PM Mitsotakis announces emergency levy on natural gas power producers to combat high electricity prices
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis gave an interview to SKAI TV on Tuesday evening, emphasizing that the government has decided to impose an emergency levy on natural gas power producers for the next two months. “We will use this revenue to alleviate electricity bills in August,” Mitsotakis stressed. “Given the current price trends, citizens would otherwise see a sharp increase in electricity prices in August.”
Anna Diamantopoulou announces candidacy for PASOK leadership
Anna Diamantopoulou announced on Tuesday her candidacy for the leadership of PASOK – Movement for Change in the upcoming October 6 elections. In a video posted on social media along with a written declaration of her candidacy, the former PASOK minister and EU commissioner addressed the challenges of modern social democracy.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/835068/Anna-Diamantopoulou-announces-candidacy-for-PASOK-leadershiprn
Government, SYRIZA spat over main opposition MP’s insulting remark
The government and the main opposition bickered on Tuesday over a prominent SYRIZA lawmaker who made rude remarks about a New Democracy official at a television panel discussing access of the uninsured to the national healthcare system the day before.
46 forest fires in the last 24 hours across Greece
In the last 24 hours, 46 agricultural forest fires have been throughout Greece. Of these, according to Fire Department, 36 were dealt with immediately while the fire forces are dealing with another ten. According to Civil Protection, eight of them needed the assistance of aircraft.
https://www.amna.gr/en/article/835074/46-forest-fires-in-the-last-24-hours-across-Greece
ATHEX: Energy firms lead decline at the stock market
Tuesday saw many stocks back on a downward course at Athinon Avenue, led by energy companies, which may be affected by the measures the government is expected to announce on Wednesday. The rest of the market was actually fairly balanced, with a large number of stocks ending up with gains and banks suffering only a minor drop, as did the daily turnover.
https://www.ekathimerini.com/economy/1244145/athex-energy-firms-lead-decline-at-the-stock-market
KATHIMERINI: PM Mitsotakis issues ultimatum for doctors
TA NEA: Power subsidies in August
EFIMERIDA TON SYNTAKTON: Government electrocuted
RIZOSPASTIS: Rally in Larimna in support of LARKO workers
KONTRA NEWS: PM’s office electrocuted by the sharp increases in power prices
DIMOKRATIA: The guardians of the Aegean went to Poland!
NAFTEMPORIKI: The new equation for the minimum wage
HOWDY. Welcome to your Wednesday edition of Brussels Playbook, coming to you from Strasbourg this week. Eddy Wax will be your host on Thursday and Friday.
VDL TALKING POINTS MEMO
REFERENDUM ON AN IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY: Ursula von der Leyen’s speechwriters are surely hard at work today on the address that could make or break her future at the European Commission. In an address to the plenary just two hours before MEPs vote on Thursday, she’ll have to walk a fine line on issues like migration and climate to satisfy lawmakers who are diametrically opposed on how the EU should proceed on this issue.
Complicating that task: She’ll also have to reassure lawmakers who don’t really trust her.
Trust fall: Top jobs and policy priorities can be negotiated. But von der Leyen’s history on issues of transparency and collaboration across institutions remains a sticking point with many of the MEPs she’ll need, both to the right and left of her, to win the backing of an absolute majority. Secrets she’s kept — and promises she hasn’t — are on lawmakers’ minds and in the headlines.
HAUNTED BY HUNGARY: The Parliament is already suing von der Leyen over a decision to release €10 billion in frozen EU funds to Hungary. Its concerns were further inflamed last week when a Commission VP talked about a “deal” to Playbook.
DELETEGATE WON’T DISAPPEAR: Also known as Pfizergate, the scandal involving von der Leyen’s deleted texts with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla allegedly about coronavirus vaccine negotiations is still a sore spot. Gheorghe Piperea, of Romania’s insurgent AUR party, said von der Leyen’s lack of “factual” explanations is one of the reasons its five MEPs will vote against her. And that’s not the only heat she’s taking on transparency.
Vaccine contracts ruling today: The EU’s top administrative court will say whether or not the Commission was right when it refused to give lawmakers full access to documents related to Covid-19 vaccines.
Backstory: A group of Green MEPs filed requests to get access to vaccine contracts and certain related documents to understand the agreement between the Commission and Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers in 2021. The Commission only agreed to give partial access to those, arguing that some sections had been redacted for protection of commercial interests or privacy matters.
It’s a no. The MEPs then took the Commission to the European Court of Justice over the refusal. They now hope the judges’ decision will “clarify the European Parliament’s role in ensuring democratic oversight,” according to Jutta Paulus, one of the MEPs who brought forward the case. Other Pfizergate cases are also pending in different EU jurisdictions.
MORE ‘MALADMINISTRATION’: The European Ombudsman on Tuesday knocked the Commission for refusing to share documents about meetings the EU executive held with Thorn, an organization founded by the actor Ashton Kutcher that develops and sells tools to prevent child sexual abuse.
PARLIAMENT’S POWER: “Is she willing to cooperate with us more clearly than last time?” That’s a top question German Green MEP Hannah Neumann wants an answer to when she listens to von der Leyen on Thursday.
Speaking to Playbook from her new office in the Salvador de Madariaga Building, Neumann noted that von der Leyen in 2019 backed the idea that the Parliament should be able to initiate legislation on its own (as opposed to tweaking bills written by the Commission). “That never materialized,” Neumann said.
Bottom line: With the U.S. looking increasingly chaotic, there’s little appetite for creating more instability by rejecting von der Leyen even among many of her critics. There’s no clear alternative. At the same time, MEPs (especially those who’ve been on the job for more than a day) are keenly aware that this is their moment of peak power over the Commission. Once von der Leyen is back at the Berlaymont, their options to hold her accountable plummet.
ANOTHER COMPLICATED RELATIONSHIP: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is also facing a trust dilemma: Back von der Leyen to keep Italy in the European fold, or stay true to her ideological supporters back home? Hannah Roberts looks at the complex relationship between Europe’s most powerful women.
ECR split: Meloni’s political family, the hard-right European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), also appear to be split on von der Leyen. Eddy Wax and Max Griera map out the divisions.
PARLIAMENT, DAY 1
METSOLA’S SMASHING RESULT: It’s safe to say Roberta Metsola is the most popular woman in Brussels after she glided to a second 2.5-year term as the Parliament’s president. The 45-year-old Maltese member of the European People’s Party received the backing of 562 MEPs. More from Max Griera.
Already slacking: Exactly 699 votes were cast in the secret ballot, with 61 going to The Left’s token opposition candidate, Irene Montero. Another 76 ballots were blank or invalid. That means that some 20 MEPs simply didn’t bother to cast a vote at all. (Some were barred from voting because they had yet to fill out conflict-of-interest declarations.)
One missing: Officially, there are supposed to be 720 MEPs. But only 719 have been confirmed. The missing member? Toni Comín, a Catalan separatist, whose refusal to travel back to Madrid — and thus have his reelection certified — has been covered in this space.
Who’s in: The official list of MEPs is here. They include Tomislav Sokol, who is returning to the Parliament after the head of Croatia’s EPP list, Dubravka Šuica, opted to keep her spot as European commissioner for democracy and demography.
AN ABSTENTION, EXPLAINED, SORT OF: “I chose to not vote for anybody because I think they are not good enough,” said Fidias Panayiotou, the Cypriot YouTuber MEP, in a video. He did not elaborate on what he found lacking.
That’s cool: This appears to have been his first unilateral decision, after using social media polls to decide whether to join a group (the masses voted for him to stay independent rather than join the Greens) or vote for von der Leyen (the masses said no). Asked by a reporter what he’d like to change, Panayiotou replied: “I want to make politics cool.”
VEEPSTAKES: Antonella Sberna, a member of the hard-right Brothers of Italy party, won a tight vote for one of 14 vice president spots on Tuesday — a defeat for left-leaning parties that wanted to extend the cordon sanitaire to Meloni’s party. Though Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s new Patriots for Europe group was allocated a VP seat by the Parliament’s rules, their candidate, National Rally’s Fabrice Leggeri, was blocked. The winners.
EXIT INTERVIEW: JAN ZAHRADIL
AN ECR FOUNDER ON THE ‘EUROCRITICAL’ FUTURE: The Czech Republic’sJan Zahradil just wrapped up two decades in the European Parliament. A founding member of the ECR — he ran as the party’s lead candidate in 2019 — Zahradil is leaving just as a kaleidoscope of right-wing forces looks poised to mount unprecedented resistance to European integration. Playbook caught up with him on his last day, recording an interview in a secluded section of the MEP bar.
Sad to be leaving at this moment of real power for the ECR?
No one believed that we could have done something that would last for 15 years. Everybody was like, “Yeah, you can try. But it would last one, two years, maybe one term, then it will collapse, then you will go back to the EPP or elsewhere.” Didn’t happen.
Now it can be taken for granted that it will survive. And it’s deeply rooted in the political landscape of the European Parliament. So I’m fine with that.
What about Viktor Orbán’s new Patriots for Europe group? Are they made to last?
He proved himself to be a good strategist.
For some time, he was trying to get into the ECR. That attempt failed because I think there was some behind-the-scenes games being played — maybe Meloni was a little bit pushed to the corner by [the] upcoming Commission; maybe there were even some signals from von der Leyen.
Then Orbán acted very quickly [to form the Patriots]… [which is] now up to the third-largest group.
They will not change the course [of the Parliament], but they will change the atmosphere, which is a good thing. And cynically speaking, it is also good for the ECR group, because now we can be seen as, let’s say, the more moderate Eurocritical group.
It sounds like you think Meloni made the right call if she made a deal with von der Leyen.
[Meloni] could have made a deal with Orbán … that would probably have resulted in a stronger Eurocritical group with maybe more than 100 MEPs. But that could cause her some trouble back home. And as prime minister of Italy, still the third largest economy in the EU, I think she decided … to act rather, let’s say, responsibly, on behalf of her country.
It doesn’t exclude the possibility … they will get closer and closer during the next five years.
Highlights from your tenure?
Definitely the ECR family. At the very beginning, we were portrayed like far-right extremists, xenophobes, all that. Now we are taken as more moderate or mainstream.
As vice chair of the international trade committee, we were really trying to open markets as much as possible outside of the EU for European exports. It’s not easy. Unfortunately, you can even see some signs of economic protectionism growing in the U.S., in Europe, elsewhere in Asia.
Advice for new MEPs?
Do not take yourself too seriously. Because after some time here in the European Parliament, some people start to feel that they are somehow running the global policies, they are running Europe, they are running almost everything. And this is not a reality.
HUNGARY GAMES
ALTERNATIVE FAC FALLS FLAT: Count this as a win for Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán: EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell’s plan to counter-program Budapest’s gathering appears to have fizzled. The idea was to plan a “formal” summit of foreign ministers at the same time in August that Hungary summoned them for an “informal” gathering, as part of its rotating Council presidency. But capitals received a message Tuesday informing them that the plan was off.
MICHEL REBUFFS ORBÁN ADVICE: Council President Charles Michel sent a sharp reply to Orbán’s “peace mission” debrief (described in Tuesday’s Playbook), reminding the Hungarian prime minister that the rotating presidency has “no role in representing the Union on the international stage.”
Sticking up for Kyiv: “No discussion about Ukraine can take place without Ukraine,” Michel writes in the letter, dated July 12. “I cannot accept your claim that we have led a ‘pro-war policy,’” Michel adds. More from Paul Dallison.
IN OTHER NEWS
PLOT AGAINST TRUMP: The U.S. intelligence community has received an increasing amount of evidence to suggest that Iran is actively working on plots to kill former President Donald Trump, potentially in the lead-up to the election in November. My U.S. colleagues have the details.
Last night in Milwaukee: A parade of former rivals praised Trump at the Republican National Convention, including vanquished former presidential hopefuls Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio and Nikki Haley. Trump’s VP pick, J.D. Vance, is expected to speak today and Trump on Thursday. Follow all the developments in our live blog.
Trump on Ukraine: The former president did an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek in which he appeared cool on the idea of punishing Russia for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. “I don’t love sanctions,” he said.
Vance fallout continues: The choice of the isolationist Vance as Trump’s running mate continues to reverberate around the world. European leaders have cycled through shock, dismay, denial and bargaining, my Stateside colleagues report. One European diplomat in Washington texted POLITICO after the announcement: “Holy sh*t.” On the other hand, writes Cory Bennett, Vance’s role in practice may not go much beyond acting as the transatlantic scolder-in-chief.
ROCKY REACTION: Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo blasted Spain’s men’s national football team on Tuesday, saying it had behaved in a way that was “worse than disgusting” when it chanted “GIBRALTAR IS SPANISH!” during the Euro 2024 victory celebrations in Madrid.
That escalated quickly: The U.K.’s top authority on the rock said the slogan recalled “the dictatorial politics of a mass murderer like Franco and his fascist regime’s attempt to usurp a neighboring territory.” Picardo added that the Spanish sportsmen’s stunt “cannot stand unchallenged,” emphasizing “the Rock is OURS.” Gibraltar’s Football Association echoed the sentiment in an official complaint filed with UEFA in response to the episode.
SILENCE IS GOLDEN: The ECB is expected to keep interest rates on hold on Thursday, although an improving inflation outlook could mean cuts later in the year, Johanna Treeck reports.
FRENCH SPENDING UNDER SCRUTINY: Paris and Brussels are on course for a clash over France’s spending, as political turmoil risks delaying progress on cutting “excessive” budget deficits, the FT reports. The paper says EU officials presented draft guidelines to Paris at the end of June showing Brussels wants France to impose spending cuts of 0.6 percent of GDP annually on average over the next seven years.