Mitsotakis: Greece is once more being tested by fires
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis began a cabinet meeting on Monday by thanking frontline firefighting forces for their great work over the last few days, noting that the state had been “present from the first moments against hundreds of blazes, throughout the country.”
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/831143/Mitsotakis-Greece-is-once-more-being-tested-by-fires-
Former PM Antonis Samaras criticizes government policies on several issues
Former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras criticized the government on several issues during a speech at a book presentation on Monday at the War Museum of Athens.
Four MPs enter PASOK’s leadership race in election countdown
PASOK lawmakers Milena Apostolaki and Michalis Katrinis on Monday added their names to the other three politicians who announced they would run for party leader in the election scheduled for October 6 this year.
Pilot successfully ejects from Mirage 2000-5 after landing at Tanagra; jet slightly damaged
The Mirage 2000-5 fighter jet from which its pilot ejected safely on Monday during taxiing in Tanagra air base did not crash or burst in flames, the Hellenic Air Force General Staff said later the same day.
ATHEX: Healthy gains for majority of stocks
The French election result that diminished the possibility of the far-right governing alone, boosted eurozone stocks on Monday and offered the Greek bourse some much-needed fuel for further recovery, greater than last Friday’s. Banks continued to drive price growth, helping Athinon Avenue make a very positive start to the year’s second half.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1242894/athex-healthy-gains-for-majority-of-stocks
KATHIMERINI: Two former PMs and presidents of ruling New Democracy open a front with the PM
TA NEA: Former PMs and presidents of ruling New Democracy demand a “right turn” for the party
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: New Democracy has been split in three parts
RIZOSPASTIS: The people have been abandoned with no measures against wildfires
KONTRA NEWS: The PM’s office is in panic due to the collapse of Macron
DIMOKRATIA: No confidence vote against Mitsotakis by former PMs Karamanlis and Samaras
NAFTEMPORIKI: Balance of terror regarding the course of inflation
GUESS WHO’S COMING TO KYIV: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is heading to the Ukrainian capital today for a surprise visit, the FT and Guardian reported overnight, after Budapest took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU on Monday. Orbán, Russia’s No. 1 EU ally, is expected to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. If it goes ahead, the trip will be Orbán’s first to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
HOWDY. Welcome to Tuesday’s Brussels Playbook, written through deeply mixed feelings by your Belgo-American author: tipsy on bottles of Bud from the U.S. Tri-Mission’s Independence Day party, weepy from the Red Devils’ elimination at the hands of France.
DRIVING THE DAY: THE LAST SUMMER
BASKING IN THE UNCERTAINTY: The breaking point is coming — maybe next week. And we’re already tired. So let’s just enjoy this bit of summer.
That’s the vibe in Brussels right now. At the U.S. Mission’s freedom fest, for example, the only person who seemed to want to bring up U.S. President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a diplomat from an authoritarian country. “Americans have a tough choice,” he shrugged. And what does he care? They’ve had good relations with both administrations.
Immune to chaos: It’s an attitude Europeans might want to emulate. While diplomats, lobbyists, military brass and spooks milled around Brussels’ Oldmasters Museum, waiting for the new world order, the Supreme Court was declaring U.S. presidents immune from prosecution for “official acts.” That rules out a prosecution of Donald Trump on Jan. 6 charges before the November U.S. election.
Waiting for hints: The French election remains difficult to even partially predict — the deadline for candidates who’ve made it to the second round to register is at 6 p.m. CET today. Only after that will we know how far French President Emmanuel Macron and his Renaissance candidates are prepared to go to block a National Rally majority. Victor Goury-Laffont has more in this essential guide to what happens next.
Three-way race update: Third-placed leftist and Renaissance qualifiers have been dropping out of the runoff to clear the way for the anyone-but-National-Rally candidates in the race, my Playbook Paris colleagues report. Le Monde last night reckoned there would only be 126 three-way runoffs next Sunday, down from 307.
How Jean-Claude Juncker sees it: France’s heft in the European Union will drop regardless of what happens in the second round of the snap legislative election next weekend, former Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker predicted in an interview with Playbook’s Eddy Wax.
“Macron will have very little influence on the direction of European policy because [it] comes under the jurisdiction of the government, which holds the whip hand,” said the 69-year-old Luxembourger who led the EU executive from 2014-2019. Those who believe Macron — who will attend European Council summits until 2027 — could still shape French positions in Brussels alongside a National Rally prime minister such as Jordan Bardella have an “erroneous conception” of how the EU works, Juncker said.
Might as well make some money while we wait: Investors are too confused by the French election to panic — yet, reports Geoffrey Smith.
Out of sync: Brits at the U.S. reception were in high spirits. Everyone was surprised by their snap election, when it was first announced. But the Labour landslide, slated for Thursday — America’s official Independence Day— is likely to warm U.K. relations with Brussels (at least, the Brussels of Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz and Mark Rutte, however much longer that exists).
However much longer any of us exist: The U.S. has briefed NATO allies on Russia’s space nuke, Matt Berg reports for POLITICO Defense Pros.
HUNGARIAN PRESIDENCY
MAKE EUROPE ROCK AGAIN: Budapest might be Ukraine’s biggest obstacle in the EU, but honestly, Hungary’s mass-appeal PR for its rotating Council presidency is reminiscent of Kyiv’s highly effective (and highly produced) messaging. Here are three Best Practices that Viktor Orbán’s comms strategists are already putting to good use:
1) No sex or drugs, but maybe rock ‘n’roll: This video’s Queen-inspired stomp-and-clap beat makes a stodgy presidency handoff with the refined Belgian PM Alexander De Croo and endless handshakes feel like a macho back-slapping session. Playbook is also choosing to read heavily into the footage of Orbán’s meeting with Council President Charles Michel, where each man had a full couch to himself. It’s just too bad the Belgian weather forced Orbán to remove his badass sunglasses.
2) Translate the inflammatory stuff: If Hungarian government officials have been giving nuanced, measured interviews at home, fully reflecting Budapest’s ambitions to play “honest broker” during its presidency, then spokesman Zoltan Kovacs hasn’t bothered to translate them. Instead, he helps out us non-Hungarian-speaking journos by posting lengthy summaries of inflammatory media appearances in English.
Take Monday’s lines from a domestic media interview with chief security adviser György Bakondi, who stressed Hungary’s plans to prioritize illegal immigration and that the “national conservative values represented by Hungary are at odds with the idea of a ‘United States of Europe’ favored by liberal forces.”
3) Pick a mutually beneficial Twitter feud: German Green MEP Daniel Freund and Orbán allies are playing a game of mutually assured elevation on social media. Both sides know how to get our attention. (Freund was behind a buzzy-but-preposterous bid to block the Hungarian presidency, and he’s been in overdrive on Hungary’s record on rule of law in recent weeks.)
The call-and-response fight plays out on X: “Are you very sad, Daniel Freund?” posted Fidesz MEP Enikő Győri (thought to be on the commissioner shortlist) on X Monday as she gloated about high attendance at the presidency’s opening festivities in Brussels.
CHEGA TO CHOOSE: The executive committee of the Portuguese far-right party Chega will vote today on whether to join Orbán’s right-wing alliance. Chega would represent the fourth of seven countries needed for the Patriots of Europe to form a group in the European Parliament.
Timeline: Orbán is planning a constitutive session for the new group on July 8, reports Hungarian journalist Mariann Őry.
MECA: Orbán lays out his plan to “make Europe competitive again” in a FT op-ed published Monday evening. The “green transition,” he writes, is the “the chief example” of Brussels “imposing its own ideologically motivated goals without adequately consulting industry.” Nonetheless, he continues, “Europe must aim for leadership in the green industry, with particular emphasis on electric vehicle development and manufacturing.”
URSULA 2024
VON DER LEYEN COURTS GREENS: In her bid to win 361 votes in the European Parliament for a second mandate, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen paid a visit to the Green’s bosses on Monday.
Don’t say it too loudly: “Constructive” was how Green Co-Presidents Bas Eickhout, in a press release, and Terry Reintke, on X, referred to the meeting. “We discussed finding a stable, democratic majority,” said Eickhout, adding that the Greens wouldn’t be part of one that “negotiates with or relies on the far right, including ECR.”
MACRON’S MAN IN THE BERLAYMONT: Alexandre Adam, Emmanuel Macron’s former Europe adviser, is set to be von der Leyen’s deputy head of Cabinet, as first reported by Le Monde and confirmed by POLITICO’s Clea Caulcutt.
Eyes and ears: Adam’s appointment had been in the pipeline for some time, with Frenchwoman Stéphanie Riso having left the post in March last year. For Macron, it offers the chance to retain some influence with von der Leyen, at a time when a hostile government could upend his Commission nomination plans and his Renew group in the European Parliament is significantly diminished.
MONEY STUFF
CENTRAL BANKERS GATHER IN REMOTE MOUNTAIN STRONGHOLD: Monday marked the 11th edition of the ECB Forum on Central Banking, an annual elite gathering of central bankers and assorted technocrats held in the Ritz-Carlton’s Penha Longa, a vast and secluded hotel buried deep in the mountains overlooking Lisbon, Ben Munster writes in to report. Officially, the event, featuring players as powerful as U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, is a low-key European version of its better-known American equivalent in Jackson Hole — primarily a place for monetary policy enthusiasts to get into a lather about bank rates and yield curves.
But tensions are high. There appear to be markedly fewer central bankers this year, with at least one absent amid legal pressures back home. Meanwhile, though ECB President Christine Lagarde, in a speech Monday evening sounded a positive note about the possibility of a “soft landing” for the European economy — in which inflation is defeated without shattering growth — the unofficial chatter this year has moved beyond mere inflation and onto the brewing economic troubles in France.
Dodging the elephant: Timed between the two rounds of the French parliamentary election whose conclusion Sunday could inflict market turbulence on Europe’s second-biggest economy, the ECB forum would seem to be the appropriate place for policymakers to hammer out a game plan. So far, however, the event (which really kicks off today) has been notable for what has not been said about France. Policymakers, sworn to political independence, have pointedly refused to touch on the topic, and even Lagarde (a former French finance minister) focused more on the granularities of monetary policy.
Scintillating Sintra: Nevertheless, POLITICO will be pounding the Penha Longa’s lush surrounds for insights, taking particular advantage of the fact that central bankers are forced to use the same bathroom as journalists (Ben insists he’s kidding). Even the food this year — miniature steak bites, chickpeas and codfish, delicate little rolls of mango, sweet chilli and soy — is a little sparer than last year’s offering, a reflection, perhaps, of the additional rounds of monetary tightening the European economy has endured in the months since.
AROUND EUROPE
SPAIN BLOCKS SEPARATIST MEP: Spain’s Central Electoral Board is refusing to include MEP-elect Antoni Comín on the official list notifying the European Parliament of the lawmakers elected for the 2024-29 legislative term, Aitor Hernández-Morales reports.
Wanted: The separatist politician, who fled Spain following the failed 2017 Catalan independence referendum, continues to be sought by Spanish authorities and therefore declined to travel to Madrid to swear to uphold the country’s constitution. The electoral board reckons Spanish law obliges all elected representatives to make that vow in order to take public office, but Comín, who belongs to the separatist Junts party, contends that said rule does not apply to the European Parliament.
You still ain’t Comín: If all this sounds familiar, it’s because we lived through the exact same scenario five years ago. In 2019 the board refused to accredit Comín and Carles Puigdemont after they failed to travel to Madrid to take the vow. Because their names were not included on the list the body submitted to the Parliament, its then-President Antonio Tajani declined to seat the lawmakers, who appealed to the Court of Justice of the EU, which ruled that member countries had no right to ban MEPs-elect from taking office. It remains to be seen if current Parliament President Roberta Metsola will admit Comín directly this time around, or whether he’ll have to ask the court to intervene once again.
Meanwhile: Carles Puigdemont is still under arrest.
CASH FUELS GERMAN-POLISH THAW: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is in Warsaw today for the first consultations between the German and Polish governments since 2018. He’s expected to announce a plan to compensate the still-living Polish victims of Nazi crimes, Nette Nöstlinger, Hans von der Burchard and Joshua Posaner report.
GOING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION: Montenegro undermined its EU membership bid with a vote condemning crimes committed by Croatian fascists during World War II, Prime Minister Milojko Spajić acknowledged in an interview with POLITICO.
SO RIGHT, SO WRONG: Right-wing and far-right parties across Europe attempting to reinvent themselves as respectable are being hindered by their own activists, POLITICO’s trans-continental team writes today.
ELBOW GREECE: While many countries, including Belgium, are moving toward a four-day work-week, Greece is going for a six-day slog. More from the Guardian.
MYTH-BUSTING TRUMP: Asked about U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump’s repeated claims that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours if he’s elected in November, Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia responded: “the Ukrainian crisis cannot be solved in one day.”
TRUMP-PROOFING NATO: NATO will station a senior civilian official in Kyiv as it seeks to Trump-proof Ukraine aid, the Wall Street Journal reports.
NEW ROLE FOR NAVALNAYA: Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, has been elected chair of the Human Rights Foundation, succeeding former world chess champion and Putin critic Garry Kasparov.