Author: staff

John Kampfner is a British author, broadcaster and commentator. His new book, “Braver New World: The Countries Daring to Do Things Others Won’t,” was published in April. He is a regular POLITICO columnist. Ahead of this September’s regional elections, Germany is in existential panic. As the country’s mainstream parties flounder, and the ruling coalition stumbles from one non-reform to another, the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) is preparing for power. What once seemed seconded only to the realm of theory is now in danger of becoming reality: the establishment of the country’s first AfD-led state government after the election…

BRUSSELS — EU countries voted on Thursday to keep on ice the bloc’s retaliatory tariffs against the United States in the long-running Airbus-Boeing dispute, two EU diplomats told POLITICO.  The move, first reported by POLITICO, comes as Brussels seeks to avoid reigniting a transatlantic trade war at a time when tensions between the EU and the U.S. have been easing. Just this week the European Union gave its final green light to the trade deal it struck with President Donald Trump last year. Thursday’s vote prolongs the suspension of the EU’s retaliatory tariffs — affecting $4 billion in imports of…

Meloni pushed back on Thursday, saying Rutte was incorrectly implying that flights from Italy were used in direct attacks on Iran in his eagerness to convince Washington that NATO was playing a significant role. “In his — let’s call it enthusiastic — account, the secretary-general has lumped together things that are actually quite different from one another, confusing the types of authorized flights,” Meloni told reporters during a Franco-Italian summit in southern France. “We did not participate in the conflict with Iran. By the way, if we had participated in the Iran conflict, there would be no explanation for this…

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump administration can immediately strip humanitarian protections from roughly 350,000 Haitians and 6,000 Syrians living legally in the country, paving the way for their deportation. Thursday’s 6-3 decision in Mullin v. Doe overturned lower court orders that had blocked the removal of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a programme created by Congress in 1990 to shield migrants from deportation when their home countries are too dangerous to return to. The ruling effectively hands immigration authorities unchecked power to end the programme, with the conservative majority finding that courts have no basis to…

Il aura fallu attendre quatre ans après l’arrivée au pouvoir de Giorgia Meloni pour que la France et l’Italie organisent un sommet bilatéral. La rencontre d’Antibes de ce jeudi, et les signatures de contrats qui vont avec, marquent une normalisation des relations entre Emmanuel Macron, le libéral proeuropéen, et Meloni, la figure de proue de l’extrême droite sur le continent. Jusqu’à quel point ? Anthony Lattier en discute avec Giorgio Leali, envoyé spécial de POLITICO à Antibes, dans le podcast Playbook Paris. **Un message de Groupement Mousquetaires : Depuis plus de cinquante ans, des entrepreneurs indépendants s’engagent au cœur des…

Starting in June 2026, employers across the EU must publish salary ranges in job ads, stop asking about candidates’ pay history, and allow workers to request pay data on colleagues doing equivalent work. That’s the promise of the Pay Transparency Directive. However, most member states missed the June deadline to adopt it into national law. Only Italy, Slovakia, Malta and Lithuania fully transposed the rules on time. Belgium, Malta and Poland did so partially. The Netherlands has pushed its deadline to January 2027, and Ireland confirmed it will miss it too. Estonia signalled it may simply pay EU fines rather…

But the risk in refusing to call an election is that the president’s opponents in AUR and other parties are already threatening to try and impeach him — an option some believe will gain broader support the longer the crisis drags on.  Meanwhile, for the country of 19 million on the EU’s eastern border, time is running out. Bucharest is under pressure to reduce its high budget deficit and meet key targets for economic reforms by the end of August to secure around €11 billion in EU funding.  Credit rating agencies are also watching, amid fears that the political uncertainty…

After two years of negotiations, the EU has reached a landmark agreement on the new Child Sexual Abuse Directive, setting much stricter rules against predators. One of the most significant measures allows victims of child rape and other serious offences to formally file a complaint against their alleged assailant until they turn 50, in all EU member states. It aims to remove what’s been called a cruel geographical “lottery” by giving all victims across the EU at least 32 years to file charges after reaching the age of 18. That’s particularly relevant for countries with shorter limitation periods, such as…

The new restrictions indefinitely bar multiple-entry visas, reimpose visa fees for diplomats and extend visa-processing times to 45 days. First proposed by Brunner, the sanctions are not the EU’s first attempt at compelling countries to cooperate on migrant readmission. Ministers imposed similar measures on Gambia in 2021 and on Ethiopia in 2024. The Ethiopian visa restrictions were lifted in late May after member countries said “cooperation has improved substantially” on readmission. EU member countries have been rolling out a major overhaul of migration policy in order to increase control over who enters the bloc, including by negotiating new rules that…

Updated: 25/06/2026 – 15:22 GMT+2 The French navy boarded a tanker suspected of belonging to Russia’s so-called “ghost fleet” in the Mediterranean, the fifth such operation since September 2025, as Paris steps up efforts to enforce sanctions linked to the war in Ukraine. … More