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 [...]

The stage is set for Greek-Turkish relations step-by-step by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   The end-run to Greece’s run-off parliamentary elections that are about to produce a Government end of June was mainly focused on an acrid pre-electoral debate over taxation. Tax is fast becoming a prohibited word in Greek politics, which is somehow a surprise for a country that closely missed default a dozen years ago due to fiscal profligacy: Greece recently fought its way out of Covid-19-induced recession by generalized [...]

The aftermath of elections in Turkey and (to be confirmed) Greece by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Maybe the first tangible outcome of the May 28 run-off elections in Turkey, that is of the 6th successive mandate to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (his first 3 were as PM) may well be the affirmation of intent for a bilateral meeting. A meeting that has been in the offing for some time now, but was wisely enough kept under covers as electoral campaigns were [...]

A landslide, with some turbulence ahead by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Following a landslide victory that nearly gave the ruling Nea Dimocratia party an independent majority under an electoral system of proportional representation (in itself a rarity in Greek political mores),  PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis can confidently plan ahead to lead the country unhindered – in turbulent waters. The (formerly radical) left-leaning Opposition SYRIZA is reeling under the shock of losing to ND by some 20 percentage points; centre-left PASOK, albeit a [...]

Elections in Turkiye: be prepared for further bumps ahead by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Neither the mainstream opinion polls in Turkey over international media proved able to grasp the undercurrents of Turkish opinion: instead of a lead to the Opposition coalition around Kemal Kilicdaroglu, voters gave incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan a clear advantage for the second round of the presidential election, which is to be held on May 28. The election night was fraught with recriminations, with the flow of results [...]

Ebb and flow in the Aegean, time and again by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   It should be expected that the twin May 2023 elections in Greece and Turkey –  or, as the international system would rather have it, in Turkey and Greece – would bring to the fore the two countries’ fraught relations over maritime zones, or even over sovereignty matters in the Aegean. After all such matters play to the national feelings in both countries, although revisionist reflexes that have [...]

The future prospects: when the Oracle tries to tackle today’s issues by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Not an easy thing, to retrieve and prioritize topics broached at the – wider than ever – Delphi Economic Forum of 2023. At the front of economic issues and corresponding forecasts, one could discern some sort of moderate optimism as to the challenges ahead: neither the bout of inflation underway nor the recessionary perspectives due to restrictive monetary policies and ratcheting interest rates seemed to [...]

DEF 2023: looking for optimistic outcomes from paradigm shifts underway by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   The Delphi Economic Forum, in its eighth version and having already proved its mettle throughout the Covid pandemic and the turbulence of the Greek political scene, is still growing up – not just in participation numbers or in ambition of topics covered. Ten speakers short of 1.000, more than 1 /3 of them from abroad, plus dozens of issues ranging from Geopolitics/Geoeconomics to front-line Tech issues [...]

Reading through the Report of the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Reading through the quarterly report of IOBE/the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research is always an edifying experience. The main findings may sound unsurprising enough, as things have been going in recent months. Growth has picked up, with the last quarter of 2022 almost at the level of the whole-year tempo (5.2% at years’ end, for a 5.9% year-on-year change); such growth was based [...]

Needed: political leadership able to convince the people by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras, presenting the BoG Annual Report, upped 2023 growth expectations to 2.2% - clearly higher than earlier forecasts (the 2023 Budget voted in November went for 1.8%, the European Commission was more conservative with 1.2%), albeit clearly lower than the  5.9% achieved for 2022. As for the thorny issue of inflation, BoG projections are for a rather optimistic 4.4% rate, optimistic now that [...]

Time and again there are calls on Greece’s political system to achieve some measure of consensus: is there anybody out there? by Antonis D. Papagiannidis   The most recent calls on Greece’s political system to work towards a minimum of consensus commensurate with the challenges its economy is facing – even more so: the challenges it will face in the near future – come from an institutional body that has an analogy to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office. As the CBO, [...]