Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs has been given the political mandate to begin forming the country’s next government after his United List alliance secured 41 of the 100 seats in the Saeima. President Edgars Rinkēvičs backed Kulbergs to lead coalition negotiations on Tuesday following consultations with all six political forces elected to parliament.

Kulbergs will now negotiate the composition of the coalition, the division of ministerial responsibilities and the programme of the next government. The formal constitutional nomination cannot take place until the newly elected Saeima convenes on 3 November and the present government relinquishes its mandate.

Announcing the decision on 6 October, Rinkēvičs said consultations with the incoming parliamentary parties had shown broad support for United List and Kulbergs taking the initiative. The President described the party’s 41-seat showing as an unusually strong mandate and said he expected substantial progress in coalition negotiations before the beginning of November. The President’s full statement following the consultations.

Rinkēvičs said he would like to see a new Cabinet formed by Latvia’s national day on 18 November, although he stressed that there was no formal deadline. The government will also need to begin work rapidly on the 2027 budget.

United List almost triples its representation

According to the provisional results published by Latvia’s Central Election Commission, United List received 283,892 votes, or 35.29 per cent, giving it 41 seats.

Latvia First finished second with 13.08 per cent and 17 seats, while Sovereign Power/Alliance of Young Latvians took 11.71 per cent and 15 seats. The National Alliance won 10 seats with 8.90 per cent, the Progressives also secured 10 with 7.88 per cent, and New Unity took seven seats on 6.36 per cent.

The result represents a substantial change from the 2022 parliamentary election, when United List won 11.14 per cent and 15 seats. New Unity was then the largest party with 26 seats; it has now fallen to seven. The Union of Greens and Farmers, which won 16 seats in 2022 and joined Kulbergs’s government earlier this year, received just 4.40 per cent this time and failed to cross the five per cent threshold.

United List has indicated that its first choice is to negotiate with the National Alliance and New Unity. Together, the three parties would command 58 seats, providing Kulbergs with a clear parliamentary majority. A narrower United List–National Alliance coalition would have 51 seats.

The choice of prospective partners points towards continuity rather than a major change in Latvia’s foreign or security policy. United List, the National Alliance and New Unity have all backed continued support for Ukraine, membership of NATO and higher defence expenditure.

Kulbergs became prime minister only in May following the collapse of Evika Siliņa’s government during a political crisis over Latvia’s response to repeated drone incursions. The government he subsequently formed brought together United List, New Unity, the National Alliance and the Union of Greens and Farmers.

The October election campaign was consequently dominated by national security, drone threats and the war in Ukraine, alongside domestic concerns over household finances and the economy. Kulbergs entered the election seeking his own mandate after only several months in office.

Security policy set for continuity

Latvia’s position on NATO’s north-eastern flank has given defence policy an unusually prominent place in domestic politics. The country borders both Russia and Belarus and has faced a series of drone incidents, border pressure and Russian information operations.

Earlier this year, Latvia’s intelligence service warned that Russia was increasingly viewing Latvia in terms similar to those it applied to Ukraine before the full-scale invasion. At the same time, Latvia has had to respond to unmanned aircraft crossing its territory from Russian airspace, incidents which contributed directly to the collapse of the previous government.

Russia subsequently alleged that Ukraine was preparing attacks from Latvian territory, an accusation rejected by Riga. The dispute further sharpened concern that drone incidents could be used to generate a wider confrontation involving a NATO member state.

Defence spending is therefore unlikely to be substantially altered by the coalition negotiations. Latvia’s 2026 defence budget stands at €2.16 billion, currently calculated at 4.73 per cent of projected GDP, with the government moving towards expenditure equivalent to five per cent. Rinkēvičs said after Tuesday’s consultations that he had heard a clear commitment among the parliamentary parties to maintaining the country’s security, defence and foreign-policy course.

Turnout reaches record low

The size of United List’s parliamentary victory contrasts with a marked decline in electoral participation. The Central Election Commission recorded 806,641 voters from an electorate of 1.56 million, producing turnout of 51.79 per cent. Detailed election figures show that 793,846 valid ballots were ultimately counted.

Turnout in the 2022 parliamentary election was 59.41 per cent, meaning participation fell by more than seven percentage points.

The immediate question in Riga is therefore no longer who will lead the government-building process, but what form Kulbergs’s second administration will take. With 41 seats of his own and potential partners able to provide a comfortable majority, the election winner enters the negotiations from a considerably stronger position than any Latvian prime minister in recent years.

A seventh man was arrested Tuesday over a major incident last month at a British military airbase used by the United States to launch strikes on Iran, police said. The arrest came a day after President Donald Trump said the United States had withdrawn all B-1 bombers from RAF Fairford because of "threats" he believed were linked to Tehran. A 22-year-old British male was arrested in London "on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts", Britain's Counter-Terrorism Policing network said in a statement. Six men in their 20s have already been arrested and released on bail after three suspicious vans were stopped near the base in southwest England on September 27. FRANCE 24's Bénédicte Paviot reports from London.

Marine Le Pen has set out plans to cut French public spending by €140 billion by 2032, reduce the deficit and impose a constitutional constraint on future borrowing, placing France’s deteriorating public finances at the centre of the campaign for the 2027 presidential election.

Marine Le Pen has presented a five-year fiscal programme under which a National Rally administration would seek €140 billion in net savings by 2032, restore France’s primary budget balance within 18 months and bring the headline deficit back below the European Union’s three per cent threshold by 2030.

The proposals, presented on Tuesday as Le Pen outlined the financial trajectory she would pursue during a presidential term, come as France faces rising borrowing costs and a public debt ratio approaching 120 per cent of GDP.

The scale of the problem was underlined on the same day by France’s Directorate-General of the Treasury. Its latest report on public debt projects the debt ratio at 119.3 per cent of GDP this year before rising to 121.7 per cent in 2027. Debt stood at 115.7 per cent at the end of 2025.

EU Today has already reported that French borrowing costs and concerns over the sustainability of the country’s finances have begun to weigh on the euro and widen the gap between French and German government bond yields.

Le Pen’s programme is therefore aimed not only at French voters but at financial markets increasingly focused on whether Paris can prevent debt from continuing to rise.

According to the proposals outlined on Tuesday, spending reductions would be concentrated heavily in the first three years of a Le Pen presidency. She would also seek to introduce what she calls a constitutional “golden rule”, requiring successive governments to reduce the budget deficit each year.

The measure would be put to a referendum and is intended to make deficit reduction binding beyond an individual government’s annual budget decisions.

Le Pen has also proposed reducing France’s public debt to around 112 per cent of GDP by 2032. That would reverse the trajectory currently expected by the French government, although the National Rally’s assumptions would depend on its ability to deliver the proposed savings and on economic growth during the next presidential term.

Among the most politically significant proposals is a plan to restrict France’s net contribution to the EU budget to €5 billion. The party argues that some European spending should instead be financed through harmonised taxes on products such as tobacco and alcohol.

Le Pen also expects substantial savings from tighter immigration controls and the introduction of the National Rally’s proposed “national preference” rules for access to parts of the welfare system. Her programme estimates that measures connected with immigration could eventually produce savings of as much as €29 billion annually.

Other elements include changes to pension policy, reductions in corporate and energy taxation, measures against VAT fraud, the abolition of more than 120 taxes and a reduction in the number of state agencies.

The programme marks an attempt by Le Pen to make fiscal policy a central part of a campaign that has until now been dominated largely by immigration, security and questions surrounding France’s political fragmentation.

The timing is significant. Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s government has itself introduced a difficult fiscal consolidation programme. The 2027 budget presented by the Finance Ministry envisages €54 billion in measures to improve the public finances, including €43 billion contained directly in the state and social-security budgets.

The government expects the deficit to fall from 5.4 per cent of GDP in 2026 to five per cent next year. It forecasts growth of only 0.5 per cent this year before a recovery to one per cent in 2027.

The debt burden is becoming increasingly costly. Interest payments are expected to reach €91.2 billion in 2027, up from €79.2 billion this year, according to the Finance Ministry. By 2030, total public-sector interest costs are projected to reach 3.7 per cent of GDP.

That gives the presidential campaign an economic dimension that is difficult to separate from France’s relationship with Brussels. Paris remains subject to EU fiscal rules requiring a gradual reduction in its deficit, while any attempt to reduce the French contribution to the EU budget would require negotiations with the other member states.

Le Pen enters that debate from a strong electoral position. Recent polling examined by EU Today has placed her ahead in first-round scenarios for 2027, although the final field remains unsettled. EU Today reported in September that Le Pen was polling between 33 and 36 per cent depending on her opponents.

Her latest intervention shifts part of the campaign onto terrain traditionally associated with the centre-right: public spending, debt and the credibility of France’s finances.

With the government attempting to secure parliamentary support for its own austerity measures and French borrowing costs under closer scrutiny, the question of how the country pays for the state is now moving towards the centre of the contest to succeed Emmanuel Macron.

A former German spy chief was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of espionage and treason, an embarrassing case at a time when the country is seeking to broaden the powers of its intelligence agencies. August Hanning, who ran Germany's BND foreign intelligence agency from 1998 to 2005, is accused of espionage, treason and working for foreign intelligence services, federal prosecutors said. FRANCE 24's Nick Holdsworth reports from Berlin.

 

It was poor old Greece who drew the short straw. It chairs the UN Security Council this month and it’s fallen to them to chair the Council’s extra-sticky deliberations this coming Thursday on whether—as the United States is proposing—to extend the arms embargo on Sudan to the whole of the country. 

If the current embargo, currently covering Darfur, is of any practical effect, that would be in favour the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF); their supply lines are easier. That would change under a countrywide embargo, and the regime led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan naturally argue that the proposed extension would deny a ‘sovereign government’ a right to defend its people, its borders, and its own existence. 

But the issue isn’t whether Sudan has a right to exist or to protect civilians. It is whether the combatants who have made Sudan ungovernable should continue to receive external military support without meaningful restraints. The answer, say the United States, the United Kingdom and France, must be no. However, fortunately for Burhan, it’s a da from Russia and a semi-da and a raised eyebrow from China, neither of whom are especially squeamish about aggressive population control measures. 

So if the pro-extensionists are to make any headway on a countrywide UN arms embargo, they are going to have to make, and carry the day on, some fine distinctions. 

To begin with, a countrywide embargo would not settle the question of who represents Sudan at the United Nations. But it would recognise that neither the SAF nor the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) should enjoy an unlimited licence to import the means to continue a ruinous civil war.

There is an important distinction between a state’s standing in the UN and the rights claimed by those who temporarily wield power within that state. Sudan remains a member state. It has a seat in the General Assembly. Burhan and his minions continue turning up and claiming to speak in Sudan’s name. 

None of that would necessarily change in the face of an arms embargo extending across the whole of Sudan. The Security Council would not be making a determination regarding Burhan’s or the SAF’s legitimacy. Recognition, credentials, representation—these are all distinct matters decided elsewhere and by other means. 

The Council’s job is something else. It’s not dealing with constitutional niceties; it’s dealing with the life and death issues of international peace and security. If weapons are feeding a conflict and threatening civilians in a territory or state, it can restrict the transfer of arms to that state or territory without stripping it of its international legal personality. Sanctions are not derecognition. What they do recognise is that in some circumstances, stopping the bloodshed take precedence over any right to buy arms. 

A nationwide embargo would establish at least this much: that the SAF and the RSF are both belligerents. The SAF may be commanded by General Burhan and presently in control of the state’s formal institutions; the RSF may be a paramilitary force with its own commercial interests, territorial ambitions and record of atrocities. But neither distinction entitles either side to decide Sudan’s future at gunpoint. According to the UN Charter we are not supposed to be living in a world where political legitimacy is determined by the military power at your disposal.

The SAF’s claim to sovereignty cannot mean an unconstrained right to acquire weapons while the country is being torn apart. The RSF’s local control, meanwhile, cannot be converted into international entitlement by force, atrocity or the occupation of territory. Both forces are armed parties to a conflict. Both draw sustenance from external supplies. Both have strong incentives to believe that, if they can secure the next shipment, the next drone or the next patron, a military decision remains possible.

It’s this kind of calculation that the Security Council has to disrupt.

All that said, an embargo alone can’t bring peace. Sudan needs a ceasefire now, with humanitarian access protected, credible monitoring of violations and a civilian-led political process that gives Sudanese people — not rival generals — the authority to determine their country’s future.

But if both sides believe more arms may tilt the balance then a ceasefire becomes harder to achieve. An embargo changes that calculation. It increases the cost and risk of resupply, makes foreign sponsors more visible, and tells commanders that time is no longer automatically on the side of whichever force can secure a fresh consignment.

That is why this measure matters. It’s nowhere near a magic bullet but it would at least narrow the military options of the SAF and RSF alike, improve the prospects for a ceasefire, and more create political space for civilians to reclaim their state. 

Two merchant vessels have been attacked by aerial and maritime drones in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone in the Black Sea, sinking one ship and forcing the evacuation of another. The incident follows a deadly attack on a grain carrier off Romania a day earlier and has prompted concern over the growing risks to civilian shipping close to EU and NATO territory.

Two commercial vessels were struck by drones in Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone early on Tuesday, 6 October, in the first known attack of its kind on merchant shipping in Bulgarian waters.

The Togo-flagged ALFA WATAN suffered severe structural damage and sank, while the Palau-flagged ABLE caught fire. Bulgarian Prime Minister Rumen Radev said the vessels were attacked at around 3am by both aerial and maritime drones about 70 nautical miles east of the coastal town of Byala. The Bulgarian government said a search-and-rescue operation was continuing for the crew of the ALFA WATAN, whose fate remained unknown.

All 18 people aboard the ABLE were rescued after abandoning the burning vessel. The Bulgarian-flagged passenger and freight ferry DIOSCURIA was diverted to the area and initially took the crew on board before Bulgarian Navy and Border Police vessels transferred them towards Varna.

The crew comprised 11 Turkish and seven Indian nationals. Two sailors were taken to hospital, including an Indian crew member suffering from burns and the Turkish captain, who sustained a head injury. Bulgarian public broadcaster BNT reported that the remaining 16 sailors subsequently arrived safely in Varna for medical checks.

The ABLE was reportedly carrying grain towards Istanbul. The cargo aboard the ALFA WATAN, which had been heading north towards Romania, has not been officially established.

Radev convened an emergency meeting involving the ministries of defence, interior, transport and environment, alongside the presidency and Bulgaria’s security services. He described the attack as an unacceptable violation of international and maritime law and warned of its effect on commercial navigation in the Black Sea.

Bulgarian authorities have not publicly identified who launched the drones. Investigations are examining both the weapons used and the circumstances surrounding the attack. One rescued Turkish sailor told Bulgarian television that he believed the ABLE had been hit by a Russian underwater drone, but that account has not been independently established and Sofia has made no formal attribution.

Foreign Minister Velislava Petrova said Bulgaria was in contact with its European and NATO partners and described Black Sea security as inseparable from wider European security. She said civilian crews and freedom of navigation must be protected and that Bulgaria would work with its allies to assess the wider consequences for maritime security.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen also condemned attacks against civilian shipping, saying the situation in the Black Sea was becoming increasingly concerning. She said commercial vessels and their crews were being targeted as investigations continued into the latest incidents.

Tuesday’s attack came less than 24 hours after another commercial vessel caught fire and sank in Romania’s exclusive economic zone. The Turkish-owned Royad Mammadov, sailing under the flag of Saint Kitts and Nevis, had left the Ukrainian Danube port of Izmail carrying corn for Ravenna in Italy.

Romanian authorities confirmed that two people died and 11 crew members were rescued. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the vessel had been struck by two Russian drones, although Romanian authorities did not themselves publicly attribute the incident to Russia.

The two incidents in consecutive days mark a further geographical expansion of the risks facing commercial shipping in the western Black Sea. EU Today has previously reported how strikes near Romania have moved maritime war risks closer to NATO territory, while a separate maritime drone explosion at Constanța raised questions over the ability of coastal states to detect and respond to unmanned systems approaching commercial infrastructure.

The distinction between territorial waters and an exclusive economic zone remains important. The attacks occurred outside Bulgaria’s territorial sea and therefore do not amount simply to an attack on Bulgarian territory. They nevertheless took place in an area where Bulgaria has internationally recognised economic rights and responsibilities, including search-and-rescue and environmental obligations.

The immediate concern for Sofia is the search for the missing crew of the ALFA WATAN and the possibility of pollution from the wreck. The wider concern for the EU is the increasingly exposed position of civilian shipping routes linking Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Ukraine’s maritime export routes remain particularly important for agricultural trade. Repeated attacks on merchant vessels can increase insurance premiums, discourage shipowners from entering the region and raise transport costs even when ports themselves remain operational. Russian attacks on Odesa and its export infrastructure have already placed Ukraine’s Black Sea grain corridor under sustained pressure.

With merchant ships now struck in the economic zones of both Romania and Bulgaria on consecutive days, Black Sea maritime security has moved further onto the agenda of EU and NATO governments along the western coast.

A Spanish Supreme Court judge on Tuesday lifted the arrest warrant for Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, clearing the way for him to return home without fear of detention ahead of a general election in November.

The European Commission has proposed up to 15 years of post-accession safeguards to punish new member states in case of bad behaviour, in a long-delayed pre-enlargement policy review out on Tuesday (6 October).

The reforms were initially requested by the European Council in June 2024 to be ready by spring 2025, but were delayed several times due to political sensitivities in EU capitals.

They are aimed at frontrunners for future EU membership – Montenegro, Albania, Moldova, and Ukraine – each of whom will get an accession roadmap this month.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has deemed union enlargement a “geopolitical imperative” amid the war in Ukraine and shift towards a new global order.

By expanding, the EU hopes to promote democracy and strengthen the single market.

But this also comes with fears that countries could misbehave after getting in, prompting the commission’s proposed new guardrails.

The commission suggests that new member states promise “not to oppose EU decisions on future enlargements” due “to bilateral disputes” for an unspecified time.

But Marta Kos, the EU’s enlargement commissioner, said this commitment would be voluntary.

Commissioner dismisses ‘two-tier’ concerns

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French borrowing costs are surging and central bankers are starting to fret. Some of them, at least.

The head of the French central bank, Emmanuel Moulin, told the Financial Times that his country risks being “strangled by interest rates”.

The best solution, he made clear, was for the French government to cut costs and reduce the deficit, which, in an unchanged scenario, could reach upwards of six percent next year.

Last week, the French minority government proposed €43bn worth of cuts for 2027. But pushing them through parliament is a tall order in a divided country.

Meanwhile, investors are dumping French bonds, pushing up French government borrowing costs compared to German benchmark Bunds. This is already immensely costly to French society.

“In three weeks, we’ve lost the equivalent of €15bn a year in higher debt-servicing costs over a 10-year horizon, or almost €100bn cumulatively over 10 years!”, French economist Shahin Vallée said on social media last week.

The gap, or spread, between French and German bond yields, historically around 50 basis points (0.5 percentage points), was 109 basis points when he wrote it on Wednesday. It is now 30 points higher.

Spreads are a crucial marker for financial stability because they show how nervous investors are. The bigger the spread, the higher the perceived risk.

And France’s parabolic bond spread is already bringing back unwelcome memories of the eurozone crisis in November 2011, when the spread reached 200 basis points.

Bypass parliament?

The question is what to do about it, and who is best positioned to act. The French government could bypass a parliamentary vote or push through the budget by ordinance, under articles 49.3 and 47 of the constitution, respectively.

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The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) published today a supervisory statement on the authorization and ongoing supervision of private equity-related (re)insurance undertakings. The statement is addressed to national supervisors and aims to promote consistent, high-quality and risk-based supervision of private equity-backed undertakings across the Union. Private equity (PE) firms have over the past […]

A prominent lawmaker has sparked controversy by saying Ukraine is losing the war and should consider making controversial compromises with Moscow. An opposition party ejected Oleksiy Honcharenko from its parliamentary faction, but his remarks may fuel further debate amid relentless Russian attacks.

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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The death of a lab worker in Russia’s Siberia region has sparked concerns over a possible plague case, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday, adding that it was following the situation closely.  

Politicians need to solve the affordability crisis to stop the far-right, social democratic Portuguese prime minister Luís Montenegro told MEPs on Tuesday (6 October).

Opening a debate in Strasbourg, Montenegro called for more lax regulation as a way to address the housing crisis, defended strict migration policies, and expressed support for funding poorer regions in the next EU budget.

He also stressed the importance of lowering fuel prices and prioritising the energy transition to “solve the real problems that people wrestle with,” adding that “our response … has to be felt in the lives of Europeans” to avoid disappointed voters turning to populism and extremism.

Back at home, Montenegro has the far-right Chega (Enough) party on his tail: in the 2025 parliamentary elections, they won 23 percent of the ballots against the Montenegro alliance’s 33 percent.

Now, polls give Chega 27 percent of declared votes for the next parliament, slightly less than the Socialist Party (28 percent) and ahead of the current government coalition (24 percent).

For his part, a Chega MEP (Patriots for Europe), António Tânger Corrêa, challenged Montenegro on Tuesday for relying on wind and solar energy without enough storage in case of blackouts and shutting down coal power plants.

He also warned Montenegro against agreeing to limit unanimous votes in the European Council in future, as representing a blow to Portugal’s sovereign powers.

From his left-wing opponents, Portuguese MEP Catarina Martins pointed out the high rent costs in the country and criticised the government for failing to support low-earning tenants.

In Lisbon, the average rent was only €84 less than the average salary in 2026, according to Portugal’s statistics body.

Montenegro said his government simplified the law around housing construction – much in line with the EU’s focus on deregulation – and proposed tax breaks to encourage investors to build more.

An EU-level policy complementing it “would be very useful,” he said, as long as it simplified existing regulations.

The Affordable Housing Act presented by the EU Commission in early September aims to improve the market for tenants by restricting short-term rentals.

A case of treason on an unprecedented scale is emerging at Germany’s foreign intelligence service, in what German media say could shake the entire agency.

According to the investigative team of WDR, NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), August Hanning, the former head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), is being investigated for alleged espionage detrimental to the state and intelligence activities.

Hanning’s tenure at the BND ended in November 2005.

But he is accused of having illegally obtained secret information for several years after he left the service, which gathers and assesses information on foreign, security, and economic threats.

He was arrested at his home in Nordwalde, near Münster in western Germany, on Tuesday (6 October).

Der Spiegel reported that police arrived at 6.41AM and took him away in a black minibus at 8.58AM.

Another former senior BND employee was also detained in the Bavaria region — apparently the former head of Hanning’s office, who worked for the intelligence service until spring 2026.

Neither German authorities nor Hanning’s representatives had commented on the case by Tuesday noon.

What investigative journalists found

According to investigative journalists, Manfred D. leaked top-secret information from within the BND to Hanning until 2022.

According to Der Spiegel, which cited investigators’ findings, Hanning and Manfred D. agreed, as early as spring 2010, that the latter would, in return for payment, gather intelligence from the BND for his former boss, which Hanning could use in his private security consultancy work.

Investigators are working on the assumption that, in at least one case, Hanning prepared a security analysis for a foreign intelligence service.

According to WDR, NDR and SZ, it was not for Russia.

In another case, he allegedly used information from internal BND documents when communicating with a foreign agent.

According to information from security circles obtained by WDR, NDR, and SZ reporters, Hanning came under scrutiny after his home and offices were searched in September last year, when the State Criminal Police Office (LKA) was investigating the case of steak empire heiress Christina Block.

Abduction of children

Hamburg prosecutors accused her of commissioning the abduction of her two youngest children in late 2023 amid a custody dispute.

According to investigators, Hanning was involved in an earlier attempt to abduct them, accusations he denies.

While assessing material seized from Hanning last year, LKA officers found an electronic data storage device with explosive contents, according to the investigative journalists.

The former official apparently had access to top-secret BND documents from the recent past which, under no circumstances, should have been in his possession.

In total, he obtained around 2,000 documents. In many cases, these were briefings for the so-called intelligence situation meeting at the federal chancellery, where the heads of security agencies exchange information every week.

They included highly sensitive reports, for example, on Iran’s nuclear programme or the Russian military. According to security sources, they also included reports from foreign partner services.

A leak of such material is regarded by intelligence services as an absolute catastrophe. Friendly intelligence services could lose trust in the BND and cut off the institution from crucial information.

After assessing them, the LKA Hamburg police team handed the seized documents over to federal authorities.

And in May 2026, the Federal Public Prosecutor General’s Office ultimately opened confidential proceedings against Hanning and his alleged BND informant. It remains unclear over what period the former intelligence chief was supplied with secret internal information.

According to security sources, the most recently discovered documents date from June 2022.

It also remains unclear how the alleged BND mole managed to remove material from the secured agency. The BND was asked for a statement on the case.

Hanning’s lawyers have not yet responded to a brief request for comment on the allegations.

An affair of historic proportions

For the BND, this is already the second serious incident in the space of a few years.

In 2022, the espionage case involved Russia, when a former head of a BND unit was accused of spying for Moscow together with another man.

It concerned top-secret information on BND cyber operations that was leaked from the service.

As the Tagesschau website noted, if the suspicions against Hanning are confirmed, this would be an espionage affair of historic proportions.

German history has never before seen an alleged case of treason involving such a senior former top official.

According to Der Spiegel, this is unprecedented. This is particularly so because, for many years after leading the intelligence service, Hanning remained among the most important officials in Germany’s security apparatus.

Before becoming BND president, he was responsible for protecting classified information at West Germany’s representation in East Germany.

After serving at the chancellery, including as coordinator of the federal intelligence services, the lawyer, who holds a doctorate, took over the leadership of the BND in 1998.

At the end of 2005, after leaving the intelligence service, Hanning became a state secretary at the interior ministry. He retired four years later.

Questionable business

According to German media, his subsequent activities were seen as problematic. He became known as a businessman and security consultant with a company in Switzerland.

Its German subsidiary was hired for a time in the custody dispute between Block and her former husband.

According to prosecutors, in 2023 he allegedly planned, together with an associate, to “discredit Block’s former husband through false allegations of paedophilia”.

Hanning and his alleged accomplice apparently tried to plant a hard drive containing child sexual abuse images and videos on the father of Block’s children.

The investigation has not yet been concluded. Hanning has previously denied all allegations in the case.

Iran’s worsening medicine shortages are driving patients to a booming black market, where essential drugs can cost several times official prices. Cancer and chronic disease patients face soaring costs, while authorities struggle with imports, currency shortages, and supply disruptions.

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.