BRUSSELS ― The EU should consider approving a three or four-year budget instead of trying to plan the bloc’s financial needs for seven years, the president of Cyprus told POLITICO.

“We’re discussing the budget in 2034 and now we’re in 2026,” Nikos Christodoulides said in an interview on the sidelines of Thursday’s summit of EU leaders in Brussels.

A three or four-year budget might be “easier” for some member countries to swallow, he suggested. “Why not open the political discussion?”

“You don’t know what’s going to be the situation in 2030, 2031,” he added. “I mean, look what happened with Covid, with the Ukrainian war … It’s not possible to declare all your priorities today.”

The EU’s seven-year, roughly €2 trillion budget has to be agreed by all 27 member countries but has two deeply entrenched camps on either side: The so-called frugals, comprised of Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and others who want a smaller budget, and the friends of cohesion, a loose grouping of 17 countries that do not want major cuts to agriculture and regional funds.

An EU official close to the budget negotiations said the idea of a shorter timeframe was weird.

EU law allows a budget of “at least five years,” though every budget has been seven years since 1993.

The odds of the budget being approved by the end of the year are increasingly slim, with an election in Spain in November, which polls indicate Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will lose to the center-right and far-right, potentially blowing out the timeline for consensus to 2027.

“Everybody used to understand that we need to finish … a political agreement by the end of the year,” Christodoulides said. “Now, with the situation in Spain, elections there,” that is less likely to happen.

Christodoulides also said he expected the budget to be cut by around a 10th compared to the budget proposed by the European Commission. Last week, the Irish government proposed an 8% cut compared to the Commission’s proposal.

“I think we may end up on 10% or 11%,” he said. “Double digits.”

Zoya Sheftalovich contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — Slovakia is reviving a dormant cooperation forum with Moscow, putting Russia’s gas and oil supplies, nuclear fuel and the treatment of Russian athletes high on the agenda of their first such meeting in five years, according to a Russian government note obtained by POLITICO.

The note, written by Russian Science and Higher Education Minister Valery Falkov, says Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár agreed during an Aug. 20 video call to hold a meeting of the Russian-Slovak Intergovernmental Commission in Moscow.

Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said Wednesday the meeting is scheduled for Nov. 25. The Russian note — which is dated Sept. 10 — initially set the date of the meeting as Oct. 26-27.

The IGC, which covers economic, scientific and technical cooperation, has been dormant since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The last meeting was the commission’s 21st session, held in Bratislava on Nov. 12, 2021.

The meeting comes as Moscow finds openings in other international arenas. The U.S. has invited Vladimir Putin to December’s G20 summit in Miami, while the International Olympic Committee has provisionally lifted its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee and urged sports bodies to ease restrictions on Russian athletes.

Asked about the purported agenda for the IGC, the Slovak foreign ministry directed POLITICO to Blanár’s public statements after the Aug. 20 call. “We pursue a policy in all directions and maintain dialogue with all countries that are interested in pragmatic cooperation with us for the benefit of the Slovak Republic’s national interests,” Blanár said at the time.

The Russian foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

The renewed push for warmer Slovak-Russian relations follows Fico’s May 9 visit to Moscow, where he met Russia’s President Vladimir Putin during Victory Day commemorations. It comes after Viktor Orbán’s defeat in Hungary’s April election, which cost Putin one of his closest partners in Europe and forced him to look elsewhere for EU allies.

Months before losing the election to Péter Magyar, Orbán rebooted the Russian-Hungarian Intergovernmental Commission on Economic Cooperation, which had been suspended for several years after the 2022 invasion. Magyar’s government did not confirm to POLITICO whether the commission would go ahead next year.

EU leaders, including Fico, will gather in Brussels on Thursday for a two-day summit focused on issues including energy prices and support for Ukraine, with the country’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expected to join them for a conversation on Friday.

Oil imports and cultural integration

In the August video call, Blanár raised Slovakia’s opposition to the EU’s phaseout of Russian gas imports and asked to discuss supplies at the Moscow meeting, according to the document, which POLITICO could not independently verify but bears the hallmarks of a legitimate Russian ministerial note. Slovak representatives also stressed the importance of continued Russian oil deliveries through the Druzhba pipeline and welcomed regular shipments of nuclear fuel for Slovak power plants, according to the note.

Slovakia remains heavily reliant on Russian oil and gas, and Fico has argued that ending imports would raise costs. When the two leaders met in Moscow on May 9, Putin said Russia would do everything to meet Slovakia’s energy needs.  

The agenda for the meeting next month reaches beyond energy, according to the document. The sides plan to explore working groups on culture, tourism, agriculture and environmental protection, and to discuss the status of the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Bratislava.

Falkov also records Blanár’s opposition to what the note calls the “discrimination against Russian athletes” at international competitions, noting the issue is to be discussed at the IGC meeting.

The International Olympic Committee lifted the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee in July and said its previous recommendations restricting Russian athletes’ participation no longer applied. World Archery lifted restrictions on Russian athletes and officials in August. FIFA President Gianni Infantino has also called for Russia to be allowed back into international football.

The approach echoes Moscow’s recent effort to lock in closer ties with Orbán’s Hungary. Budapest and Moscow in December agreed on a 12-point plan to expand cooperation in areas including energy, trade and culture. The plan was signed by then Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó and Russian Health Minister Mikhail Murashko after talks in Moscow in December. The Slovak note points to a similar breadth of ambition.

The Kremlin’s outreach to Fico shows how Moscow can use energy ties to pull individual EU countries away from a united stance on Ukraine. Putin made a similar pitch in Washington last weekend: After a call with the Russian leader, President Donald Trump said Russia would supply diesel to U.S. and global markets to bring down fuel prices. The deal would provide revenue to Moscow while weakening efforts to maintain a united front against the Kremlin.

But there are questions over whether Putin can follow through on his pledge to Trump. Ukraine has been stepping up drone strikes on Russian refineries, aiming to disrupt fuel supplies and cut revenue for Moscow’s war effort. Kyiv said this month that strikes had disabled 51 percent of Russia’s oil-refining capacity.

The Ukraine war’s spillover into the Black Sea is creating a growing European security and commercial risk: Drones are hitting ships and killing sailors, grain routes are under strain, and insurers and investors are weighing the cost of operating through Ukraine’s ports.

Five commercial vessels have been hit in Bulgarian and Romanian waters over the past week alone, leaving at least four people dead, several sailors missing and others injured. In response, Black Sea countries Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey have raised the issue at NATO, asking for more focus toward the region and joint support, according to two alliance diplomats.

“The attack within Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone is absolutely unacceptable. It constitutes a serious breach of maritime and international law and will further jeopardise safe navigation in the Black Sea,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said on X after the attacks last week.

Russia has been attacking Ukrainian ports and cities in the area since the start of its full-scale invasion. But the recent strikes have brought the spillover into NATO territory. If they continue, EU leaders will face pressure to protect Black Sea shipping and keep Ukrainian trade moving.

Those questions will be top of mind at Thursday’s European Council summit. According to draft conclusions obtained by POLITICO, leaders are expected to discuss the “immediate restoration of safe passage for grain cargo ships.”

A wider problem

Russia is not the only country using naval drones in the Black Sea. Ukraine has also used them against Russian-linked shipping. In June, a Ukrainian sea drone exploded in Romania’s Constanța port after Kyiv said it had veered off course because of Russian electronic interference.

“The Black Sea situation is quite dangerous because attacks are coming from both [sides],” said an EU shipping representative, who was granted anonymity to speak freely. “You have to worry about both.”

Attribution can also be difficult. Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said Wednesday that investigators still have not proven that Russia is behind the strikes — although some have attributed his reticence to his broadly softer approach toward the Kremlin.

Drone operations by both Russia and Ukraine are likely to continue as long as each has the money and production capacity to sustain them, said Cristian Vlas, assistant research manager for Eastern Europe at the think tank ACLED.

Oleksii Goncharenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker and founder of the Black Sea Security Forum, told POLITICO that a “serious diplomatic initiative” was needed, bringing together Ukraine, Russia and a third-party guarantor, such as Turkey, “to restore freedom of navigation in the Black Sea.”

Grain routes under pressure

The security risk is disrupting routes that carry Ukraine’s harvest to market, with consequences for EU transport links. Black Sea ports are Ukraine’s main export gateway, handling around 95 percent of the country’s grain exports, as well as significant volumes of iron ore. Shipping traffic has fallen as the security risk has grown.

Some cargo is being rerouted to the River Danube, but capacity there has been stretched in recent months as drought pushes water levels to record lows. Operators are trying to add rail capacity, but that risks moving the bottleneck westward to Romania.

Moving more Ukrainian grain overland also risks reviving tensions with farmers in neighboring EU countries, Vlas said. Romanian farmers have worried that Ukrainian produce meant only to transit could stay on the domestic market, he added, while transport operators are already juggling competing demands for capacity.

Ukraine’s Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi has warned that millions of tons of unsold grain is piling up, and that farmers who can’t sell won’t be able to afford to resow all their land.

Bulgaria is working with Romania and Turkey on a joint initiative to protect freedom of navigation in the Black Sea, which Radev plans to bring to EU leaders on Thursday.

Following the Black Sea countries’ request at NATO, military officials are likely to look into possible options such as shifting counter-drone systems to the region, the two alliance diplomats said. Radev said Sofia will convene his counterparts in Ankara and Bucharest to examine further proposals, while a senior Bulgarian official called for new joint anti-drone systems with Romania, partly financed by the EU.

Investment at risk

The attacks also threaten what had started to look like a renewed bet on Ukraine’s ports. MSC, the world’s largest container line, was among the biggest and newest investors, reportedly acquiring a majority stake in a container terminal at a port near Odesa in May.

Ukraine has also been offering investors a long-term concession at the Chornomorsk terminal near Odesa. This terminal is one of Ukraine’s largest planned port public-private partnerships and part of what is expected to be a multibillion-euro reconstruction effort involving European companies.

But people who work in Ukraine’s ports say the case for rebuilding is collapsing.

“No one is ready to invest and rebuild, since you know that tomorrow there will be another missile, another pack of drones,” Oleg Grygoriuk, chairman of Ukraine’s Marine Transport Workers’ Trade Union, said.

The French government is closely watching a cybersecurity crisis at supermarkets after they were forced to throw out food due to an attack that knocked out refrigerators. 

The office of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu told POLITICO that he is “personally monitoring the situation” after cyberattacks targeted the refrigeration systems of several major supermarket chains. Lecornu has asked the country’s cybersecurity agency ANSSI to look into it, his office added.

News reports on Monday said that hundreds of supermarkets were affected. Intermarche and Cooperative U, two French supermarket chains, told AFP that they had been affected. Intermarche told AFP that affected stores will have to throw away affected fresh and frozen food. 

Dominique Schelcher, the CEO of Cooperative U, confirmed on X that a cyberattack hit “the cold production facilities of several stores in our network” since Sunday night.

EU agriculture and food commissioner Christophe Hansen condemned the attack, also mentioning Leclerc, France’s largest supermarket chain, which has not yet publicly confirmed that it is affected. 

French news reports state that the attack hit refrigerators manufactured by Danish company Danfoss. Prime Minister Lecornu’s office said ANSSI has found a flaw in software provided by “a Danish company” and has contacted it. The agency is coordinating with European counterparts as other countries may be affected, the office said.

Danfoss did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

EU cybersecurity agency ENISA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Germany has rejected Ireland’s proposal for the EU’s next seven-year budget, despite €159 billion in cuts. And it’s not alone: Governments are divided over where the cuts should fall, while the European Parliament is threatening to block the deal.

Zoya Sheftalovich and Nick Vinocur unpack the backlash and what it means for this week’s EU leaders’ summit.

Plus, Zoya interviews Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner about Europe’s efforts to curb irregular migration and plans to tighten restrictions on Russian visitors and former soldiers.

And why the influencers expected at this week’s EU summit won’t be showing up after all.

Questions? Comments? Let us know on our WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29.

BRUSSELS — Europe will lose out because of €159 billion in cuts to the bloc’s next long-term budget, the European Commission has warned days before EU leaders gather in Brussels for talks on the bloc’s future spending plans.

In an unusual attack, the Commission told governments that scrapping billions from several rainy-day funds will leave Europe less equipped to deal with crises during the next seven-year budget cycle, said four EU diplomats briefed on the talks, granted anonymity to speak freely about confidential discussions.

The Commission’s top budget official, Stéphanie Riso, delivered the warning to the EU’s 27 ambassadors during a closed-door meeting on Sunday, a day after the Irish presidency of the Council of the EU, which is steering the talks, proposed cutting around 8% from the bloc’s total budget from 2028 to 2034.

The Commission is “very concerned about cuts to flexibility,” said one of the EU diplomats.

As a result of the changes, “we will have no ways left to help farmers and regions when crises hit, because of climate change or geopolitical tensions,” they added.

EU ambassadors gathered to discuss the Irish plan, which envisages cuts of €159 billion in current prices from the Commission’s nearly €2 trillion proposal. Of that amount, €38 billion was cut from foreign aid, €75 billion was axed from competitiveness, and at least €22 billion was slashed from rainy-day funds.

But even those reductions were criticized as insufficient by a German-led group of states pushing for cuts of several hundred billion. During the closed-door meeting, a rival bloc of 17 countries, known as the Friends of Cohesion, welcomed the fact that the Irish presidency had spared agriculture and regional payments from cuts.  

EU governments are racing to finalize a deal on the budget among themselves by the end of the year — before elections in France, Italy and Poland that threaten to disrupt the negotiations.

A leaders’ summit on Thursday and Friday will give early signals as to whether the end-of-year deadline is achievable — or whether leaders should start preparing contingency plans.

One EU diplomat said the pressure is now on those leaders: “What could make a difference is if Friedrich Merz and Emmanuel Macron show up, hand-in-hand, and say we live in a new world.”

Cuts to the future

The Commission warned that cuts such as those put forward by Ireland will shrink the next budget — excluding repayments to post-Covid debt — below the current one.

The cuts overwhelmingly affect EU-wide priorities such as competitiveness, defense and foreign aid while leaving traditional policies untouched such as agriculture and regional payouts, which make up almost half the budget.

The changes undermine the Commission’s proposal, which envisaged more flexibility and steered hundreds of billions of euros toward new priorities.

In a further setback for the Commission, Ireland also downsized — or even scrapped — several financial cushions to shelter EU countries from unforeseen events such as natural disasters or public health emergencies.

The EU executive argues these changes will make spending in the next budget more rigid than in the current one — and potentially warrant a midterm review of the budget further down the line.

However, Ireland’s Europe Minister Thomas Byrne disputed this claim in a press conference on Saturday, saying the budget proposal “offers increased flexibility … in response to the clear call from member states for a simplified and more flexible, modern [budget].”

Another source of tension in the next budget came from Ireland’s watering down the link between EU payouts and economic reforms.

The Commission has repeatedly defended using regular budget payments as a carrot to nudge governments to undertake reforms that will make them more competitive.

However, Ireland’s ambassador to the EU, Aingeal O’Donoghue, said during the meeting that the new text will not link EU cash disbursements and “fiscal reforms,” according to one of the diplomats.

BRUSSELS — Germany and its allies rebuffed Ireland’s plan to downsize the bloc’s next seven-year budget, arguing that the proposed cuts are not enough.

On Saturday, the Irish presidency of the Council of the EU, which is steering the talks, proposed cutting around 8% from the bloc’s total budget from 2028 to 2034 in a bid to assuage a German-led camp demanding reductions of several hundred billions euros.

But Dublin’s hopes of facilitating a deal were immediately dashed by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, one the key players in the negotiations as his country contributes to approximately one-quarter of the bloc’s common budget.

“We are still a long way from an agreement. The amount of the new proposal is not a basis for an agreement. The EU budget must be affordable for those who bear the brunt of the financing,” Merz wrote in a statement on Saturday.

Germany leads a group of six “frugal” countries — Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland and Austria — which contribute 40% of the Union’s common budget.

Most frugal countries criticized Ireland’s proposed €159 billion in cuts in current prices from the Commission’s nearly €2 trillion proposal, saying they were insufficient.

Sweden’s Europe minister Jessica Rosencrantz described the negotiating document, or negobox, on X as a “wildly unaffordable increase,” as the overall amount would still be higher than the current budget.

Austrian Europe Minister Claudia Bauer echoed that criticism, saying that the new budget remained “miles away from an Austrian yes.”

Tensions will come to a head during a summit of EU leaders next Thursday and Friday, where they will discuss the negobox.

EU governments are racing to reach a budget deal among themselves by the end of the year — before elections in France, Italy and Poland in 2027 threaten to derail negotiations.

But Dutch Finance Minister Eelco Heinen warned on Saturday that “at this rate, there will be no deal by the end of the year.”

Ireland’s Minister of State for European Affairs Thomas Byrne, who leads the negotiations, dismissed criticism and described the proposal as a balanced compromise.

“The negotiating box acts to bridge the many differences between the Member states,” Byrne told reporters on Saturday.

Divided Union

The EU is split between frugal countries pushing for cuts across the board and a rival camp of southern and eastern states, the Friends of Cohesion, opposing reductions to farmers’ subsidies and regional payouts known as cohesion policy.

These areas account for almost half of the total budget and are politically sensitive because of pressure from farmers’ lobbies and regions.

In a concession to the 17 Friends of Cohesion, Ireland left the agriculture and regional budgets untouched and focused cuts on other priorities such as competitiveness, defense and development aid.

“There was a strong support for heading one [agriculture and cohesion] from almost all of the member states, including some of the countries who would be considered to be net contributors” to the budget, Byrne told reporters.

Reactions to the negobox from the Friends of Cohesion were more conciliatory than those of their frugal peers.

“It’s an excellent starting point to have recovered the money for the CAP [Common Agricultural Policy], but we’re still not satisfied,” said Italy’s Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida.

Poland’s Europe minister Ignacy Niemczycki welcomed the fact that his country “continues to receive the largest allocation,” but noted that the “change in the overall size of the budget does not match the EU’s ambitions.”

The frugals were also are disappointed that the cuts disproportionately target innovative policies such as defense and competitiveness, which they favor.

“They’re cutting the future to protect the past,” said one EU diplomat from the frugal camp.

BRUSSELS ― EU governments expect the proposed size of the bloc’s next seven-year budget to be slashed by €100 billion to €200 billion from the previous plan announced in June, 12 EU diplomats told POLITICO.

Ireland, which holds the presidency of the Council of the EU and is steering the talks, will unveil the proposal on Saturday, setting the scene for fraught discussions among EU leaders at their summit next week.

The bloc is split between so-called frugal countries — Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and others — that want to slash several hundred billion euros from the nearly €2 trillion proposal on the table, and a rival coalition of southern and eastern countries, the Friends of Cohesion, that opposes the cuts.

Dublin is expected to cut the budget by between €100 billion and €200 billion as a goodwill gesture to the German camp, the diplomats said. However, the Irish plan to shield agriculture and regional spending from major cuts as a concession to the Friends of Cohesion.

At next week’s summit, EU leaders will react to the latest numbers, known as the “negobox” because it gives governments something to negotiate on, and signal early whether an agreement is possible by the end of the year.

Governments are rushing to secure a deal among themselves before national elections in France, Poland and Italy in 2027 threaten to derail the negotiations.

As a neutral broker in the discussions, Ireland hasn’t publicly disclosed its intentions on the negotiating document. 

Dublin’s European Affairs Minister of State Thomas Byrne told the European Parliament earlier this week that EU member countries have made “substantial progress” toward an agreement. But he warned: “we cannot satisfy everybody.”

Germany and its allies criticized the previous Cyprus Council presidency for cutting only €32 billion in the last negobox in June.

Ireland’s looming cuts

The frugals’ calls for budget savings have ignited fears among the Friends of Cohesion. 

The 17 countries — including heavyweights Italy, Spain and Poland — issued a joint statement last week opposing cuts to agriculture and cohesion. 

In a concession to this camp, Ireland is expected to propose budget savings in other policy areas. Governments are bracing for major reductions to the Global Europe fund, the EU’s €200 billion pot of development aid and external relations cash, and the €410 billion European Competitiveness Fund to boost the bloc’s industrial capacity. 

Cuts to administrative costs, with €118 billion earmarked for the EU’s institutions and staff, are also popular among EU governments, though they will yield fewer savings.

However, frugals have warned against shielding agriculture and cohesion from a smaller budget. They argue instead that more money should be steered away from traditional priorities towards new challenges such as defense and competitiveness.

“We are very concerned that Ireland would decide to smash funding for research and external action, which is a major issue for development, our economic interests and migration,” said one EU diplomat, granted anonymity like others in this article to speak frankly about their expectations for the sensitive negotiations.

Tax game

Another sensitive issue is EU-wide taxes — known as “own resources” — to finance the budget and reduce national contributions.

In 2025, the European Commission proposed five new levies that are expected to generate €66 billion per year. During negotiations, governments opposed levies that would overwhelmingly affect their economies.

Several European governments lobbied Ireland to remove a corporate tax, known as CORE, that is unpopular across the bloc. But Dublin is expected to refrain from doing so, and keep the Commission’s five levies in the negobox.

To make CORE more palatable, Dublin might exempt small and medium enterprises from the scope of the levy. It could also make tweaks to a tobacco levy that is opposed by many.

Instead, the European Parliament’s proposed taxes on digital levies, online gambling and crypto firms are expected to be left out entirely from the negobox.  

An EU diplomat criticized these incremental changes as “disappointing and minimal.”

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.