Eastern Libya declares EU delegation, including Greek minister, ‘persona non grata’ over Tripoli visit
The eastern Libyan government, headed by de facto ruler Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, has strongly condemned visiting ministers from Greece, Italy, and Malta, along with EU Commissioner for Migration Magnus Brunner, accusing them of a “flagrant violation of Libyan sovereignty and diplomatic norms.” The delegation was abruptly declared persona non grata and their scheduled visit to Benghazi was cancelled.
Crucial 2015 meeting stirs political controversy
A controversy has erupted over the alleged minutes of a crucial political leaders’ meeting following Greece’s 2015 referendum, with former prime minister Alexis Tsipras requesting their publication and current officials dismissing them as fabricated.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/politics/1274603/crucial-2015-meeting-stirs-political-controversy
Suspicious envelope delivered to Parliament was sent from Russia
A suspicious envelope discovered at the Greek Parliament among the day’s incoming mail was addressed to Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and appears to have been sent from Russia, according to information.
Commission Rule of Law Report: Greece shows improved performance
Greece has made progress in its rule of law performance in 2024 compared to the previous two years, according to the European Commission’s annual report released on Tuesday. However, the report also highlights that challenges remain and that further efforts are needed to address them.
ATHEX: Index reaches yet another 15-year peak
Banks led another stock rally at Athinon Avenue on Tuesday, with the benchmark having definitively returned to the pre-bailout period and rising to highs unseen since April 2010. It notched up yet another 15-year record after its sixth consecutive session of gains, and did so with the highest daily turnover of the last couple of weeks. Even through a conservative viewpoint, the main index of the Greek market could break through the 2,000-point barrier by the end of the month, when banks issue their second-quarter results.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1274728/athex-index-reaches-yet-another-15-year-peak
KATHIMERINI: Conflict between EU and Eastern Libya ruler Haftar on the migration issue
TA NEA: NAVTEX for maritime research: Turkish “block” on fish as well
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: The government is tearing public programs for drug rehab apart
RIZOSPASTIS: Displacement and total occupation in Gaza to exterminate the Palestinian people
KONTRA NEWS: Eastern Libya ruler Haftar humiliated Greece internationally
DIMOKRATIA: Eastern Libya ruler Haftar warded off Greek Migration Minister Plevris
NAFTEMPORIKI: ATHEX: Historic rally – 12 blue chips lead the Athens Stock Market
DRIVING THE DAY: MIGRATION MAYHEM
NO MORE MONEY FOR NOTHING: In one week, on July 16, the European Commission will present its blueprint for the EU’s next seven-year budget, the monstrous Multiannual Financial Framework, known as the MFF.
One trend is becoming clear already, through public comments from commissioners and leaks to POLITICO reporters: Brussels wants to stop giving away billions of euros and getting nothing in return.
Then came the lawyers, then came the rules: On Tuesday, Democracy Commissioner Michael McGrath made clear he wanted the next long-term budget to take a far stricter approach to rule-of-law issues, making compliance a condition of receiving any EU funding. (Memo to Hungary, Slovakia, and maybe Poland one day, too.)
Another one of your deals: This transactional tendency makes a striking appearance in the Commission’s plan for overhauling international aid spending in the long-term budget. A document leaked to POLITICO’s Gregorio Sorgi says African countries will be required to stem the flow of migrants heading to the EU if they want to keep receiving aid money from Brussels.
What it says: “Increased coherence between migration, asylum and external policies is needed to ensure that the Union’s external assistance supports partner countries to manage migration more effectively,” the document reads.
What it means: That’s EU-speak for what Ursula von der Leyen’s growing band of center-left critics will see as a Trump-style drive to put Europe first and make everyone else pay.
Turn right: The EU executive’s hardening approach on migration is an attempt to neutralize right-wing parties that have been advancing across Europe in recent years, including in last European Parliament election.
Left out: And the migration plan is likely to infuriate the left … again. It’s not as if von der Leyen doesn’t already have a problem there. The Socialists & Democrats and the Greens are already angry at her for, in their view, pandering to the far right with her handling of key issues, including cutting back on climate commitments. Oh, and their MEPs get to vote on whether to bring down her presidency on Thursday, too. (More on that later.)
LIBYA RETURNS UNWANTED ARRIVALS: One nation that Commission officials no doubt had in mind for the new aid budget strings is surely Libya. It’s awkward, then, that the EU’s Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner found himself kicked out of the country on Tuesday for (allegedly) breaching diplomatic protocol while on a trip to discuss how to handle the flow of migrants across the Med.
What happened: Brunner was on a trip with ministers from Italy, Greece and Malta. After visiting the U.N.-recognized government in Tripoli, in western Libya, the group then arrived in Benghazi in the east, which is controlled by Russia-aligned warlord Khalifa Haftar. As Elena Giordano, Ben Munster and Nektaria Stamouli report, the EU team insisted they wanted to talk to Haftar alone and declined meetings with other officials from the Benghazi government. But Haftar wanted a bunch of his senior ministers and aides to join, too. Cue diplomatic incident.
Stage rage: “The delegations were in the VIP area of the airport and were about to have a meeting, but Haftar wanted several of the ministers (and definitely the PM and the FM of the Eastern Libyan govt) to join the meeting,” a government official from an EU country told POLITICO. “That was not possible for the EU Commissioner and the EU govts to accept. Brunner had agreed only for a meeting with Haftar. It seems that Haftar’s reaction was staged.”
What was really the matter: The European side reckons Haftar was angry because the EU delegation had visited Tripoli first, instead of giving precedence to his administration in the east.
Cash splashed: Brussels has committed around €150 million in aid to Libya since 2014, with another €465 million specifically to support migration control efforts and provide help to displaced people.
What now? The EU will have to reassess its plans for working with Libya after this debacle. It might be tempting for countries like Greece — which is seeing a large number of migrants arriving from Libya and landing on Crete — to consider bypassing Brussels and making their own arrangements.
TRUMP SLAMS PUTIN’S ‘BULLSHIT’
“MEANINGLESS”: Donald Trump seems at last to be coming around to the notion that Vladimir Putin should not be taken at his word. The U.S. president said on Tuesday he was “very unhappy” with Russia’s leader. “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, [if] you want to know the truth,” Trump said. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Zelenskyy is in luck: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has had a series of more positive engagements with Trump in recent months. Trump told reporters he was thinking hard about whether to back a harsh U.S. package of new sanctions on Russia, even as American lawmakers hinted they could bring the measures forward potentially within days. “We’re moving,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, the bill’s author, adding that Trump “told me it’s time to move.” POLITICO’s team in Washington has more.
Now read this: My Stateside colleagues also have this story on Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon’s top policy chief, who has made a series of moves that have blindsided parts of the White House and frustrated American allies. Among them was last week’s decision, first reported by POLITICO, to halt shipments of some air defense missiles to Ukraine. CNN reports that U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not inform the White House before he authorized the weapons shipment pause.
MEANWHILE, ON THE FRONT LINES: Polish and allied aircraft scrambled overnight to secure Poland’s airspace after Russia launched a barrage of air strikes targeting western Ukraine. Reuters has a write-up.
VDL’S FATEFUL VOTE
SOCIALISTS AND LIBERALS PILE PRESSURE ON VDL: This Thursday, MEPs will vote on a far-right-backed motion to bring down von der Leyen’s Commission. While both the Socialists and liberals, who on paper at least support her executive agenda, have stated they won’t back the motion, they’re trying to use the opportunity to squeeze political commitments out of the EU executive by threatening to abstain instead, POLITICO’s Max Griera reports.
Deliberations ongoing: The chairs of the European People’s Party, S&D and Renew met on Tuesday night to try to iron out their differences. Both the Socialist and liberal groups will separately meet today to take a final decision on how they will vote.
She’s safe, right? Von der Leyen is expected to survive. Abstentions from her allies in the S&D and Renew groups would not change that, as the motion would need a two-thirds majority in Parliament to pass. Still, the loss of fulsome support would send a strong political message that von der Leyen can’t count on Parliament to back her unconditionally.
What they want: Among other requests, the Socialists want a commitment from von der Leyen to keep intact the European Social Fund as part of the EU’s long-term budget. They fear she will try to cut it. She met political group leaders on Tuesday afternoon, but the Socialists were not happy. “We missed clarity and commitment … If nothing changes, it will be difficult for the S&D to decide not to abstain on Thursday,” a spokesperson for the group told POLITICO.
“Renew will very likely vote against,” said a spokesperson for its group chair, Valérie Hayer. Yet, some of its delegations, such as Ireland’s Fianna Fáil, are pondering whether to abstain, and a final decision will only be taken later today.
Ursula come home: Hayer asked von der Leyen to ensure her own EPP stops passing measures with far-right parties and commits to only working with Socialists and liberals. “Madam President, I must now tell you: nothing is guaranteed. We expect you to take back control, so that at last the political agenda we share with you can truly move forward,” Hayer stressed. Good luck with that.
Green extremes: The far-right Patriots group of Le Pen, Orbán, Salvini & co. seized control of parliamentary talks on the EU’s next climate milestone on Tuesday, sending shockwaves through the Strasbourg chambers. Today, centrist MEPs are mounting a last-ditch effort to blunt the Patriots’ influence on the law — but it all depends on which side the EPP chooses. Zia Weise and Max have more here.
EU AND BRITAIN
MACRON IN LONDON: After waking up at Windsor Castle this morning, French President Emmanuel Macron might be forgiven for feeling a little queasy, given all the Champagne at the state banquet on Tuesday, Clea Caulcutt reports.
Stopping the boats: Macron will join the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for talks and a working lunch. Foremost in Starmer’s mind is getting the French to do more to stop the small boats crossing the Channel, as the number of arrivals of undocumented migrants in the U.K. remains stubbornly high.
Swap? According to a French official, a deal hasn’t yet landed, but “everything is under discussion.” The two countries are working on a controversial “one in, one out” deal, under which the U.K. could return to France migrants who arrive by small boat in exchange for accepting from France asylum-seekers with a family connection in Britain.
In the water: Paris is also considering hardening the rules on French police patrolling the beaches of the country’s north to allow them to stop migrant boats in shallow waters. But this is causing tensions within the government because, under maritime law, there is an obligation to rescue people at sea.
TRADE WAR TIPS: Ursula von der Leyen should follow London’s example and form a high-level political team to conclude trade negotiations with the Trump administration, former European Commissioner Thierry Breton told Playbook’s Nick Vinocur. While Europe has obtained an extension in its negotiations with the White House, the bloc has yet to clinch a framework agreement like the one the U.K. got with the U.S.
“It should not be controversial to say that our team has failed. We had 90 days to conclude this deal, and it’s not done. This is a fact,” Breton, a former commissioner from France and von der Leyen bête noire, said in the phone interview.
The British way: Breton advised the EU to take a page from the U.K.’s playbook and send a more political team with at least one high-level name to camp out in Washington until the deal is done.
EU can do better. However, following the British example doesn’t mean accepting a similar deal. “We should not base ourselves on their deal,” Breton said. “It’s obvious that everyone expects us [the EU] to get a better deal than the United Kingdom. This is why we have given negotiating powers to the EU: to give us as much leverage as possible. If not, we might as well dismantle the EU.”
TRUMP TARIFFS LATEST: Trump could soon announce an EU trade deal, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last night. “The European Union, to their credit, has now made significant, real offers” to open its agricultural and other markets, Lutnick said in an interview on CNBC. “The president’s got those deals on his desk, and he’s thinking about how he wants to play them.”
IN OTHER NEWS
ROMANIAN ROMANCE: The new president of Romania, Nicușor Dan, is at the center of a political love triangle with the pan-European parties of Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz competing to persuade him to join their ranks. “He is weighing his decision very carefully, with the utmost respect towards the importance of it, and he will decide for the next [European Council summit] which one of the political families’ meetings he will attend,” a spokesperson for Dan said. Your Playbook author and Clea Caulcutt have more here.
FACE-SAVING CHINA SUMMIT: Ursula von der Leyen and Council President António Costa will travel to China in two weeks. But with the two sides entangled in various spats, officials are bracing for a summit that’s more about saving face than achieving concrete results, report Antonia Zimmermann and Camille Gijs.
IRAN’S URANIUM: France’s intelligence service boss Nicolas Lerner told LCI television that U.S. and Israeli bombings have set Iran’s nuclear program back by months, but added that there is uncertainty over the location of its highly-enriched uranium stocks. Reuters has the story.
GROK GOES ALL IN ON NAZIS: Grok, the AI chatbot made by Elon Musk’s xAI and deployed on his X social media platform, wrote numerous antisemitic posts Tuesday alleging “patterns” about Jewish people, praising Hitler and referring to itself as “MechaHitler.” The posts came after xAI updated the bot over the weekend. NBC News has a write-up.