PM Mitsotakis reiterates criticism of multinational corporations
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday stood by his recent call for the EU to address the unfair practices of multinational corporations that restrict the sale of goods in the single market, resulting in higher prices for consumers.
PASOK’s Androulakis calls on voters to end a gov’t of ‘outdated clientelistic practices’
Progressive citizens should join forces, concerns, and hopes to vote for PASOK-Movement for Change (KINAL) party leader Nikos Androulakis said on Wednesday, at the party’s main pre-election address at Thissio in Athens.
Greece buoyed by Turkish official’s comments on Parthenon Sculptures taken by Britain
One of the world’s most intractable cultural disputes is back in the spotlight after a Turkish official cast doubt on the existence of proof long cited by Britain that it had legally acquired the Parthenon Marbles , 2,500-year-old sculptures taken from the Acropolis in Athens.
IELKA: Prices in supermarkets fell in May
The prices of products in supermarkets in May 2024 have for the first time declined on an annual basis and are reduced by an average of -1.25% compared to May 2023, according to a survey conducted by the Research Institute of Retail Consumer Goods (IELKA) in large supermarket chains.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/824661/IELKA-Prices-in-supermarkets-fell-in-May
ATHEX: Stocks post rebound after dip
Greek stocks recovered most of their losses from Tuesday’s session on Wednesday, in a rebound that was more common when Athinon Avenue was not perceived as a developed market, but rather a bourse easily swayed by fears and hopes within Greece and abroad, i.e. during the decade-long financial crisis. This time, the price rise was quite uniform across the stock board, while Thursday will likely be dominated by the European Central Bank interest rate decision.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1240714/athex-stocks-post-rebound-after-dip
KATHIMERINI: Ongoing operation against squats
TA NEA: Kasselakis’ wealth declaration sparks a civil war in the Left and raises questions
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Why parties fear vote abstention
AVGI: Weird questions regarding Greenberg’s remuneration
RIZOSPASTIS: Let’s raise the Greek Communist Party even higher and make real what they fear
KONTRA NEWS: New Democracy is pushing people to vote abstention
DIMOKRATIA: SYRIZA commits political suicide
NAFTEMPORIKI: Three-month breathing space for debtors who wish to regulate debts
DRIVING THE DAY: VOTING BEGINS
DUTCH HEAD TO THE POLLS: 27 countries. 200-odd parties. 373 million eligible voters. 720 seats at stake. Four days of voting kick off today, with Dutch polls opening at 7:30 a.m. with paper-only ballots. All eyes are on just how well Geert Wilders’ far-right PVV party performs — POLITICO’s Poll of Polls shows it could win around a third of the country’s 31 seats.
Green bogeyman: Wilders is on a mission to get his backers to the voting booth, and is pitching the EU campaign as a choice between ex-EU climate chief Frans Timmermans and himself (although neither is running for a seat in the European Parliament). Read more from The Hague by Koen Verhelst.
ALSO NOT ON THE BALLOT: Ursula von der Leyen. Yet she’s hitting the campaign trail for a second mandate anyway, fueled by lattes and tomato juice. It reminds us a bit of how Hillary Clinton swore by hot peppers to stay healthy on the stump, adapted for the Northern European palate. It’s those little details that make Barbara Moens’ trail log a must-read on the Commission’s often inscrutable president.
FEED YOUR ADDICTION: How to watch the EU election like a pro | POLITICO’s election live blog | Register to watch our Election Night Live analysis as the results come in on Sunday.
THE INTERNET’S BIG QUESTION: “Ist die AFD bei der Europawahl dabei?” (is the AfD in the European elections?) is Google’s top trending question on the EU election over the past week, up more than 2,000 percent, Mark Scott writes in to report.
Answer: It sure is. Despite some Maximilian Krah-shaped setbacks, Germany’s AfD and other far-right parties are on track for major gains when the voting is all over. The potential to reorder the political landscape means the Continent could be facing its Donald Trump moment, my colleagues report in this sweeping assessment.
UP NEXT: Ireland and the Czech Republic head to the polls Friday.
Who needs Taylor? Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox endorsed Clare Daly, the Irish MEP announced. Daly and her fellow Left firebrand Mick Wallace might be down in the polls, but they’re evidently not (wait for it) walking on broken glass.
3 MORE SCENE-SETTERS: Camille Gijs on Wallonia’s tug-of-war on the left … EU anti-fraud enforcers are probing Belgium’s top far-right MEP Tom Vandendriessche, report Elisa Braun and Pieter Haeck … and Josh Berlinger and Victor Goury-Laffont on why the French hating Paris helps the far right.
ORBÁN VS. MAGYAR
EXCLUSIVE — EPP WELCOMES HUNGARIAN OPPOSITION: The center-right European People’s Party — once home to Viktor Orbán — is opening the door to the Hungarian prime minister’s biggest problem in this election. EPP leader Manfred Weber said he’d be “very glad” to cooperate with Péter Magyar.
Who’s he? A former Orbán ally, Magyar is also the ex-husband of Hungary’s former Justice Minister Judit Varga. But he suddenly switched sides and has been leading a mass anti-establishment movement railing against state corruption and bringing people out onto the streets. The Respect and Freedom party he leads is on course to win some six seats, according to projections, and he has been vocal about his desire to join the EPP group in the European Parliament, whose MEPs have the final say on who’s allowed in.
Come in: “Our doors are open,” Weber told Playbook’s Eddy Wax in a statement, saying he’s “happy” about Magyar’s interest.
Hungary’s disinfo campaign: As Budapest drums its “anti-war” narrative, the Hungarian government has been spreading disinformation that Weber has supposedly spearheaded a plan for mass military conscription across the EU. It’s something the EPP has described bluntly as “misleading.” Weber this week said it was “fake news” in an interview with Der Spiegel.
EU LOVE STORIES
8 RELATIONSHIP ARCHETYPES THAT DEFINED THE 2024 ELECTION: EU power players’ entangling alliances are enough to fill a pop album. Here are our keys to understanding 2024, in love stories …
The bad boyfriend — Emmanuel Macron + Ursula von der Leyen: Everyone knows that the French president helped install von der Leyen in her current post. And he’ll never let her forget it, or let her feel secure in the relationship. She has to pay tribute — showing up at his party’s kick-off event in October, for example, even though it angered her French conservative friends — while he continues to withhold the love she needs. Macron’s support in the Council will be crucial for von der Leyen to secure another term as Commission president, but he keeps letting his bro Thierry Breton diss her and publicly flirting with other prospects. Still, when VDL is feeling down, she can count on Uncle Joe for moral support.
The love triangle — VDL + Marine Le Pen + Giorgia Meloni: Ursula wants Giorgia. Marine wants Giorgia. Which one will win the Italian prime minister’s heart and her hand in implementing their center-right or far-right agenda, respectively, in the next mandate?
The vengeful divorce — Péter Magyar and Judit Varga: Varga was Orbán’s protégée, poised to lead the Fidesz delegation in the European Parliament. Magyar was a functionary best known as Varga’s husband (at least before they divorced in 2023). Then Varga abruptly resigned in a scandal around pardoning a child sex abuser, and Magyar released tapes in which she appears to incriminate members of Orbán’s inner circle. (Varga has accused him of harassment and abuse.) Now Magyar is running a list on track to rival Fidesz in the hemicycle, and, as we reported above, take Orbán’s party’s old place in the EPP.
The fantasy lover — Macron + Mario Draghi: Macron probably doesn’t have whatever it takes to put the ex-European Central Bank chief in charge at the Berlaymont.
Dick-ing around — Geert Wilders’ Dutch governing coalition: Former Dutch spy chief Dick Schoof has been recruited to lead a government coalition that includes radical-right firebrand Geert Wilders and Mark Rutte’s center-right liberal VVD. His tasks include implementing a strict new asylum policy.
Family feud — Renew Europe: Europe’s centrist liberals have always been a fractious bunch — Macron’s Renaissance has refused to join the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats party even though they’re part of the Renew Europe group in Parliament — and things are on track to get worse. Renaissance leader Valérie Hayer’s threat to boot the Dutch VVD out of the group as punishment for their cooperation with Wilders could diminish the group’s kingmaker role even beyond expected election losses.
Always the bridesmaid, never the bride — Kaja Kallas and Mette Frederiksen: Whenever a high-profile job comes up, especially defense or diplomacy gigs where nominating a woman would be a good look (NATO secretary-general, defense commissioner, EU foreign policy chief, Council president), the names of the Estonian and Danish prime ministers come up. But there always seems to be a stronger reason to count them out.
Ghosted — Frans Timmermans: He used to be one of Brussels’ most powerful figures. Yet Timmermans stepped down as climate chief to run in the Dutch election last year — only to see Wilders take the lead. Now that Timmermans has virtually disappeared from the scene, his landmark Green Deal is at risk of fading away, too.
THE STATE OF ELECTORAL DEMOCRACY
INBOX, 4:35 p.m.: AfD politician stabbed by man wielding box cutter
INBOX, 4:59 p.m.: Nigel Farage milkshake attack: Woman charged with assault
INBOX: 6:58 p.m.: Slovak PM blames assassination attempt on opposition in first appearance since shooting
MONEY STUFF
FRANKFURT’S ELECTION DAY GIFT: Playbook cares more about power than money (probably why we don’t have much of either). But as students of politics, we know “it’s the economy, stupid.” So when we saw the headline saying “ECB to deliver historic rate cut Thursday,” we recruited our colleagues Carlo Martuscelli and Ben Munster to explain.
The news: The European Central Bank is all but certain to lower its key policy interest rate today from 4 percent to 3.75 percent.
Why it matters: The ECB helps set the tempo of the overall eurozone economy by making it either easier or harder to borrow money. It does this by controlling the rate of interest (if you’ve taken out a mortgage recently, you’ll have noticed). For a decade after the financial crisis, rates were close to zero, at rock bottom. But a surge in inflation, driven by Covid-era disruptions and the 2022 energy price spike, led the ECB to hit the brakes on the economy by raising interest rates sharply.
What’s changed? Inflation, while still running a lot higher than the pre-pandemic period, has been (more or less) brought under control. The ECB has thus decided it can afford to be a little more relaxed.
Fast-acting: Today’s cut might be enough to inject some juice back into the European economy, according to slides shared with Playbook by Dimitris Valatsas of Aurora Macro Strategies. For the past two years, the high cost of borrowing has led Europeans to focus on saving rather than spending, but the move to easing will allow them to begin, tentatively, borrowing again. Still, the real boost will come from further, deeper cuts, but that could take months — or even years.
**How will the political groups perform this weekend? Join us as the tension peaks on Sunday night and Brussels Playbook Writer Sarah Wheaton goes live with a special feature of the EU Confidential podcast to unpack the first election results. Register here!**
COUNTERING RUSSIA
EU CAPITALS SUPPORT WASHINGTON’S RUSSIAN ASSETS PLAN: European finance ministers supported a U.S.-led plan of Western governments jointly providing a multibillion-euro loan for Ukraine ― rather than the EU doing it by itself, five officials told POLITICO.
G7 appetizer: The EU’s 27 finance chiefs held a virtual meeting on Wednesday to test the waters ahead of a G7 summit in mid-June where frozen assets will take center stage.
The plan in a nutshell: The American proposal would see the U.S. or the G7 raising a loan of potentially $50 billion that they would pay down with the profits generated by frozen Russian assets that are mainly held in Europe.
SPEEDING UP THE GAS SANCTIONS: European ambassadors are considering splitting their latest Russia sanctions package to prevent major gas sanctions from getting bogged down in a different fight over punishing Belarus. More for Trade Pros.
WHAT WOULD TRUMP DO? K.T. McFarland, a leading Donald Trump supporter who served as his deputy national security adviser, tells Anne McElvoy on today’s Power Play podcast about Trump’s plan to bring Vladimir Putin’s regime to its knees by weaponizing the price of oil.
12 COUNTRIES PUSH TO OPEN DOOR FOR KYIV: A group of 12 countries is pushing to start the official accession process with Ukraine and Moldova before the end of the month, according to a joint letter to the Belgian presidency, seen by POLITICO and dated June 5, which was first reported by Euractiv.
Haggling with Hungary: “We believe that now is the time to move forward,” the countries argue. The goal is to put pressure on Budapest, which issued a wide range of concerns that could put official talks planned for June 25 in jeopardy.
MORE RUSSIA: Elisa Braun’s debut edition of EU Influence looks at Russia’s best friends in the European Parliament. Sign up here to receive the weekly newsletter on lobbying, campaigning and political influence in the EU for free in your inbox, landing this afternoon.
D-DAY
DÉJÀ VU: World leaders are in Normandy today to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Host Emmanuel Macron and his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden are expected to deliver speeches tying the devastation of World War II to today’s threats, as they each wage political campaigns, Clea Caulcutt reports ahead of today’s ceremony.
Unusual inspiration: Biden’s team is borrowing from Ronald Reagan’s playbook in Normandy, reports Eli Stokols, hoping to emulate the magic of “the boys of Pointe du Hoc” 40 years on from that iconic speech.
‘We must be ready for war by 2029,’ German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius reportedly told a parliament committee Wednesday.
COMMEMORATION ROUND-UP: Franco-British ceremony is at 10:20 a.m. at the British Normandy Memorial at Ver-sur-Mer … Franco-U.S. ceremony is at 12:30 p.m. at the Normandy American Cemetery … International ceremony at Omaha Beach from 3:30 p.m.
VIPs: U.S. President Joe Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Britain’s King Charles III, Queen Camilla and Prince William, Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, Dutch PM Mark Rutte, European Council President Charles Michel, among others, are expected to attend the various ceremonies.