Thessaloniki International Fair (TIF) dominated the domestic political agenda. Mitsotakis unveiled a package exceeding €2 billion, spread deliberately across pensioners, the self-employed, farmers, private sector workers and families — a strategy designed to recover an estimated one million voters lost since 2023. Internal government polling identifies the damage with unusual precision: support among the self-employed has fallen from 52% to 30%, among farmers from 48% to 20%, and among private sector employees from 35% to 20%. The early verdict from targeted groups, however, is that the sums were too modest to register against a cost-of-living crisis in which diesel could exceed €1.70 per litre this winter. Inflation rose to 3.8% in August, driven by a 53.2% annual increase in heating oil, 40.2% in natural gas and 30.6% in diesel.
Seven years in power and the festering Mitsotakis-Samaras feud have compounded a general culture of distrust that fiscal generosity alone cannot dissolve. Alexis Tsipras, at his own TIF address, offered what he described as his most left-wing and structured economic programme — including a "patriotic contribution" targeting large financial wealth — left open the possibility of post-election cooperation with PASOK, and attacked Mitsotakis's foreign policy as one-dimensional.
On the geopolitical front, the Achilles' Shield agreement with Israel has accelerated Turkish rhetorical escalation, with Ankara reviving claims over the demilitarisation of Greek islands and Aegean grey zones. Athens is responding with calibrated preparation, explicitly invoking its right to extend territorial waters to 12 nautical miles in a recent demarche rejecting Turkey's declaration of marine parks within the Greek continental shelf — the first time Athens has made this linkage so explicitly. Three near-term escalation triggers are being monitored: presidential decrees under Marine Spatial Planning, Turkey's forthcoming Blue Homeland bill, and the start of the Great Sea Interconnector project with France's Meridiam now as majority shareholder. The prevailing assessment in the Prime Minister's Office is that Erdogan "seeks tension, not crisis," but contingency planning is underway.
On the constructive side, Mitsotakis held a Greece-Cyprus-Egypt trilateral in El Alamein, reaffirming the 2020 maritime delimitation framework and advancing the GREGY electricity interconnection. The Medusa-15 exercise with Egypt, France, Italy and Cyprus followed in the Cretan Sea, conspicuously in waters adjacent to the Blue Homeland zone. A Macron meeting at the Elysee covered the Great Sea Interconnector, the under-15 social media ban and Hormuz energy pricing. Washington welcomed the Achilles' Shield agreement, while Israel confirmed that Greek companies will develop the command-and-control source code under exclusive Greek control.
Greece formally concluded its €35.95 billion Recovery and Resilience Facility on 31 August — a milestone the government presents as a landmark, though critics note over 100 projects were cancelled or cut and questions remain over the programme's structural legacy. The €23 billion National Development Programme 2026-2030, funded from national resources, now takes over as the central development instrument. Tourism continued its strong trajectory, with first-half travel receipts up nearly 15%, Attica emerging as the post-pandemic period's biggest winner, and long-haul markets becoming strategically central. On property, a 15% transfer tax for non-EU nationals — up from 3%, effective July 2027 — signals the effective winding-down of the Golden Visa model. Legal migration approvals rose 44% year-on-year in the first eight months, as the structural collapse of the foreign resident labour force continues to generate shortages across key sectors.
The structural outlook remains sobering. Climate research projects up to €1 billion in annual agricultural losses within three decades, with olives, tree crops and summer vegetables most exposed, and Thessaly and Central Macedonia hardest hit. Greece's university graduate NEET rate — the highest of any educational cohort, the reverse of every EU norm — points to a deep mismatch between higher education and the labour market that no single policy lever can quickly address.
Taken together, this week captures a Greece whose strategic positioning is more assured than in decades, but whose domestic political economy is running on thinner margins — with a disappointing pre-election package, worsening inflation, structural labour and education mismatches, and an Aegean environment where the window between managed tension and genuine crisis is narrowing.