Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony says Hungarian police have recommended he be charged for defying a government ban and allowing a Pride parade to take place earlier this year in Hungary’s capital. “The police concluded their investigation against me in connection with the Budapest Pride march in June with a recommendation to press charges,” he said in a video posted on Facebook Thursday. “They accuse me of violating the [new law on] freedom of assembly, which is completely absurd.” Pride gatherings, rooted in protest and celebration, are held around the world to promote the rights and freedom of expression of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. In March, however, Hungary adopted a law restricting the freedom of assembly in cases involving the public portrayal to children of “divergence from self-identity corresponding to sex at birth, sex change or homosexuality.” The Budapest Pride parade was subsequently banned based on the legislation. But political opponents say the government banned Pride in an attempt to create a wedge issue to stay in power. Hungary faces parliamentary elections in April 2026, and in the most recent poll, conducted from Nov. 21-28 by 21 Research Centre, a Budapest-based think tank, the country’s ruling Fidesz party was on track for 40 percent support behind the challenger, Tisza, at 47 percent of decided voters. Karácsony, a Green politician and a strong opponent of nationalist Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, rejected the federal government’s edict and allowed the rally to proceed in June. Several EU politicians joined the event to show solidarity with LGBTQ+ people, even though Orbán warned organizers and attendees that legal consequences would follow. The Budapest mayor was questioned by Hungary’s state police in August, and on Thursday said he’d received a formal notice in the case. “In a system where the law protects power rather than people, in this system that stifles free communities, it was inevitable that sooner or later, as the mayor of a free city, they would take criminal action against me,” Karácsony said. He added: “I am proud that I took every political risk for the sake of my city’s freedom, and I stand proudly before the court to defend my own freedom and that of my city.” The European Green Party backed Karácsony. “The fact that the police are requesting to indict the Green Mayor of Budapest Gergely Karácsony for supporting Budapest Pride 2025 is a shocking misuse of state power by the Orbán regime,” the party’s co-chair, Vula Tsetsi, said in a press release. Karácsony is one of the ’10 to Watch’ in the POLITICO 28: Class of 2026. The Rendőrség, Hungary’s national police force, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Csongor Körömi and Max Griera Andreu contributed to this report.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday his country will not make territorial concessions to Russia as the Trump administration looks to broker a peace deal between the two countries. Zelenskyy told reporters following a meeting with leaders from France, Germany and the U.K. in London that Ukraine has “no right to give anything away” — under Ukrainian, international or moral law — according to The Washington Post. Zelenskyy’s comments come as the Ukrainian leader faces growing pressure from the U.S. to accept a framework to bring to an end more than three years of fighting since Russia escalated its war with Ukraine in 2022. The first draft of that framework drew skepticism from Ukrainian and European leaders — as well as bipartisan lawmakers in the U.S. — after a leaked draft echoed several key Russian demands, including that Ukraine agree to give up the Donbas region and agree not to join NATO. Peace talks between the U.S. and Ukraine have since hit a roadblock as the Trump administration insists that Kyiv cede the region in eastern Ukraine. Zelenskyy said ahead of his trip to London that Ukrainian representatives had held “substantive discussions” with U.S. peace envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, but he added that “the conversation was constructive, though not easy.” “Today, we held a detailed discussion on our joint diplomatic work with the American side, aligned a shared position on the importance of security guarantees and reconstruction, and agreed on the next steps,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media following the meeting. Trump told reporters on Sunday evening that the Kremlin was “fine” with the latest version of a peace deal but that Zelenskyy “isn’t ready,” adding that he was “a little bit disappointed that President Zelenskyy hasn’t yet read the proposal.” Zelenskyy is also set to meet with the leaders of NATO, the European Council and the European Union in Brussels.

DOHA, Qatar — Inside the U.S., President Donald Trump is dogged by rising consumer prices, the Epstein files debacle, and Republicans’ newfound willingness to defy him. But go 100 miles, 1,000 miles, or, as I recently did, 7,000 miles past U.S. borders, and Trump’s domestic challenges — and the sinking poll numbers that accompany them — matter little. The U.S. president remains a behemoth in the eyes of the rest of the world. A person who could wreck another country. Or perhaps the only one who can fix another country’s problems. That’s the sense I got this weekend from talking to foreign officials and global elites at this year’s Doha Forum, a major international gathering focused on diplomacy and geopolitics. Over sweets, caffeine and the buzz of nearby conversations, some members of the jet set wondered if Trump’s domestic struggles will lead him to take more risks abroad — and some hope he does. This comes as Trump faces criticism from key MAGA players who say he’s already too focused on foreign policy. “He doesn’t need Capitol Hill to get work done from a foreign policy standpoint,” an Arab official said of Trump, who, let’s face it, has made it abundantly clear he cares little about Congress. Vuk Jeremic, a former Serbian foreign minister, told me that whether people like Trump or not, “I don’t think that there is any doubt that he is a very, very consequential global actor.” He wasn’t the only one who used the term “consequential.” The word doesn’t carry a moral judgment. A person can be consequential whether they save the world or destroy it. What the word does indicate in this context is the power of the U.S. presidency. The weakest U.S. president is still stronger than the strongest leader of most other countries. America’s wealth, weapons and global reach ensure that. U.S. presidents have long had more latitude and ability to take direct action on foreign policy than domestic policy. They also often turn to the global stage when their national influence fades in their final years in office, when they don’t have to worry about reelection. There’s a reason Barack Obama waited until his final two years in office to restore diplomatic ties with Cuba. In the first year of his second term, Trump has stunned the world repeatedly, on everything from gutting U.S. foreign aid to bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. He remains as capricious as ever, shifting sides on everything from Russia’s war on Ukraine to whether he wants to expel Palestinians from Gaza. He seeks a Nobel Peace Prize but is threatening a potential war with Venezuela. Trump managed to jolt the gathering at the glitzy Sheraton resort in Doha by unveiling his National Security Strategy — which astonished foreign onlookers on many levels — in the run-up to the event. The part that left jaws on the floor was its attack on America’s allies in Europe, which it claimed faces “civilizational erasure.” The strategy’s release led one panel moderator to ask the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, whether Trump sees Europe as “the enemy.” Yet, some foreign officials praised Trump’s disruptive moves and said they hope he will keep shaking up a calcified international order that has left many countries behind. Several African leaders in particular said they wanted Trump to get more involved in ending conflicts on their continent, especially Sudan. They don’t care about the many nasty things Trump has said about Africa, waving that off as irrelevant political rhetoric. Trump claims to have already ended seven or eight wars. It’s a wild assertion, not least because some of the conflicts he’s referring to weren’t wars and some of the truces he’s brokered are shaky. When I pointed this out, foreign officials told me to lower my bar. Peace is a process, they stressed. If Trump can get that process going or rolling faster, it’s a win. Maybe there are still clashes between Rwanda and Congo. But at least Trump is forcing the two sides to talk and agree to framework deals, they suggested. “You should be proud of your president,” one African official said. (I granted him and several others anonymity to candidly discuss sensitive diplomatic issues involving the U.S.) Likewise, there’s an appreciation in many diplomatic corners about the economic lens Trump imposes on the world. Wealthy Arab states, such as Qatar, already are benefiting from such commercial diplomacy. Others want in, too. “He’s been very clear that his Africa policy should focus on doing business with Africa, and to me, that’s very progressive,” said Mthuli Ncube, Zimbabwe’s finance minister. He added that one question in the global diplomatic community is whether the next U.S. president — Democrat or Republican — will adopt Trump’s “creativity.” The diplomats and others gathered in Doha were well-aware that Trump appreciates praise but also sometimes respects those who stand up to him. So one has to tread carefully. Kallas, for instance, downplayed the Trump team’s broadsides against Europe in the National Security Strategy. Intentionally or not, her choice reflected the power differential between the U.S. and the EU. “The U.S. is still our biggest ally,” Kallas insisted. Privately, another European official I spoke to was fuming. The strategy’s accusations were “very disturbing,” they said. The official agreed, nonetheless, that Trump is too powerful for European countries to do much beyond stage some symbolic diplomatic protests. Few Trump administration officials attended the Doha Forum. The top names were Matt Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, and Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey. Donald Trump Jr. — not a U.S. official, but certainly influential — also made an appearance. Several foreign diplomats expressed optimism that Trump’s quest for a Nobel Peace Prize will guide him to take actions on the global stage that will ultimately bring more stability in the world — even if it is a rocky ride. A British diplomat said they were struck by Trump’s musings about gaining entry to heaven. Maybe a nervousness about the afterlife could induce Trump to, say, avoid a conflagration with Venezuela? “He’s thinking about his legacy,” the diplomat said. Even Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of State whom Trump defeated in the 2016 presidential race, was measured in her critiques. Clinton said “there’s something to be said for the dramatic and bold action” Trump takes. But she warned that the Trump team doesn’t do enough to ensure his efforts, including peace deals, have lasting effect. “There has to be so much follow-up,” she said during one forum event. “And there is an aversion within the administration to the kind of work that is done by Foreign Service officers, diplomats, others who are on the front lines trying to fulfill these national security objectives.” Up until the final minute of his presidency, Trump will have extraordinary power that reaches far past America’s shores. That’s likely to be the case even if the entire Republican Party has turned on him. At the moment, he has more than three years to go. Perhaps he will end immigration to the U.S., abandon Ukraine to Russia’s aggression or strike a nuclear deal with Iran. After all, Trump is, as Zimbabwe’s Ncube put it, not lacking in “creativity.”

Sprawling defense legislation set for a vote as soon as this week would place new restrictions on reducing troop levels in Europe, a bipartisan rebuke of Trump administration moves that lawmakers fear would limit U.S. commitments on the continent. A just-released compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act — which puts Congress’ stamp on Pentagon programs and policy each year — has been in the works for months. The measure stands in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s new national security strategy, which sharply criticizes European allies and suggests the continent is in cultural decline. Lawmakers also endorsed a slight increase in the Pentagon budget with a price tag that is $8 billion more than Trump requested. And it would repeal decades-old Middle East war powers, a small win for lawmakers who’ve been fighting to reclaim a sliver of Congress’ war-declaring prerogatives. The final bill is the result of weeks of negotiations between House and Senate leadership in both parties, heads of the Armed Services panels and the White House. The measure had been slowed in recent days by talks on issues unrelated to defense, including a major Senate-backed housing package and greater scrutiny of U.S. investment in China. The defense bill typically passes with broad bipartisan support. Speaker Mike Johnson will likely need to win back some Democrats who opposed the House GOP’s hard-right initial bill in September. And the speaker will have to contend with fellow Republicans upset that their priorities weren’t included. But both House and Senate-passed defense bills reflected bipartisan concerns that the Trump administration would seek to significantly reduce the U.S. military footprint in Europe. Both measures included language that imposes requirements the Pentagon must meet before trimming military personnel levels on the continent below certain thresholds. Republicans, led by Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), broke with the Trump administration, arguing that troop reductions — such as a recent decision to remove a rotational Army brigade from Romania — would invite aggression from Russia. The final bill blocks the Pentagon from reducing the number of troops permanently stationed or deployed to Europe below 76,000 for longer than 45 days until Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the head of U.S. European Command certify to Congress that doing so is in U.S. national security interests and that NATO allies were consulted. They would also need to provide assessments of that decision’s impact. The legislation applies the same conditions to restrict the U.S. from vacating the role of NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, a role that the U.S. officer who leads European Command chief has held simultaneously for decades. Negotiators included similar limitations on reducing the number of troops on the Korean Peninsula below 28,500, a provision originally approved by the Senate. Lawmakers agreed to a slight increase to the bill’s budget topline, reflecting some momentum on Capitol Hill for more military spending. The final agreement recommends an $8 billion hike to Trump’s $893 billion flat national defense budget, for a total of roughly $901 billion for the Pentagon, nuclear weapons development and other national security programs. The House-passed defense bill matched Trump’s budget request while the Senate bill proposed a $32 billion boost. Republicans separately approved a $150 billion multi-year boost for the Pentagon through their party-line tax cut and spending megabill earlier this year. Regardless of the signal the topline budget agreement sends, the defense policy bill does not allocate any money to the Pentagon. Lawmakers must still pass annual defense spending legislation to fund Pentagon programs. House Armed Services ranking member Adam Smith (D-Wash.) described the agreement as a “placeholder” that would allow lawmakers to finish the NDAA, while congressional appropriators continue their talks on a separate full-year Pentagon funding measure. A House Republican leadership aide who, like others, was granted anonymity to discuss details of the bill ahead of its release, said the revised topline is a “fiscally responsible increase that meets our defense needs.” The bill also would repeal a pair of old laws that authorize military action in the Middle East, including 2002 legislation that preceded the invasion of Iraq and the 1991 Gulf War. Those repeals were included in both the House and Senate defense bills as bipartisan support for scrubbing the old laws — which critics contend could be abused by a president — overcame opposition from some top Republicans. Repealing those decades-old measures is a win for critics of expansive presidential war powers, who argued the measures aren’t needed anymore. They point to the potential for abuses — citing Trump’s use of the 2002 Iraq authorization to partly justify a strike that killed Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani in Iraq in 2020. A second House GOP leadership aide said the repeal of the two Iraq authorizations won’t impact Trump’s authority as commander-in-chief. But the repeal is ultimately a minor win for lawmakers seeking to reclaim congressional power. The 2001 post-9/11 authorization that undergirds much of the U.S. counterterrorism operations around the world remains on the books. And the bill is silent on Trump’s ongoing campaign against alleged drug smuggling vessels in the Caribbean. Many lawmakers — including some Republicans — have questioned the administration’s legal justification for the lethal strikes. The final bill also doesn’t include an expansion of coverage for in-vitro fertilization and other fertility services for military families under the Tricare health system. The provision, backed by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) and others, was included in both Senate and House bills before it was dropped. Johnson reportedly was seeking to remove the provision, which similarly was left out of last year’s bill.

BERLIN — School students across Germany skipped class Friday to demonstrate against the government reform on military service. On Friday, the German parliament approved a legal change requiring all 18-year-old men to fill in a questionnaire about their fitness and willingness to serve in the military. For women, the questionnaire will remain voluntary. As part of the reform, the governing coalition also agreed to reinstate mandatory medical examinations starting for men born in 2008 onward. If the military fails to meet its recruitment targets for voluntary service, a portion of those examined could be called up after a separate Bundestag vote.  Protests are being held in around 90 towns and cities across Germany. According to Berlin police, around 800 people gathered to protest the reform in the morning, with several thousand expected in Germany’s capital by the end of the day. The initiative behind the protest, Schulstreik gegen Wehrpflicht (school strike against conscription), said on its website: “Politicians [and] Bundeswehr … argue how we should reintroduce conscription. But no one talks to us. No one asks us what we want.” Martin, a high school student from a town in Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, was among the students who skipped school to object. The initiative behind the protest, Schulstreik gegen Wehrpflicht, said on its website: “Politicians [and] Bundeswehr … argue how we should reintroduce conscription. But no one talks to us. No one asks us what we want.” | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICO “Why resolve wars by arming up? That’s just repeating what happened before the First and Second World Wars,” the 16-year-old, who only gave his first name due to privacy concerns, told POLITICO in central Berlin. He had been figuring out how to circumvent the draft, he said, for example by going to a psychologist or being declared ill. “Why should I do what old men tell me to do?” he asked. “I’d be actively doing training that doesn’t help me in life except to learn how to kill people.” Nils, a 17-year-old high school student who also only provided his first name, argued he had nothing against peers joining the armed forces per se, but that the compulsory aspect of the law had prompted him to attend the demonstration. “The problem I have with it is that it shouldn’t be forced on anyone. Maybe they should consider making the profession of soldier more attractive to those who want to become soldiers,” he said. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius on Thursday addressed students in a video message on Instagram. “Everyone can protest for and against everything. Freedom of expression is one of the major achievements of our democracy. Our entire way of life is a gift — but a gift we have to defend every single day. On Friday, the German parliament approved a legal change requiring all 18-year-old men to fill in a questionnaire about their fitness and willingness to serve in the military. | Nette Nöstlinger/POLITICO “If you want to live in the same way in the future … then you need to be willing to stand up for it,” Pistorius added. “Neither democracy nor the state can defend themselves. People have to do that, just as they did in the past.” Germany plans to increase its force levels from 180,000 to 260,000 active soldiers, and from 55,000 to 200,000 reservists to meet NATO readiness targets amid a growing threat from Russia. The ruling parties — the conservative bloc and the center-left Social Democrats — debated the reform for months, before reaching a deal on the law change in November.

LONDON — Keir Starmer is promising British voters he’ll fix the Brexit-shaped hole in the U.K. economy, but Brussels appears to have quite enough on its plate. Days after Britain’s grim growth prospects were laid bare in the U.K. budget, the country’s PM gave two speeches promising closer ties with the European Union and elevated his EU point person, Nick Thomas-Symonds, to the Cabinet. “We have to keep moving towards a closer relationship with the EU, and we have to be grown-up about that, to accept that that will require trade-offs,” Starmer said on Monday.   But European leaders are already grappling with packed in-trays as they look for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine and confront their own domestic economic challenges — and skepticism remains as to how much room for maneuver the British PM actually has.  Starmer’s political red lines — no customs union, no single market, and no return to freedom of movement — remain in place, and ministers continue to stress that a return to full EU membership remains off the table. Even Starmer’s existing EU “reset” agenda — which aims to walk back some of the harder edges of Boris Johnson’s Brexit settlement — is not all going to plan. A push to join the EU’s SAFE loans-for-arms scheme crashed last week after the two sides failed to agree on how much money the U.K. would pay. “The same ‘how much should the U.K. contribute?’ question has been slowing down the actual implementation of basically all the reset topics,” said one EU diplomat who was not authorized to speak on the record. Despite plenty of talk in London about closer ties, the forum for putting fresh topics on the agenda would be the EU-U.K. summit that is due next year. But a date has yet to be set for that gathering. “Nobody is talking about the next summit here yet. I’m not saying it isn’t going to happen, it’s just a question of bandwidth,” another EU diplomat said. “For us the focus now is to work through our existing commitments and finalize those deals, start implementing them and then showing that the deals are bringing value. That takes time,” a third diplomat said. LIMITED SCOPE  The problem for Starmer is that his existing plan to rebuild EU ties is unlikely to move the dial on U.K. economic growth. Economists at the Centre for European Reform reckon that the government’s reset package — if delivered in full — is worth somewhere between 0.3 percent and 0.7 per cent of U.K. GDP over a decade.   Meanwhile, academics at the Bank of England and Stanford University calculate that the economic hit from Brexit could be as high as 8 percent of GDP over a similar period. “It is striking how frequently the chancellor and prime minister will now lament the costs of Brexit, without making any suggestions on how to change the status quo,” said Joël Reland, research fellow at the U.K. In A Changing Europe think tank.  “This could be read as a slow creep towards a breach of their red lines, but I suspect it is mostly about domestic political management. They are in a sticky economic situation and Brexit is a convenient thing to blame. I don’t think they’d be brave enough to risk a manifesto breach on Brexit, but I’d be surprised if ‘no single market or customs union’ is in the 2029 manifesto,” Reland said.  One British government official stressed that Labour’s red lines remain in place — but added: “We don’t think we’re at those red lines yet.”  BREAKING THE TABOO  Labour’s previous reluctance to talk about Brexit was born of a fear of upsetting Leave-leaning swing voters whom the party wanted to win over in the last election.  But that started to change over the summer.  Thomas-Symonds, the minister in charge of delivering the reset, went on the attack in a speech hosted by the Spectator, a right-wing magazine. Parties pledging to reverse Starmer’s reset were offering “more red tape, mountains of paperwork, and a bureaucratic burden,” he argued. To the surprise of Downing Street aides, the attacks landed well and drew a line between the government’s agenda and that of Reform UK boss Nigel Farage — the longstanding Brexiteer dominating in the polls — and Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch.  It emboldened Starmer and his lieutenants. Rachel Reeves, the U.K.’s chief finance minister, used her speech at the Labour Party conference in Liverpool to talk up the benefits of improved cross-border mobility for the economy.   Ahead of last week’s difficult budget stuffed with tax rises, she waded in further, damning the effects of a “chaotic Brexit.” While the new rhetoric has yet to be backed up by a shift in policy, there are signs that some of Starmer’s close allies are starting to think bigger.  Rejoining the EU customs union was reportedly raised as an option by Starmer’s economic advisor ahead of the budget — but was rejected. “There are definitely people who have been pushing at this for a long time,” one person with knowledge of conversations in government said.  “I don’t think that will be that surprising to people, because if your primary goal allegedly is growth then that’s one of the easiest levers you can pull. Most economists would agree — it’s the politics that’s stopping it.”  Pressed on the prospect of Britain’s applying to rejoin the customs union on Wednesday, Health Secretary Wes Streeting did not explicitly rule out the idea but stressed the government’s policy was about “new partnerships and new relationships, not relitigating the past.” If Starmer opts for a risky manifesto-busting push to rejoin the customs union, diplomats say even that is unlikely to be a quick fix for the British PM.  “It would take time. Just consider how slow has been so far the progress on SPS, ETS and Erasmus,” the first diplomat quoted above said. “As of now, the U.K. needs the EU to spur its growth, not the other way around.”

The EU is adding Russia to its blacklist of countries at high risk of money laundering and financing terrorism, according to two EU officials and a document seen by POLITICO. The global watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) suspended Russia as a member after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but failed to blacklist it, despite evidence presented by the Ukrainian government, because of opposition from countries in the BRICS group of emerging economies, which includes Brazil, India, China, and South Africa. EU lawmakers called on the Commission many times to do what FATF was not able to. The Commission committed to complete a review by the end of 2025 to get their support to remove the United Arab Emirates and Gibraltar from the list earlier this year. POLITICO saw a draft of the Russia decision, which will be an annex to the list. In other internal documents, the Commission had said that the assessment was complicated by the lack of information-sharing with Moscow. The EU already has a wide range of sanctions heavily limiting access to EU financial services for Russian firms. The blacklisting is landing as the EU executive is trying to end Belgium’s resistance to using the revenues from Moscow’s frozen assets to fund Ukraine. The move will oblige financial institutions to strengthen due diligence on all transactions and force banks that have not already acted to further de-risk. The EU has usually aligned itself with FATF decisions, but from this year, it has its own Anti-Money Laundering Authority. AMLA will contribute to drafting the blacklist from July 2027. Dutch top official Hennie Verbeek-Kusters, a former chair of the financial intelligence cooperation body Egmont Group, is set to join the AMLA authority executive board after a positive hearing with lawmakers held behind closed doors, one of the EU officials said. A vote on the appointment is due on Dec. 15, said a third official.

Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has rejected accusations that she partially held Poland and the Baltic states responsible for the outbreak of Russia’s war on Ukraine. “You have to call it fake news, meaning that it wasn’t said at all,” Merkel told German public broadcaster Phoenix in an interview published Thursday, saying her comments had been misrepresented. “It was simply a discussion about chronological developments, as they already appear in my book “Freiheit”[Freedom]. For a whole year, no one had an issue with it … And then a big uproar arose because hardly anyone reads the original anymore,” she said.  Asked whether she meant to blame the outbreak of the war on Poland or the Baltic states, Merkel replied: “No. We all failed — I, everyone else — we all failed to prevent this war, including in our talks with the Americans.” In an October interview with Hungarian media outlet Partizán, Merkel noted the refusal by Poland and the Baltic states to permit direct talks between her, French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to Moscow’s troop buildup near the Ukrainian border in summer 2021. Baltic and Polish leaders reacted furiously to Merkel’s comments, perceiving it as partly blaming them for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine half a year later. On Thursday, Merkel elaborated on that statement, saying: “A few days before I made this proposal at the European Council, U.S. President Joe Biden had met with Vladimir Putin. And I simply didn’t think it was good that we Europeans were not also seeking a conversation with Putin and were leaving that entirely to the American administration.” “That’s why I advocated for this new proposal, and there was opposition,” she added, emphasizing that no “attribution of blame” regarding responsibility for the war was implied in her statement.

The EU’s top court ruled Tuesday that when a same-sex couple is legally married in one member country, any other member country where they move or reside must recognize that marriage. The case concerned two Polish citizens who were resident in Germany and married in Berlin in 2018. When they sought recognition of their marriage in Poland, authorities refused, citing national law, which does not recognize same-sex marriages. The couple took the case to the Polish Supreme Administrative Court, which referred it to the Court of Justice of the European Union. The Luxembourg-based court said this was contrary to EU law because it “infringes” on the freedom of movement “and the right to respect for private and family life.” In a press release summarizing the judgment, the court added: “Member States are therefore required to recognize, for the purpose of the exercise of the rights conferred by EU law, the marital status lawfully acquired in another Member State.” Member countries “enjoy a margin of discretion to choose the procedures for recognizing such a marriage,” the court added. The court stressed, however, that its ruling does not oblige countries to introduce same-sex marriage under their domestic laws.

LONDON — Damian Mercer thinks his business shouldn’t exist.  He drives up and down the country removing botched cavity wall insulation from people’s homes — some of it installed under government-backed schemes designed to fix the U.K.’s raft of drafty houses. “Everybody thought: ‘Well. I’m doing it right … I’m actually having my insulation put in my house,’” Mercer said, his own mother and father-in-law included.  “I’ve been telling them for years that it will cause problems. And, as sure as eggs are eggs, they are starting now to have problems. But they are old school. [They think]: ‘The government [isn’t] going to lie to us.’”  The scale of those problems is only now becoming clear.  In January, the U.K. government suspended work with 39 companies over shoddy installation.  Installing cavity wall insulation. | Newscast/Universal Images Group via Getty Images Then in October, the National Audit Office, a public spending watchdog, revealed 98 percent of homes with external wall insulation installed under one longstanding government energy-efficiency scheme, the Energy Company Obligation (ECO), would need work to resolve “major issues” including damp and mold.   It could not come at a worse time for Labour ministers.   The government’s budget statement on Wednesday will be focused on helping hard-pressed voters with cost-of-living pressures, while ministers are weeks away from unveiling flagship plans for bulking up millions of homes with insulation and other energy upgrades. It is banking on the Warm Homes Plan to help it hit lower-emissions targets and, crucially, cut soaring household bills.   Labour came to power promising to bring bills down — but pumping out heat into drafty homes, ministers recognize, is one factor pushing them up. Upgrades like insulation will mean “lower bills to help tackle the cost-of-living crisis,” Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said in a speech at Labour conference this fall.   But flaws in the government-approved program to incentivize home insulation has put all this at risk, some experts say.  “Whenever any scheme from any government is not well-implemented, it damages credibility in the scheme but also in [the] government’s ability to execute. So it’s troubling,” said Nigel Topping, chair of government advisers the Climate Change Committee. BILLS UP   The ECO scheme was introduced by David Cameron’s Conservative-led coalition government in 2013, as part of plans to limit climate-wrecking emissions and get energy costs under control for struggling families.   ECO requires energy suppliers to fund upgrades for the poorest families, paid for through a levy on bills.   By this August, around 4.3 million energy-efficiency measures had been installed in 2.6 million homes under ECO — including around 926,000 under the latest version, ECO4.   One of those homes belongs to 45-year-old father and charity founder Duncan Hayes, who had a string of retrofit works in 2023, including insulation, after moving to the countryside in the English west country to be closer to his daughter.   He hoped the upgrades, fitted under ECO4, would bring down his energy bills. He found the opposite.   Hayes claimed he raised issues such as damp with his installers before work was carried out, but these were ignored. He said the company fitted radiators and a heat pump that were incorrectly-sized, pushing up his bills threefold and leaving him unable to turn on his heating. Solar panels started to weigh down the roof, he said, which was defective before the works had begun.   His cottage, he claimed, was “cowboy heaven.”   “There were, like, bangs and cracks in the night, and they were keeping me up. At four in the morning, I was just sat up, listening to the roof failing,” he said.     Hayes said he spent thousands trying to repair the roof. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is currently investigating his case, according to emails seen by POLITICO.   Hayes’ daughter hasn’t stayed in his cottage since February 2023.    The installer, which POLITICO has decided not to name, said installations are carried out according to retrofit standards and are “subject to independent technical monitoring and quality assurance.”  SYSTEM FAILURE   Hayes is not alone.    The NAO found 29 percent of homes with internal wall insulation — another upgrade offered under ECO — also required remedial works. Its report revealed a complicated picture where a complex web of bodies and responsibilities left it unclear who, ultimately, oversaw ECO. In some cases, poor quality work went unchecked, allowing installers to “game” the system, the NAO said.   The government had “limited oversight” of the scheme after handing more responsibility in 2021 to Trustmark, a private not-for-profit company tasked with overseeing the quality of projects. Trustmark, in turn, didn’t have enough cash to employ the staff it needed to audit installations sufficiently, while a separate web of certification bodies didn’t have full “visibility” of works, the NAO said. “The government created an overly complex system that ultimately failed,” it said.   There were “failures at every level of the system,” DESNZ’s top official Jeremy Pocklington admitted in parliament this month, including the fact his “department did not oversee these schemes in the way that they should have done.”   A spokesperson for TrustMark said the organization “remains completely committed to ensuring strong consumer protection and confidence in home improvements of all kinds.” But they acknowledged: “It’s time for change and reform to the system, enabling stronger oversight by TrustMark on businesses and strengthening of consumer protection.”   The “poor workmanship” exposed by the NAO was “completely unacceptable,” they added, pledging the firm would work with partners “to help get these problems fixed as soon as possible.”   ‘A FEW STEPS BACK’ Ministers are now promising to overhaul the system. “Rather than private companies in the driving seat, the government will be at the fore, instituting tight controls and tough sanctions,” Energy Minister Martin McCluskey said in October.   The government also says that, where insulation has failed, people will not have to pay to fix it — but has not published any timeline for cleaning up the mess.   A DESNZ spokesperson said: “Everyone deserves to live in a warm, energy-efficient home. It is clear that an overhaul of the retrofit system and the consumer protection landscape is urgently required. We are bringing this forward as part of the Warm Homes Plan.” That’s a reference to the delayed, multi-billion-pound program designed to get insulation and other green tech into people’s homes.   One option being mulled by officials ahead of the budget is scrapping the levy on bills which funds ECO, according to The Guardian. That means the government would have to ditch ECO completely, find cash for it through Miliband’s Warm Homes Plan, or — as suggested by one industry figure, granted anonymity to speak candidly — replace it with a taxpayer-funded energy-efficiency scheme. The NAO found 29 percent of homes with internal wall insulation — another upgrade offered under ECO — also required remedial works. | Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images However they do it, though, ministers will need to fund home insulation to honor those promises on bills. And that means rebuilding public trust in those programs — a tough ask, one senior Labour MP believes.   “It’s going to be really important to overcome the wider sense the public have about rogue traders and cowboy builders,” said Energy Security and Net Zero Committee Chair Bill Esterson.    It’s about “giving confidence to consumers that somebody coming into your home is going to do a good job and not cause you problems with damp or mold or other damage to your home,” he added.   “I think we need to accept that we’ve probably taken a few steps back in terms of people’s interest in this,” said Gillian Cooper, head of retail energy markets at consumer group Citizens Advice.     WANTED: A PLAN   “If the Warm Homes Plan does not initiate a concrete plan to fix homes damaged by public insulation schemes, and set out how households won’t be put at risk in the future, then British homeowners will be skeptical that they can trust insulation schemes,” said James Dyson, senior researcher at the E3G think tank. Reforms must include “proper funding” for organizations tasked with policing installations, said Citizens Advice’s Cooper. “That is one of the biggest challenges in this country,” she said. “We have rules, [but] we don’t necessarily fund the bodies enough to ensure that they can actually enforce them.” “Nobody comes out and checks the work, or very rarely does it happen,” confirmed Mercer, the de-installer. Attention is now turning to the budget and the Warm Homes Plan expected soon after, to see if ministers can fix the system. The findings of the NAO report, Conservative MP and Public Accounts Committee Chair Geoffrey Clifton Brown told parliament, are the “worst I have seen in my 12 years on this committee.”   Insulation is a smart move to make homes warmer and cheaper to run, experts stress. But not when it is bungled.  “It needs to be installed correctly,” said Mercer, “policed and monitored through the life expectancy of that property … because by not doing so, we are just making a perfect storm.”