Greece strongly condemns Russia’s missile attacks on Ukraine, esp. on children’s hospital
Greece strongly condemned Monday’s missile attacks by Russia in several Ukrainian cities, especially a children’s hospital, the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on the X platform.
PM visiting Washington for NATO anniversary summit
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ visit to Washington for the NATO Summit and the special significance of this meeting, due to the fact that it coincides with the 75th anniversary since the foundation of the Alliance, were the focus of a press briefing by government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis on Monday.
Gang blackmailing store owners in Athens includes nine civil servants, police says
Security police dismantled a criminal gang whose members blackmailed owners of stores with threats of unfavorable health inspections in Athens, and arrested 14 individuals, of whom 9 were public servants, a Greek police statement said.
Appeal trial for deadly Mati fire opens in Athens
The appeal trial for the deadly fire in Mati in 2018 opened at the misdemeanors appeals court of Athens on Monday with 7 of the 21 defendants represented by their lawyers.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/833090/Appeal-trial-for-deadly-Mati-fire-opens-in-Athens
Exports fall 4.5% in January-May
The upward trend of Greek exports stopped in the year’s first five months, falling by 4.5% year-on-year to 20.9 billion euros.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1243494/exports-fall-4-5-in-january-may
ATHEX: Benchmark climbs to four-week high
The relief from the French election results, which may have led to a hung parliament but have also banished the prospect of a far-right cabinet, gave stock buyers an extra push on Monday at the Greek bourse, leading the benchmark to highs unseen in four weeks upon closing, on improved turnover too. Nevertheless, the unstable outlook in France coupled with that in the US may well prove to lead to a turbulent stock fall after the summer holidays.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1243487/athex-benchmark-climbs-to-four-week-high
KATHIMERINI: Kickbacks ring in the center of Athens
TA NEA: Study: How many tourists can Greece accommodate?
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Who is afraid of Mélenchon?
RIZOSPASTIS: Large rally of the Greek Communist Party’s Youth Faction in Thessaloniki against NATO’s war plans
KONTRA NEWS: Society supports candidates Doukas and Geroulanos for the leadership of PASOK
DIMOKRATIA: Objective values for real estate assets to change in 12 municipalities
NAFTEMPORIKI: Cultivating and sowing a new farming model
HOWDY. Welcome to Tuesday’s Brussels Playbook.
One of the cardinal rules of politics: If you don’t like a proposal, leak an early draft to the press. We imagine that was the motivation for whoever leaked MLex’s Luca Bertuzzi a draft of next week’s European Parliament plenary agenda. From what we’re hearing, Playbook isn’t the only one who finds the late afternoon timing of the vote on Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s candidacy on July 18 to be problematically late: It’ll be almost impossible to get back to Brussels that night. Parliament groups still have a chance to change it …
DRIVING THE DAY: REINING IN ORBÁN
DIPLOMATS PLOT ORBÁN INTERVENTION: As Viktor Orbán jets to Washington for the NATO summit starting today, diplomats in Brussels will be plotting ways to ground his shuttle diplomacy initiative.
Mission incorrigible: Hungarian PM Orbán insists the Council presidency hasn’t gone to his head, even as he jets off to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and now Washington on his self-assigned “peace mission.”
Just making suggestions: After each of his meetings, Orbán reports back to the EU27 leaders to “inform them and make some suggestions as to how we can proceed,” he told Welt’s Paul Ronzheimer in an interview published Monday.
“I try to be as modest as possible as prime minister of a country with a population of 10 million,” he said.
Cooking up some humble pie: EU diplomats aren’t buying it. There is growing annoyance over what they see as Orbán using his turn in the rotating Council chair to promote Hungary’s worldview. It’s one that’s been so often at odds with the EU majority, especially on aid to Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. They’re planning to force the issue at Wednesday’s ambassador’s meeting.
Make Europe grate again: “The speed with which he’s been doing this trolling has been quite baffling,” marveled one diplomat. “To use an expression from Lenin: Orbán is acting as a ‘useful idiot’ for attempts to undermine the unity of the EU,” said another, referring to Orbán’s trips to Beijing and Russia.
What could be done: Diplomats cite draft agendas of Wednesday’s meeting to note that Budapest is already planning a “debrief” on Orbán’s shuttle diplomacy. But other capitals want to read him the riot act to shut down the operation before he can do lasting damage — and before they resort to more drastic measures.
Game plans for taking the unprecedented step of cutting the Hungarian presidency short and handing it off to the Poles in the fall are once again gaining traction: A how-to guide from Daniel Hegedus, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, went viral on X Monday.
“Not yet,” said the first diplomat, when asked if such extreme measures were up for serious discussion. “But I’m saying: not yet.”
DOMESTIC DISTRACTION: Diplomats annoyed by Orbán’s hype videos with Hungarian presidency branding are only half his intended audience. Orbán’s party, Fidesz, just suffered its weakest result in 15 years at the European election, and Péter Magyar’s insurgent opposition movement is proving a serious threat. My colleagues Csongor Körömi and Barbara Moens have the full debrief on Orbán’s early tenure as the self-appointed president of Europe.
MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy seemed to give Orbán any space to claim progress. Russia bombed a children’s hospital in Kyiv on Monday.
Serving up some humble pie: Zelenskyy, meanwhile, echoed Orbán’s reasons for modesty as he dismissed the Hungarian leader’s capacity to mediate, saying it takes “an economy that influences Russia” or a strong military to be effective. “I think the USA is such a country, China and the EU. Not just one country, but the entire European Union,” Zelenskyy said.
LAWMAKERS PILE ON: Renew Europe wants European Council President Charles Michel to come down like a ton of bricks on Orbán when the Belgian comes to the European Parliament next week. In a letter to Michel on Monday, seen by Playbook, Renew’s President Valérie Hayer said: “I would like to ask you to state clearly … that to whomever Viktor Orbán may be speaking outside the Union, he has only done so in his own name and can never represent the EU.”
Hayer’s strongly-worded letter (requested over the weekend by some Renew MEPs) describes Orbán’s trip to Russia, which came without EU backing, as “a security risk and a disgrace.” Michel’s only public reaction so far came ahead of the trip and did not mention Orbán by name.
NO REPLY, YET: The Hungarian perm rep declined to reply for the record. Instead, we were advised to show up to a press conference on Wednesday with Budapest’s EU Affairs Minister János Bóka.
COMPETING INTERESTS: Budapest is playing its traditional Council presidency role today, hosting EU ministers responsible for industry at a “competitiveness council” summit. Competitiveness has been the buzzword of 2024, and the agenda is chock full of hot topics: electric vehicle and battery production in Europe, as well as AI.
Power player or placeholder? But given Orbán’s courtship of Chinese industry, including his opposition to the Commission’s planned duties on Chinese EVs, EU27 governments might be tempted to send a low-key civil servant rather than a minister, according to our trade reporter Koen Verhelst.
TOP JOBS — PARLIAMENT EDITION
BARDELLA’S PATRIOTS CLAIM PARLIAMENT COMMITTEES: The far-right Patriots for Europe, the newest group in the European Parliament, claimed the right to chair two committees — on transport and culture and education — as part of a tentative deal struck at a technical level last night by the administrators of the institution’s seven groups, Eddy Wax writes in to report. Negotiations went on past 1 a.m.
Où est Jordan?A day after a disappointing election in France, the National Rally’s Jordan Bardella became president of the Patriots group Monday, despite not being present for his new team’s first meeting. The group, including the MEPs of Geert Wilders and Viktor Orbán, will have 84 members, making it comfortably the third-largest force in the Parliament.
Not another cordon sanitaire: Other groups are all but certain to block them from taking up those roles when the positions are formally voted on in the week of July 22, just like five years ago when MEPs from Identity and Democracy were blocked from leading the agriculture and legal affairs committees. National Rally’s Jean-Paul Garraud slammed the cordon sanitaire as “totally undemocratic” at a Patriots’ press conference on Monday.
WHO’S GONNA BUDG? What’s less certain is whether the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, which claimed the budget and civil liberties committees in the deal, will be able to ascend to their positions. It may depend on who the group puts forward. The Socialists are said to be apoplectic about the prospect of Giorgia Meloni’s faction leading the Parliament’s work on topics like the rule of law in the LIBE panel. ECR already rules the budget panel so that shouldn’t be so controversial.
Heavyweights: Among its seven committees, the EPP grabbed probably the biggest committee of the upcoming legislative cycle — industry. It also nabbed agriculture and foreign affairs.
Green Deal’s red heart: The Socialists claimed the environment and international trade committees, among others. The Greens scooped the internal market committee and human rights. More details here on who claimed what for POLITICO Pros.
NATO SUMMIT
NATO SUMMIT HEATS UP: The NATO summit kicks off in Washington today and runs through Thursday. There’s a sense that this might be the last show of transatlantic unity for Ukraine, depending on who wins the U.S. presidential election in November, Stuart Lau writes in from the sweltering 36-degree heat in D.C.
Still up for debate: While the bulk of the NATO deliverables — including multiple bilateral security guarantees and air defense pledges — and the summit statement are already precooked by diplomats, negotiations were ongoing last night on the exact wording of NATO’s commitment to Ukraine’s future membership, as well as China.
Irreversible (*unless Trump): NATO looks set to approve a designation for Ukraine’s membership path to be “irreversible” — although an important Trump ally sees it differently. “Of course, it’s reversible. I mean, I don’t think it makes sense for us,” Elbridge Colby, a senior Pentagon official in the Trump era, told Stuart. “And by the way, the Biden administration and [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz recently are both indicating it doesn’t make sense either, at least for the foreseeable future. So what does irreversible mean?” Full story here.
BIDEN-TRUMP MATCHUP OVERSHADOWS EVERYTHING: European diplomats conceded that more attention would be paid to President Joe Biden than to Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, who’ll also be in D.C. “Everyone will be watching how he speaks, whether he gets lost etc.,” a diplomat said, referring to concerns about Biden’s fitness. (Biden’s fight to persuade colleagues in Congress that he should stay in the presidential campaign is about to get uglier, my U.S. colleagues report.) Domestic political attention will also be diverted by the Republican convention, which is set to formally endorse Trump as presidential candidate and announce his VP pick.
Europe’s not helping: Orbán’s adventures in Moscow and Beijing are also a headache for the EU, whose leaders are under pressure to pull their weight. Seven European countries — plus Canada — are going to miss the deadline of reaching the target of 2 percent of GDP as defense spending, agreed a decade ago. NATO may not name and shame these countries, but Trump certainly will. (The FT has a piece this morning on Spain, which it reports will this year spend less on defense as a proportion of GDP than any other country in the 32-member alliance.)
NATO watching China: Adding to the drama is China’s military exercise with Belarus on the border with Poland, which started just as NATO leaders flew to Washington. “NATO routinely tracks all military maneuvers near its borders. The China/Belarus exercise near Poland illustrates the growing relationship between authoritarian powers,” a NATO official said. “We remain vigilant.”
And India? Zelenskyy lashed out at Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for meeting Putin in Moscow on the same day as the strike on the children’s hospital in Kyiv, calling the visit a “huge disappointment and a devastating blow to peace efforts,” CNN reported.
FRENCH ELECTION
L’ENFER, C’EST MOI: Who does Emmanuel Macron confide in when the burden of office weighs him down? “Myself,” he told POLITICO Europe’s Editor-in-Chief Jamil Anderlini, who leads a piercing portrait of the French president with this revelation. And maybe it was just his own counsel that Macron received when he decided to call a snap election last month — but he’ll need more than that to navigate what comes next.
Gridlock and uncertainty: Although there was relief among mainstream pro-Europeans that Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella failed to take control of the French parliament on Sunday, the ambiguous outcome is likely to lead to months of political turmoil that could damage the EU. My colleagues Barbara Moens and Jacopo Barigazzi examine how Macron’s troubles at home will impact his sway in Brussels.
Opportunity in chaos? Macron’s allies are hoping to turn the post-election turmoil to their advantage and some think they’ve found a possible way to assert their centrist agenda — by exploiting divisions in the fragmented leftist alliance. Clea Caulcutt and Anthony Lattier report.
WEBER WEIGHS IN: European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber, who was denied the Commission presidency by Macron’s intervention in 2019, is clearly loving watching Macron founder at the hands of not the far right, but the left.
Comment dire schadenfreude? Weber took to X on Monday to offer his analysis of the French vote: “Far from clarifying the political situation, Macron plunged France into confusion, strengthening the extremes,” he said. “Very worried about the far left & far right anti-EU rethoric [sic]. We need a strong democratic force @lesRepublicains giving a real alternative to put France back on its feet.”
Then again … Whether Les Republicains is a “strong” force offering a “real alternative” could be up for debate. The center-right party — which tore itself apart over its leader’s aspirations to team up with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally — won just 6.2 percent of the vote, losing 13 seats.
You solve this problem: Build your own National Assembly majority and check out other graphics and maps relating to the French election, in this graphics collection by Hanne Cokelaere.
IN OTHER NEWS
WHAT NEXT, BUNGA BUNGA AIRLINES? A decision by the Italian government to rename Milan’s main airport after former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has prompted an outcry. Elena Giordano has the story.
AMNESTY WARNS OF ‘CHILLING EFFECT’ ON PROTESTS: Potential dissenters may think twice before hitting the streets, according to a report out today from Amnesty International which says authorities across Europe are curbing rights to nonviolent assembly. Examining 21 European countries, researchers documented repressive laws and excessive use of force, but also subtler ways that authorities undermine peaceful protests — including politicians stigmatizing protesters and targeting groups like those advocating for Palestinian solidarity or women’s and LGBTQI rights.
Shared grievance: While Amnesty International Ireland, which flagged the report to Playbook, highlighted the persecution of progressive activists, conservatives also feel singled out. In an opinion piece for Brussels Signal, Konstantinos Bogdanos highlights the prosecution of people who organized counter-protests against Pride parades in Italy and Greece, blaming EU-level resolutions against hate speech.
COHESION FUNDING NOT COPACETIC: Cohesion funding, meant to reduce disparities across the bloc, is a third of the EU’s budget — some €409 billion between 2014 and 2020. And the spending is subject to persistently higher error rates than other budget areas. A European Court of Auditors report published late Monday found that while controls are improving, both the Commission and capitals can do more to make sure that the cash is only spent on eligible projects and compliance with state aid and procurement rules.
POLAND’S DIPLOMATIC TANGLE: Poland’s foreign service has been thrown into turmoil because dozens of Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s appointments are being obstructed by President Andrzej Duda, the FT reported.