An EU Parliament memorial for victims of the 7 October attack caused disarray and anger as well as grief in a divided European house.

It was crowned by a towering Israeli flag, alongside the EU’s.

The exhibit set up in Strasbourg’s parliament included maps showing Occupied Palestinian Territories as part of Israel and sold trinkets made from debris of Israeli missiles.

But it made no mention of the 74,200 people killed by Israel in Gaza in the past three years, after Palestinian militants Hamas killed some 1,200 Israelis in a surprise attack.

This situation struck a chord with the sole Palestinian in parliament, left-wing French MEP Rima Hassan, who tried to take down the Israeli flag in protest, and toppled over the EU one as well in an unwanted domino effect.

“My action was in no way directed at the victims of 7 October or their memory,” Hassan told EUobserver. 

Instead, it targeted “this incessant and untenable double standard, for a Russian flag would never be permitted, and rightly so, within the [EU] institution’s premises”.

The memorial was organised by German centre-right MEP Hildegard Bentele, who chairs the parliament’s Israel delegations, alongside the Israeli embassy, and the The International Movement for Peace & Coexistence (IMPAC) group in Brussels, as well as others.

“During a conversation with a member of my team, the guest artist [at the EU Parliament memorial] claimed that Palestine ‘does not exist’,” Hassan added.

Her family were expelled from their birthplace by Israel in 1948 along with hundreds of thousands of others in what Palestinians call the Nakba (Catastrophe).

But in the cacophony of narratives in the EU assembly, those who saw her anti-Israel flag protest as offensive or antisemitic had echoing voices.

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Persuading China that its €1bn daily trade surplus with the EU is not sustainable was always going to be a hard sell for EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič.  

And the early signs are that Šefčovič’s two days of talks with Chinese commerce secretary Wang Wentao, which conclude on Friday (9 October), are not going to deliver the breakthrough demanded by EU leaders when they gather for a summit in Brussels next week. 

“The message around the table was clear: the need to improve access to the Chinese market, while boosting our economic security,” Šefčovič posted on X ahead of the first day of talks. 

But rhetoric aside, three months after the EU Commission set up a series of ‘work streams’ with Chinese officials, with a mandate to address the multi-layered EU-Sino trade dispute, it is hard to see much tangible progress. 

Hours before Šefčovič arrived, Beijing rejected an EU demand for so-called “voluntary export restrictions” on its electric vehicles (EVs). 

In August, data published by Schmidt Automotive Research found that 14 percent of EV sales across Europe this year were Chinese-made, up from 9.4 percent last year. 

That is despite the EU imposing additional tariffs of between 17 and 36 percent on Chinese EVs in October 2024. 

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First published in Respekt, adapted by EUobserver

Unsavoury news comes from Russia often these days. But the latest unexpected development is the spread of a deadly disease.

Behind the mysterious death of a young woman in Siberia in early October was reportedly pneumonic plague – a disease so contagious it is considered as bad as anthrax, smallpox, and Ebola.

Local authorities in Russia have denied the plague as cause of death, but despite this, they have implemented anti-epidemic measures.

Eva Hrncirova, a spokesperson for the European Commission, said on Thursday (8 October): “Russia should make information about the plague available as soon as possible. This is what we need”.

“We had a meeting with the member states yesterday within the [EU Commission’s] Health Security Committee, and with the WHO [World Health Organization], who are in contact with our delegation in Moscow,” she said.

Russia was asked by the WHO to share “timely, precise, and exact information” about the possible plague in Siberia, she also said.

“We don’t have enough information to assess the epidemiological situation,” she added.

Nothing to see here, says Russia

Pneumonic plague disease can be treated with antibiotics if detected early, but officials beyond Russia’s borders are left with worrying questions.

Did an Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute lab technician in Shelekhov (Siberia) really die of plague?

If so, was it a natural version of the disease, or a more dangerous bacterium modified in military labs?

And what is the risk of the Middle Ages-era disease spreading?

Pneumonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis — the same one that once brought devastating plague epidemics known as the Black Death.

The pneumonic form of plague, a disease that killed up to half of Europe’s population in the 14th century, spreads through droplets by coughing or sneezing.

It manifests as severe, rapidly developing pneumonia that almost always ends in death if left untreated. But if antibiotics are administered in time (ideally within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms), the disease is treatable.

Independent Russian-language media say that Darya Shipilova, a 28-year-old laboratory technician at the research and hygiene institute in question, accidentally broke a test tube containing plague bacteria in late September, became infected and died in hospital several days later, on 2 October.

Authorities have not confirmed the cause of the woman’s death, letting on only that she died of pneumonia and claiming that no microorganisms connected with her work had been found in her body.

Some 200 of her contacts were subsequently put into quarantine with medical supervision.

Authorities also ordered a three-week quarantine at several hospitals in the wider area, and facemasks for the wider population – even for schoolchildren.

Russia’s neighbours, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, have all introduced border controls.

Russia said the epidemic situation in the area was stable, that none of the deceased woman’s contacts had shown signs of infection, and that there was no cause for concern.

However, the head of Russia’s public health authority reportedly travelled to Irkutsk to attend a meeting with local officials, while residents of Shelekhov report that people in protective suits are moving around the town.

And epidemiologists say it is simply not possible that Russia’s public health service would resort to such dramatic measures, including closing hospitals, over a single case of ‘pneumonia of unknown origin’ .

The institute where the laboratory technician worked is said to be a civilian facility that, among other things, researches and monitors the incidence of plague.

In Siberia, especially near the borders with China and Mongolia, the bacteria in question still circulate among animals and occasionally infect humans, as they do in some parts of Africa, where the disease is most common.

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• Horrifying stories from the occupied Ukrainian town are mounting.
• Two clans have emerged in Oleshky — those who support Putin can get food.
• According to experts, Russia is fundamentally violating international law and using residents’ vulnerability as a weapon.
• Putin’s tragic gift: the death toll in Pryluky rose to 22; 12 people were killed on a bus the following day.
• Maps of the day: Operation Vivaldi continues to make gains in Donbas.
• Videos of the day: an FPV drone attacked a fully occupied quad bike; a refinery is on fire.

Horrifying stories from the occupied town are mounting. The situation in Russian-occupied Oleshky, in Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, has long been extremely tense.

Around 2,000 residents have long faced a severe humanitarian crisis and isolation. Before the Russian invasion, 24,000 people lived in the town.

And the situation of local residents left behind shows how Russia, as an occupying power, treats civilians brutally and deliberately violates international agreements.

“There is a lack of food and healthcare. Since the destruction of the hydroelectric power plant, there has been no drinking water, electricity or gas. They do not even have wood for heating. Not only is it impossible to live with dignity, it is also impossible to bury people with dignity, because the occupiers even prohibit the burial of the dead,” Tetiana Hasanenko, head of Ukraine’s military administration for Oleshky, told Denník N.

Russia is also using Oleshky to shell the right bank of the Dnipro, especially the city of Kherson, just nine km away. Fierce fighting is under way over the surrounding islets. This turns Oleshky residents into human shields and prevents their safe evacuation.

According to the BBC, Oleshky is trapped by both geography and war. “To the north and west, it is cut off by the river and destroyed bridges, while to the south and east it is cut off by dangerous or impassable roads,” the report said.

The situation in the town had already been dramatic in 2023, when the destruction of the Kakhovka dam caused flooding.

A few days ago, special units of the SBU security service and Ukraine’s National Guard launched, according to the RBK-Ukraine website, a new operation to deliver humanitarian packages containing food, water and medicines across the Dnipro.

The aid totalled around four tonnes, with each package weighing 19 kg.

Footage from the mission can be viewed in this video by Suspilne television.

In these difficult conditions, heavy Vampire drones — dubbed Baba Yaga by Russians — are, according to a Ukrainian website, one of the few ways of providing aid to people on the occupied side of the river. Ukrainian soldiers often deploy them at the front for their own logistics in areas that are extremely dangerous.

Last year, the drone was even described as the most effective combat vehicle changing the course of the war.

According to Hasanenko, Ukraine’s armed forces have regularly dropped food by drone into the occupied area since March.

“They did it, but not on such a large scale. And every time drones fly over, the occupiers punish local people for it,” said the Ukrainian woman, who is in contact with people from Oleshky.

She said people try to immediately transfer the aid into unmarked containers to avoid punishment. “The occupiers believe that if people accept help from the Ukrainian armed forces, they supposedly have some connection with them and are betraying the country — which is not actually their country. And that is why they punish them,” Hasanenko explained.

In recent months, Oleshky residents have relied mainly on their own harvests, but at the end of the season they face a critical food shortage.

There have even been reports that residents were forced to eat dogs. A BBC report from late September revealed shocking findings from the town: people had learned to cook even with weeds.

Some, according to Ukrainska Pravda, caught pigeons or pheasants, while others cooked borscht “in a new way” — from eggs, courgettes, tomatoes and herbs.

“Prices there are not merely high but almost astronomical. Eggs sell for 800 hryvnias a dozen (€19), potatoes and onions for 500 (€11.90), courgettes for 250 (€5.95), and tomatoes for 200 (€4.76), because there was a good harvest,” the website wrote.

Despite the risk of being killed by a mine, residents travel along a “road of death”, lined with burnt-out cars, to the nearest town, Radensk, for food. This was also confirmed by Reuters, which spoke to people who still have relatives there.

“The choice Russia imposes on civilians every day: stay and die of hunger, or leave and risk being blown up by a landmine,” the agency quoted Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets as saying.

Two categories of people and harassment over humanitarian aid. In the hospital, where dead bodies have been lying in the basement for four months, people have been divided into two clans, according to witnesses.

“Those loyal to the Russian regime have some food, sometimes even meat and alcohol. The people they call Ukraine-lovers have nothing. The hospital director took everything from the latest deliveries provided as humanitarian aid and handed it out to his own people,” Ukrainska Pravda quoted the son of a man who remained in Oleshky as saying.

When Ukrainians succeeded in dropping humanitarian aid into Oleshky, a new phase of psychological warfare by the Russian Federation began.

Under normal circumstances, an operation to drop humanitarian aid would not attract so much attention, but according to Ukraine’s SBU security service, the Russian response reached particularly absurd proportions.

According to its information, Russian soldiers were ordered to arrange a series of interviews aimed at discrediting the Ukrainian side.

The recorded interviews were meant to include claims that Ukrainians were shelling Oleshky, positive views of Putin’s regime and expressions of gratitude. The SBU therefore urged Ukrainians to treat such reports cautiously and not spread unverified information.

According to information from the Ukrainian resistance movement in the Kherson region, which cannot be independently verified, those who received the aid faced abuse during interrogations.

According to Hasanenko, the most important thing now is to evacuate people from the town.

“Even what humanitarian missions are doing now, dropping food, will not solve their problems. I have reports in which people wrote that they had food left for two days and that this saved them. But it will not save them forever. Many people are dying there because of drones and artillery shelling. We need to establish a humanitarian corridor,” said the head of Oleshky’s military administration, adding that last winter had already been difficult and that they might not survive this one.

She herself has received reports that people have lost 10, 20 or even 40 kg. “There is one case: a woman wrote that she weighed 110 kg and now weighs 67. She has lost 40 kg and writes to me that she is dying.”

Violations of international law. During the recent UN General Assembly session, Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha spoke about Oleshky. Ukraine’s main aim, he said, was to establish a humanitarian corridor in the area and safely evacuate people who have not accepted the Russian occupation.

It is precisely because of this stance, Kyiv says, that the Russian army is retaliating by blockading the town, where tourists had before the war come for its unique natural environment of pine forests and Dnipro inlets.

“There is no supply of electricity or gas. Over the past month, the delivery of food, medicines and other basic necessities has been completely blocked. Horrifying testimonies are coming from occupied Oleshky about how people are trying to survive under a blockade imposed by Russia: they are looking for scraps of food and gathering grass because there is simply no other food,” Ukrainian website NV quoted the foreign minister as saying.

Another dimension of Russian terror, he said, is the hunting of civilians. Russian FPV drones pursue and attack people, turning even an attempt to leave one’s home or move around the town into a deadly risk.

According to TSN, Russia is artificially creating food shortages in Oleshky, selling an ordinary food package for 50,000 hryvnias — nearly €1,000 — compared with a standard price of up to 2,000 hryvnias (€40). When people have no money, they offer their jewellery in exchange for food.

Food was last delivered to the town at the end of May, and according to Ukrainska Pravda, no further attempt to bring in food was made. When locals tried on 2 June, their four cars were blown up by anti-personnel mines, killing two people.

Legally, the humanitarian crisis in Oleshky, as well as the use of the population as human shields, constitutes, according to Ukrainian website Rubryka, a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention — on the protection of civilians in time of war — and a war crime under Article 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

An occupying power is responsible for those living in occupied territory. “It must provide people with food, medical care and proper sanitation. But Russia is indifferent to all international requirements,” Ukrainska Pravda wrote.

According to the Institute for the Study of War, Oleshky has become a test of Russian dominance in an area “characterised by population decline, damaged infrastructure, chronic insecurity and growing isolation from the rest of Ukraine”.

Rather than reversing these conditions, the think tank said, Russia governs through them.

“Oleshky demonstrates that the humanitarian crisis unfolding across many Russian-occupied communities is not merely a byproduct of war but increasingly appears to be the result of an occupation system that tolerates, exploits, and sustains civilian vulnerability as a means of maintaining control,” wrote US experts.

According to Hasanenko, Russian fears of Ukrainian operations are also behind this. “I think they are simply trying to prevent the Ukrainian armed forces from crossing the Dnipro, because they could begin liberating the left bank. And people simply serve as human shields for them, while they mine everything completely,” she told EUobserver.

A tragic toll on Putin’s birthday. At least 22 people were killed, including five children, in a Russian Kh-101 cruise missile attack on an apartment building in Pryluky, in the Chernihiv region, on 7 October. Rescue workers pulled many people from the rubble of the destroyed building. According to local authorities, Russia fired as many as six cruise missiles at the town.

“This is the ‘gift’ Putin gave himself for his birthday. Killing children, killing people. There were new attacks with Shahed drones and aerial bombs during the day. It is important that leaders do not remain silent about what happened,” said Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, calling on the West to help with air defence.

Brutal Russian attacks continued the following day. As many as 12 people were killed after Russia hit a bus in the Donbas city of Kramatorsk. Putin’s regime is currently facing a crisis at the front, which it is trying to address through massive shelling of Ukrainian cities.

Maps of the day

Ukraine’s successful Operation Vivaldi continues. According to a report by the Institute for the Study of War, Ukrainian forces are continuing counterattacks towards the eastern bank of the Zherebets River, northeast of Lyman. The numerical superiority of Ukrainian forces and drones there is preventing Russian forces from consolidating their positions in the town.

According to September statistics, which we wrote about a few days ago, Russia has just had its worst month in Donbas for the past three years. The US newspaper The New York Times also charted this on its map.

Ukraine Claws Back Land in the Donbas, Thwarting a Russian Push – via @NYTimes using control of terrain data from @TheStudyofWar Link ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/Kcn0dN2wSd

— Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyofWar) October 7, 2026

Videos of the day

Smoke over a distant refinery. Ukraine continues to launch drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. Most recently, it caused a fire at the Gazprom Neftekhim Salavat plant in the Bashkir region, one of Russia’s largest refineries. It is located around 1,300 km from the front line.

A fatal quad bike ride. The Hornets of Dovbush, from the 68th Brigade, released a video showing five Russian soldiers on a quad bike coming into view of their FPV attack drone. The location of the attack is unknown.

Regulation could be the fastest response for tenants facing their next rent payment, Italian MEP Irene Tinagli said. Measures to moderate rent increases and restrict short-term rentals in neighbourhoods under the greatest pressure could help in the short to medium term.

“In the long term we need structural measures that provide a greater supply of affordable homes,” she told the European Newsroom (enr) on Wednesday. That would however require substantial investment and long-term planning, she added.

Tinagli, who chairs the European Parliament’s Special Committee on the Housing Crisis (HOUS), said residential property “has become an asset” and was increasingly attracting investors and real estate funds. These investors were buying entire buildings and evicting tenants or sharply raising rents, she said, describing a pattern seen in cities across the EU.

One such case was Maricarmen Abascal, whose eviction from her longtime Madrid home made her a symbol of Spain’s housing protests. She died in hospital at the age of 87 on October 7, two weeks after her eviction. She never returned home, despite an agreement with the apartment’s owner, Urbagestión, that would have allowed her to return at roughly her previous rent rate.

In the interview, conducted before news of Abascal’s death emerged, Tinagli described Abascal’s eviction as “a case that we are seeing in many other cities and countries across the European Union” and added: “It tells me that we need to do something.”

European tools, local action

While housing remains primarily a national and local responsibility, the EU could provide authorities with tools to act, alongside guidelines and parliamentary resolutions, Tinagli said.

She pointed to greater use of cohesion funds, “reprogramming them to address housing investments”, and more flexible state-aid rules to support social and affordable housing projects.

Work on an Affordable Housing Act, which the European Commission proposed last month, was intended to give authorities clearer criteria for restricting short-term rentals “where they are becoming increasingly invasive of the dynamics of the city,” the Italian politician said.

Such restrictions could range from limits on licences to outright bans, depending on local housing pressures. Reducing potential returns from holiday lets could curb investors’ interest in driving up property prices, she added.

In April 2021, I told The Guardian that Sahrawi activists were having their phones and internet connections hacked.

At the time, we could describe what was happening to us. We could not see the machinery behind it.

Five years later, Amnesty International’s new investigation, “We Start With the Verdict”: Inside Morocco’s Surveillance Machine, gives those warnings a disturbing new context.

Amnesty describes a surveillance ecosystem involving spyware, physical surveillance, location tracking, informants, judicial pressure and smear campaigns. Western Sahara is not peripheral to its findings.

The organisation devotes a case study to Sahrawi activists and reports that a former member of Morocco’s domestic intelligence service, identified as “Safir,” described Sahrawis and Riffians as priority intelligence targets, including beyond Morocco. Amnesty says it independently verified his identity, employment and key elements of his testimony.

The report also contains forensic evidence involving Pegasus spyware and documents cases connected to Sahrawi activism that reached European territory.

The people Amnesty examined are the tip of the iceberg. They are documented cases: people researchers could interview, devices they could examine, or targets for whom other evidence was available.

Surveillance is secret by design. Most people never learn that their phones have been compromised, and most suspicious devices will never reach a forensic laboratory.

That is why the chronology matters.

Chilling effect

On 8 April 2021, The Guardian quoted my warning that Sahrawi activists’ “phones and internet connections are hacked.” We were describing the symptoms years before Amnesty’s latest investigation exposed more of the machinery.

But surveillance is not simply about collecting information.

When a security service knows who an activist speaks to, where that person travels and what exists inside a phone, information can become power.

Amnesty documents cases in which private information gathered through surveillance later appeared in media coverage and coordinated smear campaigns against human rights defenders.

The organisation is careful: it could not independently establish the source of every piece of private material published. But it says the nature of some material raises serious concerns that surveillance-derived information may have reached media actors.

For Sahrawis, that raises an obvious question: How does private information about activists move from their lives and devices into the public sphere?

That question deserves independent forensic investigation.

But Amnesty’s report should provoke another examination — this one in Washington and European capitals.

For decades, Western governments have built close security relationships with Morocco around counterterrorism, intelligence cooperation, migration and regional stability.

The question is not whether those relationships should exist. It is whether the West has adequately examined what happens to security capabilities once they are in the hands of its partners.

Amnesty does not establish that every security capability Morocco obtained through Western cooperation was used against Sahrawis. The evidence does not support such a sweeping conclusion.

It does, however, justify harder questions.

What safeguards accompanied security cooperation? Who monitored end use? What happens when capabilities developed or acquired in an environment shaped by counterterrorism are directed toward peaceful human rights activism?

That is the line separating security from repression.

Western Sahara struggle

The contradiction is especially striking because Sahrawi human rights activism has often relied on peaceful means: demonstrations, documentation, journalism and engagement with international institutions.

Amnesty reports restrictions on expression and assembly concerning Sahrawi rights, alongside reports of arbitrary arrests, prolonged surveillance, restrictions affecting families and the dispersal of peaceful demonstrations.

Europe has encountered similar contradictions in its relationship with Morocco.

In June 2021, the European Parliament explicitly rejected Morocco’s use of border control and migration, particularly involving unaccompanied minors, as political pressure against Spain.

Yet the same resolution emphasised the longstanding relationship and cooperation between the European Union and Morocco in counterterrorism, migration and trade.

That contradiction should matter to Europeans.

When democratic governments make another state indispensable for stopping terrorism, controlling migration or providing intelligence, they provide more than resources. They provide leverage. Eventually, fear of losing cooperation can make scrutiny of a partner more difficult.

Europe has confronted another warning sign. In its response to the corruption scandal that engulfed the European Parliament, the Parliament itself denounced alleged attempts by Morocco and Qatar to influence lawmakers and staff through acts of corruption.

These remain allegations. They do not mean that every European position favourable to Morocco was corrupt. But they demonstrate why foreign influence over democratic institutions requires serious scrutiny.

European vs American foreign policy

Western Sahara remains an issue on the United Nations agenda and is tied to a decades-long international process concerning the political future of the territory.

That should matter to an EU that regularly invokes a rules-based international order.

Morocco has rejected previous allegations concerning Pegasus and described earlier Amnesty findings as baseless. Amnesty says it provided Moroccan authorities with a summary of its latest findings before publication and invited a response but received none before the report was published.

Those denials belong on the record.

So does the evidence.

The test of a human rights policy is not only how a democracy responds to abuses by its adversaries. The harder test is what it does when credible allegations concern a security partner.

For Sahrawis, however, this story is older than spyware.

For nearly half a century, generations of Sahrawis have lived through restrictions and documented abuses connected to political expression over the future of Western Sahara. Children have grown into adults watching what can happen when someone speaks publicly: surveillance, imprisonment, smear campaigns, pressure and fear.

After all these years, what Sahrawis are asking for is not complicated.

We are not asking the world to choose an answer for us. Nor should the outcome be written in advance in our favour.

We are asking for something more elementary: Treat the Sahrawi as a free human being, capable of thinking, choosing and expressing a view about the future of the land he or she calls home without fear.

It is easy to live in a democratic society, protected by freedom of expression and equality before the law, and then propose a political solution for a distant people who will have to live with its consequences every day.

But a human question should come before the geopolitical one:

Would you accept for yourself and your children a political order in which expressing your views about your homeland could expose you to surveillance, intimidation or punishment?

A Sahrawi is not a number in a diplomatic file, a detail in a geopolitical bargain or a security problem to be managed.

A Sahrawi is a human being, with a memory, a family, a homeland, an opinion and a future.

After nearly 50 years, perhaps it is time simply to hear that voice as it is, rather than as others interpret it.

Give Sahrawis one day without fear.

One day to speak without surveillance, without pressure and without wondering whether their words will reach their phone, their workplace, their home or their family.

Do not write the answer for them.

Just let them speak.

If any political solution is truly just, why should it fear the voice of the human being who will have to live under it?

When certain governments discuss the EU’s next seven-year budget, their first reflex seems to be: what can we cut? That is the wrong question. The real question is not how much the EU budget costs, but how much an insufficient budget will cost us all.  

Economic benefits of EU membership are estimated to be two to six times the financial contribution of individual member states. For every euro we contribute to the EU budget, we can receive up to six euros in return.

That is the power of investing together: European investment delivers more than fragmented national spending. And it does so with a budget of just one percent of EU GNI, while national budgets can reach 50 percent.

The EU budget is not simply money transferred from national capitals to Brussels: it is an investment that creates value benefiting citizens through stronger economies, better infrastructure, food security, cutting-edge research, educational opportunities, regional development, and security.

Ultimately, all member states benefit from the added value created by the EU, making the concept of ‘net contributors’ obsolete.

Easing the pressure on national contributions is a legitimate objective, and it has a clear solution: an EU revenue reform. 

The European Parliament supports the basket approach of the European Commission on new own resources and its proposals. It also proposed three additional options capable of generating substantial revenue by 1 January 2028: a digital service levy on major platforms (€25.2bn per year), a levy on online gambling (€3.9bn per year) and a crypto-assets-based own resource (€3bn per year).

Our position is clear: large global companies that benefit most from Europe’s single market should contribute fairly to the EU budget that makes those benefits possible.

Cutting the EU budget may look like saving money. But if it means weaker competitiveness, less social investment and a less secure Europe, we save nothing and taxpayers foot the bill.

The European Union’s common budget has not grown in real terms for 40 years. On the contrary, its purchasing power has been steadily eroded due to high inflation. The current EU budget has lost around 10 percent of its purchasing power compared to when it was adopted in 2020. 

A more ambitious EU budget does not automatically mean that member states will have to contribute substantially more from their national budgets. When amounts are compared in constant prices and as a share of the size of the European economy – like with like – a more realistic picture emerges. 

In terms of spending capacity, and without counting repayment of the Covid-19 recovery fund (NextGenerationEU), the commission’s proposal for the 2028-2034 budget would be below the relative size of the current 2021-2027 MFF at the time of its adoption.

Even with parliament’s proposed increase for key EU programmes, member states’ contributions would still not substantially increase. 

Let us not forget: Europeans benefit considerably more than their countries’ headline contributions suggest. The single market is the clearest example. By removing barriers between 27 economies, it creates opportunities and delivers growth that no country could generate alone. 

By reducing the budget, the EU and its member states will have less capacity to deliver the economic and social benefits that citizens expect. We’ll have less cohesion, less competitiveness, a weaker agricultural sector, less global influence, reduced social investment and a much less secure Europe. And this also comes at a cost. A big one.

Instead of “what can we cut” we should be asking ourselves, “how can we finance a budget that delivers more for all”.  

If we genuinely want to use limited public resources efficiently, we must invest together. Economies of scale work for successful businesses, and they work for Europe.

Siegfried Mureşan (EPP, Romania) and Carla Tavares (S&D, Portugal) are the parliament’s co-rapporteurs on the EU budget, also known as the multiannual financial framework (MFF)

Production: By Europod, in co-production with Sphera Network.

EUobserver is proud to have an editorial partnership with Europod to co-publish the podcast series “Briefed” hosted by Léa Marchal. The podcast is available on all major platforms.

Find the full transcript below: 

France has been seeing growing protests by high school and university students in recent weeks.

The movement is continuing today with a fourth day of mobilisation. According to the government, the far-left opposition party is fuelling the protests. For Donald Trump, the movement is the result of mass migration and the presence of Islam.

But what are young people actually protesting about? High school students’ anger has been building for some time. One of the tipping points came in June, when temperatures inside many schools rose above 35 degrees. Many classrooms had no fans, let alone air conditioning.

And this happened in buildings that were already often in poor condition. Add to that the fact that absent teachers are frequently not replaced. The result was what you might call a general overheating — both literally and politically.

The government, meanwhile, has accused the left-wing party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, or LFI) of fuelling the protests. Some commentators have even suggested that the movement was orchestrated by the party from the beginning.

There is little doubt that LFI is supporting the mobilisation and may be trying to benefit politically from it. But dismissing the protests as political manipulation risks ignoring problems that are well documented.

As sociologist and child psychiatrist Laelia Benoit recently told Le Monde, assuming that high school students cannot think for themselves and must necessarily be manipulated by adults or political parties is, in her words, a way of denying them their ability to act politically.

And many of their demands are supported by both parents and teachers. Teachers, for example, have long complained about the lack of replacements when they are absent.

This is supported by the latest PISA report on France: 87% of French students — as well as school principals — said their school’s capacity to teach was affected by a lack of teachers.

So young people are increasingly asking to be heard. Earlier this week, they put forward their demands, resulting in 10 concrete measures supported by both high school and university students.

Among other things, they are calling for a major programme to renovate schools, more staff, a guaranteed €1 meal at university canteens, and higher housing benefits and grants so that students can live with dignity.

So what is the government offering in response? France has opened an online platform in recent days where students can submit their demands. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said yesterday that the platform had already received more than 40,000 contributions.

So for now, the government’s message is essentially: go back to class and submit your demands online. The prime minister then pointed to the additional €1 billion he has proposed for the education budget next year.

And as for more immediate measures, he announced five areas of work that should begin at the end of October. They include tackling teacher replacements, improving schools’ material conditions, reorganising school timetables, reforming the university admissions platform which appears to be a nightmare, and thinking about how to give high school students a greater voice.

Let’s see if that is enough to ease the protests.

MEDIA-SOCIETY.COM // Experts from ODIHR and international civil society organisations examine attacks against Christians, threats to religious converts and the need for coordinated protection across the OSCE region. WARSAW, 8 October 2026 — Religious hate crimes, the safety of vulnerable faith communities and the need for stronger institutional responses were at the centre of a […]

Europe’s Green party has called on the European Commission to exercise the powers it previously used during the Ukraine war to tax the exceptional profits made by big oil and gas companies during the ongoing conflict in Iran. 

“There are models in Europe that we can use to tax these super profits,” German MEP Rasmus Andresen told a European Parliament debate in Strasbourg on Wednesday (7 October), in his call to crack down on Iran-crisis profiteering.

The Strasbourg debate came after Austria, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain wrote to Ireland’s finance minister in August calling for an EU-wide framework to tax windfall profits.

Ireland holds the rotating EU presidency and can set agendas in the EU Council until the end of the year.

Several of those in the group of six EU states already put in place energy windfall taxes since this summer, ranging from 60 percent levies on excess fuel profits in Poland to 33 percent in Portugal.

Many other EU countries oppose introducing another tax at European level, which would require unanimity among all 27 member states to put in place.

But for his part, the Greens’ Andresen told MEPs in the hemicycle on Wednesday: “I don’t understand how despite the fact that there is this initiative from these six member states, that the commission is not taking action.”

Estimates from NGO Transport and Environment found that excess profits of €7.5bn were seen by eight oil companies alone in the first half of 2026 in Europe.

The figures were twice what they had made in the previous quarter. 

The EU had reacted to soaring energy prices after Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022 with a special “solidarity” tax on oil and gas firms, said groups on the Parliament’s left.

A commission assessment found that the measure raised €28bn in 2022-2023.

A senior official representing the Irish presidency, Thomas Byrne, said on Wednesday that windfall taxes “could be considered to respond to the concern related to the rising cost of living“.

But energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen poured cold water on appeals for EU-level action, saying “corporate taxation falls mainly in the realm of national competence” in legal terms.

Andresen’s fellow Green MEP, Marie Toussaint, said taxing Iran profits could be used “to pay for the energy transformation” in Europe, in the context of difficult talks on the EU’s next multi-annual European budget.

If they were not taxed, “how can they be exonerated from all responsibility in the rise of prices at the gas station?,” said the French vice-president of the Greens group.

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• What Ukrainian officers say about the changes brought by the new commander-in-chief, Mykhailo Drapatyi.
• He has appointed people in their thirties and forties to important positions, often those who did not suit Syrskyi.
• According to Ukrainska Pravda, Ukrainians are preparing a war plan to clarify the Ukrainian army’s long-term objective.
• Russians attacked Ukrainian cities during Putin’s birthday, damaging apartment blocks and killing at least 11 people.
• Charts of the day: How far production at Russian refineries has fallen; exports of oil and oil products have declined, but Trump is indirectly keeping profits from them high.
• Videos of the day: a blazing sunset in Sochi; the music plays on; an unmanned Humvee; a robot’s duel with a drone; what the road to Crimea looks like.

Two and a half months have passed since major general Mykhailo Drapatyi became commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. That may not be enough time for major reforms. But in recent days, articles have begun to appear about how the new commander is trying to change the Ukrainian army.

Unlike his predecessor, Oleksandr Syrskyi, Drapatyi does not promote himself much on social media. He has not made a single Facebook post since July, and his Telegram profile has similarly remained silent.

Ukrainska Pravda journalist Olha Kyrylenko tried to fill this “information vacuum”. She spoke with around 20 senior officers in the Ukrainian army.

Based on their anonymous testimonies, she sought to convey how Drapatyi had changed the Ukrainian army over those two and a half months.

The army is currently performing well at the front: Russians are suffering heavy losses and advancing very slowly, if at all. The protection of military, industrial and civilian sites in the rear against Russian air attacks is worse.

The article she wrote presents Drapatyi in a very positive light. According to Kyrylenko, the first word brigade and corps commanders use to describe the changes he has brought is “freedom”.

Drapatyi gives units considerable freedom and does not seek to micromanage everything at the front, as Syrskyi did.

“Unlike his predecessor, who told some brigade commanders how and where they should fight — and even specified the coordinates where they should establish a position — Drapatyi chose a different approach. He decided to decentralise command and abandon ‘micromanagement’,” Kyrylenko wrote.

Drapatyi is not as concerned with what is happening on each section of the front. He is more interested in statistics, analyses and the broader picture of the war.

“Syrskyi listened to reports from everyone every day and could give specific instructions on how to respond to developments, including where units should advance. Drapatyi does not do this; it is the task of the commanders of military groupings. Drapatyi focuses on strategic and systemic issues,” an unnamed senior military officer told Ukrainska Pravda.

The newspaper also adds that Drapatyi travels to visit units less frequently.

After taking up the post of commander-in-chief, he made several personnel changes. Broadly speaking, he is promoting younger commanders proven in the current war to replace older officers of the old Soviet school.

By contrast, he is moving the latter to rear-area and training roles, or they are retiring.

They are being replaced by younger commanders; Drapatyi himself is only 43. For example, Denys Prokopenko, a general with a far-right past, was put in charge of the important area near Dobropillia, where Russians are currently exerting the greatest pressure, despite being only 35.

Drapatyi has also rehabilitated some commanders who fell out of favour with the command under Syrskyi because of their criticism. One example is Serhii Sobko (42), who resigned last year from command of a brigade after the high command refused to send him reinforcements and would not allow his units to withdraw from a threatened area. Drapatyi appointed him as his deputy.

Emil Ishkulov (39), meanwhile, was sidelined after criticising the previous command over the campaign in the Kursk region, which ultimately ended with the withdrawal of Ukrainian soldiers. Drapatyi made him commander of the 11th Army Corps.

Ukrainska Pravda mentions an example from early summer under Syrskyi, when the 7th Corps was moved from Dobropillia to the Belarusian border in the Volyn region. The command said this would deter a possible Russian attack from Belarus.

After taking office, Drapatyi reversed this decision and sent the corps to defend the Zaporizhzhia region. The units themselves said they had had nothing to do at the Belarusian border for two weeks.

Ukrainska Pravda writes that a war plan is being prepared under Drapatyi. It is intended to define the Ukrainian army’s real long-term objectives and how to achieve them in this war.

“We need a grand strategy for 30 years, so that we as commanders know where we should be heading,” one of the corps commanders said, according to Ukrainska Pravda. The National Security and Defence Council is currently working on the plan.

Journalist Kyrylenko says this is probably the first such plan. However, the Thornpill account wrote that similar plans had already been prepared in 2017 under General Valerii Zaluzhnyi.

The Kyiv Post also published an article headlined that Ukraine’s army is winning under Drapatyi.

“Drapatyi is reshaping Ukraine’s armed forces to focus on drone-intensive warfare, decentralised command and younger combat commanders,” it wrote.

However, the steps taken by the previous command have also had a major influence on the current situation. For example, Operation Vivaldi, through which Andrii Biletskyi’s 3rd Army Corps has been liberating territory north of Lyman, has been under way since May, although its results are only being published now.

Ukrainska Pravda also recalls that Syrskyi handed Drapatyi an army in a better position than the one he had “inherited” in 2024 from the dismissed General Zaluzhnyi. At that time, the Russians were advancing rapidly and captured Avdiivka, for example.

The current commander-in-chief had an “easier start” in July.

“Drapatyi took office at a time when the front had been relatively stabilised, with Ukrainian armed forces even holding the advantage on the battlefield in some places. According to Ukrainska Pravda’s sources, the corps reform initiated by Syrskyi played a key role in this. Not all corps managed to develop into strong units, but the 3rd Corps, for example, substantially strengthened and literally retrained the relatively weak brigades it had received for combat duty,” Ukrainska Pravda added.

Nevertheless, several Western analysts shared the current reports about Drapatyi’s initial changes, especially his granting greater freedom to commanders. “It is a pity that Syrskyi was not replaced by Drapatyi much earlier — Ukraine would be in a better position now,” said Jakub Janovský, an OSINT analyst at Oryx, for example.

Russia again attacked Ukraine overnight into Wednesday. This time, it deployed at least five ballistic missiles, nearly 50 cruise missiles and 130 drones, 46 of them jet-powered. The fairly respectable 83-percent interception rate for jet-powered drones is noteworthy.

However, Russian missiles and drones also struck several locations and residential buildings. “Today, on Putin’s birthday, the Russian army ‘gave’ him the destruction of a residential building in Pryluky, in the Chernihiv region. It was an ordinary five-storey building. Unfortunately, according to current information, five people were killed and 26 injured, including five children. People may still be trapped beneath the rubble,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The Russian attack damaged five apartment blocks in Dnipro and four in the city of Kremenchuk. This is what the situation in Kremenchuk looked like.

This is my hometown in the video, and today it suffered too. This is Kremenchuk – a city in Ukraine whose name doesn't pop up in news feeds very often, but tonight it got hit as well. One of the missiles hit a courtyard between high-rises: windows, cars parked in the yards, and… pic.twitter.com/PeeUkU19dZ

— Katerina Horbunova (@blue_eyedKeti) October 7, 2026

Overall, according to Zelensky, at least 11 people were killed and dozens were injured.

As can be seen in these photographs, a ballistic missile fell in Kyiv but did not explode; Ukrainian bomb disposal experts tried to render it harmless.

An unexploded Russian Iskander 9M723 ballistic missile lies among residential buildings in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district, where Ukrainian bomb disposal teams are conducting a complex operation to neutralize it.

The missile was launched at Kyiv during last night’s Russian attack. pic.twitter.com/1MKddYRJyO

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 7, 2026

Chart of the day

Ukrainians claim that their attacks on refineries have put more than 50 percent of Russia’s oil-processing capacity out of action. Michael Bohnert, an analyst at the RAND think tank, wrote on X that this was not entirely accurate. According to his calculations, current fuel production at Russian refineries stands at 3.22 million barrels per day. Before the war, it was usually around 5.5 million barrels per day, meaning a fall of about 40 percent.

There has also been a monthly decline of 0.36 million barrels per day, apparently owing to the latest attacks on refineries, for example in Moscow and Samara.

Ukraine says its strikes have taken out more than half of Russia’s refining capacity. Live crude runs do not show that.

My bottom-up tracker (41 refineries plus the mini-tail, version 2) puts national throughput at about 3.22 mb/d as of 6 Oct. That is down 0.36 mb/d over the… pic.twitter.com/RhXrzGlnJS

— Michael Bohnert (@mbohnert) October 6, 2026

According to Bohnert, this is the third time Ukrainians have managed to reduce Russian oil processing so substantially. There was a drop of around 40 percent last autumn and in July this year. “3.2m barrels per day is roughly the point at which things start becoming uncomfortable for Moscow,” he wrote.

Unlike last year, however, Russia is helping itself through imports. The country, once the world’s third-largest fuel exporter, has sharply curtailed its exports. At the same time, it is partially making up for the shortfall in domestic production through imports.

South Korea is also helping it in this respect. According to information from the Guardian, 176,000 tonnes of fuel, mainly diesel, arrived from South Korea at Russian ports in the Far East in July and August. Seven tankers made a total of 14 voyages to Russia. Three of the tankers are on the European Union’s sanctions list.

Overall, Russia imported 368,000 tonnes of petroleum products by sea in August, a third of them from South Korea. The country, which once supported Ukraine not only verbally but also through non-military aid, is now helping Russia cope with Ukrainian attacks on refineries.

High petrol prices are also working in Russia’s favour. Analysts at the Kyiv School of Economics Institute published a chart showing that Russia exported the least oil and petroleum products in August since 2018. As the final bar in the left-hand chart shows, this was mainly due to a decline in petroleum-product exports.

Nevertheless, revenue from sales remains at last year’s level (the purple line in the left-hand chart). This is mainly due to the rise in their prices on global markets as a result of the US-Israeli war against Iran.

1/9 🛢️ Russia’s crude oil and oil product exports fell to their lowest level since 2018 in August. Despite higher prices, oil export revenues increased by just $0.3B to $13.9B. September Russian Oil Tracker by @KSE_Institute 👉 https://t.co/Rk4hd5OiA6 pic.twitter.com/KdVMj4QjVV

— KSE Institute 🇺🇦 (@KSE_Institute) October 6, 2026

Videos of the day

This was the sunset seen by residents of the Russian coastal city of Sochi on Tuesday. A tanker sailing under the Liberian flag was burning close to shore. Footage showed that it was ablaze along virtually its entire length.

The Russian Rybar channel wrote that it had been hit by naval drones. It was therefore probably a Ukrainian attack on Russia’s shadow fleet, which exports oil around the world and thereby finances the war.

The oil-laden tanker was travelling from Novorossiysk to India. Local residents reported an explosion and feared that oil would spill into the sea.

🔥🚢 A dramatic view from the Russian Sochi right now, where the burning oil tanker off the port has turned into a massive wall of fire pic.twitter.com/oFKrLRTIuw

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 6, 2026

This is a rather surreal continuation of the previous video. A man is playing guitar on the promenade in Sochi while an oil tanker burns behind him, sending up an enormous plume of smoke.

Recorded on October 6, 2026, in Sochi, Russia. A street musician continues to play music on the waterfront while an oil tanker burns offshore in the background. pic.twitter.com/5lcfiOqZD2

— Директор✖️Кладбища (@directklad) October 7, 2026

Ukrainians are experimenting with remotely controlled vehicles. This video shows how a US Humvee off-road vehicle was converted into a remotely operated ground drone. It was loaded with wooden beams, which it delivered to soldiers building fortifications.

A Ukrainian HMMWV converted into a remotely controlled UGV is being used for frontline logistics, delivering timber for the construction and reinforcement of defensive positions. pic.twitter.com/NxQnuoa6Xf

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 7, 2026

This video shows a duel between a Ukrainian robot and a Russian FPV drone. In this case, the robot ultimately won, neutralising the drone by ramming it.

A Ukrainian ground robotic system rammed and destroyed a Russian FPV drone on the Pokrovsk axis. The UGV, operated by the 25th Sicheslav Airborne Brigade of Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps, was returning from a combat mission when the FPV began pursuing it. The operators… pic.twitter.com/dIPGuEMVVC

— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) October 6, 2026

Ukrainian attacks on the land route to Crimea continue. This is what one of the roads to Crimea currently looks like, with numerous damaged and destroyed lorries visible.

This is only part of the road now referred to as the land corridor to Crimea. Another road has turned into a "road of death" for the Russians. pic.twitter.com/D0fKAXQdGo

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) October 6, 2026

The EU should not accept any cuts to the proposed allocation of funds to defence and security in the next long-term EU budget, German MEP Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann said in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

“Without security, we have no discussion anymore about anything,” the chair of the European Parliament’s committee on defence and security (SEDE) told the European Newsroom (enr) on the sidelines of Parliament’s plenary session.

The European Commission has proposed €131 billion for investment in defence, security and space under the European Competitiveness Fund in the EU’s 2028–2034 budget. This represents a five-fold increase compared with the current budget period.

Asked what compromise she would accept on the size, funding or allocation of defence spending to secure a budget agreement, Strack-Zimmermann said: “We need everything without compromises.”

The next long-term budget requires unanimous agreement among EU member states and the European Parliament’s consent.

Support for Ukraine

Strack-Zimmermann accused Russia of trying to deter European leaders from visiting Kyiv and undermine their support for Ukraine following attacks during German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s visit last Sunday.

Asked about accelerating deliveries to Ukraine to defend itself against Russia’s war of agression, Strack-Zimmermann said funding was available but action required approval from national governments.

Ukraine needed humanitarian, military and economic assistance, including money to produce more weapons to protect its people, she said.

All in on SAFE

Strack-Zimmermann urged countries to move faster on joint defence procurement, backing the EU’s Security Action for Europe (SAFE) instrument.

SAFE provides up to €150 billion in competitively priced loans to member states aimed at accelerating large-scale investment in critical capabilities.

“We have more than 150 different weapons systems and to protect Europe we need this SAFE program,” the German politician said.

She said the programme had attracted interest both within and outside the EU. According to the European Commission, 19 EU member states have submitted defence investment plans, such as France, Italy and Poland, but not Germany.

The first non-European country to participate in SAFE was Canada, which concluded an agreement with the EU in June.

Every major technological shift reshapes not just the economy but the tax system that pays for it. When big corporations emerged, corporate and payroll taxes followed. When mass car ownership took hold, fuel duties emerged to pay for the roads it required. 

As AI shifts work from people to machines, it will force a rethink of who gets taxed, on what, and where. Nowhere is that question more urgent than in Europe, which funds the world’s most comprehensive welfare states primarily through taxes on work.

Taxes on work make up 51.5 percent of all tax revenue in the EU-27, according to the European Commission’s latest Taxation Trends data — a share that rose in 2024. These charges are taken straight from the payslip. They’re hard to avoid, and scale with employment.

AI, by replacing human work with software and machines, eats away at exactly this tax base. 

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that around 40 percent of jobs worldwide are exposed to AI. If that leads to fewer workers, it will also mean fewer payslips, pension contributions and social charges, weakening the revenue streams that fund Europe’s pension and healthcare systems. This is not a distant problem; the costs are already mounting.

Shift the burden to corporate profits

The obvious response is to shift more of the tax burden onto corporate profits, which will increasingly reflect the gains firms make by deploying AI instead of hiring workers.

Unlike a tax on machines and equipment themselves, a profit tax falls mostly on excess profits and need not distort investment. The case for shifting weight from payroll taxes to profits is strong and strengthens as AI replaces more workers with machines.

But profits, unlike payrolls, move. A company can locate its intellectual property in a low-rate jurisdiction — a pattern Europe knows well from decades of profits routed through Ireland and Luxembourg — and ensure that profits are booked far from where the jobs are lost. It is how the world’s largest technology and AI firms already operate.

Two-pillar answer

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) Inclusive Framework was designed to address exactly this: profits shifted across jurisdictions to avoid tax, and e-commerce allowed sales where firms have no physical presence. AI makes these reforms more urgent. 

Pillar One of the framework put forward by the Paris-based wealthy nations’ club addresses where a corporation is taxed. It shifts partial taxing rights for the largest multinationals away from where they are headquartered and toward where their customers and users are located. 

Still under negotiation, it would apply only to a handful of the largest firms, but many AI companies would qualify. 

These firms are concentrated in a select number of countries, very few of them European, but the displacement they cause, and the public services that displaced workers will require, will weigh heavily on European budgets.

Pillar Two of the OECD framework introduces a global minimum corporate tax of 15 percent on multinationals with revenues above €750m.

The EU moved first and furthest: Council Directive (EU) 2022/2523 made the minimum tax binding across the Union from 2024, and 22 of the 27 member states now apply it in full. The United States, notably, has not implemented the rules. 

Politics is undermining the fix

But the obstacles are real. US ratification of the OECD proposals is unlikely, and many of the largest companies are headquartered there. 

The pressure is already reshaping Europe’s own rules: under the G7’s June 2025 ‘side-by-side’ agreement, US-parented groups would be exempt from the EU’s minimum-tax rules: a carveout the European Commission confirmed in January 2026 and which several member states consider legally fragile. 

The Commission also dropped its proposed EU digital levy under US trade pressure, leaving a patchwork of national digital services taxes in France, Italy, Spain, Austria, and elsewhere.

Such exceptions and carveouts show that big-power politics can hollow out the framework. These reforms were designed to address the tax challenges for an AI-economy. They were good policy then. They are fiscal necessities now. Fairer corporate taxation will not be enough, but it is a start. 

Europe’s choice

The EU has instruments on the table, the BEFIT common corporate tax base and the proposed Corporate Resource for Europe, but both remain politically contested.

European governments that fail to act will be managing the social costs of technological disruption with a tax system built for the industrial age, while the profits that fund their rivals accumulate beyond their reach.

Even if Europeans work less, their needs for health care, pensions, and consumption remain. As wage-based contributions shrink, Europe must shift more of the tax burden onto corporate profits and close off the routes that let those profits move beyond the reach of the states bearing the costs of automation. 

Productivity gains may soften the arithmetic; they will not repeal it. The tax base must follow the economy. 

Production: By Europod, in co-production with Sphera Network.

EUobserver is proud to have an editorial partnership with Europod to co-publish the podcast series “Briefed” hosted by Léa Marchal. The podcast is available on all major platforms.

Find the full transcript below: 

Chinese carmakers are taking an increasing share of the European car market, particularly when it comes to electric vehicles. Why are European carmakers now opening their factories to their Chinese competitors?

Until recently, the main concern in Europe was Chinese-made electric vehicles being imported into the EU. That’s why, two years ago, the EU imposed hefty tariffs on Chinese electric cars.

But Chinese manufacturers have found another way into the European market: they are setting up production here. Some are building factories of their own. Others are entering partnerships with European carmakers and using their existing production sites.

That’s the case with Stellantis and Chinese manufacturer Leapmotor. And now Dongfeng is also negotiating to produce cars at the French plant of Rennes La Janais. Because by moving production to Europe, Chinese manufacturers may be losing one of their main advantages, which is cheap labour.

But low labour costs are only one part of their competitive edge.

Chinese manufacturers also continue to benefit from state support. And setting up production in Europe doesn’t necessarily mean building brand-new factories.

In many cases, Chinese companies are looking to partner with European manufacturers and use factories that are already there — factories that are no longer operating at full capacity. That means they can save significantly on investment costs. And they can also rely on their European partners’ existing sales and distribution networks.

So how big is this Chinese presence in Europe becoming? For 2028, there are already 12 projects involving Chinese carmakers setting up production in Europe. Several are in Spain, with others in France, Belgium, Slovakia, Hungary, Sweden and Austria.

Now, why would European manufacturers allow their Chinese competitors to produce cars in their own factories? Part of the answer is that European carmakers are struggling to keep up in electric vehicles sells. And that is contributing to factory closures and job losses.

European manufacturers have to meet EU targets on average CO2 emissions each year. And producing more electric vehicles is necessary to meet those requirements.

So partnerships with Chinese manufacturers can serve two purposes: they can help European companies fulfilling their green cars objectives, while also keeping existing factories and jobs running.

Though there is a longer-term risk for European manufacturers. The more Chinese companies establish themselves in Europe, the more competitive pressure they could put on European brands — potentially even leading to takeovers. That has happened before: Volvo Cars, for example, was acquired by Chinese group Geely in 2010. 

In Germany, carmakers are for now refusing to open the doors of their production sites to the Chinese. But they do have partnerships with Chinese companies to produce vehicles in China, where they can benefit from lower production costs. That explains why they were very much opposed to imposing tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.

But the situation is now changing. Volkswagen closed its Dresden factory last year, and other German plants are also facing closure risks. Germany’s car industry is therefore increasingly joining calls for stronger protection against Chinese competition.

And that brings us back to the Franco-German paper that is circulating in Brussels, which calls for measures to restrict Chinese access to the European market.

Because this debate goes well beyond cars. The EU is increasingly concerned about Chinese competition and dependence in a range of strategic industries. This will be discussed next week, when EU leaders meet in Brussels.

The European Commission could also present a new so-called “diversification” tool, either at the summit or around it. One possibility would be to require companies not to rely exclusively on China for certain critical materials. Something which could trigger what we call a trade war. I’ll be following that very closely!

Media-Society.com // Presented in Warsaw, the OSCE chairpersonship’s plan turns established human rights obligations into practical measures for detention, investigation and survivor support Switzerland presented an 18-point roadmap for preventing and eradicating torture at the Warsaw Human Dimension Conference on Tuesday, setting out practical measures for police stations, prisons, courts and independent monitoring bodies across […]

The Commission is “going a bit too fast” in unlocking €4.2bn and restarting the Erasmus+ student exchange programme in Hungary, according to budget committee MEPs.

The EU froze its financial assistance to Hungary in 2022 due to concerns about rule of law breaches and misappropriation of funds by Viktor Orbán’s government.

Green MEP from Germany, Daniel Freund, told EUobserver he “would have taken a more staged approach to not release everything in one go,” admitting that the reform agenda of Péter Magyar’s new government still has some way to go.

The commission’s proposal to unlock part of the €16.4bn in funds available to Hungary requires the green-light from the EU council, representing member states, one month after its announcement on 23 September.

Freund said that he was “happy about the changes we have seen” following his visit to Hungary on 1 October.

“Hungary needs this money, I also want Hungarians to have this money, since for years it was just going to Orbán and his cronies,” he said on Tuesday (6 October).

However, Freund and other MEPs on the fact-finding mission found that “the same risks of corruption exist,” and “there are new laws that are still fragile in their implementation,” French socialist and democrat Jean-Marc Germain told reporters in Strasbourg on Monday. 

The Parliament can serve as a pressure point, although the decision on funds is largely in the hands of the commission and the council.

“There is no real political pluralism in Hungary, which may in the long run be a reason for worrying,” he said, adding that most companies are still owned by the same few people as during Orbán’s rule.

The tone is different on the other side of the political spectrum.

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European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has joined MEPs in urging the bloc’s governments not to gut the EU’s next seven-year budget, as talks on spending reach a critical phase. 

“I would like to caution against large cuts. It would risk cutting deep into critical priorities that we all together have agreed on,” von der Leyen told MEPs during a speech in Strasbourg on Tuesday (6 October), ahead of an EU summit on 15 October.

The commission has proposed a budget worth just under €2 trillion, equivalent to 1.26 percent of the EU’s gross national income, a small increase on the previous seven year spending plan. But the so-called ‘frugal’ group of countries, led by Germany, have demanded hefty cuts, complaining that they are contributing too much. 

“Having no new financial framework is by far the most financially advantageous solution for Germany,” chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday. 

But 17 EU countries from Southern and Eastern Europe signed a joint letter last week, demanding that farmers’ subsidies via the Common Agricultural Policy are maintained, as well as spending across the EU’s poorest regions, known as cohesion policy 

During a press conference on Tuesday, Siegfried Muresan, the Romanian centre-right MEP who is co-leading parliament’s negotiating team on the seven-year budget with Portuguese socialist and democrat Claudia Tavares, said that there was “still time” for the Irish presidency to avoid proposing “unjustified cuts” that “would make Europe weaker and severely undermine the institutional cooperation between parliament and council.” 

Though Muresan conceded that governments did not want to increase their national contributions, “there is a way out”, he said. 

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Recent reports and videos of alleged recruitment irregularities are fuelling tensions between mobilisation authorities and Ukrainian society, while raising questions about the oversight and implementation of military recruitment.

Every day, children are killed in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Where are the outraged headlines?

The number of children killed in Gaza since Israel started its onslaught, following the Hamas attack on 7 October, 2023, is estimated at more than 21,600. 

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says that since the so-called Israel-Hamas ceasefire, an average of “at least” one child a day – 300 children over 300 days – has been killed in the enclave. 

Children, toddlers, and babies are being killed in their homes, schools, hospitals, shelters, and on roads marked by displacement. They are also dying because the basic structures that should protect them – family, healthcare, education, food, water, and refuge – have been systematically destroyed.

Where are the urgent statements from EU and world leaders?

EU governments continue to authorise arms transfers to Israel despite rules which require governments to deny licences where there is a risk that military equipment will be used for serious violations of international humanitarian law. 

Every EU member state is also bound by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the EU’s own treaty, which requires the union to promote children’s rights. 

Why are these international rules and domestic commitments not being applied to the children of Gaza?

Children rights beyond Ukraine

The EU does care for children. In Ukraine, the EU treats children as individuals rather than statistics: it convenes coalitions, compiles names, traces families, imposes sanctions, creates mechanisms for return and makes the fate of children a central diplomatic demand. 

In her State of the Union address last month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – a proud mother and grandmother – introduced and praised the courage of Sasha, a six-year-old Ukrainian girl who lost a leg in a Russian missile strike in Ukraine but has now returned to her beloved gymnastics.

Von der Leyen quite rightly made the suffering of Ukrainian children intimate and personal. It is more than time she did the same for Palestinian children.

But let’s not only blame political leaders for their indifference, their lack of historical knowledge of Palestine’s occupation and their limited understanding of Palestinian calls for justice. 

Parts of the legacy media must also own up to their responsibility in normalising the abhorrent.

Powerful mainstream media have preferred to “repeat Israeli propaganda and sometimes simply cut and paste IDF press releases” rather than accept the analysis of Palestinian journalists, writers and scholars, writes Bhakti Shringarpure.

Her criticism reflects a wider ongoing discussion on the sourcing and framing of Gaza coverage, with studies spotlighting how Western media has described Israeli suffering by using emotive language around 11 times more often than Palestinian suffering. References to Israel’s “right to defend itself” appear roughly five times as frequently as references to Palestinian rights.

Also, as the immediate shock of the bombardment recedes – but the killing continues – Gaza has dropped down the news cycle. 

Assal Rad,  author of “Don’t Say Palestine: How the Media Manufactured Consent for Genocide”, describes the logic: “The façade of a ceasefire has created the space to cover it less. In reality, the conditions on the ground for Palestinians in Gaza have not changed.”

It is also less politically costly for leaders and media to focus on settler violence and settlement in the occupied West Bank, since it can be described as the work of “extremists” rather than of the Israeli government.

EU silence

Our lack of a strong reaction to what is happening is Gaza is also the story of how bystander societies can watch, absorb, and rationalise horrors – and move on. 

Additionally, the killing of Palestinian children is preceded by their political “unchilding”, a process which Palestinian scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian says begins before the missile falls, when Palestinian children are imagined not as children with futures but as demographic threats, future militants, or extensions of an armed group. 

Their age, instead of guaranteeing greater protection, becomes entangled with suspicion.

Even amid such savage violence, some people are not giving up. 

Their bosses may still look the other way, but EU Staff for Peace, which holds vigils in front of the European Commission and the EU Council every Thursday, has held gatherings to read out the names of children killed in Gaza, thereby according individuality to children whom the political and media systems have reduced to numbers.

As one EU staffer told me: “We only have a time slot of three hours and the last time we only managed to read out the names of children up to three years old. It took us one hour to read out the names of Palestinian babies under one-year old.”

Hind Rajab, who was five, was killed on 29 January 2024 by Israeli fire on the car in which she was trapped. Her body was found 12 days later alongside the bodies of members of her family and two paramedics who had gone to rescue her.

Israel has acknowledged firing on the car but has not admitted that her killing was unlawful, citing an ongoing investigation. In other words, there has been no accountability.

The obscenity is not only that Hind was killed, but that by now the killing of children in Gaza has become a familiar event. 

The shame is that so many of us have constructed a hierarchy in which some children summon the world’s full moral and political force, while others are ignored.

Omar El Akkad, in his seminal book says that “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.” Given the cowardice on display over the last three years, I sometimes wonder if there will ever really be a true global moral reckoning.

• Russia continues to pressure cities, while the first autonomous counter-drone turrets have been deployed in Kyiv.
• Ukraine is maintaining pressure on Russia’s oil industry, reporting that it has disabled 51 percent of refinery capacity.
• Russia still sees a large pocket of encircled Ukrainians in Kharkiv region, but no such pocket exists.
• Ukraine says it destroyed a Russian Su-34 and Su-35 on the ground. Satellite imagery provides no clear evidence.
• Maps of the day – Kharkiv region
• Videos of the day – intense trench fighting; Russians shot down a balloon carrying an FPV drone; Russia has revived the idea of a barrage of tethered balloons; ground drones repelled an FPV drone attack using a counter-drone net – views from both sides.

Russia continues to pressure cities. Ukraine has begun testing AI-controlled machine-gun turrets in them. The new autonomous weapon is intended to protect key sites from drone attacks, typically bridges and similar infrastructure. Air force spokesperson Yuri Ihnat said on Monday that the AI turrets, which receive information from other air-defence components, had achieved their first shoot-downs, including of Geran-5 drones.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky reported on Saturday, before Ihnat’s announcement, that 12 turrets of the kind shown in the military video below had been installed in the capital by that date. Another eight are planned.

They are armed with a 12.7mm heavy machine gun, which is not effective against a Geran flying high and fast, but becomes effective during the final phase of its flight, when it comes within the weapon’s range. The soldier in the footage said 50 rounds were sufficient to shoot down a Geran with AI assistance.

AI is entering Ukraine’s air-defense fight — and it is already helping shoot down Russia’s jet-powered Shaheds.

Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said AI-assisted turrets using machine vision have already successfully engaged Russian Geran-5 jet-powered UAVs.

“I was a big… pic.twitter.com/zixvpliQuN

— Army Media 🇺🇦 (@armyinformcomua) October 5, 2026

Details of the turrets’ precise deployment are, understandably, not yet known. However, both Russian and Ukrainian sources commented on them in interesting ways. Ukrainian expert Anatoliy Khrapchynskyi told the NV website, among other things, about the risk that fully autonomous turrets pose to civilians. Serhii Beskrestnov was the first to warn about it on Monday: “I warn you that, for your own safety, you should not stand by windows during an air-raid alert.”

Khrapchynskyi noted that this rule has applied to any weapon since the start of the war. People should not stand by windows during air raids precisely because air defences or debris from downed weapons can damage buildings and injure people. There is a two-wall rule: if you cannot get to a shelter, hide somewhere in your flat protected from a potential blast by two walls, such as in a corridor.

“This does not mean that robotic turrets will fire at windows. They will target moving aerial targets, but they could hit civilian infrastructure,” Khrapchynskyi conceded.

The Russian Telegram channel Two Majors complained that while Ukraine was already using AI turrets in practice, and although promising projects of the same kind existed in Russia, bureaucracy and high costs were holding back their introduction into service.

The same Russian source was among those that published a video showing an entire bridge across the Dnipro in Kyiv being wrapped in a counter-drone net.

But after several days in which Russian Gerans targeted only Kyiv’s bridges, they attacked Zaporizhzhia in the same way overnight from Monday to Tuesday. Russia injured five city residents, including two Red Cross workers, and halted or restricted traffic on several bridges in Zaporizhzhia, causing traffic jams in the city during the morning.

Zaporizhzhia lies about 30 km from the front and is a natural supply route for fighting units. Taking the bridges out of action would create a serious logistical complication, but the same applies as in Kyiv: their complete destruction is unlikely. Russia will also be satisfied with constant attacks causing minor damage, but sufficient to halt traffic.

A bridge across the Dnipro in city of 🇺🇦 #Zaporizhzhia bombed by 🇷🇺 during the night
There are victims pic.twitter.com/wTFl60IA1o

— C4H10FO2P ☠️ (@markito0171) October 6, 2026

Among other sites hit by Russian weapons was one of the hospitals in Kryvyi Rih, which was struck by two missiles. Two people were injured during the air raid.

Ukraine is maintaining pressure on Russia’s oil industry, reporting that it has disabled 51 percent of refinery capacity. “More than half of the enemy’s capacity has been taken out of operation. This is the result of carefully planned, methodical and systematic work aimed at exhausting Russia’s war machine and destroying its military-economic potential,” new minister Yevhen Khmara said.

His statement cannot currently be verified, but footage of another fire at oil infrastructure in Russia emerged on Tuesday morning. It was at the Volodarskaya production and distribution centre in Moscow region. It lies just under 40 km southeast of central Moscow in a straight line, and its premises contain a large oil depot. It is also a pipeline junction through which fuel flows to Moscow, including aviation fuel for Moscow’s airports.

Ukrainian attack drones successfully struck Russia's Volodarskaya LPDS tonight, a major storage and distribution hub supplying jet fuel, diesel, and gasoline for the Russian capital, Moscow.

Seen here, the facility burns. pic.twitter.com/bmtqTUD6xF

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) October 6, 2026

Ukraine says it destroyed a Russian Su-34 and Su-35 on the ground. Satellite imagery provides no clear evidence. The attack targeted Khanskaya airfield in Krasnodar region, from which a training unit normally operates.

The incident took place over the weekend. Satellite images showing clear traces of explosions and fire appeared relatively quickly, but it is not possible to identify what exploded and burned.

The usual Russian source, Fighterbomber, did not comment on the matter at all.

📍Satellite imagery of the aftermath of the UAV attack on "Khanskaya" airfield.

1× Su-34;
1× Su-35S.

Source: @avivector https://t.co/fYZej288A8 pic.twitter.com/CU6JD9ft22

— Oko Gora (@oko_gora_tg) October 4, 2026

Russia still sees a large pocket of encircled Ukrainians in Kharkiv region, but no such pocket exists. The image below shows a map of the part of Kharkiv region where active military operations are under way. It was produced by the Russian defence ministry and shown by Two Majors on its Telegram account.

Alongside the image, the same source again cited Kremlin claims in listing alleged Russian successes in this sector: “In the Kharkiv direction, the Northern Group of Forces reported further advances. In the Lyptsi sector, our troops advanced near Tokarivka and captured several enemy strongpoints. In the Vovchansk and Velykyi Burluk directions, advances were reported in the areas of Prykolotne, Kotivka, Varvarivka, Reznikove, Mykolaivka, and Annopil.”

We have already written in Ukraine Battlefield update that no pocket exists, and that Ukrainian and independent sources follow the northern part of the front only marginally, because far less is happening there than Russia claims.

Among respected OSINT projects, Playfra most recently covered this battlefield on Saturday. The first map from this source shows the section of the front located at the top right of the Russian map. This is where the alleged encirclement is supposed to be, which various Russian sources have been reporting for almost a month.

The fighting here consists of Russian infiltration attempts, which are “chaotic and unorganised”. Playfra unequivocally rejects any encirclement.

Bilyi Kolodyaz-Velykyi Burluk directions.

No particular changes.
The Russians continue infiltration attempts to encircle Ukrainian units in the Dehtiarne salient, though, once again, for now there is definitely no encirclement of the Ukrainians here.
Russian infiltrations remain… https://t.co/ZlzDhwdMDh pic.twitter.com/GZz4lHkxSp

— Playfra (@Playfra0) October 4, 2026

The following map from Playfra shows the same section of the battlefield as that seen in the Russian defence ministry’s version. The gap between reality and Russia’s claimed successes here is among the largest along the entire front, from Sumy to Kherson:

For comparison, the same area according to Finland’s Black Bird Group:

And according to the Russian project Slivochny Kapriz, which is relatively reliable. In all cases, Kharkiv is at the bottom left and the village of Dihtiarne, directly on the Ukrainian-Russian border, is at the top right:

Three-quarters of Ukrainians support peace talks. In the second half of September, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology asked respondents whether they supported peace negotiations with Russia.

Exactly three-quarters — 75 percent — said they supported peace talks, 21 percent were against, and the remainder could not give a definite answer. This was virtually identical to the result in February 2025, when 74 percent of respondents answered the same question positively.

This is also shown by the Kyiv polling agency’s graph, whose analysts stressed that willingness to negotiate does not equal willingness to accept Russian terms.

Views on who will win the war have shifted more significantly. As the next graph shows, the difference between February 2025 and September 2026 is again almost zero, but there has been a significant change compared with July this year.

At the beginning of the summer, 60 percent of Ukrainians were certain they would win the war (dark blue), while 25 percent considered it more likely than not. Now, only 47 percent are certain, but 79 percent of respondents in total still expect a Ukrainian victory.

The change was probably driven by optimism in July, when Crimea was almost completely isolated and a successful campaign of medium-range strikes began. Although it continues, the one-off shift in public mood has since returned to its original level.

There have been minimal changes in views on how long Ukrainians are prepared to fight. The largest group — 62 percent — said (dark blue) they were prepared to do so for as long as necessary. Four percent (light blue) said one year, while 23 percent (orange) said they could endure only a few more months. However, the number who say resistance should continue for only months has fluctuated around 20 percent for more than two years.

Videos of the day

Videos like this were common in 2023. It is unclear when this one was made, because the prevailing nature of the fighting is different today. The Ukrainian squad in the footage clears Russian trenches.

In the more than seven-minute recording, views from the ground alternate with those from a reconnaissance drone hovering above the battlefield, which gave the Ukrainians an overview of the enemy. The fighting is confused, but the basic orientation is simple: Ukrainians with green identification markings attack from right to left.

Full video.

Original combat POV footage documenting a tactical operation to clear fortified positions in a contested tree line. The video shows real-time close-quarters maneuvers, tactical coordination, and direct trench combat.

The coordination between the infantry and the… https://t.co/4BxTfnwdwu pic.twitter.com/5olByLJ2li

— 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝕯𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝕯𝔦𝔰𝔱𝔯𝔦𝔠𝔱 🦩🇬🇪🇺🇦🇺🇲🇬🇷 (@TheDeadDistrict) October 5, 2026

A Russian drone destroyed a balloon carrying a Ukrainian FPV drone beneath it. Ukraine is trying to use favourable wind currents in this way to extend the range of its small drones, which can then operate deeper in the Russian rear.

Video of a Ukrainian FPV carried by a balloon intercepted by Russia’s 50th Varyag Unmanned Systems Brigade.https://t.co/2Xb9UZGyRV https://t.co/L0waDkbokK pic.twitter.com/ir5FbmUTXP

— Rob Lee (@RALee85) October 5, 2026

Twenty-first-century warfare in Moscow. A Russian soldier with a man-portable air-defence system shot down a Ukrainian drone by firing over a busy road.

Russian channels have released previously unseen footage from a drone attack on Moscow-area refineries.

The footage reportedly shows a mobile air-defense team using 9K38 Igla-series MANPADS engaging a Ukrainian FP/Liuity-type drone moments before it struck an oil storage… pic.twitter.com/9dJXPTZ6XG

— SILENT BRIEF (@SilentBriefHQ1) October 5, 2026

Tethered balloons saw their greatest use during the Second World War, when they were deployed by armies on both sides. Balloon barrages protected London in the summer of 1940 and the Normandy landing fleet in June 1944, as well as German cities.

The principle was the same as in this Russian propaganda video. Balloons tethered to the ground by cables floated above cities and militarily important targets to prevent enemy aircraft from flying low. Ideally, they would hit the cables and crash. This principle may now be applied against drones.

👀 Russia has begun producing aerostats to protect oil refineries from drones.

Similar aerostats were actively used during World War I. pic.twitter.com/H3h8HQykqX

— MAKS 26 🇺🇦👀 (@Maks_NAFO_FELLA) October 4, 2026

A Russian FPV drone was targeting a Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle. Just before impact, it successfully deployed a defensive launchable net.

Footage from a Russian FPV drone shows it diving toward a Ukrainian unmanned ground vehicle. Moments before impact, the UGV fires an anti-drone net from its rear section, catching and bringing down the attacking FPV. pic.twitter.com/MednUTUs45

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 3, 2026

This was not an isolated case. Another video from a different location shows a similar situation, but this time from the perspective of a camera on the ground drone.

Se me acaban las palabras para describir esto.

Las imágenes proporcionadas por la cámara instalada en un sistema terrestre no tripulado ucraniano 🇺🇦 muestran su sistema de red anti-drones “KARAKURT” funcionando en condiciones reales de combate.

El robot terrestre ucraniano 🇺🇦,… pic.twitter.com/xgJ1YiNbkQ

— SergioLR🪖 (@CasetaBosque) October 3, 2026