PM Mitsotakis joins emergency EU meeting to discuss Ukraine via video conference
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Monday took part in an emergency meeting of European Union leaders regarding the war in Ukraine, which he joined via video conference. According to a Greek government announcement, there was agreement regarding the progress made during Sunday’s meetings between the United States and Ukraine in Geneva, with praise for the efforts made by U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Tsipras’ ‘Ithaca’: The ministers, the referendum and the left
Political memoirs generate passions and Alexis Tsipras knew this well when he wrote “Ithaki” (“Ithaca”). With Monday’s book release, the former prime minister distanced himself from several of his former ministers and SYRIZA cadres who, throughout the tumultuous 2015 negotiations with Greece’s international creditors and EU leaders, were constantly pushing him for a more confrontational approach. “Ithaca” is already causing waves and is obviously a conscious choice of the author, with reactions expected particularly from those who believed he would denounce his coalition with Panos Kammenos’ right-wing populist ANEL. According to Tsipras’ account, his former ministers troubled him more than the president of ANEL, but he did not choose to cut them off early.
Pierrakakis: Greece and Germany deepen investment and EU ties
Bilateral relations between Greece and Germany are stronger today than ever, said Economy and Finance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis after meeting German Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil in Berlin.
New Democracy holds internal elections, achieves record leadership renewal
More than 122,000 active members of the ruling conservative New Democracy party voted to elect 2,500 representatives for the 59 Electoral District Management Committees (DEEPCs) and 330 Municipal Local Organizations (DIMTOs).
ATHEX: Twelve-month high for daily turnover
Turnover soared on Monday at the Greek stock market, with Metlen accounting for 55% of trading, which registered a new 12-month high. More than 80% of turnover was recorded in the closing auctions, which left the benchmark with minor growth and the majority of stocks with gains. This was due to the MSCI index rebalancing that sees Metlen removed from the MSCI Greece Standard Index, leaving eight stocks as its components. ATHEX will announce its new FTSE index composition on Wednesday.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1287751/athex-twelve-month-high-for-daily-turnover
KATHIMERINI: Tempest due to the black list of Ithaca [title of former PM Tsipras’ memoirs]
TA NEA: Inheritances: 4 new interventions
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Our personal health data are up for sale
RIZOSPASTIS: Farmers and livestock breeders set up blockades throughout the country struggling for survival
KONTRA NEWS: Turbulence in the political system after Tsipras’ revelations
DIMOKRATIA: Mockery for 500,000 pensioners
NAFTEMPORIKI: GDP in 2025: accelerating and hitting the breaks
DRIVING THE DAY
TRUMP WHISPERERS: European officials quietly hoped they had won over Donald Trump after a series of high-level meetings aimed at convincing him to pull back from a confrontation over Ukraine and an all-out trade war. But it’s never long before this American president delivers a jolt of reality, transatlantic rifts are reopened and the White House again appears to be an unreliable ally. Will Brussels learn anything this time around?
Action stations: Presidents and prime ministers are continuing talks on the sidelines of the EU-Africa summit in Angola today after Trump’s plan to end the war in Ukraine derailed the program. Kyiv’s “coalition of the willing” allies will meet virtually to discuss the U.S. proposals — which included making major concessions to Russia — before foreign ministers join an emergency videoconference on Wednesday. And U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is in Abu Dhabi for talks with Ukraine’s military intelligence chief and a Russian delegation, the FT reports this morning.
Privately, European capitals have expressed optimism that they will convince the Americans not to foist a bad peace deal onto Ukraine. “Things are happening as they should,” said one diplomat of the response to the leaked plan, which prompted urgent talks with American officials in Switzerland over the weekend. “There was a proposal that was never meant to be public; we talked about it, now it’s being changed.”
Trump appears to have dropped a Thursday deadline for Kyiv to accept the proposal and has said he is open to amending it. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Monday that his negotiators returned from talks in Geneva with a streamlined framework that incorporated “many of the right elements” from Kyiv’s perspective — though sensitive issues remain to be discussed with Trump. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said there was no meeting scheduled between the two leaders as of last night.
But but but … if the anxiety about Trump’s peace plan seems to have eased somewhat, the wrangling over the past week will only add to broader calls for the EU to shift gears and depend less on Washington for the defense of the continent.
“We could have proposed our own plan together with the Ukrainians,” Brando Benifei, the MEP who chairs the European Parliament’s delegation to the U.S., told Playbook. “The EU still today is a very fragmented union of 27 different member states — we need to do more in terms of political unity or we will never be able to compete in terms of influence in the world of today.”
Brussels vs. Brussels: One lightning rod for criticism is the fact the bloc still hasn’t agreed on the use of frozen Russian cash to issue a €140 billion loan to ensure Kyiv doesn’t run out of money next year. Belgium blocked the initiative at a summit in October, fearing legal repercussions. “If we had agreed a deal on the use of Russian assets to fund Ukraine at the last European Council, this wouldn’t have happened,” said a senior European official. “If we want a seat at the table, we need to pay the money.”
Clock ticking: “America is, unfortunately, not interested in European security,” former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis told Playbook. “This isn’t the beginning of the end. It’s the end of the end. There’s a European Council on Dec. 18, and leaders need to be prepared to come out of that having made serious decisions on frozen assets and on sanctions.”
The EU’s inaction has left Zelenskyy facing a miserable choice, my colleagues write this morning: Take the offer cooked up by Trump and Putin, or gamble his country’s future in the hope of one day getting enough help from European allies who won’t send him their troops, or the weapons he wants, or even raid Russia’s frozen assets from their banks to help him buy supplies of his own.
Missing in action: Supporters of Trump are also being emboldened by the lack of action. “You can talk a good game,” Greg Swenson, chair of Republicans Overseas UK, told POLITICO. “You can attend all these diplomatic meetings and you can send all your best people to Geneva but the only way to beat Putin is to fight. And none of them are willing to do that. So it’s all talk. It all sounds great when you talk about democracy and defending Ukraine but they’re just not willing to do it.”
Outside the circle: The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, has been kept out of the spotlight given her sometimes difficult relationship with the Trump administration. According to two other officials, even U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — the most pro-European of Trump’s top team, who changed the tack of Trump’s Ukraine negotiations — has been declining to hold bilaterals with Kallas. But, one of the officials pointed out, she is busy playing the bad cop by corralling member states behind the scenes.
TRADE TENSIONS: Meanwhile, the EU’s hopes that trade ties would be easier after the deal struck with Washington over the summer have fallen short. On Monday, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick used a visit to Brussels to urge the bloc to review the digital rules binding American companies and to find a more “balanced” approach. If it doesn’t, he said, talks about exempting steel and aluminium from crippling tariffs could fail.
Hitting back: “The European digital rule-book is not up for negotiation,” said the Commission’s competition chief Teresa Ribera in a statement shared with POLITICO. “It’s our duty to preserve our values and to defend our people.”
RULE OF LAW
BUDA-PISSED OFF: Lawmakers will vote this morning on a resolution urging EU countries to find the Hungarian government culpable for breaching the bloc’s values and suspend its voting rights in Brussels. And it’s not the first time — MEPs last asked for the measure to be applied three years ago.
Symbolic step: The move is designed to put pressure on the Council, which has the power to invoke Article 7 of the treaties and strip Hungary of its ability to vote on key proposals. Despite a recent push by the Danish presidency, the required unanimity is missing, with countries like Slovakia defending Viktor Orbán’s government.
Hatching a plan: “They have not taken any meaningful actions … it’s really difficult at the moment to get unanimity but the first steps that the Council can take can be taken with a fourth-fifths majority,” the lead MEP on Hungary, Tineke Strik, told POLITICO ahead of the vote. Countries could officially declare a serious risk of a breach of the fundamental values in Hungary, and to come up with official recommendations to increase pressure on Budapest, she said.
SPEAKING OF SLOVAKIA: A coalition of NGOs is today writing to the Slovak government expressing “grave concern” over a decision by the interior minister to abolish the office that protects whistleblowers after a series of probes into its ministers. The letter, signed by the Whistleblowing International Network, the European Whistleblowing Institute and Transparency International Slovakia, warns of a “deeply alarming rule of law crisis of constitutional proportions.”
We want a refund: “The minister himself has a direct conflict of interest. He shouldn’t be touching any of this because the cases are against him,” said Vigjilenca Abazi, an expert at the European Whistleblowing Institute and co-author of the letter. “What can the EU do? There’s a clear toolbox of infringement proceedings at this stage. The most direct thing you could do is cut funding from the Recovery and Resilience Facility or ask for it to be redisbursed because of violations.”
NO REFUND FOR NOW: The European Parliament will delay its decision on whether to demand €4 million of taxpayers cash back from the now-defunct Identity and Democracy group until prosecutors have concluded an investigation into alleged mismanagement of funds, according to a note seen by my colleague Max Griera.
EMPLOYMENT
THE UNION’S UNION: The European Commission’s Central Staff Committee has written to the team conducting the large-scale review of the executive’s structure, warning that efforts to give employees a say are “too little and too late.” The group, which represents the interests of tens of thousands of officials and other workers, says there has been a “lack of coherence” in the approach to key stakeholders that doesn’t meet the standards the Commission advocates for other organizations.
List of demands: The review “never included a proper consultation of the Staff Committee,” the missive reads, and calls for the inclusion of two staff representatives in each workstream and as members of the high level group advising the process. Trade unions and representatives should be given preliminary conclusions and consulted on the recommendations, it argues. Read the full letter here.
Everyone’s a critic: Meanwhile, recent warnings from Commission officials that they are “overloaded” and should be entitled to fewer working hours have been met with scorn from some skeptical of the institution. “What world are these entitled Eurocrats living in? Sky high wages, big perks and pensions,” said Anders Vistisen, an MEP from the far-right Danish People’s Party. “They are completely unaware that there is a big rough world out there, with lower wages … and competition in the labor market.”
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DEFENDING EUROPE
SHIELDS UP: Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath had a rough night in Strasbourg Monday after he was sent out to defend the Commission’s democracy shield. The initiative is meant to streamline how authorities react to everything from rogue drones to disinformation, but measures it includes are light touch and voluntary after an inter-institutional fight over who owns the plans.
“The democracy shield seems to be full of new ways to exchange information between member states,” said Kim Van Sparrentak, a Dutch MEP from the Greens. “However there are no other truly new or effective proposals to actually take action. And without concrete action this proposal feels more like a European neighborhood watch group chat.”
Far-right fury: “On paper the goals look good,” said Hungarian Patriots for Europe MEP Csaba Dömötör, “but behind these noble goals you want to build a political machinery without an electoral mandate.” He alleged, without evidence, that it would funnel money toward “liberal NGOs” and fact-checkers. “In America they are dismantling censorship,” he said. “You are strengthening it.”
NO MORE CYBERCOP: The EU appears to have given up on ambitions to be the world’s technology regulator, having backed away from data and privacy rules in the face of America’s deregulation drive. Pieter Haeck and Ellen O’Regan have the autopsy report on what was once dubbed “the Brussels Effect.”
PARLIAMENT MAKES WAY FOR DEFENSE BOOST: Lawmakers in the Parliament will debate and vote on the European Defence Industry Programme (EDIP) during Tuesday’s plenary session. In October, MEPs reached an agreement with the Council on the proposal, which the Commission put forward in March 2024. The program will have a budget of €1.5 billion from 2025 to 2027 and aims to ensure the “timely availability and supply of defense products.”
IN OTHER NEWS
NAUGHTY NORDIC: The European Commission today is expected to reprimand Finland (of all countries) for overspending as part of its annual budget oversight, several officials told POLITICO Pro’s Morning Financial Services. Helsinki will be asked to cut public spending to bring its deficit back in line with the EU’s rules. Its deficit-to-GDP ratio is set to significantly exceed the Commission’s 3 percent threshold in 2025, 2026 and 2027.
MERCOSUR SAFEGUARDS VOTE COMING UP THIS WEEK: The center-right European People’s Party has pushed to fast-track a vote on one of the final hurdles facing the EU’s trade agreement with the Latin American Mercosur bloc, which will happen as soon as today, Camille Gijs and Max Griera write in to report.
Adoption Thursday: The EPP, Socialists and Democrats and Renew Europe groups all told POLITICO they support the fast track, which means the safeguards themselves will be voted on — and likely adopted — on Thursday. But France and Poland continue to express misgivings. “Our position is clearly defined: We will vote against despite the agreement on safeguards that has been reached,” said Michal Baranowski, Poland’s undersecretary of state in the Ministry of Economic Development.
LA CONCORRENZA: Italy’s competition authority has challenged the supremacy of Brussels’ rules by successfully forcing Google to change its terms and conditions for data sharing — and Brussels is happy to see member countries doing some of the heavy lifting in negotiations. My colleague Jacob Parry has more.
GOOD NEWS AND BAD NEWS FOR PEDRO: The lawyer at the center of a complaint against the wife of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has withdrawn his support for the case, declaring on Monday that he believes it is founded on “political opportunism” rather than legal arguments. The surprise announcement was made hours after Attorney General Álvaro García Ortiz stepped down after being found guilty of leaking secrets by Spain’s Supreme Court.