This was supposed to be an EU summit about the EU’s long-term budget. But things are never easy for EU leaders, and world events have a nasty habit of making their way onto the itinerary.

That meant this European Council had a lot more on the agenda than the last handful of summits, at least: Energy, migration, enlargement, Ukraine, and more besides were covered — and very little, if anything, was decided.

Have FOMO because you weren’t there? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Here’s POLITICO’s rapid roundup of what we learned at the European Council.

1) Energy stole the show right out of the gate

The summit’s first major clash came Thursday morning, with EU leaders split over whether to delay ETS2, the bloc’s second phase of carbon pricing, to address high energy prices, triggering a three-hour-long standoff.

Italy and Greece joined the Visegrád Four — Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — in calling for a delay, a push rejected by the majority of countries.

The debate dragged on, delaying lunch (spare a thought for our hungry leaders!) and leading to the cancellation of a press conference on Thursday night.

2) Budget negotiations are a marathon…

Negotiations on the bloc’s next long-term budget were expected to be one of the summit’s most contentious topics. But they were a nothingburger, with most leaders repeating positions they have held for months. The summit brought them no closer to a breakthrough.

Many countries, of course, want a smaller budget, with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson telling reporters that his country is “not an ATM for the EU.”

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, meanwhile, said he had no choice but to be frugal at the European level, arguing he is used to tightening his belt at home because his wife is Dutch. Think of Bart next time your Dutch friends ask you to pay them back for that coffee.

3) … and a sprint

European Council President António Costa is still aiming to get a budget deal before the end of the year, according to two EU officials. He announced that leaders will hold a special summit at the end of November to try and make progress (and there’s a December summit too). But that timing leaves them up against the clock to reach a deal by year’s end.

See you all back here on Nov. 26!

4) EU leaders may need to bring extra luggage next time

If leaders do hope to agree on the EU’s long-term budget this year, they should prepare for long negotiations in November and December.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested the pre-Christmas summit could last longer than the scheduled two days. “For the December summit, we should pack a few more shirts than usual,” he said. Gulp!

5) Your next holiday to Cyprus might be a little easier

Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides told reporters he hopes EU leaders will discuss his country’s bid to join the Schengen travel zone at the December summit.

“All technical preparations have already been completed, and we hope that the matter will be discussed by the relevant council in December so that the final political decisions can be made,” he said.

6) Rose-colored glasses have come off when it comes to Costa

European Council President António Costa drew the ire of some leaders over his handling of negotiations to curb high energy prices, which had become a “mess,” three EU diplomats told POLITICO, with another two diplomats saying that leaders were fuming at Costa for allowing talks to go off the rails.

7) Drink (a little) less beer to help Ukraine

Ahead of the summit, Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs told reporters that supporting Ukraine costs each European the equivalent of one beer a year.

“That one beer is just a cost [for EU citizens]. There, it’s a cost of life. We drink less, their lives are saved,” he said. “Simple as that.”

He didn’t say whether he meant a beer bought in Stockholm or Prague. As anyone in Belgium knows, not all beers are created equal — or cost the same.

8) The EU Parliament wants you to know it matters too

The European Parliament’s two lead negotiators on the EU budget made the rounds of the press room to make sure journalists heard their views. Siegfried Mureșan (of the European People’s Party) and Carla Tavares (Socialists and Democrats) both stressed that the Parliament’s position is important.

Meanwhile, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola joined leaders for the first part of the summit. Metsola said she had made it clear to them that “the Parliament is not a rubber-stamp and never will be.”

9) Talking China (without mentioning China)

Leaders discussed trade imbalances (read: China) over lunch on Thursday and welcomed the deal the European Commission struck with China last week to curb imports of Chinese hybrid vehicles. Czech PM Andrej Babiš even went so far as to call the deal “fantastic.”

POLITICO scooped that the European Commission is expected to work on trade measures tackling imports of chemicals and industrial machinery in an effort to protect European industry from unfair Chinese competition.

10) New bromance brewing

Hungarian PM Peter Magyar posted a late-night selfie with Dutch PM Rob Jetten on social media after day one of the summit. The two were all smiles and “tired, but not sad”, as Magyar put it in his tweet.

In reaction to the tweet, Jetten told reporters, “We are more or less of the same generation and a tad more direct and pragmatic than some colleagues in the European Council, so there’s a click.”

We started at 7:30 this morning in Brussels. The second shift begins after 10 PM, with Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten @MinPres.
Tired, but not sad. pic.twitter.com/dmtSMbqG4m

— Magyar Péter (Ne féljetek) (@magyarpeterMP) October 15, 2026

11) Back to the castle

António Costa announced that another competitiveness summit at Alden Biesen castle in the Belgian countryside will take place in February 2027, three EU diplomats told POLITICO.

Leaders already visited the castle earlier this year, and they clearly loved the Belgian countryside so much they want to return (or Costa is forcing them to go).

12) Still reeling from Ceuta

Ahead of Friday’s talks, 16 EU leaders met to discuss migration over breakfast (before discussing migration over lunch with everyone else).

According to one EU diplomat, leaders broadly agreed that the EU should be able to suspend asylum applications when faced with a sudden influx of migrants that may have been engineered on purpose. But would that mean the EU will implement pushbacks (which are banned under EU law)?

13) Denmark, Italy and Poland want to be tougher on migration

The three leaders joined forces to argue that migration is a concern for many EU citizens and is contributing to rising crime rates. That caused a delay to an already shockingly long summit.

14) There were some agreements

Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Spain’s Pedro Sánchez found some time on the sidelines of the summit to chat about Rome’s restrictions on Spanish nationals sparked by the Ceuta crisis.

Plus, France and Germany said they had struck a deal to favor European-made cars under the Industrial Accelerator Act in exchange for weakening a 2035 vehicle emissions target, ending months of wrangling between the bloc’s two biggest economies.

15) EU leaders get the good stuff to eat

Thursday’s lunch menu featured a “full-flavored vegetable jus.” Not a little flavor, not a medium amount of flavor, but the full flavor. Then on Friday there was a “rich jus”. There was also a Champagne sauce. Only the best for our leaders!

16) The same can’t be said for reporters

Some POLITICO journalists lamented the lack of vegetarian options at the Council canteen. Pray for us.

17) No harsh words from EU to Zelenskyy

At a press conference on Friday afternoon, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was asked whether EU leaders had expressed annoyance at his recent tone toward U.S. President Donald Trump. The question followed reports that some capitals were frustrated with him and worried he was further riling the White House.

But it was all love from Zelenskyy, who said there had been no harsh words during his time in the summit room. “I heard from my European colleagues support and only support, and I’m grateful for this,” he said.

18) No hugs for Fico

As Zelenskyy entered the European Council building, he was seen hugging and kissing fellow leaders — with one exception: Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico received no hug. That may well have been because Slovakia is preparing to revive a dormant cooperation forum with Moscow.

19) 20M Ukrainians could flee to Europe if Russia wins war

Zelenskyy issued a stark warning to Europe: if Russia wins the war, as many as 20 million Ukrainians could be forced to flee to Europe. Over 4 million Ukrainians already live in EU countries under temporary protection status, according to Eurostat. 

20) EU leaders have forgotten about Britain … or have they?

There was plenty of talk across the Channel this week about the U.K. potentially rejoining the bloc, but the subject did not come up at the summit, even with an EU-U.K. summit due next month. EU leaders have more pressing issues on their minds.

Still, some had things to say about the U.K.’s relationship with the EU. Foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said “all our friends are welcome to join,” naming Britain alongside Canada, Norway and Iceland as partners seeking closer ties.

Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs suggested the U.K. “should come back to the family,” although he also said that Russia “had its hands on Brexit.”

21) At POLITICO, we save the best for last

Covering European Councils often involves a lot of waiting around, but during this summit conditions were a little tougher because of a phantom farter among reporters waiting for Zelenskyy’s press conference. POLITICO went viral in Brussels’ diplomatic and journalistic circles for reporting the hard facts on our live blog.

While this summit’s agenda was packed, in the end not many concrete decisions were taken. Some might say the summit was a load of hot air.

DUBLIN — The Irish capital, which doubles as Europe’s de facto tech capital, hosted two very different AI summits in the past week.

Most eyes were on the International AI Summit, the signature tech event of Ireland’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU, where top brass from the world’s biggest tech firms discussed ways to harness artificial intelligence and minimize safety risks.

But the weekend before, a very different conversation was taking place at the Workers’ AI Counter Summit, as Ireland’s tech workers demanded a say in how the burgeoning technology reshapes the workplace and society.

Ireland’s lucrative tech sector has been rattled by waves of AI-driven layoffs — and the country’s fledgling tech union has seen an exponential spike in sign-ups from workers who are worried about their future.  

There’s an “awakening” happening right now among workers in Ireland’s tech sector, and a growing “awareness that they’re not bulletproof,” said Sinéad Gibney, a social democrat lawmaker who previously worked for Google.  

“I do think what we will see is that parts of roles will be automated, which means that people will be competing more heavily for the same roles,” she said. “They won’t have the same labor power and therefore we’re going to see a drop in quality of work, we’re going to see more zero-hour contracts, in more places than we already see it.”

The labor movement brewing in Ireland, where many of the world’s tech giants have their EU bases, is part of a wider trend among tech workers globally, who have seen their work disrupted by rapidly evolving AI.

Rise in layoffs

Ireland’s dedicated union for tech workers, the Digital and Techworker Alliance (DATA), has seen a five-fold increase in membership since it was first founded in 2023.  

In its first year and a half of existence, membership hovered around 270 people. In the past year-and-a-half, it’s jumped to more than 1,350 members, DATA organizer John Bohan told POLITICO.  He added that this number tends to spike around layoffs and other actions.

“The tech industry was founded on the idea that it would never have a union, because they’re making people rich, and treat them really well,” Bohan said.  “But post-Covid, workforce adjustments happened again and again, with layoffs and declining conditions in the sector. We started to see more people wanting to get organized around redundancies.”  

The spike in sign-ups coincides with a wave of layoffs in Ireland’s tech bubble (and the tech sector globally), as companies corrected pandemic-era overhiring, and diverted investment to AI.  

Ireland hosts the EU headquarters of most of the world’s largest tech companies, and more than 170,000 people are employed in the tech sector, according to the country’s statistics institute.

Social media giant Meta has roughly halved its workforce in Ireland since the pandemic, axing well over 1,000 roles to offset AI investment and boost efficiency. Separately, Meta subcontractor Covalen also announced massive layoffs earlier this year, cutting more than 700 people.  

Video-sharing platform TikTok announced this year it would shed around 300 Irish jobs, mostly from its trust and safety team, shifting the work to other countries, outsourced vendors or automated AI solutions.  

A report by the IMF earlier this year warned that Ireland’s labor market is “relatively more exposed” to AI than many advanced economies, partly due to its concentration of tech workers.  

The AI race is also creating new jobs on the Irish market – as AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI are setting up Irish bases and trying to lure Big Tech workers with even bigger salaries.  

Amid the uncertainty and volatility of the AI boom, tech workers are turning to unions for the first time as a safety net. One tech worker who used to work in trust and safety at a big tech firm told POLITICO that there used to be a feeling that as a “pampered” tech worker you “can’t ask for your rights, because you already have it so much better.” 

But as layoffs continue and teams get leaner, workers in fields like trust and safety “now have to deal with these issues with fewer and fewer resources”, and face a “constant threat of being chopped,” the worker said.  

That’s causing an “undoing of a certain perspective that we have of ourselves as tech sector workers,” they said, “because of undeniable experiences that now put us in situations where we clearly see our rights being violated, even if we may have it so much or somewhat better than most people.” 

A different tech worker who currently works for Covalen told POLITICO that there is a sense that “if they believe they can replace you with AI, they will do that.”  

“All these Big Tech firms only care about profit, and what I have realized is the Irish government protects that Big Tech capital [rather than workers],” the Covalen worker said. “But the question is, what’s the government going to do when the tech bros change their mind and move elsewhere?”  

Workers at the center

The speaker list at this week’s AI summit was a flex of the country’s strength as a tech hub, as top names from the world’s biggest companies like Google and Microsoft took to the stage.

Fionnuala Ní Bhrógáin, head of organizing and campaigning at Ireland’s Communications Workers’ Union (DATA’s parent union), was the only union voice on the line-up.

“The fact that 36 executives and industry bosses featured on the program, compared with just one trade union speaker — invited at the last minute after attention was drawn to the absence of workers’ voices — says a lot about the value the Irish government places on AI’s impact on workers,” she told POLITICO.

“The reality is that a meaningful conversation about AI’s future can only happen through genuine engagement with workers and collective bargaining,” Ní Bhrógáin added. “Without that voice, we risk deepening mistrust and resistance rather than creating the conditions for workers to shape these changes collectively.”

DATA organized its counter-AI summit the previous weekend, to put “workers at the center of the debate about power, AI, technology and the future of work.” 

The event cut through the “hype and futurism of politicians and industry figures to focus on the real present harms faced by ordinary workers and communities,” DATA’s Bohan said.  

The union is pushing for stronger legal protections for tech workers caught up in AI-driven layoffs in Ireland, including making it mandatory for employers to recognize unions during collective bargaining. It is also calling for a ban on cooling-off clauses that prevent laid-off workers from moving between Big Tech subcontractors.  

A spokesperson for Ireland’s department for enterprise told POLITICO in a written statement that the government is “committed to strengthening collective bargaining and industrial relations” and has published an action plan to do so between now and 2030.  

They said that employers already have to comply with obligations under Irish employment law, including consultation and notification procedures for collective redundancies, and workers who feel those rules have been broken can complain to the Workplace Relations Commission. 

Firefighting to future-proofing 

Naoise Ó Cearúil, a center-right Fianna Fáil lawmaker who chairs the AI committee, pointed out that while there have been high-profile job cuts in Ireland’s tech sector, “the actual net is that there has been an increase [in jobs], particularly over the past year and even five years.” 

According to Ireland’s central statistics office, total employment in tech and related sectors surpassed 177,000 in the second quarter of this year, up from around 144,000 at the same time in 2021.  

Ó Cearúil pointed out that many job losses were in trust and safety jobs like content moderation that are “very difficult mentally,” and now tech firms are able to “utilize AI and software to be able to do a lot of detection, rather than using humans.”  

He has called for a national program to be established, to support workers whose jobs are at risk due to AI and automation.  

A spokesperson for Ireland’s department of enterprise acknowledged that the country’s tech sector has “experienced significant adjustment in recent years,” but said the changes were generally part of wider global restructuring “rather than reflecting any Ireland-specific weakness.” 

They said the Irish government is currently focused on “ensuring workers and businesses are equipped to adapt to technological change through investment in education, training, lifelong learning and digital skills.”  

BRUSSELS — France and Germany said Friday they had struck a deal to favor European-made cars under a landmark EU industry bill in exchange for weakening a 2035 vehicle emissions target, ending months of wrangling between the bloc’s two biggest economies.

Under the agreement, Germany would accept stricter “Made in Europe” — or local content — requirements for the automotive industry in the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, a longstanding French demand, while France would back Berlin’s push to relax the EU’s plan to phase out new combustion-engine cars.

The EU’s current target is for companies to reduce emissions from new vehicles by 100% from 2021 levels by 2035, with the possibility to “earn” 10% of emissions leeway through initiatives like offsets and investments.

France and Germany now want to soften the 2035 target to 90% but without having  to offer investments in alternative fuels to compensate the remaining 10%, as proposed by the European Commission.

“This balanced approach will enable the European Union to pursue its climate objectives while strengthening the technological sovereignty, industrial base and international competitiveness of its automotive industry,” the two countries said in a joint statement.

The agreement, first reported by POLITICO in July, was due to have been announced Thursday, during a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels. But it was held up at the last minute by disagreements within Germany’s governing coalition.

“We hope that this Franco-German dynamic can swiftly lead to an agreement with our partners, for our jobs and our industry,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on social media.

An Elysée official on Friday made clear that, under the Franco-German deal, the scope of Made in Europe for automotive can be extended to the U.K. and Switzerland under certain conditions. — addressing a key concern of Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government ahead of a Nov. 20 U.K.-EU summit in Brussels.

The agreement was reached after the German Social Democratic Party, the junior partner in Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition government, dropped its opposition.

“This is a modern realignment of German industrial policy that places significantly greater emphasis on preserving jobs and production sites,” said German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider, who is from the SPD.

“The clear expectation for German companies is that they will use these new opportunities to make investments and guarantee jobs here in Germany,” he added.

CORRECTION: This article was updated on Oct. 16 after an earlier version misrepresented the figures in the Franco-German proposal on the softening of 2035 targets.

BRUSSELS — France and Germany on Thursday failed to agree a common position on the scope of the bloc’s future “Made in Europe” rules, as well as on greater flexibility for CO2 emissions cuts and the 2035 combustion engine ban. 

The draft quid-pro-quo deal, which was first reported by POLITICO in July, marks a major convergence between the two countries and had been expected to be signed imminently. On Thursday evening, however, the agreement stalled amid opposition from Germany’s Social Democratic Party, the center-left junior partner in the ruling coalition, over concerns it dropped key environmental targets.

“A final agreement has yet to be reached,” a German government spokesperson said.

Earlier this week, French President Emmanuel Macron had suggested the ball was in the German court. “There are political constraints on the other side of the Rhine, and I completely respect coalition discussions,” Macron said Monday on the sidelines of the Paris car show.

Under the terms of the proposed deal, Germany would accept stricter Made in Europe criteria for the automotive sector in the Industrial Accelerator Act, which France has pushed for, in exchange for weakening the combustion engine ban, one of Berlin’s long-term demands.

“In light of the significant technological, economic and geopolitical changes since the existing regulatory framework was established, the Automotive Package should strike a better balance between climate objectives, industrial competitiveness, technological development and the strengthening of European value creation,” the two countries wrote in a draft agreement obtained by POLITICO.

“Based on the Franco-German Ministerial Councils in 2025 and 2026, Germany and France therefore propose a balanced negotiating package combining ambitious CO₂ reduction targets with additional flexibility and targeted incentives for European value creation,” the agreement adds.

Currently, the EU’s target is for companies to reduce combustion engine emissions by 100% from 2021 levels by 2035, with the possibility to ‘earn’ 10% of emissions leeway through initiatives like offsets and investments.

Under the proposed deal, France and Germany want to soften the 2035 target to 90%, and to offer a further 10% leeway in exchange for investments in alternative fuels (for a combined 80%).

Crucially for steel manufacturers and Germany’s leftist SPD, the French-German agreement would axe the green steel investment requirement, removing a key incentive.

“This destroys the lead market for the steel industry,” an industry lobbyist told POLITICO on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic. In failing to put pressure on automakers to source green steel, the draft deal makes it a “nice-to-have” extra, they explained.

In a concession to Berlin, the draft agreement stresses that the so-called utility factor — which calculates plug-in hybrid emissions based on how often a vehicle’s electric motor is used vs. its combustion engine — should be calculated on lab-based results rather than real-world data, as required by the Commission. The change will help automakers sell more plug-in hybrids while still reaching the broader emissions targets.

In exchange for these emissions concessions, Germany endorsed France’s demand that the scope of the Made in Europe rules under the bloc’s Industrial Accelerator Act be restricted when it comes to the automotive sector.

The text only covers the EU’s 27 member countries and will be extended to the U.K. under certain conditions.

EU industry chief Stéphane Séjourné told POLITICO on Tuesday that he supported the deal as a way of breaking the impasse, and said the U.K. currently qualifies for Made in Europe. 

The agreement could resolve a stalemate over both the CO2 regulation and the IAA, in which France and Germany have been on opposite sides. “The elements of this combined package should be adopted as soon as possible and at the same time,” the two countries wrote.

The British government welcomed the potential inclusion of the U.K. in the Made in Europe rules for cars. 

“This is a Franco-German proposal and there is still a European process to run, but if confirmed, we welcome the objective to have the U.K. included in the Industrial Accelerator Act, and this would be good news for the British automotive industry and the jobs and investment it supports across the U.K.,” a No. 10 official said in a statement.

If approved, the comprehensive Franco-German deal will still have to be approved by other EU countries and by the European Parliament, which are currently discussing the Industrial Accelerator Act and the automotive package, including emissions targets for automakers.

Carlo Martuscelli, Francesca Micheletti and Graham Lanktree contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — NATO allies will hold a crisis meeting to discuss how to respond to a series of drone strikes on cargo shipping in the Black Sea, Romania’s President Nicușor Dan said.

Two chemical tankers were hit by air drones in the past 24 hours in or near Romania’s territorial waters, but it is “too early” to say for sure whether Russia was behind the attacks, Dan added.

Dan was speaking on the sidelines of the European Council summit in Brussels, where he spoke to Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte about the latest incidents.

“The secretary general expressed the solidarity of the alliance and there will be a NAC [North Atlantic Council] meeting at which the whole situation with the Black Sea will be discussed,” Dan told POLITICO. “Of course the conclusion is that all the hybrid attacks are trying to decrease our support for Ukraine. We will continue to support,” he said.

Dan said invoking NATO’s collective defense clause, Article 5, was “not now” being discussed as an option for responding to the attacks. Nor has Romania asked for Article 4 — the emergency clause that sets consultations in motion over military matters when a member’s security has been threatened — to be triggered, he said.

Rescuers are searching for seven missing crew members after two chemical tankers were hit by aerial drones in or near Romanian territorial waters. Over the past 10 days, drones have hit at least five more cargo ships close to Romania and Bulgaria — both NATO members — killing at least 23 sailors.

Investigation teams from Romania’s army and intelligence services are trying to establish what led to the most recent drones strikes on the ships, Dan said.

Romania asked NATO for equipment including specialized radars and requested the delivery to be accelerated after a Russian drone crashed into an apartment building near the border with Ukraine in May.

Dan suggested Romania was likely to seek further assistance with equipment from allies this time. “On the operational level, we are in the same situation where we have been … on the Danube border with Ukraine,” Dan said. “What we did at that moment, we came here to NATO and some of our allies — United States, France, Spain, Italy, Slovakia, Portugal — gave us some equipment. And now we are in the same situation, but on the other border, with the Black Sea.”

After the meeting with Dan and Radev, NATO’s Rutte said the alliance had already increased “counter-drone capabilities” along its eastern flank. “NATO will continue to work closely with our allies in the Black Sea, adjusting our deterrence and defence posture as needed,” he posted on X.

This story has been updated. Victor Jack contributed to the report.

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.

BRUSSELS — European leaders came for the budget. They’re staying for everything else.

A two-day European Council starting Thursday was supposed to be all about the money. Instead, leaders of the 27 EU member countries are heading into one of their most crowded summits in years, with a succession of geopolitical crises threatening to hijack the EU’s carefully laid plans.

European Council President António Costa originally wanted the gathering to accelerate negotiations on the bloc’s next seven-year budget, hoping to seal a deal before elections in France, Italy and Poland in 2027 make an already difficult agreement even harder.

But the world had other plans. Soaring energy prices, tensions with China, Russia’s war in Ukraine (and U.S. President Donald Trump’s ambiguity over it), migration and turmoil in the Middle East have all elbowed their way onto the agenda.

The result is a two-day marathon covering virtually every major challenge facing the EU, from keeping European factories competitive to ensuring the world’s most important shipping lanes stay open.

For anyone trying to follow the action without spending 48 hours glued to Brussels, here’s your guide to what matters.

With the usual warning: EU leaders are notorious for letting discussions drag on or reshuffling the agenda — that’s what our liveblog is for.

Thursday at dawn: The pre-match warm-up

Before the summit even starts, Europe’s political families will gather at the crack of dawn.

The European People’s Party meets from 7:30 a.m. at the Sofitel Brussels Europe — the place to be if you can get in, given how many center-right leaders will be at the summit table.

The Socialists gather from 8:30 a.m. at PES headquarters, with Costa, Spain’s Pedro Sánchez and Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen expected.

Renew kicks off at 8 a.m. at the Palais d’Egmont, with French President Emmanuel Macron and top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas among those expected.

Even without leaders in the summit room, the far-right Patriots got a head start Wednesday, with Marine Le Pen delivering a scathing attack on the state of the EU.

Thursday morning: The energy blame game and China

Leaders kick off with discussions on Europe’s struggle for economic competitiveness, starting with energy — potentially the most politically explosive debate.

Governments want immediate relief from soaring energy prices as a result of the war in Iran, and will push the Commission to introduce new measures on top of the wide-ranging but somewhat toothless package it announced back in March.

Expect finger-pointing between capitals and Brussels over who should act, and for climate policies like the upcoming Emissions Trading System on heating and transport to come under fire.

Next comes China. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will brief leaders on efforts to tackle the EU’s enormous trade imbalance with Beijing, following trade chief Maroš Šefčovič’s negotiations with Chinese officials.

Leaders are expected to renew their demand for Brussels to “urgently” tool up with further trade defenses to prevent further deindustrialization of the bloc and to shield further industrial sectors from Chinese competition.

There’s also time for the familiar fight over EU red tape, with calls for Brussels to stop legislating.

Thursday afternoon: Costa’s budget gamble

This was supposed to be the main event. Leaders will discuss Ireland’s negotiating proposal for the EU’s 2028–2034 budget slashed by €159 billion from the Commission’s original proposal.

The positions are well known: The self-styled “modernists” — essentially the old frugals in disguise — want to contain costs, while countries benefiting from EU spending are determined to defend their allocations, under the less glamorous banner of “friends of cohesion.” Positions on new EU-wide taxes are similarly entrenched.

But the real story is timing.

Governments have watered down a commitment to secure an agreement by December, according to draft conclusions seen by POLITICO. Costa wants a deal before a series of high-stakes elections in 2027 complicate negotiations; capitals fear a deadline could weaken their bargaining power.

Most importantly, Costa is moving into the driving seat as budget talks enter their most politically sensitive stage. Watch for clues about a possible extraordinary summit in late November — and whether December remains a credible deadline or leaders quietly start preparing for negotiations to spill into 2027.

Thursday dinner: Making room for new members

Over dinner, leaders will tackle enlargement and the EU reforms needed to accommodate new members — after all, October’s summit has historically been devoted to the bloc’s hopefuls.

Montenegro is edging closer to completing accession negotiations, while progress elsewhere raises questions about whether the bloc is institutionally and financially ready to grow.

The Commission has outlined proposals to prepare the EU for enlargement, and leaders will discuss how internal reforms should accompany the accession process. Watch for a positive signal to Montenegro and commitments on reforming the bloc itself.

Friday morning: Ukraine’s wish list

The second day begins with Ukraine and an expected appearance by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Declarations of European solidarity are all but guaranteed. The more interesting question is what leaders are actually prepared to do.

Kyiv needs air defense systems, interceptors and financing as Russian attacks intensify. Leaders could discuss tougher action against Moscow’s shadow fleet and visa restrictions for Russians. And while EU financing for Ukraine has already been agreed for 2026, the country’s needs beyond that remain an increasingly pressing issue.

Could this mean reopening the debate on using frozen Russian assets to plug future funding gaps? That remains a question mark — although no immediate breakthrough is expected.

Friday pre-lunch: Defense and three dangerous waterways

Before breaking for lunch, leaders will turn to Russian hybrid attacks, maritime security and the Middle East.

In the Black Sea, recent attacks on civilian shipping threaten Ukraine’s crucial grain export route. Turkey has floated new protected shipping corridors, while countries including Romania and Bulgaria are pushing to give the issue more attention.

Will leaders back concrete measures or stop at condemnation? That’s the question.

Discussions then turn to the Middle East and two other critical shipping routes: the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. The fallout from the Iran–U.S. war, increased Iranian attacks around Hormuz and renewed Houthi threats in the Red Sea have disrupted global trade and energy flows.

The EU’s Aspides naval mission is short of vessels, and Kallas wants governments to contribute more. Watch whether leaders put ships behind their promises.

The broader Middle East discussion will also touch on Iran, Yemen, the West Bank and Lebanon.

Friday lunch: The migration showdown

Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen are worth watching as leaders discuss migration over lunch, following the crisis in Spain’s North African exclave of Ceuta.

Irregular arrivals have been declining, but disagreements remain over border crises, solidarity and tougher migration controls.

And with an election looming in Spain on Nov. 29, this could be Sánchez’s last tango — and a final chance to defend his government’s handling of the crisis while venting his frustration over the lack of European solidarity.

Watch whether the debate produces agreement or another political clash, as happened last time.

Bonus: Two pressers are better than one

With such a packed agenda, leaders won’t wait until the end of the summit for the usual joint press conference by von der Leyen and Costa. An additional one is planned for Thursday, after the budget debate.

On Thursday, watch Costa’s language on the budget deadline and whether von der Leyen offers any concrete measures on energy prices.

On Friday, look for promises of additional support for Ukraine, whether commitments on maritime security come with actual ships and resources — and commentary on how the migration showdown over lunch went.

Martina Sapio contributed to reporting.

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.

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 .”

When Maroš Šefčovič set out his strategy for engaging with China to European Union ambassadors in July, he had a warning for governments urging tougher action on trade against Beijing.

“Sometimes, it’s even popular to start a trade war, but it’s very difficult to finish it,” the EU trade chief recalled later in an interview with POLITICO.

Three months on, Šefčovič has secured a first breakthrough, reaching a deal in Beijing last week to sharply reduce imports of Chinese hybrid cars. The symbolic win marks a small step toward stabilizing a trading relationship that Brussels believes has reached a dangerous tipping point.

The agreement, which will initially cap imports at 350,000 vehicles a year, marks a significant concession from Beijing, whose carmakers have been flooding the European market with increasingly competitive vehicles. 

For Šefčovič, who negotiated last year’s tariff truce with Donald Trump, the agreement suggests his strategy of engagement backed by the threat of tougher trade measures may be starting to pay off.

Šefčovič agreed to launch the trade dialogue at a meeting with Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao in Brussels in late June.

By focusing initially on cars — an area where the EU has leverage as one of the few major markets still open to Chinese manufacturers — the Slovak commissioner hoped to secure a confidence-building win before tackling thornier questions, from critical raw materials to China’s vast industrial overcapacity.

At the same time, he worked to coalesce European governments behind a parallel effort to strengthen the bloc’s trade defenses, reinforcing his negotiating position with the threat of tougher action to bring down the EU’s €1 billion-a-day trade deficit with China.

The hybrid deal, however, is only the opening move in a much bigger contest.

EU leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday to take stock, weighing the benefits of continued engagement against demands for more aggressive action to protect European industry from a surge in Chinese imports.

The meeting will test whether a commissioner who has made a career of finding compromises with difficult partners can maintain Europe’s support for a strategy whose success is far from assured.

“You have to deal with the same partner across the table,” Šefčovič said of the risks of starting a trade war, in the interview with POLITICO in August. “So if you can avoid this, it would be much better.”

Market power

Šefčovič’s opening move was to focus on an area where Europe still has leverage: access to its market of 450 million people.

China’s fiercely competitive manufacturers have become global powerhouses, but they are struggling with weak demand at home. A prolonged property slump has weighed on consumer spending, while cutthroat competition has triggered price wars. Domestic sales of passenger vehicles fell 28% in September from a year earlier.

That makes overseas markets increasingly important. With the U.S. shutting out Chinese imports, Europe remains one of the most lucrative markets still open to Chinese manufacturers.

Šefčovič gambled that Beijing would prefer to accept limits on exports rather than risk losing access to the European market altogether.

He set his sights on the automotive sector, where Chinese manufacturers have been making rapid inroads. Chinese carmakers accounted for just 2% of both the European hybrid and plug-in hybrid markets in 2024; by the first half of 2026, their respective shares had risen to 14% and 25%, industry figures show.

The Commission was preparing to restrict hybrid imports even without an agreement. But a negotiated settlement also offered Šefčovič something valuable politically: evidence that engagement with Beijing could deliver tangible results.

The negotiations were intense, according to a person familiar with the talks on the Chinese side.

“It was very, very tough,” the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations. “Both sides hadn’t seen such intensity in a long time. No summer break, no holidays. They worked around the clock even one, two days prior to Šefčovič’s trip to Beijing.”

While pursuing dialogue, Brussels also wanted to convince Beijing that it was prepared to take tougher action if the negotiations failed.

Šefčovič had earlier flagged plans for a new “diversification instrument” that would require businesses in critical sectors to source essential inputs from at least three suppliers — a move to reduce China’s ability to exploit Europe’s dependence on its critical raw materials.

Then, just three days before Šefčovič’s trip to Beijing, France and Germany raised the stakes.

President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for a powerful new trade weapon that would allow Brussels to restrict — or even shut off — access to the European market within days for countries deemed to have severely distorted the bloc’s single market.

The proposal did not explicitly name China, but Beijing was its obvious target. 

Keeping it together

EU leaders are expected to welcome the agreement but also press the Commission to act quickly to strengthen the bloc’s trade defenses, according to several diplomats. The understanding reached in Beijing has bought time, but hasn’t settled how far Brussels should go if Chinese exports keep rising or negotiations stall.

“We’re losing thousands of jobs in industry; olive oil and ice cream won’t solve the core issue,” said one EU diplomat after Šefčovič briefed ambassadors on Sunday, referring to reported deliverables from the talks.

A senior German official welcomed the Beijing deal as a first step in the right direction. “It’s a positive sign — which, of course, doesn’t fully solve the problem of the trade deficit with China,” the official said.

But Berlin’s support for a tougher line might prove short-lived.

Alicia García-Herrero, a senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank, argued that Beijing’s concessions had been calculated to assuage Berlin, given the importance of the automotive industry to the German economy.

“I’m just hoping Merz doesn’t turn away from the letter he sent to the Commission,” she said. With the German chancellor politically weakened at home, García-Herrero fears he may be reluctant to risk a prolonged confrontation: “I worry Merz will take this quick win and run.”

That leaves Šefčovič facing a balancing act: keeping EU governments on board with continued engagement with China while maintaining a credible threat of tougher action if the talks break down. 

“I expect [leaders] to give the Commission a nod to move ahead with other trade defense measures. China may see this as a betrayal. If that is the case, we could return to conflict very quickly,” said Noah Barkin, a senior adviser at the Rhodium Group’s China practice.

The battle ahead

For Šefčovič, the challenge now is to turn a limited breakthrough on cars into a broader rebalancing of trade with China — while buying Europe time to strengthen its defenses should the negotiations fail.

“There is an argument for doing to China what China had done to Europe for years — bogging Beijing down in dialogue and process while Europe gets its tools in place. But the EU needs to make full use of the time that these talks provide,” said Rhodium’s Barkin. 

The trade chief is expected to hold a video call with Wang in January, before the two meet again next March. Those talks will test whether Beijing is prepared to make further concessions in sectors where European industry is increasingly on the defensive, including chemicals.

Another priority is critical raw materials, where China has agreed to continue issuing export licenses for rare earths. Beijing’s grip on their supply gives it considerable leverage over European manufacturers, underscoring the limits of Šefčovič’s negotiating position.

The Commission is also preparing two proposals for December: the diversification instrument, aimed at reducing dependence on Chinese supplies, and a mechanism to shield European industries and regions from retaliation.

The scale of the challenge is daunting. Chinese hybrid imports were worth €6.7 billion in the first half of 2026, against an EU-China trade deficit of €360 billion last year. The agreement offers some relief to European automakers but does little to address the underlying imbalance.

Brussels hopes the hybrid safeguard can serve as a blueprint for protecting other industries facing a surge in Chinese imports.

“We hear our industry. That includes the chemical industry, the wind industry, the furniture industry. We know where there’s a surge, and we know what hits the hardest in terms of our deindustrialization,” a senior Commission official said on Monday.

Šefčovič acknowledged the limits of dialogue in his August interview, warning that negotiations would become harder to sustain without tangible progress.

“What would be very important is to come back to say there is acknowledgment of the issue and there are already some pilot schemes which we want to test and to see if they are working,” he said.

“But if simply there will be no action, then of course it will be much more difficult for us just to talk about these issues.”

Jordyn Dahl in Brussels and Hans von der Burchard in Berlin contributed reporting. 

PARIS — Fresh off his dominant victory in a center-left primary over the weekend, French presidential candidate Raphaël Glucksmann slammed U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to ease restrictions on Russian diesel exports as a move that benefits the Kremlin at Europe’s expense.

“There is, at the head of the United States, someone who is either a useful idiot or an agent of the destruction of European strength and freedom,” Glucksmann said at POLITICO’s Competitiveness Summit in Paris. “[Russia’s war against Ukraine] targets us directly, us Europeans, and we are alone.”

The MEP also insisted that sending his far-right rival Marine Le Pen to the Elysée Palace in 2027 would be a victory for Russian leader Vladimir Putin and a step toward “the defeat of the European continent.”

Le Pen has previously expressed “a form of admiration” for Putin, and her party, the National Rally, received a loan from a Russian-linked bank in 2014. Le Pen said her party borrowed money overseas because French banks refused loans and that the loan had no impact on her political stances. The party has since paid back the funds.

Though Le Pen condemned Russia’s all-out war in Ukraine, some elected officials within her party remain strongly opposed to helping Ukraine and favor a stronger relationship with Russia.

At a POLITICO event last month, Le Pen said she believed France could provide Ukraine with military training and assistance but could no longer afford financial support given France’s budgetary constraints.

Le Pen currently boasts a double-digit lead over her competitors for the first round of next year’s presidential election, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. Glucksmann is in fourth, trailing former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon. France’s presidential election will go to a runoff if neither of the top two candidates gets more than 50% of the vote in the first round.

In his interview with POLITICO, Glucksmann, one of the race’s strongest pro-European voices, doubled down on his support for a European Sky Shield for Ukraine and the need for a more robust, sovereign European defense industry — a push also endorsed by French President Emmanuel Macron and widely shared across the French political spectrum.

“For decades,” Glucksmann said, “we have delegated our sovereignty and our security to Washington, and we are now realizing what a mistake that was.”

In practical terms, however, Europe remains split over whether non-EU countries should be allowed to tap its defense money. France is leading the push to limit the outsiders’ access to the European Competitiveness Fund.

Glucksmann also said Europe should take on joint debt to fund defense projects — a proposal Germany and other fiscally conservative EU members have been loath to consider — instead of attempting member-state-to-member-state projects like the failed Franco-German next-generation fighter jet.

Without joint investment, he said, “no European countries, including Germany, will be able to face, in the short term, the war of the future” against powers like China, Russia and the U.S.

“It’s a life or death question,” Glucksmann said.

Wars abroad, protests at home

In a sweeping interview, Glucksmann outlined how his foreign policy, if elected president in April 2027, would involve strengthening ties with countries in central and eastern Europe instead of courting leaders like Putin or China’s Xi Jinping.

The next president, he said, “should go to Warsaw; should go to Tallinn,” rather than Beijing or Moscow. The MEP has frequently criticized Macron for hosting Putin at a lavish ceremony in the Versailles Palace in 2017 and offering Xi a tour of his grandmother’s village in southwest France in 2024.

The center-left candidate said Europe needed to “leverage its position of strength” when it comes to negotiations with China, with whom the bloc is trying to reduce its €1 billion-a-day trade deficit. He also said that the EU should stick by its goal of phasing out combustion engine vehicles by 2035 and invest in electric vehicles so as not to “abdicate” the sector to the Chinese.

Glucksmann is pitching himself to voters as a French president who will confront what he considers to be strongmen at the head of global powers like Xi, Putin and Trump.

With the presidential campaign under way, Glucksmann is also looking to strengthen his credentials on the domestic front. He said recent protests by high school students — which center, among other grievances, on the lack of substitute teachers in France, overcrowded classrooms and the run-down state of several schools — are “perfectly legitimate and justified.” He also argued that teachers are underpaid.

PARIS — French center-right presidential candidate Edouard Philippe accused his far-right rival Marine Le Pen of trying to force a Frexit in disguise with her euroskeptic campaign promises.

“There is something in Marine Le Pen’s proposals that has the potential to blow Europe up, or let’s say to crack it open,” Philippe said at POLITICO’s Paris Competitiveness Summit on Tuesday.

The former prime minister — who is currently the best-placed centrist candidate to challenge the front-running Le Pen, according to recent polls — said Le Pen’s plan to unilaterally demand a drastic cut to France’s contribution to the EU budget was akin to “saying you want out of Europe” without openly advocating for leaving the bloc. Le Pen had previously called for a referendum in France on leaving the EU but dropped the proposal after her crushing defeat to Emmanuel Macron in the 2017 presidential election. Her party, the National Rally, now says it wants to change the EU from within.

Philippe, a fiscal conservative who has been pitching himself as the voice of reason in a campaign dominated by populist rivals, also slammed budget plans Le Pen unveiled last week as “grotesque,” accusing her of pitching “fantasy” savings.

Le Pen’s fiscal plans have faced serious scrutiny since being presented, with many observers saying they either lack key details or overestimate savings on major proposals like immigration. Progressive think tank Terra Nova wrote in a note out Tuesday that Le Pen’s budget presentation was “riddled with errors and contradictions” as well as “botched estimates.”

“She isn’t even able to estimate the cost of the pension reform she is proposing,” Philippe said.

Le Pen said in August that her plan to bring France’s legal retirement age back down to 62 for most workers would cost €9 billion a year, and last week she said she would lay out at a later stage how she intends to fund her flagship pledge. However, the Institut Montaigne, a fiscally conservative think tank, estimated the proposal would cost €34.7 billion a year.

Philippe is hoping to convince voters that his fiscally conservative agenda is the right path in a country burdened by a ballooning public debt and a budget deficit still above 5% of gross domestic product, in breach of EU rules.

Philippe said France needed to get its finances back on track to regain credibility on the European stage after a “loss of influence” over the past few years.

Though he currently leads a crowded field of centrist candidates, Philippe’s campaign has struggled in recent weeks to gain momentum — and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon is now challenging the former PM for second place in the polls. France’s presidential election goes to a runoff if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, and Le Pen’s strong poll numbers all but guarantee her a spot in the second round.

Tough on China

The former prime minister pitched a pragmatic European agenda with less regulatory burden, more focus on investment and a tougher approach to China.

Philippe had some harsh criticism for an already embattled flagship measure of the EU’s green deal, saying the 2035 combustion engine ban has been “disastrous.”

There was “a great naiveté toward China,” which ultimately benefited from Europe’s push on electric vehicles, Philippe said.

“We need to much better protect our market,” he added. “If one wants access to the European market, one has to manufacture in Europe. If a carmaker doesn’t manufacture here, then we have to slap high tariffs.”

The EU is in the process of drawing up new “Made in Europe” rules that would favor European producers over those outside the bloc, in response to trade practices by competitors like China and the United States.

Shortly before Philippe took the stage, European Commissioner for Industry Stéphane Séjourné said at the POLITICO event that a Franco-German deal trading stronger protections on the definition of Made in Europe in exchange for a loosening of combustion engine rules should be finalized “in the next few hours or in the next few days.”

On artificial intelligence, Philippe aligned himself with Macron, advocating for European sovereignty in the field and the need to regulate what he described as “an instrument of power.”

“What I see is an AI world making money for the U.S. with European savings and European data, and that bugs me,” he said.

PARIS — A deal between France and Germany to strengthen protections in the Industrial Accelerator Act in exchange for a loosening of combustion engine rules should be finalized “in the next few hours or in the next few days,” the bloc’s industry chief Stéphane Séjourné said Tuesday.

Speaking at POLITICO’s Competitiveness Summit in Paris, Séjourné said he hoped the agreement would help “break the deadlock, particularly in the European Parliament” on the IAA.

Séjourné’s comments come a day after French President Emmanuel Macron said a grand bargain with Germany was “imminent.”

The French commissioner said he was open to more “flexibility” on the combustion engine ban and emission rules — so long as decarbonization targets are not fully abandoned — if that helps to unlock talks on the IAA.

“This agreement, in fact, is a European agreement, and that is why it is so important. It should make it possible to green-light the IAA,” Séjourné added.

POLITICO revealed the Franco–German bargain in July. Séjourné is hoping the agreement will ease tensions in the European Parliament, where a minority of lawmakers from the center-right European People’s Party — mostly from the German delegation — have sought to reject or substantially weaken the proposal.

The IAA dispute lies between supporters of an opt-in system — where trading partners would need to qualify before receiving preferential treatment on the European market — and backers of an opt-out system in which the EU would move to exclude partners that fail reciprocity or other conditions. Many of those who back the opt-out option are German EPP lawmakers.

Séjourné called the debate irrelevant, stressing that what matters most is reciprocity with countries the EU works with.

“European public funds should be used primarily for public procurement,” he said. “Our goal is to keep production running smoothly, so we can’t expand the scope of Made in Europe indefinitely if our goal is to manufacture in Europe.”

On the EU’s broader trade policy, Séjourné stressed the need for Europe to continue to build credible “trade defense instruments” while arguing that China “rightly believes that they won their power struggle with the Trump administration a year ago on trade.”

Séjourné was also asked for his thoughts on a member country unilaterally cutting its contribution to the EU, as proposed by the far-right front runner for next year’s presidential election in France, Marine Le Pen — a move he said would be akin to leaving the bloc.

“I don’t know of any gym member who goes to the gym and doesn’t pay their membership fee to gain access,” he said.

As the United States looks towards Russia for diesel, European leaders are doubling down on their support for Ukraine.

On the show, hosts Zoya Sheftalovich and Ian Wishart unpack all the ways the EU plans to put its money where its mouth is and help Kyiv. Expect it to be the talk of the town at this week’s meeting of leaders at the European Council summit.

Next, exclusive polling coming out of Spain shows that 58% of Spaniards fear tensions with Morocco over Ceuta and Melilla could spiral into an armed conflict in the next 10 years. We discuss what this means for a country that’s heading into a snap election at the end of next month.

Speaking of Spain, we’re launching Madrid Playbook today! For our Spanish-speaking listeners, subscribe why don’t you?

Finally, Ursula von der Leyen may have been smiling in influencer videos filmed after her State of the Union speech, but behind closed doors, her comms teams was furious.

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

Articles mentioned in this episode:

• “Poll: Spaniards say Ceuta crisis could spark armed conflict with Morocco.”
• “Ukraine’s FM: Russia’s war budget makes the case for using frozen assets now.”
• “EU approves biggest Russia sanctions package since invasion began.”
  

WARSAW — European leaders are preparing to demand tougher sanctions on Russia at a summit on Thursday, putting them at odds with Donald Trump just days after the U.S. president struck a deal with Vladimir Putin to ease restrictions on Russian diesel exports.

The leaders plan to call for further sanctions and measures targeting Moscow’s oil revenues at the European Council, according to a recent draft joint statement obtained by POLITICO, as EU governments reject Trump’s claim to have secured an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.

The disagreement exposes a widening divide over how to bring Moscow to the negotiating table. While Trump is seeking to bring down U.S. fuel prices by allowing more Russian diesel onto global markets, European leaders argue that restricting the Kremlin’s energy revenues remains essential to forcing Putin to end the war.

“Russia is not interested in deescalation, ceasing fire or peace,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a security conference in Warsaw on Monday. “That is why I will go to Brussels to ask my partners to consider seriously increasing sanctions against Russia.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also called for further restrictions, pointing to Moscow’s continued attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure despite Trump’s announcement of a ceasefire.

“Russia will only negotiate in good faith under pressure,” Merz said Monday. “Following Moscow’s reckless attacks on Ukraine’s civilian energy supply, we must even tighten [sanctions] further.”

The push comes after EU foreign ministers on Monday approved the bloc’s largest-ever addition to its Russia sanctions list, targeting more than 1,600 individuals and entities. The European Commission is also preparing a 23rd package of sectoral sanctions, which Kyiv expects to be circulated to EU governments by the end of the year, according to a senior Ukrainian official who was, like others in this article, granted anonymity to speak frankly on the sensitive negotiations.

Other European countries are taking a similar position. Britain and Norway have also pledged to increase pressure on Moscow.

“It’s important to sanction Russia not to finance the war,” Norwegian Defense Minister Tore O. Sandvik told POLITICO, calling for loopholes in existing restrictions to be closed.

Trump’s election calculation

Behind closed doors, many European diplomats see Trump’s abrupt shift toward easing restrictions on Russian energy as driven primarily by domestic political concerns ahead of next month’s U.S. midterm elections.

That is the “broadly held view” among EU officials, according to one senior official.

The president is under mounting pressure over fuel prices, which have surged since the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. Having promised during his 2024 campaign to bring gasoline prices below $2 a gallon, Trump now faces an electorate paying more than twice that amount, with Republicans at risk of losing control of Congress.

His agreement with Putin is intended to release an additional 4.8 million tons of Russian diesel onto global markets over the coming months, easing pressure on fuel supplies and prices.

But European and Ukrainian officials question whether the additional supply will make a meaningful difference, saying that the total volume promised amounts to only around 10 days of U.S. demand. They feel the deal risks undermining efforts to deprive Moscow of the revenues funding its invasion.

“The reality” is that the additional fuel will have a “minimal” impact on U.S. prices, the senior EU official said.

“This is about the midterms,” a second EU official said. “He said he would bring down prices, but then he decided to go to war with Iran.”

The officials also question whether Putin intends to honor Trump’s purported energy ceasefire. Russia has continued striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure since the announcement, while Kyiv says it was not consulted on the arrangement.

For now, most European officials are reluctant to criticize Trump publicly, despite any doubts about the agreement. The EU and Ukraine should maintain their position over the coming weeks, when the administration’s longer-term intentions toward Kyiv may become clearer, one diplomat said, adding that Trump might even change course again if Putin fails to deliver the promised diesel.

Pressure on Washington

The dispute has also revived European calls for Washington to enforce its own sanctions against Moscow.

Tusk urged Europe and the United States to act together to show Russia they were prepared to impose tougher measures, while EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called on Washington to align its approach with Brussels.

Kallas pointed to sweeping Russia sanctions legislation championed by the late Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, which Trump signed into law last month but has yet to fully implement.

The legislation gives Washington additional tools to target Russia’s energy trade and those helping sustain its war effort. European officials want the administration to use them rather than loosen restrictions on Russian exports.

Some Republicans are also calling for tougher action.

“I think we need to be implementing the Russia sanctions bill,” Republican Representative Dan Crenshaw told the Warsaw conference.

The disagreement is raising wider questions in Europe about its dependence on Washington, particularly amid reports that U.S. officials have threatened to restrict Ukraine’s access to American weapons unless Kyiv stops attacking Russian oil refineries.

There is currently “no sign” Washington is following through on those threats, a NATO official told POLITICO, arguing that restricting sales would also hurt American weapons manufacturers.

“PURL is a good deal for the Americans,” the official said, referring to the NATO initiative under which European allies finance purchases of U.S. weapons for Ukraine.

European Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius, without directly addressing the reports, said Europe needed to take “primary responsibility” for its own defense more urgently as Washington reduces its military presence on the Continent.

The immediate test, however, comes on Thursday, when EU leaders will seek to maintain pressure on Moscow even as their most powerful ally moves in the opposite direction.

Victor Jack and Sebastian Starcevic contributed reporting from Brussels, James Angelos contributed reporting from Berlin, Esther Webber contributed reporting from London.

LONDON — Britain and the European Union will hold their annual leaders summit on Nov. 20 in Brussels.

U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham confirmed the date in a statement to the House of Commons on Monday afternoon.

Brussels and London want to use the meeting to sign off new agreements on agri-food trade, emissions trading, and a youth mobility scheme.

Burnham told the Commons he wanted to secure a deal on the agreements — begun by previous Prime Minister Keir Starmer — and then begin a “calm, clear-eyed, rational look” at even closer relations.

“If we are serious about promoting growth, controlling immigration, upholding our values and security, it is a conversation we must have,” he said.

“Sticking with the status quo is not good enough for Britain. Worse, it would be a major dereliction of duty to turn away.”

He added: “Our immediate priority is securing a successful outcome at the summit, and I believe we should then set up a serious dialogue about the different options for our relationship in the long term.”

The prime minister also said the meeting would present an opportunity to “raise our concerns about Made In Europe” — the EU’s program of protectionism which some countries want to exclude the U.K.

Burnham has previously suggested these future options could include rejoining the single market, customs union, or even the EU wholesale.

Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition Conservative party, criticized the prime minister for focusing on the U.K.’s relationship with the EU.

“His exact words earlier this year were, ‘The last thing we should do right now is rerun those arguments,’” she said.

“And yet, here he is unpicking the deal this country signed with the EU a decade after the referendum. He is not going to get a better deal. The EU are tough negotiators.”

She added: “Just like some people thought all of Britain’s problems would be solved by leaving the EU, some now think all our problems will be will be solved by rejoining. Neither of these are serious positions.”

In a statement issued while Burnham was speaking in Westminster, António Costa, president of European Council, which represents EU member countries, said improving cooperation was “essential.”

He said the three agreements under negotiation could be complemented by additional deals on a defence and security partnership, as well as on migration and law enforcement.

“The European Union and the United Kingdom are like-minded partners, united by common values and shared interests,” he said in a statement,” he said.

“Our security and prosperity are closely intertwined, making a strong partnership between us essential.

“By deepening our cooperation, we can strengthen our ability to address the challenges of our time, strengthen our resilience and promote stability in Europe and beyond.”

Costa and Burnham will be joined by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the Nov. 20 meeting. Negotiations have been taking place since the previous summit in May 2025, which was attended by Starmer.

This year’s summit was intended to take place in July but was postponed following the collapse of Starmer’s administration.

The European Union and China reached an agreement on Friday that will curb China’s booming hybrid car exports, delivering a breakthrough in negotiations aimed at rebalancing their trade relationship.

The announcement came as Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič wrapped up two days of talks in Beijing, the culmination of a push launched in June to narrow the bloc’s €1 billion-a-day trade deficit with China. 

The deal marks a win for the EU executive, which has been under pressure to secure concessions from Beijing. Going into the talks, France and Germany strengthened Šefčovič’s hand by calling for the EU to take tough action on trade if China failed to curb a growing export glut.

Speaking in Beijing, the commissioner said the two sides had reached an agreement that would help to shield European automakers from low-price Chinese competition. He declined to enter into specifics before EU leaders officially mandate the EU executive to move forward. 

“We have reached a shared understanding to moderate China’s export of hybrids and plug-in hybrids to the European Union. This opens the prospect of cutting China’s exports by more than a half,” Šefčovič told reporters. 

The estimate was based on projections of how Chinese exports would grow over the next four years without the agreement. In practical terms, it would mean that “several millions of car exports from China to the European Union” would be prevented, he explained.

China’s Commerce Ministry highlighted the understanding on hybrids in a parallel 16-point statement, but offered no details on how exports would be restrained. It said the two sides “will continue to strengthen communication and cooperation under the trade monitoring mechanism and further leverage dialogue mechanisms to enhance mutual understanding.” 

Šefčovič declined to elaborate when asked whether the deal would allow the EU to impose safeguards — a mixture of import quotas and tariffs — a step that Brussels has been considering. He said the arrangement would comply with the rules of the World Trade Organization.

First step

Šefčovič said that Beijing had also agreed to lower duties on European goods worth €4 billion, ranging from olive oil to footwear, a move that would save exporters €225 million. 

“It is a crucial first step,” he said. “But only a first step in the process of rebalancing.” 

The Slovak commissioner said he would report back to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, along with EU leaders, when they meet for a summit in Brussels next Thursday.

He had focused on cars as a key deliverable going into meetings in Beijing with Commerce Minister Wang Wentao and Vice Prime Minister He Lifeng.

Chinese auto exports to Europe have been booming, accounting in August for one in eight cars sold in the bloc — mainly driven by sales of hybrids. Europe’s own automotive industry is feeling the pressure, with Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz recently announcing job cuts and plant closures.

Aside from the deal on hybrids, Beijing said in its statement that it was “willing to continue” fast-tracking licenses to export rare earth elements to the EU. Automakers had been forced to shut down assembly lines after China temporarily restricted exports in response to U.S. tariffs last year. China dominates the production and processing of rare earths.

“We have reached a shared understanding to further facilitate China’s export licensing for rare earths and permanent magnets,” Šefčovič said. 

Road ahead

Brussels sees the agreement on hybrid electric vehicles as a blueprint that could be replicated to shield further EU sectors currently under strain, such as chemicals or machinery. The two sides plan to meet again in March 2027, and will hold a video call in January. 

The agreement on one of the EU’s top negotiating targets significantly reduces the risk of an escalation in trade tensions that could have led to a tit-for-tat round of retaliation. It remains to be seen whether the EU will act swiftly on the Franco-German call to empower Brussels to shut out exports from countries that destabilize its single market.

“Public opinion and the leaders clearly expect very fast action from our side. I am glad to say that the Chinese partners appreciated this very strong political argument, and therefore, we can proceed through the negotiated solution,” said Šefčovič.

Other areas of agreement include exploring easier market access for European medical devices, as well as promises by Beijing to scale back sweeping disease-control measures that have restricted European meat and livestock exports. 

While the deal will cool the most immediate tensions, a wider resolution to the economic imbalances that fueled the conflict remains distant. The EU’s trade deficit with China totaled nearly €360 billion in 2025, and is already up 12 percent so far this year.  

China’s automotive exports to the EU, which totaled €15.1 billion last year, are only a fraction of that.

This article has been updated.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission announced a new list of 46 projects Friday in a bid to diversify away from China’s grip on raw materials and establish its own mineral sovereignty.

The projects span extraction, processing, recycling, and substitution for raw materials to supply the EU’s defense, automotive, clean tech and technology industries.

Many of the projects are designed to support electrification and the battery value chain. Lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite — the five key battery metals used in electric vehicles and grid-scale batteries — dominate the list. Copper and aluminum, conductors that are used in anything involving electricity, also figure prominently.

Through these projects, Brussels wants to meet its targets under the Critical Raw Materials Act, which, by 2030, the bloc aims to mine at least 10%, process 40% and recycle 25% of its own needs, while sourcing no more than 65% of any one material at any processing stage from a single non-EU country.

The list covers 15 of the 17 “strategic minerals” under the act, which the bloc needs to deliver these targets on each one.

Friday’s announcement is the second batch of strategic projects listed under the act, after the EU rolled out its first list in March 2025, featuring 47 projects and 13 non-EU country projects. The majority of those projects are behind schedule however, highlighting the complexity of getting critical mineral projects up and running.

“With the projects selected in 2025 and 2026, we could now fully meet our European extraction target for lithium, nickel, rare earths, magnesium and tungsten,” said the bloc’s industry chief, Stéphane Séjourné. “We could also meet our processing target for lithium and rare earths. And our recycling target for lithium, cobalt and rare earths.”

With over 170 applications received, the 46 projects span 16 EU member countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Romania and Sweden.

“Exactly one year ago, we experienced firsthand why this matters. On Oct. 9, 2025, China announced new export restrictions on rare earths,” said Séjourné. Those export controls are due to expire in January.

The “strategic project” label is meant to provide faster permitting and help secure public and private finance, with permitting deadlines of 27 months for mines and 15 months for processing and recycling projects.

The Commission will also announce strategic projects in non-EU countries later this year.

BRUSSELS — The EU is facing a winter gas shortage that could leave it scrambling to replace lost energy supplies equivalent to the power used by 12 million homes, according to new reports shared with POLITICO.

The shortfall raises the prospect of a winter of soaring power bills and forced energy saving measures if the bloc fails to find adequate supplies elsewhere.

As the war in Iran continues to disrupt global energy supplies, the EU faces an overall shortfall this winter of up to 14 billion cubic meters of natural gas — around 7% of the bloc’s demand and enough to power between 10 and 12 million European households, according to a report by the Institution for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a U.S.-based energy think tank.

Those conclusions are echoed in a key report by a top European body of gas network operators that was presented to national energy officials on Thursday.

Natural gas is used widely to heat Europe’s buildings, power its industry and generate its electricity. But the EU’s gas reserves have fallen to their lowest level for the time of year since records began in 2011, at just above 70%, after high prices made it more attractive for traders to sell gas in the summer rather than store it for later use in the winter.

With gas prices at near-four-year highs and supply constrained due to the U.S.-Israeli war in the Middle East, Europe has limited supply options if the coming winter proves as cold as the last, IEEFA found.

While that doesn’t necessarily mean the bloc will run out of gas, it does mean there could be 7 billion fewer cubic meters of stored gas to draw upon. That could force countries to buy gas at high prices on increasingly volatile global markets, or even require consumers to cut demand if fresh supplies are unavailable.

The EU’s record-low reserves leave the bloc “with less of a buffer” against global supply disruptions, leaving it “vulnerable to price spikes,” Ana Jaller-Makarewicz, IEEFA’s lead European energy analyst, said in a statement. If countries are forced to exhaust stocks this year, that would also leave them with more to refill next year, continuing the feedback loop of low reserves and higher prices, she added.

The same risks were outlined in a 2026-2027 winter supply outlook published Thursday by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSO-G), an association of gas operators. The report warns that if imports of liquefied natural gas are limited or even “optimal” in the context of a cold winter, storage levels could fall as low as 11%, a baseline needed for strategic reserves that can’t be easily tapped into.

If countries hope to restore their reserves to 30% by the end of winter — or else face increased exposure to future cold spells — volumes equivalent to 7% of the demand will either have to be curtailed or simply withheld from consumers, ENTSO-G warns.

Part of that pressure comes from a looming EU-wide ban on long-term supply contracts for Russian LNG, due to take effect in January, which will reduce European gas imports by an additional 7 billion cubic meters, according to the IEEFA report. Russian gas has been historically used to offset “swings in demand” over the winter, it said. “Now Europe depends on storage to get through winter.”

To make matters worse, the IEEFA report argues, gas demand over winter has crept up in the past two years, while imports to the bloc have flatlined. That’s left the EU leaning harder on its reserves over the winter period, with net drawdowns rising to 22.6 billion cubic meters in January this year, up from 18.8 billion cubic meters in January 2025 and 17.8 billion cubic meters in January 2024.

The alternative would be to import fresh LNG, a seaborne fuel that the EU increasingly sources from the U.S. But at current prices, importing the lost volumes would cost Europeans an additional €3 billion, a 12% rise over what the same volume would have cost last year, on top of already sky-high prices, according to the report. U.S. LNG production is also near full capacity, meaning those additional imports would further squeeze supply, Jaller-Makarewicz told POLITICO.

To some, a rise in prices is more likely. While ENTSO-G’s tight market scenario assumes a “global deficit” that sees available LNG imports into Europe reduced by 20%, Laurent Ruseckas, a senior gas market analyst at S&P Global Energy, argues that reserves can only ever fall so low, “since a rapid drawdown early in winter will drive up prices,” drawing cargoes to Europe from Asia.

“There is not much demand to destroy in Europe,” he added, pointing out that the war in Ukraine already destroyed 20% of the bloc’s industrial demand. “And it didn’t come back.”

BRUSSELS — It was meant to be Europe’s escape from the web of Chinese critical mineral supremacy.

But two years after it took effect, the EU’s Critical Raw Materials Act is not on schedule. Just one in four critical mineral projects granted special status under the law is on track to be ready on time, according to new analysis shared with POLITICO.

On Friday, EU industry chief Stéphane Séjourné will unveil a new list of critical mineral projects that will receive privileged access to funding, accelerated permitting and help from Brussels to find buyers.

The idea is to make Europe a major producer of materials essential to clean energy, tech, and defense manufacturing. It’s currently a heavy importer.

But progress on the first round of 47 projects, announced early last year, offers little hope for the bloc’s ambitions.

“At least one in three mining and processing strategic projects is either late, stalled, at risk, or no longer exists, and only about a quarter are clearly on track,” said Diego Marin, policy officer for raw materials at the European Environmental Bureau, citing publicly available sources. The findings will be published in a report later this month.

Financial, regulatory, and political hurdles are blocking European mining projects, the industry says, despite the Critical Raw Materials Act’s aim to speed up the time it takes to get the shovels in the ground.

The EEB’s findings were echoed in an industry call in August, where 23 projects named in the first round claimed some were facing “immediate jeopardy,” in a letter sent to the Commission and obtained by POLITICO.

Those same companies also believe that announcing more strategic projects will create more problems. However, a Commission official dismissed that claim, saying that some of those projects had received direct funding from the Commission, and claiming the companies believe new projects would “dilute their status.”

The EU unveiled 47 projects in March 2025, covering 14 of the bloc’s 17 designated strategic raw materials—from lithium, nickel, cobalt and graphite for electric vehicle batteries and rare earths for magnets used in wind turbines, to tungsten for military equipment and gallium for semiconductors. It also includes 13 projects from outside the bloc.

These were designed to deliver the EU’s raw materials targets: by 2030, the bloc aims to mine at least 10 percent, process 40 percent and recycle 25 percent of its own needs, while sourcing no more than 65 percent of any one material at any processing stage from a single non-EU country.

Breaking Europe’s dependence on China for key metals is at the heart of the policy, a goal European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen highlighted in her State of the Union speech last month. “We are more than 80% dependent on China for many critical raw materials [and] 90% for some rare earths,” she lamented. 

A Commission official said that if all goes to plan, the EU will meet its 2030 goals for lithium, cobalt and rare earths, but results for other materials are mixed, with shortfalls in nickel processing and recycling and across the manganese supply chain. They did not give hard figures, though.

Industry skeptical

“Unless something happens that is absolutely not foreseen today, we will be far, far away from reaching the targets, even if they are quite low,” said Jan Moström, former CEO of Swedish mining giant LKAB and outgoing president of Euromines. He said better access to financing and faster permitting was key.

The EU is under additional time pressure as a pause on China’s export controls on rare earth minerals is due to expire in January.

Global think tank ODI found in June that “out of 60 projects, 14 are unlikely to contribute by 2030 because their estimated start of production falls between 2029 and 2031,” and that “three out of four are either behind their expected schedule or impossible to verify using up-to-date public evidence” — backing up the EEB’s numbers. 

A European Court of Auditors report this year also revealed that “many projects will struggle to secure supply for the EU by 2030” and that there was “no proper tracking of results.” 

The European Commission questioned the current validity of the ECA’s findings, saying it “audited a period of policy that does not cover everything we’ve done since this mandate. So the Court of Auditors had very relevant points that we took into account in our policy, but should absolutely not be seen as a fair assessment of the work we’ve done with the von der Leyen Commission number two,” said a Commission official. 

Desperate times

Since adopting the Critical Raw Materials Act in 2024, Brussels has rolled out a flurry of initiatives to get projects moving. They include a proposed critical raw materials center, for which Parliament is seeking €2 billion; the “RESourceEU” plan that’s mobilized more than €2 billion; a mechanism to identify suppliers; and plans to revise water rules and speed up environmental impact assessments. 

But industry leaders say the EU is moving too slowly. 

“I’m still to be convinced that it makes any difference,” Michael Staffas, CEO of Swedish miner Boliden, told POLITICO when asked about the benefits of being designated as a strategic project. Boliden’s subsidiary Somincor was granted strategic status for a copper and zinc mine in Portugal. 

The “strategic project” label promised faster permitting and help securing public and private finance, with permitting deadlines of 27 months for mines and 15 months for processing and recycling projects.

“In Sweden you have different authorities that can basically object to a permit process and that in itself creates way longer time than 27 months, just the legislation,” said LKAB CEO Johan Menckel, whose company currently has three strategic projects.

One is the Per Geijer deposit, home to Europe’s largest rare-earth deposits, which the local indigenous Sámi community opposes, arguing it would harm their reindeer-herding tradition. 

The local administration recently recommended that the State Mining Authority grant the concession on the condition that the Swedish company “minimize the impact on the reindeer industry,” but that will be subject to appeal from the Sámi.

Karin K Niia, a Sámi reindeer herder, said in comments that the EU will be complicit in cultural genocide if the project goes ahead. 

Europe’s lithium hope

Europe’s biggest bet to escape China’s foothold in battery metal supply chains is the Barroso lithium mine in Portugal, run by UK-based mining company Savannah Resources. The company says the mine could supply enough lithium for around half a million electric-vehicle batteries a year.

“I don’t think the strategic project stamp and the [Critical Raw Materials Act] have been absolutely essential, but it wasn’t also supposed to be. It was supposed to, in my understanding, be important to set a framework under which Europe can do the right thing faster, better, and for the better benefit of the next generation of Europe,” Savannah’s CEO Emanuel Proença said, calling it just another piece of a very big puzzle. 

Europe’s lithium-refining ambitions are also faltering: France’s Viridian Lithium went bankrupt after failing to secure funding, while Portugal’s José de Mello Group was unable to finance its planned €492 million refinery — despite both projects winning strategic status in the EU’s first round.

Viridian Lithium spokesperson Luc Pez said the strategic project label was a ‘curse.’ 

Rio Tinto’s Jadar project in Serbia, one of the non-EU projects to gain strategic-project status, was meant to provide double Barroso’s lithium capacity and cater to up to 25 percent of Europe’s demand. That, however, was suspended because of permitting issues and became a widely protested project amid allegations of corruption and environmental concerns. 

That reflected the simple fact that people don’t like mines in their backyard — an obstacle for mining projects worldwide, but especially in Europe, which is densely populated and has strong civil society.

“These projects had strategic status, EU money and fast-track permits, and it still wasn’t enough,” said EEB’s Marin. “If the supply push can’t deliver even under those conditions, the EU has to take demand reduction and sufficiency seriously. We can’t permit our way out of a market problem.”

Frida Preuß contributed to this report.