The European Council summit kicks off in Brussels on Thursday, with migration taking center stage. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis arrives with modest expectations but is determined to press for urgent progress on key issues.
Former prime minister Antonis Samaras accused the government of his New Democracy successor of taking too soft a stance towards Turkey, saying that “when ‘calm waters’ lead to the silent acceptance of fait accomplis, it always brings great storms.”
Greece’s state budget presented a primary surplus of 8.743 billion euros in January-September 2024, against a primary surplus target of €5.3 billion and a primary surplus of €5.98 billion euros in the same period of the previous year, per the preliminary data available for the execution of the state budget on a modified cash basis.
Following the European Commission’s disbursement to Greece of 1 billion euros in grants from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) on Wednesday, the total amount disbursed to Greece amounts to €18.2 billion, more than 50% of the total budget of the Greece 2.0 national plan.
Turkey has spent eight of the first nine months of 2024 as Europe’s largest producer of coal-fired electricity, overtaking Germany and Poland as it cranked coal burning for power.
The future of a special tax on bank deposits paid to the state in Cyprus may be heading for a shift, though a final decision is not guaranteed.
An auction for a reissue of a five-year Greek government bond with an interest rate of 3.875%, maturing on March 12, 2029, was held by the Public Debt Management Agency (PDMA) on Wednesday, raising the asked sum of 250 million euros.