The EU is pressing allies, such as the UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Norway, to help close a €70bn shortfall in Ukraine’s funding for next year, after president Volodymyr Zelensky warned that the war will cost €155bn in 2027.

EU Council president António Costa told MEPs in Strasbourg on Wednesday (21 October) that member states already provided 80 percent of external aid to Ukraine and “international partners must also step up their efforts”. 

“Our commitment to peace must go hand in hand with sustained pressure on the aggressor,” he also said, after meeting Zelensky at an EU summit in Brussels last week.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen also told MEPs on Wednesday: “The war will not be decided on the frontline; the war will be decided in our political will, in whether we stand up for freedom and democracy and support our Ukrainian friends.” 

Zelensky’s €155bn figure refers to Ukraine’s total war-related spending in 2027, part of which Kyiv covers from its own budget.

But that still left a €70bn gap that Ukraine needed foreign partners to fill, as next year approached.

The EU has already agreed a €90bn loan covering 2026 and 2027, meant to meet two-thirds of Ukraine’s financing needs over that period.

The remaining third was supposed to come from other partners, but so far that money has been secured only for 2026, not for 2027.

Costa told MEPs on Wednesday that €16bn had been disbursed this year under the defence line of the loan, while another €17bn could be sent to Ukraine if anti-corruption reforms were implemented.

“Our determination to support Ukraine and its people is stronger than ever,” he said.

EU hopes for Ukraine cash from allies

Meanwhile, EU commissioner Maroš Šefčovič also indicated on Monday that Britain will be asked to increase funding to Ukraine, speaking ahead of an EU-UK summit on 20 November.

“Following the signature of a contribution agreement on 13 July 2026, the UK can now participate under the EU’s €90bn Ukraine support loan,” he said.

Both the EU and UK would support Ukraine “as long as it takes to bring Russia’s illegal war of aggression to an end”, Šefčovič added.

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

Over coffee, an Israeli woman I know began to cry. “I’m 42,” she said, “and I’ve spent my entire adult life held captive by Bibi.”

Benjamin Netanyahu has not been Israel’s prime minister for every one of those years. Yet even out of office, Israeli politics rarely escaped his gravitational pull.

For him or against him, public life kept arranging itself around his presence.

Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having previously held office from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to 2021, and from 2022 onward.

Hungarians know something about that feeling. For 16 years, Viktor Orbán was not merely Hungary’s prime minister but the organising fact of Hungarian politics. Institutions bent around him, opponents defined themselves against him, and arguments somehow ended up being about him.

On 12 April, that era ended.

Péter Magyar’s insurgent Tisza party defeated Fidesz after 16 uninterrupted years in power. The final results gave Tisza 141 of parliament’s 199 seats, a two-thirds majority.

The temptation is to tell a simple story of liberation: the dominant leader fell, the spell broke, democracy returned. But political systems leave habits behind, and Orbán’s most durable legacy may prove to be the way Hungarians learned to imagine politics itself.

That is also Magyar’s dilemma.

Opposition movements confronting personalised systems often conclude that they, too, need a protagonist capable of gathering diffuse grievances into a political force.

Yet the qualities that help an insurgency win are not necessarily those needed to build a pluralist order afterwards. Campaigns reward concentration, and democracy depends on dispersing authority.

A challenger may have to become indispensable in order to win. Governing democratically requires eventually proving that he is not.

For people my age, Orbán’s rise was a rupture because we remember other governments and possibilities. Many of my students, now in their 20s, do not. Their political adulthood unfolded almost entirely under Fidesz. Orbán was simply there, as unavoidable as the weather.

Power can come to look distant and durable, participation noble but futile, and institutions captured or irrelevant. Politics becomes something done to you rather than something you do.

Conversations with Orbán

I know how deeply that can lodge itself in the mind. For five years, I have had countless conversations with Orbán in which I argued with him and tried to persuade him to change course. All of them took place in my dreams.

Supporters and opponents experienced Orbán’s system differently, but both learned to orient themselves around the same centre of gravity. Loyalists read its signals, while critics watched it constantly and defined themselves against it.

Parties that spend years confronting a dominant machine tend to centralise themselves. Message discipline becomes existential, disagreement can look like sabotage, and restraint like something to discuss after victory.

That is why Hungary’s challenge is larger than reversing Orbán’s policies.

A government elected to repair democratic institutions has to accept restraints precisely when it can most easily avoid them: strengthening parliament even when it dominates it, protecting independent media when they attack the government, and creating institutions whose authority does not depend on proximity to the prime minister.

Older Hungarians understandably speak about restoration: rebuilding institutions, restoring judicial independence, returning to democratic normality.

But “return” means something different when you are 25. You cannot return to a political world you never inhabited. For younger Hungarians, democracy cannot merely be recovered; it has to become real for the first time.

That distinction matters beyond Hungary. Opponents of personalised populism often offer restoration as their programme.

Yet generations raised amid democratic erosion may have little memory of the normality they are being asked to recover. Democratic politics has to show that dispersed power need not mean ineffective government, that disagreement need not threaten the state, and that losing an election need not mean losing the country.

Success should also mean making politics less consuming. Most democratic life is not election night but local meetings, newspapers and arguments about schools, budgets and public space.

A healthy political order allows citizens to pay less attention to the leader because fewer things depend on what that leader wants. Personalised rule teaches the opposite lesson. Even resistance can become dependence.

This is where Hungary’s experience returns me to my conversation about Israel.

Israelis are due to vote on 27 October in an election in which Netanyahu once again occupies much of the political landscape.

Whatever voters decide, Hungary suggests a question that will remain whenever his long political era eventually ends: can political life be reorganised around institutions and competing interests rather than around the presence, or absence, of one man?

Removing a dominant political figure does not remove the habits formed around him. Supporters have to imagine their politics without the leader they regarded as indispensable, while opponents have to decide what they stand for when opposition to him is no longer enough to bind them together.

Hungary’s experience suggests that this is where democratic renewal really begins – not with replacing one dominant figure with another, but with building institutions and political movements that no longer require one.

My friend’s tears were for the time she felt had been taken from her. Hungary’s younger generation, now free of Orbán, cannot mourn in quite the same way, because many have no memory of political adulthood against which to measure what was lost.

Their challenge, now, is not to recover an old normal but to create something they have never experienced: a public life in which politics belongs to citizens without consuming them, and in which no leader becomes so indispensable that an entire country must organise itself around him.

The EU’s top diplomat has backed the idea of a Black Sea naval mission to protect grain ships from Russian drones – but this would require a much bigger effort than Europe’s existing Red Sea operation, while air-policing might be more effective.

“The EU should send a mission to the Black Sea,” said EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday (20 October).

“To protect merchant shipping, not to escalate, not to scare anyone, but to make sure that we will supply safely fuel, merchandise at normal prices, anything we need. This is how it should be,” she said.

Some “six attacks in 10 days by suspected Russian drones marks a dangerous and unacceptable escalation,” in the region, Kallas added, with “rescuers
still searching for seven sailors missing after the drone attack on two tankers near Romania’s Black Sea coast”.

The Russian attacks were costing Ukraine €60m a day in lost exports of grain and fertiliser, Kallas also said.

And Russia had changed its tactics to start targeting people instead of cargo, said Sidharth Kaushal, from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) defence think-tank in London.

“Before, they targeted ports, not civilians, or vessels at sea. They realised that threat to life is a much more effective deterrent to commercial shipping than threat to cargo,” he told EUobserver.

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

The EU “will not drill and will not buy” Arctic oil and gas, EU officials said on Tuesday (20 October), as the European Commission presented its new Arctic strategy. 

“Our position on Arctic oil, gas and coal has not changed,” a senior EU official told reporters. “It’s fairly simple. We will not drill in the Arctic, and we will not buy hydrocarbons from the Arctic.”

The strategy follows months of heavy lobbying by Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre and his cabinet. 

Oslo used the energy supply disruption caused by the Iran war to push the EU to drop its 2021 support for a moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic, insisting that it was crucial for future energy security. 

But EU officials made clear on Tuesday they did not buy that argument. “We do not need Arctic resources to keep our energy supply secure,” the official said.

What happened to the moratorium?

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

Europe is supposed to be financing its defence together. It barely is.

Of the €800bn announced under ReArm Europe in March 2025, €650bn is not common money. It is an estimate of the extra room governments get under the national escape clause to spend up to 1.5 percent of GDP more on defence for four years.

Each country still pays for that spending itself.

The room is also temporary: EU Commission simulations suggest that maintaining higher defence spending after 2028 could require additional annual fiscal adjustment of 0.25 to 0.4 percentage points of GDP from 2029.

The other €150bn is SAFE, and it is loans, not grants.

The EU borrows and lends the money on, and each country repays its share. Grants are small: €1.5bn from the European Defence Industry Programme for 2025-2027, plus the European Defence Fund for joint research.

Not every country has used these tools, as Table 1 shows. The Netherlands and Sweden have used neither. Like Germany, which has taken only the clause, they can borrow at least as cheaply as the EU, so SAFE gets them nothing.

France has taken SAFE but not the clause, to protect the credibility of its budget plans.

Table 1. Who uses SAFE and the national escape clause

Source: Council of the EU, European Commission. Data as of 17 October 2026. * Hungary: allocated €16.2bn, now requesting €5.4bn; still pending. ** Italy: the Commission backed its request on 8 October 2026; the Council has yet to decide.

Where SAFE does matter is on the eastern flank. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia can borrow the equivalent of five to eight percent of their GDP, and Poland almost five percent.

Graph 1. SAFE loans as a share of GDP, by country (%)

Source: Council of the EU, European Commission, Eurostat. SAFE loans only, as a share of 2025 GDP. Amounts approved by the Council, except Italy and Hungary (* revised requests of €8bn and €5.4bn, September 2026). Data as of 17 October 2026.

That leaves private money.

The European Investment Bank and the European Investment Fund are trying to bring in private investors, partly by removing the reputational stigma of financing defence.

But defence is almost a monopsony: the state is nearly the only buyer. Without a clear flow of public orders, private investment will be hard to come by.

So Europe barely borrows together. And it buys alone.

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

MEPs have put themselves on a collision course with EU governments by rejecting plans for a 17-percent cut in foreign spending – instead demanding additional spending worth €25bn. 

Earlier this month, the Irish government, which holds the six-month rotating EU council presidency, proposed that €38bn of cuts be made from the ‘Global Europe’ heading, which covers foreign aid, as part of an overall package of €141bn of cuts to the seven-year EU budget, known as the multi-annual financial framework (MFF). 

But in a vote on Monday evening (19 October), the European Parliament’s development committee instead backed a dedicated minimum budget of €25bn for humanitarian aid, as well as dedicated budget lines for a Gaza reconstruction fund and for candidate countries. Put together, that would mean a €25bn increase on the EU Commission’s original budget of €200bn for the Global Europe heading. 

The position agreed by MEPs, by a 61-to-34 vote margin, will eventually form the basis of negotiations between MEPs and ministers when EU governments agree their position on the budget. 

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

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been shortlisted for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, an annual human-rights award from the European Parliament.

The announcement on Monday (19 October) comes after US president Donald Trump put his weight behind Israeli efforts to discredit the international judicial body by extending sanctions against it.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant in 2024 for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes, as well as other senior Israeli officials and Hamas. The US then responded by targeting its judges by impeding their day-to-day activities such as banking.

New sanctions against the court were announced by the US administration this month after the Nobel Peace Prize went to Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge who wrote a UN report concluding Israel is committing ​genocide in Gaza.

The ICC court labelled the move as an “assault on the rule of law” and called on countries to step up to protect it.

Sakharov Prize finalists named 

Members of the EU parliament’s foreign affairs committee shortlisted the ICC and its members for the Sakharov Prize.

Named after the Soviet nuclear scientist dissident Andrei Sakharov, the award has been previously awarded to the likes of Iranian protest icon Mahsa Amini and to the Ukrainian people enduring Russia’s attacks.

“We stand by the ICC and its officials, and we are committed to safeguarding its work,” said Yannis Maniatis, Greek MEP for the Socialists & Democrats group which nominated the ICC for the award. “If the aggressors become the victims, and if we stand by helplessly as international justice erodes, we risk allowing those who believe themselves above the law to prevail.”

Tundu Lissu, a Tanzanian opposition figure in court for inciting the public to disrupt an election and facing the possibility of death row, is also a Sakharov Prize finalist. “There is no doubt about the political nature of his detention,” said David McAllister, MEP for the European People’s Party who co-nominated Lissu.

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

It is hard for European allies to know which is worse, hearing their sacrifice in the US-led war in Afghanistan mocked by Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, seeing his State Department counterpart Marco Rubio dissembling about the interruption to Starlink service in Ukraine, or watching the commander-in-chief of the free world blithely end sanctions on Russia. 

One option is to sit tight and hope that next month’s mid-terms will bring deliverance.

Mid-term blues?

It is possible, perhaps, that a huge political defeat for Donald Trump will change American foreign policy, though those who sincerely hanker for the eras of Joe Biden and Barack Obama may need to adjust their rose-tinted filters.

More likely is that constitutional tussles will make the US even more distracted and unpredictable. Who really believes that a midnight phone call alerting the president to a surprise Russian incursion into Nato territory will gain a firmer response if the Democrats control Congress? 

It is also tempting simply to wallow in outrage.

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

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

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

The EU is preparing to curb Chinese imports of chemicals and industrial machinery, following a successful deal with Beijing that capped hybrid car exports to the bloc.

The European Commission “showed openness” to proposing safeguards, referring to an emergency brake on imports that can cover entire sectors, an EU diplomat told EUobserver on Thursday (15 October).

And there was “broad support” for the idea among member states for the commission to proceed, the diplomat said.

Last week, trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič agreed with Beijing to cap imports of Chinese hybrid cars at 350,000 next year, which was less than half the amount expected this year.

He called the deal a “blueprint” for other sectors, a view which was publicly echoed by EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, also on Thursday. 

Under World Trade Organization (WTO) and EU rules, anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases require Brussels to prove that Chinese firms sell at unfairly low prices or receive subsidies.

Safeguards do not need evidence under WTO rules, which allows them to be used as an emergency measure.

And the commission only has to show that a surge in imports is seriously harming European producers. 

“We like the idea, chemicals, machinery where there’s still a lot of Chinese overproduction needs to be managed,” said another EU diplomat.

The instrument had its limits: Safeguards have to apply to all countries, not just China, and can last no more than eight years.

The EU rarely uses WTO safeguards, but did so on steel, also aimed at China, which expired in June, after reaching the eight-year limit, and which have since been replaced by a separate EU steel regime.

And the Centre for European Reform, a prominent think-tank in Brussels, previously suggested exempting the EU’s 76 free-trade partners from safeguards so that the measures fell mainly on China.

It was a legal moot point in the WTO if that was OK, but the EU has done something similar before. 

Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and 10 other countries were left out of the steel safeguard, but using this tool to address Chinese imports was still seen as a temporary solution.

Before the end of the year, the EU commission aims to present diversification tools to reduce reliance on Chinese goods, as well as a mechanism to compensate companies hit by Chinese countermeasures.

And the package would include an instrument to shut Chinese companies out of the EU market if need be, in a measure first proposed in a Franco-German paper last week.

Slovak prime minister Robert Fico appears to have become Russia’s most prominent ally in the European Union, following the demise of Hungary’s pro-Kremlin leader.

Juraj Blanár, Slovakia’s foreign minister, announced controversial plans to revive a joint committee with Russia back in August – just a day before the anniversary of the Soviets occupying Czechoslovakia in 1968.

His announcement also came before Fico headed off to meet his counterparts at a summit in Brussels on Thursday (15 October).

And “so that there are no surprises, on the 25th [of October] there will … be a meeting of the joint economic commission with the Russian Federation,” Fico told the European affairs committee in Slovakia’s parliament on Wednesday.

The central European leader announced the closer ties with his aggressive neighbour immediately after planning a trip to Lviv in Ukraine early next month.

But if Fico does actually go to Lviv, just over the border from Poland, it would be the deepest he has travelled in the war-torn country so far.

And while he has not visited Kyiv in three years since returning to power, Fico has made plenty of time to go to Moscow during this time.

Many factors point to Slovakia now openly supporting the Kremlin, even as Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians intensify, killing dozens of people.

The Institute for European Security Studies (IESS), a Kyiv-based think tank, noted, in its analysis, that a recent statement by Slovak defence minister Robert Kaliňák did not consider Russia a threat, despite Russian intelligence services having been linked to attacks in Slovakia including, potentially, a drone attack on a manufacturer near Prešov.

The IESS also highlighted the renewed Slovak-Russian cooperation at the level of military attachés, with two Slovak military personnel sent to the Russian capital while a Russian officer went to Bratislava.

This swap of soldiers was promised by Fico to Putin when they met in the Kremlin on 9 May.

And to make matters worse, a Russian military attaché was captured on video handing cash to an associate of the Slovak fake news site Hlavné správy.

The Ukraine think-tank warned that Slovakia’s magnetism towards Russia should not be ignored.

“In the end, by lowering Nato’s guard and reopening the doors to Russian intelligence, Slovakia is doing exactly what Moscow needs: disabling the West’s defences from the inside out,” it said.

Pro-Kremlin all around

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

Europe’s trade deficit with China reached a record $34.8bn [€31bn] in September, as EU leaders meet in Brussels on Thursday (15 October) to discuss Europe’s competitiveness agenda and what they call “macroeconomic imbalances” — a euphemism to avoid mentioning China by name.

EU heads of state and government are expected to give a mandate to the EU Commission to propose a set of trade defence measures and tools to reduce the EU’s reliance on Chinese industry, based on a new Franco-German blueprint, as a united front spreads across the bloc. 

There was a move towards a “surprising unitary position” on Beijing among member states, said an EU diplomat, ahead of a two-day summit in Brussels which began on Thursday (15 October).

A joint letter and policy paper submitted by French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Friedrich Merz to commission president Ursula von der Leyen last week was viewed by many EU diplomats as marking a decisive shift towards a more consolidated EU stance on trade relations with China. 

“For a long time, there were significant differences between these two countries on how to deal with China, how to address the economic situation,” parliament president Roberta Metsola told reporters on Thursday. 

The diplomat added that the commission’s trade diversification package, designed to reduce the bloc’s reliance on Chinese industrial inputs and curb Chinese exports, will be presented by the end of the year and will be based on the Franco-German paper. 

But the commission, for its part, has downplayed the prospect of rapid progress to EU-Chinese trade statistics. “It’s an issue which is not going to be solved in a couple of months,” said one official. 

‘Be ready for escalation’ but do nothing

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

As EU leaders gather in Brussels on Thursday and Friday (15-16 October) to discuss, among other things, the issue of Europe’s southern border, countless Moroccan families cling to the hope they may see their children again after they entered the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in north Africa in July. 

“Ayoub left on 30 July at 2PM. Since that day, I haven’t heard anything from him, apart from the fact that he went to Ceuta,” his brother said.

Ayoub Elkhamlichi was 27 when he left the north of Morocco for the nearby border with Ceuta, a half-hour drive from his home. 

In the commotion that accompanied the rush of an estimated 72,000 mostly Moroccans into the enclave over 30 and 31 July 2026, 141 people were reported to have lost their lives while attempting the crossing. 

Those that have not been heard of since that deadly July remain innumerable. 

Among them is Ayoub, who had been working in a local konafa shop before leaving.

His brother Mohamed Ali laments that he’d forgotten his ID card, which will reduce the chances he’ll be identified if he’s ever found. 

“The border with Ceuta was opened, so everyone left Morocco, because the city of Tetouan offers few job opportunities,” Mohamed Ali told EUobserver, from his home in one of Morocco’s closest cities to the Spanish border. 

“Ayoub managed to find a job, but the pay was low. So he went to Ceuta,” he said. His family, meanwhile, “are in a state of anxiety and fear.”

It has been 11 weeks since Khaled’s dad Said has also seen his son, 26, who left for Ceuta from Tidass, a small Moroccan town, which Said said “has its problems.”

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

A backlash is building against an EU ‘omnibus’ bill that seeks to make it easier to authorise and use pesticides across the bloc. 

MEPs are still yet to set a date to vote on the European Commission’s proposal to extend how long pesticide active substances can stay approved in the EU, amid a series of protest letters from scientists, UN health experts, and divisions among member states. 

EI parliament’s environment and agriculture committees were originally expected to hold a joint vote on a compromise text on 5 October, but shelved that date without proposing another as this article went to publication. 

Sustained criticism has come from the scientific community. 

Last month, a group of more than 500 scientists signed an open letter to the commission on 16 September demanding a pause on the file pending “an independent assessment, whether carried out by parliament’s own research service or by an equivalent independent body.” 

And last week, a group of five UN health experts penned their own letter to the EU executive.

They warned that the commission’s plan to extend grace periods for products withdrawn on safety grounds, widen derogations for hazardous substances, and restrict the use of the latest independent scientific evidence “seem difficult to reconcile with the precautionary principle and with obligations to respect, protect and fulfil human rights, including the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas”. 

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

The EU is shying away from triggering rules that would shield people and companies working at or with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague from US sanctions, preferring instead months-long diplomatic outreach.

The European Commission on Wednesday (14 October) told reporters in Brussels that it was doing everything to seek “practical solutions”, while hoping that its diplomacy will help the court, which prosecutes people for war crimes, genocide, and other atrocities.

“We haven’t made any decisions yet. But we continue to discuss at every level,” said a commission spokesperson, when pressed on whether a little-known blocking statue, which would presumably damper the impact of the US sanctions, remains an option.

And an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday is expected to ask the US to reverse the decision, according to draft conclusions seen by EUobserver.

The EU’s little-known “blocking statute” would prevent EU companies and banks from complying with the sanctions. It was first used against US sanctions on Cuba, Iran and Libya.

The Trump administration had, last Friday, announced financial sanctions on the ICC as part of a larger assault to dismantle the court, after it issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, its former defence minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif.

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

Belgium’s foreign minister has called on the EU to deepen its economic, trade, and defence ties with Turkey, amid concerns from Ankara that it risks being shut out of the bloc’s new rules on industrial supply chains and multi-billion euro defence procurement scheme. 

Speaking at a Turkey-EU business forum in Brussels on Tuesday (13 October), Belgian foreign minister Maxime Pévot said that European manufacturers were increasingly looking for reliable partners closer to home as they seek to reduce their reliance on Chinese inputs. 

“We should make values of its proximity, particularly in sectors where Europe needs to reduce strategic dependencies,” he added. 

“Our economic relationship should no longer be limited to buying and selling goods. We should also be developing, producing, and investing together,” he said. 

For his part, following talks with Ankara’s trade minister, Ömer Bolat, EU trade commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told reporters that the two sides had agreed on reforms to Turkey’s import control system to make the system easier for EU exporters to use and a mutual recognition pact on trusted traders. 

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

The European Commission is promising more support to Egypt, even as Egyptian warplanes reportedly bomb in Sudan and authorities carry out a campaign of violence against the refugees it hosts.

The civil war in Sudan includes reports of genocide, chemical-weapons use, mass rape, and starvation, forcing some 1.2 million Sudanese people into Egypt, which was described as a priority migration-busting partner by commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday (13 October), who also promised continuing support for Cairo.

In a letter sent to the 27 heads of state and government ahead of an EU summit on Thursday in Brussels, she spoke of “offering protection and durable solutions in … host countries”, as well as further aid for Sudanese people who had returned to parts of the country, now deemed relatively safe.

But her warm words stand in sharp contrast to internal EU documents on Sudan, released by the London-based group Statewatch earlier this month, and which speak of an Egyptian-led campaign of violence against the Sudanese it is tasked to help.

“The Egyptian authorities have continued arbitrary arrests, detention and deportation campaign against migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, with a sharp escalation of forced deportations being observed since January 2026,” said the Irish EU presidency, in an internal document written in September.

Estimates suggest Egypt hosts over nine million migrants and refugees.

Some 80 percent are Sudanese, Syrian, Yemeni, and Libyan nationals. Of those, just over 1 million are officially registered as refugees. Most come from Sudan.

And Egypt’s crackdown also comes amid a massive 74 percent funding cut for the UN’s refugee agency in the country, even as the EU’s financial support to Cairo increases, already totalling €5bn.

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

More than a third of people who receive warnings of disasters are unable to act before they strike, according to a global poll. Social resilience has fallen also in Poland, Greece, and France.

The findings, published by the Lloyd’s Register Foundation on Tuesday (13 October), drew on more than 143,000 interviews conducted by Gallup across 140 countries in 2025.

They show that an estimated 1.1 billion people – one in five adults worldwide – experienced a disaster in the previous five years.

Almost 220 million received no warning at all.

“A warning is only as good as what people are able to do with it,” said Nancy Hey, director of evidence and insight at Lloyd’s Register Foundation’s Global Safety Evidence Centre.

The gap between being warned and being able to respond is stark between rich and poor countries. Adults in low-income countries were almost twice as likely to have been affected by a disaster as those in high-income countries, at 31 percent compared with 16 percent.

Yet only 64 percent of affected adults in low-income countries received a warning, against 84 percent in high-income countries.

Even when warnings arrive, they do not guarantee safety.

The challenge is not simply to warn people when disaster approaches, but to ensure they have the means and support to act.

Fewer than half of warned adults in low- and lower-middle-income countries were able to act, compared with 71 percent in high-income countries.

Europe’s resilience is unequal

The report’s companion study, ‘A resilient life: How wellbeing shapes the capacity to cope’, pictures the preparedness to act under pressure — including in wealthier countries.

“There are some changes that are happening in Europe that I’m not seeing in other parts of the world,” Hey told EUobserver.

Across the EU, 77 percent of people affected by a disaster received a warning, compared with 80 percent globally.

But only 59 percent of those warned could act, against 64 percent worldwide and 71 percent in high-income countries.

“Some of the biggest drops globally have been in Greece, Netherlands, Estonia, and France, which is surprising given that generally that measure is going upwards,” Hey said.

Just 29 percent of EU households have a disaster plan, and only 28 percent of people think their national government is well prepared for a disaster.

Meanwhile, 44 percent say their government does not care about them at all, compared with 29 percent globally.

The differences between countries are stark.

In France, 80 percent of those affected received warnings, but only 61 percent could act. Just 22 percent of households have a disaster plan, compared with 47 percent in Germany and 60 percent in Austria. And overall, France’s social resilience has fallen six points since 2021.

Greece faces a deeper crisis of preparedness and confidence.

Only 55 percent of disaster-affected people received warnings, and just 39 percent of those warned could act. Only 12 percent believe their government is well prepared, while 70 percent say it does not care about them.

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

Nearly three decades after the Dayton Peace Agreement ended the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country remains deeply divided along ethnic and political lines.

The agreement brought peace, but its complex political system has done little to overcome those divisions. Republika Srpska, the predominantly Serb entity, has pursued an increasingly divergent political course, while Serbia and Croatia maintain close ties with different parts of the country.

And for Christian Schmidt, the international community’s high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina (2021-26) the main threat is no longer a return to war, but political stagnation and growing frustration.

He says that weak civic engagement, slow progress towards EU membership and the influence of Russia and neighbouring countries are reinforcing Bosnia’s divisions. Young people, he says, are increasingly responding by leaving the country.

In this interview, Schmidt discusses foreign influence, the EU’s role, the legacy of Dayton, and why Bosnia’s future may depend on whether it can build a stronger political community across its ethnic divisions.

A country that remains divided

You started your work in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2021 and were there for five years. It was a period of major changes, with COVID and then the war in Ukraine. What were your experiences of these moments. How has the situation in Bosnia evolved?

I think there has not been sufficient involvement. Civil society in Bosnia and Herzegovina is not very strong. It is, more than just politically, somehow divided on political issues. This prevents a joint political position or commitment from civil society to make more progress in democratic development and European integration.

So far, I don’t see that this has changed very much. It has also not changed that some parties, especially the SNSD, [Serb nationalist Milorad] Dodik’s party, but honestly not only them, are counting on ethnic differences as an argument for supporting their party instead of having a multi-ethnic approach. One can be doubtful about their real pro-European commitment.

Russia and its influence

When civil society is not engaged and when countries are not politically stable, we know that they are prone to interference from other states or political entities. Is this being seen in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

It is evident that neighbouring countries, especially Serbia and Croatia, have a kind of preferred relationship with parts of the country. This is, by the way, also established in the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina [also known as the Dayton Peace Agreement]. So it is not necessarily something that is not in line with Dayton [Agreement].

But there is beyond this more interference if I refer, for example, to Serbia’s reaction on the occasion of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution of 2024 about establishing an international day of commemoration for the Srebrenica genocide. There was a really remarkable attack against this, despite the fact that Serbia was not named in the resolution. There were only named individuals who had committed war crimes or genocide.

But it was used to create a “Pan-Serbian declaration”, which can be seen as a way of bringing cultural issues of the same ethnic group closer together. It has to be seen additionally as a tool to try to gain more political influence in the other part of the country.

You mentioned Croatia and Serbia. Is Russia also playing a role in these interferences?

Yes, but not ethnic interference. It is more through traditional good relations, especially with the Orthodox community, which is basically the Serb Orthodox community, where there are relations and a lot of activities, including in the media and on social media.

They [Russia] try to influence a part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially Banja Luka and Republika Srpska, and Dodik is somehow to act as an influencer for Russian interests. This is indeed the case. Dodik has been sitting together with [Russian president Vladimir] Putin for the 11th time since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. This is really remarkable.

How important is Bosnia and Herzegovina and Dodik for Russia and for Putin?

The economic and political-strategic importance is nearly zero. But it can be used as a way of distracting from European and somehow American activities, just by giving them a negative impact on everything. So this is more seen as a tool, rather than an area of influence.

EU— only accession talks?

Does the EU have a role in fighting such interference — Russian, but also the ethnic interference from Croatia and Serbia?

The ethnic relationships are within the framework of Dayton, and they are acceptable. But I think it is very important that the EU makes it clear that European integration is not based on ethnic differences, but on uniting in diversity.

This is something that is very complicated. You cannot do this only with programmes or money. I think these challenges are the typical issues that you can address through European commitment, but in the details, it has not delivered.

Unfortunately, maybe the European Union should sit down again and think about more tools and opportunities, especially addressing civil society, to give more attraction to the European idea.

How would that work?

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

EU leaders will mouth hollow criticism of West Bank settlers at next week’s summit, while staying mute on Israel’s genocide in Gaza – in sharp contrast to the 2026 Nobel peace prize.

The EU “strongly condemns the continued and growing settler violence against Palestinian civilians and calls for accountability”, they aim to say in a declaration in Brussels on Thursday (15 October), according to a draft seen by EUobserver on Friday.

And they are to warn of “legal, economic, and reputational consequences for [Israeli] businesses participating” in building a settlement in the E1 area of the West Bank, which would destroy the two-state solution by chopping the region in half.

It remains to be seen if Slovenia’s pro-Israeli prime minister, Janez Janša, will sign up, after he ranted on X in August that he would veto this type of thing.

But even if Janša agreed, it would still amount to EU impunity for settlers, as there was no mention of banning settler imports or even blacklisting more settler extremists.

“The EU keeps condemning illegal settlements that it trades with, financing the very occupation and abuses it claims to oppose. How does that make any sense?,” said Claudio Francavilla from Human Rights Watch.

The summit draft also voiced “grave concern over developments in Gaza”, where “protection of civilians must be ensured”, and urged Israel to let in more aid.

Israel has killed some 1,450 people in Gaza since an October 2025 ceasefire.

It has killed over 74,000 Palestinians and displaced 1.8 million people in Gaza since 2023, but the EU leaders’ passive-tense language did not blame Israel for civilian deaths or mention Gaza “accountability”.

And that will put our 27 prime ministers and presidents at odds this Thursday with Europe’s moral compass, international law, and public opinion.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to Navi Pillay, a South African judge, who had chaired a UN commission that found Israel guilty of “genocide” in Gaza and worked for the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which has indicted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes.

She was “a bigot … propagating blood libels,” he said on X.

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar said: “[Nazi propaganda chief] Joseph Goebbels is probably applauding in hell.”

And US president Donald Trump joined their Nobel-bashing by imposing sanctions on the ICC.

But three other Nobel laureates, from Colombia, DR Congo, and Liberia were among global VIPs who also wrote to the European Commission on Friday urging trade sanctions on Israel, in a sign of wider revulsion.

And “if the EU was serious about fulfilling its obligations under international law, or indeed in terms of its own stated values and policies, it would go much, much further [in terms of sanctions],” said H. A. Hellyer, from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think-tank in London.

Palestine solidarity marches in Berlin, London, Rome, and Warsaw on Saturday showed that ordinary Europeans wanted their elected politicians to take action.

Some 83 percent of Germans and 88 percent of Italians now disapproved of Netanyahu, said the Pew Research Centre in June.

Blood and rubble

The latest EU summit draft pledged support for Palestinian elections.

“The European Union stands ready to support the electoral process, including by the deployment of an EU Election Observation Mission,” it said.

But EU words were being buried in blood and rubble faster than the summit statements could be updated.

The Palestinian vote would have to be postponed until at least late 2027 due to the “security and economic conditions” created by Israel in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority warned France, also on Friday.

Meanwhile, the EU summit will fall two weeks before Israeli elections on 27 October and the leaders’ empty words might be tactical – so as not to throw meat to far-right Israeli zealots in a rabid atmosphere.

But Europe’s quietism is also due to Germany and Italy’s internal politics and its psychopathological mix of World War 2-guilt, raging far-right populism, and transatlantic realpolitik.

“I don’t think this [the draft EU summit text on the Middle East] is a strategy, so much as a statement of the lowest common denominator in EU foreign policy,” RUSI’s Hellyer said.

And going back to the Nazi slurs against the 2026 Nobel, Israeli author Gideon Levy said in the Haaretz daily on Saturday: “No, Sa’ar … If Goebbels has a reason to applaud, it is upon seeing what has happened to the country that arose from the ashes of the Holocaust.”

“Goebbels is applauding perpetrators of genocide around the world, particularly the one in Gaza,” said Levy.

So long as Berlin and Rome don’t realign their compasses, Europe’s silent blessing for Palestinian erasure will feed Israeli hardliners’ schizoid and delusional sense of self-righteousness.

“As long as Israel is not willing to … admit, at least partially, to its crimes, it will never change,” Levy said.