Politico Europe

Listen on Spotify Apple Music Amazon Music Der überraschende Rücktritt von Jens Spa

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration declined to participate in an international declaration on sustainable livestock because it mentions gender equality too often. On Thursday, Officer for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Paul Welcher repeated his government’s wish to “disassociate” itself from the U.N.’s Global Plan of Action for Sustainable Livestock Transformation at the Food and Agriculture Organization’s COAG30 summit in Rome. Multiple mentions of climate change, gender, eq

BRUSSELS — France, Italy and Spain are among 10 countries pushing back against a European Commission plan to link EU payments to policy overhauls in the bloc’s next seven-year budget, four diplomats with knowledge of discussions told POLITICO. Under the Commission’s budget blueprint currently being negotiated by national capitals, EU countries would have to jump through multiple hoops, including potentially highly sensitive issues such as raising the retirement age, to receive payo

Arkady Dvorkovich, Russia’s former deputy prime minister and president of the International Chess Federation (FIDE), suspended his duties Thursday evening after the European Union sanctioned him. In its latest sanctions package, the EU accused Dvorkovich of “supporting actions or policies which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.” The FIDE chief pushed back, stating “unequivocally” that he considers the decision “un

BRUSSELS — China announced it will add export restrictions on 14 EU defense and technology companies after the EU added 14 Chinese businesses to its Russia sanctions lists. This marks Beijing’s most direct and forceful response yet to EU sanctions listings, which it denounced as “egregious.” Recent studies estimate that up to 90 percent of sanctioned goods still reaching Russia transit through China. Germany’s rapidly expanding defense company Rheinmetall is among 14 firms that Chinese exp

WARSAW — The nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party that ruled Poland from 2015 to 2023 split on Friday in a political rupture that undermines the conservative camp’s attempts to topple pro-EU Prime Minister Donald Tusk in an election next year. After the victory of conservative Karol Nawrocki in the presidential election of May 2025, PiS hoped it would build momentum toward a return to government in 2027. That prospect raised alarm in Brussels given PiS’s long track record of c

BRUSSELS — The European Union on Friday signaled it could live with new U.S. tariffs imposed over its alleged failure to ban imports made with forced labor after President Donald Trump largely stuck to the terms of a transatlantic trade truce. Washington on Thursday slapped new double-digit tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners, including the European Union, scrambling to rebuild its “tariff wall” which was struck down by the Supreme Court in February. EU exports will be subject to a

BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Friday unveiled the first stage of what will be a comprehensive reshuffle of top positions within his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) intended to save his rock-bottom popularity ratings.  The reshuffle comes amid historically low ratings for the chancellor and his centrist coalition and weeks before crucial regional elections in eastern Germany, which could put the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) — currently als

Tariffs are back — and they couldn’t come at a worse time for the GOP. Some Republicans fear the eye-popping new levies President Donald Trump threatened to slap on Canada and generic drug makers this week will aggravate Americans who were already blaming the tariffs for stubborn inflation ahead of a midterm election dominated by economic issues. The president has long brandished tariffs as a cudgel in negotiations and some industry insiders see the promise of a future 50 pe

BERLIN – Kanzler Friedrich Merz hat den Personalwechsel an der Spitze des Gesundheitsministeriums am Freitag vor Reportern bestätigt. Carsten Linnemann wird neuer Gesundheitsminister, die bisherige Amtsinhaberin Nina Warken wechselt ins Kanzleramt. Damit hat Merz der Kabinettsumbau offiziell gemacht, der mit dem Rücktritt von Jens Spahn als Vorsitzender der CDU/CSU-Bundestagsfraktion begann. Der bisherige Kanzleramtschef Thorsten Frei folgt auf Spahn, Warken wiederum folgt auf Frei. Linnemann

Listen on Spotify Apple Music Amazon Music Three very senior EU heavyweights are on

Listen on Spotify Apple Music Amazon Music Vor dem wichtigen Koalitionsausschuss am

For more than two decades, EU Regulation EC261 has been one of Europe’s clearest consumer success stories. It transformed air passenger rights from vague promises into enforceable protections, while creating powerful incentives for airlines to improve operational reliability. The results are measurable: EU passengers today are 70 percent less likely to face delays exceeding three hours and face 20 percent less same-day cancellations than travellers in the United States, where no comparable sy

Barcelona’s short-term rental (STR) market is not a regulatory gap waiting to be filled. STRs have been regulated since 1998 and a moratorium on new licences has existed since 2014. Since then, the number of STRs has held steady at roughly 10,000 units for over a decade — barely 1 percent of total housing stock. Yet Mayor Jaume Collboni intends to remove all legal STRs from the market by 2028. Framed as a housing remedy, the decision raises a broader and uncomfortable question for Bruss

Ireland is set to spend more than three times as much as Cyprus and Denmark on its Presidency of the Council of the EU, with the estimated cost of chairing the bloc’s policy agenda between July 1 and Dec. 31 nearing €300 million. Almost half of the projected €293 million budget produced by Ireland’s public expenditure department — €125 million — is being allocated to policing and security, as the neutral country, long viewed as Europe’s defense blind spot, scrambles to ramp up security capaci

PARIS — As Jordan Bardella edges closer to possibly replacing Marine Le Pen as France’s far-right presidential candidate, he is taking aim at one of her key economic promises. Le Pen has made the preservation of France’s generous pension system a major campaign issue, pledging to roll back President Emmanuel Macron’s reforms and keep the country’s legal retirement age at 62. Bardella has suggested that policy should be up for debate. Officials close to Bardella are now studying a pla

WARSAW — Poland and Ukraine have a common enemy — Russia — but a dispute over massacres eight decades ago is increasingly being weaponized in domestic politics on both sides. The historical feud began in May when Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy named a Ukrainian military unit after the “Heroes of UPA,” which outraged Poland. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, known as UPA, killed tens of thousands of Poles in World War II in an ethnic cleansing campaign in what is now western Ukraine

Paris and Berlin push to make EU foreign policy great — somehow Governments have differing views on what the EEAS should look like and what it should do. But France is taking the lead on opening the debate. By JACOPO BARIGAZZI in Brussels and CLEA CAULCUTT in Paris Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO The EU’s two most powerful countries want the bloc’s foreign policy wing to change. They just don’t agree on how to do it. France is push

LONDON — Britain is announcing one of the biggest shake-ups of its armed forces in decades, and it’s using the experience of the war in Ukraine as a model. The Defence Investment Plan, set to be published on Tuesday by Prime Minister Keir Starmer in one of his last acts before stepping down, shows the U.K. is copying Ukraine’s successful playbook to focus on “cheap systems destroying high-value targets and innovation cycles measured in weeks, not years,” the Ministry of Defence said on Monday