“The Greeks are back”: High-level executives recommend changes by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   A group of high-level Greek executives who ply their trade in large companies around the world have convened – in a “The Greeks are back” format – in Athens to try and set out policy proposals in order to contribute to the ever-relevant goal of attracting investment to Greece. Some of their findings (more at www.greeksareback.gr) : As one would expect, the field of AI and of Cyber-security [...]

Dealing with an environmental impasse by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   A roundtable organized by the Association “Law-Nature” and the Tsatsos Centre for European Constitutional Law, coming soon after environmental extreme events have shaken public opinion in Greece (wildfires in summer, floods in autumn), tried to put in perspective the means available to deal with such unprecedented climate challenges that are becoming part of our life. As stated by two participants coming from different walks of life but resolutely trying to shed [...]

When East meets West in a constructive mood: The Empress Theophano Prize goes to the United Nations in 2023 by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   The humanitarian role of multilateral institutions, this is what the United Nations was honoured for – in the person of Secretary-General Antonio Gutterres – with the Pan-European Prize Empress Theophano. Founded in 2020, to reward “individuals or organisations who make an outstanding contribution to bridging Europe’s historic diversities”, the prize is awarded annually on the first Saturday [...]

European promises of accession as a way out from a “frozen conflict” in Ukraine? by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Could it be that the lightning visit of EU Commission President to Kyiv (unannounced until it happened: peculiar, given the bandwagon of publicity following Ursula von der Leyen whenever she ventures in foreign-affairs terrain), meeting President Zelenski to congratulate Ukraine for “excellent progress […] impressive to see” in preparing for accession negotiations, be some kind of smoke-screen for pressure being brought to [...]

The Athens/ECB version of the Delphic Oracle by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Ain 2008, almost 15 years ago, while the clock was already ticking for Greece’s financial crisis that led to the near-miss of Grexit in 2015, the Eurosystem central bankers and the Governing Council of the ECB convened in Athens to more-or-less celebrate the tenth anniversary of the launch of the third stage of EMU and the process leading to the  Eurozone creation (European Council of May 3rd, 1998). This [...]

The exercise of summitry – and Greek foreign policy in the Middle East by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Greek P.M. Kyriakos Mitsotakis joined the Cairo Peace Summit, a conference of mainly Arab and European leaders and officials trying to de-escalate the Israel-Hamas conflagration and to avoid a generalised war flare-up in the Middle East. By a peculiar turn of things, the Cairo Summit was attended by three Greek dignitaries: Mitsotakis was joined by Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulidis, but also by European [...]

War has changed – shockingly so by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   War is a horror; so is terrorism, an insidious substitute to war. Problem is, war has changed in our days. War has changed in shocking but also in ensnaring ways. War has been always changing and adapting – all along getting ever more deadly. Passing from longbow to gunpowder must have been a horrible experience for European belligerents of the 14th century; so was greeting the Gatling gun on battlefields [...]

Through the looking-glass: the art of drafting Budgets in Greek circumstances by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   For the real fans of Lewis Carroll’s works, one of the deeper aspects of “Through the looking-glass” is the fallacy of equivocation; that is, of using the same term/the very same word to denote clearly different – possibly even opposite – objects or meanings. In the time-honored charade of drafting budgets in Greek practice – not to forget that ex post assessments of the budget’s [...]

Greek leaders discover Europe anew: in shining or dark context? by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Greece belongs to Europe, to the “European family”: ever since the Eighties, when a Euro-hesitant public opinion turned decidedly Euro-phihe (for a period of more than a decade Euro-enthusiastic) this is a tenet of Greek politics. A brief spell of Euro-disappointment when Greece and Greeks experienced the tough love of bail-out/Adjustment Programmes based on austerity, was decisively reversed when the spectra of Grexit became apparent. A [...]

An awkward success for Greece: investment grade won back amidst natural calamities by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   It is quite strange an experience for a country to get back its investment grade rating – lost in 2009, at the onset of Greece’s financial debacle – when it is reeling under successive shocks of raging wildfires and devastating floods. Still, it just right now that Greece’s sovereigns recorded the belated success of getting a BBB (low) rating, with stable trend, by DBRS [...]

The Greek economy facing 2024 – just before the Thessaloniki Fair ritual by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Traditionally, the Thessaloniki International Fair – attended as it is by everybody who counts in Greek politics, especially the Prime Minister, along with the court surrounding politics – constituted the setting for positive assessments of the Greek economy performance, plus whatever criticism can be presented, but essentially for a glimpse at the economic policies to be implemented in the year to come. Up to [...]

The Mitsotakis version of family hospitality-based foreign policy More than 30 years ago – in July 1991 to be more precise, when the world order was being rearranged with the crash of the Soviet Union – Greek Prime Minister Mitsotakis (Constantine) greeted to the Crete family home of the Mitsotakis clan no less the then US President George Bush, Sr along with First Lady Barbara Bush. The 3-day stay of the Bushes benefited of all the hospitality associated with Marika [...]

The Right-Left balance in Europe: Spanish and German angles revisited by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Spain has emerged from its recent snap general election with Right-wing Partido Popular leading, with 47 more seats than it had in the last (2019) vote; the snap election was called by the ruling Left-leaning coalition around Socialist PSOE, after they did worse than expected in last May’s regional elections. PSOE came a close second to PP, giving the lie to those who thought that PP [...]

Interest on Greek public debt: a case of “there is no free lunch” by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   After many years during which the fight to gain some sort of fiscal equilibrium was of pre-eminent importance for Greece, the fact that the first semester of the current year ended with a 2.1 bn euros surplus in the implementation of the 2023 budget was surely cause for satisfaction (Notwithstanding the fact that quite a portion of such good performance is to be [...]

Of high-visibility personalities covering their bets by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Economies run partly – or, sometimes, mainly – on psychology; so, leading figures have always the tendency to play on forecasts and/or warnings so as to contribute to what is considered the common good. Take for one Jamie Dimon, the CEO of J.P. Morgan Chase since 2005 – the quintessential leading figure of global finance (of Greek ancestry: his grandfather Theodore Papadimitriou cut his teeth at banking in Smyrna and [...]

Will the benefit of the doubt given to the new Government allow for important changes to be attempted? by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   It is part of Greek political life, however little acknowledged by analysts when it actually occurs. After an election in Greece, even when tempers have run high in campaigns and public posturing, there is a reflex of the body politic – regardless of  every single citizen’s choise at the voting urn – to grant the winner quite wide [...]

Looking forward to the set-design for the Mitsotakis-Erdogan Vilnius meeting by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   The Vilnius NATO Summit (of July 11/12) was further prepared by a seven-nation meeting last week at the Hague, with NATO SecGen Stoltenberg joining the Presidents and/or Prime Ministers of the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Poland, Romania, Lithuania and Albania. The set-up of this group was consciously staying clear of major NATO nations: it is a measure of the efforts of the Alliance to weave closer ties [...]

Has Greece shifted to the Right? Is this part of something wider? by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Greece was always – certainly in the post-WWII years/probably ever since the mid-Twenties when the flow of Asia Minor refugees altered decisively social structure and politics – a Centre-Left/Left leaning country. Even when ruled by Right-wing Governments, which was often the case especially in the post-War years when the US influence was most pronounced and anti-Communist imperatives were strictly enforced, underlying Left-leaning reflexes were [...]

Of prudent leadership and the willingness to negotiate by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   60 years ago, U.S. President J.F. Kennedy attended the Commencement Ceremony of the American University in which he pronounced one the most influential speeches of the post-WWII era – a speech that ushered the practice of what would later be known as deconfliction and the politics of restraint months after the Cuba missile crisis had reached its climax; it also opened the era of managed competition instead of [...]

From APR to AMMR, the EU keeps trying on the migration front by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   The essence of the long-awaited European Union APR (asylum procedure regulation) and AMMR (asylum and migration management regulation) – the EU has the knack of using acronyms to make unpleasantness more palatable! – agreed last week at Home Affairs Council level is to speed up procedures at entry for people seeking international protection while also establishing some measure of intra-EU solidarity. This agreement has [...]