After Kyriakos Mitsotakis returned from Israel late last night, the prime minister is convening the last Ministerial Council of the year today, which will have a rich agenda. That’s because ministers will be given instructions to sailors for 2026 with the key priorities of their portfolios.

This is the successor to the now-familiar “blue envelopes” format, with a codification of the key reforms and projects that ministers are being asked to “run” with speed, as 2026 will be a de facto election year. Besides, yesterday’s resignation of secretaries general who want to be politicians and the announcement of their candidacies in specific constituencies were developments indicative of the preparations.

In his introductory statement, Mitsotakis will present step by step the government priorities for 2026, which will be a full government year, before entering 2027, which by definition will be an election year. The presentation of the key priorities by the ministry will then be made by Deputy Prime Minister Kostis Hatzidakis and State Minister Akis Skertos, who will also hold a detailed press conference immediately after New Year’s Day. According to reports, at the core of the government’s plan are 20 key reforms and 20 major projects that ministries are required to carry out.

Today’s cabinet meeting, however, has other material, as Giorgos Florides and Yiannis Bougas will present the Justice Ministry’s bill on the Unified Digital Register for Monitoring Corruption Cases, followed by Yiannis Kefalogiannis presenting the bill on reforming the prevention system, preparedness, and response to forest fires and other natural, technological or man-made disasters. Finally, there will be a proposal by Dimitris Papastergiou on practical guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence by ministries, while the proposal of Konstantinos Kyranakis on interventions for traffic-driven interventions in the Attica basin has been extended for the first ministerial of 2026.

Message to the blockades

And today’s cabinet meeting, however, takes place in the shadow of the agricultural mobilizations, but also of the criminal prosecution of the “general” of the Malgaron blockade, Kostas Anestidis, for illegal subsidies from OPEKEPE.

Mitsotakis is expected in his opening statement to again send a message of dialogue to farmers, based on the framework of demands that the government also recognizes. But Mitsotakis will also add to the equation the social inconvenience and disruption of economic activity during the holiday season, with obvious effects so far on tourism and trade from the “gridlock” on the highways.

As for the Anestidis case, government officials make it clear that the prosecution is not at all vindictive, nor is the government doing any checks. It is simply, in this case, breaking the OPEKEPE abscess with cross-checks by the ADC. “Checks are being carried out on tens of thousands of subsidy cases, a percentage of which were hit as red or problematic all over Greece, and every week various findings come out, and every 1-1.5 months the total of these findings comes out,” government officials stress.

Stalemate with the “tough”

More broadly, however, government officials acknowledge a sense of deadlock in the debate with farmers as the blocks are dominated by the “hardliners. Apparently, there is a rapprochement between government officials and representatives of several agricultural blockades behind the scenes, but government officials stress that if the discussion is not comprehensive and in a coordinated manner, then any decisions will not have general legitimacy. In this light, it will be a gift from the government to have a dialogue with…half of the blockades.