High level Greek-Turkish diplomatic, military meetings ahead
High-ranking Greek and Turkish officials will meet in Athens on Monday, April 22. The agenda, whose details are not yet known, will focus on the so-called Confidence Building Measures. It is part of the effort to maintain communications between the two NATO allies and avoid tensions.
Fredi Beleri named ruling ND candidate in European elections
Ruling New Democracy has announced Fredi Beleri, an ethnic Greek mayor-elect in Albania recently sentenced to two years in prison for vote-buying, as a candidate for the upcoming European elections.
SYRIZA: 35 MEP candidates from the preliminary elections
The vote counting of main opposition SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance members and supporters who participated in the selection of the 35 candidates to be included in the party’s ballot paper for the upcoming European elections on June 9th was completed on Monday afternoon.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/812361/SYRIZA-35-MEP-candidates-from-the-preliminary-elections
Greece to spend €780 mln to protect marine biodiversity, PM says
Greece is pushing ahead with 21 initiatives worth 780 million euros to protect marine biodiversity and tackle coastal pollution, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Monday ahead of an international conference.
ATHEX: Notable drop for the local stock market
The Greek stock market failed to follow the cool reaction of most other eurozone bourses to events in Israel over the weekend, and suffered losses on Monday that were somewhat moderated toward the end. The country’s proximity to the Middle East and the increased turnover on the day point to negative treatment of the local bourse by foreign traders in the aftermath of the Iranian drone and missile attack late on Saturday.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1236573/athex-notable-drop-for-the-local-stock-market
KATHIMERINI: 163,000 complaints about fake receipts
TA NEA: Middle East: Greek involvement in 3 fronts
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Strike against the government responsible for price hikes
AVGI: Repeated vile behavior by the Minister of Justice
RIZOSPASTIS: The Greek Communist Party’s euro-ballot expresses the genuine opposition of the people
KONTRA NEWS: Mitsotakis is using ethnic Greek mayor-elect in Albania Fredi Beleri as lifejacket
DIMOKRATIA: Reckoning hour regarding retroactive payments for pensioners
NAFTEMPORIKI: Investors ask for Iron Dome
EU ‘UNITED’ IN CALLING FOR ISRAELI RESTRAINT: America and Europe are urging Israel and Iran to keep cool heads and avoid escalation, fearing scenarios ranging from another war in Lebanon and shipping blockades in the world’s busiest oil and trade routes to an all-out catastrophic showdown between the two regional powers.
An extraordinary video meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers today will “send a signal that we are united” in calling for restraint, said one senior diplomat.
EUCO hijacked: A previously planned summit of EU leaders Wednesday and Thursday is expected to “urge all parties to exercise utmost restraint and refrain from any action that may increase tensions in the region,” according to new draft conclusions seen by Playbook.
Plea to Israel: French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday that allies must “convince Israel that we must not respond by escalating, but rather by isolating Iran, and succeed in convincing the countries of the region that Iran is a danger.”
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Don’t retaliate: The EU wanted to “preemptively send a message to Netanyahu not to do anything crazy,” another senior diplomat told Playbook. EU countries were united in calling for de-escalation and urging Israel not to retaliate, several diplomats told Playbook after a meeting of the EU’s 27 government representatives on Monday to prepare Wednesday’s EUCO summit.
Caveat: The EU is clearly worried — but if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t listen to U.S. President Joe Biden, he’ll hardly listen to a EUCO statement.
Sanctions against Tehran: The EU is also resorting to the time-honored Western tactic of vowing stronger sanctions against Iran, for what that’s worth, which is not very much.
On the agenda today: EU foreign ministers are expected to discuss imposing yet more sanctions at their meeting today, and if they all agree, they could be imposed as soon as this week, said several diplomats.
Good luck with that: The West has been slapping sanctions on Iran since 1979 and Tehran is adept at sidestepping them to advance its military technologies.
The plan: Several countries proposed expanding the already existing EU sanctions regime against Iran, which currently targets its production of drones for Russia. The plan is to include Iran’s production of missiles and also sanction production for the Middle East. Not that these sanctions seem to have severely harmed the drone trade. Russia is still using Iran’s Shahed (martyr) suicide drones in its onslaught against Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, and is even reported to be upgrading the Shahed’s design.
What are the sanctions worth? It’s largely symbolism. Iran has shown it knows full well how to bypass sanctions for missile and nuclear work over the previous decades, and has developed home-grown technologies. North Korea and Iran — which have widely exchanged missile technology — are glaring examples of how heavily sanctioned states can build large-scale ballistic programs if they want to. Indeed, Israel is not putting its faith in porous sanction regimes, and has appeared to take matters into its own hands with cyber and drone attacks on Iranian arms’ facilities, including a prominent assault last year in the central Iranian city of Isfahan.
Iran’s nuclear program: Macron also called for “increased sanctions” against Tehran and “greater pressure on its nuclear activities” during an interview on French TV about the Paris Olympic games on Monday morning.
“JCPOA,” the Iran nuclear deal, from which Donald Trump pulled back but which the EU wanted to keep alive, “was already dead but it’s buried” now, said the first senior diplomat.
FOCUS ON LEBANON: EU leaders are especially worried about Lebanon — a (perilously fragile and sectarian) democracy in the Levant — as they weigh up the risks of an escalation between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia militia that controls parts of the country.
Powder keg: The draft EUCO conclusions mention the country five times, stressing Europe’s “strong support to Lebanon and the Lebanese people” and “the difficult circumstances Lebanon is experiencing domestically and as a result of regional tensions.”
Boots on the ground: Several EU countries including Italy, France, Spain, Germany, Ireland and Poland, have troops in Lebanon as part of the UNIFIL peace-keeping mission and many fear another war that could further destabilize the struggling country that was once known as the Switzerland of the Middle East.
Refugees: Lebanon also hosts 1.5 million Syrian and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees — which may not be the first priority for the U.S. but clearly could trigger another refugee crisis for the EU.
“We are all worried about what could happen with Lebanon, even the Americans,” the second senior diplomat said. “Lebanon is so connected to Iran that it is difficult to separate the crises.”
“Lebanon is on everyone’s mind,” said the first senior diplomat. “When we say we want to avoid regional escalation everyone thinks of Iran and Lebanon.”
EU HOSTAGE IN IRAN: While we are on the subject of Iran’s brutal regime, family and friends of EU diplomat Johan Floderus, who’s been arbitrarily detained by Iran for two years, will hold a 12-hour vigil on April 17 in Brussels at Gare Europe, in the courtyard of the European Parliament, with speeches by Commissioner Ylva Johansson and other officials.
RUSSIA-UKRAINE
ZELENSKYY CALLS ON WEST TO DEFEND UKRAINE’S SKIES LIKE ISRAEL’S: Ukraine is calling out American and European double-standards in protecting Israel better than Ukraine.
Political will: “The entire world witnessed allied action in the skies above Israel” demonstrating how effective such action can be “when it is based on sufficient political will,” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
Background: Before and during the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv called on its supposed allies to establish a no-fly-zone over its territory to prevent Russia from bombing its cities and infrastructure. But Western leaders refused, pointing out that a no-fly-zone de facto meant shooting down Russian planes with NATO planes.
Where do you draw the line? Zelenskyy is now suggesting NATO should help shoot down Russian missiles and drones, arguing that would not drag them into the war. It’s also a clear expression of grievance that the West is willing to do more to defend Israel than to defend Ukraine.
“Israel is not a NATO member, so no action, such as triggering Article 5, was required. And no one was dragged into the war,” he added.
Double-standards: The defense of Israel “pointed to a yawning difference in the way Western powers treat Israel compared to Ukraine,” write my colleagues Nicholas Vinocur, Stuart Lau, Jacopo Barigazzi and Veronika Melkozerova in this must-read piece.
Bitter truth: More than two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s allies are leaving the country’s diminishing air defense capacities at a disadvantage, struggling to fend off missiles and drones that battered the city of Kharkiv and destroyed a key power plant just last week.
PIEPER’S PIPE DREAM
EU’S ‘SME ENVOY’ RESIGNS BEFORE HIS FIRST DAY: Markus Pieper has stepped down as SME envoy, the European Commission confirmed last night. Handelsblatt first reported the news.
Background: Pieper had already signed his contract and was going to start his new job today, but was under enormous pressure following a vote in the European Parliament which asked the Commission to start from scratch, pointing to reports that two other candidates had scored better than Pieper during the selection procedure.
Party politics: As Playbook reported, MEPs and some Commissioners accused President Ursula von der Leyen of playing party politics with the appointment. Pieper is a member of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, like von der Leyen.
Slamming Breton: Pieper blamed a campaign by Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton in a statement. “SMEs and red tape were and are foreign words for the French Commissioner,” Pieper said. The fact that Breton was questioning Pieper’s selection procedure was “bad style and exclusively motivated by party politics,” he added.
Asked for a reaction, Breton told Playbook: “As for all Commission appointments, transparency, collegiality and meritocracy in the selection process are vital for the credibility of the post and of the institution as a whole.” An official close to Breton said Pieper’s accusation of party politics smacked of “reverse engineering.”
COLD WATER ON E-CARS
BRETON WARNS OF ‘NECESSARY ADJUSTMENTS’ FOR E-CARS: The EU’s single market chief is warning that industry still needs to make massive changes to supply chains and that the EU will need to make “necessary adjustments to meet our 2035 targets” on the Green Deal and electric vehicles.
Warning: “The Green Deal will not be achieved by magic wand or an executive order from Brussels,” Breton told Playbook in a statement. “All enabling conditions need to be met.”
Combustion engine ban: In a document prepared by DG GROW officials and shared with Playbook, the Commission is warning that the EU is nowhere near ready for the combustion engine ban when it comes to uptake of electric vehicles or availability of charging stations.
China is taking over: “Made in China EVs [are] increasing exponentially,” the document also warns.
“We can’t measure success to zero emission mobility only by the number of electric cars sold, it is a concern that one in five electric cars sold in the EU last year was made in China,” Breton told Playbook, adding it was equally problematic that most charging stations were concentrated in just 3 EU countries.
Batteries also a problem:“Even if we have made good progress on battery manufacturing, projects are not emerging as fast as necessary,” Breton said. “There will be no zero-emission mobility” without improvement on such points, he added.
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IN OTHER NEWS
STORMY DAYS AHEAD: Nearly eight years after paying a porn star hush money, former U.S. President Donald Trump stands criminal trial.
The calm before the storm: The circus outside the courthouse was a small one compared to his usual rallies on day one. Inside, before court adjourned, nine potential jurors cleared the initial hurdle. And the former president, now the Republicans’ nominee, even appeared to sneak in a nap.
COMMISSION FAVORS CONDITIONALITY FOR COHESION FUNDS: The European Commission wants to attach more strings conditions to the hundreds of billions of euros it gives its poorest member countries, according to three officials.
Tried and tested: Brussels wants to extend the cash-for-reforms model, which it used to disburse the Covid recovery fund, to the EU’s cohesion policy for the next 7-year-budget.
Big deal: Cohesion policy, which is aimed at narrowing the gap between richer and poorer regions, makes up about a quarter of the EU’s entire budget. Gregorio Sorgi has more for Pro subscribers here.
EU TO FOOT €150M BREXIT BILL: The EU is facing a bill of up to €153 million after members of the European Parliament agreed the bloc should cover a rent shortfall caused by hot-desking company WeWork at the old London office of the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Mari Eccles and Rory O’Neill have the story.
FRANCE, BRAZIL WANT TO TAX THE RICH: The finance ministers of France and Brazil will meet in Washington on Wednesday and outline global measures to tax the world’s richest individuals, France’s Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters Monday.
Three ideas: Le Maire and Brazil’s Fernando Haddad will meet on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings to pitch three approaches: More information sharing between tax authorities of G20 countries; stricter transparency obligations for taxpayers; and introducing “non-abuse” clauses to prevent rich folks from dodging the taxman.
Minimum rate: A French official said the two countries had yet to discuss a possible minimum tax rate for the rich. The EU Tax Observatory, which advised the Brazilian G20 presidency, has called for a two percent wealth tax on the world’s 3,000 richest people. The think tank estimated such a levy could raise nearly $250 billion a year.