Mitsotakis and Meloni sign agreements on energy and railways
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced the conclusion of two key agreements on an electricity interconnector and railway infrastructure with Italy during a joint press conference in Rome alongside his Italian counterpart, Giorgia Meloni.
Mitsotakis visiting Berlin; meeting with Merz
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will travel to Berlin on Tuesday, where he will meet with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at 13:00 (Athens time). After the meeting, the two leaders will make statements to the press.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/903364/Mitsotakis-visiting-Berlin-meeting-with-Merz
PASOK poised to demand Parliamentary investigation into Karamanlis, Androulakis reveals
Main opposition PASOK-Movement for Change possesses the 30 signatures needed to demand a Parliamentary preliminary investigation into the actions of former transport minister Kostas Karamanlis with respect to the disastrous train accident in Tempi, PASOK-KINAL leader Nikos Androulakis revealed at the conclusion of his four-day visit to Heraklion, Crete on Monday.
Terna and IPTO sign €2-bln deal on Italy-Greece power connection
Italian power grid operator Terna and its Greek counterpart IPTO have signed a deal worth nearly €2 billion on a new undersea electricity interconnector between Italy and Greece.
Pierrakakis to Bloomberg: Greece planning to repay loans from first rescue package 10 years early
Greece is planning to repay the loans from the first rescue package 10 years ahead of schedule, Greek National Economy and Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis said in an interview with Bloomberg on Monday, while in Brussels to attend the Eurogroup and ECOFIN meetings.
ATHEX: Fifteen-year high on deal over tariffs
News of the agreement between Washington and Beijing on lowering tariffs on each other’s products sufficed to send Greek stock prices higher on Monday and the benchmark of Athinon Avenue to a new 15-year record, with a variety of protagonists among blue chips. The day’s turnover was also the highest of the last month. This is all ahead of Tuesday’s rebalancing of the MSCI indexes for Greece, and Friday’s verdict on the Greek economy by Fitch Ratings}
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1269510/athex-fifteen-year-high-on-deal-over-tariffs
KATHIMERINI: Retroactive salary increases for working pensioners
TA NEA: Alert for banks: new type of fraud threatens bank deposits
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Greece-Italy: New deal on old rails
RIZOSPASTIS: Profits party for business groups aided by anti-worker laws imposed by local governments and the EU
KONTRA NEWS: Trump cancelled Europe’s role in the talks between Russia and Ukraine: The… eager pay, Erdogan profits!
DIMOKRATIA: PM Mitsotakis is responsible for the hike in the cost of living
NAFTEMPORIKI: Truce between Trump and China
DRIVING THE DAY: TOUGH TRADE
BRUSSELS AT THE BACK OF THE LINE: Brexit Britain got the first Trump trade détente. Big-baddie Beijing got the second. Brussels, meanwhile, is waiting — and signs from the White House only seem to be getting worse.
Relationship status: “European Union is in many ways nastier than China, OK?” U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday. That outburst was an expression of annoyance that we pay less for medicines on this side of the Atlantic (more on that in a bit).
It’s complicated: Yet the EU isn’t at the bottom of the priority list because it’s nasty. More likely, it’s because it’s thorny, my colleagues Camille Gijs, Daniel Desrochers and Ari Hawkins report. The White House wants “quick wins right now,” said Josh Lipsky, senior director at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank. With the multi-national trading bloc that is the EU, “it’s a very difficult picture to understand what a win would look like.”
Putting it all out there … In Brussels, there’s a sense that Washington keeps moving the goalposts and changing its mind about what it wants. So the EU has tried to make its stance super clear. “No partner of the United States has gone as far down the road in laying out their positions as the EU,” one Commission official told my colleagues. That includes €100 billion in retaliatory tariff targets ranging from Boeings to bourbon.
… and then playing hard to get: Yet the EU executive is also — arguably — sending mixed signals of its own. After working hard to get face time with the White House, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen seemed to notch a tentative win when Trump followed up their impromptu papal funeral summit with a compliment and an expressed desire to meet. Her reply? Only if I can see your package.
The (White) House always wins: “Oh, they’ll come down a lot. You watch. We have all the cards,” Trump said Monday. Read the full article from POLITICO’s transatlantic team.
Or does he? As my Stateside colleague Doug Palmer reports, Trump’s trade war could come to an abrupt halt this month. The U.S. Court of International Trade, an obscure, New York-based federal court that decides cases related to trade and customs law, is hearing oral arguments today in a lawsuit challenging Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose tariffs. If the court grants the plaintiffs’ request for an emergency injunction, it could upend the Trump administration’s trade negotiations, Doug writes.
EUROCRAT EQUIVALENT OF STALKING YOUR EX’S INSTA: “We are currently closely analyzing the content” of the U.S.-U.K. trade pact, said Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis on Monday (via Reuters), as eurozone finance ministers met in Brussels.
Sloppy seconds: Defense and security will be the EU’s priorities for next week’s EU-U.K. “reset” meeting, the Council said Monday. Agriculture standards, along with “people-to-people contacts, including migration and youth mobility,” are also on its agenda. More from Jon Stone.
Already underwhelmed: “Backward-looking dogma and unnecessary red lines may result in the summit underachieving,” warn Aslak Berg, Ian Bond and Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform think tank.
IF YOU CAN’T BE WITH THE ONE YOU LOVE, LOVE THE ONE YOU’RE WITH: EU countries can ease the pain of the Trump tariffs by boosting more trade amongst themselves, argues former Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya in Foreign Affairs. She cites BNP Paribas’ Isabelle Mateos y Lago, who estimates that it would only take a 0.12 percent increase in intra-EU trade to make up for a 1 percent drop in exports to the U.S.
SIDE EFFECT OF TRUMP’S PHARMA PLAN: Trump’s latest effort to decrease U.S. medicine costs by tying them to lower price tags abroad could have the “unintended consequence” of boosting prices in Europe, a health care access advocate warned my colleagues at Morning Health Care.
FACING THE PEOPLE
VDL MEETS VALENCIAN MOURNERS: Ursula von der Leyen is likely to face some awkward demands today from associations representing the victims of the deadly floods that tore through Spain six months ago. Bottom line: They hold the Spanish affiliates of her European People’s Party responsible for the disaster that left more than 220 dead — and they Commission chief to call them out, too.
Backstory: The country-wide blackout that hit Spain just before the EPP gathered for its annual congress in Valencia largely muted the planned protest over poor handling of the floods by the regional government, led by Spain’s EPP affiliate, Partido Popular. That spared Brussels power players, including von der Leyen and Parliament President Roberta Metsola, protests and atrocious optics. Today, victims’ advocates are bringing their complaints to Brussels, with closed-door sessions on the book with both women.
The asks: In a letter requesting the meeting, the victims’ groups say the Commission should take a “firm stance” on “climate denialism among regional governments — particularly those aligned with parties that downplay or reject the climate emergency.” They call for von der Leyen as EPP leader, specifically, to give a “clear and public condemnation” of the Valencia Region President Carlos Mazón , a member of the PP.
More broadly, they ask for streamlined aid for rebuilding and say that implementing the European Green Deal “must be a red line that cannot be crossed.”
PP meetings next: The Valencia representatives are set to meet with Esteban González Pons, a vice president of the European Parliament and top PP player, in Brussels on Wednesday, said a spokesperson for the Spanish center-right party in the Parliament. The PP’s “main objective,” the spokesperson stressed in a statement to POLITICO, is “reconstruction.”
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
HAIL MARY APPEAL TO METSOLA TO REVIVE ETHICS BODY: The EU’s new ethics body — meant to help align integrity standards across the institutions — looks to be DOA in the European Parliament. Some CPR from President Metsola might be the only hope, say MEPs who back the measure in a last-ditch appeal for her to save the ethics body from her own political family.
Execution day is Wednesday, when a right-wing majority, led by the European People’s Party, could oppose a change in the Parliament’s internal rules that would enable the Parliament to join the interinstitutional EU ethics body.
Guilt trip: Socialist, centrist and Green lawmakers urge Metsola to bring the EPP on board “at a time when new allegations of corruption are coming to light,” in a letter viewed by Max Griera. “We trust you will take the necessary steps to ensure that our Institution fully upholds its commitments without delay.” Metsola’s team declined to comment.
METSOLA’S VISION: The Parliament president is planning to be on the record this evening with a speech called “Re-launching Europe: A manifesto for change.” In it, her team tells Playbook, Metsola will call for the EU and Parliament “to do things differently and to work faster, with confidence, and be braver in its decisions.”
HOW TO SPEND IT
WHAT THE COMMISSION PAYS MUSK, INC.: The Commission has thus far spent some €339 million on contracts with companies linked to U.S. tech tycoon Elon Musk, according to a Commission answer to a parliamentary question sent by German Green MEP Daniel Freund, seen by POLITICO. (Suffice to say, Freund’s not a fan: “The rule must be: no EU money for enemies of the EU.”)
Here’s the breakdown:
— €180 million: 2024 spending by the European Space Agency on contracts with SpaceX to launch satellites to improve the EU’s global navigation system.
— €158 million: Ongoing contracts with Tesla for deploying charging stations for long-haul vehicles across Europe.
— €630,000: Paid advertising on X since Elon Musk took over. (The Commission says it suspended all paid advertising on Musk’s platform in October 2023.)
TRAVEL EXPENSE MEMO FOR EUROCRATS: New guidelines that apply as of today detail how much EU officials can spend on hotels and daily expenses, depending on the country, Hugo Murphy reports.
Spendy sojourns: France is top of the list, with €212 allowed per night for a hotel (up €30 from last year), and a daily allowance of €127 (up €25 from 2024). There’s also more flexibility for the (already pricey) Luxembourg and Nordics.
Miserly missions: Per diems are down in Romania and Bulgaria. The maximum allocated budget for a room in these countries is, respectively, €109 (down from €136) and €121 (down from €135).
RAMA WINS IN ALBANIA
WHAT TRUMP EFFECT? The Trump formula failed to deliver in Albania, where Socialist Prime Minister Edi Rama rode a wave of pro-EU sentiment to become the country’s longest-serving democratic leader. It’s a loss not just for opposition candidate Sali Berisha, but also for the strategist Chris LaCivita, who failed to deliver a repeat of his victory as Trump’s campaign maestro.
High-drama Rama: “Hiring LaCivita and thinking you can become Trump is like hiring a Hollywood hairdresser and thinking you’ll become Brad Pitt,” Rama told Una Hajdari for POLITICO.
Loser’s familiar script: “Here is what stealing votes looks like in Albania..courtesy of the narco govt of edie [sic] rama,” LaCivita said in a post on X, echoing Berisha’s claims that the election was rigged.
Fair point: The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe election monitoring mission said Monday that the election was conducted comprehensively and transparently, but noted the Socialist Party’s long tenure in government “created an unfair advantage in power.” Read Una’s full article.
IN OTHER NEWS
MACRON’S BACK (ON YOUR TV SCREENS): French President Emmanuel Macron will face two hours of questions on “The Challenges of France” on channel TF1 tonight at 8:10 p.m. Our Playbook Paris colleagues have a full preview.
UKRAINE LATEST: Donald Trump said he’d consider flying to Turkey to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russia’s Vladimir Putin (assuming Putin agrees to the proposed Thursday meet-up). “I’ve got so many meetings, but I was thinking about actually flying over there,” Trump said. Zelenskyy, for his part, was on board with the plan. “All of us in Ukraine would appreciate it if President Trump could be there with us at this meeting in Türkiye. This is the right idea. We can change a lot,” he said on social media.
In the neighborhood: Trump is heading to the Middle East today to visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. Curtain-raiser for his trip here.
MEANWHILE, TRUMP’S CUTS HIT UKRAINE’S HIV PATIENTS: Trump’s massive cuts in January to projects funded by international development agency USAID have hit NGOs and government-run projects in Ukraine working to tackle one of the largest HIV epidemics in Europe. Lily Hyde has the story.
POLAND VOTES: Warsaw Mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, a centrist who backs Prime Minister Donald Tusk, is polling first ahead of Sunday’s Polish presidential election. Wojciech Kość reports on the potential impact Trzaskowski could have on Tusk’s own fortunes.
GREEN DEAL ON THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR: Austria has walked back its support for the EU’s 2040 climate target, Zia Weise reports.
THE SWISS GUARD, BUT ONLINE: My colleague Antoaneta Roussi has this fascinating read on the IT group (named the Vatican CyberVolunteers) doing the Lord’s work in protecting the Holy See from cyberattacks.