Athens sends message to Nicosia over power cable project
Athens is pressing Cyprus to take a clear stance on a flagship electricity interconnection project linking the island to Greece and Israel, as political rifts and a European investigation cast uncertainty over its future.
Greece toughens penalties for rejected asylum seekers, speeds up returns
Greece’s parliament passed a law on Wednesday toughening penalties for rejected asylum seekers and speeding up returns to their home countries, hardening the country’s stance on migrants after a surge in arrivals at its southern borders this year.
Androulakis: The time has come for major political change
PASOK-Movement for Change leader Nikos Androulakis, in his speech at the Zappeion Megaron during the event for the 51st anniversary of the party’s founding declaration, harshly criticised the Mitsotakis government.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/929976/Androulakis-The-time-has-come-for-major-political-changern
Shots fired between Greek and Turkish fishermen near Samothraki
A serious incident occurred on Tuesday night in the Thracian Sea, when Turkish fishermen fired warning shots during a clash with Greek fishing vessels, according to public broadcaster ERT.
ATHEX: Index shows recovery, but not direction
Markets are bracing for two volatile weeks, with central banks adjusting or affirming their rate policies and France facing an uncertain political future, so it could be a bit of a bumpy ride. In this context, the Greek bourse enjoyed a rebound on Wednesday that took the benchmark higher and well above the 2,000-point mark. However the day’s turnover remained relatively low, confirming that many major players are keeping their cards close to their chest.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1279849/athex-index-shows-recovery-but-not-direction
KATHIMERINI: Show of power by Xi Jinping
TA NEA: Super-ID
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: The stench (as well as the tentacles of the Cretan mafia) has reached the PM’s office
RIZOSPASTIS: Time for the people to speak! Everybody join Saturday’s rally!
KONTRA NEWS: Slap by Cyprus regarding the electricity cable
DIMOKRATIA: Greece entangled in the web of the mafia
NAFTEMPORIKI: The reduction of the presumed income tax will be announced at the upcoming TIF
DRIVING THE DAY: SECURING UKRAINE
WILLING, BUT NOT ABLE: France and the U.K. will host another summit of the unfortunately named “coalition of the willing” this morning to discuss security guarantees for postwar Ukraine, which falls to them after U.S. President Donald Trump ruled out sending in troops himself. But don’t get too excited — whatever emerges from the meeting will still have to be greenlit by Washington.
Ready when you are: As an Elysée official stressed earlier this week, the members of the ad-hoc band of countries are now all but fully committed to providing guarantees to Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire. Instead, the main event will be a scheduled call with Trump himself after the meeting, in which European leaders will press their case with the president, POLITICO’s Laura Kayali tells me.
Is what it is: As usual, Trump has given no real indication of where things stand, with a typically inscrutable outburst Wednesday about his Russian counterpart. “I have no message to President [Vladimir] Putin, he knows where I stand,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “He’ll make a decision one way or the other, whatever his decision is, we will either be happy about it or unhappy and if we’re unhappy about it, you’ll see things happen.” He said he plans to call Putin in the “next few days.”
Putin’s message to Trump: IDGAF. Russia fired more than 500 drones and two dozen missiles at Ukraine overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, mainly hitting civilian infrastructure and particularly energy facilities, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
Under the hood: At least one leader in the coalition of the willing may struggle to back up whatever lofty commitments arise this morning (if any). French President Emmanuel Macron remains unable to pass a budget, and the continued parliamentary deadlock around spending in Paris will almost certainly topple François Bayrou, the prime minister of nine months, at a confidence vote next week. Finance Minister Eric Lombard warned the FT on Wednesday that the next premier would have to compromise with parliamentary rebels— putting into doubt France’s military spending commitments.
Bayrou’s tapestry: On that note, read this profile of the soon-to-be-ousted Bayrou by my French colleagues Pauline de Saint Remy and Joshua Berlinger. The PM, they write, reckons his suicidal commitment to politically toxic spending cuts will be vindicated when France experiences a genuine financial crisis in the next few years, elevating him to the presidency on the back of a collective sigh of shame at the realization that this unheeded prophet was right all along.
Household shame: The doomed premier is apparently banking that his polling, currently abysmal, will begin to recover by the winter of 2026, before the 2027 election. “The criterion,” he told reporters, “is that in their kitchen, around family meals, at the earliest at Christmas, in February, or in March, there are people who say: ‘This one can do it.’”
BESTIES FOR LIFE: Separately, Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s own, parallel gathering of allies at his Victory Day parade in Beijing on Wednesday featured some unnerving small-talk between Xi and Putin, with the two men overheard on hot mic mulling the use of organ transplants to prolong their lives.
Around for a while: “Earlier, people rarely lived to 70, but these days at 70 you are still a child,” Xi told Putin. “With the development of biotechnology, human organs can be continuously transplanted and people can live younger and younger, and even achieve immortality,” Putin replied. “Predictions are, this century, there is also a chance of living to 150,” Xi responded. Full story by Elena Giordano, Jordyn Dahl and Douglas Busvine.
Harmless fun: China also used the occasion to debut new weapons that will decidedly not prolong any lives, including lasers, nuclear ballistic missiles and “robotic wolves,” according to the BBC.
Love triangle: Against this backdrop, a delegation of Chinese officials is set to visit the European Parliament for the first time in seven years, as my colleague Max Griera reports. The officials and their EU hosts will address the topics of Russia’s war in Ukraine, trade, maintaining the role of the U.N. in the global order, and human rights, according to MEP Engin Eroglu, chair of the EU-China interparliamentary delegation. The visit underlines the EU’s hot-and-cold approach to China: while both remain at odds over China’s massive trade surplus with the EU and its covert support for Russia, Beijing and the European Parliament in April lifted restrictions enforced on each other.
Now read this: A huge Chinese cyberattack, Salt Typhoon, may have stolen information from nearly every American, the New York Times reports.
A BRIDGE TOO FAR: Italy has abandoned plans to classify a controversial €13 billion bridge linking Sicily to the Italian mainland as a defense asset after U.S. NATO Ambassador Matthew Whitaker poured cold water on the scheme earlier his week. Treasury officials had believed that classifying the bridge as vital military mobility infrastructure could allow them to count it toward NATO’s 5 percent defense spending target, as POLITICO previously reported. It comes as the Italian government mulls a new tax squeeze on firms to fund what’s set to be a painful budget.
ISRAEL DELIBERATIONS STALLED, REDUX
BACK TO INACTION AS EU DITHERS ON GAZA: The first post-summer gathering of EU ambassadors on Wednesday failed to break any new ground on efforts to sanction Israel over its increasingly bloody war on Gaza. That’s despite what two diplomats, speaking to Playbook, describe as growing frustration among member countries at Brussels’ failure to address the country’s behavior, which the EU’s own diplomatic arm has found to be in breach of human rights obligations under its association agreement with the bloc.
All talk, no walk: Nevertheless, a proposal that would see Israel severed from the EU’s Horizon research program remains on ice, as is another to cut off preferential trade access, the diplomats said. To be sure, there’s a rather feeble sense that “something should be done,” they added. But, according to one of them, around 10 holdouts are still ruling out severing trade or research ties as counterproductive and are instead emphasizing “dialogue.”
Poor look: “Despite the level of atrocities reached in Gaza and the complete lack of intentions of Israel to go back to its international obligations, so many member states keep on turning a blind eye and prefer the status quo rather than having the courage to act in a human way,” the official said. “The inaction and inability to take a position could have a disastrous effect on the EU’s credibility, forcing member states to take actions individually.”
NEW MOTION(S) OF NO CONFIDENCE AGAINST VDL: The Left group in the European Parliament started a hunt on Wednesday for the required signatures to launch a motion of censure against the Commission — just a month and a half after the last one — accusing von der Leyen of inaction on Gaza (the Commission itself remains split over how to deal with Israel), securing a sloppy U.S. trade deal and backtracking on green policy, among other reasons stated in the motion, obtained by POLITICO.
Non-stop: The confidence debate and vote could take place as early as October — they just need 26 signatures to reach the 72-person threshold, which is feasible if non-attached members get involved, as well as frustrated members of the Greens, Socialists, liberals and conservative parties (as the group has barred far-right MEPs from signing).
Meanwhile, the far-right Patriots group is discussing whether to launch a separate confidence bid over the Mercosur deal, but are first awaiting the State of the Union debate, according to one official.
FROM THE BOWELS OF THE BERLAYMONT: A group of civil servants has called on the Commission leadership to support the large flotilla led by activist Greta Thunberg, which is aiming to deliver a mountain of aid to Gaza. The officials, per a letter seen by Playbook, asked the EU executive to demand that safe passage is given to the flotilla, and to encourage member countries to escort it. The push comes as Italian dockworkers threaten to close Israeli access to European ports if the aid doesn’t reach its destination.
FRAUGHT FINANCES
EU PARLIAMENT WANTS FAR RIGHT TO PAY BACK €4M: The EU Parliament administration wants the far-right Patriots group to reimburse millions misspent by the preceding far-right group Identity and Democracy, dissolved in 2024, Max reports inthis bumper scoop.
BATTLE OVER EU PAYMENTS HEATS UP: European lawmakers will grill the European Central Bank today over its push for a “digital euro” that would profoundly reshape the EU’s payment and banking landscape. It has generated fierce resistance from top center-right parliamentarians and accusations of sabotage from the left.
Digital what now? As envisioned by the ECB and various institutions in Brussels, the digital euro would be a sort of publicly owned equivalent to Visa, a pan-European payments network that would allow seamless cross-border transactions without over-reliance on U.S. monopolies — or fickle domestic card schemes. The idea first emerged as a response to Facebook’s abortive effort to build a digital currency in 2019, sparking fears of a competitor to the euro that have since reemerged with Trump’s push for crypto-linked dollar assets.
Resistance: But the plan has run into opposition from lawmakers tasked with legislating for it. Fernando Navarrete of the center-right European People’s Party, the leading MEP for the digital euro, has emerged as a particularly strong critic. Earlier this week, he wrote a withering 27-page paper arguing that the virtual currency would be ill-equipped to defend Europe’s monetary sovereignty and harm innovation in the private sector.
Happening today: Some left-leaning MEPs say Navarrete is deliberately sabotaging the initiative and their anger could explode into public view today as Parliament questions the ECB’s digital euro czar, Piero Cipollone. Those lawmakers complained to Playbook that Navarrete and his predecessor have deliberately slow-walked the preparation of the draft legislation for the virtual currency — claims that the Spaniard denies. “I remain fully committed to presenting the draft report on schedule in 2025,” he told POLITICO’s Giovanna Faggionato.
RUNNING OUT OF OPTIONS: A controversial €16.6 billion Italian banking takeover linked to Giorgia Meloni’s government is about to reach its heady conclusion. Within days, the leading investment bank Mediobanca will almost certainly be taken over by the partially state-owned Monte dei Paschi di Siena, after its appeals to the European Commission for help seemed to fall flat. The deal would tighten Rome’s grip on Italy’s banking system, in defiance of the EU’s financial integration goals. Read my full report here.
TRIGGERING TRUMP
FRENCH REGULATOR DOES WHAT BRUSSELS WOULDN’T: The CNIL, France’s data protection authority, last night announced it had fined U.S. tech giant Google a record €325 million and Chinese fast fashion retailer Shein €150 million over cookie violations, Zoya reports. The Google fine, in particular, risks drawing Donald Trump’s ire, after he threatened to impose severe tariffs on countries that implement “discriminatory” regulations or taxes that target U.S. tech firms. (Though that Shein fine does give France some cover.)
Reminder: European Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič on Monday made an 11th-hour intervention to stop the Commission from issuing a penalty against Google over its search advertising practices, amid Trump’s continuing threats.
Comfort read: But the good news for the EU is that Trump wasn’t talking about Europe in his Truth Social post, our Stateside colleague Ari Hawkins reports in this must-read scoop. He was in fact referring to South Korea, according to four people familiar with the White House’s conversations on digital trade policy. But the caveat is that as ever, the only person who really knows what Trump is thinking is Trump himself.
WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: Trump asked the Supreme Court to quickly overturn a federal court decision striking down his administration’s wide-ranging global tariffs.
IN OTHER NEWS
LISBON FUNICULAR DISASTER: At least 15 people were confirmed killed after one of Lisbon’s funiculars derailed and sped down a hill in the city center on Wednesday. In operation since 1885, the Glória Funicular is a favorite among foreign visitors who flock to board the antique yellow tram cars that travel up and down a steeply sloped hill in central Lisbon, Aitor Hernández-Morales reports. Authorities said nearly all the victims “have foreign last names” and are presumed to be tourists; there are 19 injured, five of whom are in critical condition.
Electoral consequences: In the aftermath of the disaster, employees of Lisbon’s public transit authority said they had repeatedly raised concerns about the safety of the Portuguese capital’s aged transport infrastructure and complained of budget cuts that had impacted maintenance standards. The crash is set to dominate the final stretch of the campaign ahead of the Oct. 12 local elections in Lisbon, in which polls have incumbent center-right Mayor and ex-European Commissioner for Research Carlos Moedas narrowly ahead of Socialist Party candidate Alexandra Leitão.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED ABOARD VDL’S PLANE? Allegations that Russia jammed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s private jet gripped Europe this week ― but the story is beginning to unravel. Antoaneta Roussi, Tommaso Lecca and Mathieu Pollet have the story.
NEW CHIEF DIPLOMATIC ADVISER FOR VDL: Meanwhile, Simon Mordue is von der Leyen’s new diplomatic adviser, three officials told Jacopo Barigazzi. The British-Irish official was previously chief diplomatic adviser to the former Council chief Charles Michel, and replaces Italy’s former intelligence chief, Elisabetta Belloni, who quit for what an official described as “issues in getting used to Commission’s dynamics.”