Brussels (enr) – Local and regional leaders raised concerns that the next multiannual EU budget risks undermining investment in affordable homes needed to alleviate Europe’s deepening housing crisis.
“Europe’s housing challenge is not simply about building more housing units,” said Kata Tüttő, President of the European Committee of the Regions (CoR), an EU advisory body home to democratically elected regional and local representatives from all 27 Member States.
At a gathering in Brussels on Thursday, they demanded the EU “move from political ambition to concrete investment and delivery,” arguing that failing to invest now will only put affordable housing further out of reach for millions of Europeans.
As negotiations over the EU’s next long-term financial framework gather pace, cities and regions fear that affordable housing could become a casualty of competing spending priorities as several EU member states seek to cut the European Commission’s proposed €2 trillion budget for 2028-2034.
Tüttő called on the European Investment Bank (EIB), the EU’s lending arm, to “mobilise the scale of investment” that cities and regions need to “make communities liveable” by providing essential infrastructure. She cited public transport, as well as energy and water infrastructure, as key examples.
Italian MEP Irene Tinagli, Chair of the European Parliament’s Special Committee on the Housing Crisis (HOUS), said addressing the housing crisis “requires investment, better coordination across all levels of government and a shared commitment from European institutions, Member States, regions and cities”.
The CoR and EIB on Thursday agreed on closer cooperation in key areas including social infrastructure, housing, and energy. The European Investment Bank’s president, Nadia Calviño, said “investing into resilient cities and regions, into cohesion and housing” was a strategic priority.
According to EIB figures, the world’s largest multilateral development bank provided a record €5 billion in financing for housing projects across Europe in 2025. The EIB is targeting an increase to €6 billion this year, Calviño confirmed.
The investments are a contribution to the European Commission’s Affordable Housing Plan, which was launched in December and aims to boost housing supply, mobilise public and private investment, and support Member States and regions in expanding social and affordable housing.
According to the Commission’s estimates, however, the EU needs to build 2 million homes each year to meet current demand, which amounts to an investment of approximately €153 billion per year.
This story was produced by the European Newsroom (enr) in cooperation with the European Committee of the Regions (CoR). The editorial responsibility lies with the enr.
Brussels (enr) – The European Union’s migration commissioner has renewed his call for Germany to gradually end controls at its internal borders, pointing to falling numbers of irregular arrivals and the bloc’s new asylum rules.
It was now time to gradually abolish internal border controls, Magnus Brunner told members of the European Newsroom (enr) network in Brussels.
The Austrian commissioner said the EU’s external borders were better protected and that irregular crossings had fallen sharply. Frontex recorded about one-third fewer irregular crossings at the EU’s external borders in the first half of 2026 than in the same period last year.
The EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum also took effect on June 12. Brunner said member states had begun implementing the rules and that the bloc was already seeing progress.
He welcomed steps by individual countries to ease controls. Checks on the border between Germany and Luxembourg on the Trier motorway have been lifted, he said. He also cited the suspension of controls between Austria and Slovenia.
Germany has had checks at its land borders since September 2024. Former Interior Minister Nancy Faeser ordered them, and her successor, Alexander Dobrindt, intensified them in May 2025. Dobrindt has repeatedly extended the measures, which are currently due to remain in place until September.
Brunner also defended the EU’s new Entry/Exit System, known as EES. The digital system records the entry and departure of travellers from outside the EU, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.
He acknowledged that the system had caused problems at some airports, including in Greece and Portugal, but said: “The system itself works very, very well.”
The system has faced criticism over long queues. The Airports Council International Europe has reported waiting times of up to five hours and missed connecting flights.
Brunner said professional truck drivers from the Western Balkans faced a particular problem because they can currently stay in the EU for no more than 90 days in any 180-day period. He proposed that EU member states and Western Balkan countries negotiate long-term visas on a bilateral basis.
Hanoi (dpa) – Vietnam and the European Union on Thursday upgraded ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership, Vietnam’s highest diplomatic tier, amid a tumultuous period for global trade.
In a joint statement, Vietnam and EU stressed “the importance of a partnership based on common interests and shared values of peace, security, and prosperity in a rules-based international order, based on international law.”
Though US tariffs were not explicitly mentioned, at a press briefing held after meeting Vietnamese President Luong Cuong, European Council President António Costa said: “At a moment when the international rules-based order is under threat from multiple sides, we need to stand side-by-side as reliable and predictable partners.”
“Vietnam considers the EU one of its most important partners in the world and wishes to continue promoting and deepening its relationship with the EU,” Cuong said.
Cuong labelled the move a “historic milestone,” coming 35 years after Vietnam and the EU established diplomatic relations. The EU-Vietnam free trade agreement, signed in 2020, has helped drive a 40 percent increase in bilateral trade.
Vietnam is one of the EU’s largest trading partners in South-East Asia, while the EU is Vietnam’s fourth-largest trading partner. In the first 10 months of 2025, two-way trade reached nearly 61 billion Dollar (51 billion Euro), up 8.4 percent year on year.
Vietnam and the EU on Thursday also underscored the need to strengthen cooperation on peace, defence and security, and voiced support for multilateralism and respect for international law, including the UN Charter. (29 January)
The European Union’s vision to create a seamless, sustainable and high-quality multimodal transport network across Europe by 2050 was recently thwarted – by an EU watchdog who warned that delays of major projects are putting key 2030 and 2040 milestones at risk.
From the Lyon-Turin rail link to the Canal Seine-Nord waterway, an EU goal to complete a group of cross-border links by 2030 “will not be met”, according to a January report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
“Three decades after most of them were designed, we are still a long way from cutting the ribbon on these projects, and a long way from achieving the intended improvements in passenger and freight flows across Europe,” said the ECA member Annemie Turtelboom.
The ECA audited eight projects forming the backbone of EU plans to boost road, rail, water, and air transport across the 27-nation bloc in a bid to spur trade and economic growth.
The Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) is the backbone of Europe’s transport network and includes numerous large-scale transnational projects that are essential to improving connectivity across Europe.
In 2013, EU member states agreed to complete the TEN-T core network by 2030, but the Court of Auditors, updating its view from five years ago, considered that “the outlook in 2025 is worse than it was in 2020, and is very far from what was initially envisaged”.
In 2020, EU auditors reported that the eight megaprojects examined had experienced an overall 47 percent increase in actual costs (adjusted for inflation) compared with the original estimates.
Touching 13 countries including Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, France and Italy – the projects have received 15.3 billion Euro in EU funding and accumulated on average a 17-year delay, the auditors found.
According to the ECA report, the delays were down to a series of challenges, such as unexpected technical issues as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
According to the new report, costs have ballooned further than expected.
Not considering inflation, the overall price tag for the projects analysed was up 82 percent on the original estimates, the report said.
The most recent calculations for the projects are now almost twice the original levels, with the sharp rise attributed to two rail links – the Rail Baltica linking Tallinn and Warsaw via Riga and Kaunas, where costs have risen by 291 percent, and the link between Lyon in southern France and Turin in northern Italy, where the rise has been of 127 percent.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – which broke free from the Soviet Union when it crumbled in 1990-1991 and went on to join both the EU and NATO in 2004 – all have Soviet-era wide gauge railways.
With a total population of just six million people, the Baltic trio inked a deal in 2017 to build a high-speed rail link, aimed at creating fresh opportunities for the region in terms of trade and logistics.
In addition to rising costs, the construction of the Lyon-Turn railway has, over the years, also faced opposition from environmental groups critical of the Lyon-Turin tunnel project. Supporters said it will greatly ease freight road traffic but opponents – who staged, for example, a protest close to the village of Saint Remy-de-Maurienne in southeastern France in 2017 – said the ecological damage risks being devastating and that springs had already started to dry up due to the works.
The Brenner Base Tunnel connecting Innsbruck (Austria) and northern Italy – which aims primarily to shift freight from road to rail – will now cost 40 percent more than originally estimated and is currently estimated to open in 2032 at the earliest. The original opening date was 2016, and the ECA had already moved its estimation to 2028 in its report five years ago.
Costs for the Fehmarn Belt road/rail link between Denmark and Germany will be 52 percent higher, with opening planned for 2029, 11 years later than originally planned, with the possibility of further delay until 2031.
The Seine-Nord Europe Canal, a high-capacity waterway intended to facilitate the transport of goods between the Benelux countries and the Paris region also suffered from massive overruns, up 225 percent.
“The Basque Y railway line, which was supposed to be operational by 2010 according to its initial timeline and by 2023 according to the revised plan from 2020, is now expected to be ready by 2030 at the very earliest,” the report said, although the auditors consider 2035 to be more realistic.
According to data from the European Commission, Spain was one of the countries investing the most in high-speed rail, with an average of around 1.5 billion Euro per year between 2018 and 2022. However, the aftermath of three fatal train crashes earlier this month exposed the inadequate maintenance of existing railway networks.
Despite the critical issues that have emerged across the eight megaprojects, according to the report, the European Commission has never used the legal instruments at its disposal to obtain clarification on the delays from the capitals.
Moving forward, the auditors expressed the hope that national transport plans will in future be coordinated with priorities at European level. Member states are now obliged to do so, but this will show up only in new megaprojects.
On a more positive note, in the case of two projects, the A1 motorway in Romania and the E59 railway line in Poland, the latest cost estimates are actually lower than the original ones.
According to the ECA report, costs for the E59 line were down 18 percent and auditors did not provide an estimated year of opening.
Poland’s TEN-T network already covers the seaports of Gdańsk, Gdynia, Szczecin and Świnoujście, as well as airports including Warsaw, Kraków, Gdańsk and Katowice, which serve as key multimodal nodes. The E59 railway is part of the Baltic Sea – Adriatic Sea corridor.
According to the ECA report, costs for the A1 motorway in Romania are 11 percent lower than initially estimated.
The A1 motorway in Romania is a key component of the Rhine-Danube Corridor and, within Romania, provides a direct connection between the capital city Bucharest and the Hungarian border at the Nădlac crossing point.
Prospects for the completion of the A1 motorway have thus improved, and the project could be commissioned ahead of the 2030 deadline.
Editorial note: The location of the Brenner Base Tunnel has been updated for clarification.
This article is an ENR Key Story. The content is based on information published by ENR participating agencies.
Brussels (dpa) – The European Commission has opened a probe into the US tech company X over its artificial intelligence chatbot Grok after it created sexualised images of women and children.
“Non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” EU Commission Vice-President Henna Virkkunen said on Monday.
The investigation is to probe whether X has complied with its obligations under European Union law, including the duty to “diligently assess and mitigate systemic risks,” the Commission, which acts as the EU’s digital watchdog, wrote in a statement.
“This includes risks related to the dissemination of illegal content in the EU, such as manipulated sexually explicit images, including content that may amount to child sexual abuse material,” it said. “These risks seem to have materialised, exposing citizens in the EU to serious harm.”
Elon Musk‘s social media platform has come under heavy criticism in recent weeks after Grok allowed users to digitally replace women’s clothing with bikinis and, in some cases, create sexualized depictions of minors.
After prolonged international outrage, X introduced some restrictions in mid-January.
These include preventing Grok “from allowing the editing of images of real people in revealing clothing such as bikinis” and restricting the image creation feature of the AI chatbot to paid subscribers, X said in a statement.
The Commission stressed that the opening of a probe does not prejudge its outcome. (26 January)
Davos, Switzerland (dpa) – German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has blasted the European Parliament for referring the contested EU free trade deal with four countries from the South American Mercosur bloc to court.
“I deeply regret that the European Parliament has put another obstacle in our way,” Merz told political and business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday. “But rest assured, we will not be stopped. The Mercosur deal is fair and balanced. There is no alternative to it if we want to have higher growth in Europe.”
Merz said he expects the trade deal to be implemented “provisionally” despite the Parliament’s challenge.
The European Parliament voted on Wednesday to have the Mercosur trade deal, which was signed last week following decades of painstaking negotiations, reviewed by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
Waiting for the court’s opinion could significantly delay the ratification process for the agreement with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. It is unclear how long it will take for the judges at the ECJ in Luxembourg to submit their assessment, but previous assessments took between 16 and 26 months.
The agreement, which aims to remove trade barriers and customs duties and boost the exchange of goods and services, would create one of the largest free trade zones in the world. (22 January)
European Union countries are rushing to find a joint response to threats by US President Donald Trump to impose an additional 10-percent tariff on goods from several European allies from February 1.
EU leaders are set to meet in Brussels on Thursday after Trump threatened that eight European countries would face higher tariffs until the United States secures what he described as the “complete and total purchase” of Greenland.
The US repeatedly said it wants the mineral-rich autonomous Danish territory of Greenland for “national security”, despite it already having a base on the island and long established security agreements with fellow NATO ally Denmark, which has controlled the Arctic island for about 300 years.
Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom recently sent a small number of soldiers on a reconnaissance mission to Greenland as a sign of solidarity with Denmark, which is pushing back against Trump’s takeover ambitions.
“We won’t be blackmailed, and we stand together in solidarity in Europe,” said German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, arriving in Brussels on Monday for two days of previously planned talks with his EU counterparts. “We don’t want an escalation. We are not looking for an escalation, but we are ready if it comes,” Klingbeil said.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – considered one of Trump’s few allies in the EU – has called the new tariff threat a “mistake”.
In a different threat scenario, Trump also ramped up his rhetoric against France on Tuesday, warning he would impose 200 percent tariffs on French wine and champagne over its intentions to decline his invitation to join his “Board of Peace” set up to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza.
French President Emmanuel Macron said at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (Switzerland) on Tuesday: “What doesn’t make sense is to have tariffs between allies. We have to fix the war in Ukraine, we have to help the Ukrainians resist, and find a sustainable peace.”
Macron called the possibility of potentially activating the Anti-Coercion Instrument against the US “crazy” and added: “I do regret that. But this is a consequence of just unpredictability and useless aggressivity.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has warned Trump not to plunge transatlantic relations into a dangerous downward spiral over Greenland. “This is why the proposed additional tariffs are a mistake, especially between long-standing allies,” she said in Davos.
Arctic security can only be achieved together.
— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) January 20, 2026
This is why the proposed additional tariffs are a mistake, especially between long-standing allies.
The EU and US have agreed to a trade deal last July.
A deal is a deal.
And when friends shake hands, it must mean something. pic.twitter.com/5wpMic148s
The leader of global rights group Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, urged European countries Monday to stop “appeasing” Trump and to resist him and other “bullies” who she said were intent on destroying the rules-based order in place since World War II.
Since Trump’s return to the White House a year ago, he has taken “a range of decisions that have led to the demise of many rules around the world”, while Russia was destroying the system “through its aggression in Ukraine”, the human rights organisation’s secretary general told AFP in an interview in Davos.
The post-WWII order “is also being destroyed by Israel that has completely ignored international law in its genocide of Palestinians in Gaza”, she added.
Furthermore, European powers have been treading a thin line over Ukraine in recent months, relying on Washington to try to help settle the conflict but resisting terms too favourable to Moscow.
Trump meanwhile has put the transatlantic alliance to the test with threats to take over Greenland “one way or the other”, as European countries close ranks against Washington’s designs on the vast Danish autonomous territory.
In a message to Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, Trump said “I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace”, citing his failure to win last year’s Nobel Peace Prize despite openly coveting it. He said although peace would still be “predominant”, he could “now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America”.
Store said in a statement: “I have clearly explained, including to President Trump, what is well known – the prize is awarded by an independent Nobel Committee”, not the Norwegian government.
Amid the global tensions, Denmark is proposing that NATO start surveillance operations in Greenland, with the support of the Arctic island, Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said Monday after meeting NATO’s chief Mark Rutte. The precise details of the proposal and the response from Rutte remain unknown.
While a number of NATO allies have sent troops to Greenland or have announced plans to do so despite the risk of additional US tariffs being imposed on them, others remain reluctant and divided over the move.
Belgium is sending a liaison officer to Greenland. Despite this decision, the country was not included on Trump’s list of sanctioned countries on Saturday. “But there is no guarantee that this will not be the case in the future and we must show solidarity with our colleagues”, Foreign minister Maxime Prévot said. He called the American measures “incomprehensible and unnecessarily hostile”.
Likewise, Slovenia on Saturday announced it would deploy two Armed Forces officers to Greenland to take part in the planning and implementation of the Danish-led international military exercise Arctic Endurance.
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk – whose country is a staunch NATO ally with the highest defence expenditure as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) in the EU – already said last week the country was “not planning to send Polish soldiers to Greenland”.
Contrary to false claims on social media that Germany had sent warships to Greenland, the country did send 15 soldiers to the island for a reconnaissance mission. The troops however left Greenland on Sunday after the mission was completed on schedule, according to the Ministry of Defence.
Spain has not announced plans to participate in the mission in Greenland. Defence Minister Margarita Robles however said recently that the country could join the group in the future.
At the same time, some NATO allies are still navigating how the Greenland dispute plays out in their domestic political debates.
Asked on Monday whether the government of the Czech Republic supports Greenland, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš said he could not give a clear answer. He added that the United States is the leader of NATO and that conflicts are counterproductive. “We definitely prefer that an agreement be reached within the alliance. It would be very unfortunate if there were to be any conflicts,” Babiš said.
In Bulgaria, political reactions are mixed. The outgoing government has not issued a position on the recent developments around Greenland, but reactions from parliament have begun to emerge.
On the one hand, the leader of Continue the Change – a party affiliated at European level with Renew Europe – Assen Vassilev, said that every country should have the right to determine its own future, rather than having its choices dictated by external powers.
On the other hand, Revival (Vazrazhdane) – whose MEPs sit with the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group in the European Parliament – backs the US claims over Greenland. Party leader Kostadin Kostadinov reiterated the party’s call for Bulgaria to withdraw from NATO and argued that tensions between Washington and Copenhagen expose deeper structural problems within both NATO and the European Union.
Slovakia’s Foreign Minister Juraj Blanár said “Slovakia considers Greenland to be part of Denmark”. He rejected tariff battles between states: “We prefer diplomacy and peace, not tension or fighting,” he said.
EU leaders will meet in Brussels on Thursday to discuss a coordinated response to the prospect of US tariffs – with its most powerful trade tool on the table.
The Anti-Coercion Instrument, a mechanism adopted in 2023, that can be used in cases of economic coercion when a non-EU country attempts to pressure the bloc or one of its 27 members into making a decision through trade restrictions.
Such practices “unduly interfere with the legitimate sovereign choices of the European Union and its member states”, the European Commission says on its website.
France had signalled its intention to request the activation of the instrument after Trump announced on Saturday that he would impose additional tariffs on the eight NATO allies.
To apply the instrument, the European Commission first has to examine whether economic coercion is present in the case. EU countries must then back the Commission’s conclusion, before the EU’s executive arm ideally enters into talks with the country. If these are unsuccessful, the EU can impose countermeasures.
Retaliatory measures under the ACI however are only a last resort and must be proportionate. Using it against the United States would be ”the very first time” the EU has ever applied the tool, Macron recalled in Davos on Tuesday.
Should the ACI be applied over Trump’s latest trade threats, retaliatory tariffs on imports of US goods are likely. The EU-US tariff agreement concluded in July could also be put on hold.
Under discussion is also the possibility of imposing additional tariffs on a list of goods with a total trade volume of 93 billion Euro (108 billion Dollar), including industrial and agricultural goods such as motorcycles, beef, whiskey and citrus fruits.
This article is an ENR Key Story. The content is based on information published by ENR participating agencies.
Brussels (dpa) – European Council President António Costa will convene a special summit following US President Donald Trump‘s new tariff threats in the Greenland dispute, with Thursday being considered a possible meeting date, an EU official said on Sunday.
While the date has not been definitively determined, it is clear that a meeting will take place.
Costa said that his consultations with member states on the recent tensions surrounding Greenland had made it clear that tariffs would undermine transatlantic relations and were incompatible with the EU-US trade agreement.
He said that the EU was prepared to defend itself against any form of coercion. At the same time, it wanted to continue to work constructively with the United States. There was a common transatlantic interest in peace and security in the Arctic, particularly through cooperation within NATO.
The meeting would involve EU heads of governments and states and comes after Trump announced on Saturday that he would impose a 10 percent tariff on goods from eight European countries from February 1, rising to 25 percent from June 1 if no resolution is reached to his satisfaction, which would be the “complete and total purchase” of Greenland.
Six of the eight countries – Germany, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Finland – affected by the tariffs are EU members, while the United Kingdom and Norway are also on Trump’s list.
The tariffs come as the above mentioned NATO allies have sent soldiers to the Arctic island, something the Trump strongly criticised. “Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Finland have journeyed to Greenland, for purposes unknown,” he wrote, describing this as “a very dangerous situation for the Safety, Security, and Survival of our Planet” he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
On Sunday the eight nations issued a joint statement warning of a “dangerous downward spiral” stemming from Trump’s tariff announcement.
All eight countries are members of the NATO defence alliance. NATO chief Mark Rutte is to meet with ministers from Greenland and Denmark on Monday over the dispute.
Greenland, a largely autonomous Arctic island, is part of the Kingdom of Denmark and is therefore also in NATO. (18 January)
Brussels (dpa) – Germany and the other European Union member states could be required to provide assistance at Denmark’s request in the event of a violent conflict over Greenland, a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Thursday.
The comments came after inconclusive talks between US and Danish officials in Washington on Wednesday.
Greenland is part of the territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, a NATO member, and therefore in principle falls under the mutual solidarity clause in Article 42(7) of the EU treaty, the spokeswoman told dpa.
At the same time, she emphasised that the question of applying it is not now on the table since a military confrontation with the United States is considered very unlikely because presumably no one would take on the world’s most powerful military power.
US President Donald Trump wants to incorporate the vast, resource-rich island into the United States, saying the US needs to own the country for its security needs, which he sees as being threatened by China and Russia.
The Europeans want to convince Trump that Greenland can be best protected within NATO.
Following unsuccessful talks in Washington on Wednesday to resolve the Greenland dispute, EU states including Germany announced they would send troops to the island for a mission in support of Denmark.Russia’s ambassador to Denmark, Vladimir Barbin, has accused NATO of seeking to militarise the Arctic amid the US demands. He said Copenhagen was pursuing a confrontational approach by involving NATO, driving a rise in military tensions in the Arctic. (15-16 January)
Warsaw (dpa) – The number of irregular border crossings into the European Union fell by more than a quarter in 2025 compared to the previous year, according to figures from the EU border control authority Frontex.
The Warsaw-based EU agency said on Thursday it had registered just under 178,000 crossing attempts last year, the lowest number since 2021.
Frontex described the decline as a significant development, but also warned that the situation at the EU’s external borders remains uncertain. “The trend is moving in the right direction, but risks do not disappear,” said Frontex Director Hans Leijtens.
He said that Frontex’s close cooperation with governments and partners in countries outside the EU has yielded good results.
According to Frontex, last year there were significantly fewer irregular attempts to enter the EU on the West African route (down 63 percent), on the Western Balkans route (down 42 percent) and on the EU’s land border with Belarus (down 37 percent).
Frontex attributed the decline on the Western Balkans route to improved security measures and cooperation with EU candidate country Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Most of those registered by Frontex trying to make irregular border crossings have Bangladeshi, Egyptian or Afghan nationality. The most frequently used migration route into the EU therefore remains across the Mediterranean, which accounted for almost a third of all irregular border crossings in 2025, with the Libya-Italy route being the most common.
There was hardly any change on the Mediterranean route overall compared to the same period last year: Frontex recorded 66,328 attempts to enter the EU over the sea in 2025 – 1 percent fewer than in the previous year.
Looking only at the eastern Mediterranean, the number of irregular border crossings fell by 27 percent. However, Frontex recorded three times as many attempts to enter the EU from eastern Libya to the Greek island of Crete compared to 2024.
From Algeria to Spain, the numbers increased by 14 percent in 2025.
In contrast, there was a slight decrease in crossings to the United Kingdom. The number of attempts to cross the English Channel fell by 3 percent compared to the previous year. (15 January)
Brussels (dpa) – European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen unveiled on Wednesday details on how the European Union is to support Ukraine with 90 billion Euro over the next two years, including 60 billion Euro to bolster the military.
“We all want peace for Ukraine and for that Ukraine must be in a position of strength,” von der Leyen said in Brussels, weeks before the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The loan package is to provide “stable and predictable funding” and “reaffirms Europe’s unwavering commitment to the security, the defence and the future prosperity of Ukraine,” von der Leyen said.
Two-thirds of the funds are earmarked for military support.
Ukraine is required to spend the money on Ukrainian and European-built equipment but can acquire weaponry from abroad if the needed equipment is not available in Europe, von der Leyen said.
“With the military assistance, Ukraine can stand strong against Russia and, at the same time, it can integrate more closely into Europe’s defence industrial base,” she said.
The remaining 30 billion Euro is meant to support Kyiv’s budgetary needs but are tied to further reforms in the areas of democracy, rule of law and anti-corruption measures.
The conditions are “to make sure that Ukraine moves forward on its path of accession to the European Union” and are “non-negotiable for any financial support,” the Commission president said.
Von der Leyen said she hopes the first disbursement to Kyiv can be done as early as April, once the European Parliament and capitals have scrutinised the proposal. (14 January)
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