Earlier this week, EU officials said in unusually staunch terms that they would not buy Arctic oil and gas.
Even if someone (Norway) decided to drill new oil or gas wells in the Barents Sea, which is well above the Arctic Circle, the EU would not purchase it.
The goal is to dissuade investors. It costs many billions of euros to develop gas or oil at scale in the harsh conditions of the far north.
If there is no offtake market in continental Europe, no-one is going to take the risk.
The thing is, EU buyers already buy gas (and oil) from the Arctic. A lot of it.
Most of the gas, some 12 million tonnes so far this year, comes from Russia’s Yamal LNG plant, which sits on the shore of the biggest estuary you have never heard of, the Gulf of Ob (Obskaya Guba in Russian).
But that will end 10 weeks from now, when the EU ban on Russian LNG kicks in.
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The European Parliament overwhelmingly supported an increased budget and scope for the Erasmus+ student-exchange programme under the new EU budget on Thursday (22 October).
The plenary in Strasbourg opted for a €7bn increase in Erasmus+’s budget compared to the commission’s proposal, by 454 votes, with 34 abstentions, against 93, mostly from right-wing parties.
And it was an audacious move, seeing as ‘frugal’ EU capitals are pushing for €150bn of cuts to the commission’s draft.
But even a “slight increase” in Erasmus+ funds would mean more opportunities for thousands of people, said Bogdan Zdrojewski, a Polish centre-right MEP, who was the rapporteur on the file, during a parliamentary debate earlier on Wednesday.
Celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2027, Erasmus+ enables young people to study, live, and work in foreign countries both inside the 27 EU states and the programme’s 160 “associate” states worldwide.
Some 17 million people have taken part since it began, with an estimated 1 million babies also born to couples who met on exchange, in what the commission has long used as a flagship PR project for creating a feel-good factor about the EU.
Meanwhile, the UK will rejoin the programme in 2027, which means EU students will once more have the opportunity to also spend a semester in Britain, which host some of Europe and the world’s top universities.
And the parliament would also welcome Canada’s full participation in a few years’ time, Zdrojewski told press on Wednesday.
The EU Parliament would like to expand Erasmus+ to more vocational training. “Erasmus+ will be a programme for Europeans no matter what age, what stage of life,” Zdrojewski said.
And students from poorer homes should get more support to live in pricey cities abroad, he added.
The share of Erasmus+ participants who had fewer opportunities to travel under the present structure stood at 15 percent in 2023 – up from 10 percent only two years earlier, according to a commission evaluation.
“Far too often, it is still the parents’ financial situation that determines who can take part in Erasmus+ and who cannot,” said Sabrina Repp, a German socialist MEP, in Wednesday’s debate in Strasbourg.
Working students often cannot afford to quit their current job to go abroad, she added: “That is precisely what we must change.”
The EU budget talks are to be finalised early next year.
Some 83 percent of Erasmus+ participants say they gained professional skills that helped them in the labour market.
But in order for those opportunities to be available more widely, “we need more funding for this programme,” also said Lucia Yar, a Slovak liberal MEP in the Strasbourg debate.
Soldiers told the New York Times how they survived six months in the kill zone.
Basic rules for survival.
Modern warfare: masses of equipment versus courageous individuals.
Following peace talks, the humanist Putin sent ballistic missiles to Ukraine.
Map of the day: the successful Operation Vivaldi.
Videos of the day: the underground Operation Veles into the Russian rear and an aerial drone duel.
Soldiers speak about their six months in the kill zone. When the 128th Mechanised Brigade asked at a training ground last autumn who was willing to go into the ‘kill zone’, the term used for the most dangerous stretches of the 1,200-km front, two soldiers volunteered.
And the rest visibly breathed a sigh of relief.
Hennadiy and Mykhailo, whose story was reported by the New York Times, spent a long six months “at zero” rather than one, and described in detail how they managed to survive on the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Their account shows how, despite drone warfare, the basic work — holding or capturing new positions — is still done by infantry, which remains indispensable even in this war, where a technological advantage can mean the difference between life and death.
Both set out by car from the village of Prymorske and, when they were about 1.5 km from their destination, began a slow and extremely dangerous journey.
It was most dangerous when they had to move.
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The EU’s border force Frontex is getting overhauled next Tuesday (27 October) by a European Commission determined to give the Warsaw-based agency a larger role in deportations, more resources, and more agility to deploy.
The Brussels-executive has already proposed increasing the agency’s budget to €12bn, spread out over seven years. The money is being discussed as part of a larger drawn out EU budget fight among EU states.
Budget tussles aside, the commission has already dropped clues into what it wants from the new agency, following demands from its political masters at the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP).
The EPP had wanted to expand the border force to 30,000 from the proposed 10,000. But it is unlikely the 30,000 will be met given the difficulty of finding recruits.
Frontex currently has around 1,250 officers, who are directly employed by the agency. Its standing corps also includes officers provided by member states on long- and short-term assignments. That means they are not all on the Frontex payroll.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, ahead of this month’s EU summit, instead spoke of a “substantial increase” of the Frontex standing corps, without committing to a number.
She also called for European Border and Return Reserve, a Quick Reaction Force for crisis deployment, a Return Coordination Centre to accelerate and improve returns including from foreign states, and social media snooping to gauge any possible Ceuta-like mass arrivals.
The European Parliament on Thursday (22 October) backed a three-year delay to the EU’s methane rules for oil and gas importers, two years more than the European Commission proposed last week.
MEPs also voted to extend the delay to European oil and gas producers, which goes beyond the commission’s plans.
The text now forms parliament’s position for negotiations with member states, whose ambassadors failed to agree on Wednesday.
Under the amendments, tabled by the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), importers would only have to prove that their oil and gas meets EU monitoring standards from 2031, instead of 2027 under the current law.
Reporting on methane intensity would also be delayed from 2028 to 2031.
A separate amendment from a cross-party group of 36 Romanian and Bulgarian MEPs, which also passed, delays reporting obligations for EU operators by three years, to 2030.
MEPs also approved an amendment, tabled by Dutch Socialist MEP Mohammed Chahim, that the extra time should not apply to oil, gas and coal from countries under EU sanctions, which in practice means Russia.
A far-right Patriots for Europe proposal to suspend the regulation altogether was rejected, as was a push by the conservative ECR group to delay parts of the rules even longer.
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The International Criminal Court (ICC) has received the EU’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.
Reacting to EU Parliament president Roberta Metsola’s announcement of the prize winner on Thursday (22 October), the Hague-based court said it is “thankful” for the recognition of the court and its officials.
“This award comes at a time when the court and its officials face unprecedented challenges, including sanctions aimed at disrupting the court’s judicial mandate,” ICC president judge Tomoko Akane told EUobserver in a statement.
The parliament’s recognition “underscores the importance of […] support to enable the Court to carry out its mandate independently and impartially, in the service of justice and the victims of the gravest crimes,” said the Japanese judge.
The court’s win comes after US president Donald Trump put his weight behind Israeli efforts to discredit the international judicial body by extending sanctions against it.
The ICC investigates and tries individuals charged with war and human-rights related crimes. When it issued an arrest warrant in 2024 for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes, the US responded by sanctioning its judges.
EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the win, saying: “For victims of the world’s gravest crimes, justice means a voice. The ICC must be free to pursue its mission, independently, and without pressure or intimidation. Europe stands firmly behind president Tomoko Akane, the Court’s judges and officials, and their vital work for a world governed by rules.”
New sanctions against the court were announced by the Trump administration this month after the Nobel Peace Prize went to Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge who concluded in a UN report that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Tomoka said: “While this prize recognises the work of the court in combating impunity and ensuring fair trials, it is also an important recognition of the role of international justice as a cornerstone of lasting peace. In a world marked by rising conflicts, there is no peace without justice and no security without law.”
Strasbourg stands for justice
French MEP Chloé Ridel initiated the ICC’s nomination for the Sakharov Prize on behalf of the Socialists & Democrats parliament group.
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A high-ranking EU politician has gone on hunger strike over the humanitarian crisis in besieged Oleshky in Ukraine.
Pina Picierno, an Italian MEP and a vice-president in the EU parliament, told EUobserver she is refusing to eat solid food to draw attention to the besieged Ukrainian town.
Eight kilometres from Kherson, Oleshky is reported to now have 1,700 inhabitants, down from 24,000 people before Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The EU says the town is without access to food, medicine, clean water and basic care.
The only route to escape is tapped with mines and rife with attack drones, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha warned last Saturday (17 October).
Saying that Russia wants to make Oleshky a “death trap”, the Ukrainian minister urged the UN and International Red Cross to secure evacuation corridors and immediate humanitarian access to Oleshky.
“Families are starving, surviving on leftover garden vegetables, preserves and even snails,” he said.
Pope calls Putin over Oleshky
The Vatican has attempted to mediate, with Pope Leo calling last week for Russian president Vladimir Putin to arrange a humanitarian ceasefire to allow in aid.
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Last week, Elsene became the fifth municipality to vote for an end to fossil-fuel advertising, joining Saint-Gilles, Jette, Schaerbeek and Molenbeek.
Four of those five votes came in the space of just four months, and together, these municipalities are home to roughly 370,000 people: one-third of the Brussels-Capital Region’s population.
All five are making the same demand: that the Brussels region bans fossil-fuel advertising across the entire city, from metro stations to regional roads. More motions are already being tabled, and by the end of the year, a majority of Brussels’ 19 municipalities could be on record calling for a ban.
While local politicians are taking the lead, the outlook a little higher up the chain looks less promising.
Europe’s ad town and the EU’s lobby town
Everyday tens of thousands of officials, MEPs, assistants and diplomats brave Brussels morning rush hour on their way to work on the laws that will decide whether Europe meets its climate targets.
Along the way they pass numerous temptations, bus shelters and metro walls selling them petrol cars, weekend flights and gas contracts, normalising the ongoing mass-consumption of these products.
Once they reach their offices, they meet the same industry again, this time in person. The seven biggest oil and gas companies alone have declared lobbying budgets of almost €64m.
Fossil Free Politics research shows EU Commissioners and their cabinets had nearly 900 meetings with fossil fuel lobbyists in the last term. That’s nearly once every working day, showing just how embedded the industry is in the daily rhythm of Brussels life.
Some files come under particularly heavy pressure, with one egregious example being how a secretive alliance of eleven large multinational enterprises worked to tear down the EU’s flagship human rights and climate law last year, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).
Over 80 percent of all commission meetings with external interest representatives on this regulation involved fossil fuel lobbyists, and the European Parliament is no better. All 17 MEPs who called for the methane regulation to be reopened in an April 2026 letter to the commission had met with fossil fuel lobbyists in the preceding year.
And those are only the declared figures.
Lobbyists roaming the corridors
Safe to say, the real total is almost certainly higher. According to new research by Reclaim Finance, on two out of every three days, the fossil-fuel lobbyists present at the European Parliament had no meetings scheduled with MEPs. They roam the corridors and cafés in the building, aiming to bump into the MEPs they wish to influence.
The councillors behind these fossil ad ban motions are not pretending that a few billboards will single-handedly solve the climate crisis, but they refuse to continue letting public spaces be misused by the fossil, automotive and aviation industry to freely promote their propaganda; as for the latter, especially since the advertised destinations are often precisely those places that have been the victims of severe climate disruptions..
“The summer of 2026 was a painful awakening to the harsh reality of the consequences of the climate crisis,” said Mathias Gyselen, the Ecolo-Groen councillor who tabled Schaerbeek’s motion in September.
“Heatwaves, heat islands and heat deaths are unfortunately becoming the new normal in the city. Doing nothing is no longer an option.”
They are right. Advertising is how the fossil fuel industry keeps its social licence, presenting itself as part of the solution while expanding the very products driving the crisis.
Not just the five sub-municipalities of the Brussels capital acknowledge this, but over 70+ cities worldwide have taken steps to clear their streets from fossil fuel advertising, among them Amsterdam, Sydney, Stockholm and Edinburgh.
The problems with advertisements, and multi-million euro lobby strategies, are not just that they very much harm the planet, they are also fundamentally undemocratic.
Residents, community groups and civil society organisations cannot match the industry’s firepower. They do not have the budgets, the staff or the open doors that put them across the table from lawmakers week after week.
Europe has dealt with this before.
‘Godfathers of climate chaos’
Tobacco lobbyists no longer get privileged access to health ministers, nor can cigarette brands buy billboards. For many similar reasons the world wants to end fossil fuels, the EU banned tobacco advertising because promoting a deadly product was incompatible with public health.
UN secretary-general António Guterres made the same comparison in 2024 when he urged every country to ban fossil fuel advertising, naming fossil-fuel companies as the “godfathers of climate chaos”
Municipal motions are not binding, so the decision now lies with the Brussels-Capital Region, which controls advertising in the metro, along regional roads and on its own infrastructure. A first obvious step is that it should listen to its municipalities and introduce a city-wide ban.
But the message is also addressed to the institutions on the other side of the Rue de la Loi.
If the streets of Europe’s capital are being cleared of fossil fuel promotion, the corridors of its institutions should be too. That means limiting the industry’s access to decision-makers, closing the revolving door, and rejecting fossil fuel sponsorship and partnerships, just as the EU did with tobacco.
The municipalities of Brussels have shown what local democracy looks like. Now it is up to the region and the EU institutions to show that Europe’s capital is not for sale; not on its billboards, and not in its corridors of power.
For years, Serbia’s opposition has struggled to turn public discontent into a credible challenge to Aleksandar Vučić’s political dominance. On Sunday (25 October), a student-led movement that began with demands for accountability after a deadly train station collapse will attempt to do what established opposition forces have repeatedly failed to achieve: translate civic mobilisation into political change.
The upcoming parliamentary elections are about more than the (re)distribution of seats. They represent the endeavour citizens want and need in a democratic society.
For several years now, “the students operate according to the principles of direct democracy,” senior research associate at the University of Belgrade, Vasiljević told EUobserver. They gather in “plenums” and make collective decisions.
The motor behind that movement was anger. The lack of accountability after the collapse of a canopy at Novi Sad railway station on 1 November 2024, which killed 16 people was the main trigger.
Since then, protests have been taken place around in the country. Eventually, they grew into a nationwide challenge to the government. The student movement even marched from Belgrade to Brussels and Strasbourg to appeal to the EU institutions.
“It brought some irreversible changes that will have a lasting impact on society,” said Vasiljević.
And these changes could be now transposed into politics. “The country has been held captive for far too long by one ruling party and, in fact, one ruling elite,” Miloje Savić, a volunteering poll observer, told EUobserver.
A protester shows a patch reading ‘Students are winning’ during a mass student-led anti-government rally in Belgrade. Source: EPA/Andre Cukić.
For many Serbs, as for Savić, the students’ organisation represent “a tectonic shift in how society is organised and how it should function.”
The Student List, now the electoral vehicle for the mobilisation, has given people frustrated with established politics a new focus for their demands. The main idea being that political participation can be rebuilt from the ground up.
“It is not a good time to be living in Serbia. And during my life, I can’t remember a time when it was,” Ivan Bartoš, a 31-year-old organiser of student protests in Bački Petrovac told EUobserver.
Serbia, as many European countries, is suffering from an ageing population. It brings to the social debate a generational difference. On one side, the middle-aged and “corrupted” regime led by Vučić, on the other, a proposal of change without real political experience.
And the question that is heard in the run-up to the elections is “does Serbia need a professional politician who has been trained for years in kleptocracy, or is society willing to take a risk?”
Vučić’s ‘men in black’?
Yet the movement’s rise has exposed a fundamental tension: society may be changing faster than the institutions through which change must be delivered.
“The institutions have been captured and controlled by the regime. There is not enough institutional space to accommodate these political changes,” Vasiljević said.
Previous Serbian elections have been accompanied by allegations of vote-buying, voter intimidation and ballot-box stuffing. After the last ones, held in December 2023, European MP’s called for “independent investigations into the irregularities”.
Knowing what is at stake, the Student List is trained an unprecedented number of poll monitors (15,000), seeking to protect the vote and document potential irregularities.
Attacks on opposition representatives by groups of unidentified men dressed in black have repeatedly raised concerns during the rule of Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).
The media are not safe either.
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Poland’s governing coalition voted in parliament to loosen abortion law on Tuesday (20 October) – but the country’s conservative president is expected to block the change.
Poland has one of Europe’s harshest abortion laws, allowing only two exceptions to a general ban: in case of rape or danger to the woman’s health.
The amendments, passed by a narrow majority, would allow for abortions in cases of severe deformation of the foetus, and partially decriminalise helping others terminate their pregnancy.
Currently, doctors fear facing up to three years in prison for performing an illegal abortion. At least six women have died because they were denied an abortion in the last six years.
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