“As we close the tap on Russian energy, we open the doors to a more diverse range of reliable suppliers,” EU energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen wrote in an op-ed for EUobserver this week.

“And these suppliers know that we are reliable buyers.”

One of those ‘reliable’ suppliers is the US, which provided 57 percent of the EU’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) last year and is on course to supply two-thirds this year, according to IEEFA. 

Four out of five overseas gas cargoes arriving in the EU will be American by 2028, the think tank estimates. These expensive cargoes have kept coming in. But how reliable is that supply likely to remain?

US officials have already shown their willingness to use their gas dominance for strategic gain. In March, US ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder threatened that Europe could lose its favourable access to American LNG if it tried to reopen the ‘Turnberry’ bilateral trade deal.

“In switching from Russia to the US, the EU has jumped from the frying pan into the fire,” Pascoe Sabido, a researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory, wrote in a comment under Jørgensen’s op-ed.

And recent developments prove his point.

This article continues, but the full version is available only to EUobserver.com subscribers. Visit account.euobserver.com/membership

On 11 October, Trump declared an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine. It binds only Ukraine. In the two days that followed, Kyiv held its fire while Russia kept hitting Ukrainian energy and critical infrastructure across 19 regions. A Russian strike collapsed an apartment stairwell in Kharkiv and killed three. And before Russia’s latest ballistic missile strike, five missiles and more than 100 drones, Ukraine received no early warning at all. Washington then said both sides were to blame.

This is what one of Trump’s decisions looks like on the ground. There were four of them, in three days, 9 to 11 October.

Three days that further weaken the West and undermine liberal democracies. Three days that encourage Putin to continue his war against Ukraine and his hybrid war against Europe. Like China, the US has sided with Russia against Ukraine and Europe. Whatever the motives in Washington—diesel prices before the midterms, a long feud with the court—the effect is the same.

International law

On 9 October, the Trump administration announced new sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC), an institution crucial for holding Putin and the Kremlin responsible for the war of aggression and its atrocities. The sanctions came hours after the Nobel Peace Prize went to Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge.

"We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said. "Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC." He expects allies, many of them ICC members that rely on American servicemembers for their defense, to rein in the court.

The ICC exists to investigate, prosecute, and try individuals accused of the world's gravest international crimes. Washington wants to end it. The court called the measures an assault on the rule of law and the foundations of the international legal order.

Funding Russia's war

On 9 October, Trump also lifted sanctions on Russian diesel exports. The deal comes less than a month after he signed the sweeping Russia sanctions law dedicated to the memory of Sen. Lindsey Graham, which allows tariffs on buyers of Russian oil. Multiple US lawmakers argue the move violates federal law. Congress banned Russian energy imports in 2022, and a bipartisan group of seven senators, including Republicans Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski, stated that the decision "runs directly counter to that law." They also argue that the administration failed to consult Congress or justify its decision as the statute requires.

Western sanctions and Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries—its own "sanctions"—aim at the same effect: making the war unaffordable for Russia. Trump's decision does the opposite: it helps Russia pay for the war. It also breaks with the principle of unity of effort, further undermining Western cohesion.

Zelenskyy said the deal showed US weakness, as Washington had secured no concessions in return: "What did [Trump] get? That he will have more diesel? For whom? More Russian diesel for Americans? ... It looks like Alaska No. 2. You know, it looks like a happy birthday present for Putin. It looks absolutely terrible."

Stability and sovereignty

On 10 October, Trump said of the elected president of a country fighting off Russia's full-scale invasion: "I think it's time for Ukraine to get a new president... I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal, because he could have made many deals and, for some reason, he never does." He claimed Zelenskyy could have ended the war many times, and insisted that Zelenskyy "wants to make problems for the world" by authorizing strikes on Russian refineries.

The Trump Administration conspicuously ignores the Swiss Summit on Peace in Ukraine, President Zelenskyy’s 10-point peace plan based on international law, and not least, the international effort to establish unity of efforts to enforce a just peace.

Zelenskyy has repeatedly proposed talks and shown willingness to compromise for a peace that guarantees Ukraine's sovereignty. On 18 July, he said: "This year alone, we have reached out to Russia dozens of times with proposals to stop this war—but all we got in return were refusals."

The "deals" Trump alludes to would not have secured peace or guaranteed Ukraine's future existence, nor safeguarded Europe against future Russian aggression. They were not rooted in international law, but in the prospect of great wealth for Trump and his associates—business deals dressed up as "peace plans”. Ukraine and its European partners instead proposed amendments and defined red lines to bring the drafts up to the standards of international law.

The Kremlin itself exposed the absurdity of Trump's claim. In a phone call with Trump, Putin categorically ruled out resuming peace talks, his aide Yuri Ushakov said, and sought to convince Trump that Ukrainian resistance has "no prospects whatsoever."

Supporting Russia

On 11 October, Trump announced: "Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!"

He gave no details. Zelenskyy had no prior knowledge, but said Ukraine would agree if Russia did. He had already offered to stop striking Russian refineries if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

It was not an energy ceasefire. It was a gift to Putin. A White House official told Axios that, as Trump understands it, the term means only that Russia and Ukraine stop attacking each other's oil refineries—and that this is what Washington expects Ukraine to do. Ukraine has one refinery, while Russia has 38, of which 21 have been targeted by Ukrainian drones.

To most of the world, an energy ceasefire covers the whole energy sector: nuclear power, oil refineries, power plants, the grid down to local transformers. But not in Trump's world. The official said a deal on power plants and grids could come next—if Ukraine first stops striking the refineries fueling Russia's war.

Axios wrote that White House officials see Ukraine's refinery strikes as doing more damage to Zelenskyy's relationship with Trump than to Russia. The administration has reportedly threatened to cut Ukraine off from US intelligence if the strikes continue.

Forcing Ukraine to halt its refinery strikes, while Russia keeps hitting not only power plants and the grid but heating and water systems, hospitals, schools, railways, ports and civilians, does not motivate Russia to stop. Within hours of Trump's announcement, Russia struck a power plant in Kharkiv. Trump's one-sided pressure encourages Russia to continue.

Enabling Russian aggression

Moscow paints Ukraine as the intransigent party, though Russia has offered no concessions and rejected numerous compromise proposals from the US and Ukraine. Still, Trump insists that Ukraine, not Russia, is the problem.

In three days, Trump has sanctioned the court that could hold Russia accountable, called on Zelenskyy to step down, secured revenue for the Kremlin's war, and declared an "energy ceasefire" that only asks Ukraine to stop striking Russian refineries, while Russia goes on turning winter into a weapon.

The call for Zelenskyy to step down led Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chair of the European Parliament's Committee on Security and Defence, to say: "If Trump calls on Zelenskyy to step down, he is clearly siding with a murderer. Only the Ukrainian people can decide who leads Ukraine in free elections, not the White House, and certainly not the Kremlin." Her conclusion: "By once again attacking allies and democratic institutions, Trump is weakening the West and undermining democracy. [...] Europe must therefore remain firmly on course and support Ukraine, because the US can no longer be relied on."

The US's latest National Security Strategy does not merely shift America's foreign policy priorities. It aligns them with Moscow's on seven separate issues, while explicitly calling for Washington to "cultivate resistance to Europe's current trajectory" by backing nationalist parties against sitting EU-aligned governments.

Europe must stand on its own

The last three days demonstrate that the US is no longer an ally, but a strategic adversary. None of Trump's recent decisions helps end the war on Ukrainian or European terms. On the contrary, they encourage Putin and push any realistic hope of peace years away. They undermine international law and support the notion that might makes right.

Worse still, they help explain why war between Russia and Europe by 2029 is becoming more likely. Trump—Putin's close ally—leaves office on 20 January 2029.

Europe must stress its support for continued Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries unless the Kremlin agrees to a comprehensive energy ceasefire in line with Ukraine’s demands.

Europe urgently needs to distance itself from the US and its foreign policy. Heads of state must join Canada's efforts to unite middle and small powers in common defense against increasingly aggressive great powers. As this series has repeatedly argued, Europe must build a Coalition of Like-Minded countries strong enough to confront Russia, China and, sadly, the US.

Editor's note. The opinions expressed in our Opinion section belong to their authors. Euromaidan Press' editorial team may or may not share them.

Submit an opinion to Euromaidan Press

The European Union has continued its scientific cooperation with Israeli firms and institutions implicated in genocide and apartheid throughout Israel’s three-year old assault on Gaza. Such complicity must stop.

Israel has been associated with the €95.5bn Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (2021-2027), and, according to the European Commission’s detailed Horizon dashboard, the EU’s net contribution to Israel amounts to €1.02bn.

While much of the funding supports legitimate research, the programme also channels substantial resources to Israeli universities and companies, some closely connected to Israel’s military and security apparatus. 

Pointing to just such EU-Israel collaboration, Francesca Albanese’s UN report “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” published last year, estimated EU research funding to Israeli entities at over €2.12bn since 2014. 

Horizon Europe funds collaborative projects and European Research Council grants.

But it is the European Innovation Council (EIC) and schemes which include the EIC Accelerator, the EIC STEP Scale-up and the Scaleup Europe Fund which are especially relevant to the question of EU complicity in Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza.

Horizon Europe is formally limited to civilian research, but Israeli companies with links to Israel’s military and security establishment have received funding through these schemes. 

In March 2026, for example, members of the European Parliament tabled a written parliamentary question asking the European Commission specifically about such companies including Sightec, an Israeli drone-navigation firm that received almost €2.5m through the EIC Accelerator and whose chief executive has described its technology as “combat-proven and deployed on over 3,000 drones in critical missions”.

The issue is not confined to overtly military applications. EU-funded civilian technologies can also serve Israel’s settler-colonial project.

Should European public money finance, for example, orange-harvesting robots that help Israel manage what it euphemistically calls a “labour shortage” in settlements built on occupied Palestinian land?

The EIC also goes beyond grants. Through the EIC fund, the EU can take equity in companies it supports; the new Scaleup Europe Fund is explicitly designed to make direct equity investments in strategic technology firms, and is open to companies based in countries associated with Pillar III of Horizon Europe, including Israel.

The EU can therefore not only subsidise Israeli technology firms but also acquire a financial stake in them and potentially profit from their future growth. 

And it could get worse.

The EIC’s 2026 work programme expands the type of projects that can be funded by including ‘dual use’ applications that are both civilian and military.

This opens the door for the EU to fund nuclear-related Israeli projects although Israel is not a member of the European Atomic Energy community (Euratom).

But none of this is inevitable.

Next EU budget and credibility at stake

Israel’s association with the current Horizon Europe programme runs only until 2027 and the shape and scale of the EU’s next Horizon programme will be  decided during ongoing negotiations on the bloc’s seven-year Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF).

There are also clear signs that Israel is likely to participate in the next Horizon programme (2028-2034).

Only a few weeks ago, Ekaterina Zaharieva, European commissioner for startups, research and innovation, met with the head of the Israel Space Agency, Shimrit Mama.

Reportedly, they discussed potential cooperation in high-tech air defence and space capabilities, AI and robotics, and underlined the importance of satellite imaging, AI modelling and a “multi-layer defence approach.” 

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and her team must ask themselves if the EU should be building an innovation architecture in which Israeli firms and state institutions, which are already deeply integrated into Israel’s military-industrial ecosystem, could receive European support for technologies explicitly framed as dual-use or defence-related. 

Are they comfortable with funding companies that help develop the type of violent technologies described in the award-winning documentary NAZA, which exposes the systems and AI technology used during the military campaign in Gaza?

Last year, under public pressure, von der Leyen proposed a partial suspension of Israel’s participation in Horizon Europe by specifically excluding Israeli entities from new EIC Accelerator grants and investment support. 

The proposal was modest: it would have affected future funding only, not existing agreements, and covered roughly 20 percent of EU financial flows to Israel under the programme.

It required a qualified majority in the Council but did not secure the necessary votes. It is, however, technically “still on the table”, according to commissioner Zaharieva.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Navi Pillay concluded in 2025 that Israel’s actions have “consistently pointed toward a singular, harrowing objective – the destruction of Palestinian life in Gaza”.

The EU has done little so far to stop the genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the occupied West Bank, and arguably – through trade and weapons’ exports – is actually contributing to it. 

Now the EU faces a clear choice. It can continue to fund, co-invest in and deepen research ties with an Israeli innovation sector increasingly oriented towards dual-use and defence technologies. 

Or it can stand with the winner of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, draw a line and decide that there will be no Israeli participation in the next Horizon programme, no EU equity in Israeli firms, and no public money for technologies that may be used to sustain genocide, occupation, surveillance and war.

The credibility of the EU and the values it proclaims depends on the choice it makes. 

Last Saturday, the Irish presidency of the EU proposed cutting nearly €160bn from the EU’s next seven-year budget against the European Commission’s proposal, a bid to bring the wealthiest, frugal member states on board. The deepest cuts fall on competitiveness (€75bn), external action (almost €38bn) and the EU’s administration costs (€10bn).

What the plan leaves alone is the borrowing.

The Irish text, known in Brussels as the negobox, keeps all three of the commission’s borrowing programmes that sit outside the budget’s normal limits: Catalyst Europe, a €150bn lending facility; a crisis mechanism of up to €395bn for major unforeseen shocks; and support for Ukraine of up to €100bn.

Add loans for defence and lending to other non-EU countries and, by our estimates, joint borrowing could still equal around 44 per cent of the new budget, about €800bn at current prices, up from 41 per cent under the Commission’s proposal. The budget shrinks, but the borrowing hardly changes. 

Ireland’s proposed budget is too small for Europe’s mounting common challenges, and its borrowing approach is too ad hoc and risky. 

Excluding the distorting effects of NextGenerationEU (NGEU), the Covid recovery fund, the Commission’s budget proposal is already far smaller than the headline figures suggest, and Ireland’s proposal would make it smaller still.

That matters because, as the Draghi report argued, Europe’s shared challenges such as Ukraine, rearmament and competitiveness require European public goods because no single member state captures their full benefits.

A budget worth just over one percent of the EU’s gross national income (GNI) is a poor match for that responsibility.

By comparison, total government expenditure across EU countries comes to close to half of their combined GNI. Keeping most fiscal capacity at national level, while expecting such a modest EU budget to finance increasingly vital continental priorities, is a bad use of public resources. 

A stronger common budget needs more of its own revenue, at least what the Commission proposes in its Own Resources Decision, which Parliament broadly supports and which would raise nearly €60bn extra a year.

The Irish plan’s acceptance of five new resources is encouraging. But it has to survive the negotiations, and the details of the final reform will decide whether it means anything.

The Council’s approach to common borrowing remains haphazard, lacking a permanent framework and relying on crisis-driven compromises. Governments may not like it, but a more European approach is coming, and the €800bn is likely to grow.

Support for Kyiv, to be provided outside budget ceilings via the Ukraine Reserve and policy loans, is capped at €100bn for the whole period. This is already looking tight given the accelerating rate of disbursements to Ukraine seen in recent years.

And a successor to SAFE, the EU’s defence loan scheme, is widely expected, since €150bn has proved far from enough for Europe’s rearmament.

France has just shown what it costs to borrow alone. Its yields recently hit a 24-year high, and the state now pays more to borrow than some major French companies. Sharing the effort through the common budget, including prudent joint borrowing, would help spread that risk.

Yet Europe has no clear, sustainable plan for borrowing. To date, EU governments have reluctantly signed up to each new borrowing instrument and called it an exception.

European borrowing capacity has been assembled one crisis at a time, starting with the euro area crisis and accelerating since the pandemic.

NGEU was accepted by fiscally cautious states as a one-off decision to deal with the Covid-19 emergency. Then the war in Ukraine and the need to fund rearmament produced new exceptions.

This year, EU governments used enhanced cooperation, a procedure that lets a subset of member states go ahead without the rest, to approve the €90bn Ukraine Support Loan, the EU’s largest foreign loan ever.

For defence, they reached for Article 122, the treaties’ emergency clause, to set up SAFE. Parliament, which felt sidelined, decided to sue the Council before the European Court of Justice.

There is a catch though.

These exceptional programmes are guaranteed by the so-called budget headroom, the margin between the EU’s revenue ceiling and the spending limits in the seven-year budget, rather than by money set aside in advance.

In barely five years, headroom-backed exposure has climbed to €681bn (see Figure 1), 82 percent of all EU debt.

The European Court of Auditors has warned that if a Ukraine loan guaranteed this way goes bad, future EU budgets, and the national contributions that fund them, would have to cover the loss.

Frugals vs Friends of Cohesion

EU capitals remain divided over the new budget and over joint borrowing. Net contributors, sometimes referred to as the Frugal Six, want deep cuts in the commission’s proposal, argue that new common borrowing is not the solution and have misgivings about the creation of new own resources.

By contrast, a group of sixteen southern and eastern countries, that call themselves the “Friends of Cohesion”, are much more open to joint borrowing and back an approach closer to the Commission and Parliament on the budget and own resources.

Ireland’s plan largely reflects the influence of the frugal countries, yet one diplomat has already dismissed it as “not even close to a landing zone.”

Europe needs an ambitious budget, backed by at least the Commission’s proposed new own resources, so it relies less on national contributions based on GNI. Joint borrowing should become a permanent, predictable part of it, with safeguards.

First, it should fund loans, not grants, as the Commission suggests. Second, riskier exposures, especially to non-EU countries, should be at least partly backed by money set aside in advance, as the Court of Auditors recommends.

Where it makes sense, the headroom guarantee could be topped up with national guarantees in proportion to each country’s size, as under SURE, and like-minded partners outside the EU could sometimes take part.

Stronger capital at institutions such as the EIB, or at any future defence-financing vehicle, would also let Europe borrow more together without putting its creditworthiness at risk.

Governments should also consider deferring repayment of the NGEU bonds, as the Draghi report suggested, especially if the own-resources reform falls short. It would protect priority spending when it is needed most.

Sustained joint borrowing brings a bonus: more common safe assets in euros, which strengthens the euro’s international role. The demand is already there.

Last month Piotr Serafin, the EU’s budget commissioner, flew to Seoul and Tokyo to meet investors. Asian buyers’ share of EU bond syndications has risen from 5 per cent to 9 per cent in the second half of 2025.

Wobbles in US bond markets, which partly reflect doubts about America’s fiscal health, its reliability as a partner and the dollar’s safe-haven status, give the euro an opening.

But it can only take it if EU governments put their own fiscal houses in order.

Ongoing tensions in the French bond market provide a clear warning. Putting France’s finances on a sustainable path would do more than reassure markets about the euro. It would restore French debt as a safe euro asset.

EU leaders meet on Thursday and Friday in Brussels. Whatever they discuss (and later decide) on the budget, Europe should keep borrowing together, and in large amounts.

The task now is to give that borrowing a coherent plan: a permanent framework, money set aside in advance and safeguards that cautious capitals can accept.

Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI models, is preparing what could be the largest initial public offering in history, raising more than $100 billion, according to The New York Times, at a valuation near US$2 trillion. According to Reuters, which reviewed the draft prospectus (the document has not yet been made public), the company […]

The post Postpone AI public offerings until US Congress acts appeared first on Asia Times.

Medicine can (and will) acknowledge that treatment has its limits. Families may decline further interventions and allow death by natural means. But there is a world of difference between eliminating suffering, ceasing medical treatments, and terminating the patient.   The child never asked to die. Unable to speak, the child could not describe its suffering... Continue Reading