Avgenakis expelled from ND parliamentary group over airport assault
MP Lefteris Avgenakis has been officially expelled from the New Democracy parliamentary group after footage emerged on Wednesday showing him assaulting an airport employee.
Nadia Giannakopoulou launches bid to be PASOK leader
PASOK MP Nadia Giannakopoulou has announced her candidacy for the party leadership race.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1243048/nadia-giannakopoulou-launches-bid-to-be-pasok-leader
Parliament ratifies two military agreements between Greece and Saudi Arabia
Two bills ratifying Greece’s collaboration in the Armed Forces passed in parliament on majority vote by ruling New Democracy, main opposition SYRIZA, and PASOK on Wednesday.
Dangerous weather conditions expected in Greece on Thursday, Kikilias says
Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vasilis Kikilias on Wednesday said that people should prepare for dangerous weather conditions in Greece on Thursday, with severe rains and thunderstorms, in a statement after an emergency meeting of the Greek Risk Assessment Committee, which is to be followed by a meeting of the civil protection coordinating committee.
ATHEX: Index ends session at day’s high
Stocks bounced back on Wednesday after Tuesday’s decline, although trading volume remained at a low level, reminding observers that July is nothing like June when it comes to turnover, barring any unforeseen circumstances. Thursday may well see less action given the national holiday in the US and the general election in the UK. However, the local business front remains active, with more mergers and acquisitions seen as likely.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1243096/athex-index-ends-session-at-days-high
KATHIMERINI: Independent State Revenue Authority shut down a fuel station for tampered fuel violations but a court ruled in favor of its reopening
TA NEA: Banks: Next generation loans
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: The bully of the Mitsotakis family
RIZOSPASTIS: Thousands of youngsters to join large anti-imperialistic meeting in Halkidiki
KONTRA NEWS: Society is enraged with the bully minister
DIMOKRATIA: Bully MP
NAFTEMPORIKI: New Special Spatial Framework to regulate tourism-related activity
DRIVING THE DAY: JEAN-CLAUDE JUNCKER INTERVIEW
JCJ ON BREXIT, TRUMP, ORBÁN AND MORE: On the eighth floor of the Berlaymont, I wander into a big office to find former European Commission president — and one-time Playbook author — Jean-Claude Juncker sitting behind a desk cluttered with papers, wearing a dark suit, pink shirt, pink tie and suspenders. He’s watching French news channel LCI on TV, which stays on, but on mute, during our hour-long interview. JCJ is still plugged in.
ON BREXIT: “When you leave a boat, you can’t get back on the same boat,” says the man who — with Michel Barnier — led the EU’s side of Brexit talks. Never? “In a century or two, yes,” he said, eyes sparkling mischievously behind his glasses. He notes that no British political party fighting today’s election wants to rejoin the EU (with Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer — who is widely expected to be the U.K.’s next PM — saying the country would not rejoin the EU’s single market in his lifetime). Britain is “currently discovering the consequences of its vote, and the consequences correspond exactly to what we told them they’d be,” Juncker says.
ON VON DER LEYEN: It would be a “macabre idea” for Juncker’s European People’s Party to go into a coalition with Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy in order to get Ursula von der Leyen elected for a second term as Commission president this month, Juncker says. He’s spoken to EPP chief Manfred Weber several times to warn him off the idea. Instead, the EPP should do a deal with the Greens, because “for a European Union that works properly you need a strong majority.”
ON BIDEN: Juncker, still a sprightly 69, said he hasn’t yet watched last week’s Joe Biden-Donald Trump debate (which our Stateside colleagues report has Democrats in panic mode and Biden assuring governors he’s had a medical checkup), but “one can be of a certain age … and do a good job.” He notes Konrad Adenauer became German chancellor in his 70s.
ON TRUMP’S “INCOMPLETE MIND”: He’s “not going to change that much” in a second term, and his view of the EU is worth criticizing, Juncker reckons, because “he always thought that the European Union was his enemy.” Trump “considers the European Union as an invention of Europeans against the United States of America,” he adds. Whether it’s his changing opinions on pulling out of NATO or claims about ending the war in Ukraine in a day, “one must not take Trump at his word,” Juncker argues, admonishing his “incomplete mind and flawed reasoning.”
ON MIGRATION: Juncker admits to being “very surprised” by the migration curbs-for-cash deal that von der Leyen and some European leaders have struck with Tunisia (as well as other countries), but he points out that no one in the Commission or Council stood up against it at the time. And MEPs? “The European Parliament, which I like, and which I’ve always had excellent relations with, often expresses empty threats,” he says.
ON THE NEXT COMMISSIONERS: His way of organizing the 27 commissioners’ roles — with one first vice president and five VPs instead of three executive vice presidents — was “better,” Juncker says.
On Schmit: “The fact that [EU Jobs Commissioner] Nicolas Schmit was the Spitzenkandidat for the Socialists is not, according to me, enough of a reason to name him Luxembourgish commissioner,” Juncker says of his fellow Luxembourger.
On the Spitz:“If Mrs. von der Leyen is reelected, the Spitzenkandidat system stays alive,” Juncker says, while adding he “enormously regretted” that it was overridden in 2019 — regardless of the person who ended up succeeding him.
ON ORBÁN’S COUNCIL PRESIDENCY: “The influence of a presidency is large when it wants to advance things; it is not very large when it wants to block them,” Juncker argues. And he says he wants “maximum discomfort” for Orbán’s new far-right political group the “Patriots,” which he predicts will have little impact on the Council.
ON CHARLES MICHEL: “He is too criticized because he has all the same tried to play his role. I don’t like it when someone who’s been among those leading Europe is thrown into the mud … He’s made mistakes, obviously, like …”
“Like for example …” I probe, willing him on. “Like others,” Juncker says, laughing. He still reckons the Council and Commission presidency jobs should be merged.
HELLO, DICTATOR: Juncker has now spent more time writing — actually he dictates to an assistant — his much-anticipated book about his time running the EU, than he actually spent in the job. What’s the hold-up? He says it’s because he’s writing it from memory, with no one helping him. “I describe, like Lenin would have said, the things behind things, and the people with whom I dealt, in Europe and internationally.” He’s 70 percent done.
ON HIS BACK PAIN: “It’s better but not going well,” he says. “I have continual back pains,” he adds, tracing the malady to a fateful car accident in 1989 that left him in a coma. The stress of being Commission president brought the sciatica back and was one of the reasons he didn’t run for a second term in 2019, he says.
OLD HABITS DIE HARD: Twice a week, Juncker comes into the Commission HQ, from which he ran Europe between 2014-2019, and mostly gets up to his own stuff in his office, giving interviews, meeting former prime ministers and MPs — and this week, watching the Euros in peace. He isn’t paid but has reached a unique administrative arrangement whereby he’s loosely attached to the team of Austrian Commissioner Johannes Hahn. The tiny team that still works with him calls him “the president.”
GIF or it didn’t happen.
 Eddy Wax | POLITICO |
FRENCH ELECTION
FRENCH ELECTION VIOLENCE: French government spokesperson Prisca Thevenot and her team were attacked while they were out campaigning last night, leaving one person hospitalized with a broken jaw.
WHERE’S MACRON? Meanwhile, President Emmanuel Macron, who called the fateful election that threatens to usher in a far-right government in France, is nowhere to be seen. Apart from planned international commitments (and last Sunday’s Top Gun-themed dash to vote), he hasn’t been on the campaign trail for almost two weeks.
Harsh reality: Macron’s allies don’t want him on the stump. “He was told to stop [campaigning],” a Renaissance party official tells POLITICO’s Clea Caulcutt. Macron “underestimated how much the public were turned off by his personality,” the official added.
AND WHO IS PUTIN BACKING? Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, naturellement.
UKRAINE
UNCLE SAM SAYS YOU CAN TRUST HIM ON UKRAINE LOANS: Coverage in Playbook and Pro Morning Financial Services on Wednesday seems to have ruffled a few feathers in Washington over a light-hearted comparison between the U.S. approach to the $50 billion loan for Ukraine and that friend who ducks to the toilet when the bill comes. The point we were making:Washington’s domestic constraints are making it harder to divvy up contributions toward the loan.
Washington responds: U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics Daleep Singh said in a statement that any implication that the U.S. “will not pay its fair share of the loan is incorrect, misleading, and unnecessarily divisive.”
Still under negotiation: “While contribution levels and assurances are under negotiation, the United States’ commitment to fund our part of the $50B loan remains steadfast,” Singh added.
GUESS WHO’S (MAYBE) INTERVIEWING VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY: Tucker Carlson, the right-wing U.S. pundit who sat down with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year. “Looks like we’ve got the Zelenskyy interview,” Carlson said on X. “Coming soon we hope.”
WHAT WE’RE READING
1) EIB corruption probe: President approved million-euro exit payment, by Follow the Money’s Simon Van Dorpe
2) Germany’s Scholz breaks bad on migration, by POLITICO’s Matthew Karnitschnig
3) It’s the end of the Brexit dream, by POLITICO’s Jon Stone
4) The untold story of the most chaotic NATO summit ever, told by the people who witnessed the 2018 Trump show first hand, by the FT’s Henry Foy
5) Biden tells allies he knows he has only days to salvage candidacy, the New York Times’ Katie Rogers reports (though Team Biden has denied it)
PARLIAMENTARY POWER-PLAYS
ECR CONSOLIDATES 3RD PLACE, AS POLES STAY: Poland’s Law & Justice party will not quit the European Conservatives and Reformists group, despite threats from former PM Mateusz Morawiecki that he was considering jumping ship to join Viktor Orbán’s Patriots. Far-right Estonian MEP Jaak Madison quit Identity & Democracy and joined ECR, taking the group size to 84. That assures ECR the third spot, ahead of Renew.
Pole positions: So what did the Poles get in return for staying? They keep one of the group’s two co-chair positions, with Joachim Brudziński replacing the outgoing Ryszard Legutko (and Brothers of Italy MEP Nicola Procaccini remaining in post). The Poles and Italians will also share the co-treasurer roles. Rumor has it that former Polish Ambassador to the EU Andrzej Sadoś is in line to become the new group secretary-general — a role currently held by a Pole who’s retiring.
What about the Italians? PiS knows it can’t get enough MEPs to back one of its own to become a vice president of the Parliament, so prefers to focus on powerful internal roles. But could Meloni’s Brothers of Italy get a vice president of the Parliament this month? The 14 VP spots will be nominally divided up between political groups today.
IDENTITY & DEMOCRACY’S NEW ID: PATRIOTS? The far-right Identity & Democracy grouping pushed its founding meeting of the parliamentary term, which was meant to take place Wednesday, to next Monday. A question, one official said, is whether to fully merge with Orbán’s Patriots, which has already lured in some ID members like Austria’s FPÖ and Portugal’s Chega, or stay put and hold onto the structures it has built since 2019. That should be decided Monday, according to the official.
LEFT MULLS LETTING 5STARS IN: Having sat with Nigel Farage in the pre-Brexit Parliament, and then failed to negotiate their way into the liberal ALDE, the Greens and the Socialists, Italy’s unclassifiable 5Stars will today find out if the Left group will accept them into the fold.
What they have in common: Their rejection of the EU’s migration pact, the new fiscal rules and Ursula von der Leyen. “The door is open, but there are clear political conditions,” French far-left MEP Manon Aubry told reporters. The Left, which currently has 39 MEPs, would grow to 47 with the 5Stars. The move would also make the prospect of a conservative left group led by Sahra Wagenknecht more unlikely, as Der Spiegel’s Timo Lehmann points out.
Nordics and Greeks on the up: Experienced Danish official Maj Aslett-Rydbjerg becomes the Left’s secretary-general, replacing Paco Orozco Dopico, in a sign of the growing sway of Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance, and the Nordics in general, in the group, after strong election results. Aubry and German Die Linke’s Martin Schirdewan were reappointed as co-presidents, but Schirdewan will be replaced by Kostas Arvanitis from Syriza in 2027.
Cleaning up: The Left group has adopted new transparency and ethics rules, banning MEPs from accepting money, paid trips or side jobs, the group’s presidents announced. The update goes further than the rules “other groups have adopted so far,” a spokesperson told Playbook. MEPs also cannot talk to corporations that “reinforce the corporate capture of institutions and undermine democracy,” the spokesperson added. “And if they do, they should report it.”
Q&A
ASKED AND ANSWERED: “The Council does not comment on ongoing litigation in a Member State” — that’s the terse reply Qatargate suspect Eva Kaili received this week to a parliamentary question in which she accused Belgium of “illegal methods and “blatant violations” of her rights.
OTHER NEWS
THINK TANK TELLS COMMISSIONERS — KILL YOUR SACRED COWS: The crises of the past five years have left the EU in a “bruised state,” with a “widening productivity and per capita income gap with the United States,” notes a “memo” to the EU’s top leaders out this morning from the Bruegel think tank.
So what to do about it? The strategy paper, written by Bruegel Director Jeromin Zettelmeyer and Senior Fellows Andre Sapir and Maria Demertzis, suggests cutting the Common Agriculture Policy to redirect the cash to “public goods” — or rebrand the CAP as a “Rural Green Deal.”
Other recommendations touch on climate finance, a single market for defense procurement (including the U.K.) and the EU’s Blue Card program. Read the memo to leaders here; 19 other memos directed at new commissioners are in the works.
MIDDLE EAST UPDATE: Israel and Hamas are close to agreeing the framework for a cease-fire and hostage release deal, an Israeli source told CNN.