Three years into Israel's genocide in Gaza, the consequences of a decision driven by siege, settlement expansion and assaults on Al-Aqsa are still unfolding
As Palestine commemorates three years of genocide and devastation, find a synopsis of news – in Gaza, West Bank, Israel, and beyond – right here. Every day.
Persuading China that its €1bn daily trade surplus with the EU is not sustainable was always going to be a hard sell for EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič.
And the early signs are that Šefčovič’s two days of talks with Chinese commerce secretary Wang Wentao, which conclude on Friday (9 October), are not going to deliver the breakthrough demanded by EU leaders when they gather for a summit in Brussels next week.
“The message around the table was clear: the need to improve access to the Chinese market, while boosting our economic security,” Šefčovič posted on X ahead of the first day of talks.
But rhetoric aside, three months after the EU Commission set up a series of ‘work streams’ with Chinese officials, with a mandate to address the multi-layered EU-Sino trade dispute, it is hard to see much tangible progress.
Hours before Šefčovič arrived, Beijing rejected an EU demand for so-called “voluntary export restrictions” on its electric vehicles (EVs).
In August, data published by Schmidt Automotive Research found that 14 percent of EV sales across Europe this year were Chinese-made, up from 9.4 percent last year.
That is despite the EU imposing additional tariffs of between 17 and 36 percent on Chinese EVs in October 2024.
This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership
We live in a world where genocide can continue for over 1,000 days (hundreds of those days "ceasefire"), and no one has made sufficient effort to stop it.
EU leaders meeting next week in Brussels for the usual post-summer European Council are rehashing conclusions on migration, echoing almost word-for-word statements since at least 2015.
“The European Council has developed a strategy aimed at stemming the unprecedented migratory flows Europe is facing,” they announced in December 2015, following a summit.
“It is indispensable to regain control over the external borders,” they also said, noting the perceived threat to the EU’s internal border-free Schengen zone.
And they voiced fear over the low number of deportations, insisting on “concrete measures to ensure the actual return and readmission of people not authorised to stay.”
Eeleven years later and the 15 October summit in Brussels next week is now asking almost the same thing, including to what extent previous conclusions on migration have been implemented.
Although draft conclusions can change, and likely will, the current wording essentially repeats the same demands spanning over 50 EU summits since at least 2015, when over a million Syrians entered Europe to seek protection.
Out of the 52 published conclusions since 2015, over half dealt with migration in some shape or form. The latest draft dated 5 October and seen by EUobserver is among those.
This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership
Pedro Sánchez has turned a parliamentary defeat over housing into a general election on 29th November.
The calculation is clear: force Spain’s political argument onto territory more favourable to the left before migration, corruption allegations and parliamentary paralysis return to the foreground. But the polls suggest that the gamble could still deliver power to the centre-right People’s Party and Vox.
Pedro Sánchez’s decision to dissolve Spain’s parliament nine months ahead of schedule is more than an admission that his minority government had reached the limits of what it could achieve in the Congress of Deputies. It is an attempt to choose the terms on which his government will be judged.
The immediate trigger was the defeat of two emergency housing decrees after the conservative People’s Party (PP), Vox and Catalan separatist Junts voted against them. Housing had already moved rapidly to the centre of Spanish politics following the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from the Madrid flat where she had lived for 71 years, followed by large demonstrations across the country. EU Today has previously reported on both the housing protests across Spain and Sánchez’s subsequent decision to call the election.
The prime minister is now attempting to convert legislative weakness into electoral advantage.
In his announcement on 5 October, Sánchez presented the election as a choice between a broader progressive majority capable of advancing social legislation and an opposition that had obstructed measures on housing and other domestic priorities. The government reinforced that strategy a day later by approving revised versions of the two housing decrees, containing 21 measures including tax incentives, assistance for first-time buyers and measures intended to increase supply. They will require validation by the Diputación Permanente, the standing parliamentary body that remains after dissolution.
The political calculation is straightforward. Housing offers Sánchez an issue on which anger is directed not only at government but at landlords, property investors, regional authorities and political parties opposing stronger regulation. The eviction of Abascal gave that argument a human symbol and transformed a long-running affordability problem into an immediate political confrontation.
That does not mean the strategy will work.
Most polling continues to place the PSOE behind the PP. Surveys put the Socialists at roughly 28 per cent, while Vox has risen to around 18 per cent. A PP-Vox combination is currently the only bloc consistently projected to command an outright parliamentary majority. One Sigma Dos survey published after the election announcement projected the two parties winning 203 of the Congress’s 350 seats.
Sánchez therefore appears to be playing less for immediate dominance than for mobilisation.
His problem before the housing protests was not simply the strength of the right. The broader left had become fragmented, while the government was being damaged by disputes over migration, particularly following the crisis in Ceuta, as well as corruption investigations involving figures associated with the PSOE. At the same time, Junts had become an increasingly unreliable parliamentary partner, leaving the government unable to guarantee major legislation or a new budget.
Housing changes the subject.
It allows Sánchez to argue that the central question is not whether his coalition has governed smoothly, but whether voters want a parliament prepared to intervene more aggressively in the housing market. The PP, however, is contesting precisely that framing. Alberto Núñez Feijóo argues that the housing shortage is itself a product of Sánchez’s eight years in government and has promised to raise annual construction towards 200,000 homes while reducing taxes.
The election may therefore develop into a dispute over responsibility rather than diagnosis. Both sides accept that housing has become a major national problem; they differ sharply over whether regulation or additional supply should dominate the response.
There is also a wider European dimension. Housing affordability is increasingly politically disruptive across the EU, including in major cities where construction has failed to keep pace with household formation, migration and demand for short-term accommodation. EU Today has examined similar pressures in Berlin’s housing market. Spain could now provide a test of whether housing can become powerful enough as an electoral issue to reverse the wider European movement towards the right.
For Ukraine, however, the consequences are likely to be less dramatic than Spain’s domestic political contest might suggest.
Sánchez committed €1 billion in bilateral military support to Ukraine for 2026, with Spain putting its cumulative bilateral military assistance since Russia’s full-scale invasion at almost €4 billion. Madrid has also trained more than 9,000 Ukrainian military personnel.
Spain is also home to a considerably larger Ukrainian community than the roughly 300,000 figure frequently cited. Government data showed 353,009 Ukrainian nationals holding valid residence documentation at the end of June, including 262,782 under temporary protection.
A PP-led government would alter Madrid’s domestic priorities and potentially its approach to defence spending and migration, particularly if Vox were required to sustain a parliamentary majority. Yet there is little basis at present for assuming that a change of government would produce a reversal of Spain’s fundamental position on Russia’s invasion or membership of the European and Atlantic security structures supporting Ukraine.
The more immediate question is whether Sánchez can make housing important enough to overcome the electoral arithmetic confronting him.
Calling the election has allowed him to escape a parliament in which his legislative coalition was steadily disintegrating and to enter a campaign around an issue capable of mobilising his electorate. It has not changed the fact that the PP and Vox begin that campaign with the stronger numbers.
Sánchez has chosen the battlefield. On 29th November, Spain will decide whether that was enough.
The West Bank too is crumbling, as IDF finds excuses to kill Palestinians, steal land, demolish homes, even rewrite history. Latest news and headlines here.
After years without being able to pass a budget, a coalition that wavered over every major proposal, the Ceuta crisis, a string of corruption cases and people taking to the streets over the housing crisis, Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez has called snap elections for 29 November — just as a rightwing victory appears increasingly unstoppable.
Monday’s (5 October) move is barely a surprise. Sánchez’s gambles have proven effective in the past to keep his grasp on power.
Even before the summer, an early election wasn’t considered a far-fetched possibility. Sources in Sánchez’s centre-left Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and its allies linked it to the budget vote anytime from October onwards, with some analysts pointing to November 2026 as a politically attractive date.
Spain now faces a 54-day sprint to the polls, the shortest window the law allows, with Sánchez betting that the housing issue can turn the campaign in his favour.
But why now?
The eviction of an 87-year-old woman from her rental home after 70 years on 23 September prompted people across the country to take to the streets against Spain’s ongoing housing crisis.
And last Friday, the Spanish lower house in parliament rejected two new housing decree-laws. It was the centre-right People’s Party (PP), far-right Vox, Catalan pro-independence party Junts and Navarrese regional party UPN who voted them down, exposing once again how fragile Sánchez’s parliamentary coalition is.
But with parliament dissolved, a political manoeuvre could now see similar housing decrees approved anyway – helping Sánchez make the housing crisis his main election motto.
Housing bet
In Spain, when parliament is dissolved ahead of an election, responsibility for ratifying government-approved laws passes to a smaller standing committee of 69 lawmakers, known as the Diputación Permanente [Permanent Deputation], which continues to operate until the new parliament is sworn in.
The maths in that body favours Sánchez. His socialist party and the left-wing and regional parties that backed the original housing decrees hold 35 seats, against 34 for the opposition.
This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership
The Israeli war machine never sleeps. Neither does the Israeli propaganda machine. Here is your daily accurate and concise summary of Palestine, Israel, and Palestine-adjacent news.
Ukraine’s record on reform during Russia’s war is stronger than much recent criticism suggests. By September, Kyiv had completed 84 of 95 milestones due under the Ukraine Plan. Yet progress on a smaller group of rule-of-law commitments has been strikingly weaker. The difference between the two tells Brussels much about where Ukraine’s European transformation is encountering resistance.
Ukraine’s reform record currently produces two figures that appear difficult to reconcile.
Under the Ukraine Plan, Kyiv had completed 84 of the 95 milestones due by late September — around 88 per cent. The result was strong enough for EU governments to approve another payment of almost €3 billion under the Ukraine Facility.
Three months earlier, however, a coalition of Ukrainian organisations monitoring ten rule-of-law and anti-corruption commitments agreed with Brussels had awarded progress just 15 points out of 100.
Neither figure is wrong. They measure different programmes.
The first covers a broad reform and investment agenda extending from the judiciary and financial markets to energy, agriculture, transport, human capital and the business environment. The second examines a deliberately narrow collection of reforms concerning prosecutors, criminal investigations, anti-corruption agencies and judicial governance.
Put together, they raise a more useful question than whether Ukraine is “reforming” or “not reforming”.
Why has a country capable of delivering most of a demanding EU programme during a major war found this particular group of reforms so much harder to complete?
Russia’s aggression provides part of the answer. Ukraine has been attempting an institutional transformation while mobilising its population, financing its armed forces, repairing infrastructure and keeping a functioning state under repeated Russian missile and drone attacks. No previous EU candidate has operated under comparable conditions.
But the ten reforms where progress has been weakest have something else in common. Most concern institutions that can investigate senior officials, prosecute corruption, scrutinise appointments or otherwise place limits on the exercise of political authority.
That is what makes the comparison important.
A strong overall record
The wider reform record should not be understated.
When the European Commission released €2.9 billion to Ukraine on 2 October, it specifically credited Kyiv with implementing reforms covering the judiciary, financial markets, human capital, the business environment, energy, transport, agriculture and the green transition.
Total EU support provided under the Ukraine Plan has now exceeded €32 billion. More than €17 billion in further budget support remains potentially available during 2026, provided Ukraine fulfils the corresponding conditions.
The money is particularly important because the Ukrainian state is directing such a large share of its own resources towards defence. European financing helps keep the civilian state operating while Ukraine fights Russia.
The Ukraine Facility has therefore become more than an aid mechanism. It gives Brussels a means of measuring reform against specific commitments and releasing money when they are met.
That system has generally worked.
It also makes the areas where progress is weaker much easier to identify.
The 15/100 assessment published in June concerned ten priorities agreed in December 2025 between Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos and then deputy prime minister Taras Kachka. The score came from Ukrainian civil society, not the European Commission, and cannot legitimately be presented as Ukraine’s overall EU reform score.
It had nevertheless risen only six points from an assessment of nine out of 100 in April.
Among the unfinished commitments were changes to criminal procedure affecting high-level corruption cases, stronger guarantees for the independence and effectiveness of NABU and SAPO, reform of the State Bureau of Investigation, new arrangements surrounding the Prosecutor General, competitive recruitment within the prosecution service and further changes to judicial governance.
These are among the most difficult reforms Ukraine has undertaken since 2014 because they concern who has the authority to investigate whom.
The July 2025 episode changed the argument
The events surrounding NABU and SAPO in July 2025 remain central to understanding why Brussels is paying such close attention.
Ukraine had spent years building a specialised anti-corruption system intended to make investigations of senior political figures less vulnerable to interference from the conventional prosecutorial hierarchy.
NABU conducts investigations. SAPO provides specialised prosecution. The High Anti-Corruption Court hears the cases.
The system has never been free from political controversy, nor has its performance been beyond criticism. But its independence became an important part of Ukraine’s relationship with the EU and other international partners.
Then, in July 2025, parliament passed legislation placing NABU and SAPO under substantially greater authority of the politically appointed Prosecutor General. Zelenskyy signed it.
The decision produced an unusually sharp reaction inside Ukraine. Demonstrators took to the streets despite martial law, while European partners made clear that the legislation threatened reforms regarded as fundamental to the country’s European integration.
Kyiv reversed course within days. Parliament restored the independence of the two bodies.
The reversal demonstrated that Ukraine’s political system still contained powerful corrective forces. Civil society mobilised, public opposition was visible and international pressure had an effect.
Yet the episode also established that the independence of institutions created specifically to investigate high-level corruption could still become the subject of direct political intervention.
That changed the context in which subsequent reform commitments are being judged.
The European Commission’s 2025 report on Ukraine recorded both sides of the episode. It acknowledged the restoration of NABU and SAPO independence, while warning that undue pressure on anti-corruption agencies remained a concern.
The Commission also identified practical weaknesses. NABU still required better access to timely and impartial forensic examinations, while SAPO needed stronger powers in cases involving members of parliament.
This is why simply retaining NABU and SAPO is no longer sufficient evidence that this part of the reform process is secure. Brussels is looking at whether they can operate when investigations become politically difficult.
Follow the institutions
The same issue appears elsewhere.
Ukraine agreed to review the procedure for appointing and dismissing the Prosecutor General, drawing on European standards and the Venice Commission. It also committed itself to transparent and competitive recruitment for senior positions throughout the prosecution service.
The significance is obvious. The Prosecutor General occupies a pivotal position in the Ukrainian criminal-justice system. The method by which that office is filled — and the circumstances in which its occupant can be removed — affect the credibility of every politically sensitive prosecution beneath it.
Progress has been slow.
There is a similar problem with the State Bureau of Investigation, which handles cases involving senior officials and law-enforcement personnel. Kyiv agreed to an independent assessment of the bureau followed by reform of its legal and institutional framework.
Again, the issue is not administrative tidiness. An agency responsible for investigating state officials has little value as a check on government if its own leadership or investigative decisions are susceptible to political influence.
Criminal procedure provides another example.
Ukraine committed itself to changing provisions under which corruption proceedings can eventually be closed because deadlines for pre-trial investigations have expired, as well as addressing limitation periods for corruption offences.
Draft legislation has appeared. Bills No. 15333 and 15334 were registered in parliament, and NABU and the Ministry of Justice have worked on amendments.
But the process has taken months.
For a simple criminal case, procedural deadlines may appear an obscure legal question. Top-level corruption investigations are different. They can involve offshore structures, large quantities of financial evidence, foreign jurisdictions and prolonged litigation. If the clock eventually disposes of a case that investigators and prosecutors cannot bring to judgment quickly enough, the anti-corruption architecture fails at the point where it is supposed to produce results.
The same pattern is visible in judicial reform and the new Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2026–2030. Work is taking place, legislation is being prepared and institutions are consulting one another. Some changes have been completed.
Others remain somewhere between agreement and implementation.
This is precisely the stage of accession at which that distinction begins to count.
Ukraine has no shortage of declarations of European intent. What the Commission needs to establish is whether the machinery beneath them works.
The limits of the wartime argument
Any assessment that ignores Russia’s war would be unserious.
Full-scale aggression has inevitably changed the Ukrainian state. Decisions that might take months in peacetime sometimes have to be taken within days. Military information cannot be handled according to ordinary transparency rules. Elections cannot proceed under normal conditions. The executive carries responsibilities that no Ukrainian government faced before 2022.
Reform is also competing for administrative capacity with mobilisation, defence procurement, reconstruction, energy emergencies and the daily consequences of Russian attacks.
This has to be taken into account when Brussels sets timetables and assesses progress.
It is less convincing when applied indiscriminately.
Competitive recruitment of prosecutors does not interfere with the defence of Ukraine. Neither does an independent procedure for selecting the Prosecutor General. NABU’s ability to investigate senior officials does not prevent the armed forces from conducting operations, while closing procedural loopholes in corruption cases has no obvious adverse effect on wartime decision-making.
There is therefore a boundary between powers required to fight Russia and powers that are simply easier for government to retain during wartime.
Finding that boundary is becoming one of the more difficult questions in Ukraine’s relationship with the EU.
This does not support the sweeping claim that every important Ukrainian institution has been placed under political control. The evidence does not justify it.
It does show why Brussels is concentrating increasingly on institutional independence.
The problem with wartime centralisation is rarely that it begins without justification. Governments fighting wars need authority. The longer an emergency lasts, however, the more important it becomes to distinguish measures required by national security from arrangements that have become politically convenient.
Ukraine has now lived under full-scale war for more than four years. Institutions created for the post-war European state are being shaped while the wartime state still exists.
That makes the current reform period unusually consequential.
Conditionality becomes Brussels’ leverage
The EU has one powerful instrument with which to influence the outcome: money.
The Commission is already using it.
The almost €3 billion approved in September followed the completion of agreed Ukraine Plan milestones. The next payments depend on further commitments being met.
There is a limit to how far Brussels can push this. Ukraine is fighting a Russian war of aggression that also poses a direct security threat to Europe. Destabilising the Ukrainian budget in order to demonstrate the rigour of EU conditionality would make little strategic sense.
Kyiv is well aware of that.
But Brussels cannot simply waive the conditions either. Doing so would weaken reformers inside Ukraine, reduce EU influence over the accession process and make it more difficult to explain enormous long-term transfers to European taxpayers.
The result is already visible: continued financial support accompanied by increasingly detailed scrutiny of how reforms are implemented.
That approach is likely to become tougher as accession advances.
There is another reason for it.
Ukraine will eventually have to manage reconstruction on a scale Europe has not seen for decades. European governments, international financial institutions and private investors will be asked to commit hundreds of billions of euros. Confidence in prosecutors, courts, public procurement and anti-corruption agencies will affect how much money arrives and on what terms.
Strong institutions are therefore not a concession Ukraine makes to Brussels in exchange for membership.
They are part of the infrastructure required for Ukraine’s recovery.
The same applies to the war itself. Corruption in defence procurement, reconstruction or public administration gives Russia opportunities to damage confidence in the Ukrainian state and strain relations between Kyiv and its partners. Moscow has every interest in amplifying genuine scandals alongside fabricated ones.
The most effective answer is not tighter political management of damaging information. It is institutions capable of investigating misconduct credibly.
That is also why the role of Ukrainian civil society deserves attention.
The organisations producing critical assessments of Kyiv’s reforms are operating in a country under attack. Many have supported Ukraine’s European integration for years. Their reports can be disputed and their scoring methodologies examined, but criticism of government performance is not evidence of disloyalty.
The ability to produce such criticism is itself one of the features separating the Ukrainian political system from the authoritarian model Russia represents.
Ukraine’s reform record consequently looks neither like the failure portrayed by some critics nor the uninterrupted success sometimes presented by its defenders.
The broader record is impressive. Completing 84 of 95 Ukraine Plan milestones while fighting a major war is not a trivial achievement, and the EU would not have continued releasing billions of euros if the reform programme existed only on paper.
The difficulty appears further down, where institutional reform begins to affect the ability of political authorities to influence prosecutors, investigators and judicial appointments.
The NABU-SAPO confrontation made that problem impossible to ignore. The subsequent reversal showed that Ukraine also possesses the political and civic capacity to correct course.
What happens next will matter more than either episode.
Bills that have remained in parliament will have to become law. Reviews of the SBI and prosecution service will have to produce institutional changes. Competitive appointment procedures will have to work when the preferred candidate of those in power does not win. Anti-corruption bodies will have to be allowed to pursue cases when their targets are politically connected.
These are less visible achievements than opening accession negotiations or announcing another EU funding package.
They are also much closer to what EU membership ultimately requires.
Russia has forced Ukraine to build an exceptionally powerful wartime state. European integration requires Kyiv to ensure that some of that power can eventually be constrained by institutions that do not depend on whoever occupies the presidential administration.
The figures that currently look contradictory — 84 out of 95 and 15 out of 100 — are therefore telling different parts of the same story.
Ukraine has shown that it can reform during the war.
The harder test is whether it can complete reforms precisely where doing so reduces political discretion.
Some expected a change in Hungary’s pro-Russian foreign policy after Viktor Orbán’s fall. But they failed to take into account the domestic political pressures on Hungary’s prime minister Péter Magyar.
An unexpected source of tension in Ukrainian-Hungarian relations came at a meeting of the newly formed ‘Carpathian Eight’ (C8) in late September. At the meeting in Kyiv, PM Magyar was embroiled in a sharp exchange with Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha, who criticised Budapest for not taking part.
Magyar responded to Sybiha by claiming that Hungary had been included in the C8 without his consent.
“To claim that a sovereign country is a member of an international cooperation (Carpathian Integration) without prior consultation or consent of the country concerned is completely unacceptable,” Magyar said on social media.
This comes after Hungary-Ukraine relations began to improve rapidly following the formation of the Tisza government in May.
Under Orbán’s government, relations had fallen to a historic low, raising the prospect of escalation. In June, Magyar announced that he had reached an agreement with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on settling the rights of the Hungarian minority in Transcarpathia, hailing it as a historic deal.
Ukraine’s Deputy PM Vsevolod Chentsov informed me that legislation on minority education rights will be submitted to Parliament. I welcome this step after weeks of 🇭🇺🇺🇦 expert consultations. Thank you to all Hungarian and Ukrainian colleagues for their constructive work. Looking…
Since June, however, Hungary has repeatedly blocked Ukraine’s EU accession negotiations, arguing that progress on settling the rights of Hungarians in Transcarpathia has fallen short of expectations.
Orbán’s Fidesz party previously used the same argument to block Ukraine’s integration efforts.
Three months after the so-called historic agreement, Ukraine’s foreign minister Sybiha wrote that although Orbán had lost the election, Orbánism (a policy based on isolation and obstruction) prevailed in Hungary.
“Orbanism has done no good, neither to Hungary nor to the broader region, in the past — and it will not do anyone any good moving forward,” said Sybiha on social media.
Domestic Hungarian politics can explain the dispute.
MOL, an oil company, signed a memorandum with Ukraine’s Naftogaz at the C8 meeting on the possible establishment of Ukrainian oil storage facilities in Hungary.
The deal was criticised by Fidesz politicians, and Magyar’s government strongly distanced itself from the deal, too. Fidesz may have contributed to Magyar entering the dispute over C8 participation so very forcefully.
What is the Carpathian Eight?
In August, Zelensky announced the creation of the C8 to bring together countries from the wider Carpathian border region. The Ukrainian president said its members would focus primarily on the economy, security, the environment and investment.
Ukraine described it as a project intended to strengthen cross-border cooperation even with countries that do not provide it with military aid. Alongside Ukraine were to be Romania, Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Austria and Hungary.
Michal Lebduška, an analyst at the Association for International Affairs in Prague (AMO), said that it was one of many regional initiatives. While he did not believe it would trigger “major cooperation”, it could nevertheless be important.
The inaugural summit of the newly formed C8 was held last month (18 September) in Bukovel, in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, around 160 km from both the Slovak and Hungarian borders. Zelensky called it “an important beginning” and thanked the countries of the Carpathian region for being among Kyiv’s most reliable allies.
From Ukraine’s perspective, however, the meeting had mixed results. On the one hand, several leaders travelled to Bukovel in person, lending the gathering greater diplomatic weight. Polish PM Donald Tusk, Romanian president Nicușor Dan and Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić all attended in person.
On the other hand, the remaining countries sent lower-ranking representatives. Slovakia’s PM Robert Fico had initially indicated that he would attend, and was originally due to meet Tusk. At the last minute, however, he announced that he could not attend the summit due to sudden illness.
Slovakia was ultimately represented by Marek Eštok, state secretary at the foreign ministry.
Andrej Babiš’s Czech government all but completely ignored the initiative. As Respekt magazine wrote, Babiš declined the opportunity to visit Ukraine and did not send any representative to Bukovel.
So Czechia was represented at the summit only by opposition deputy Senate president Jiří Drahoš.
And Austria was ultimately represented by Christine Schwarz-Fuchs, president of the Federal Council.
Hungary sent Ádám Ceglédi, the acting chargé d’affaires at the Hungarian embassy in Kyiv, as the Hungarian foreign ministry confirmed to Telex.
According to the analyst, Ukraine may have hoped that Orbán’s fall would bring a clear shift in Hungary’s Ukraine policy. Anita Orbán, as foreign minister, has confirmed this by pursuing a foreign policy moving away from Russia.
However, Ukrainians did not take Magyar’s domestic political interests into account.
Magyar panders to anti-Ukraine crowd
This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership
France has seen plenty of street protests. What is striking about the latest unrest is not that French students have discovered the barricade, but that a dispute over school conditions has spread with extraordinary speed, drawing hundreds of schools into a confrontation between teenagers, teachers, police and the government.
About 400 schools and other educational establishments were expected to remain closed on Friday, while more than 560 schools were reported to have experienced protests or disruption. The movement, which began in the Paris region, has spread across the country. What started as complaints about overcrowded classrooms, teacher shortages and dilapidated buildings has now included fires, property damage, clashes with police and thousands of arrests.
There is a temptation, particularly in Paris, to treat every eruption of street anger as another instalment in France’s long tradition of protest politics. But there is something more revealing here. These are not principally pensioners defending their retirement age or trade unionists protecting established privileges. Many of the demonstrators are teenagers complaining that the institutions preparing them for adulthood are failing to provide the basics.
That complaint is not entirely without evidence. France’s education system has faced persistent staffing difficulties. During the 2024-25 school year, almost 10 per cent of teaching hours in public secondary schools went untaught, according to education ministry data cited by Time. Roughly 7.5 per cent of those lost hours resulted from difficulties finding replacement teachers.
The students’ demands consequently deserve to be distinguished from the violence that has accompanied some of the demonstrations. A teenager asking why there are 35 pupils in a classroom is making a fundamentally different argument from someone setting fire to a school entrance.
That distinction is becoming increasingly important as the authorities attempt to regain control. Education Minister Édouard Geffray has said the original grievances were legitimate but argued that violent groups have taken the movement hostage. The government has also alleged that politicians from the hard-left La France Insoumise helped initiate or politicise the protests. LFI figures have rejected that accusation.
The evidence therefore needs to be treated with care. France clearly has genuine educational grievances, but it is also clear that organised political actors are seeking to influence the atmosphere around the demonstrations. Those two propositions are not mutually exclusive.
Nor is the police response a simple story of heroes and villains. Riot police have been deployed amid reports of fires, attacks and damage, but students and rights organisations have accused officers of excessive force. More than 300 police officers, gendarmes and firefighters were reported injured on Thursday, while scores of students and education staff have also been injured.
This creates precisely the sort of vicious circle that governments find difficult to escape. Violence demands a security response; a heavy security response can generate further anger; that anger can then be used as evidence that the original security response was necessary.
The danger for the government is that the school gates become another national political battlefield.
France is already wrestling with severe fiscal pressures. The proposed 2027 budget has become politically contentious, while the education ministry is simultaneously facing demands for greater investment. Reuters reported that the planned education-budget increase is only 1.7 per cent, below the rate of inflation, while debt-servicing costs are expected to become the largest item in the national budget.
That makes the students’ complaints politically awkward. Governments can promise more teachers, better buildings and improved facilities. Delivering them costs money. And money is precisely what the French state increasingly lacks.
The approaching presidential election adds another layer. President Emmanuel Macron cannot seek a third consecutive term, and parties on both the left and right are already positioning themselves around the unrest. A movement involving large numbers of teenagers therefore risks becoming a proxy battle for France’s much wider argument about the direction of the country.
The immediate priority is consequently straightforward: keep pupils and staff safe, protect schools from damage, preserve the right to peaceful protest and establish whether the educational grievances can be addressed within the financial constraints facing the state.
France has considerable experience of protest. It has less experience of resolving the underlying problems once protest becomes the political system’s principal language.
The teenagers now filling French streets are demanding to know whether their country is investing in their future. The government’s answer cannot ultimately be delivered through tear gas or barricades. Nor can it be financed by promises detached from France’s deteriorating public finances.
That is the uncomfortable equation confronting Paris: a generation demanding better schools, a state struggling to pay for them, and a protest movement increasingly escaping the boundaries of the classroom.
The sharp drop in irregular migrant arrivals is evidence that the EU’s policy reforms are working, EU migration commissioner, Magnus Brunner, said on Thursday (1 October).
But Syria is also no longer the single biggest source of asylum claims after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime 22 months ago, a factor that appears to have been conveniently ignored.
On Thursday, he told reporters after a meeting of EU interior ministers in Luxembourg that irregular arrivals have dropped 55 percent in the past two years.
“So that’s a record low in the asylum applications,” said the former Austrian finance minister, adding that Austria and Sweden have recorded equally low asylum numbers and that Germany is deporting more people than are asking for protection.
“The basis for all of that, and the foundation for all of that, is the pact, the pact on migration and asylum,” he said, in comments that were echoed by Ireland’s migration minister, Jim O’Callaghan.
The pact, spanning a mix of complex regulations, was launched in June. Despite having two years to prepare for the launch, its implementation remains patchy.
This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership
A blacksmith, a groom, a soldier, a slave: the faces and stories of these and other inhabitants of an ancient Roman city in modern-day Hungary have been brought back to life with astonishing accuracy in a new exhibition in Budapest, the Associated Press reported in July (as cited by BTA). The exhibition, which runs until […]
Every day Israel creates a new humanitarian crisis in Gaza, a new provocation in the West Bank, a political dilemma in the US. Keep track of the news here.
Login
