Romanian President Nicușor Dan has nominated diplomat Luca Niculescu as prime minister, beginning a fourth attempt to form a government after three previous candidates failed to secure a parliamentary majority.

The nomination was announced on Monday, 5 October, after Dan held consultations with Romania’s parliamentary parties at the Cotroceni Palace. Niculescu now has the task of finding sufficient support for a government after five months of political deadlock.

Dan said he had chosen the candidate he believed had the best chance of assembling a majority. “Romania needs a government. We need a budget for next year,” he said after the consultations, according to Romanian reporting on the nomination.

Niculescu, 55, is a former journalist and diplomat who has served as a secretary of state at Romania’s Foreign Ministry and national coordinator for the country’s accession to the OECD. He was Romania’s ambassador to France between 2016 and 2022 and was also accredited to Monaco and Andorra.

Accepting the nomination, Niculescu said his first task would be to build a parliamentary majority. He promised a government programme centred on predictable economic policy, public spending discipline, investment and Romania’s European and Euro-Atlantic commitments.

The appointment follows three unsuccessful attempts to replace the government of Ilie Bolojan, which was removed in a no-confidence vote on 5 May after the Social Democratic Party withdrew its support. EU Today reported at the time that 281 lawmakers backed the motion, bringing down the pro-European administration.

Eugen Tomac was the first candidate asked to form a government but relinquished the mandate after failing to secure sufficient support. Adrian Veștea was then nominated, but his proposed government was rejected by parliament.

The third candidate, PNL MEP Siegfried Mureșan, was nominated in September. His government received 182 votes in the parliamentary confidence vote on 30 September, well short of the 233 required. That defeat left Dan facing a fourth round of negotiations with the same fragmented parliament.

Niculescu therefore begins without an established majority behind him. During Monday’s consultations, the PSD continued to promote its own candidate, Sorin Grindeanu, while USR and AUR pressed for early parliamentary elections. PNL signalled greater flexibility but stopped short of committing itself to a new governing formula.

AUR leader George Simion has already said his party will not support Niculescu. USR, meanwhile, said it would examine the proposed cabinet, governing programme and the political majority behind it before deciding how to vote.

Under Romania’s constitution, a prime minister-designate has ten days from nomination to seek parliament’s confidence for the proposed programme and full list of ministers.

The repeated failures have also revived discussion of early elections. The president may dissolve parliament if no government receives a vote of confidence within 60 days of the first request for investiture and at least two attempts have been rejected, although dissolution is a presidential option rather than an automatic step.

Dan has so far indicated that he would prefer to exhaust efforts to form a government.

The political stalemate comes at a difficult economic moment. Romania is under pressure to reduce its budget deficit, maintain investor confidence and continue reforms tied to EU funding. The strain on the governing coalition had already become an EU fiscal issue before Bolojan’s government fell, with questions over budget consolidation and European recovery funding increasingly tied to political stability in Bucharest.

The immediate test for Niculescu will be whether his diplomatic background can translate into enough parliamentary votes to assemble a cabinet. His nomination leaves him more freedom than a candidate tied directly to one of the main parties, but the arithmetic remains unchanged: a government still requires at least 233 votes to take office.

Photo: Razvan Socol / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has called a general election for 29 November, bringing Spain to the polls months ahead of schedule after his minority government suffered a major parliamentary defeat over measures intended to tackle the country’s housing crisis.

Sánchez announced the dissolution of parliament on Monday, ending months of speculation over whether his increasingly difficult parliamentary position could force an election before the current legislature was due to expire in 2027.

In an institutional statement announcing the election, Sánchez acknowledged that his government had “made mistakes” and had not achieved everything it had set out to do.

He said problems remained particularly acute in inequality, public services and access to housing, arguing that further reforms required a larger parliamentary majority.

“To do more, we need to renew and expand people’s support,” Sánchez said. He called for a “much broader, progressive majority” capable of carrying the government’s programme through parliament.

The election will take place on Sunday, 29 November, rather than in 2027, when the current parliamentary term was due to end. Sánchez informed King Felipe VI before convening an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers to dissolve the Cortes Generales.

Housing defeat brings crisis to a head

The immediate political backdrop to the decision was Friday’s rejection of two emergency housing decrees by the Congress of Deputies.

The government had approved the two decrees on 29 September in an attempt to address growing anger over rents and access to affordable housing.

The first contained measures to protect vulnerable households from eviction, increase the supply of affordable homes and restrict some forms of speculative property investment. It also proposed changes affecting tourist accommodation and purchases by investment funds.

The second concentrated on residential rental contracts, including provisions intended to prevent tenants from suddenly being forced into substantially more expensive agreements when existing leases expired.

Both measures were defeated. The first received 172 votes in favour and 178 against. The second was rejected by 184 votes to 166. The votes again demonstrated the difficulty facing a government whose survival has depended on agreements with several regional and nationalist parties.

Housing has developed into one of Spain’s most contentious domestic political issues as rents and property prices have increased sharply in Madrid, Barcelona and other major cities and tourist areas.

The dispute intensified following the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen Abascal from the Madrid home where she had lived for more than 70 years.

Abascal was removed from the property on 23 September following a dispute over the rent. Her previous monthly payment had been €500, while the owners initially sought €2,650 before reducing the demand to €1,650 — still above her pension income.

Images of the elderly woman being taken from the building on a stretcher prompted widespread public anger and helped turn her case into a symbol of Spain’s housing crisis.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators subsequently took to the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and other cities demanding stronger protection for tenants and measures to curb rising housing costs.

Sánchez’s fragile parliamentary majority

The housing vote exposed once again the central weakness of the government formed after Spain’s inconclusive 2023 election.

The conservative People’s Party (PP) won the largest number of seats, but its leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo was unable to assemble a parliamentary majority.

Sánchez remained prime minister after securing support from Sumar and reaching agreements with Catalan and Basque parties. The arrangement allowed him to form another government but left individual pieces of legislation dependent on negotiations with parties whose positions frequently diverge.

The latest housing measures were opposed by the PP and Vox, while Catalan party Junts also voted against them.

The PP has argued that greater intervention in the rental market risks reducing the number of properties available by discouraging owners from renting them. Its housing policy has instead placed greater emphasis on increasing supply.

Sánchez’s government argues that intervention is necessary because housing costs have increasingly become disconnected from household incomes in the areas experiencing the greatest pressure.

The issue has also become increasingly relevant at European level. Housing affordability has moved higher up the EU political agenda as governments confront shortages in major cities, rising construction costs and the impact of short-term tourist accommodation.

EU Today has previously reported on the growing pressure on European governments to address housing affordability, an issue that is increasingly intersecting with debates over migration, tourism, urban development and the cost of living.

Eight years in power

Sánchez has served as prime minister since June 2018, when he replaced Mariano Rajoy after winning a parliamentary vote of no confidence.

His latest term has been complicated not only by parliamentary arithmetic but by investigations and corruption cases involving people connected with the Socialist Party, as well as disputes over migration and household costs.

The government has nevertheless pointed to Spain’s economic performance and employment figures as evidence that its policies are working. In his election announcement, Sánchez described Spain as the EU economy recording the strongest growth and employment creation.

Spain has also remained an important participant in wider European debates over Ukraine, defence expenditure and the future direction of the European Union, while Sánchez has frequently differed with some European partners over the pace of increases in military spending.

The coming campaign is therefore unlikely to remain centred solely on housing.

PP sees opportunity

Feijóo enters the campaign with the PP expected to emerge as the largest individual party according to most recent polling, but the question of whether it could govern will depend heavily on the performance of Vox.

A PP victory without an outright majority could leave Feijóo dependent on Vox to form a government, making the balance between the two parties one of the central questions of the campaign.

Sánchez, meanwhile, will attempt to rebuild the coalition of left-wing and regional voters that allowed him to remain in office after the 2023 election.

His decision effectively turns the parliamentary confrontation over housing into a national vote on his eight years in power.

“The time has come,” Sánchez said in Monday’s address, “for the Spanish people to decide what future you want for yourselves and for your country.”

Spain will now enter a compressed election campaign in which housing, the cost of living, migration, corruption allegations and the future composition of the government are likely to dominate.

The formal election process begins with the dissolution of parliament, with voters going to the polls on 29 November.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned that political division and disinformation are placing growing pressure on the country’s democratic institutions after a succession of state elections weakened Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats and strengthened parties outside Germany’s traditional political centre.

Speaking during German Unity Day celebrations, Steinmeier compared the present political climate with divisions associated with the Weimar Republic, while stopping short of saying that Germany had reached such a point.

His intervention follows a difficult September for Merz.

Alternative for Germany won 43.8 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt, while in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania the AfD finished first with 38.2 per cent. Merz’s CDU recorded just 4.9 per cent in the latter state, leaving it outside the regional parliament for the first time.

Berlin produced a different winner but a similar problem for the established parties, with Die Linke taking first place.

The combined results have accelerated the fragmentation of a party system that for much of the post-war period revolved around two large political blocs.

EU Today examined that shift after the September elections, arguing that Germany’s political centre was losing voters in several directions at once.

Steinmeier did not confine his warning to electoral arithmetic.

He criticised the use of political demagoguery and warned that organised disinformation was damaging democratic debate. He referred to material originating from Kremlin-linked actors, domestic extremists and other networks using digital platforms to amplify manipulated information.

The remarks come during an increasingly difficult period for Merz.

The Chancellor took office promising to restore economic momentum and political stability. Instead, Germany continues to face concerns about industrial competitiveness, living standards, energy costs and the ability of its political system to absorb an increasingly fragmented electorate.

The pressure is particularly evident in eastern Germany.

Before September’s elections, EU Today noted that Merz was approaching a political reckoning in the east, where the CDU was losing ground while the AfD converted dissatisfaction over migration, energy, economic policy and distrust of established institutions into electoral support.

The subsequent results were worse for the CDU than many in the party had anticipated.

In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD finished more than 26 percentage points ahead of the CDU. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the CDU failed even to cross the threshold for parliamentary representation.

The consequences extend beyond German domestic politics.

Germany remains the EU’s largest economy and one of the principal states shaping European decisions on Ukraine, defence, migration, fiscal policy and industrial competitiveness. Political instability in Berlin can therefore affect negotiations in Brussels as well as the domestic legislative programme.

Economic policy is central to the dispute.

Germany’s manufacturing sector has faced stronger competition from China, while the rupture of the previous economic relationship with Russia has increased costs for energy-intensive industries. Russia’s continuing war against Ukraine has simultaneously required Berlin to spend more on defence and provide substantial assistance to Kyiv.

The German cabinet’s 2027 budget reflects that change. The government has approved federal expenditure of €555.4 billion, including €109.7 billion for the Defence Ministry and €11.6 billion for continued support to Ukraine.

The political difficulty is that higher security expenditure comes alongside pressure to invest in infrastructure, public services and an economy struggling to recover stronger growth.

The rise of the AfD has consequently become more than a debate over whether other parties should maintain the so-called firewall preventing formal co-operation with it.

The more difficult question for Germany’s established parties is why voters are abandoning them and whether economic and political dissatisfaction can be reversed through government policy rather than coalition arrangements designed chiefly to exclude competitors from office.

Steinmeier’s intervention places that argument inside a historical frame familiar to Germans.

The Federal Republic’s post-war institutions were deliberately designed to avoid the failures of the interwar period. But constitutional safeguards alone cannot prevent political fragmentation if large groups of voters cease to regard established parties as capable of responding to the issues that concern them.

Germany enters the final months of 2026 with that question moving from the margins of its politics to the centre.

Moldova’s Prime Minister Vasile Tofan will meet senior EU officials in Brussels on Monday as the country attempts to move from the opening stages of accession negotiations towards deeper economic, security and institutional integration with the European Union.

The 10th EU-Moldova Association Council will be held in Brussels on 5 October, chaired by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas. Tofan will lead the Moldovan delegation, while Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos will represent the European Commission.

The meeting will review Moldova’s accession process, political reforms, justice, freedom and security, foreign and security policy, trade, energy and wider economic co-operation. Regional and global security issues will also be discussed during a restricted session.

The timing is significant because Moldova has moved considerably further along the accession process during 2026.

In June, the EU formally opened negotiations on the Fundamentals cluster, which covers the rule of law, fundamental rights, democratic institutions, public administration and economic criteria. Progress in that cluster determines the overall pace of accession negotiations.

EU Today described that step as the point at which the accession bids of Moldova and Ukraine moved from political commitment to a practical rule-of-law test.

A second step followed in July when negotiations began on the External Relations cluster. That part of the process covers commercial policy, development co-operation and alignment with the EU’s common foreign, security and defence policy, including sanctions.

Moldova is consequently moving beyond the declaration that it has a European future and into negotiations over specific areas of EU law.

That process is taking place under conditions markedly different from previous rounds of enlargement.

Moldova borders Ukraine and has faced persistent Russian political pressure, disinformation campaigns and attempts at electoral interference. Energy vulnerability remains another concern, while the unresolved Transdniestria conflict leaves part of the country outside the effective control of the government in Chișinău and with Russian forces still present.

Security and accession policy have therefore become increasingly difficult to separate.

At the EU-Moldova summit in June, European leaders concentrated on accession, reform implementation and gradual integration into EU structures. The meeting took place only a week after the first negotiating cluster was opened.

EU Today argued at the time that the summit had turned Moldova into a test of whether enlargement can provide practical security and resilience for a candidate country exposed to sustained Russian pressure.

Finance is another component of that policy.

Moldova is benefiting from the EU’s €1.9 billion Reform and Growth Facility, intended to accelerate economic convergence and reforms connected to accession. The Commission’s current Moldova enlargement record shows that a second regular payment of €189 million was delivered in March 2026.

The Association Council will not decide when Moldova joins the European Union. Accession remains conditional on reforms, compliance with membership criteria, completion of negotiations and unanimous approval by the member states.

What Monday’s meeting will show is whether the process is maintaining momentum.

Moldova and Ukraine formally began accession negotiations together in 2024 and entered the first substantive negotiating cluster together this June. The two countries remain politically connected in the EU enlargement debate, although Brussels formally assesses each candidate on its own record.

The next challenge is less ceremonial.

Opening clusters demonstrates political progress. Closing negotiating chapters requires legislation to be adopted, institutions to function and reforms to be enforced beyond their appearance in government programmes.

For Moldova, that work is being undertaken while the country manages Russian pressure, energy security, economic restructuring and domestic political change.

Monday’s Association Council will provide Brussels with its latest opportunity to judge whether those pressures are slowing the accession process or whether Moldova remains capable of moving through the EU’s negotiating machinery.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has announced a new package worth more than €1.3 billion for Ukraine during a visit to Kyiv, combining additional military assistance with support for the country’s damaged energy infrastructure as German-Ukrainian industrial co-operation expands.

Merz visited the Ukrainian capital on Sunday while Russian drone attacks continued against Kyiv.

According to the Ukrainian presidency’s account of the meeting, the package includes more than €1 billion for defence and additional financing for the energy sector ahead of winter. Separate reporting put the energy component at approximately €350 million.

The visit also produced an extensive group of bilateral agreements involving governments and companies.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine and Germany had concluded 15 agreements and documents, most concerning security co-operation, production, procurement, orders for German industry and joint projects in Ukraine. He put the total value of the agreements reached during the visit at more than €8.5 billion.

A narrower set of industrial agreements reported during the visit was valued at about €6.6 billion and included air-defence, radar and drone projects.

The visit went beyond another transfer of military aid.

Germany and Ukraine are increasingly constructing a defence relationship based on procurement, industrial production and the transfer of Ukrainian battlefield experience to European manufacturers.

At the Ukrainian-German Business Forum, Zelenskyy said the new security package would strengthen Ukraine’s armed forces immediately while industrial agreements were intended to build longer-term production capacity.

The direction corresponds with a wider shift in European support for Ukraine.

Military assistance is increasingly moving away from transfers of existing national stocks towards contracts financing new weapons production. In July, the EU released €3.47 billion for Ukrainian defence procurement, including financing intended for drones, missiles, air defence and combat aircraft requirements.

Kyiv has since asked European partners to accelerate further financing as the demands of the war outpace scheduled disbursements. EU Today reported in September that Ukraine was seeking early access to part of its 2027 EU funding to close a military budget gap.

The German agreements add a bilateral industrial track to that European system.

They also reflect changes on the battlefield.

Russia has continued to expand large-scale drone and missile attacks, increasing the importance of interceptor production, radar coverage and lower-cost methods of destroying unmanned aircraft. Ukraine’s air-defence problem is increasingly an industrial one: inexpensive attack drones cannot sustainably be countered only with scarce and costly surface-to-air missiles.

EU Today has previously examined how Ukraine’s air-defence battle has become an industrial equation, determined as much by production rates and cost ratios as by the technical performance of individual systems.

German-Ukrainian co-operation is increasingly being shaped by that requirement.

Merz has presented continuing support for Ukraine as a direct German and European security interest, rather than assistance based solely on solidarity with Kyiv.

The argument has acquired greater force as German authorities investigate Russian-linked sabotage and hybrid operations on German territory.

In September, investigators reportedly traced the attempted bombing of a Ukrainian cargo aircraft at Leipzig/Halle Airport to a suspected Russian military-intelligence organiser, with EU Today reporting details of the alleged GRU-linked logistics network.

For Berlin, support for Ukraine is now increasingly seen as part of Germany’s own security.

Merz’s visit also carries a domestic political dimension. His government is committing Germany to considerably higher defence expenditure at a time when the CDU has suffered severe electoral setbacks in eastern Germany and voters remain concerned over public finances and economic performance.

Yet Germany’s military and industrial engagement with Ukraine is continuing to expand.

The new package announced in Kyiv is important in itself, particularly as Ukraine prepares for another winter of Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure. The wider development, however, lies in the growing number of defence-production agreements accompanying it.

European governments have spent much of the war debating how to replenish their own weapons stocks while sustaining Ukraine.

The German approach increasingly points towards a different model: Ukrainian operational experience, Ukrainian procurement requirements and European industrial capacity being brought into the same defence-production system.

Italy expects its budget deficit to rise above the European Union’s three per cent reference level again next year as Giorgia Meloni’s government uses new EU fiscal flexibility to finance defence and measures responding to higher energy costs.

Rome’s latest multi-year fiscal projections put the 2027 deficit at 3.4 per cent of GDP, substantially above the previous target of 2.8 per cent.

The increase follows a planned fall to 2.9 per cent this year, which would bring Italy below the EU’s three per cent threshold for the first time since 2019. The deficit stood at 3.1 per cent in 2025.

The change reflects Italy’s decision to use the EU’s national escape clause, allowing member states under specified conditions to deviate temporarily from their agreed expenditure paths.

Under the latest projections, Rome intends to use fiscal flexibility worth 0.6 per cent of GDP in both 2027 and 2028 for defence and energy-related spending. The additional expenditure amounts to roughly €29 billion across the two years, while the deficit is projected at 3.2 per cent in 2028.

The decision turns a long-running dispute over fiscal flexibility into a test of the EU’s revised budget framework.

The national escape clause was introduced in the 2024 reform of the Stability and Growth Pact. It permits a member state to deviate temporarily from its fiscal path when exceptional circumstances outside its control have a major effect on public finances, provided medium-term fiscal sustainability is not endangered.

The mechanism was subsequently used to give governments greater room to increase defence spending. In 2026, the Commission also moved to broaden its application to energy-security expenditure.

Italy has been among the governments pressing hardest for such flexibility.

In August, EU Today reported that Rome intended to use the available fiscal room fully for energy measures but only partly for defence. The decision illustrated the competition between longer-term military investment and the immediate political pressure created by household and industrial energy bills.

The latest projections make that trade-off larger.

Italy’s annual inflation rate increased to 4.1 per cent in September, from 3.2 per cent a month earlier. Meloni has sought additional room from Brussels to cushion the economic effect of elevated energy costs.

At the same time, the government has improved its growth forecasts.

GDP is now expected to expand by one per cent in 2026, compared with an earlier projection of 0.6 per cent. Growth for 2027 has been revised from 0.6 to 0.8 per cent.

Those figures provide some additional room, but Italy’s debt remains the larger constraint.

Public debt is projected to rise from 138.1 per cent of GDP this year to 138.5 per cent in 2027 before edging down to 137.9 per cent in 2028. The government now expects the debt ratio to begin falling a year later than previously planned.

That leaves Rome in an unusual position. It expects formally to bring its underlying deficit below the EU threshold while headline borrowing rises above three per cent once exceptional spending is included.

Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti has said Rome is discussing with the European Commission how the calculation will affect Italy’s attempt to leave the EU’s excessive deficit procedure.

The Commission will therefore have to judge not only Italy’s fiscal trajectory but how extensively exceptional expenditure can be accommodated under rules Brussels itself has made more flexible.

That question has already generated concern.

EU Today reported last month that the European Fiscal Board had warned that exceptions were beginning to weaken the clarity of the revised rules. The watchdog has been particularly critical of allowing room initially associated with higher defence spending to be extended to energy-resilience measures.

Italy provides one of the clearest examples of the problem.

Rome is trying simultaneously to increase military capacity, protect households and businesses from energy costs and demonstrate that its very high debt remains manageable.

It has also argued that European rearmament cannot proceed unless governments have sufficient room to finance it. The same tension emerged in Italy’s debate over participation in the EU’s SAFE defence loan programme.

The EU has given governments more flexibility to manage those competing demands. Italy’s 2027 budget will show how far that flexibility can stretch before the argument returns to the credibility of the fiscal rules themselves.

The party of pro-Russian Bosnian Serb politician Milorad Dodik has emerged as the largest political force in Republika Srpska following Bosnia and Herzegovina’s general election, while several parties supportive of Ukraine and European integration recorded strong results in the country’s Bosniak-Croat Federation.

The Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), led by Milorad Dodik, has emerged as the largest party in Republika Srpska as preliminary results from Bosnia and Herzegovina’s 4 October general election continue to be counted.

The country’s Central Election Commission confirmed that preliminary results were being released following the close of polls on Sunday. The elections covered the state presidency and parliament, the legislatures of both entities and the presidency of Republika Srpska.

According to preliminary projections cited after most votes had been counted, SNSD was heading for 34 seats in the National Assembly of Republika Srpska. Pokret Sigurna Srpska (PSS) was projected to take 12 seats and the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) 11. The Coalition for the State, comprising pro-Bosnian parties based principally in the Federation, was projected to secure two seats.

The result leaves SNSD as the principal political force in the Serb-majority entity despite the removal of Dodik himself from public office.

Dodik was not on the ballot after losing his position as president of Republika Srpska following a criminal conviction for refusing to comply with decisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s international High Representative. EU Today previously reported on the decision to revoke Dodik’s presidential mandate after the conviction became final.

His absence from the ballot did little to remove him from the campaign. Dodik remained the dominant public figure around SNSD and continued to challenge the constitutional arrangements under which Bosnia and Herzegovina has operated since the end of the 1992-95 war.

At his party’s final campaign rally, attended by Russian Ambassador Igor Kalabukhov, Dodik told supporters that Bosnia was “dead” and described it as an “impossible country”.

The comments followed years of disputes between the Republika Srpska leadership, Bosnia’s central institutions and the Office of the High Representative over the division of powers between the entity and the state.

A different result in the Federation

The electoral picture in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the predominantly Bosniak-Croat entity, was markedly different.

With 89.45 per cent of votes counted, preliminary figures put the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) first in the election to the Federation parliament with 30.63 per cent, representing more than 212,000 votes.

The Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SDP) was second with 15.27 per cent and more than 105,000 votes. The coalition centred on the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) followed with 13.89 per cent, while the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (SBiH) was fourth on 8.97 per cent.

The results illustrate the political differences between Bosnia’s two principal entities, particularly over relations with Russia and Ukraine.

SDA, SDP and SBiH have condemned Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and support Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Western orientation. HDZ BiH also formally supports European integration, although the party has at times co-operated politically with Dodik and SNSD.

Dodik has pursued a markedly different course, maintaining close political relations with Moscow and repeatedly opposing Bosnia joining Western sanctions against Russia.

The second- and third-placed forces in the Republika Srpska parliamentary contest do not present themselves as explicitly pro-Russian parties, but have supported a position of neutrality for Bosnia and Herzegovina over the Russia-Ukraine war.

Bosnia’s post-war political structure

The political divisions are magnified by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s unusually complicated constitutional structure.

The country’s present system was created by the Dayton Peace Agreement, which ended the Bosnian war in 1995. Bosnia and Herzegovina was preserved as a single sovereign state but divided internally between the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska, alongside the separately administered Brčko District.

The state has a three-member presidency representing Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs, while extensive powers remain with entity, cantonal and local authorities.

The Central Election Commission said 3,414,364 voters were registered for the 2026 general election. Voters elected the three members of the presidency, members of the state parliament, the Federation parliament, the Republika Srpska National Assembly and a series of other entity and cantonal institutions.

The election also marked the first nationwide use of biometric voter identification, ballot scanners and rapid electronic transmission of results. The new election technologies were introduced for the 2026 vote after the election authorities determined that the necessary technical requirements had been met.

Turnout, however, fell sharply compared with the previous general election, adding another element to the political picture facing the incoming administrations.

EU accession and the Dodik problem

The results matter beyond Bosnia because the country remains an EU candidate while its internal political disputes have repeatedly complicated its European course.

Bosnia and Herzegovina was granted candidate status in December 2022, and EU leaders subsequently agreed in March 2024 to open accession negotiations. The EU accession process remains dependent on further reforms, including measures concerning the judiciary, democratic institutions, public administration and the rule of law.

Disputes involving Republika Srpska have become one of the principal complications in that process.

Dodik has repeatedly questioned the authority of state institutions and the international High Representative, while also advocating greater autonomy for Republika Srpska. His opponents have accused him of pursuing policies that threaten Bosnia’s post-Dayton constitutional order; Dodik argues that he is defending powers granted to Republika Srpska under the peace agreement.

The 4 October election has therefore produced two distinctly different political landscapes.

In Republika Srpska, SNSD remains the largest force despite the legal exclusion of its leader from public office. In the Federation, several of the strongest parties favour closer European integration and have openly supported Ukraine following Russia’s invasion.

How those forces combine at state level will determine whether Bosnia and Herzegovina can advance reforms required for EU membership or returns to the institutional confrontations that have repeatedly slowed its progress towards Brussels.

Between 400 and 500 French secondary schools are expected to suspend lessons fully or partially on Monday, 5 October, as nationwide student protests continue following several days of violence, arrests and damage to educational buildings.

French Education Minister Édouard Geffray said on Sunday that the number of affected lycées was likely to be broadly similar to Friday, when between 400 and 500 establishments suspended classes.

“There will probably be just as many on Monday, but with a partial, progressive resumption of classes,” Geffray said during interviews with France 2 and France Inter.

France has around 3,700 lycées. The government says classes are being suspended where normal security conditions cannot be guaranteed, including schools damaged during the unrest or where staff have been directly targeted. French reporting on the education ministry’s latest figures said Geffray expected disruption on a similar scale to Friday.

The closures mark the latest stage in a protest movement which began in the Paris region in September before spreading to cities across France.

Students initially mobilised over conditions in the education system, including shortages of teachers and replacement staff, overcrowded classrooms, deteriorating school buildings and demanding timetables. Pressure surrounding the Parcoursup university admissions system has also featured prominently in the demonstrations. Accounts from pupils involved in the blockades have highlighted frustration over conditions in schools and wider concerns about educational inequality.

As EU Today reported on 3 October, the protests have since developed into a broader confrontation involving students, education staff, police and political activists.

Geffray said on Sunday that 24 educational establishments had been “burned or vandalised” since the unrest intensified. He also said 78 employees of the national education system had been injured.

The minister has accused organised far-left activists of infiltrating the student demonstrations and contributing to the escalation of violence.

According to the government, some education staff have been deliberately attacked because of their position within the school system. Geffray said schools would remain closed or operate only partially in cases where staff or pupils could not be adequately protected.

The political argument over responsibility for the unrest has intensified alongside the protests. Government ministers have accused activists connected with the hard-left La France Insoumise of encouraging blockades and helping to broaden the mobilisation. LFI representatives have rejected accusations that they are responsible for the violence and have continued to support the students’ underlying demands. The dispute over the political role in the protests has become part of the wider confrontation between the government and the demonstrators.

Friday brought another large-scale police operation.

Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez said 1,747 people were detained during the day, compared with 1,954 on Thursday, taking the number of arrests since the beginning of last week to more than 5,000. Authorities said around 85 per cent of those detained were minors.

Of 735 schools affected by demonstrations or disruption on Friday, “urban violence” was recorded near 158, according to the Interior Ministry. The latest official arrest figures underline the scale of the police response.

The violence has increasingly complicated attempts by student organisations to maintain the focus on their original education demands.

Representatives of student organisations met Geffray on Friday but said afterwards that they had received no sufficiently concrete commitments from the government. They called for the mobilisation to continue and announced a new nationwide day of action, described as “Act III”, for Tuesday, 6 October.

Several education trade unions are also expected to participate in Tuesday’s action. Regional reporting on preparations for Monday and Tuesday said schools were preparing for continued disruption.

The government has already made one concession. A proposed measure that would have introduced registration fees of €178 for non-grant students entering BTS vocational programmes and €270 for preparatory classes for France’s grandes écoles was withdrawn as the demonstrations intensified. The withdrawal was announced as hundreds of schools were being affected by blockades.

The protests nevertheless show little sign of ending.

Many students continue to argue that their schools lack adequate staff and investment, while teachers and parents have raised similar concerns over replacement teachers and the condition of buildings.

At the same time, the scale of the damage and the number of injuries have moved security to the centre of the government’s response.

Monday will therefore provide an early indication of whether schools can begin returning to normal before Tuesday’s planned national mobilisation, or whether the disruption that affected hundreds of establishments last week will continue into a third week.