If rolled out, the feature would use the social media service’s TikTok Pay offering, which is already available in Southeast Asia for TikTok Shop purchases.

ATHENS — Greece’s attempt to lure top scientists back to their homeland after the trauma of the financial crisis has stalled after an ambitious program to reverse the brain drain descended into fiasco.

A group of professors who hoped to bring back young researchers through a much-advertised program financed with EU funds are now feeling betrayed, having been left waiting for years only to find out the program won’t happen.

To rub salt into the wound, no one from the government bothered to inform them that the scheme was dead, they said.

“All this ‘brain gain’ talk isn’t just a joke; it’s a massive step backward,” Aristides Hatzis, a professor at the University of Athens, said. “During the financial crisis, there was only one area where there was money invested: research, as the EU prioritized this. Now there’s nothing; it’s at the very bottom of the list of priorities — a complete abandonment.”

An estimated 500,000 people moved abroad during Greece’s financial crisis, which began in 2008, shrinking the country’s economy by a quarter and driving unemployment to 28 percent. Greece had experienced mass migration before, including in the decades after World War II, but this time it was many citizens with high levels of education and skills who emigrated.

“Brain Regain,” an initiative by the ruling conservative New Democracy government to reverse the mass exodus of scientists and professionals, comprises several schemes, such as offering a 50 percent income tax exemption for seven years, and is expanding to include high-skilled public sector roles.

And overall, the situation has improved since the crisis era.

According to the survey OECD Diaspora Review Greece, from 2021 onward, there has been a steady increase in the number of citizens returning to Greece, with 2023 marking a milestone year when — for the first time since the start of the crisis — more people returned than left. Specifically, during the two-year period of 2023–2024, 69,000 Greeks left their country while 98,000 returned.

But when it comes to scientists, there is still a major problem.

Star-crossed project

The current fury of many researchers and scientists hinges on a Greek government project called “Trust your Stars” — an €80 million research funding program backed by funds from EU’s post-Covid recovery fund, the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).

Research teams were called to submit their proposals, with 145 out of a total 1,241 submissions selected. Thirteen months later, after several complaints regarding the delay, the selected list of projects was finally published on July 22, 2025.

Then, it all started to unravel.

Those not selected for funding reacted fiercely, with some 203 submitted objections and calls for reevaluation. Scientists raised their concerns over the evaluation process itself, and some even submitted complaints to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.

In January 2026, Greece’s development ministry then issued a statement, saying payments of some €40 million had already been made, and that the remaining half of the program’s budget was earmarked for completion by Dec. 31, 2029. But complaints only escalated, with some of those selected for funding sending formal legal notices to the education ministry, seeking details about where the money had been spent since the program had not yet started.

Then, the final bombshell dropped: Trust your Stars was not going to receive the EU funds anymore.

In a statement published in May, Greece’s education ministry said the country’s finance ministry had decided to “remove the project during the review of Greece’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan.” It was later revealed that on the day the list of selected proposals was officially published, the government also delisted the program — but no one informed the applicants for 10 months.

“It was ultimately not possible to implement the project ‘Trust your Stars’ within the time frame set out by the RRF,” said an official from the education ministry. “For this reason, the project was removed, as part of a review of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan by the Council of the European Union.”

“As regards the funds linked to the actions in question, these were redirected to finance other actions undertaken by the RRF and the Education Ministry. Consequently, under no circumstances was there any loss of resources from the RRF,” added the official.

Shattered hopes

On July 15, Greece’s finance ministry issued a statement, saying it was trying to secure funds “to settle any outstanding financial obligations arising from legal commitments entered into at the time of the revocation of the program.”

While the statement rekindled hopes that a solution would be found, Hatzis argues that it was just a legal trick and that the education ministry has no legal commitment since no contracts were signed following the initial announcement of accepted proposals.

“What happened violates a fundamental principle, one that is sacrosanct in states governed by the rule of law: ‘reliance,’ the citizen’s legitimate trust in the state,” he said. “There may be no contractual liability, since we did not sign an agreement, but there is a political, moral and even legal obligation. Many young people turned down other offers or did not take up jobs elsewhere because they hoped they would be paid through the program.”

Hatzis added that with its handling of the situation, the government had managed to turn the entire scientific community against it — both those who had been successful and those who had not.

“If you’re a young scientist and you’re abroad, stay there! If you’re a young scientist and you’re thinking of moving abroad, go for it. Don’t wait a minute!” he wrote in a lengthy social media post.

Pantelis Kammas, an associate professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business who was co-leading one of the teams that had a successful proposal, said the program was a chronicle of a death foretold.

“The perception within the scientific community was that this was EU money and that it could be handed out hastily through nontransparent procedures. There was a sense of mistrust because this was a one-off emergency program,” said Kammas. “The ministry lacked an organized framework for evaluation, the academic community’s objections were based on these well-known shortcomings, and media that seek to oppose the government jumped on that. This was the perfect storm, so the government decided to backtrack and cancel the program.”

Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, an associate professor of the history of science at the University of Athens, said he had gathered a team of 25 young scientists to come to Greece from countries like the U.K. and Germany for a study of medicines used during the Byzantine period, which could serve as inspiration for new pharmaceutical formulations. Fortunately, they had not already traveled by the time the project was canceled.

“The most offensive thing is that the government never bothered to meet us or give us a reasonable explanation about what happened,” he said, noting the government’s handling created even greater problems with the scientific community than those that already existed.

Bouras-Vallianatos himself returned to Greece in 2022 after a 15-year career in Edinburgh, and has not regretted the decision, as he wanted to raise his children in his homeland. However, he added that while many others wanted to return to Greece, the conditions for doing so were not in place. Some of them do but only for sentimental, personal reasons, he said.

“There has been no serious policy by the Greek state to get its scientists back.”

According to preliminary statistics, research spending in Greece has declined, dropping to €1.27 billion — or 0.51 percent of GDP — in 2025, from €1.30 billion in 2024.

“Funding and low salaries is a big issue,” continued Bouras-Vallianatos. “An independent body should be set up, which would allocate funds for research and adheres to international standards in terms of evaluation. We are a small country; we all know each other, so a large proportion of the evaluators should be foreigners.”

The first thing I noticed when I gave up American technology was the silence.

My phone usually starts up before I get out of bed, buzzing every few minutes throughout the day with calls, messages, headlines, calendar reminders and social media alerts. It’s a constant pulse that averages nearly 200 iPhone notifications on weekends and twice as many Monday-to-Friday.

But on this warm mid-summer Sunday, my life was on an unlikely version of mute. After years of reporting on Europe’s push to wean itself off U.S. tech giants and cultivate homegrown alternatives, I had decided to test my own daily habit by cutting myself off from using any American technology for 72 hours.

No iPhone. No Mac. No Slack or Teams. No Google Search or Maps. No ChatGPT. No WhatsApp or Signal. No Facebook or Instagram feeds. No credit card payments.

I wondered if I would turn into a digital monk.

For three days, I set out to live and work in Brussels as if U.S. tech had suddenly become unavailable to me overnight. It was a purposefully fictional scenario rooted in a very real European anxiety: what happens if Washington weaponizes our continent’s Silicon Valley dependence and reaches for the tech “kill switch?”

Limited versions of that scenario have already surfaced. When U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration cut off French-born International Criminal Court judge Nicolas Guillou from U.S.-linked financial and technology services, he called it a form of “civil death.”

Meanwhile, U.S. export controls in June forced Anthropic to block foreign nationals from accessing two of its most advanced AI models, offering a glimpse of what government bans on access to cutting-edge technology can look like.

Such episodes feed into mounting fears that the Trump administration could use Europe’s overreliance on U.S. tech as leverage in trade fights or disputes over EU regulations. A Proton survey released earlier this month found that 74 percent of European business leaders worry such a cutoff could disrupt their operations.

In my own little experiment, the stakes were much lower. Yet I was about to find out that replacing American tools with those built here in Europe was going to make almost everything harder — and lonelier.

Trying to live without U.S. tech, I would find out, essentially amounts to trying to live without tech at all. That was partly because, like virtually all of my fellow Europeans, I had locked myself into those consumer choices.

Dumbphones and FOMO

The early symptoms of going cold turkey looked suspiciously like withdrawal.

On that first morning, with my iPhone shut off, I reached for a Nokia brick from Finland. The so-called dumbphone is the type of device now enjoying a second life among people detoxing from screen time and is also a favorite of drug dealers seeking to avoid getting busted by any tracking and data collection.

Several hours in, I realized there were no notifications on the Nokia. Nobody calls or texts anymore. Then came the shameful part: a sense of helplessness, followed by FOMO-fueled restlessness. The world had surely kept spinning at full speed, and I was missing it. For the next few days, I would still catch myself checking the phone compulsively like an addict.

“The phone aged you instantly,” my best friend joked later that day as we traded our now-standard FaceTime video calls for a regular one. It was unclear whether he meant the muffled audio or me struggling with a new-but-actually-old device, or both.

I did notice that I was pacing up and down my flat because my usually overstimulated brain apparently couldn’t handle focusing on a voice-only call.

One instant benefit from my dumbphone: no doomscrolling in bed.

It all took me back to my first cellphone at 13, when texting meant tapping the same tiny key several times for a single letter, every SMS cost money and abbreviations and emojis were not just stylistic choices but ways to squeeze more into a message.

I knew my social media life would be at risk in my experiment. European alternatives such as Mastodon have gained traction since Elon Musk turned Twitter into X. But who joins a social network when none of their friends are there?

That was fine. I was actually eager to disappear for a while, well aware of the anxiety social media induces in me and the insecurities created by constantly watching other people’s supposedly perfect lives.

Online shopping was out — but so too was paying by card in stores and restaurants. The payment networks I rely on are American: Visa and Mastercard dominate card payments across Europe, meaning that even a purchase made with a European bank card often still runs over U.S.-controlled rails.

It meant I had to buy everything using cash, which I hadn’t done regularly in ages. Fortunately, unlike in some other European countries, Belgian legislation requires merchants to accept banknotes. The hard part was finding some of those stores without the help of Google Maps, which I’d come to rely on almost as much as my credit cards.

The invisible grip

Swearing off Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and YouTube was also part of the deal — already eliminating a sizable chunk of my leisure time. But it turned out I could barely watch anything at all, or even properly test European streaming platforms, because my television and tablet both ran on Google software.

Thankfully, an offline Nintendo Switch from Japan, good old books and the legendary Snake game kept me company.

These invisible dependencies run deep. Beyond the products we use every day, U.S. systems often serve as gateways to European companies trying to take on Big Tech.

Take Sweden’s Spotify or the Estonia-based rival to Uber, Bolt. Both still heavily rely on U.S.-controlled app stores, operating systems, payment networks and other digital infrastructure.

And then there is the cloud: the data centers and servers that host websites, process data and route traffic. The vast majority of that market is dominated by Amazon, Microsoft and Google, whose infrastructure supports large parts of Europe’s digital economy.

Many corners of Europe would go dark if those services were shut down, with its economy, public administration and communications infrastructure struggling to function normally.

Working outside the stack

On Monday morning, I walked into the office with the slightly misplaced confidence that I had prepared for everything. My efficiency at work, admittedly during a very quiet summer week, took less of a hit than I expected.

I was still working from the office. I used an open-source, Linux-powered computer. I communicated by email through a Switzerland-based Proton address, browsed the web using the Norwegian browser Vivaldi and French search engine Qwant, wrote everything in LibreOffice and even tried Mistral’s generative AI assistant. And there was always a good old notebook.

I felt productive. But the workflow around me was not. The tools themselves worked perfectly well once I accepted that breaking years of habits would take time. The disruption ultimately came from stunted collaboration: meetings, messages, shared documents and the constant stream of small exchanges that keep a newsroom moving.

“It was like you disappeared,” one colleague would tell me later.

European alternatives do exist in that space. The problem is, just like for social media, they only work properly when everyone else uses them too or when competing systems are interoperable — something the EU has long tried to legislate and enforce, often against resistance from large technology platforms.

For this little while, despite technically being able to continue working, I became an outsider within my own team. I had to skip our routine video meetings on Slack and Teams, while missing messages sent over WhatsApp and Signal.

In a trade, a city and an era built around instant messaging, sending a good old SMS felt almost prehistoric — a reminder of the longstanding complaints from the European telecom industry about losing messaging and calling revenues to U.S. tech firms.

Ultimately, this underscored one of the major pinch points in Europe’s push for greater tech independence: digital sovereignty is not an individual project. It only works if people, companies and institutions move together.

On their own, individual efforts are more likely to leave people feeling digitally isolated rather than digitally sovereign.

Relax and relapse

And yet, there was something blissful about these three days.

The initial anxiety slowly gave way to a kind of peace. Of course, that feeling may only reflect that the experiment was temporary and my digital life had not been erased.

The experience nevertheless highlighted how much I had taken these tools for granted. I have placed all my eggs in the same digital basket: my communication channels, the tools I use to authenticate myself and access the digital world, my polished digital self and years of accumulated knowledge, all stored inside one sprawling digital safe.

The concern is no longer simply whether that safe could be broken into from the outside. It is also whether somebody could lock it — or empty it — from within.

Now, as you might wonder how I’ll act on what I’ve learned, I am strangely reminded of Covid.

Many of us emerged from that temporary era of lockdowns and involuntary limits full of healthy new habits and grand ideas about how our lifestyles should change, only to return remarkably quickly to our old routines.

Sadly, the same thing happened here. My iPhone came straight back into my pocket. Messages began flowing through again. My bank card returned to its usual place. Within hours, I had fallen comfortably back into the U.S. technology stack.

As I switched my smartphone back on, my screen lit up with incoming texts inquiring whether my little experiment was over. After 72 hours of old-school SMS exchanges, two different friends were both clearly eager to return to reality, sending me the same final text: “Back to WhatsApp?”

MIRROR, ALBERTA — Nestled within a sleepy community campground and roadside cafe, hundreds of Canadians are gathered to imagine a new country of their own.

It’s July 1, and they’re hosting a family-friendly event that looks like a typical Canada Day celebration. Live music, a farmers’ market, hamburgers on the grill. Except there isn’t a Maple Leaf in sight.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

And until Alberta separates, Moore places her faith not in Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — whom she views as part of a Davos “cabal” — but in U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I kept thinking this: Trump is the only one that can save us.”

Moore’s affinity for conspiracy theories is shared by many, though certainly not all, of the separatists. Resentment toward the federal government in Ottawa is longstanding in Alberta. But a surprising new ingredient has turbocharged the separatist push: Trump and the increasingly toxic U.S.-Canada relationship. The separatists are furious about Carney’s friction with Trump and the fraying ties to their southern neighbor. Some even hope the Trump administration might help their cause.

Many separatists believe Trump’s presidency makes Alberta’s independence possible, with the United States a ready customer for its oil and gas should they split from Canada. One group, the Alberta Prosperity Project, is trying to seek a C$500-billion U.S. government loan to fund the province’s “seamless departure” from Canada.

“This isn’t your grandfather’s independence movement,” says Jeffrey Rath, a co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project and a longtime separatist activist who has sought to court the Trump administration.

Many separatists see a cultural kinship with the United States. They proudly share fake newspaper clippings that highlight the province’s history of early American settlers allegedly helping to shape a self-reliant, frontier culture that remains in Alberta today. They argue the Eastern provinces are more associated with European traditions than American ones.

While some object to Trump’s idea of making Canada the 51st American state, others embrace the idea.

“I like freedom and less taxes,” says Casey Phillips from Edmonton, Alberta.

Carney and his government are now working hard to convince skeptical Albertans their best prospects lie with a united Canada. He and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who called the Oct. 19 vote, are touting a new pipeline agreement to send western oil abroad. The effort may work with some swing voters, but the hard-core separatists aren’t likely to buy it.

“It will never happen because Canada’s a communist country and there will be 24 years of paperwork,” Phillips says of the pipeline project. “It’s all lies.”

The separatists have good reason to think the Trump administration could be an ally. In January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Alberta a “natural partner for the U.S.” while referencing the province’s “great resources.”

“People are talking,” Bessent told conservative podcaster Jack Posobiec, nodding to the separatist movement. “People want sovereignty. They want what the U.S. has got.”

Rath says he has requested introductions to the U.S. Treasury Department and major financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to build a day one feasibility plan for Albertan independence, though it’s unclear if he has had any such conversations.

The Alberta Prosperity Project, however, has taken three trips to Washington, D.C., and Rath insists the group has met with “very senior level” officials, who he says have taken their information directly to the White House.

A State Department spokesperson said the department “regularly meets with a wide range of representatives. We do not anticipate any future meetings, and all department engagements are at our sole discretion.”

“As Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said, the vote is a decision for the people of Alberta,” the spokesperson added.

Bessent made his comments amid heightened U.S.-Canada tensions; days earlier Carney had argued at Davos that middle powers needed to form new coalitions after the Trump-fueled “rupture” in the global order.

That episode inflamed the pro-America separatists, as did Carney’s subsequent use of the phrase “new world order” during a January trip to China to sign new energy and trade agreements. That phrase is catnip to those who fear the creation of a global government, and more conspiracy theories quickly seeped into Alberta’s separatist movement through Facebook groups and YouTube videos claiming Carney is steering the country toward communism and against the U.S.

But it’s also true that Alberta’s grievances with Ottawa began long before Carney jostled with Trump. They have been passed down for generations, rooted in a belief that the federal government has ignored, exploited or misunderstood the province since its founding.

Today, that resentment has become deeply personal. Separatists point to what they see as federal overreach and clean energy policies that have made life more expensive and undermined their economy.

Federalists, meanwhile, are alarmed that neighbors, friends, family, and sometimes even spouses, are “willing to betray their country,” in Kenney’s words.

Former Conservative MP Damien Kurek cautions against dismissing separatists as traitors. Instead, he argues, politicians should ask why so many Albertans feel abandoned by the federation.

For Kurek, one of the defining moments of Albertan anger came in 2021, when U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office by revoking its cross-border permit.

The ripple effects spread throughout Kurek’s riding. He says mechanics had fewer oilfield trucks to repair and restaurants served fewer meals, while roadside motels sat empty and young families put off buying homes.

But what many Albertans remember most isn’t Biden’s decision. It’s the belief that Ottawa, under then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, failed to fight it.

“I was very frustrated with the Liberals, including many Liberals that told me that I just needed to accept it, that are still on the Liberal Cabinet benches today,” says Kurek, whose riding included Hardisty, Canada’s largest oil pipeline hub.

That moment reinforced a deeper belief among many of his constituents, he says: If our national leader won’t stand up for us when we need him most, the very “promise of Canada” was in question.

Many in rural Alberta feel like their communities live or die by decisions made thousands of miles away in Ottawa. But this was just another chapter in a much longer story.

Kenney, the former Alberta premier, traces Western alienation back to the province’s creation in 1905. He says Ottawa initially treated Alberta more like a colony than an equal partner, including delaying provincial control over its natural resources.

The modern separatist movement then took shape in the 1980s after former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau introduced the National Energy Program, which raised taxes on oil companies and oil exports and shifted more of the industry’s profits from Alberta to Ottawa. The unpopular program was dismantled five years later, but Albertans didn’t forget.

When Trudeau’s son, Justin, became prime minister in 2015, his government introduced environmental policies that Alberta’s oil industry argued made it more difficult and expensive to build pipelines, expand production and attract investment.

Albertans’ sense of alienation also extends beyond energy policy. Many feel their votes carry less weight than those cast in vote-rich Ontario and Quebec, since that’s where federal elections are often decided. After repeatedly electing Conservative MPs only to see Liberal governments take power in Ottawa, some have concluded federal elections have little effect on Alberta’s fortunes.

That frustration is compounded by Canada’s equalization program, enshrined in the Constitution, which redistributes federal tax revenue to help less wealthy provinces fund public services. Because Alberta’s oil-rich economy is one of the country’s wealthiest, it has never qualified for those payments. At the same time, Ottawa collects more in federal taxes from Albertans than it spends in the province, which reinforces a decades-old belief that Alberta bankrolls the rest of the country while getting too little in return.

“It’s very scary to see what they’re trying to take from us, what they’re trying to control,” says Trina, a Red Deer resident who volunteers with a separatist group and who did not give her last name. “It leaves us with a lot of uncertainty. Nothing feels secure.”

Carney is aware of the challenge ahead. Even as he has warned Alberta against stumbling into its own Brexit disaster, he has sought to address the province’s most tangible concerns.

Last November, Carney signed an agreement with Alberta to work toward a new oil pipeline and soon after, delivered a sobering wake-up call to his Liberal caucus behind closed doors.

To the surprise of MPs in the room, Carney opened his remarks by addressing the specter of Alberta separatism, framing the pipeline deal not just as an economic win, but as a strategic necessity to keep the country together.

“He was emotional,” a Liberal MP, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal party matters, told POLITICO at the time. “You could hear a pin drop.”

It was a clear sign from the prime minister that the separatist movement was shaping his thinking — and federal policy.

“This was a no-BS kind of thing,” the Liberal lawmaker said. “This was coming from someone who grew up in that province, who understands that province, and who was very worried about the feelings of alienation.”

The speech also marked Carney’s first step in persuading Liberal supporters — many of whom had embraced Justin Trudeau’s aggressive climate agenda — that pipelines, increased oil production and energy exports were essential to Canada’s economic and geopolitical future.

Carney has made a similar pitch to the broader public.

“In Canada, we are strongest when we are united — when we look out for each other and ensure that no child, no family, no one is left behind,” Carney said in a speech to Canadians and his Cabinet in January. “This spirit of solidarity and generosity helps define us as a nation.”

Nine months later, Carney has backed up that message with action. Since taking office, he has rolled back several Trudeau-era environmental policies despite pushback from some Liberal MPs, including former environment minister Steven Guilbeault, who is leaving politics after accusing his party of “backsliding” on climate action. Last month, the West Coast oil pipeline got closer to fruition, after Carney’s government announced its partnership with Alberta would amount to a C$35 billion project in a bid to boost the province’s energy sector.

The policy shift is part of Ottawa’s effort to encourage federalists to send a strong message on Oct. 19, that they want to remain in Canada. In July, Carney made three trips to Alberta, two of which included photo-ops with Smith, Alberta’s premier. Both have been framing their pipeline pact as proof that Canada still works, for all its people, even as many separatists argue it comes a decade too late.

Federalists say the biggest risk in the vote isn’t necessarily that Alberta endorses moving toward separation; polls show about 30 percent of Albertans want independence. It’s that federalists don’t show up to vote since they assume victory. If turnout is low, a highly motivated separatist base could post an unexpectedly strong result, giving the movement new legitimacy and driving away private investment in the province.

“We can all think that the worst isn’t going to happen. We could put signs on our lawn and write poetry about Canadian unity. But honestly, unless people show up at the polls on Oct. 19, we could lose this referendum question,” says Eleanor Olszewski, a federal Liberal cabinet minister from Alberta.

Back outside the Whistle Stop Cafe, the conversations at Albertans’ Day drift from claims Carney wasn’t democratically elected, to beliefs the pandemic was orchestrated by global elites, to how a federal ban on assault-style firearms is meant to stop Canadians from rising up against the federal government.

One vendor sells knives, stun batons, tactical shovels, night-vision glasses and body shields, encouraging Albertans to protect themselves. Pickup trucks and SUVs are modified to look like sheriff’s vehicles with “Republic of Alberta” decals. Some separatists show off homemade T-shirts that read “skid mark Carney” or “pure-blood warriors” showcasing a white baby in the paws of a lion.

The antipathy toward Carney and enthusiasm for Trump even has some separatists ready to defend Trump’s wave of tariffs against Canadian goods.

Keith Walker, who is from a small farming community in southern Alberta, believes the only thing preventing Canada from becoming a communist country under Carney is Trump’s trade war.

Canada, in his view, is part of a group of governments that Trump is trying to dismantle alongside Venezuela, Cuba and Iran. “That’s why that’s happening,” Walker says of Trump’s tariffs; he and a friend are both wearing Trump 2024 hats.

The separatists’ longstanding grievances with Ottawa aren’t occurring in a vacuum. Populist forces have reshaped the globe over the last decade, amid Brexit and Trump and the pandemic, and they are now converging in Alberta.

Separatism has become a right-wing uni-cause.

“It is a perfect umbrella,” Kenney says, “for every obsession, paranoia and anxiety on the right.”

LONDON — Andy Burnham entered Downing Street with a promise to give hard-pressed voters “breathing space” on the cost of living. Now he must show he can deliver. 

At the top of his list is finding a way to reduce stubbornly high energy bills — even as the Iran-U.S. war forces up prices and ministers are under pressure to cut their own departmental budgets. The new prime minister knows any intervention must make a real impact for voters if he is to turn Labour’s fortunes around. 

“You need to make an emotional connection with people,” said one senior government official, granted anonymity to talk candidly about Whitehall thinking. 

Britain’s new prime minister has already made one bid to show voters he is serious about tackling the problem: Removing VAT from household electricity bills, something he announced on his first day in No. 10. 

The move will knock less than £4 off the average monthly bill, ends after one year, and comes with a price tag of £850 million. Downing Street said it will be paid for through so-far unspecified Whitehall savings. 

But Burnham and his new Energy Secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, promised that the intervention is just a start. Cutting VAT is a “down payment” ahead of the winter, Fahnbulleh said. 

That means ministers have just weeks before Burnham’s first budget this fall to figure out what, if anything, can really ease the burden — and how to pay for it. 

Salami slicing 

“The fiscal space is going to be a challenge, and that is the case for any government,” said Sam Alvis, associate director for environment, energy security, and nature at the Labour-aligned Institute for Public Policy Research think tank. 

That’s because any intervention to bring down energy bills will have to be funded from already under-pressure Whitehall departments. 

“This government is going to have a look at the budget. Whether it chooses to do some priorities differently — that is an open question,” Alvis said. 

One option for Burnham is to slice more charges from electricity bills, as he did with VAT. But any savings could be quickly wiped out if, as expected, the Middle East crisis pushes up wholesale gas prices.

Forecasters at Cornwall Insight predict that average annual household bills will rise by two percent this fall, even after the VAT intervention. 

That leaves Burnham facing the same problems as the man he replaced, Keir Starmer. 

Starmer cut £150 off yearly bills last November by shifting some so-called green levies, used to fund a clean energy scheme, onto general taxation. By the summer, that cut had been swallowed up by higher prices driven by the Strait of Hormuz crisis. 

Nonetheless, Alvis said, this approach remains Burnham’s most realistic option. 

“We are now in a bit of a scenario of salami slicing, where you’re aggregating lots and lots of smaller bits,” he said. “There’s no one big thing that you can do that’s going to take over £100 off bills. So, it’s about accumulating all those things that you think you could possibly do in one go, so it becomes sizable and noticeable.” 

Decisions, decisions 

One of those options, proposed by the think tank Nesta and reportedly being considered by Burnham, involves shifting further green levies from electricity bills onto tax.  

It identified another £42 of savings from a yearly bill, costing the Treasury £1.7 billion per year for a decade. 

Every small cut helps consumers, insists Andrew Sissons, Nesta’s director of sustainable futures. The think tank has also proposed knocking £22 a year off bills by shifting the standing charge on gas — currently a fixed daily fee — onto the unit rate, which changes depending on how much energy a home uses. That would take a year to implement and would not cost the government a penny, Nesta says. 

But such moves must be accompanied by larger interventions if voters are to feel the benefit, he added. 

“The amount you’d need to cut people’s energy bills … for it to feel like a real difference is quite substantial,” he said. The government, he argued, should aim for a “big package.”  

If the government aims for larger changes, they would come with even greater costs.  

Nesta has suggested a one-off move to wipe out electricity debt, removing some bailout costs currently funded through bills, taking total annual bill savings to £130. But the Treasury would have to find £2.7 billion to fund that. 

“[We] shouldn’t ignore the fact that there are fiscal trade-offs. But if the government wants to prioritize energy bills, then this is the kind of step it needs to take,” Sissons added, pointing to their proposed levy change alongside the VAT cut.  

Things take time  

Net-zero policies will, ministers hope, bring down bills for good. But large-scale changes take years to implement. 

“Realistically, the only way to deeply, deeply help people is to get them solar panels, is to get them an EV [electric vehicle], potentially heat pumps in some houses as well,” said Alvis. 

This is another reason to opt for “salami slicing”, he said: To “alter the balance of electricity and gas prices, so that those clean technologies stack up and save people even more money.”  

Alex Bevan, a research fellow at the Future Governance Forum, agreed that big savings attached to the shift to green energy were still a way off.  

“There aren’t quick workarounds on whichever form of energy you choose to generate and deploy,” he said. But government must nonetheless “lock in the benefits [of clean energy],” he argued. 

The same official quoted above stressed that no decision had yet been made on how the government would intervene on bills. Asked whether the government favored a series of small policies or one big intervention, they said: “It doesn’t have to be binary. … It doesn’t have to be one or the other.”  

A Department for Energy Security and Net Zero spokesperson said: “The energy secretary’s focus is bringing bills down for good. We will tackle the cost of living to make life’s essentials affordable again and bring back hope.”

For now, Alvis insisted, Burnham has one thing going for him: He can operate in the knowledge voters accept international issues are pushing up costs. 

“The political point I would make is: By doing your best effort, you give yourself the space to have a conversation with the public,” he said. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Palantir is shifting profits from its European operations to the United States, allowing the Florida-based data analytics giant to pay minimal taxes in Europe, a new report finds.

The report by the U.K.-based Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research, a group partly funded by labor unions that researches corporate tax avoidance in an effort to win reform of global tax rules, found that Palantir’s European subsidiaries, which took in €440.5 million in annual revenue in 2024, report far smaller profit margins in Europe than in the U.S.

“Although a substantial part of Palantir’s revenue is realized in Europe, almost all of the pre-tax profits are funneled to the United States,” the report said.

Palantir pays no U.S. federal income tax because previous losses, tax credits, and R&D deductions offset its taxable income; and virtually no state income tax, with the exception of Maryland, which levies a digital services tax.

The profit gap between the U.S. and Europe is stark. In 2025, Palantir’s American business pocketed 47.7 cents in profit from every dollar of revenue — more than double the previous year’s 22.5 cents. Outside the U.S., the profit margin was just 6.3 percent. In some European subsidiaries, it fell to around 3 percent, according to the new report.

CICTAR argues that Palantir “intentionally and artificially” shrinks European profits — and therefore its European tax bills — to concentrate profits in the U.S. There is no claim in the report that such arrangements, often referred to as “profit shifting,” are illegal. Multinational companies often reduce reported profits by paying subsidiaries or other related entities for intellectual property, loans or expertise.

In Sweden, for example, Palantir reported €13.7 million in revenue in 2024, but only €1.1 million in profit. At Sweden’s 20 percent corporate tax rate, that left the company with a tax bill of just €424,000.

In its Q2 earnings report on Monday, Palantir made no explicit reference to earnings from its European subsidiaries. Instead, it highlighted its U.S. business, where revenue rose 115 percent year-on-year to $1.57 billion (€1.36 billion), and boasted of its 62 percent profit margin.

A U.K.-based Palantir spokesperson said that the majority of the company’s 2025 revenue and profitability was driven by its U.S. business. “Our tax position in each jurisdiction reflects the level of economic activity there, and we meet our tax obligations in every market in which we operate,” the spokesperson said.

Not alone

Palantir is not the first U.S. tech company to draw scrutiny over how it books profits in Europe.

In 2024, the European Court of Justice ordered Apple to pay Ireland €13 bn in back taxes, ending an 8-year-long fight over what Brussels said amounted to illegal state aid. Amazon also fought the European Commission over claims it had received an unlawful tax advantage worth around €250 million in Luxembourg — a case the company ultimately won. Microsoft, meanwhile, has faced scrutiny over its Irish subsidiary, Microsoft Round Island One, which avoided paying millions to the state after claiming tax residency in Bermuda. The U.S. software giant has denied that it is circumventing Ireland’s tax laws.

Jan Willem Goudriaan, General Secretary of the European Federation of Public Service Unions — a supporter of CICTAR— said that companies such as Palantir, Amazon and Microsoft focus on minimizing the taxes they pay, “thus robbing funding for public services.”

“Companies bidding for public contracts should have to demonstrate responsible tax conduct by disclosing where their revenues, workforce, profits and taxes are located,” he said.

Another reason for the low profits of Palantir’s European subsidiaries is their high personnel costs. In the U.K., where most of the company’s non-U.S. workforce is based, Palantir reported £173 million (€204.3 million) in employee costs for 749 staff in 2024 — an average of £230,974 (€272,803) per employee.

The report also points to Palantir’s use of stock-based compensation across its European subsidiaries, especially in the U.K., Spain and Norway. This means employees are paid partly in company shares or awards. Those awards are recorded as staff expenses, which can lower a subsidiary’s corporate tax bill.