The Christmas holidays are over, and the government is back in “battle formation” from today. Kyriakos Mitsotakis is leading the way, returning to the Maximou Mansion and meeting with his colleagues after his brief getaways to Chania and Milan.

The morning coffee meeting will meet today for the first time in 2025, while Mitsotakis will be in Cairo tomorrow, Wednesday, for the Greece-Cyprus-Egypt trilateral meeting, which is also considered extremely crucial because of developments in Syria, with Turkey aspiring to play an expanded role in the region. Indeed, ministers of Erdogan’s government are also announcing an EEZ agreement with Syria, although the new Damascus regime is still in the process of exploratory moves.

In this context, Mitsotakis’ instruction to the ministers of the government is clear: the slack is over, the batteries, while they are charged, are charged, and now they must “run” the priorities they have in the “blue envelopes” they received at the last cabinet meeting of the year before Christmas.

The year ahead is critical for the government, which has begun to find its stride by moving beyond day-to-day crisis management. Mitsotakis’ goal is to have tangible policy outputs that are understandable to citizens. The first cabinet of 2025 will meet on Friday, and then Mitsotakis is expected to set the tone for the new year in more detail.

The decisions for the presidency

With the arrival of the new year, however, the sand in the hourglass for selecting the person for the Presidency of the Republic is running out. Despite the scenarios of many more persons being heard in the public sphere, until a few days ago Mitsotakis allegedly had not settled on the person he would propose. Of course, time is running out, as the prime minister may announce his intentions next week in the form of an announcement, as he did in 2020 when he nominated Katerina Sakellaropoulou for the top state office.

According to protothema.gr, Mitsotakis is also working on the scenario of a surprise candidacy, an out-of-the-box solution, beyond the faces that have been heard so far in the public debate. It is, after all, a common assumption that everything has advantages and disadvantages, depending on the perspective and the political issue at stake. It is also standard practice that the prime minister tends to orient himself towards solutions outside the box, and practice has often shown that persons who have been heard for a long time for key positions are ‘burned’ in the end.

The timing, however, is specific, as the proceedings in the Parliament should start no later than February 12, a month before the formal completion of the current President’s term. Therefore, if Mitsotakis is oriented toward another person, he will have to be found, “measured” on the one hand, and the appropriate contacts will have to be made on the other.

In any case, the scenarios for a second term of Ms. Sakellaropoulou and the names of Evangelos Venizelos, Loukas Papademos, Kostas Tasoulas, etc. are “playing” with fewer chances in the public debate. The central banker Yannis Stournaras, in the manner of Nikos Dendias, has made it clear that he is not interested in the position, while the scenarios for Lina Mendoni “run up against” the fact that she is a sitting minister.