EU ministers have discussed how to make labour standards compatible with modern technological conditions and workplace culture, such as telework and AI-led staff oversight, without losing competitiveness.
The law in question, called the Quality Jobs Act, covers a wide range of work protection measures, such as common standards for being able to ‘go home’ and disconnect from remote work, and limits to AI role in recruitment or its scrutiny of workers’ performance.
Technological innovation should “benefit both workers and businesses,” said Portuguese labour minister Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho, addressing the ministers’ council on Monday (19 October) in Luxembourg.
Human oversight is essential, especially where AI systems decide on recruitment or workers’ assessment, she said.
Next to innovation, labour rules needed to ensure “fair and transparent practices, respect for human workers’ rights … and effective social dialog,” said Roxana Mînzatu, the EU commissioner for employment.
“This revolutionary technology has to be regulated” so that it “delivers for all,” Isabelle Schömann, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) deputy general secretary had also said during a conference organised by the centre-left S&D group in the European Parliament on 14 October, commenting on the need for the Quality Jobs Act to curb AI.
The draft Quality Jobs Act that the European Commission plans to present in December aims to update the long out of date 1989 and 1990 health and safety workplace rules.
It would also protect subcontractors and create standards for working in heatwaves, becoming more frequent with climate change.
EU legislators need to ensure minimum standards so that “neither jobs nor businesses are jeopardised” with extreme weather, Yolanda Díaz Pérez, the Spanish labour minister, said ahead of Monday’s debate.
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Paris, 19 October, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – President Emmanuel Macron is facing mounting political pressure after the France riots left public buildings damaged, businesses looted and thousands arrested across the country. The crisis deepened on Monday when Macron … Read more
Berlin and Paris spent months negotiating over the future of Europe’s auto industry.
Germany wanted to keep selling new combustion-engine cars beyond 2035. In return, France wanted strict “Made in Europe” rules: public money spent on electric vehicle (EV) purchase incentives, subsidies and government contracts should benefit cars genuinely made in Europe, not simply assembled here.
One concession in exchange for the other. French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz have now sealed the deal.
Both can claim victory at home, and both say they want the same thing: to strengthen Europe’s auto industry against Chinese competition.
But the trade-off undermines that very goal. It rightly pushes for more European production, but pays for it with less ambition for electric vehicles.
For Europe’s automakers to compete, two things need to happen: More of the value generated by car manufacturing must stay in Europe, and the transition to electric vehicles must remain on track. Trading one for the other weakens both.
Value creation is already moving elsewhere
On one point, France is right: a growing EV market alone won’t protect European jobs. Many of the most important components in electric cars already come from China, especially batteries.
Meanwhile, Chinese automakers are building factories in Hungary and Spain, securing direct access to the European market.
The risk is clear: cars assembled in Europe from imported components qualify as European products, benefit from purchase incentives and win public contracts.
Final assembly stays in Europe, but much of the economic value is created elsewhere. European auto suppliers have already cut more than 100,000 jobs in two years, and the European Commission warns that up to 600,000 more could disappear over the next five to 10 years.
That’s where the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act comes in. It would link public spending on subsidies, purchase incentives and government procurement to production in Europe.
This isn’t just about shutting out foreign competition. It steers demand to where it strengthens Europe’s industrial base.
To work, the rules must target the components that will shape the industry’s future: battery cells, software, electric drivetrains and power electronics.
“Made in Europe” can’t simply mean attaching the wheels here.
That doesn’t mean every nut and bolt must come from the EU. The auto industry relies on global supply chains and trusted trading partners.
But a law riddled with exemptions would be little better than no law at all: It would create more red tape without bringing a single new factory to Europe.
Factories need customers
Even the best industrial policy will fail without buyers. A battery factory can only make money if it produces enough batteries. Yet Europe’s battery plants are running well below capacity because they don’t have enough orders. Every battery that goes unproduced drives up the cost of those that are made. Factories, machinery and workers still have to be paid for.
Since 2022, roughly a quarter of announced battery projects in the EU have been canceled or put on hold.
This is why Germany’s push to delay the phaseout of combustion-engine cars is so damaging. Every combustion-engine car sold instead of an EV means one fewer battery that could be made in Europe. The very factories meant to make “Made in Europe” a reality would lose potential customers.
The best way to boost demand for European batteries is to build more small, affordable EVs in Europe. That’s where the biggest sales volumes are. Yet German automakers in particular have been slow to embrace this market, despite significant demand potential in Germany itself. Delaying the combustion-engine phaseout would only give them another reason to hold back.
Slow down, lose out
For European automakers, the stakes go far beyond their home market. Sell fewer EVs at home, and manufacturers will launch fewer new models, produce fewer cars and face higher costs. That will make it harder to compete abroad, too. Giving combustion engines more time won’t close the gap with China. It could make it wider.
Political uncertainty only makes matters worse. Automakers plan new models, factories and supplier contracts years in advance. Every fresh debate over exemptions gives investors and consumers another reason to hesitate.
Companies investing billions in EVs and batteries – and consumers considering buying an electric car – need to know that policymakers won’t change direction tomorrow.
The Franco-German bargain ignores economic reality. The future of the car is electric, and China figured that out long ago.
Beijing is doing everything it can to build an unbeatable lead in EVs, including through unfair practices such as massive government subsidies.
And Europe? It’s haggling over more time for yesterday’s technology. At stake is nothing less than the auto industry – the backbone of Europe’s industrial economy and a major source of jobs.
This deal is not yet law. A better deal would be simple: Europe should pursue electric vehicles with the same determination as China while making sure the jobs, factories and economic benefits stay in Europe.
European Council president António Costa gets to work this week rewriting the EU’s seven-year budget, after the bloc’s leaders binned the long-term plan proposed by the Irish council presidency last week.
The budget will be debated by MEPs at the plenary in Strasbourg on Wednesday (21 October), when European Parliament will also vote to allocate €47bn for Erasmus+ instead of the €40bn planned on Thursday (22 October).
A separate vote on Wednesday (21 October) will decide parliament’s position on the EU’s short-term 2027 budget, when MEPs will decide whether or not to ask for €2.7bn more than what council proposed in summer, with extra monies proposed for expanding Erasmus+, agriculture and responding to climate disaster.
Further, MEPs will also decide on disbursing €489m to Mediterranean member states ravaged by storms and flooding, and €1.1m to retrain hundreds of workers laid off in Finland’s paper industry cuts – both on Wednesday (21 October).
This comes after last week in Brussels, where national leaders at their summit binned a long-term budget proposed by the Irish Council presidency. While most wanted to keep budget headroom, a minority of big spending countries wanted to save cash. So while European Council president Antonio Costa gets to work rewriting the 2028-2034 funding plan, MEPs will also make their views on the matter clear.
A debate will also ensue on Tuesday (20 October) on how to respond to escalating Russian provocations off Bulgarian and Romanian coasts where drones have repeatedly violated EU airspace, followed by a vote on Thursday (22 October). MEPs will also ask the commission to explain why it decided to unlock sanctions on luxury Russian furs shortly after it imposed them.
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Brussels, 17 October, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – European Union leaders are intensifying efforts to strengthen Europe’s industrial competitiveness as EU trade defences against unfairly priced Chinese imports become an increasingly important part of the bloc’s economic strategy. The … Read more
Brussels, 17 October, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – An EU migration dispute exposed divisions among European leaders during the European Council summit in Brussels on 15 and 16 October, as Denmark, Italy and Poland demanded tougher language on irregular … Read more
EU leaders have failed to settle their differences over the 2028–2034 budget, with Germany demanding further reductions to the proposed spending framework and the European Council taking charge of negotiations ahead of a difficult December deadline.
European Union leaders have ended their Brussels summit without agreement on the bloc’s next seven-year budget, after German Chancellor Friedrich Merz rejected the scale of spending envisaged under the latest compromise proposal and demanded deeper cuts.
The discussions on 15–16 October exposed the continuing division between governments determined to contain national contributions and those seeking to protect agricultural subsidies, regional development and new European investment programmes. The dispute now threatens the political timetable for approving the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework, the budget that will determine the Union’s spending priorities over the next seven years.
In their formal summit conclusions, leaders invited European Council President António Costa to take negotiations forward towards a timely agreement. No new spending settlement was endorsed, despite the Irish presidency having presented revised figures immediately before the summit.
Germany rejects the compromise
The European Commission originally proposed a framework approaching €2 trillion in current prices, arguing that Europe needed greater financial capacity to meet its growing responsibilities in defence, competitiveness, technological development, migration and external security.
Ireland, which holds the rotating Council presidency, submitted a revised negotiating document on 10 October intended to narrow the differences between governments. The latest proposal includes substantial reductions compared with the Commission’s initial ambitions while seeking to preserve financing for established EU programmes.
Those concessions have not satisfied Berlin. Merz argues that the Union must recognise the difficult fiscal position facing national governments and that the proposed increases in common spending remain excessive.
Germany, the largest contributor to the EU budget in absolute terms, has been working with other budget-conscious governments to seek reductions from the original Commission proposal.
The Irish compromise has done little to bridge the divide. The revised framework seeks to combine greater financial restraint with protection for agricultural and cohesion policies, while retaining significant investment in security, research and competitiveness.
Yet every attempt to rebalance the proposed spending exposes another political conflict.
Agriculture, cohesion and defence compete for funding
The Common Agricultural Policy and cohesion funding remain among the largest and most politically sensitive components of the EU budget. Agricultural payments support farmers across the Union, while cohesion programmes finance infrastructure, regional investment and economic development, particularly in less prosperous territories.
Governments benefiting heavily from those programmes are reluctant to accept reductions, particularly when national finances are already under pressure.
France, Italy and other countries defending traditional EU expenditure have therefore resisted attempts to transfer the burden of budget restraint disproportionately onto agriculture and regional support.
At the same time, the Commission has argued that the EU cannot simply preserve the spending structure of previous decades while promising a stronger role in European defence, industrial development and economic security.
The contradiction is increasingly apparent. European governments demand greater independence from external suppliers, stronger military capabilities and sustained financial support for Ukraine, yet remain unwilling to agree on the larger common budget that might help deliver those objectives.
Cuts to research, innovation, cross-border infrastructure or defence-industrial programmes would not necessarily produce immediate political costs. Their consequences would emerge later, through investments postponed, capabilities not developed and projects left dependent on national budgets.
Conversely, reducing agricultural payments or regional investment would produce more immediate resistance from farmers, local authorities and national governments.
The Council’s budget negotiations had been intended to deliver a political agreement before the end of 2026. That would leave 2027 for the European Parliament and member states to complete the legislation required for the new financial framework to operate from January 2028.
Failure to reach that timetable would not immediately stop EU expenditure. It would, however, compress the period available for completing the detailed legal arrangements underpinning individual programmes and could complicate the uninterrupted delivery of funding at the beginning of the next budget cycle.
The political environment is hardly favourable. Several governments face difficult domestic debates over public spending, taxation and the demands of European integration. In France, the approach of the 2027 presidential election adds another complication to negotiations requiring sensitive national concessions.
Agreement on the seven-year framework requires unanimity among member states, followed by the consent of the European Parliament. The latter has already argued that the EU needs sufficient financial resources to match the responsibilities its governments have assigned to it.
Costa now faces the task of converting competing national positions into a financial settlement that all 27 governments can accept. That will require decisions not only about the overall ceiling but also about the balance between national allocations and programmes managed at European level.
The Brussels summit has demonstrated that the principal disagreements remain unresolved. The next negotiating round will determine whether governments are prepared to compromise on spending priorities or whether their ambitions for a more capable European Union will once again run ahead of their willingness to finance it.
Italy has extended checks on travellers from Spain for another week, but talks between Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sánchez have opened the way for an end to reciprocal restrictions imposed after the migration crisis in Ceuta.
Italy and Spain have agreed to work towards ending their reciprocal Schengen border controls following discussions between Prime Ministers Giorgia Meloni and Pedro Sánchez at the European Council summit in Brussels. Rome nevertheless extended its restrictions for another seven days on Friday, 16 October, as the two governments consider how to bring their respective measures to an end.
The decision marks a possible turning point in a dispute that has disrupted travel between two of the European Union’s largest countries since the summer. According to the notifications recorded by the European Commission, the restrictions concern air and sea connections between Italy and Spain, which do not share a land border.
The two governments have instructed their interior ministers to consider alternative arrangements over the coming week. Although neither side has formally withdrawn its measures, the agreement to coordinate their removal suggests that both capitals are seeking a way out of an increasingly uncomfortable confrontation over migration and internal European security.
How the Ceuta crisis reached Schengen
The dispute began after an extraordinary influx of migrants from Morocco into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta in late July. More than 72,000 people crossed the border, prompting serious questions about the management of the EU’s external borders and the possibility of onward movements into other member states.
Italy responded by introducing checks on passengers arriving from Spain, arguing that the situation created risks for public order and internal security. Rome also raised concerns about the possible movement of individuals presenting security threats, although the extent of any such movement remained disputed.
Madrid rejected the justification and introduced reciprocal measures. What began as an emergency response to events on an external border consequently developed into a disagreement about whether one Schengen member could impose restrictions on another on the basis of anticipated migration movements.
EU Today examined the original Spanish retaliation in August, when the dispute first threatened to turn temporary border controls into an instrument of political pressure.
The wider consequences of the Ceuta incident have raised questions about the vulnerabilities exposed at the EU’s external border and the effectiveness of common European migration and crisis-response policy.
The limits of temporary border controls
Schengen is built on the principle that people can travel between participating countries without routine internal border checks. Member states nevertheless retain the right to reintroduce temporary controls in response to serious threats to public policy or internal security, subject to the requirements of EU law.
The difficulty lies in determining when those exceptional powers are justified. Italy has maintained that the Ceuta crisis warranted precautionary action. Spain has argued that controls imposed specifically on travellers from its territory were unjustified and discriminatory.
These opposing positions matter beyond the two countries. If concerns over irregular arrivals in one member state become sufficient grounds for another to introduce sustained checks, the distinction between Europe’s external borders and its internal travel area becomes increasingly difficult to maintain.
The operational results have also entered the political argument. Italian figures cited during the dispute indicate that nearly half a million passengers were checked during the first month, with 31 refused entry. Those numbers demonstrate that the measures were substantial, but do not by themselves establish whether the original security concerns were proportionate to the restrictions imposed.
Madrid, meanwhile, has maintained that migrants involved in the Ceuta influx had not moved onwards to mainland Spain in the manner suggested by Italian concerns.
Meloni and Sánchez seek a practical compromise
The latest discussions offer both governments a route towards de-escalation without formally conceding their underlying positions. Meloni can present the additional week of controls as a continuation of Italy’s security precautions, while Sánchez can point to an agreement to prepare their coordinated removal.
The two prime ministers remain politically divided on migration. Meloni has consistently argued for stronger border enforcement and deterrence, while Sánchez has defended an approach incorporating legalisation and labour-market integration for migrants already living in Spain.
Those disagreements were also visible during the Brussels summit, where European leaders returned to the question of migration management and the consequences of national decisions for the wider Union.
For Brussels, the immediate concern is whether the two governments can replace competing national restrictions with arrangements that address security concerns without unnecessarily interrupting movement between Schengen countries.
A coordinated end to the controls would not resolve the underlying problems exposed by Ceuta. It would, however, remove one of the more unusual internal consequences of that crisis and demonstrate that political negotiations can still prevent emergency border measures from becoming semi-permanent.
The decisive period is now the coming week. Whether the controls expire as planned will depend on the discussions between the Italian and Spanish interior ministries and their ability to agree practical alternatives.
Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen attacked Spanish leader Pedro Sánchez on migration during a summit debate in Brussels on Friday (16 October).
Frederiksen, who despite leading a centre-left party has taken an increasingly hard line on migration, criticised Sánchez for granting renewable one-year legal residence permits to undocumented migrants.
“I have asked the commission to look into whether one country is doing almost everything in the opposite direction of what the others are doing. In other words, you come to a country illegally, and suddenly you’re allowed to be there legally,” Frederiksen said before arriving at the second day of the Brussels summit.
In response, Sánchez told reporters after the meeting with EU leaders that Spain’s regularisation scheme “does not go against the grain” – since there are many countries with similar measures.
In April, Spain approved plans to grant legal status to around 500,000 undocumented migrants and asylum seekers. These so-called regularisations are a common labour-migration policy that other countries have also used, including Italy, which has authorised nearly 500,000 non-EU work visas through 2028.
But at the EU leaders’ summit in Brussels in June, several European leaders used the meeting to criticise Spain’s regularisation.
The criticism resurfaced during this October summit, after the summer’s migrant crisis in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, which some EU governments then weaponised against Spain.
Push for stronger wording
Following a breakfast on Friday (16 October), attended by 16 EU countries backing stricter migration restrictions, Denmark, Poland and Italy had also attempted to link migration to crime in draft EU summit conclusions.
They tried to amend the summit conclusions to call on the commission for extra efforts to monitor national migration measures that can affect other member states, highlight the impact of migration on welfare and public services, as well as avoid “measures that could create incentives for illegal migration”.
However, France and Luxembourg criticised the position of the 16, and leaders had a strategic exchange and agreed to return to the topic at a later date.
According to experts from the Migration Policy Centre, it is hard to conclude whether Spain’s regularisation plans encouraged more migration to the EU.
So-called ‘pull factors’ are difficult to consider in isolation, as migration depends on work opportunities, social networks abroad and other factors, but policies can also play a role.
Regularisation could pave the way to legal work, generating “positive employment and fiscal outcomes over time,” the scholars also said.
Denmark itself is not bound by EU laws (due to an opt-out) on border control, immigration, civil and criminal law, or police cooperation, and therefore cannot vote on them in the Council.
Rhetoric versus facts
It is not the first clash between the two socialist leaders on migration, but the timing matters.
Sánchez faces elections in November, and France heads into presidential elections next spring, where it is feared anti-migrant rhetoric could roll out the red carpet for the far right.
In response to a barrage of criticism from the likes of Austria, Czech Republic and, Sánchez said that the numbers on illegal migration returns speak for themselves.
“See what is happening in Spain – some politicians are willing to replace the population only so they can be … in government,” said Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš ahead of the meeting on Friday. “I am convinced that for some countries, it is too late – and that some day we will have to defend our borders so that migrants don’t come to us from Western countries if it continues like this. And we, of course, are preparing for this.”
“It’s a road to hell,” added Babiš, who belongs to the far-right Patriots for Europe group.
His comments, Sánchez said, resembled the rhetoric of the far-right political party Vox in Spain, now polling close to 20 percent. “One thing is the rhetoric, the blablabla, and another thing is the facts,” he said.
Ceuta crisis
The situation in Ceuta escalated at the end of July 2026, when tens of thousands of people simultaneously attempted to cross over from Morocco to the autonomous enclave.
The Spanish have since deployed additional security measures to regain control over the territory.
A majority of newly arrived migrants were eventually returned to Morocco, but thousands remained in the city of 80,000 people – many of whom are unaccompanied children and teenagers.
The crisis has exposed tensions between Spain, Morocco and the EU on border control and asylum and put into question who is responsible for migrants.
French president Emmanuel Macro previously said: “Spain was the target of an attack. Call it a hybrid attack if you like, but it was an information attack. Traffickers, and probably people seeking to destabilise Spain, led many people living in poverty to believe there was an opportunity, using false information and creating an information bubble.”
Meanwhile Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni previously called for a suspension of the Schengen free movement agreement with Spain.
The whole situation triggered tit-for-tat border closures between Spain and Italy.
On Thursday (15 October), Italy decided not to renew the security checks with Spain, paving the way for a week of negotiations between Madrid and Rome to reach a final agreement.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday (16 October) that the US-Russia ‘diesel deal’ came as a surprise and could lead to further sanctions relief for Moscow.
“We cannot treat the agreements concerning diesel and coal as isolated cases … gas could be next. I am absolutely convinced of that,” Zelensky told reporters in Brussels, after meeting with EU leaders.
“The risks I am talking about are clear: sanctions could be progressively eased,” he warned.
EU leaders are expected to “regret” the diesel deal in their summit conclusions, while discussions on a new package of sanctions against Russia are still underway.
“It is not a time to release sanctions on Russia,” said EU Council president Antonio Costa on Friday, alongside EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Zelensky before the discussion with EU leaders.
“We will not lift any sanctions unless Russia ends the war,” confirmed von der Leyen, adding that Europe will keep working on “pressuring Russia”.
Europe has adopted 21 packages of sanctions on Russia since the beginning of the war, alongside the listing of thousands of individuals and entities, and is currently working on the 22nd.
But one Ukrainian senior diplomat told EUobserver that the coming months could be crucial to agree on more sanctions against Moscow, since February is seen as a possible deadline given the upcoming 2027 French presidential elections.
Russia’s economy has come under growing pressure from Western sanctions. Although a month-on-month decrease in exports was observed (six percent for fossil fuels, eight percent for crude oil), the US diesel deal could offer Moscow a potential lifeline.
No concessions
The diesel deal is widely seen as a way to restart peace talks. At the same time, the United States is pushing Kyiv and Moscow toward a negotiated settlement, which puts Ukraine under growing pressure to come to the table, even though any deal could force it to make painful concessions.
Zelensky, however, has warned against any deal that would compromise Ukraine’s sovereignty or territorial integrity.
“Putin plans to stick around much longer. He is building a Russia that looks like North Korea,” he wrote on X.
Instead, the Ukrainian president has turned to European “real leaders”, seeking to shore up their political and military support and strengthen Kyiv’s position in any future negotiations.
And in the words of von der Leyen, Europe is already helping Ukraine to prepare for “winter-isation”, which for Zelensky should translate into more funds and defence support.
This week, the commission disembursed €2.9bn to Kyiv to purchase drones, air defence systems, missiles, radars, electronic warfare systems and ammunition, as part of the EU’s €90bn loan, backed by EU leaders last year.
But Kyiv has warned it will need tens of billions more to continue fighting against Russia, as the war intensifies on the front lines and the number of attacks in Ukrainian cities increases.
Ukraine’s defence needs are estimated for 2026 around €23bn and Kyiv still needs to fund a hole of roughly €69.3bn for 2027.
“We will have to increase the funding once again,” German chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Thursday before meeting EU leaders in Brussels.
Protect Russian frozen assets
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Brussels, 16 October, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – European Union leaders have delivered a strong message of solidarity with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a high-level summit in Brussels, as disagreements with US President Donald Trump intensify over Russia … Read more
The European Commission’s likely anti-asylum proposal to tackle sudden large arrivals may come before the end of the year, after warm endorsements by some 17 EU states during a breakfast on Friday (16 October) ahead of the second-day of the EU summit in Brussels.
Beyond the warm words, the discussions exposed a clear ambition among the 17 to give member states the power to close EU borders and temporarily and selectively suspend asylum applications, according to an EU diplomat.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the diplomat said there had been a lot of support for the so-called European emergency response framework, proposed by EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen during her State of the Union address last month.
Speculation on what exactly such a framework entails remains unclear, amid alarm among human rights defenders that the EU is seeking legal tools to curb asylum rights – echoing Polish temporary emergency measures that have suspended asylum registration along the Belarus border since March 2025.
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Europe is heading into an electoral moment without recent precedent. Four of its five most populous member states, Spain, France, Italy and Poland, are due to vote within the next 12 months – starting with Spain on 29 November.
If voters move further right, the combined effect could reshape the Union far more profoundly than any single national election.
Two shifts stand out. First, the firewall between the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the hard-right is crumbling, even in Germany, its last bastion.
Hard-right parties sit in the governments of Italy, Czech Republic, Finland, Slovakia and Croatia, while Slovenia’s government relies on outside support from one.
Second, competition from the far-right is pushing established radical-right parties to harden their positions.
In Catalonia, Aliança Catalana is challenging Vox; in France, Éric Zemmour’s Reconquête, despite scoring single digits, is pressing on Marine Le Pen’s National Rally; in Italy, Roberto Vannacci’s National Future is challenging Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy; and in Poland, Grzegorz Braun’s Confederation of the Polish Crown is cannibalising the Confederation.
Under pressure, established conservatives tend to move towards these parties rather than hold the line, as Spain’s Partido Popular and France’s Les Républicains illustrate. Positions once on the margins become mainstream.
The implications go beyond immigration.
Le Pen and Vox leader Santiago Abascal advocate “national priority” in access to welfare and public services. Under pressure from the League and National Future, Meloni’s government has introduced a 30-percent cap on first-year classrooms for pupils without Italian citizenship, based on their birthplace or prior schooling.
A leaked AfD strategy paper reportedly goes further, proposing that national constitutions override EU law and reducing the Court of Justice to a forum for disputes between governments.
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Human rights NGOs in Europe are not doing well. Funding cuts, legal restrictions, administrative burdens and smear campaigns are taking their toll.
I see organisations drastically downsizing or closing altogether and staff burning out. If we are to reverse our fortunes, the traditionally legally-focused movement needs to rebalance its skill-set to include more communicators and organisers.
Traditionally, human rights NGOs have been staffed mainly by lawyers. This is understandable. Human rights are legal standards contained in national, European and international law. If your main tools for getting human rights implemented are advocacy and litigation, then you need legal experts. But advocacy is becoming less effective because decision makers increasingly see supporting human rights as politically risky.
And litigation as a tool is partly limited by increasing political interference with the courts in some countries, or because – again – politicians see potential political brownie points in not complying with (or see potential political costs in complying with) judgments that enforce human rights standards.
It’s not just that NGOs’ traditional tools are losing their power. It’s that legal training does not equip us with the tools do we need to reverse our fortunes.
Our main lever for restoring human rights and the organisations that promote them is public opinion. For as long as we live continue to live in democracies, pressure from voters can have an impact on decision makers. Which means we need communicators who can help the public realise how important human rights are to them.
David Attenborough pointed out a few years ago that “saving our planet is now a communications challenge. We know what to do, we just need the will”.
The same goes for human rights.
But legal training does not make you good at communicating with folks outside your bubble.
‘Legal-ese’ is not the right lingo
I know from personal experience. I trod a path to human rights through a law degree, masters, doctorate and then academia. Human rights folks talk about them in a way that conveys a fraction of their value and power. If you’d asked me 15 years ago why human rights are important, I’d have said things like this: ‘they protect us from abuse by the government’, or ‘they’re minimum standards of protection the state can’t breach’, or ‘they exist to protect the vulnerable’.
These things are true. They’re also not very persuasive to people outside our base of support. Because the kinds of human rights breaches the movement foregrounds tend to affect ‘other people’. And lawyers are used to thinking about rights in the context of legal disputes.
So human rights get reduced to a shield that protects groups or institutions that most people don’t care about, don’t understand, or who live in other countries.
Human rights are not just a passive defence. They are transformational. Human rights are tools. Tools we use to demand that our leaders use the powers and resources with which we’ve entrusted them to do what’s best for all of us. Tools that we use to create the lives we want to live and the communities we want to live in. This is how we need to talk about them, especially when it comes to civil and political rights.
People outside our base cannot be made to care about media freedom, the right to protest or democracy itself just on principle or because they’re enshrined in legal standards. To care about human rights, most people need to know what these things deliver.
Folks will see that protest is important when we explain how it allows people like them to come together and make their leaders listen to their concerns, whether it’s about climate change or better pay for teachers. I’ve seen it first-hand when testing messages in focus groups.
Empathy, not stereotypes
The same goes for stimulating support for the rights of people from marginalised groups. Right now, most people have trouble caring because they been fed negative stereotypes that cause them to regard some people as ‘others’ and ‘outgroups’, meaning that they will tolerate lower standards of treatment for them.
Using legal arguments and evidencing rights violations by focusing on the harm being suffered doesn’t work because it does nothing to address the reason people don’t care. For that, we need to stimulate empathy and dissolve negative stereotypes through techniques like storytelling. Once people empathise and recognise our common humanity, they’re much more likely to support equal treatment.
When we communicate in a way that allows our audience to see how human rights deliver things they find important to them, they don’t just start to support human rights as standards. They also start to support the organisations that promote them. That means they’re more likely to listen to them, stand up for them, get involved in their work and even donate.
It’s not just about communicating better. We also need organisers who can help people come together to carry effective messages and make the strength of public support felt by our leaders.
Folks with legal training are still essential.
If you’re going to make phones, you need engineers. But we don’t see the engineers being given the job of persuading folks to buy the phones, do we?
Unless they’ve had proper communications training. The human rights movement’s legalistic centre of gravity needs to shift to make room for knowledge and skills that can meet the moment.
In the short-term we could achieve this by retraining staff and joining forces with other progressive movements that know how to organise and mobilise, like environmental NGOs.
We could also tackle the issue upstream by working with universities that produce human rights graduates to develop more holistic curricula that cover communications and organising and not only law.
EU leaders met Thursday (15 October) for their first face-to-face talks on the 2028–2034 budget, killing the latest negotiation proposal put forward by Ireland.
Dublin, which holds the symbolic EU Council presidency, proposed cuts of up to €141bn from the long-term budget, about eight percent less than the commission proposal. But it failed to make anybody happy, for different reasons.
And now, EU Council president António Costa has been tasked to deliver a new compromise before EU leaders meet again on 26 November in Brussels, with the goal of striking a deal during the summit in December.
An EU official said Costa deemed the deal in December as “essential,” urging EU capitals “to assume their responsibility”.
For Denmark, for example, it is important to have more funds for defence, borders, illegal migration, and competitiveness. “It will probably be as difficult as it was last time or even more difficult,” said Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen ahead of the meeting.
“We need unanimity in the Council. We are far from that unanimity,” also said German chancellor Friedrich Merz before meeting counterparts.
The EU is divided into two camps. The so-called Frugals (Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden) want “several hundred billion” more to be cut, mostly from agriculture and cohesion funds, while 17 EU member states (self-named as Friends of Cohesion) criticise the savings.
But time is of the essence to reach a deal this year, especially for French president Emmanuel Macron. France will hold presidential elections in the spring, and if Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally party, wins, reaching an EU deal would become far more difficult.
Le Pen has pledged that, if she comes to power, she will halve France’s contribution to the EU budget.
And Macron reportedly said in the room with EU leaders that from January onwards, there will be no political room for reaching an agreement.
‘Easier to give up what you don’t yet have’
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The European Commission says asylum seekers arriving at EU borders are now being screened, but it makes no mention of the independent rights monitors that EU law requires to oversee those procedures, even as spending on border surveillance surges.
“Screening of people arriving illegally and the border procedures are being carried out,” said European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, in a letter addressed to the 27 heads of state and government meeting at an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday (15 October).
An annex to her letter, obtained by EUobserver, highlights broad outstanding issues when it comes to implementing new EU-wide asylum laws that kicked into force this past June.
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Brussels, 15 October, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – Sweden has rejected the latest EU budget proposal, intensifying disagreements among European Union leaders meeting in Brussels over the bloc’s €1.62 trillion spending framework for 2028–2034. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson … Read more
When European Union leaders meet in Brussels later on Thursday (15 October), migration will be high on the agenda. Amid political panic — real and manufactured — over the events in Ceuta this summer, the European Commission has come out with a five-point plan promising more border surveillance and policing, more dodgy deals with countries outside the EU, and more deportations.
It also includes an ominous plan to devise a new “emergency response instrument” that could allow for the total suspension of access to asylum, which is likely to result in summary mass deportations, in situations when third countries are blamed for ‘instrumentalising’ migration movements.
That the idea is even on the table is a measure of how far the EU’s approach to migration has degenerated.
There is a jarring disconnect between commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s insistence on European values and the rules-based order and the willingness to throw the right to asylum out the window.
It is a short-sighted and dangerous hypocrisy that will harm women, men, and children at EU borders and potentially beyond if it encourages other states to adopt a similar approach.
If a 20-year-old man I interviewed in Ceuta in August were at the summit in Brussels, he might help guide the debate back to the realities of why people flee and seek safety, their needs and aspirations and hopefully toward a policy informed by shared humanity.
A Ceuta story
He told me he escaped from his village in Somalia in November 2024 when the Islamist armed group Al-Shabab attacked it. He went to Libya and spent six months detained in a smuggler’s warehouse in Kufra, where he said he witnessed many deaths from nightly beatings. He escaped, reached Morocco, and after months of hardship there saw his chance to seek safety on 31 July, when he swam to Ceuta.
It may well be that instrumentalisation played a role, among many other factors, in the arrival of more than 72,000 people there during two days at the end of July.
For many, the decision to cross may have been opportunistic and fuelled by disinformation on social media. Yet that cannot justify violence, summary returns, degrading treatment, or denying access to asylum procedures, in Ceuta or elsewhere.
Among the thousands who have remained in Ceuta are asylum seekers from strife-torn Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Chad, and elsewhere.
Suspending asylum completely would not only thwart their chances to find protection. It would rupture the EU’s commitment to the rules-based international order in a profound way.
Rupture of rights
The right to seek asylum is embedded in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and the related prohibition of refoulement — sending someone to a place where they face serious harm — is a red line through international human rights and refugee law.
The focus on deterrence and externalisation over the past decade – coinciding with the growing influence of the far-right in European politics – has arguably made this previously unthinkable option part of the conversation.
Both Greece (temporarily in 2020 and 2025) and Poland (continuously at its border with Belarus since March 2025) have suspended asylum without significant reaction from the commission or other member states.
The Crisis Regulation, part of the pact, already allows a member state to depart from normal border procedures and curtail important safeguards in a situation of mass arrivals and/or when a third country or hostile non-state actor instrumentalises migration. While the regulation causes concern about potential misuse and unjustified restrictions on access to asylum, it does not allow for wholesale suspension of the right.
A difficult situation was compounded by recriminations against Spain from other EU countries, exploitation by far-right groups, and neglect and hostility that led to people living on the streets, in the forests, and in makeshift huts on the beach in an apparent effort to compel them to go back to Morocco. It took Spain weeks to begin housing and registering people.
Spain did not invoke the Crisis regulation. Rather than adding new measures, policymakers should be wrestling with why it didn’t use supposedly tailor-made EU legislation and addressing how mismanagement and a finger-pointing lack of cooperation among EU states create an endless loop of crises that feed xenophobia.
EU leaders should keep sight of the people affected and basic principles at stake. They should reject approaches to migration that so clearly violate fundamental rights and normalise cruelty.
Marine Le Pen has warned that a future French government could oppose further European financing for Ukraine and withhold part of France’s EU budget contribution, bringing the cost of supporting Kyiv into the 2027 presidential contest.
Marine Le Pen has threatened to challenge future European Union funding for Ukraine, warning that France cannot continue underwriting large financial commitments while confronting its own deteriorating public finances. The National Rally leader has also proposed withholding half of France’s contribution to the EU budget, a confrontation that could place Paris at the centre of a major dispute over European spending.
In an interview published on 14 October, Le Pen questioned the EU’s €90 billion support loan for Ukraine, describing France’s estimated €18 billion share as an excessive burden. She also expressed opposition to the proposed €100 billion financing instrument for Ukraine under the Union’s next seven-year budget, covering 2028 to 2034.
Her intervention comes as EU leaders meet in Brussels to negotiate competing financial priorities, including defence, industrial competitiveness, agricultural subsidies and continued assistance to Kyiv. France’s presidential election in 2027 gives the dispute particular significance: a change of government in Paris could alter the position of one of the Union’s principal financial contributors.
Two funding programmes under pressure
The distinction between the existing Ukraine loan and the proposed future instrument is important to the financial consequences of Le Pen’s position.
The €90 billion package, approved earlier this year, supports Ukraine during 2026 and 2027. According to the European Parliament’s latest assessment, €60 billion is allocated to defence and €30 billion to budgetary assistance. Almost €15 billion had been disbursed by 18 September.
The loan is financed through EU borrowing backed by the Union’s budget. Le Pen’s description of an €18 billion French share should therefore not be confused with an immediate payment of that amount by the French Treasury. The financing arrangements involve collective European commitments and potential future liabilities.
The second programme concerns financing beyond 2027. Under the European Commission’s budget proposal, up to €100 billion would be available for Ukraine between 2028 and 2034, with the eventual allocation depending on its requirements. The mechanism would support reconstruction, economic stability and preparations for eventual EU membership.
Le Pen’s opposition therefore extends beyond the immediate cost of the war. It challenges the assumption that the EU will remain a major source of Ukrainian financing throughout the next budgetary cycle.
France’s contribution becomes an electoral issue
The National Rally’s position is closely connected to its domestic economic programme.
As EU Today reported on 6 October, Le Pen has proposed €140 billion in public spending reductions by 2032, alongside measures intended to reduce France’s deficit and stabilise its national debt.
Her programme includes limiting France’s net contribution to the EU budget to €5 billion. The latest threat to withhold part of the country’s payments moves that argument from budgetary reform towards a potential institutional confrontation.
EU contributions are legal obligations established under the Union’s financial framework and own-resources arrangements. A French president could oppose a new seven-year budget, which requires unanimous approval by member states, but could not simply cancel existing payment obligations without encountering legal consequences.
Timing will also be decisive. EU governments are attempting to secure a political agreement on the next budget before the end of 2026, ahead of France’s presidential election. An agreement concluded before a change of government in Paris would constrain the options available to Le Pen.
Ukraine policy exposes a wider contradiction
Le Pen’s latest statements also reveal the limits of the National Rally’s changing position towards Moscow.
However, their willingness to condemn Moscow’s conduct does not translate into support for maintaining the present scale of financial assistance to Ukraine.
The consequences for Kyiv would be substantial. European assistance finances civilian government operations and defence procurement while Ukraine devotes much of its domestic revenue to resisting Russia’s invasion.
France’s next president will therefore inherit a dispute involving more than the national contribution to Brussels. The decisions taken in Paris could determine whether the EU retains sufficient financial capacity to support Ukraine while financing its own defence, industrial and economic commitments.
For Le Pen, reducing European expenditure offers a potential response to French public debt and voters’ concerns about national spending. For the EU, the same policy could remove a major source of support from Ukraine’s longer-term financing arrangements at a time when European governments are already struggling to agree on their collective obligations.
EU leaders gathering in Brussels must reconcile demands for stronger industrial protection, affordable energy and a workable budget while maintaining support for Ukraine.
Europe’s economic vulnerabilities converge in Brussels today as EU leaders confront three closely connected challenges: competition from China, persistently expensive energy and disagreement over the Union’s next long-term budget. Together, they raise a question that successive summits have struggled to answer: can Europe translate its economic weight into a coherent strategy?
The immediate pressure comes from industry. Reuters reports that manufacturers blame rising Chinese exports for factory closures, while governments face mounting anxiety about employment and competitiveness. The political danger is clear. When established parties promise prosperity but communities experience industrial decline, voters become increasingly receptive to those offering simpler, more confrontational answers.
The Commission’s recent agreement with Beijing to limit Chinese hybrid-car imports offers leaders evidence that negotiation can deliver results. Yet one sectoral arrangement cannot settle a much broader dispute. Chemicals, steel and machinery remain sources of concern, demonstrating that Europe’s difficulties extend well beyond its automotive industry.
Europe should nevertheless distinguish between legitimate competition and demonstrably unfair trading practices. A trade deficit alone does not establish wrongdoing. Imported goods can benefit consumers and businesses that depend on affordable components. The stronger case for intervention rests on evidence of subsidies, market distortions or strategic dependencies that leave essential industries dangerously exposed.
Germany’s changing position is therefore significant. Previously a prominent opponent of EU tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, Berlin now backs Franco-German proposals for stronger action, including measures addressing chemicals and PET packaging plastics. Europe’s largest economy appears increasingly willing to reconsider assumptions that once favoured commercial engagement above confrontation.
That shift could strengthen Brussels’ negotiating position. Beijing has less reason to compromise when European capitals publicly disagree about whether action is necessary. A common approach would make the threat of trade measures more credible. But unity will be tested whenever retaliation threatens particular national industries or commercially influential companies.
Energy presents an equally demanding challenge. According to Reuters, draft summit conclusions seek additional short-term relief and refer to a proposed one-year delay in methane-emissions requirements affecting oil and gas imports. These remain proposals under discussion, rather than measures already agreed by leaders.
Temporary adjustments may ease immediate pressures, but postponing regulation cannot substitute for an energy strategy. European manufacturers need confidence about future costs before committing investment. That requires reliable supplies, stronger electricity networks and faster delivery of additional generating capacity. Repeated emergency interventions leave companies uncertain about the conditions under which they will operate.
Trade protection and energy policy must consequently work together. Raising barriers against imported products will achieve little if European factories remain burdened by uncompetitive operating costs. Equally, cheaper energy cannot compensate indefinitely for unfair competition. Treating these problems separately risks producing expensive measures that fail to address the underlying industrial weakness.
The budget discussion will expose whether governments are prepared to finance their ambitions. The proposed 2028–2034 framework requires unanimity, and Reuters reports that a special summit is planned for late November to pursue agreement. The familiar divide between national contributions and shared expenditure remains difficult to bridge.
Every government can identify European priorities worth supporting. Agreement becomes harder when those priorities require higher contributions, changes to established funding arrangements or reductions elsewhere. A credible settlement must explain which investments genuinely benefit from collective action and how spending will deliver measurable results. Larger totals alone cannot establish strategic seriousness.
Ukraine gives these negotiations an additional urgency. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is expected to join Friday’s discussions, with financing for 2027 among the anticipated subjects. Europe’s ability to sustain assistance will test the durability of commitments repeatedly expressed at summit tables.
Ultimately, this gathering should be judged by whether its decisions reinforce one another. Defending industry, securing affordable energy and funding common commitments are parts of the same task. Europe possesses substantial market power and institutional resources. Its continuing challenge is to combine them effectively, before another round of political assurances gives way to further industrial disappointment.
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