Paros, Mykonos close schools, ban traffic as severe storms cause destruction
A powerful storm lashed the Greek islands of Paros and Mykonos on Monday, triggering widespread flooding and prompting authorities to close schools and impose a ban on all traffic except emergency vehicles.
Greece and US officials discuss Chevron’s interest in offshore hydrocarbon exploration blocks
Minister of Environment and Energy Stavros Papastavrou spoke by phone with US Secretary of the Interior and Chairman of the National Energy Dominance Council Doug Burgum on Sunday afternoon to discuss Chevron’s interest in Greek offshore hydrocarbon exploration blocks.
Pierrakakis says gov’t will exhaust all options for pay raises for uniformed personnel
Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis has said that the government will “exhaust all options” for salary increases for police, firefighters, and coast guard personnel. The pledge, made Monday in an interview with Skai TV, followed a call by Maritime Affairs and Insular Policy Minister Vassilis Kikilias for salary increases for all security forces personnel, after the announcement of raises for members of the armed forces.
PPC head invites US investors to join data center development in Western Macedonia
Public Power Corporation (PPC) President and CEO Giorgos Stassis called on United States investors to collaborate on building data centers in Greece, at an event organized by the German Marshall Fund (GMF) and the Center of Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Athens on Monday.
ATHEX: Major slump on bourse, led by banks
The profit-taking process that started late last week on the Greek stock market accelerated on Monday, with international fears of an out-and-out trade war growing by the day. Bank stocks bore most of the pressure, with their index losing almost 5% in one session, while the benchmark shrank nearly 3%, dropping well below the 1,700-point mark. Even so, on a monthly basis the main index on Athinon Avenue advanced 4.82% in March, for its fifth consecutive month of growth.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1265739/athex-major-slump-on-bourse-led-by-banks
KATHIMERINI: Erdogan’s threats bring Greece and Israel closer
TA NEA: All wills on a single platform
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Greeks pay dearly for private education
RIZOSPASTIS: Greece should not cooperate with other state-killers such as Israel – Solidarity to Palestine
KONTRA NEWS: Government spokesman threatens to oust ministers Georgiadis and Kikilias [due to statements]
DIMOKRATIA: Hackers’ attack with 2,5 mln citizens as victims
NAFTEMPORIKI: The AI Factory Pharos in Greece is a game changer
DRIVING THE DAY: LE PEN TAKES UP THE SWORD
IS LE PEN MIGHTIER THAN THE COURT? “I’m combative. I won’t let myself be eliminated,” a visibly infuriated Marine Le Pen said Monday evening. In her first interview after an embezzlement conviction that leaves her unable to run for office for five years, the far-right icon conspicuously refused to endorse her lieutenant in the National Rally, Jordan Bardella.
That was the first sign of where Le Pen’s head is at as she makes an agonizing choice, as my colleagues Clea Caulcutt and Marion Solletty lay out:
— Let them eat cake: After painstakingly transforming her father’s racist party into an electable force, Le Pen was a strong contender to win the French presidency in 2027. So she could boost Bardella to take the top spot on the ticket.
— Après Marine, le déluge? Or she could dig her heels in and unleash an almighty blitzkrieg, castigating the French justice system with one hand and bringing down the government with the other.
Both options come with risks. Bardella is still seen as green (profile here). And so far, the French public seem pretty comfortable with Monday’s court ruling. An Odoxa poll for Le Figaro published Monday evening found that 54 percent of 995 respondents said they believed her sentence was a sign that France had a healthy democracy. Another 65 percent said they were “satisfied” or “indifferent” to the verdict, Victor Goury-Laffont reports.
LIBERAL UNEASE: Yet even among liberal democrats, there was a sense of unease. Sure, this is an affirmation of the rule of law — Le Pen was convicted of misusing European Parliament funds for campaign activities, after all. But it’s not a popular rejection by the demos.
SPLITTING THE CENTER RIGHT: It’s no surprise that ideological fellow travelers like Geert Wilders and Viktor Orbán panned the outcome, the latter declaring “Je suis Marine,” à la Charlie. Yet Le Pen’s disqualification appears to be splitting political families that officially back a firewall against the far right.
Top EPP pols criticize ruling: “This date will remain a very dark day for French democracy,” posted François-Xavier Bellamy, a Les Républicains MEP who serves as treasurer of the center-right European People’s Party and vice chair of the EPP group in the EU Parliament, referring to the political ban. The leader of Slovenia’s center-right party, ex-Prime Minister Janez Janša, said he “strongly opposed” the ruling, linking Le Pen’s fate to his own judicial troubles and to the more recent court decision to block a successful extreme-right candidate in Romania. “Quo vadis, EU?” Janša said.
Outliers? Bellamy and Janša often find themselves on the edges of the EPP’s big tent; both rejected Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s nomination as the party’s lead candidate in the European election last year, and Janša tangled with Brussels on rule of law issues.
Counterpoint: “I have no reason not to trust the French judicial system. The misuse of nearly €3 million of taxpayer’s money shows the criminal behavior of the National Rally,” said MEP Reinhold Lopatka, head of Austria’s EPP delegation.
Mostly silence: Yet Lopatka turned out to be the outlier in actually responding. Most EPP figures Playbook contacted, with help from Max Griera, were silent on Le Pen’s situation. A spokesperson for the EPP party did not respond to texts. The EPP group never debated the matter, a spokesperson said, so there’s no official position. A spokesperson for MEP Manfred Weber, who leads both the group and the party, had no comment, and heads of other national delegations either had no comment or didn’t reply.
Discomfort on the left: Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister now leading a niche, left-wing pan-EU party, blasted the “mind-boggling hypocrisy!” In an X post, he mocked the left’s horror at Turkish courts banning President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s top opponent, yet when it happens in France, “the liberal mind rejoices & parrots the law is the law.”
Meloni’s man’s take: The European Conservatives and Reformists group, a rightwing family sandwiched between Le Pen’s Patriots for Europe and the more centrist EPP, is outside the so-called cordon sanitaire but increasingly teams up with the EPP. Group chief Nicola Procaccini said Le Pen’s exclusion “goes well beyond any individual case.”
Procaccini added, capturing the awkwardness: “This episode serves as a reminder of how delicate the balance is between the rule of law, political fairness, and public trust in democratic institutions.”
THE U.S. IS CONCERNED: “Particularly concerning” is how a U.S. State Department spokeswoman characterized Le Pen’s case. Donald Trump said it’s “a very big deal.”
A POX ON ALL YOUR HOUSES: Lax rules on how European Parliament money is spent leave little reason to think the National Rally’s case is unique, said Transparency International EU.
TRADE WARS
TERRIFYING TRUMP WITH S-WORDS: When it comes to convincing Trump to back off his massive tariff package, the markets are conjuring up the specter of stagflation. Goldman Sachs just pegged the risk of recession in the U.S. at 35 percent.
S is for services: That’s the EU’s newest s-word — as in, they could be subject to tariffs from the bloc, Camille Gijs reports. That could mean Big Banking and Big Tech are in the crosshairs.
Rolling out the red tape: Using existing regs, Brussels can tighten rules governing Big Tech, tax major American banks, or slow the issuance of licenses to do business in the EU. It could also cut American energy or consulting firms from EU public contracts.
Circular firing squad: “The problem with all these ideas of leverage is that they are not really leverage,” said Luisa Santos, deputy director general at corporate lobby group BusinessEurope. “Our economies are so intertwined … that even if you impose tariffs or any other measure on the services side, you will be hurting your own interest.” Read more from Camille on what Europe can do to retaliate … and why it might not want to.
And right on cue: Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg jumped aboard the Trump bandwagon earlier this year — now, he’s calling in a favor, according to the Wall Street Journal. The paper reports Meta execs have pressed U.S. trade officials to retaliate with tariffs against an expected EU fine against the tech giant.
MIXED MESSAGING:
“I consider it a moment when we can decide together to take our destiny into our own hands, and I think it is a march to independence.”
— European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde
“Think about it, Mr. President and dear American friends, before you decide to impose tariffs against your closest allies. Cooperation is always better than confrontation.”
— Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk
HUAWEI SCANDAL
BELGIAN COURT PROBE: Five people arrested and preliminarily charged in a corruption scandal related to Huawei’s lobbying activities in Europe are meeting this morning with Belgian judges in Brussels’ Palace of Justice, according to a document seen by my colleague Elisa Braun.
Newsy bit: This type of hearing is mostly related to procedural matters and not open to the public, a lawyer involved in the defense said. Nonetheless, it allows us to confirm that at least three people working for Huawei in Brussels have been arrested, as well as two others who were subcontractors for the company. (POLITICO is not naming them for legal reasons.)
Arrest arithmetic: Two other people (one former and one current parliamentary assistant to MEP Fulvio Martusciello) were arrested in France and Italy as part of the probe. (They both denied any involvement and accepted being extradited.) That brings the total number of suspects to at least seven.
Huawei said in an earlier statement that it “takes these allegations seriously” and “has a zero tolerance policy towards corruption or other wrongdoing.”
RIP EU ETHICS BODY: Apparently unbowed by political pressure to show a new commitment to transparency, the EPP has indicated it will kill the EU common ethics body, despite an inter-institutional agreement to create it struck during the previous legislative term.
Killing me softly: The EPP confirmed its intentions after weeks of subtly undermining the planned ethics body with the support of the European Parliament’s far-right groups, Max Griera and Mathieu Pollet write in to report. “If necessary, we will terminate the agreement” to create the body, said leading EPP lawmaker Sven Simon, arguing that the new right-wing majority in the European Parliament means the institution must review its commitment. The ethics debate is set to split the center-right group, as some national delegations still back the body, two officials told Playbook.
Why we’re really here: Simon made his comments during a plenary debate on corruption, transparency and democracy, which was proposed after the spiraling corruption case involving Huawei came to light. During the debate, each political group raised its own pet topic, from ex-Justice(!) Commissioner Didier Reynders’ lottery scandal to the Le Pen court ruling.
Condemned without trial: MEPs “who signed the letter” at the core of the Huawei probe (full background here) “saw their names published in the press, even though they have not yet been questioned by the authorities,” center-right lawmaker Loránt Vincze lamented.
Let’s pin it on the conservatives: Center-left lawmakers used the chance to pin the Parliament’s transparency malaise on the EPP, arguing the EU ethics body could fix everything. The EPP is vulnerable on Huawei because one of its MEP’s assistants are linked to the case, and the S&D, Renew and Greens want to make an issue out of it.
MORE ANNALS OF TRANSPARENCY IN DEALINGS WITH CHINA: Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič released this vague readout on Monday of his two-day trip to China, three days after it concluded.
NGOs 1, EPP 0
EPP BLASTS BERLAYMONT BETRAYAL ON NGO LOBBYING: The EPP was left red-faced Monday evening after a bid to force a review of some Commission grants to climate NGOs failed by a small margin.
What happened? The Commission and the EPP had negotiated a deal to soothe the EPP’s concerns that the EU executive was hiring NGOs to lobby for the Commission’s green agenda. (ICYMI, POLITICO’s examination of the contracts didn’t bear this out.) But the Berlaymont did not respect its end of the bargain, according to the EPP.
The deal: The idea was that a Commission representative would read out a statement — hashed out over the weekend — at Monday’s hearing, and in exchange, the EPP would drop its bid to force a review of how the funding was disbursed.
Last-minute twist: The Commission’s Miguel Sagredo did read a statement promising to look into the issue and boost transparency. But it wasn’t the full text that had been negotiated, Dutch MEP Sander Smit said.
Left unspoken: Sagredo left out a section that essentially admitted some “undue lobbying activities,” according to a draft of the agreed statement seen by my colleague Louise Guillot.
Scramble: That threw off the EPP, which quickly switched gears and tried (unsuccessfully) to pass its motion together with the ECR and far-right MEPs. The EPP’s motion failed by one vote — likely one of their own. MEPs Radan Kanev, Ingeborg ter Laak and Dimitris Tsiodras refused to back Smit’s text, while Bartosz Arłukowicz and Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz abstained. More details in Morning Sustainability.
SCOOP — MAYBE IT’S TIME TO CRACK THE WHIP? Will there be consequences for those outlier EPP MEPs? An internal guide to the EPP’s whipping process, obtained by Louise, suggests those who blow off the party line could get blacklisted when it comes to speaking slots and leading legislation. Read the full story here.
PEACE WAR PROJECT
EU PLAN FOR HYBRID THREATS OUT TODAY: Amid concerns that Moscow and the mob are teaming up to whittle away at Europeans’ wellbeing from the inside, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s team is expected to sign off today on a new internal security strategy, “ProtectEU.” It’s a tech-heavy file, with EVP Henna Virkkunen and Home Affairs Commissioner Magnus Brunner taking the lead. A press conference is slated for this afternoon.
Law enforcement access to data: According to a draft of the proposal seen by the FT, the strategy proposes giving law enforcement more access to data, including suspects’ banking transactions.
The controversy: Europol has long had a gripe with end-to-end encryption technology, which keeps messages on services like WhatsApp and Signal private. That encryption is useful, for, say, U.S. government officials to boast about attack plans over Signal without being too worried about spies. But Europol argues it helps drug dealers, terrorists and child abusers to evade detection. The Commission, in particular Brunner, has tried to pass legislation that would give police access to those messages, much to the chagrin of privacy-minded EU governments.
How the critics will cast it: Other proposals to make anti-terrorism powers apply to domestic issues are also already triggering some capitals. “They want to build an EU police state,” the FT quoted a senior EU diplomat as saying.
BUDGET DIVERSION PLAN: With Cohesion Commissioner Raffaele Fitto in the lead, the Commission will also lay out a plan today to divert billions of regional funding toward the arms industry, critical technologies and housing, Gregorio Sorgi reports.
From roads to rockets: The EU executive will offer a menu of options on how countries can re-purpose almost €400 billion of funding originally meant for reducing inequalities across the bloc’s regions — think roads and schools for underdeveloped areas.
Ultimately, though, the spending is still up to national capitals. “It’s the Commission’s usual shell game,” said an EU official. “They put forward a big headline figure, but if national governments don’t play ball, then it all amounts to nothing.” Read more in Morning Financial Services.
WHO’S DOING YOUR HOMEWORK?
SEEDS OF AN AI SCANDAL: Is the European Commission using AI to answer questions from the European Parliament? The eyebrow-raising suggestion came up at a recent Conference of Presidents gathering after Renew group Chair Valérie Hayer complained about slow, poor-quality answers from the Commission to Parliament’s questions, Hugo Murphy, Max Griera and Nicholas Vinocur report.
Not a hallucination: Parliament President Roberta Metsola said at the closed-door leaders’ discussion that some of the Commission’s answers appeared to be written by AI, according to notes from the meeting seen by POLITICO. She said she would compile examples of potentially AI-generated replies and raise the matter with Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič, who is in charge of inter-institutional relations.
You had one job: It would be surprising if the Commission, which employs 32,000 permanent and contract employees, could not find a human to answer queries from the European Parliament and had to rely on AI.
Look closer: The Commission is already utilizing AI for internal briefings, using a walled-off version of ChatGPT for data protection reasons. Everyone, including heads of unit and directors general, is using the tech, per an EU official. But whether AI would be an appropriate way to answer questions from Parliament is sure to spark a lively debate.
Commission response: Asked whether AI is used to respond to written questions from the Parliament, a spokesperson for the Commission told POLITICO the technology is “currently being tested, for instance, for the correct attribution of questions among Commission services or the identification of precedent replies that could be relevant to a specific case.” But the spokesperson added that staff are not allowed to “replicate the output of a generative AI model in public documents, such as the creation of Commission texts, notably legally binding ones.”
IN OTHER NEWS
RUBIO INCOMING: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed he’ll travel to Brussels from April 2-4 to attend the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting.
On Rubio’s agenda on the NATO sidelines: A meeting with Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, per the FT. If it goes ahead, it would be the first in-person, high-level diplomatic talks between the two countries since Trump’s renewed … interest … in Greenland.
AFD CLEANS HOUSE: The extremist youth group affiliated with the far-right Alternative for Germany dissolved itself on Monday to avert a possible ban that might have damaged the AfD as it tries to broaden its appeal among German voters. More here.
NOT THE ACTIONS OF SOMEONE COMMITTED TO A CEASEFIRE: Vladimir Putin has ordered another 160,000 Russian citizens be called up to serve in the military. Here’s the write-up.