not comply, the Commission can take Budapest to the Court of Justice — and if the court agrees that Hungary is violating Union law, Brussels can request that it impose a daily fine for as long as the law is force.
**Join us next Monday, Feb 12, at 6 pm at the European Parliament for the premiere of “Europe’s Battle to Rein in Big Tech” by Check Productions and delve into the historic battle for the DMA/DSA.**
IN OTHER NEWS
SCOOP — NEW JOB: Charles Michel’s closest associates are beginning to head for the exit door as the Council president prepares to leave office by the end of the year. Simon Mordue, Michel’s top foreign policy adviser, is poised to join the European External Action Service (EEAS) as deputy secretary general, replacing Helena König. The decision will be announced next month, three officials told my colleagues Suzanne Lynch, Jacopo Barigazzi and Playbook.
In other EEAS news … Francisco Fontan Pardo will be appointed the new head of Cabinet for chief diplomat Josep Borrell, replacing Camilo Villarino.
CZECH REPUBLIC WON’T BLOCK SANCTIONS ON ISRAELI SETTLERS: Following POLITICO’s reporting Wednesday on the EU’s sanctions against extremist Israeli settlers — which have been held up by the Czech Republic and Hungary — Prague now says it will no longer block the move, but wants no implied link to the sanctions against Hamas.
No link: “Czechia does not substantively block the imposition of sanctions on Israeli settlers inciting violence,” Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský told Playbook. “However, Czechia refuses to link these sanctions with those against Hamas terrorists. An act of terrorism is not on the same level as the acts of settlers; these things cannot be linked.”
BANNED GOODS REACHING RUSSIA: The EU has demanded governments urgently crack down on the illegal flow of goods to Russia, in a letter seen by POLITICO. There are fears that items originally from Europe are still being used by Moscow on the battlefield. Kathryn Carlson and Koen Verhelst have the details.
HOW FRENCH FARMERS ROLLED THE EU: It took just days after French farmers took to the streets for the EU to backtrack on important green goals. But now, the swift concessions have triggered a backlash from environmentalists, Giorgio Leali and Victor Goury-Laffont report.
DISINFO MEASURES UNDER THE DSA: The Commission wants to draft guidelines between now and the end of March to direct Big Tech platforms in how to protect the upcoming EU election, Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said Wednesday. Clothilde Goujard has more.