BRUSSELS — The EU and China are in a good place to talk after last week’s trade deal on hybrid cars, but challenges remain, panelists at POLITICO’s European Resilience Summit on Wednesday agreed.

“From the Chinese business perspective this is very welcome,” said Linlin Liang of the China Chamber of Commerce to the EU, calling the understanding reached in Beijing “quite balanced from our perspective.”

An agreement to halve China’s exports hybrid vehicles to Europe was the main deliverable brought home by Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič.

The two sides said in a joint statement that they would keep talking about issues such as market access for medical devices and the Foreign Subsidies Regulation, an EU measure that scrutinizes foreign subsidies that distort competition in public procurement and corporate acquisitions.

Šefčovič will hold further talks with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in January, and they will meet again in March, as he pushes to rein in a €1 billion-a-day bilateral trade deficit.

Liang said Beijing stands ready to act if further talks go off track.

“I would like to remind all what MOFCOM mentioned: that they reserve the right to retaliate in case that things … don’t go around as agreed,” she told the panel on Europe in global trade, referring to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

Kathleen Van Brempt, a Belgian MEP for the Socialists & Democrats, said the most important outcome of last week’s Beijing talks was that there was “some sort of trade deal or result.”

Yet Beijing’s aggressive subsidy policies remain a hurdle, the senior trade lawmaker said, referring to a widely cited OECD study which found that Beijing’s subsidies to industry are up to eight times higher than in other countries: “It’s not normal,” she said.

Liang said that China’s export success should not be attributed solely to subsidies, and was the result of “decades of investment in innovation.”

She also said there was “a super appetite” among Chinese businesses to invest in Europe, but that they needed to assess the profitability of the EU market just like European companies.

The discussion also revealed differences between policymakers and businesses over the EU’s proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, a flagship measure aimed at steering public procurement spending toward European companies in sectors ranging from renewable energy to steel and the automotive industry.

Van Brempt, the S&D group’s lead lawmaker on the file in the trade committee, said the parliament’s three co-leads are aligned on the bill. While the center-right European People’s Party was “very divided” over the measure, she said lawmakers should be able to come to a common position.

The bill’s “Made in Europe” provision is a cause for concern for industry, meanwhile, as it risks isolating the EU from global supply chains.

“I would be careful always saying, okay, localize, put fences up,” said Holger Weintritt of German pharmaceutical company Bayer. “Let’s make sure that we still remain globally connected and look for reliable partnerships instead of isolating ourselves .”

EU lawmakers urged the bloc’s executive to robustly defend the International Criminal Court against U.S. sanctions in a letter sent to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday and obtained by POLITICO.

“We formally call for the urgent deployment of all instruments at our disposal to protect the International Criminal Court from the consequences of these sanctions,” reads the letter, signed by 58 MEPs, led by ECON chair and S&D lawmaker Aurore Lalucq and EPP Dutch lawmaker Dirk Gotink.

They ask the Commission boss “to draw a clear line towards the US administration.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to demolish the ICC “brick by brick.” Washington has already sanctioned several judges, including judges from France, Italy and Slovenia, after the court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

U.S. sanctions announced on Friday risk to cut off the whole ICC from the financial system, which runs on the dollar, and from the majority of tech service providers.

Lawmakers said the sanctions are “an attack by a foreign power on an entity on EU territory, using our own financial system.” They want the Commission to activate a legislative shield known as Blocking Statute, that would prevent EU firms from complying with the U.S. sanctions as soon as a 180-day grace period ends.

After a meeting in Luxembourg, foreign affairs ministers agreed to seek pragmatic solutions to make it possible for EU firms to continue to work with the Court, according to two diplomats. MEPs called for a fiercer reaction.

“The survival of the values the European Union upholds is at stake, as is Europe’s autonomy and credibility in protecting its citizens and entities against foreign sanctions,” their letter reads. “This is about the survival of the Union itself.”

PARIS — Raphaël Glucksmann’s unexpectedly decisive victory in France’s center-left primary may have won him the backing and resources of the once-powerful Socialist Party, but the 46-year-old MEP needs even more support if he wants to drive his distinctly pro-European platform all the way to the Elysée Palace.

All recent polls show Glucksmann is trailing far-right front-runner Marine Le Pen and her two main challengers for a spot in the presidential election’s second round: the far left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon and center-right former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe. Mélenchon and Le Pen both want to fundamentally alter Paris’ relationship with Brussels, while Philippe is campaigning mostly on domestic issues.

If he wants to win the presidency, Glucksmann, the leader of the moderate left party Place Publique, needs to woo several constituencies at once: the undecided left-leaning voters considering throwing their support behind Mélenchon’s surging campaign as well as the centrist voters already struggling to choose between Philippe and Gabriel Attal, the head of President Emmanuel Macron’s party.

“We’re still a long way from the final list of candidates, and the political landscape is far from set in stone,” said Socialist MEP Christophe Clergeau, who had backed Glucksmann’s rival Olivier Faure in the center-left primary. “It’s up to [Glucksmann] to build momentum, unite the Socialist family … [and] reach out to all left-wing voters to demonstrate his ability to be our camp’s voice.”

But Glucksmann and his allies are confident that his strong showing in the primary — he won more than 66% of the vote in the first round, more than four times as many votes as his nearest competitor — is a sign of good things to come.

“All the citizens of the left who came, voted, took part have given me tremendous hope,” Glucksmann said in his victory speech. “The result is indisputable: I am tonight the candidate of the democratic left.”

Aurore Lalucq, a fellow S&D MEP and co-president of Place Publique, said the result “isn’t far from a landslide.”

“There is no doubt that his platform is widely supported, and that gives us the strength to rally others behind us,” she said. “The ability to unite comes from strength.”

The next battle

Glucksmann faces stiff competition from Mélenchon and his party, France Unbowed, for voters who lean left.

Glucksmann has long refused to work with France Unbowed. He has accused Mélenchon of using antisemitic tropes — an allegation that the presidential candidate has denied — as well as being insufficiently supportive of Ukraine and too friendly with China.

Mélenchon has been courting support from the French Greens, whose candidate Marine Tondelier is struggling in the polls. Glucksmann is also eyeing support from the Greens, who have frequently teamed up with the Socialists in the past, including during the early years of François Hollande’s presidency.

Tondelier is extremely critical of Glucksmann for his refusal to associate with France Unbowed and participate in a primary contest featuring the party. Her party, however, is increasingly torn between pro-Mélenchon and pro-Glucksmann voices.

An individual close to Glucksmann, who was granted anonymity to discuss campaign strategy, said the MEP is looking to build new alliances and argued that the French Greens “are not limited to Marine Tondelier.”

Then there’s the elephant inside the Socialist room. Hollande, the party’s last president who was elected in 2012 but chose not to run for reelection five years later due to dismal approval ratings, has dropped several clues about his plans to run for president again. He refused to take part in his party’s primary — instead waiting to see if the winner’s campaign would flail, giving him an opening to step in.

Glucksmann said in an interview Monday that Hollande had called him to congratulate him on his win, but the former president has not made a public statement since the primary results.

“I’ve known François Hollande for a long time … I’ll take him at his word, that he was waiting to see how things would look at the end of the year, and that if the momentum around the party’s primary candidate was strong, he wouldn’t undermine that momentum,” said Loïg Chesnais-Girard, the president of Brittany who backed Glucksmann in the primary.

“The focus right now is on building that momentum. And then we’ll see how things play out,” Chesnais-Girard said.

PARIS — Edouard Philippe was once seen as the only man capable of defeating Marine Le Pen in next year’s French presidential election. But his lackluster campaign as the country’s voice of reason is putting his allies on edge — and some of them are starting to wonder if he has what it takes.

The former center-right prime minister promised a “massive” campaign platform that would fix France, put its finances back on track and restore the country’s standing in the world. And while Philippe has upped his campaign tempo in recent weeks, his proposals tend to fall flat.

POLITICO spoke to six members of Philippe’s political family, some of them campaign team members, who shared doubts about his strategy and chances of success. Some were granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal matters.

“It’s unbelievable how nothing is making an impact,” a campaign official told POLITICO ahead of Philippe’s decision to announce his plans for a flagship pensions reform. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Philippe is still the best-placed mainstream candidate to challenge far-right Le Pen, who commands a substantial lead in the polls. But his poll ratings have stalled over the past year, and he is now locked in a tight race with far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon to clinch a second place which would qualify him for the runoff. MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, who trails the duo in most surveys, could see a boost for his campaign after scoring a decisive victory in the recent center-left primary.

Philippe is facing a pileup of problems: He has yet to unite the center behind him, remains burdened by a decade of centrist rule and is struggling to gain traction among voters with his pitch as the plain-speaking pragmatist fighting populism.

“Philippe is the most honest guy I know,” said an ally, “but he needs to unite and find a project that rallies people around him.”

Meanwhile, Le Pen and Mélenchon are dominating headlines with political one-upmanship and at times inflammatory proposals. The two populists locked horns last week over school protests, with Le Pen accusing Mélenchon of fueling the violence, and the far left positioning themselves as the protectors of France’s youth against police violence.

“The risk is great” that Le Pen and Mélenchon will squeeze him out of the race, Philippe’s ally added.

Stale marriage

Philippe, who left his position as prime minister under President Emmanuel Macron in 2020, has been planning his bid to succeed him for years. But things haven’t quite gone to plan on the campaign trail, where he has faced upsets and distractions.

When Philippe recently announced his unpopular proposal to push back the retirement age to 65, it was supposed to be a make-or-break moment in his campaign. Instead, it went almost unnoticed.

First, he was forced to delay his flagship announcement because Macron decided to address the nation about Russian threats and spiraling fuel costs. When he finally got round to it, it was overshadowed by antisemitism allegations against National Rally leader Jordan Bardella.

Ultimately, his 20-minute speech detailing his pensions plans on YouTube garnered only 70,000 views.

A day later, Mélenchon livestreamed a two-hour Q&A session with students from HEC, one of France’s top business schools. It got 550,000 views.

But according to Philippe’s campaign spokesperson Arnaud Péricard, the battle will be won in the long run.

“We’re not firing an arrow and then running away … Voters shouldn’t be underestimated; they can understand why our pensions system needs fixing,” he said. “But we aren’t mere accountants … We want a return of a powerful France that can lead on energy, industry; that’s why we need to balance our books.”

But a mix of economic realism and European ambition sounds all too familiar after a decade of Macron’s presidency — and even insiders know there’s little appetite for it. “There’s no desire for the centrist bloc. It’s a bit like marriage after 10 years,” said the same ally quoted above.

But for Philippe, a pro-European who was one of Macron’s coalition partners, there’s not much else he can offer.

“It’s difficult for the moderates: They know what state the country is in. They understand interest rates, debt and deficits,” said OpinionWay pollster Bruno Jeanbart. “They have to campaign as if things will get better, but it’s going to be difficult. We’ll have to work longer, accept more social spending, less benefits. There is no good news.”

Cornered

The silver lining for Philippe is that while he’s not doing too well, his immediate rivals aren’t doing any better. Conservative leader Bruno Retailleau is stuck on single-digit polling figures, while centrist Gabriel Attal, leader of Macron’s Renaissance party, has relentlessly campaigned throughout the summer but is still lagging behind and looks increasingly isolated.

Party insiders are confident Philippe will prevail, but admit the drawn-out centrist battle is dragging their champion down.

“We are at a bit of a standstill, and letting ourselves get boxed into a duel with Attal,” complained a senior official from Philippe’s Horizons party.

When Philippe and Attal announced their education proposals simultaneously last month, “people didn’t notice our proposals, they just saw the squabbling with Gabriel Attal,” the official added.

A member of Philippe’s campaign team said there was “little bandwidth” to make an impact because there were “too many” centrist candidates. “Maybe we’ll have to wait before addressing some campaign topics,” the official said.

In the coming weeks, Philippe’s team hopes to drain Attal’s support among lawmakers and local representatives, according to two allies, and force him to throw in the towel.

But that’s unlikely to provide Philippe with a much-needed boost, said a centrist senator, as enthusiasm is flatlining at the local level too. “There’s no real movement anywhere,” the senator said. “And the French aren’t really listening.”

Pauline de Saint Remy and Elisa Bertholomey contributed reporting.

PARIS — Raphaël Glucksmann won France’s center-left primary on Sunday, securing the backing of the Socialist Party and its allies for next year’s presidential election, organizers said.

Glucksmann, a member of the European Parliament, won the contest outright with over 66% of votes, beating Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure and three other candidates in the first round. More than 120,000 people voted Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

The leader of the small center-left Place Publique party entered the contest as one of the favorites. He now emerges strengthened from the primary, with access to Socialist Party funds and having built a broader base for his candidacy.

“This result expresses something strong: that a left that is faithful to its values can unite, govern and win,” the MEP wrote online.

“We are here to win the presidential election: Turn the page on Macronism, stop the far right and change our lives,” he added.

But Glucksmann, a staunch supporter of Ukraine and a critic of China, now faces a much greater challenge: how to beat the far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. The head of the France Unbowed party is surging in the polls, with the latest Ifop survey giving him 14% to 17% support, compared to 11% for Glucksmann.

In recent weeks, Glucksmann campaigned against forming an alliance with the far-left leader.

Three other candidates ran in the primary, including former minister Ségolène Royal and lawmakers Jérôme Guedj and Emmanuel Maurel.

Some 140,000 people were registered to vote in the primary — including, 80,000 who paid €15 to take part but weren’t members of any of the parties whose candidates were running — raising uncertainty over the outcome.

The online voting platform was also targeted by a cyberattack shortly after opening, organizers said in a statement on Friday, but “was never disrupted” and “the integrity of the recorded votes has not been compromised.”

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Thursday called for the removal of a satirical statue of U.S. President Donald Trump from the European Parliament, describing it as a “sign of the decline of the entire European Union.”

Writing on X, Fico said that while he does not agree with all of Trump’s policies, “insulting our partners on official premises demonstrates a profound failure to understand the times we live in.”

The sculpture, titled The Orange Plague, was unveiled Tuesday by Danish artist Jens Galschiøt in the Parliament building in Strasbourg. The 2.6-meter work depicts a nude, gold-leaf-covered Trump perched on a frail man’s shoulders, holding a golf club and scales of justice. A plaque reads: “I am sitting on the back of a man. He is sinking under my burden.”

“It is sad that the leadership of the European Parliament, in its blindness, can no longer distinguish between the legitimate right to hold a different opinion and the actions of spiritually bankrupt individuals, adventurers and lunatics,” Fico added, before asking whether the Parliament would tolerate similar depictions of the French president or German chancellor.

The statue was removed on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the European Parliament said after publication. It was part of a two-day exhibition at the initiative of Danish left-wing MEP Per Clausen.

POLITICO was present at the unveiling, where visitors clamored for miniature replicas of the sculpture, which were distributed in several colors. The statue stands in a prominent spot at the entrance to Parliament’s Winston Churchill building, before the corridor linking MEPs’ and Commission officials’ offices with the plenary chamber.

Galschiøt said the work was intended to confront Trump’s policies and start a debate about how the U.S. president was “destroying the world’s only chance to counter the climate catastrophe.”

Clausen defended the installation in a statement. “If someone is so thin-skinned that they cannot tolerate this sculpture … then they have no place on the world stage,” he said.

“MEPs have the possibility to hold cultural events/ exhibitions in the European Parliament … These cultural events and exhibitions by Members shall be authorised in advance by the Quaestors who assess the compliance with the rules in place,” the European Parliament press service said in a statement to POLITICO.

“The rules in place outline that cultural events and exhibitions shall under no circumstances be offensive or of an inflammatory nature or contradictory to the values on which the Union is founded or likely to give rise to disturbances in the designated exhibition areas,” the statement says.

Fico has cultivated ties with Trump, meeting him at Mar-a-Lago in January to discuss closer cooperation, including civilian nuclear energy. He has praised the MAGA movement as “a vision that urgently resonates not only in the United States but across the world.”

The sculpture was previously displayed at protests in Copenhagen and the COP30 summit in Brazil. It is due to appear at next month’s COP31 conference in Antalya, Türkiye.

Trump has not commented on the installation.

Gerardo Fortuna contributed to this report. This article was updated.

MADRID — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has finally done something the far right approves of — calling a snap election on Nov. 29 that the anti-immigrant Vox party is hailing as “Spain’s last chance to be Spain again.”

Polling third in the race, Vox is Spain’s leading nationalist, euroskeptic force and it sees next month’s contest as its prime opportunity to remold the country after eight years of Sánchez’s socialist premiership by getting its people into top ministerial jobs.

Party leader Santiago Abascal greeted Monday’s election announcement as “excellent news.” His delight is hardly surprising given that polls suggest Vox is on track to make the biggest gains of any major party.

While the center-right People’s Party is expected to come first — with about 33% of the vote, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls — it will almost certainly have to team up with Vox, which commands support of about 18%, to build a stable coalition.

Abascal will then be able to demand the inclusion of key elements of Vox’s agenda as its price for that partnership. Its goals include deportations of undocumented migrants, a benefits preference for Spaniards over foreign nationals, slashing EU health and safety rules in the farming sector and rolling back support for gender equality and the LGBTQ+ community.

Vox secured 33 of the 350 seats in Congress in 2023, but is now set to double that. Under the PP’s coalition leadership, it should be able to form part of a comfortable majority.

“This time round, Vox is much stronger,” José Antonio Fúster, spokesperson for the party and a member of the Madrid regional parliament, said. “We are going into a very important election, not so much for us, as for Spaniards … This is the last hope for Spain to be Spain again.”

Fúster would not be drawn on which ministries his party has set its sights on, warning against “selling the bearskin before it has been hunted.”

Pointing to talks with the PP in recent months in four regions where the two parties now govern in coalition, he said the shaping of policy was being prioritized ahead of institutional power. “That is the last thing we negotiate because it is the least important,” he said.

Pet portfolios

In August, Vox MEP Jorge Buxadé told POLITICO that forming part of the government was not the only option open to his party, but that in a hypothetical coalition with the PP, his party would seek a number of ministries “in proportion to our vote share.”

That would amount to a significant percentage. If current polls translate into results in November, Vox would be in a position to claim about a third of ministerial posts.

Analysts expect Vox to press for portfolios that focus on its pet policies, such as agriculture, domestic policy, immigration and industry. The culture and education portfolios could also be of interest to the party, given their relevance in the hard right’s campaign against so-called wokeism.

The regions where the PP and Vox currently govern together — Andalusia, Aragón, Castile and León, and Extremadura — offer clues: The government departments that Vox controls are mainly linked to agriculture, welfare benefits and the family.

The party is heading into the election campaign espousing three main ideas: the concept of “national priority” — ensuring that Spaniards have access to public services and benefits ahead of foreign nationals — a clampdown on immigration and broad deregulation.

Although Vox’s rise to prominence was driven by its fierce stance against Catalan nationalism nearly a decade ago, that debate has faded from the political arena. Now, its focus is, like its European far-right counterparts, more firmly on immigration-related matters.

“Before, Vox talked about immigration, but it wasn’t the nuclear issue it has become,” said Guillermo Fernández Vázquez, a political scientist at Carlos III University and author of a book about the European far right. “Now, when Vox talks about social security payments, it talks about immigration; when it talks about the economy, it talks about immigration. Immigration is the issue that dictates everything.”

Vox also subscribes to the “remigration” policy being touted by many far-right parties, under which undocumented migrants and those who commit crimes would be deported. The PP has appeared to respond to Vox’s hard line by toughening its own stance, calling for the expulsion of foreign criminals and opposing a government migrant legalization program.

In each of the regions where the two parties are in coalition, Vox has ensured that its senior partner agreed to formally include the national priority principle in their governing agreement.

“But when it comes to national priority, the PP has added the caveat that it has to be implemented in line with the law,” said Miguel González, a journalist at the El País daily newspaper and author of a book about Vox. Legislation prevents discrimination against foreign nationals when it comes to accessing public benefits and services, meaning the policy is currently little more than symbolic in those regions. 

“In reality, in order to implement this properly, you’d have to change the immigration law,” González added.

Vox is eyeing an overhaul of that legislation to make it a workable policy.

“It’s very possible to change laws that are bad for Spaniards, so we have to roll them back and introduce new laws, making sure that Spaniards are not last in line,” Fúster said.

Deregulation nation

Deregulation also offers a platform from which to attack EU health-and-safety norms that are reviled by the farming sector, one of Vox’s main voter bases.

Fúster accepted that this could lead to clashes with the European Commission, but insisted that pressure from what he described as a rising tide of European parties sharing Vox’s values would “make sure that Brussels returns to the path of common sense.”

PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has criticized phytosanitary restrictions on farmers but has shown little appetite for conflict with European institutions.

In social policy, González said Vox might use the broader notion of deregulation to dismantle funding for gender equality and LGBTQ+ departments and projects, as it has done on a local level. Fúster was reluctant to be drawn on this: “We believe in the equality of Spaniards,” he said. “We don’t believe that anyone should have privileges above others.”

Fernández Vázquez of Carlos III University said that the origins of Vox suggest a bumpy ride for the PP. Vox would be the first far-right party to enter government in half a century since the death of Francisco Franco in 1975 — and there would likely be clashes.

The far-right party formed in 2013 as a breakaway from the conservatives in frustration at what its founders saw as the pusillanimity of the PP in the face of Catalan separatism. 

“I think the relationship between Vox and PP [in government] will be a bad one,” the researcher said. “Abascal and his colleagues are going to enjoy showing up Feijóo whenever they can, portraying him as lukewarm and weak.”

Fúster accepted “it could be a difficult relationship,” adding that the PP “don’t see things the way we do and we don’t share their vision.”

“We’re not willing to make concessions, we’re willing to have a frank, open and reasonable negotiation.”

But for now, the priority is simply to remove the Socialists. In his traditionally combative style, Abascal insisted the election was a chance to hold on to “the peace, prosperity and freedom that a mafioso government wants to snatch from us forever.”

Max Griera contributed to this article.