Ukraine called on the European Union to sanction the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom on Monday, hours after a POLITICO investigation revealed allegations of safety and engineering failures at one of the company’s flagship projects.

“Rosatom is not just another energy company — it is the instrument of Russia’s ambition to secure a global monopoly in nuclear energy,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.

He said the findings were further evidence that Rosatom was “not a reliable partner” and urged capitals to restart talks on EU sanctions. “No state should be doing nuclear business with a company complicit in war crimes,” he added, sharing a link to POLITICO’s article.

POLITICO’s investigation revealed warnings from Egyptian authorities and internal assessments by Rosatom regarding the construction of the El Dabaa nuclear plant. The documents obtained by POLITICO raised concerns ranging from the quality of concrete work to delays and management problems, while an Egyptian agency alleged “deliberate negligence” and violations of “nuclear safety culture.” Nuclear material has yet to be introduced at the site.

Rosatom previously defended its safety record at El Dabaa and pointed to regular scrutiny of the project by Egyptian, Russian and International Atomic Energy Agency officials. None of the allegations contained presented to Rosatom by POLITICO, have been “confirmed within the contractual, technical and oversight procedures envisaged by the project,” the company said in a statement.

It did not respond to a request for comment on Sybiha’s remarks on Monday.

Sybiha’s call puts renewed pressure on EU governments that continue to cooperate with Rosatom despite Russia’s war in Ukraine. In Hungary, the company is building two new reactors at the Paks II nuclear plant using the same VVER-1200 technology planned for El Dabaa.

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar last week challenged Rosatom’s claim that construction for the reactors remained on schedule, saying his government was carrying out a full review of the project.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš apologized Sunday for picking flowers in a protected area on Lysá hora, a mountain in eastern Czechia, saying he would pay a fine if necessary.

Babiš said in a Facebook video that he plucked the flowers while remembering a late colleague from his ANO movement with whom he had previously climbed the mountain.

“Maybe I broke some law, for which I apologize and I will definitely pay a fine if necessary, of course,” he said.

Footage from Saturday’s hike posted to Babiš’ Facebook page showed the prime minister climbing with a small bunch of flowers before laying them at a monument on the summit. Babiš was joined by two ministers, ANO politicians and supporters on the 1,324-meter peak, the highest point in the Moravian-Silesian Beskids.

An environmental expert working for an organization overseen by the Czech Environment Ministry told Czech local media outlet iDNES that Babiš had picked two thoroughly ordinary species — narrow-leaved willowherb and Fuchs’ ragwort — and was unlikely to face punishment.

“They are completely common flowers,” said the expert, whom the outlet did not name. “Absolutely no problem, not even in a national park.”

The U.S. on Friday threatened action against the EU unless Brussels reins in its environmental and human rights rules, which Washington says unfairly burden American companies.

Acknowledging Brussels had made “some positive reforms,” Washington said the EU had “failed to fully address U.S. concerns,” and that it “will take any actions necessary to address unreasonable burdens on U.S. commerce.”

U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder piled on the pressure Friday, writing on X that “now it’s time for the EU to deliver.” He pointed to commitments made under last year’s Turnberry trade deal to ensure U.S. businesses do not face “undue restrictions” on transatlantic trade due to Brussels’ green regulations.

The dispute centers on two pillars of the EU’s corporate sustainability rulebook: the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which requires large companies to address human rights and environmental harms linked to their operations and supply chains, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which requires companies to disclose sustainability-related information.

Brussels has scaled back both laws in its drive to cut red tape, but has stopped short of Washington’s demand to shield U.S. companies from their reach.

Last week, Puzder similarly attacked the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as a tariff on U.S. exporters. On Thursday, the White House also accused the EU and more than 40 countries of enabling Chinese goods to skirt U.S. tariffs by rerouting them through their markets.

A European Commission spokesperson told POLITICO that Brussels had made “considerable efforts” to explain its rules and highlight “its willingness to cooperate with the US to increase trade where possible,” but drew a line at changing its regulatory regime in response to U.S. pressure.

“We have been very clear and consistent on the fact that neither our rules framework nor our regulatory autonomy are up for negotiation,” said the spokesperson.

This story has been updated.

Koen Verhelst contributed reporting.

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar on Thursday cast doubt on a deal struck by his predecessor that would see Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom expand Hungary’s nuclear power capacity.

Weeks of extreme heat and drought have pushed the Danube River to record lows, slashing output at Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant — which normally supplies around a third of the country’s electricity — to little more than 10 percent.

“These plans were accepted despite the fact that nuclear power plants that do not operate with a closed-circuit cooling system and are so exposed to the environment are no longer being built in the world,” said Magyar, per local media.

Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev wrote that the Russian state nuclear company was still on schedule with two new reactors at Paks despite Hungary’s change of government in April, which saw Magyar oust Russia-friendly incumbent Viktor Orbán.

Concrete preparation for Unit 5 is more than 80 percent complete, he said, while work on Unit 6 is advancing and reactor components are already being manufactured.

“We are ready for dialogue,” Likhachev said, adding that Rosatom had received no questions from Hungary’s new government.

Magyar challenged that account hours later. Under the original contract, Paks II should have been operating by 2024, he told reporters in a press conference Thursday. Instead, Hungary has spent roughly 1,000 billion forints (€2.8 billion) on a site he described as little more than depots and “two large concrete pits.”

“I don’t really see that they have adhered to the contract,” Magyar said. His government is now carrying out a full review of the project, including its financing and cooling arrangements.

The review cuts at one of Orbán’s signature deals with Russia. Orbán struck the Paks II agreement in Moscow in 2014, handing Rosatom the two-reactor expansion backed by up to €10 billion in Russian state financing. Two years later, he called it the “deal of the century.”

Those ties survived Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As recently as March this year, Orbán’s foreign minister Péter Szijjártó admitted to discussing EU sanctions with senior Russian officials after leaked calls showed him boasting that a bank linked to Paks had been kept off a sanctions list.

Downstream, Romania shut the second and last operating reactor at Cernavodă on Thursday after the Danube fell too low to supply its cooling pumps.

Romania took Cernavodă’s second and last operating nuclear reactor offline on Thursday after the drought-hit Danube River fell too low to supply its cooling pumps.

“At 10:53 a.m., Unit 2 of Cernavodă NPP was shut down in a controlled manner,” Romania’s Energy Ministry said in a press release.

The government insisted the national grid remained stable and said it would bridge the shortfall with imports, hydropower, wind, coal and reserve generation. Romania had already notified the European Commission of an electricity crisis after the shutdown of Unit 1 on July 28, with Unit 2 accounting for roughly another 700 megawatts — about 10 percent of national production.

Cernavodă could stay offline for a while. “The forecast for the next 10 days shows a continuous decrease in the flow and level of the Danube,” plant director Romeo Urjan told Romanian news outlet Digi24 on Tuesday evening, saying officials did not expect to restart Unit 2 during that period.

Emergency dredging, rock blasting and sunk barges had bought the reactor roughly another week of operation.

The shutdown is the latest fallout from a drought emptying Europe’s rivers. Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite images released last week showed the Danube shrinking dramatically compared with last summer, exposing sandbanks and parched countryside north of Budapest in Hungary.

The river has hit a record low in Hungary, while record-low levels have also been reported in Romania, disrupting shipping and straining energy and water supplies.

Hungary is scrambling to keep its Paks nuclear plant operating. With output down to little more than 10 percent, Prime Minister Péter Magyar ordered the construction of a riverbed barrier Wednesday and put two barges on standby to be sunk if the Danube falls further.

Cernavodă’s two reactors normally supply around a fifth of Romania’s electricity. Before this summer, drought last forced a reactor there offline in 2003.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski on Wednesday threatened to reconsider Warsaw’s $50 million-a-year spending on Elon Musk’s Starlink network, joining a growing government backlash over new roaming restrictions set to hit Polish customers later this month.

“Hey, @elonmusk, big man, stop discriminating Polish users of Starlink or we might re-think paying you $50 million p.a. for your services,” wrote Sikorski on X.

The foreign minister’s anger follows Starlink’s decision to exclude Poland from a shared European roaming zone that covers more than 30 countries, including Germany, Czechia, Slovakia and Lithuania. Customers within the zone can take their terminals across borders without triggering international-use restrictions. But Polish users will now face extra requirements when traveling.

“Note: Poland is not included in the Europe region above. Accounts registered in Poland are treated as Poland-only for home-country use,” reads Starlink’s current guidance.

Polish Digital Affairs Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski also went after Musk, accusing Starlink’s parent company SpaceX of treating Poles as second-class customers and demanding it spell out the regulatory basis for the change.

“Poland is not a second-tier market. Polish customers are not second-tier customers,” Gawkowski wrote on X. If SpaceX blames “local regulatory requirements,” Warsaw expects it to point to the specific rules rather than offer “general explanations,” he added.

The new rules have applied to new customers signing up for Starlink since July 14, 2026 and will extend to existing Polish users on Aug. 17.

This isn’t the first time Sikorski and Musk have fought over Starlink. Last year, Musk told the Polish minister to “be quiet, small man,” after Sikorski warned that Warsaw could seek alternative providers for the satellite service it’s financing for Ukraine.

SpaceX did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

The brutally hot summer is set to cost the EU economy €180 billion this year — that’s equivalent to roughly 1 percent of GDP, which is all the growth the bloc was expected to generate in 2026, according to new analysis.

France could lose 1.4 percentage points of growth, which is enough to push its economy into a 0.6 percent contraction, while an 0.8-point hit could almost wipe out the Netherlands’ expected expansion.

“The result is not simply ‘the hottest countries lose the most,'” notes the analysis by Triodos Bank. “Spain and Italy have the highest physical exposure and the most hot days in absolute terms, but decades of acclimatisation imply that the marginal effect of any single hot day is comparatively small.”

The biggest drag is expected to come from people struggling to work in extreme heat. Triodos estimates lost labor productivity alone could shave around 0.6 percent off EU GDP, while agricultural output could fall by between 3 and 7 percent.

“At first sight this might seem modest, but it is exactly the expected economic growth for the EU this year,” said the bank of the overall €180 billion blow.

And the summer is not over. France and Britain are bracing for their fifth heat wave of the season this week, with temperatures nearing 40 degrees Celsius in southeastern France and 36 degrees forecast in the U.K.

The bill is already mounting beyond GDP. POLITICO estimated at least 14,000 excess deaths across the six hardest-hit European countries during the record-breaking heat wave from mid-June to early July.

Drought has also hammered Europe’s energy system: Low water levels in the Danube in recent weeks have forced sharp cuts at Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant and pushed Romania to blast apart a rock to divert water toward its last operating reactor. Vessels on the Rhine and Danube have had to sail only partially loaded.

In Austria, meanwhile, drought has caused an estimated €1 billion in agricultural losses, according to Austrian Hail Insurance, after some regions received more than 75 percent less rain than normal since mid-June.

Triodos warned against treating this summer as a freak event, saying extreme heat “might become structural” as the planet warms. But governments can soften the damage through irrigation, insulation, cooling and shifting working hours, said the bank.

“Every year adaptation without mitigation is a year borrowed against a hotter baseline.”

The European Union has collected €1.4 billion in revenue from immobilized Russian central bank assets and will channel the proceeds to Ukraine, the European Commission announced Wednesday.

In a press release, the Commission said the payment, received Monday, was the “fifth transfer of its kind.” Since the assets have been immobilized, they have generated a total of €8 billion in windfall profits.

Brussels said 95 percent of the latest tranche would go through the Ukraine Loan Cooperation Mechanism, helping Kyiv repay EU and G7 loans, while the remaining 5 percent would flow through the European Peace Facility to meet Ukraine’s “pressing military and defence needs.”

“Once again we wake up to the news of horrible atrocities by Russia through its aerial attacks on Ukraine,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X. “Russia must pay for the destruction it has caused. And we are using the proceeds from the immobilised Russian assets to make sure it does.” Von der Leyen said the EU was making “a further €1.4 billion” available to support Ukraine’s “continued resistance against Russia’s illegal war.”

Her comments came after one of the deadliest Russian attacks on Kyiv this year. Ballistic missiles and drones killed at least 17 people and wounded 44 overnight, striking residential buildings, warehouses and a railway station. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated Wednesday that additional missile interceptors “could have saved lives” and blamed delays in Western air-defense deliveries for the mounting casualties.

Over €210 billion in Russian central bank reserves were frozen by the EU after Moscow’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Since 2024, financial institutions holding those assets have been required to ring-fence the extraordinary profits they generate, allowing Brussels to redirect the proceeds to Ukraine while leaving the underlying reserves untouched.

French and British authorities rescued more than 150 migrants from a distressed boat crossing the English Channel Tuesday after the vessel’s engine caught fire.

The incident came less than a day after U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham vowed his government would be “relentless” in curbing small-boat crossings.

The vessel left France on Monday night. During the overnight crossing, five people accepted assistance from French rescue crews, but the remaining passengers refused and continued toward Britain.

On Tuesday morning, French maritime authorities said in a statement that the boat’s engine “caught fire” and its structure “deteriorated very rapidly,” triggering an immediate mayday call.

All 157 people on board were brought to safety and returned to Boulogne-sur-Mer in France.

The French maritime prefecture added that when migrants are “determined to reach the United Kingdom” they often refuse assistance and accept it only in “situations of extreme urgency.” No deaths were reported.

The incident “underlines the terrible dangers of small boat crossings,” a U.K. government spokesperson said in a statement seen by POLITICO on Tuesday. Britain will “continue to work relentlessly with the French and our partners overseas to prevent these perilous journeys,” the spokesperson added.

Burnham visited Dover on Monday, saying his two-week-old government was already making progress in tackling irregular migration. “People want to see this issue addressed,” he said, pointing to a doubling of enforcement officers targeting smuggling gangs on both sides of the Channel. But he also called for “a system that offers safe routes for people.” More than 2,000 migrants have reached Britain by small boat since Burnham entered Downing Street.

The rescue came as migration climbed back to the top of Europe’s political agenda following the arrival of 72,000 people in Ceuta last week. After days of governments trading blame, EU interior ministers closed ranks behind Spain at an emergency meeting Tuesday, insisting the Schengen zone had never been at risk and calling for closer coordination in responding to future border crises.

Poland on Monday appealed a Brussels court judgment ordering it to take delivery of roughly 64 million unwanted Covid-19 doses and pay Pfizer about €1.3 billion. Warsaw also asked judges to freeze the ruling’s provisional enforcement while the challenge is heard.

“The decision of the court of first instance does not take into account all the relevant factual and legal circumstances of the case,” the Health Ministry said in a statement. It added that Poland would use “all legal means of defense,” but declined to disclose its arguments or evidence, citing the need to protect the state’s interests.

The ruling which Poland appealed relates to a 2021 agreement the European Commission negotiated with Pfizer on behalf of EU countries. Poland stopped accepting vaccine deliveries in 2022, citing collapsing demand and the impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Pfizer sued Poland and Romania the following year. In April 2026, a Brussels court ruled that Warsaw remained bound by the contract and ordered it to pay roughly €1.3 billion, plus interest and legal costs, for the undelivered doses.

Pfizer defended the Belgian judgment, which it told POLITICO reflected “the importance of the contractual obligations that underpinned a successful European pandemic response, built on the principle of solidarity between Member States.” The company said it was taking “appropriate steps” to ensure compliance through “established legal enforcement mechanisms,” adding that those efforts followed “years of discussions and significant flexibility to accommodate Member States’ circumstances.”

A Paris court on Monday rejected Russian television star Xenia Fedorova’s appeal against a ruling that she must leave the country, a week after French authorities accused her of acting as “a conduit for disinformation campaigns” orchestrated by Moscow to “destabilize public order.”

The former head of Kremlin-backed RT France, who has been under house arrest in Paris since Wednesday, challenged three government measures: the expulsion order, a requirement that she remain in Paris and report to police daily, and a six-month asset freeze. But an administrative court ruled she had failed to demonstrate any of these measures caused her immediate and serious harm.

The former RT France chief was a regular commentator on media platforms owned by conservative French billionaire Vincent Bolloré — including CNews and Europe 1 — where her Russia-friendly views on Ukraine, NATO and European security had come under growing scrutiny ahead of the country’s 2027 presidential election.

Fedorova on Friday took to social media to reject the allegations, accusing President Emmanuel Macron’s government of “political pressure” and “censorship of opinions that do not align with the official narrative,” insisting she had merely exercised her right to express her views after living in France for nearly a decade.

On Monday, she said she intends to legally challenge the measures, but will not return to France until her ban from the country is suspended or overturned.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez defended the expulsion last week, saying Fedorova “simply relays Russian propaganda” that seeks “to undermine the democratic functioning of France,” while Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot has described her as “a proven propagandist, who serves as a relay for Kremlin disinformation.”

Monday’s ruling only concerned Fedorova’s request to suspend the measures, not the merits of the expulsion order itself.

This article has been updated.

Iran said Monday there are currently no direct talks with the United States, after President Donald Trump said negotiations would resume. Speaking at his weekly news conference, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran’s current negotiations are limited to Oman and focused on reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

“Our negotiations are with Oman. We are focused on an understanding on a route that will ensure the safe passage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz,” Baghaei said at a news conference, according to Iran’s state news agency IRNA.

He added that “the focus of the negotiations with Oman will be on this issue,” while “the issues related to Iran and the United States should be examined in the next stages to see where the situation will go.”

U.S. President Donald Trump said negotiations with Iran would resume Monday, after scrapping a planned military strike over the weekend. Speaking on Sunday, the American leader also refused to set a deadline for reaching a broader deal with Tehran.

“They knew the extent of the attack because they saw it forming. Now what we’re doing is we’re talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon, and we’ll see,” said Trump, talking to reporters aboard Air Force One.

Asked whether he had imposed a deadline, the U.S. president responded: “Would I rather make a deal? I’m not looking to kill people because people die, a lot of people die, and we don’t want that.”

Trump’s remarks came on the heels of his early Sunday announcement on Truth Social that the U.S. was shelving a “massive attack,” after Iran and several Middle Eastern countries asked Washington to pause military action while negotiators worked toward an agreement. He said the framework under discussion included the “Immediate, Complete, and Total OPENING OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT” and an end to Iran’s nuclear threat, adding that Israel had also agreed to pause strikes.

Baghaei stated there would be “no significant change” in the situation in the Strait of Hormuz as long as Iran remained under what he described as U.S. military pressure.