Getting co-decision powers on the budget, finally enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty after more than a decade of inter-institutional battles, was one of the European Parliament’s big wins. 

The challenge facing MEPs in the coming months is whether they are really going to use those powers on the 2028-34 budget. 

The early signs are that they are spoiling for a fight. The Irish government’s compromise proposal tabled on Saturday (10 October) – an 8 percent cut worth €141bn to the European Commission’s spending plan – isn’t exactly butchery. 

But it does display a startling lack of ambition, in particular on the raft of ‘own resources’ proposed by MEPs to make the budget process less vulnerable to member states wanting to reduce or at least freeze their annual contributions  

This time round, MEPs have proposed a digital services levy, an online gambling levy, and a levy on crypto-asset capital gains.

Put together the parliament reckons that these new taxes could bring an additional €30bn to the EU’s budget, on top of the €57.4bn that the EU commission believes can be raised from other levies, such as the emissions trading scheme and the carbon border levy. 

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“The issue is, do we have another leader to replace Pedro Sánchez?”.

Former Spanish congresswoman Hana Jalloul Muro is among her prime minister’s closest allies in the European Parliament.

“It has not been an easy mandate. Every day is a survival day, all the challenges that prime minister Pedro Sánchez has faced have been unprecedented,” the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) MEP told EUobserver.

They had faced the Covid pandemic, a volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands in 2021, and the migrant crisis in the Ceuta enclave in north Africa in the summer of 2026, she said – not to mention the corruption allegations levelled at his close relatives.

And he now risked being unseated in a snap election on 5 October, called after nationwide protests against lack of affordable housing.

Sánchez’ PSOE party is trailing behind the centre right people’s party (PP) in the polls, which is also growing closer allied to the increasingly successful far-right Vox party. 

“These elections will pit two models against each other,” Jalloul said.

“On the one hand, a progressive government that defends public services, improves wages and pensions, expands rights and protects the social majority. And on the other, a model represented by the PP and Vox, which, wherever they govern, have opted for privatisations and policies that risk widening inequalities,” she said.

Ceuta-linked election

Jalloul, who spoke to EUobserver at the European Parliament (EP) in Brussels, used to lecture on international terrorism at the University of Madrid, before she became vice-chair of the EP’s foreign affairs committee.

And she recalled the heated debate on the Ceuta incident on 31 July, including accusations that Morocco had engineered it to gain leverage over Spain. 

“This is a crisis that we could not expect,” she said.

But had there not been a “good relationship with Morocco, [we] would never be able to return 90 percent of the 70,000 people that came in less than 72 hours,” she added.  

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A lethal plume of toxic smoke was blowing towards us from a blaze at a battery manufacturing plant in Kaliningrad.

Troops in the Russian exclave had been ordered to help put the fire out: untrained and under-equipped, they mutinied. Terrified civilians were thronging the borders.

The Kremlin, oblivious to the unfolding humanitarian and environmental catastrophe, blamed the West for sabotage and incitement, and demanded a transit corridor across Lithuania.

However, none of this actually happened.

We (20 retired and serving officials, experts, and others) were in the safety and comfort of the Wargaming Lab at the ISM university in Vilnius, as guests of the Baltic International Security Centre (BISC).

The crisis scenarios were hypothetical; the aim was to explore the dilemmas and trade-offs they created. (You are the Lithuanian government. Do you let the mutineers in? Or leave them to be massacred?)

The games-master provided regular “injects” – new developments – such as ill-written social media posts from US president Donald Trump. He blamed the authorities in “Lithvastonia” for having started the fire in “Kaliningradia”.

An amusing parody, we thought. A few hours later, the real US president published news of his deal with Russian president Vladimir Putin on sanctions-busting diesel imports, then blamed Ukraine for being invaded.

Not so amusing, especially for our Ukrainian participant, a senior military commander there.

As we were leaving (us to safety, him to danger), news broke that Russia is stepping up its assassination attempts in Europe, targeting defence industry bosses (and perhaps Polish politicians). Our scenarios seemed tame in comparison. 

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• They looked like Russian “porcupines” and fought where the Kremlin considers Russian rear territory. They were protected by their own drone.
• Drones also struck Yandex’s third data centre.
• The battle for Dobropillia on a new type of map.
• Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG missiles caused the largest single massacre of senior Russian officers of the entire war in August.
• Maps of the day — Dobropillia, Kharkiv region
• Videos of the day — Abrams as a porcupine; MANPADS against a Geran; Russian port during an air raid; nighttime FPV drone combat; Kyiv resident narrowly escapes death at a playground

They looked like Russian “porcupines” and fought where the Kremlin considers Russian rear territory. They were protected by their own drone. Both the Russian and Ukrainian armies are continuing their efforts to return tanks and combat vehicles to the battlefield.

Russia recently attacked near Dobropillia with tanks fitted with upgraded Arena-M active protection systems.

The system itself proved effective, but was ultimately unable to withstand the flood of drones, and the attack ended in defeat and the destruction of the tanks deployed.

Last week, we also wrote about a successful operation by Ukrainian tanks from the 475th Assault Regiment.

And the same Ukrainian unit, also known as CODE 9.2, demonstrated a new use of heavy armoured equipment over the weekend.

Compared with the first case, this one revealed an important detail about the operation of accompanying drones and, thanks to geolocation, can also be used to verify the accuracy of Russian maps.

The battle took place in the Kharkiv region and involved a US-made Bradley combat vehicle as well as a tank. According to one source, it was an Abrams of Australian origin, although the appearance of its gun barrel does not suggest this.

In a video released by the unit, the Bradley advances first towards Russian positions and begins laying down covering fire. The tank joins it later, firing directly at the target.

While the Bradley’s turret has retained its mobility, the tank has effectively become an assault gun of the type known from the Second World War.

Its turret does not appear to be capable of moving, and the crew must aim the entire tank at the target. This reduces the effectiveness and speed of firing, while increasing its chances of survival.

A tank modified in this way is virtually indistinguishable from similar Russian adaptations. What distinguishes these attempts is, once again, the involvement of accompanying drones.

Aside from the heavy Vampire, first seen at 1:30, this primarily includes an FPV drone which, at 1:58, neutralises in an aerial duel the same type of Russian weapon that had attempted to strike the tank.

This is another example of how heavy equipment must be accompanied by drones at this stage of the war if it is to remain combat-capable.

Despite air support, another drone strikes it at 2:16 — after another had narrowly missed earlier. The tank remained mobile and withdrew successfully.

Beyond the operation itself, its location is also noteworthy: near the village of Anishchyne in the north-eastern part of the Kharkiv region, on the axis Russia calls the Velykyi Burluk direction.

The Ukrainian Telegram account Petrenko, which also provided the map below, precisely identified the site of the battle.

“The video reveals a discrepancy between reality and Russian claims of an alleged massive advance, the encirclement of Ukrainian units and the capture of more than 65 settlements,” the author wrote.

He noted that both vehicles operated in territory that most Russian maps mark in red — as a “Russian” zone.

This is the same area about which we have written repeatedly. For comparison, below is a map by the Russian state agency Ria Novosti. The village of Anishchyne does not appear on it, but the settlement of Vilkhuvatka — Olkhovatka in Russian — serves as a reference point in the centre-right.

The tank and Bradley were fighting around five km north of a location that Russia marks as securely captured.

Drones also struck Yandex’s third data centre. Graphs circulated online, particularly on Sunday, suggesting that Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s largest internet provider had restricted the operations of Russian bots around the world.

However, this has not yet been objectively proven. Russia has indeed reported outages affecting various internet-based services after each attack, but that is so far the only confirmed effect.

On this occasion, French analyst Clément Molin pointed out that the Russian Varyag drone brigade had attacked data centres in Ukraine in recent weeks and had boasted, among other things, of damaging Kyivstar, Ukraine’s largest operator.

The situation has now been reversed, as it was previously with attacks on ships and warehouses. This time, however, to Russia’s disadvantage.

Russia 🇷🇺 bombed multiple data centers in Kyiv, Dnipro or Odesa these last few weeks and proudly showed footage about it

Now, Ukraine is bombing Yandex data centers and causing much more harm to Russia than Russia did to Ukraine.

This is another example of symmetrical war. In… pic.twitter.com/yAXzcUN3FQ

— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) October 12, 2026

The first centre hit was in Sasovo, in the Ryazan region, followed by a second in Kaluga, in the Kaluga region. On Sunday, the third of Yandex’s four largest centres was struck, this time in Vladimir, in the Vladimir region.

“This complex houses one of the company’s Galushkin supercomputers, which is among the most powerful in Russia,” Kommersant wrote, adding that the facility had been taken out of service, affecting 10 core Yandex services, including its email service.

The situation is serious enough that, according to digital development minister Maksut Shadayev, “Yandex is facing an unprecedented attack on its data centres”.

The defence ministry is also working on the issue in an effort to protect the company’s remaining facilities. Citing its sources, Kommersant said replacing the damaged capacity could take up to six months.

The battle for Dobropillia on a new type of map. As the war evolves, so do the ways it is mapped. This Ukrainian OSINT profile, for example, has depicted the fighting for the important Donbas town — which protects the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration from the south-west — on a dynamic map.

Among other things, it shows that Russian forces are infiltrating the town through the village of Hanivka from the Nove Shakhove area.

Mashovets Dobropillia
Russia wants Kramatorsk, to the north-east. Its strongest attack here heads west, into Dobropillia: up to 40 men a day along the Byk river.

If Dobropillia and Druzhkivka hold to late December, Russia would have to replan the offensive. pic.twitter.com/OXg8F1WYXy

— Vitaly (@M0nstas) October 8, 2026

For a clearer picture, we are also including a static DeepStateUA map, as the previous one is rotated and does not follow the usual compass orientation.

The two maps are rotated by around 90 degrees in relation to each other. On the following one, Dobropillia is in the centre-left. Nove Shakhove, from where Russian infiltrators are advancing, is almost at the centre, exactly 10 km to the east as the crow flies. A small arrow directly next to the settlement’s name indicates the direction of Russian attacks.

The green area in the upper part of the map is the so-called Dobropillia salient, which was fought over a year ago.

Russia reported nothing significant concerning Dobropillia after the weekend. “On the Dobropillia axis, our forces continue to push forward, but Ukrainian units retain the ability to counterattack. Heavy fighting is under way,” the Two Majors wrote, for example.

The Ukrainian Telegram channel Petrenko published a map over the weekend showing sites of new infiltrations. Its interpretation differs considerably from DeepStateUA’s version. Russian forces are shown closer to the town, but the direction of their advance is the same as in the two previous sources.

The sites of the recorded incursions were established on the basis of videos showing drones killing Russian soldiers attempting to advance further west.

Storm Shadow missiles caused the largest single massacre of senior Russian officers in August. On Friday (9 October), a joint project by Russian exile newspaper Meduza and the BBC’s Russian service added another 17,124 names to its list of Russian war casualties. This was the number it had counted since 21 September. In total, 276,113 Russian soldiers killed in the war are now known by name.

On the same day, the project’s authors published a detailed analysis of events in Donetsk on 26 August. The Ukrainian air force had attacked a building in Donetsk with Storm Shadow/SCALP-EG missiles.

The strike was so intense that the target must have been something significant. Almost immediately, there was speculation that the building housed an important Russian headquarters.

Meduza and the BBC counted 20 high-ranking Russian military personnel killed during a joint meeting of the headquarters of the Centre group of forces and its subordinate 41st Army — 18 at the scene and another two from their injuries in the following days.

This week, in our update of Russian losses in Ukraine:
– 17,000 names added to our list since September 21https://t.co/lBGxPNvv8z

– one Ukrainian strike takes out more Russian officers than ever during the entire war; we reveal their nameshttps://t.co/BU4B66hwTN pic.twitter.com/X9l0o5MGkz

— Mediazona (@mediazona_en) October 9, 2026

They included seven colonels, six lieutenant colonels, five majors, one captain and one senior non-commissioned officer. They were identified thanks to access to nominal lists of headquarters staff as of 25 July and after that date.

It also emerged that this was not the first time officers of the 41st Army had had a bad day. During an attack on 8 September 2025, it lost a lieutenant colonel, two majors and a lieutenant. The toll on 4 August 2026 was even worse, when the army lost two lieutenant colonels, three majors, two captains and one lieutenant at once.

The following images illustrate the scale of destruction caused by the strike on 26 August:

Some of the aftermath of the today’s mass missile strike on Donetsk. https://t.co/rymUEYGOc5 pic.twitter.com/Bv2jUrIuhj

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) August 26, 2026

Videos of the day

As Russian jet-powered drones become more widespread, videos are also appearing more frequently of Ukrainian soldiers shooting them down with man-portable air-defence systems, known by the English acronym MANPADS. This is one of them.

A Ukrainian soldier shot down a Russian jet-powered Geran-4 drone using an Igla-1 MANPADS over Ukraine’s Rivne region this morning. pic.twitter.com/4onx7UNclQ

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 11, 2026

Despite its best efforts, air defences at one of Russia’s ports were unable to shoot down a Ukrainian drone, which subsequently struck a Black Sea Fleet vessel. Note the beams of light used to assist with targeting.

Один из Z-блогеров опубликовал видео работы ПВО в гавани (Новороссийск?) и попадание дрона ВСУ в военный корабль. Дата съемки неизвестна, однако, уже видны те самые синие лучи, которые пару лет назад решили ввести как лучшее средство подсветки цели. Покупали их военные обычно за… pic.twitter.com/WvDuR369Z3

— IanMatveev (@ian_matveev) October 10, 2026

The Russian soldiers in this nighttime video appear relaxed. They were probably moving through an area they still considered relatively safe. But a waiting drone equipped with a thermal camera was tracking them.

A Ukrainian FPV drone lying in ambush at night spots a passing Russian assault group of four soldiers on a quad bike, waits for the right moment, then takes off and strikes them. pic.twitter.com/MD83B4RkKk

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 10, 2026

A Kyiv resident narrowly avoided a Russian drone at the last moment as it crashed into a playground.

A man narrowly escaped a Russian drone strike on the grounds of a kindergarten in Ukraine’s Kyiv region yesterday. pic.twitter.com/aOwWNAa6Vj

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 9, 2026

The American humorist Will Rogers observed that there are three kinds of people in this world: those who learn by reading; those who learn by observation; and the rest, who have to learn by peeing on the electric fence for themselves.

In Europe, we have been learning things the hard way.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the resulting turmoil came as a shock to our energy system. More recently, the conflict in the Gulf has sparked fresh shock waves. 

Having built on our experience of the energy crisis in 2022, Europe was better prepared. But the fact of the matter is that we were still left exposed to external shocks.

Since the start of the conflict, the EU spent more than €100bn more on imported oil and gas, compared to the same period last year. We are not only learning the hard way – we are learning the expensive way.

And the lesson could not be clearer: we need to free ourselves from fossil fuel imports, as much as possible and as soon as possible.

The more clean energy that we produce – from homegrown sources like renewables, nuclear, and geothermal – the lower our bills become. At the same time, we also strengthen our energy security, cut our emissions, and reinforce our energy independence.

That’s the direction we are taking

Last year, we added 89 gigawatts of renewable energy to our energy system. One gigawatt is enough to provide electricity for up to 1m households.

And for the first time ever, the EU produced more electricity from solar and wind than from fossil fuels.

In other words, more of our energy is being “made in Europe”, which makes us less reliant on fossil imports. Since 2022, we have decreased our gas consumption significantly, to the order of 17 percent.

But it’s not just about how Europe generates electricity – it’s about how we share it. Over the past decades, EU countries have linked up their electricity markets to a degree not seen elsewhere in the world.

This makes it much easier to support each other with supplies in times of need, as well as to buy and sell electricity across borders at the best price.

This progress has firmed up the foundations of our energy system. But can these foundations withstand our uncertain times? I believe that they can and they will – as long we stick to a solid strategy.

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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: 

European gas storage levels are unusually low for this time of year, reaching their lowest autumn level since 2011.

With Russian gas imports set to end in 2027, could Europe face a tougher challenge in the months ahead? 

First, how do Europe’s gas reserves work? EU countries fill underground gas storage sites during spring and summer, when demand is lower, and draw on these stocks during the winter, when heating pushes consumption up.

Since 2022, the EU has required member states to ensure their gas storage facilities reach 90 percent of capacity by a deadline between 1 October and 1 December. That helps secure supplies ahead of winter.

But this year, stocks are well below that target, at just over 70 percent in early October. They still have time to rise before the deadline, but the situation is attracting attention.

Does that mean Europeans are at risk of running out of gas this winter? According to the European Commission, no. It acknowledges that storage levels are low compared with previous years, but says the EU’s gas system should still be flexible enough to meet demand this winter.

That said, a colder or longer winter than expected, or disruptions to supplies in other parts of the world, could put additional pressure on the market. Especially at a time when the EU is preparing to phase out Russian gas imports in 2027.

The EU has adopted a gradual ban, with transitional arrangements for existing long-term contracts.

Russian liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is due to be phased out completely from January 2027 only. Russian gas delivered by pipeline will follow later, with the deadline set for the end of September 2027.

And Russian gas still accounted for around 12 percent of EU gas demand through May 2026. Imports even increased in the first months of this year compared with the same period in 2025, amid disruptions to energy flows linked to the war in the Middle East.

So, from January, Europe will lose one source of supply.  Which means Europe should try and reduce its gas consumption.

But it’s easier said than done, particularly as winter approaches. Heating needs depend heavily on temperatures, and households cannot simply stop heating their homes.

Still, Europe has shown in the past that consumption can fall significantly. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the European Commission called on member states to reduce their gas demand by 15 percent. 

And they succeeded: their gas demand fell of around 18 percent, compared with the previous five-year average. A few months ago, following the escalation of the war in the Middle East, the Jacques Delors Institute recommended reviving efforts to reduce gas demand.

That being said, the reduction achieved in 2022 was partly helped by a mild winter and greater use of alternative energy sources, including coal and nuclear power.

Those options may help again, but they come with limitations. Much will depend on the weather and how long the winter lasts.

Which doesn’t mean Europe should not call for lowering the demand and accelerate the deployment of renewable energy.

Nearly three decades after the Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country remains deeply divided along ethnic and political lines.

The agreement brought peace, but its complex political system has done little to overcome those divisions. Republika Srpska, the predominantly Serb entity, has pursued an increasingly divergent political course, while Serbia and Croatia maintain close ties with different parts of the country.

And for Christian Schmidt, the international community’s high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina (2021-26) the main threat is no longer a return to war, but political stagnation and growing frustration.

He says that weak civic engagement, slow progress towards EU membership and the influence of Russia and neighbouring countries are reinforcing Bosnia’s divisions. Young people, he says, are increasingly responding by leaving the country.

In this interview, Schmidt discusses foreign influence, the EU’s role, the legacy of Dayton, and why Bosnia’s future may depend on whether it can build a stronger political community across its ethnic divisions.

A country that remains divided

You started your work in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2021 and were there for five years. It was a period of major changes, with COVID and then the war in Ukraine. What were your experiences of these moments. How has the situation in Bosnia evolved?

I think there has not been sufficient involvement. Civil society in Bosnia and Herzegovina is not very strong. It is, more than just politically, somehow divided on political issues. This prevents a joint political position or commitment from civil society to make more progress in democratic development and European integration.

So far, I don’t see that this has changed very much. It has also not changed that some parties, especially the SNSD, [Serb nationalist Milorad] Dodik’s party, but honestly not only them, are counting on ethnic differences as an argument for supporting their party instead of having a multi-ethnic approach. One can be doubtful about their real pro-European commitment.

Russia and its influence

When civil society is not engaged and when countries are not politically stable, we know that they are prone to interference from other states or political entities. Is this being seen in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

It is evident that neighbouring countries, especially Serbia and Croatia, have a kind of preferred relationship with parts of the country. This is, by the way, also established in the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina [also known as the Dayton Peace Agreement]. So it is not necessarily something that is not in line with Dayton [Agreement].

But there is beyond this more interference if I refer, for example, to Serbia’s reaction on the occasion of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution of 2024 about establishing an international day of commemoration for the Srebrenica genocide. There was a really remarkable attack against this, despite the fact that Serbia was not named in the resolution. There were only named individuals who had committed war crimes or genocide.

But it was used to create a “Pan-Serbian declaration”, which can be seen as a way of bringing cultural issues of the same ethnic group closer together. It has to be seen additionally as a tool to try to gain more political influence in the other part of the country.

You mentioned Croatia and Serbia. Is Russia also playing a role in these interferences?

Yes, but not ethnic interference. It is more through traditional good relations, especially with the Orthodox community, which is basically the Serb Orthodox community, where there are relations and a lot of activities, including in the media and on social media.

They [Russia] try to influence a part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially Banja Luka and Republika Srpska, and Dodik is somehow to act as an influencer for Russian interests. This is indeed the case. Dodik has been sitting together with [Russian president Vladimir] Putin for the 11th time since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. This is really remarkable.

How important is Bosnia and Herzegovina and Dodik for Russia and for Putin?

The economic and political-strategic importance is nearly zero. But it can be used as a way of distracting from European and somehow American activities, just by giving them a negative impact on everything. So this is more seen as a tool, rather than an area of influence.

EU— only accession talks?

Does the EU have a role in fighting such interference — Russian, but also the ethnic interference from Croatia and Serbia?

The ethnic relationships are within the framework of Dayton, and they are acceptable. But I think it is very important that the EU makes it clear that European integration is not based on ethnic differences, but on uniting in diversity.

This is something that is very complicated. You cannot do this only with programmes or money. I think these challenges are the typical issues that you can address through European commitment, but in the details, it has not delivered.

Unfortunately, maybe the European Union should sit down again and think about more tools and opportunities, especially addressing civil society, to give more attraction to the European idea.

How would that work?

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The EU’s annual rule of law report, tackling advancements in corruption and fundamental rights, shares overly optimistic improvement that is far from the reality on the ground, a civil liberties group revealed. 

Presented on a sweltering Friday in July, the EU commission’s 2026 rule of law report failed to avoid scrutiny, with NGO Civil Liberties Union for Europe (Liberties) observing a gap between professed achievements in member states and the reality of a significant lack of implementation of Brussels’ recommendations. 

“This year’s Report shows continued positive progress across many Member States. And that is precisely why our Rule of Law Report matters. It has become a reference point, helping to shape national debates and drive reforms across our Union,” EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said back then in a statement.

But of all recommendations in the July report, Liberties’ Gap analysis report revealed that only four percent had been fully implemented, while 54 percent show limited to no progress.

“The Commission’s Rule of Law Report has the potential to be one of the EU’s strongest tools for preventing democratic backsliding,” said Kersty McCourt, Liberties’ rule of law expert. “But when recommendations are repeatedly issued without being implemented, and new threats are not identified early enough, the system loses its power”. 

The report, published on Monday (12 October) and shared in advance with EUobserver, found that almost all recommendations issued in 2026 were regurgitations of those given in previous years, with only seven new recommendations being introduced this year.

The commission’s annual report “fails to unpack why some problems remain so entrenched,” Liberties said. 

In its own study, the Berlin-based NGO suggested the reasons for slow movement to be bound from a lack of willingness from member states, a vacuum in the EU’s enforcement mechanisms, or issues becoming “so entrenched that progress is effectively impossible.”

This reduces the function of the report as a warning system for identifying early signs of democratic backsliding, since recommendations on emerging issues remain unaddressed and even if are formally adopted, often don’t translate into effective implementation.

Liberties observed this to be evident in the example of Nordic countries, which have grown to be exempt from scrutiny due to their traditionally strong reputations.

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Money and how to make more of it are among the top issues to be discussed among EU leaders as they gather for a two-day summit in Brussels, while they also struggle with ongoing problems on Ukraine, the Middle East, migration, defence, and new rules for EU-hopefuls, such as Montenegro.

The official talks kick off on Thursday (15 October) on how to make the 27 EU states more competitive in a turbulent world dominated by US tariffs, Chinese innovation, and Iran-war linked chokeholds in the Strait of Hormuz, which have forced the G7 wealthy nations to release 100m barrels of diesel and crude oil.

Gas prices have risen by 140 percent since the end of February with imported fossil fuels now costing an extra €100bn, says the European Commission.

In Europe, a grand scheme, a so-called “One Europe, One Market”, aims to spike European fortunes by saving an estimated €37.5bn for EU businesses by 2029.

The drive is part of a larger initiative to cut red tape and remove internal market barriers, including the eventual launch of a so-called EU Inc.

Ireland, which is currently steering the EU’s rotating presidency, had already announced that the summit would start with the competitiveness theme. And leaked draft conclusions, seen by EUobserver, lead with a sales pitch to step up ambitions over the ‘One Europe, One Market’ proposal.

It also gives a nod to the German car industry, by citing efforts needed to stop China from making too much money off Europeans. The goal is to get Europeans to spend more on European products, even if they are more expensive and less innovative.

The ‘more money’ talks dovetail into how to spend it (or not) in the EU’s next long-term budget, spanning 2028 to 2034.

António Costa, the president of the European Council, is hoping for an agreement of the nearly €2 trillion budget before the end of the year. People need predictability and stability, he said, in a invitation letter sent to the 27 EU states.

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The Irish government has set the path for a showdown between MEPs and governments over the next seven year EU budget after proposing an 8 percent cut worth €141bn to the European Commission’s spending plan. 

Savings from the commission proposal have been found across all headings in the so-called ‘negotiating box’ for the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). But farmers’ subsidies under the common agricultural policy and the bloc’s cohesion policy, which provides funding to the EU’s poorest regions, have been exempted from any cuts. 

That is a nod to a sustained lobbying effort by a group of seventeen EU countries, known as ‘Friends of Cohesion’. 

As expected, meanwhile, cuts totalling €38bn have been made from the ‘Global Europe’ heading, which covers foreign aid, while €75bn has been taken from the competitiveness fund and €10bn from the EU’s administrative costs. 

In a statement on Saturday (10 October), Ireland’s minister for Europe, Thomas Byrne, said that the €1.62 trillion spending plan was “intended to bridge the many differences between Member States. It brings us closer to resolving the critical questions our Union faces on how to balance both new priorities and core policies, whilst also reflecting the fiscal realities that all Member States face.” 

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EU leaders will mouth hollow criticism of West Bank settlers at next week’s summit, while staying mute on Israel’s genocide in Gaza – in sharp contrast to the 2026 Nobel peace prize.

The EU “strongly condemns the continued and growing settler violence against Palestinian civilians and calls for accountability”, they aim to say in a declaration in Brussels on Thursday (15 October), according to a draft seen by EUobserver on Friday.

And they are to warn of “legal, economic, and reputational consequences for [Israeli] businesses participating” in building a settlement in the E1 area of the West Bank, which would destroy the two-state solution by chopping the region in half.

It remains to be seen if Slovenia’s pro-Israeli prime minister, Janez Janša, will sign up, after he ranted on X in August that he would veto this type of thing.

But even if Janša agreed, it would still amount to EU impunity for settlers, as there was no mention of banning settler imports or even blacklisting more settler extremists.

“The EU keeps condemning illegal settlements that it trades with, financing the very occupation and abuses it claims to oppose. How does that make any sense?,” said Claudio Francavilla from Human Rights Watch.

The summit draft also voiced “grave concern over developments in Gaza”, where “protection of civilians must be ensured”, and urged Israel to let in more aid.

Israel has killed some 1,450 people in Gaza since an October 2025 ceasefire.

It has killed over 74,000 Palestinians and displaced 1.8 million people in Gaza since 2023, but the EU leaders’ passive-tense language did not blame Israel for civilian deaths or mention Gaza “accountability”.

And that will put our 27 prime ministers and presidents at odds this Thursday with Europe’s moral compass, international law, and public opinion.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to Navi Pillay, a South African judge, who had chaired a UN commission that found Israel guilty of “genocide” in Gaza and worked for the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which has indicted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes.

She was “a bigot … propagating blood libels,” he said on X.

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar said: “[Nazi propaganda chief] Joseph Goebbels is probably applauding in hell.”

And US president Donald Trump joined their Nobel-bashing by imposing sanctions on the ICC.

But three other Nobel laureates, from Colombia, DR Congo, and Liberia were among global VIPs who also wrote to the European Commission on Friday urging trade sanctions on Israel, in a sign of wider revulsion.

And “if the EU was serious about fulfilling its obligations under international law, or indeed in terms of its own stated values and policies, it would go much, much further [in terms of sanctions],” said H. A. Hellyer, from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think-tank in London.

Palestine solidarity marches in Berlin, London, Rome, and Warsaw on Saturday showed that ordinary Europeans wanted their elected politicians to take action.

Some 83 percent of Germans and 88 percent of Italians now disapproved of Netanyahu, said the Pew Research Centre in June.

Blood and rubble

The latest EU summit draft pledged support for Palestinian elections.

“The European Union stands ready to support the electoral process, including by the deployment of an EU Election Observation Mission,” it said.

But EU words were being buried in blood and rubble faster than the summit statements could be updated.

The Palestinian vote would have to be postponed until at least late 2027 due to the “security and economic conditions” created by Israel in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority warned France, also on Friday.

Meanwhile, the EU summit will fall two weeks before Israeli elections on 27 October and the leaders’ empty words might be tactical – so as not to throw meat to far-right Israeli zealots in a rabid atmosphere.

But Europe’s quietism is also due to Germany and Italy’s internal politics and its psychopathological mix of World War 2-guilt, raging far-right populism, and transatlantic realpolitik.

“I don’t think this [the draft EU summit text on the Middle East] is a strategy, so much as a statement of the lowest common denominator in EU foreign policy,” RUSI’s Hellyer said.

And going back to the Nazi slurs against the 2026 Nobel, Israeli author Gideon Levy said in the Haaretz daily on Saturday: “No, Sa’ar … If Goebbels has a reason to applaud, it is upon seeing what has happened to the country that arose from the ashes of the Holocaust.”

“Goebbels is applauding perpetrators of genocide around the world, particularly the one in Gaza,” said Levy.

So long as Berlin and Rome don’t realign their compasses, Europe’s silent blessing for Palestinian erasure will feed Israeli hardliners’ schizoid and delusional sense of self-righteousness.

“As long as Israel is not willing to … admit, at least partially, to its crimes, it will never change,” Levy said.

In December 2023, a Belarusian KGB representative entered an online seminar organised by the Belarusian Free University and told participants that everything was under the service’s control.  

The following month, the online university, run from exile, was designated an “extremist entity”.

It was a warning that being in exile in a safe country does not necessarily put independent voices beyond the reach of authoritarian states. 

For people forced into exile, reaching the EU should mean being able to continue their work without fear. Yet repression follows them into the digital spaces where they organise, report, and communicate. “We can never be sure who is behind a switched-off camera in our online meetings,” one interviewee told us.  

ARTICLE 19 Europe’s new report, 404: Safety not found?, draws on interviews with exiled targeted journalists, human rights defenders working in Belarusian and Russian language environments, as well as digital security experts who try to protect them. Respondents identified Belarusian and Russian state-linked actors as major sources of threats, while stressing how difficult it is to attribute individual incidents. 

The research documents phishing attacks that expose private communications and trusted contacts, including people inside repressive states. It also shows how platform moderation is manipulated through coordinated malicious complaints.

“Extremist” and “foreign agent” designations deter audiences from sharing or subscribing to independent media. A publication may lose sensitive records built up over years, or remain online yet lose contact with the people it exists to inform. 

The harm extends beyond the person whose accounts are compromised. Stolen information may be used to pressure colleagues and relatives, while fear and mistrust drive self-censorship and withdrawal from public work.

For dispersed organisations with few offline ways to reach audiences, losing access to a platform can threaten their ability to function. 

To an external observer, those attacks might seem like a scattering of isolated incidents. They are not. Digital transnational repression is a coordinated, evolving strategy – and treating it as anything less than a systemic risk will leave the response permanently one step behind the threat.

It’s a reality that the international community, including the European Union, must confront. 

Turning commitments into protection

EU governments should recognise transnational repression for what it is: an attack on the conditions that allow independent journalism and civil society to function.

Offering physical refuge is not enough if people in exile cannot safely investigate abuses, organise or reach their audiences.  

On 23 September, more than 130 UN human rights experts called for action against transnational repression. Mariana Katzarova, the UN special rapporteur on Russia, has called for a binding UN convention. 

But the EU does not need to wait.  

The Digital Services Act already gives the European Commission a basis for action. It requires designated very large online platforms to assess systemic risks to fundamental rights arising from their services in the EU and to take effective, proportionate measures in response.

The practical test is straightforward: does a platform’s design or operation enable transnational repression? Does that amount to a systemic risk under Article 34? Has the platform adequately mitigated it under Article 35? 

Repeated abuse of reporting systems should trigger scrutiny of how those systems operate.

Platforms should provide meaningful human review, clear and accessible appeals and timely support for users facing coordinated attacks, and scrutinise government requests based on politically motivated designations.

Where the commission finds breaches, it should enforce compliance. Any measures against repression must protect freedom of expression, privacy and secure communication, including encryption. 

While attribution remains difficult, victims should not have to establish the entire chain of state responsibility before receiving support.

Investigators must pursue perpetrators and enablers, while regulators assess whether platforms have addressed recurring risks.

These are distinct responsibilities; difficulty in fulfilling one cannot justify neglecting the other. 

The EU should also establish a permanent European coordination mechanism linking national authorities, cybersecurity responders, and civil society.

It should set out clear arrangements for cross-border referrals, early warnings and support.

People reporting attacks need practical assistance, legal advice, and psychological support. Authorities must work with affected communities and build trust without treating language or nationality as grounds for suspicion. 

The test for the EU is simple: can people who have reached European soil feel safe to continue documenting abuses, speaking publicly and seeking justice without having to constantly fear the governments they fled?

If the EU’s commitment to freedom of expression is real, it must be measured by the protection it delivers. 

Student protests in France are an expression of the country’s deep political and economic crisis, says Jan Rovný, a Czech professor at Paris’s Sciences Po.

Students from elite schools and universities have joined secondary-school pupils from deprived suburbs in protesting for education reforms. Rovný explains how these young people protest in solidarity with less fortunate peers, invoking ideals of equality embedded in French minds.

He explained how traditionally violent protests in the republic are often met by disproportionately heavy-handed policing.

The French government has tried to hide students’ dissatisfaction by blaming far-left groups.

What do the protests say about French society? Are they a revolt by young people against poor conditions or part of broader woes?

It is important to realise that the situation in France does not concern only young people and education, it goes deeper than that. The era of French president Emmanuel Macron is coming to an end. For several years now, the country has been run by unstable minority governments, which all face one key problem: how to draft a budget, unveiled on October 1, and push it through parliament.

It is clear that the country is in a very difficult economic situation, because its debt stands at around 117 percent of GDP. The interest rate is rising and approaching five percent. Every day, newspapers write that France cannot bear this burden.

French society is realising that it is at an impasse both politically and economically, that the current elite has no answer, and that savings must be made in various areas. People from many sectors are now speaking out to say they do not want cuts. Or that they have problems that are not being addressed. And young people have a clear view of this, and that is why they are mobilising.

The protest began with specific demands from secondary-school pupils, who clearly identified shortcomings in education — notably missing teachers, overcrowded classrooms and schools in poor condition, some with rats running around and no running water. Yet the protest quickly grew into a nationwide movement. Why have these particular issues proved so powerful?

Partly because they underscore this whole situation, and partly because this is a young generation that represents France’s future. Young people are protesting to say: look at the future we are facing. And parents and teachers largely agree with them.

The protests began in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis and did not arise as a result of a new government reform, but from the everyday experiences of students. What does this tell us about how young French people view the state and its ability to provide public education?

France generally has relatively low trust in political institutions. Young people tend to feel this even more strongly, because they are generally less politically engaged and therefore feel they are, in some way, discriminated against. They see the state as failing to care sufficiently for them and unable to cope.

This is compounded by the approaching elections. We know that the current government is fragile, and we also know that society, as well as the political establishment as a whole, is deeply polarised, with the extremist camps in particular set to enter the elections strengthened.

Staying with the protests, it is interesting that private secondary schools have joined state schools. On Tuesday, the French daily Le Monde showed protests outisde Paris Lycée Henri-IV attended by children from elite families – and where Macron studied. How do you explain the involvement of private schools unlikely to experience the same problems as public ones?

Exactly. That is my situation as well. I teach at a very prestigious university with a beautiful campus a short distance from the Louvre.

Yet our students are protesting. They are protesting because they recognise that French society has major inequalities affecting young people in suburbs like Saint-Denis or Val-de-Marne where conditions are worse.

Better off students are mobilising in solidarity – the concept of equality has been part of France’s political consciousness since the French Revolution. Those privately educated pupil therefore see it as their duty to join protests even though they enjoy far better conditions.

France is described as a strong state where education is regarded as a public service and a fundamental pillar of the French Republic. Could frustration over lack of basic conditions in schools be a reason for current anger?

Of course, and it has several dimensions. The French Third Republic was based on the idea that public education was the means through which modern citizens are created. State schools, established by law at the time, were seen as a fundamental pillar of the new, young democracy.

When you walk around Paris or anywhere else in France, you notice that every school has both the French and European flags above its entrance, along with the words “liberty, equality, fraternity” — the motto of the republicand revolution. Historically, schools drew children out of traditional families, which at that time were highly Catholic, and turned them into modern citizens. That is the country’s foundation.

Another factor is that the French state is very powerful: public spending accounts for more than 50% of GDP. The state is hierarchical, yet it seeks to show that it can do everything, including providing schooling for all. That position is increasingly hard to defend, particularly when money is short and public spending must be cut.

France has a long history of street protests. Is the current situation different in any way from previous social conflicts?

It is difficult to say. What is interesting is that secondary-school students are mobilising. That is relatively unusual, though not entirely unprecedented. It has happened in the past too, but was less visible. Teachers’ unions are now joining these students, as are broader trade unions and public-sector employees generally. University students are also already on strike. There is talk that farmers could join them. It may gather momentum and, as with the yellow vest protests, everyone who criticises the government may take to the streets. That is essentially the majority.

What is interesting about the current protests is that they are led by underage young people who are not yet able to vote, yet can still place the government under enormous pressure. How do you explain this?

They are young and have the time and ability to mobilise. They are able to sustain it and have their own internal organisation. Certain political forces, primarily from the far left, are helping or supporting them, but only to a limited extent. I think the protest is genuinely organic, rather than being directed by a political party or political agitators.

Young people feel they have something to say, and they can mobilise with the support of some teachers, some parents and now also broader sections of society — both university students and some trade union organisations. It may last for some time.

The French government may fear protesting young people more than other protest groups. Why do protesting young people carry such particular political weight in France?

It is probably a memory of 1968 when student mobilisation shifted the entire country to open up certain issues. Sudents are able to mobilise and persevere because they do not lose income when they strike, whereas workers who go on strike do not receive pay for those days, which can be a serious problem for some.

There is also a significance of young people being the future, who say: no, we simply want this country to be different, because it will be ours and we will be responsible for it when you are no longer here.

On Monday, a 15-year-old boy lost his hand after a police grenade exploded, with several other injuries caused by police being investigated. Could this fundamentally change the public mood?

Protests in France tend to be more violent than others are used to. I think it works both ways. I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of protesting students are peaceful, but some people with somewhat different intentions join them. They are called ‘casseurs’ (wreckers)who simply exploit the situation to throw stones at police or set bins on fire.

On the other side are the police, who can become highly aggressive quickly. There is now a major debate over whether the police response is proportionate. These responses divide the left and the right quite clearly with the government and the right wing supporting police, while the left argues that police brutality is pervasive.

It is quite shocking to see footage of armed police officers beating children in the street.

Exactly. And the police will have to be careful not to lose control of the situation. The response of the education minister, who has told students that he will listen to them, is also interesting. The interior minister and the prime minister have instead responded that the police are doing their job and that the interventions are proportionate.

The government is blaming radical left-wing groups for the violence, accusing the far-left party La France Insoumise (France Unbowed) of inciting riots. Do you find this political explanation convincing, or does it take attention away from students’ genuine demands?

It is difficult to say. I would not be at all surprised if extremist groups of any kind joined the protests, although left-wing groups are probably more likely. It is difficult to speculate on the extent to which this is directed from the leadership of France Unbowed. However, I do not think it is to any great extent.

Representatives of this left-wing party, including its MPs and local politicians, joined student, thereby legitimising these protests. But I very much doubt that the party would seek to organise greater violence in order to draw attention to the situation. That suggestion seems somewhat extreme to me.

France is only a few months away from presidential elections. Could this discontent become one of the issues in the election campaign?

Everyone is trying to gain political advantage from it in some way. It is quite clear that the typical Jean-Luc Mélenchon voter supports the students and government criticism more generally.

Ordinary citizens do not want to see violence or rubbish being set on fire, and this sentiment is probably much stronger on the right, which automatically sees Mélenchon as an instigator of unrest.

Mélenchon needs to be careful. To win a larger number of voters, he must also appear as someone who is trying to prevent violence. That is what he attempted to do. A few days ago, he addressed students, saying: mobilise, but your actions must be non-violent. He specifically added that they must be disciplined.

In your view, what could be the boiling point at which governments will no longer be able to calm the situation through promises or concessions?

That is a difficult question. These protests cannot go on forever, since many students realise what they want is better teaching conditions, so that they can prepare better for the baccalaureate examinations, which are approaching in the spring for those in their final year. So they may want to sit down and study.

If the government manages to offer at least some concrete solutions to the fundamental problems — above all, on timetables and teacher allocation on lycées — it may calm the situation. If it does not, I do not know.

Can we therefore understand the current protests as an expression of a crisis in French society, or as evidence that some form of civic mobilisation and the belief that protest can change something still function in France?

It is both. From young people’s perspective, the positive aspect is that they are able to mobilise, take their future into their own hands and say: this is a problem. We told you this, you did not listen to us, so now we are changing tactics and will protest visibly. I think that is fundamentally positive — without the violence.

On the other hand, French society is in deep crisis, and overcoming it will require an explicit change in the narrative – a change in the system. There will need to be some recognition that France is no longer what it used to be; while it remains one of the larger countries of the EU, it is now more or less an ordinary country and it must behave accordingly and see itself in that way.

Understanding this is quite difficult, and it will certainly require political courage and a political figure capable of turning frustrations into something positive.

First published in Deník N.

Until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Czech Vanadium was among the European companies which clearly had Russian owners.

Since 2007, the company has been controlled through the Evraz group by Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, who is close to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The ferrovanadium producer was part of a chain through which vanadium ore mined in Russia reached Europe before being sent on to Abramovich’s factories in the US. Ferrovanadium is an alloy added to steel to help improve its properties. And Czech Republic accounts for six percent of global production.

But sanctions following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 forced the oligarch to sell up.

Evraz, the holding company in which Abramovich is the largest shareholder, supplied the Russian army, according to media reports. But Evraz denied this.

In 2024, the Abu Dhabi-based company Metco (now ‘Metco Holding’) became the sole shareholder in the Czech factory, but it is not clear who controls it.

Czech authorities and police suspect the transfer of the vanadium factory to a new parent company in the UAE may conceal the true owner. They are seeking to establish who is really behind the opaque company in the Persian Gulf, and whether it is still Roman Abramovich.

According to Deník N sources familiar with the investigation, specialists from Czech police bodies for organised crime (NCOZ) and the financial intelligence unit (FAÚ) are involved.

“Yes, we are investigating who is behind the company. There are many leads and the suspicion is clear that the company may still be backed by its former owners from Russia,” a source close to the investigation confirmed.

NCOZ spokesperson Jaroslav Ibehej declined to comment in more detail on the search for Czech Vanadium’s beneficial owner. “As a rule, we neither confirm nor deny what we are working on,” he said.

According to documents in the Czech judicial database, the company is formally controlled by one owner — a Dubai-based lawyer of Indian origin who provides nominee services for beneficial owners. The lawyer has been linked to money-laundering investigations in Ukraine and Moldova.

Apparent fake owner scheme

The officially declared owner of Czech Vanadium is Nikhil Skariah Kolekunnel. According to the ADGM free zone business register in the UAE, he is both the sole shareholder and director of Metco Holding.

However, the Gulf state’s database does not disclose so-called beneficiaries, who are entitled to the company’s profits and may also secretly control it.

Although the Czech judicial register lists Skariah as Czech Vanadium’s beneficial owner, this does not necessarily indicate the person exercising control in the background. For example, trustees of trust funds are also listed in the registers as beneficial owners.

The nature of Skariah Kolekunnel’s business suggests that he performs the specific role of an administrator, a so-called fiduciary — someone who accepts an ownership mandate and effectively manages another person’s assets.

He is a lawyer originally from India who founded two law firms in the UAE years ago. His companies represent large corporations and businesspeople who do not wish to publicly acknowledge ownership of a business.

“South Bridge Legal is an advisory firm for comprehensive business establishment in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the UAE. Our highly experienced team has been active in the sector for more than 10 years, providing services tailored to the unique needs of every ambitious entrepreneur setting up companies in Dubai,” the company wrote on its website.

“We have all activities, which is tax management, tax consulting, accounting, corporate services, offshore company formation, free zone company formation…everything,” Skariah said in a recently published video on YouTube.

Metco Holding’s address in Abu Dhabi suggests it may be a shell company. And it is headquartered from a WeWork.

Moldova and Ukraine links

‘Skariah’, the name of the Indian administrator, had already emerged eight years ago in connection with the concealment of ownership structures during an investigation into the privatisation of Moldova’s national airline. At the time, Skariah appeared as the owner of the opaque company Gold Craft FZE, established in Dubai in 2015.

“On Monday 1 October 2018, one day before the privatisation agreement for Air Moldova was signed, a plane from Istanbul landed at Chișinău International Airport. One of the passengers, a 39-year-old man, was carrying nearly €2.6m in cash in his luggage. He declared the money to customs officers, which, according to the Office for the Prevention and Fight against Money Laundering, he had borrowed four days earlier from Gold Craft FZE in the United Arab Emirates,” the investigative outlet RISE Moldova reported.

It finds that Andrei Ianovici brought cash from Dubai, equivalent to tens of millions of Czech crowns. Later that day, he deposited the money in a bank, and it ended up in the accounts of Civil Aviation Group SRL. That company privatised Air Moldova, and Ianovici was one of its partners.

The true origin of the money was never established, leading local investigators to suspect that the money had not been earned legally. No charges were brought, however.

According to court records, Skariah was also involved in disputes in Ukraine, where Gold Craft FZE claimed ownership of an Ilyushin aircraft which the company allegedly purchased in 2017.

Skariah’s Russian-linked empire

However, the UAE-based lawyer was not the only individual to have emerged as an administrator of Czech Vanadium. Another is Sergei Gushchin.

A man of this name was formerly a prominent Russian businessman in rail freight transport and, although he withdrew from Russia three years ago, he appears on Ukrainian sanctions lists for supporting the Russian army.

Gushchin became a senior manager at PJSC TransContainer, a Russian rail freight carrier, after Evraz sold its stake. In the past, a quarter of the company was owned by the holding company of Abramovich.

Meanwhile another of Gushchin’s companies, Rail Service, formed a joint venture with Evraz in 2019 focused on the production of railway wheels.

According to a UAE register, Gushchin was a director and shareholder of Metco, which became Czech Vanadium’s parent company from 2022-23.

US credit-rating agency Moody’s shared data with Deník N that listed Gushchin as a recent beneficiary of Metco Holding and as the company’s director.

Russia’s ferrovanadium monopoly

Czech Vanadium’s revenues regularly exceed €81m, and in 2024 the company reported profits of more than €8m. This summer, the company sent over €0.6m of that sum to the Dubai company, the remaining funds staying in its retained earnings account.

Last year, the company recorded a modest €0.2m loss. Its accounts retained more than €12m in undistributed profits in total.

Czech Vanadium’s business remains closely tied to Russia. Last year alone, vanadium oxides or hydroxides worth nearly €82m were imported into the Czech Republic from the Russian Federation. Russia is effectively the sole supplier of the raw materials needed to produce ferrovanadium. According to the statistical office database, exports mainly go to the United States, as well as Germany and Taiwan.

Czech Vanadium did not reply to requests for comment or an explanation of its ownership structure.

It also did not answer the question of how a Dubai lawyer had bought the Czech company, which, according to some estimates, is worth more than €40m.

Company representatives have not responded to questions about its owners since 2024, when the company left the Evraz group structure.

Fake owner model in US

Jiří Skuhrovec, an analyst at Datlab, specialises in the global vetting of business partners. He says Abramovich uses a similar model for concealing ownership in the United States.

Sanctions also forced the Russian oligarch, who became better known through his former ownership of the British football club Chelsea, to withdraw from US companies. But Skuhrovec concluded that they were probably still controlled by people linked to Abramovich just like the factory in Czech Republic.

“We mapped the entire chain, from the Russian ore supplier through the Czech smelter to the final recipient: the US company Strategic Alloys LLC. Until recently, all three companies officially belonged to Abramovich, and all three are now controlled by people with links to his Evraz group. Abramovich may therefore still secretly control the entire supply chain for this strategic raw material. This would be a textbook case of sanctions circumvention, as well as an obvious security risk,” Skuhrovec said.

Findings led Datlab and Transparency International to submit a complaint to police. “We believe that the 16m Czech crowns (around €655,000) in distributed profit may have gone to Abramovich, who is on a sanctions list. That would constitute a criminal offence,” the analyst explained.

EU and Chinese officials agreed a series of trade concessions covering electric cars, rare earths and tariffs that dragged them away from a damaging trade war on Friday (9 October), following two days of crisis talks.

Following two days of talks in Beijing, EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič said that he and China’s commerce secretary Wang Wentao had made a “crucial first step” towards rebalancing EU-China trade relations.

Europe can point to progress on hybrid vehicles, stronger assurances over the supply of critical raw materials, and continued engagement on market access issues in China.

Hours before Šefčovič arrived, Beijing rejected an EU demand for so-called “voluntary export restrictions” on its electric vehicles (EVs). However, in a joint statement on Friday, the two sides said that they had reached an “understanding on trade in hybrid vehicles in a WTO compliant manner”, but without providing further details.

They added that further negotiations on reducing tariffs and minimum pricing deals would allow Chinese EVs to enter the EU at a lower duty rate.

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The European Parliament in Strasbourg has been adorned with a grotesque vision of American power in a 2.5-metre-high statue of a naked and obese US president Donald Trump covered in 23-carat gold.

While some MEPs describe it as an expression of freedom and courage in the face of Trump, Slovak prime minister Robert Fico has said the statue is a symbol of a declining European Union and called for its removal.

Fico said the statue reflects a profound misunderstanding of the times we live in, and reminded his X followers that he and Trump are close.

“At a time that calls for dialogue and mutual respect, insulting our partners on official premises demonstrates a profound failure to understand the times we live in,” he said on social media.

“It is sad that the leadership of the European Parliament, in its blindness, can no longer distinguish between the legitimate right to hold a different opinion and the actions of spiritually bankrupt individuals, adventurers and lunatics,” he added.

Jens Galschiøt is the artists behind the Orange Plague sculpture. The Danish artist says his installation served as a warning that Donald Trump is destroying democracy.

Why call it ‘Orange Plague‘?

“I depicted Donald Trump as an ‘orange plague’ because he is destroying everything I believe in. I believe in democracy and the rule of law. All this needs to be cared for, and Trump is destroying it, as well as the debate on the environment,” Galschiøt said.

The artist chose to portray the US president as a grotesque figure hoping that people would laugh at it. “When you laugh at a dictator, you take away his power,” he said.

And Trump is also naked because of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes. In it, the emperor walks through the streets with no clothes, while people tell him how beautifully dressed he is, but no one dares tell him the truth. Only one small child cries out that the ruler is naked.

Galschiøt sees parallels the story and treatment of the US president.

“I think many of us laugh at Donald Trump, but he does not know it. He thinks he is a great leader. He thinks he is an intelligent person. He thinks he gives good speeches. But few people take him seriously. Even if you do take him seriously, it is because he is something like a gang leader, not because of what he says. Most of us actually think he is a ridiculous figure,” Galschiøt said.

His sculpture consists not only of a naked and obese Trump, but also of a slender figure.

“The little man carries the big man, and the big man tells him: ‘Oh, I really want to help you. I really love you, but I do not want to get off your back.’ It is also a story about hypocrisy and double standards, which I combined,” the artist said.

He covered the sculpture in gold because Trump is known to like the precious metal.

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The European Commission has added 46 projects to its list of critical raw materials investments, but its own figures show little EU money has reached similar schemes it selected last year.

The new projects are to be spread across 16 EU countries and cover all but two of the EU’s list of 17 strategic raw materials, said the commission on Friday (9 October).

The priority is copper, used in power grids, which featured in 19 of the 46 new initiatives.

Battery materials also top the list: with 12 projects involving nickel, 10 cobalt, seven lithium, five manganese, and four graphite.

Only four of the new projects concern rare earths used in magnets, wind turbines, and electric motors, for which the EU relies almost entirely on imports, mainly from China.

The new projects suggest the commission sees recycling as a core pillar in its quest to reduce dependency on Chinese imports. Of the 46 new ones, 19 focus on recycling, 11 on processing and eight on extraction.

‘Very tangible‘

“The results are very tangible,” EU industry commissioner Stéphane Séjourné told reporters in Brussels on Friday, pointing to the impact of the first list of strategic investments, selected in March 2025. 

He mentioned Keliber in Finland, which he said is now extracting and processing lithium, and the French company Carester’s plant in Lacq, which recycles magnets and separates heavy rare earths. 

He said Carester could eventually account for around 15 percent of global production of dysprosium and terbium oxides, used in the powerful magnets in electric car motors and wind turbines, and that Greek company Metlen is already producing gallium, important for semiconductors and defence equipment.

He didn’t mention that all three projects were already well advanced before they received strategic status in March 2025.

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• Montenegro detained Mikhail Zvinchuk, the founder of the Rybar Telegram channel.
• Key directions according to Rybar, Ukrainian and independent analysts.
• Forget Sloviansk: its capture is currently unrealistic.
• Ukrainian pressure continues towards Velyka Novosilka, with fighting already under way near Komar on the eastern bank of the Mokri Yaly river.
• Russians are infiltrating Dobropillia, but a Ukrainian counteroffensive is pressing against their flank from the north.
• The battle for data centres is now two-way, with Ukrainians attacking Russia’s ‘Google’.
• Maps of the day — Sloviansk direction; Velyka Novosilka direction; Dobropillia direction.
• Videos of the day — a scene from the Second World War: a MiG-29 shoots down a drone with its cannon; soldiers clear a network of Russian bunkers; Himars destroys an artillery radar; what the R-280 road to Crimea looks like.

Montenegro detained Mikhail Zvinchuk, the founder of the Rybar Telegram channel, who occupies one of the leading positions in the ecosystem of Russian media supporting the war. His wife and several associates were arrested alongside him. Colleagues in Moscow issued a statement saying they had been planning to film a report on one of the local monasteries, but the authorities of the Nato member state suspected them of conducting a hybrid operation.

At the top of Russian propaganda are the traditional state media, under the Kremlin’s complete control. They have almost no informational value, as they merely repeat the regime’s propaganda.

Below them, however, is a complex structure of Telegram channels that provide more varied reporting, including critical coverage. However, criticism is permitted only of mistakes in the conduct of the war, not of the war itself.

These channels, too, spread propaganda and keep Russian society in a state of war, but they also provide information that helps in analysing the course of the fighting. Rybar is among the largest and most influential of them.

In this case, it is not the work of an individual author but a media outlet with an editorial team and extensive content for 1.5m readers, so Zvinchuk’s arrest does not mean the end of publishing under this brand.

Yet through him, we can follow the fascinating story of a man who came from Russia’s defence ministry to spread its propaganda in the years that followed.

Paradoxically, however, he has recently been one of the few sources in Russia to report regularly on the Russian army’s failures at the front. And the preceding 48 hours were particularly rich in such assessments.

We will therefore gradually describe events in three different directions where, according to Rybar, the Russians are either retreating or at risk of doing so. Coincidentally, these are currently the most important directions of military operations.

We will compare all of its information with independent or Ukrainian sources.

Forget Sloviansk: its capture is currently unrealistic. “The situation is worsening; Sloviansk is being postponed,” Rybar wrote in the first sentence of its latest analysis of the Sloviansk direction. It explained why at length.

According to it, Ukrainian units in the area are increasing the pressure and exploiting their successes near Lyman, which lies north of Sloviansk. The Russian army has suffered a serious defeat here in recent months, losing a large salient from which it had hoped to bypass the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration from the north.

Rybar listed the ensuing complications: according to it, Ukrainians have concentrated fresh drone units around the village of Dibrova; the Russians had to withdraw from the village of Piskunivka and are now trying to save Kryva Luka. Ukrainians are also pressing into the village of Ozerne.

Ukrainian formations are increasing their activity, exploiting successes in the Lyman area, where fresh forces of drone operators have been concentrated around Dibrova.

Russian troops were pushed out of what remained of the village of Piskunivka and are now defending the approaches to Kryva Luka. The enemy is trying to break through there both from the west and across the river from Ozerne.

Moreover, heavy fighting is under way west of the village of Kalynyky, while fighting for Rai-Oleksandrivka is “fierce”, “although it was under the Russian army’s full control only recently”.

Nor is this the end of Rybar’s bad news. An “equally difficult situation” persists on the western bank of the Siverskyi Donets-Donbas Canal, where Russian soldiers are “for now” holding positions in the villages of Malynivka, Tykhonivka, and Yurkivka.

Taken together, all of this means that the prospect of an “attack on the agglomeration has receded considerably”.

“Without control of the forests below Lyman, the offensive is doomed, if not to failure, then to high losses from attacks on its flank,” Rybar added.

Its map fully matches the verbal description. The red arrows running from east to west along the entire stretch have been replaced by blue, Ukrainian arrows pointing from west to east.

Paradoxically, the local Telegram channel Mikolaivka-Sloviansk Online provides a far less optimistic picture.

While Rybar no longer even mentions Mykolaivka, which directly borders Sloviansk, according to this source — which has repeatedly provided highly accurate and widely cited information — Russians are still managing to infiltrate it. On Wednesday, it wrote that “the Russian army is applying pressure from the direction of Rai-Oleksandrivka”, while the village itself is in the grey zone.

The explanation may be simple. Most of the names refer to villages the Russians never fully captured, although they claimed they had — including Rybar itself. This is why its map looks as though a small counteroffensive were under way east of Sloviansk. In reality, it mainly makes its previous misleading claims more realistic.

Far more accurate is the map by the Finnish Black Bird Group. Rai-Oleksandrivka is in the middle of the image — no credible analysts have ever considered it occupied by the Russians. Further north are Ozerne and Kryva Luka. Ozerne is particularly interesting.

According to Rybar, the Russians are trying to prevent the Ukrainian army from entering the village; independent analysts show it partly in the grey zone and partly under Ukrainian control. Rybar therefore correctly sees Russian problems, but at this point this is more its usual cartographic “retreat” from unrealistic positions.

Ukrainian pressure continues towards Velyka Novosilka, with fighting already under way near Komar on the eastern bank of the Mokri Yaly river. This is not entirely new either, but several Russian sources are writing about fighting in this direction with new urgency and, from the Russian perspective, scepticism.

“The situation remains extremely tense. There is mounting evidence that the enemy is seeking to advance around the village of Komar,” Rybar wrote.

This is an important village. When the Russians captured Velyka Novosilka last year after taking Vuhledar, Komar was a significant obstacle to their advance into Dnipropetrovsk oblast.

Fierce fighting took place over the village at the time, and the Ukrainian army lost it in June 2025. The front then moved another 15 to 20 km deeper into Ukrainian territory, but it is now moving back after months of slow advances.

Here, too, Rybar’s map appears more dramatic than the situation actually is. It depicts territory being liberated since February. However, it claims that the situation is worsening and the outlook is negative.

But the information about movements near Komar is genuinely fresh. Other sources agree on it almost metre for metre.

The Russian mapping project Slivochny Kapriz showed the exact location at the northern end of Komar, across the Mokri Yaly river, where Russian drones struck a Ukrainian video.

The Ukrainian Telegram account Petrenko also geolocated the incident at the same location.

Alexander Radov, another pro-war Russian, claimed that testimony from Ukrainian prisoners in this direction indicated that the Ukrainian command’s objectives were Bahatyr, 12 km east of Komar, and Velyka Novosilka itself, 13 km to the south.

This claim cannot be verified, but if it were true, Ukrainian objectives in this sector would be becoming ambitious. (Both Bahatyr and Velyka Novosilka are in the lower-right section of Rybar’s map at the beginning of this section.)

Russians are infiltrating Dobropillia, but a Ukrainian counteroffensive is pressing against their flank from the north. The fact that Russians are already operating in the town has been objectively confirmed by both sides. However, an earlier Russian claim that it had been encircled is false.

Rybar’s map again reflects what was written. In the town itself and its surroundings, red arrows show Russian attacks, while northeast of it, Ukrainian counterattacks are shown against the flank.

The Ukrainian channel Petrenko again serves as a source from the other side. Its map of Dobropillia has three circles, each marking a location where drones spotted Russian soldiers.

A Ukrainian soldier writing under the name Bakhmut Demon also confirmed Russian infiltrations into the town. However, he said they were being eliminated and that Russian losses would rise from November. He probably meant the period when the leaves fall and the terrain begins to turn muddy. Both will make the attackers’ advance more difficult.

Bakhmut Demon also warned that vigilance needed to be increased, as Russians are changing into civilian clothes and trying to infiltrate between Ukrainian positions in them.

Soldiers on the Zaporizhzhia direction described the same practice to us during a recent trip to Ukraine. There, too, they said that men in civilian clothing are sent ahead of infiltration groups in order to deceive drone operators.

Finally, another map by Black Bird Group. It, too, confirms the Russian advance towards Dobropillia, but does not show Ukrainian attacks in the north. The explanation is the same as in the previous cases: Rybar had drawn Russian positions much further forward than they actually were.

The battle for data centres is now two-way, with Ukrainians attacking Russia’s ‘Google’. Yandex is a technology giant that underpins the Russian internet. Its search engine, for example, is used by two-thirds of Russians. But its services are far broader. Among other things, it provides cloud storage to its clients.

The company provides its services through five main data centres. On Thursday, drones attacked the first of them. They struck the facility in Sasovo, in Ryazan oblast.

“This data centre is one of the key and largest data centres in Yandex’s Russian infrastructure. It contains tens of thousands of servers, and the company’s cloud services and computing capacity for machine learning operate on its equipment,” the Russian Telegram channel Military Informant explained the significance of the target.

As a result of the attack, outages in various internet-connected services were reported throughout the day.

The exile website Meduza listed several affected media outlets whose websites either could not be loaded at times or loaded slowly: RBC, Vedomosti, RIA Novosti, Kommersant, Vesti, Interfax, and Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

On Friday, another Yandex data centre was attacked, this time in Kaluga. The company acknowledged damage to equipment and announced that “some Yandex services may experience outages”.

Videos of the day

The events in the following video are almost identical to those witnessed by people in south-east England in 1944. Nazi Germany had then begun using V-1 flying bombs, and the most effective weapon against them was fighter aircraft, which shot down hundreds of these “wonder weapons” just above the sea while flying at the limit of their maximum speed.

Ukrainian pilots are now using the same tactic because of a shortage of air-to-air missiles. In this case, a MiG-29 shot down a Russian Geran-4 jet drone with fire from its 30mm cannon.

The MiG-29 is 17.4 metres long. The distance between it and the drone when firing began was around eight times its length — just under 150 metres. The risks to the pilot are obvious: the cloud of debris endangers the aircraft itself.

Spectacular destruction of a Shahed drone with the autocannon of a MiG-29. pic.twitter.com/CMUOpUKjLr

— WarTranslated (@wartranslated) October 7, 2026

Once a common sight, now more of a rarity. A Himars multiple-launch rocket system destroyed a Russian artillery radar.

💥A rare sight these days: a HIMARS strike, apparently using a GMLRS rocket, destroys a Russian Irbis counter-battery radar after it was detected and tracked by reconnaissance drones of Ukraine’s 43rd Artillery Brigade.

The Irbis is a relatively new Russian multifunctional radar… pic.twitter.com/sYl3jRcD5i

— Special Kherson Cat 🐈🇺🇦 (@bayraktar_1love) October 8, 2026

The war has moved underground to an even greater extent than was previously customary. Soldiers at the front are building interconnected underground bunkers. A video by the 5th Assault Brigade shows the clearing of what were probably abandoned Russian positions.

Soldiers throw explosives into the openings. The footage then allows viewers to see, from plumes of smoke and dust pouring from underground, how many entrances the bunker had and how they were arranged.

🇺🇦2nd Assault Battalion of the 5th Assault Brigade clearing a collapsed bunker system, #Huliaipole sector
at south eastern front pic.twitter.com/OoVU6x7PIH

— C4H10FO2P ☠️ (@markito0171) October 9, 2026

The R-280 road to Crimea remains a deadly trap for Russian logistics.

Days after days, the same videos are coming from southern occupied Ukraine.

Large truck convoys, protected by many truck-mounted air-defense, ride at full speed on key roads.

Full of goods, fuel or military hardware, they are constantly attacked by Ukrainian drones. pic.twitter.com/tSDMe8VRwd

— Clément Molin (@clement_molin) October 7, 2026

Last week, EU member states reached a common position on the European Commission Omnibus X ‘Food and Feed’ proposal, in a bid to simplify regulation of pesticides. In reality, however, it will weaken protection against pesticides’ negative effects in Europe. The proposal pleases the chemical industry but goes against the wishes of a vast majority of citizens and many scientists who value people’s health, clean drinking water and biodiversity.

A hearing in the European Parliament on 3 September highlighted the real problem. Under the guise of a ‘discussion with experts’ in the field of health and environment, the parliament handed the megaphone to lobbyists representing a broken, toxic agricultural model.

Representatives of industrial agriculture – sugar beet, apple and cereal growers – parroted industry arguments, justifying their demands to stop banning pesticides that are toxic to public health, the environment and pollute our water resources.

Despite Europe witnessing massive droughts, extreme heatwaves leading to countless deaths, wildfires destroying biodiversity, and devastating crop losses, it seems that a significant share of MEPs are ready and willing to accelerate the degradation of European’s wellbeing and natural resources. 

Listening to them raises a fundamental question: Do farmers truly want to rely on a cocktail of toxic chemicals to maximise yields at low market prices, destroying their own health and local ecosystems in the process? Or do they wish to make an honest living, producing quality food in balance with nature for a fair income?

CAP subsidies

To better grasp this contradiction, we must look at what is actually at stake here.

Agrochemical corporations seek their share of the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) cake – a colossal €58bn budget, accounting for one third of the EU’s total budget.

Their own survival is reliant on keeping as many farmers as possible dependent on pesticides, fertilisers and industrial seeds. By diverting public CAP funds through farmers into the pockets of their shareholders, these companies ensure their long-term profitability.

Many farmers’ unions also represent agri-cooperatives that profit significantly from selling pesticides, which raises questions about whether they truly represent farmers’ long-term interests, or those of the pesticide industry.

Since the European Commission published its ‘simplification’ proposal in December 2025, proponents of pesticide-intensive farming have presented a series of flawed arguments that in fact reveal the dead-end to which intensive agriculture has led us.

Firstly, farmers’ organisations complain about a “lack of pesticide substances” on the market.

Currently around 450 different pesticide active substances are approved in the EU, from insecticides to fungicides, and herbicides. If 450 different options are insufficient, does this not signal an unhealthy addiction rather than a shortage?

Lobbyist groups, furthermore, claim that pest resistance to synthetic pesticides would inevitably lead to dramatic yield losses and hunger, arguing for even more pesticides with diverse modes of action.

And yet, according to scientific research, the  multiple chemical strategy that has been applied for more than 40 years is the very cause of the appearance of resistance. This problem cannot be solved with the mindset that caused it. The only scientific solution is, therefore, not more chemistry but prevention, and the use of alternative methods.

Thousands of farmers across the EU and the rest of the world are already proving this by switching towards Integrated Pest Management (a strategy for low-pesticide-input pest management) or organic practices to reduce pesticide inputs.

Who bares the cost

The call to keep all pesticides on the market – and potentially even use some of the banned ones –  serves only the short-term interests of the pesticide industry, not of the farmers.

Destroying soil life – the basis of soil fertility – with chemicals, and killing insect populations that naturally control pests and pollinate crops, jeopardises the very basis of farming and long-term food security.

The societal costs of this pesticide-dependent model are staggering. Citizens are the ones who bear the healthcare costs for chronic diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s, which impact not only farmers but also residents of agricultural areas.

We face water pollution that has become nearly impossible to remediate. Fewer pollinators means fewer healthy fruit and vegetables. These ‘externalities’ far outweigh any short-term benefits.

This is the reason why the Paris and Munich water companies financially support farmers in protecting the groundwater, because doing so is up to 45 times cheaper than depollution.

In the meantime, the agrochemical industry enjoys huge profits from pesticide sales, largely supported by CAP subsidies, while society foots the bill for the damage. It is indeed a perfect business model…for them.

Lobbyist circus

The spectacle witnessed in the alleged House of European Democracy is testament to the state of our political world; one that is dominated by corporate interests over citizens and farmers’ wellbeing.

We witnessed the desperate battle of a toxic agricultural model that struggles to survive, and resists being replaced by sustainable farming methods.

The lobbyist speakers in the European Parliament hearing more or less gave the diagnosis to the current pesticide-intensive agricultural system: it is simply broken. 

Citizens have repeatedly expressed their concern on the impact of pesticides on their health and biodiversity. They have also expressed the need that public support for agriculture serves the common good.

The pesticide Omnibus X proposal is merely an attempt to maintain a detrimental status quo that favours the pesticides industry.

With the 1968 Mansholt Plan Europe created a blueprint for the intensification of agriculture.

What is needed now is a new blueprint for a system which financially supports farmers to implement practices that improve soil and plant health, favour beneficial insects, accelerate the availability of alternatives to pesticides such as biocontrol products, and rapidly phase out toxic synthetic pesticides to protect our health, water resources and biodiversity.

Only then can we ensure a sustainable future for European agriculture and our children. Only then, will a greater share of the CAP remain in the hands of farmers who feed us and protect our nature.

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: 

Spain is heading for early elections, after prime minister Pedro Sánchez called a snap vote last week. According to current polls, the conservative People’s Party, or PP, is ahead of Sánchez’s Socialists, while Vox is also making significant gains.

So, what would happen if the PP and Vox decided to govern together? And what would that mean for Europe? 

Let’s start with the numbers. According to Politico’s poll of polls, the PP, the conservative right-wing party, is currently polling first, at around 34 percent. The Socialists of the PSOE are at around 26 percent, and the far-right party Vox at around 18 percent.

The Socialists already came second in the last general election, in 2023. The PP won the most seats, but it couldn’t form a government. Pedro Sánchez eventually secured enough support from other parties, including the left-wing Sumar, to remain prime minister.

This time, the balance could be different. If the current polling were reflected in the election result, the PP and Vox could have enough seats to form a government together. PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has said he could negotiate with Vox.

And this would not be completely new in Spain. The PP and Vox are already governing together in four Spanish regions: Extremadura, Aragon, Castilla y León and Andalusia.

Now, would that mean Spain would have  a government with Vox ministers? One possibility would be a government led by the PP, with Vox supporting it from outside, without taking ministerial positions. That’s what we’ve seen in Sweden, for example.

But what seems more and more likely is that Vox would become part of the government itself. The Vox MEP José Buxadé told Politico a few weeks ago that if his party negotiates a coalition with the PP, it would seek ministerial positions proportional to the number of votes it receives.

According to Politico, based on current polling, that could mean a third of ministers coming from Vox. So, what would this mean for Europe and for Spain? A lot.

Spain is currently one of the EU countries where the government has taken relatively progressive positions on issues such as migration, climate policy and social policy.

A change of government would therefore give more weight to the right in the European Council. That could be particularly important on migration, but also on economic files.

And then there is climate policy. Vox has called for the abolition of the European Green Deal, arguing that environmental policies have harmed employment and Spain’s energy policy.

Something that is very much contradicted by the fact that Spain is one of the European countries that has been particularly resilient during the energy crisis, thanks to its renewable energy.

So a change in climate policy could have consequences not only for Spain, but also for the EU’s wider energy transition.

And there could be another major change: foreign policy. Pedro Sánchez has been one of the more outspoken European leaders on the war in Gaza. Spain has taken a particularly critical position towards Israel and has recognised a Palestinian state.

Vox takes a very different position. The party strongly supports Israel and has called for European funding to the Palestinian Authority to be suspended.

The Spanish election is still several weeks away, so we don’t yet know whether the PP and Vox will actually be able to form a government, or what form such an agreement would take.

But if they do, Spain’s position in Europe could change quite significantly.