Greece’s Eurogroup candidate pitches ‘strategic, cohesive’ approach

Good morning. Who killed Europe’s single market dream? As the continent’s leaders, bureaucrats and policymakers bemoan the EU’s woeful economic competitiveness, the Financial Times has set out to find who and what tarnished what Brussels loves to claim as its greatest achievement. Over the next fortnight, we will take five deep dives into the single market’s failures. Read the first in the series here.

Today, Greece’s candidate to lead the Eurogroup tells our Athens correspondent that he’s pitching himself as a tech-savvy embodiment of his country’s economic recovery, before I explain what EU defence ministers will discuss this morning.

Comeback kid

A decade ago, Greece was the Eurozone’s “black sheep” — bailed out three times, stuck in recession and blamed by some for taking the single currency area to the brink of collapse. Now, Athens is making a bid for one of its thrones, writes Eleni Varvitsioti.

Context: Eurogroup president, a role which became very high-profile during the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis and has since involved co-ordinating fiscal policy in the single currency bloc, became vacant last month after Ireland’s Paschal Donohoe stepped down to take up a senior position at the World Bank.

Greece’s finance minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis, 42, wants the job. The election of the new president, who will serve for two and a half years, will take place on December 11 and requires a simple majority of the 20 Eurozone finance ministers.

The other candidate is Belgium’s deputy prime minister Vincent Van Peteghem, a fiscal conservative with a much longer Eurogroup experience. But Pierrakakis is leaning hard on Greece’s comeback story — and his own CV as a tech-savvy moderniser.

As minister for digital governance, he led a sweeping overhaul of Greece’s famously bureaucratic public sector, replacing queues and stamps with clicks and apps.

He wants to bring that energy to Brussels, he told the FT: “Global competition, technological acceleration and geopolitical volatility demand a more cohesive and strategically aligned euro area.” The challenge, he says, “is not to produce more analysis”.

Pierrakakis’ pitch is heavy on economic reform: boosting cross-border investment, strengthening the single market, and ensuring the digital euro supports what he calls “stability, trust and Europe’s strategic autonomy”.

He’s also keen to remind peers how far Greece has come. After the sharpest fiscal consolidation in postwar Europe, the country is growing faster than the Eurozone average, unemployment is falling, and debt is on track to drop below 120 per cent of GDP by 2030.

“This trajectory shows what is possible when strategy, discipline and execution align,” he says — an approach he promises to carry into the Eurogroup presidency if elected by his peers.

Both Pierrakakis and Van Peteghem hail from the conservative European People’s Party, which holds nine seats in the Eurogroup — thus splitting the conservative vote. The winner will have to convince finance ministers from other parties, including its largest members Germany, France and Italy.

Whoever triumphs will have further ramifications for other big Eurozone finance jobs, as capitals jostle to replace four of the ECB’s top six jobs before the end of 2027.

Chart du jour: Spluttering engine

Struggling to adjust to the rise of electric vehicles, big sales declines in China and lacklustre European demand, Volkswagen’s plan includes huge capacity reductions and job cuts. Will the radical revamp be enough?

On defence

Perhaps the EU’s defence ministers should be meeting in Florida today instead of their drab Brussels environs, literally thousands of miles away from the action.

Context: Senior Ukrainian officials met with Donald Trump’s negotiators just outside Miami yesterday, starting what could be a pivotal week of diplomacy aimed at ending Russia’s years-long war.

EU defence ministers will be talking about Ukraine for most of today, either directly in terms of how to continue supporting Kyiv, or indirectly as the fulcrum of wider European defence readiness. But many will be more interested in discussing what was decided across the Atlantic with Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio, special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“This is not just about peace deals,” Rubio said. “It’s about creating a pathway forward that leaves Ukraine sovereign, independent and prosperous.”

The dislocation shines a bright light on Europe’s difficulty in influencing the talks and possible outcome. While the continent’s leaders were successful in deflecting the immediate imposition of a Russian-drafted agreement last month in Geneva, they lack a direct, formal role.

One thing the EU does have control of is the fate of Russian state assets frozen inside the bloc, and whether or not to use them as collateral for a loan to Ukraine.

Belgium has claimed that doing so would jeopardise any possible peace agreement. The FT’s editorial board instead has argued that “it is time for the EU to act” on the loan for both Ukraine and Europe’s security.

Let the talking continue.

What to watch today

1. EU defence ministers meet.

2. EU employment and social policy ministers meet.

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