BRUSSELS — The United States wants to engage in a meaningful dialogue with Brussels on reducing European tech regulation, its Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder told POLITICO. The U.S. administration and its allies have been vocal critics of the EU’s tech rules, saying they unfairly target American companies and hurt freedom of speech. The European Commission has repeatedly denied such allegations, saying it is merely trying to rein in Big Tech and protect the online space from harmful behavior. In an interview Monday, Puzder said he hoped that this week’s vote in the European Parliament to advance last year’s transatlantic trade deal would set the scene for talks to loosen constraints on business. “I’ve had talks with individuals within the EU about moving this discussion forward. I haven’t, as yet, experienced the concrete steps we need to make that happen,” Puzder said. He was referring to the EU’s tech rulebook — and the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act in particular — that Washington sees as barriers to trade. “Hopefully, we’ll continue to talk. Once this trade agreement is approved, in the spirit of moving forward with these non-tariff trade barriers, we’ll be able to break down some of these walls,” he added.  Discussions are still in their very early stages and “there’s nothing formal,” Puzder clarified. The next steps between Brussels and Washington should be “diplomatic engagement followed by political engagement,” he added.  RECALIBRATION NEGOTIATION The envoy’s comments follow a heated series of exchanges between senior American and European officials over whether the EU’s tech rules should even be part of the transatlantic trade discussion. In November 2025, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick tied a potential easing of U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs to a “recalibration” by the EU of the bloc’s digital regulations. European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera responded that tying tariff relief to European tech rules amounted to “blackmail.” Ribera, the EU’s top competition official, told POLITICO at the time that the EU would not accept such attempts to strong-arm it on a topic that it considers to be a matter of sovereignty. She is currently visiting the U.S. and is due to meet tech industry bosses in San Francisco this week. Transatlantic ties took another turn for the worse when the Donald Trump administration in December barred former Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton from traveling to the U.S. over his role in creating and implementing the EU’s tech rules.  Puzder explained that Washington doesn’t think “that Europe shouldn’t have regulation,” but that it shouldn’t be “regulating in such an extreme manner that companies feel they can’t innovate — which is why … most of the tech startups in Europe end up moving to Silicon Valley.” European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera attends a press conference in Brussels on Feb. 25, 2026. | Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images Responding, the European Commission stressed there is “continued engagement” between the EU and the U.S.  “Executive Vice President [Henna] Virkkunen has held several meetings with U.S. Representatives, both in Europe and in the U.S. At technical level, our teams also engage on a continuous basis with their American counterparts,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier said in a statement to POLITICO.  Virkunnen’s remit covers technology policy. Before Trump’s return to the White House, the two sides held held a structured dialogue under the auspices of the now-defunct EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council.  The occasional forum, launched by former U.S. President Joe Biden, sought to establish a structured dialogue around regulatory cooperation. Yet in the view of observers it under-delivered, failing for instance to resolve a long-running steel dispute. The TTC has not met since Trump returned to the White House in early 2025. 

U.S. regulators this week proposed easing capital rules on big U.S. banks in a package of proposals that departs from globally agreed-upon standards. Now, it’s sparking calls from European trade groups to loosen the EU’s own version of the rules. On Thursday, U.S. bank regulators released a number of potential rule changes intended to align U.S. policy with a 2017 global agreement known as Basel III. Its provisions imply a 2.4 percent decrease in capital held by the largest U.S. banks and bigger cuts for smaller banks. European regulators, anticipating the U.S. move, had already been discussing loosening their own requirements, which currently call for raising the capital that banks must have on hand by around 8 percent by 2033. But the breadth of the U.S. proposal has prompted trade groups in Europe to push officials to move faster. Taken together, the moves could weaken the global regulatory framework instituted on both sides of the Atlantic after the 2008 financial crisis. “The U.S. proposal appears to mark a clear shift toward easing capital constraints to support lending and growth, while Europe seems to continue moving in a different direction,” said Sébastien de Brouwer, deputy CEO of the European Banking Federation, a trade group. The United States’ pullback is “making it more urgent than ever to review the EU framework to preserve competitiveness and financing capacity of European banks,” he said. Over the past few months, European regulators had started to reevaluate the competitiveness of the bloc’s banking sector, especially as major European economies have struggled to keep pace with U.S. growth. EU heads of government called Thursday night, in a statement agreed upon before the release of the U.S. proposal, for the European Commission “to propose targeted amendments to the prudential framework in order to enhance the capacity of the banking sector to finance the European economy.” The Commission is also authoring a report on the competitiveness of its banking sector, due after the summer, which will pave the way for legislative proposals. This is set to be a wide-ranging report that could relate to bank capital requirements or other policies. The European Central Bank has already made recommendations for simplifying the bloc’s banking rules ahead of the report, including calling for lighter Basel rules for small banks and for capital buffers to be merged. None of its recommendations were as sweeping as what the U.S. has proposed, however. The U.S. proposal departs from the intent of the original Basel accords, a long process in which global regulators worked to address the root causes of the global financial crisis, critics say. Regulators in 2017 reached an agreement around the framework for jurisdictions to mitigate risks. “This definitely goes against not just the ethos but the intent, spirit and goal of Basel III,” said Dennis Kelleher, CEO of Better Markets, an advocacy group that supports stronger financial regulation. “This proposal when finalized will inevitably ignite another global race to the regulatory bottom” One of the biggest departures relates to the unwinding of the “output floor,” which sets a minimum capital threshold for banks’ trading activities. The new proposal uses a new risk-weighting approach that would do away with the threshold. “This will encourage other jurisdictions to do the same, undermining a key reform and cornerstone of the Basel III agreement,” Federal Reserve board member Michael Barr said Thursday. In the 2017 international talks, the U.S. had argued in favor of a restrictive output floor. Major European banks argued that would hike their capital requirements above and beyond those of the U.S., given the makeup of European banks’ trading books, stymieing lending to the real economy. The threshold was ultimately set at a lower rate than what American negotiators wanted. European regulators had recently moved to delay implementation of the Fundamental Review of the Trading Book, the portion of Basel focused specifically on so-called market risk, or rules governing how to capitalize banks’ trading activities. “Removing the output floor for market risk is a divergence from international standards, and we will carefully assess the impact on internationally active banks, in particular, with respect to the ongoing discussions on EU FRTB implementation and banking competitiveness in Europe,” said Caroline Liesegang, head of prudential regulation and research at the Association for Financial Markets in Europe, which represents large banks. In the past, U.S. regulators had tended to “gold plate” the country’s rules for big banks, meaning they put in provisions above and beyond what Basel requires in order to acknowledge the United State’s central role in the global financial system and push for stricter global standards. In 2023, U.S. regulators failed to pass a capital proposal that would have raised aggregate capital by 16 percent and would have adhered more strictly to the international framework. On Thursday, U.S. regulators said the international standards should not be an unnecessary barrier to the needs of the U.S. financial system. “We should not seek to punish U.S. consumers and businesses by imposing higher costs of credit, or forcing credit availability outside of the banking system, particularly if this is done only to show greater alignment with Basel or any other international standard,” said Federal Reserve Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman, who led the U.S. central bank’s crafting of the proposal. The dilution of the agreement and its pullback on capital “will make it more challenging for the U.S. to use Basel, as it so often has, to further its own agenda,” said Kathryn Judge, professor at Columbia Law School. In the U.K., which has since left the bloc, the capital rules are expected to have less of an impact on banks than EU peers. A spokesperson for the Prudential Regulation Authority, the U.K.’s main banking regulator, said that the thinking remains the same as in its final rules, which will see the market risk rules apply from 2028. The European Commission declined to comment. The Basel Committee said it doesn’t comment on individual jurisdictions. The Federal Reserve declined to comment. Bjarke Smith-Meyer and Elliot Gulliver-Needham contributed to this report.

European countries are being advised to lower gas storage filling targets and to start refilling gas stores early, as the conflict in Middle East drives up global energy prices. European Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen urged in a letter to national energy ministers, seen by POLITICO, that countries should be flexible in how they refill gas stores, to “help reduce the gas demand at times where the supply is tense and ease the pressure on gas prices in Europe.” Since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Tehran in late February, the ensuing conflict has caused global energy prices to spike, driven in part by Israeli strikes on Iran’s vast offshore gas field and Tehran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical passage that facilitates a significant share of the world’s oil and natural gas trade. In the letter, Jørgensen asked EU countries to lower their gas storage refilling targets to 80 percent, 10 percentage points below normal targets. He also suggested that countries could start storage injections early to avoid an “end-of-summer rush to refill storages,” which would put upward pressure on prices. He also suggested that governments extend the deadline to meet filling targets to as late as December, two months later than usual. He said countries can take these measures under the EU Gas Storage Regulation, which provides for flexibility in difficult market conditions. The EU requires member countries to maintain gas reserves at 90 percent of capacity by the winter — a measure brought in after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But this year’s colder-than-average winter depleted those reserves to an average of under 30 percent as of March, the lowest since 2022. Anxiety has been growing in Brussels over whether the conflict in Iran, coupled with already low gas reserves, could spark a fight among countries over dwindling global energy supplies. Jørgensen said that the EU’s gas supplies remain “relatively protected” since the bloc only has “limited reliance” on gas imports from the region. But as a “net importer” of gas globally, “high and volatile global prices may also impact the EU gas storage injections,” he said. As developments in Iran and the wider region are “are significantly impacting global oil and gas markets,” there are indications that it could take longer for Qatari gas production to return to pre-crisis levels, Jørgensen said. The commissioner said he would support countries to make use of the allowed flexibilities, which should be discussed with the European Commission and other member states before being implemented. A Commission spokesperson confirmed that the letter was sent to energy ministers.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos arrives in Brussels on Tuesday with a clear message for EU regulators ahead of a looming review of Europe’s streaming rules: Don’t overcomplicate them. In an exclusive interview with POLITICO, Sarandos said Netflix can live with regulation — but warned the EU not to fracture the single market with a patchwork of national mandates as officials prepare to reopen the Audiovisual Media Services Directive. “It doesn’t make it a very healthy business environment if you don’t know if the rules are going to change midway through production,” Sarandos said. He also warned regulators are underestimating YouTube as a direct competitor for TV viewing, too often treating it like a social media platform with “a bunch of cat videos” than a massive streaming rival. Sarandos’ effort to win over European regulators comes soon after the collapse of Netflix’s bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery — but Sarandos maintained that the political dynamics around the deal only “complicated the narrative, not the actual outcomes.” He added that there was no political interference in the deal, and he shrugged off President Donald Trump’s demand to remove Susan Rice, a former national security adviser under President Barack Obama, from the Netflix board. “It was a social media post,” Sarandos said. “It was not ideal, but he does a lot of things on social media.” This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. What’s bringing you back to Brussels now? Well, we have ongoing meetings with regulators around Europe all the time. We have so much business in Europe, obviously, and so this has been on the books for quite a while. Can you give me a little bit of a sense of who you’re meeting with, and what is the focus? I think one of the things to keep in mind is that we’ve become such an important part, I’d think, of the European audiovisual economy. We’ve spent, in the last decade, over $13 billion in creating content in Europe. It makes us one of the leading producers and exporters of European storytelling. First of all, we’ve got a lot of skin in the game in Europe, obviously. We work with over 600 independent European producers. We created about 100,000 cast and crew jobs in Europe from our productions. So we talk to folks who are interested in all the elements of that — how to keep it, how to maintain it, how to grow it and how to protect it. In terms of regulation in the EU, Netflix is governed by a directive here. The commission is looking to reopen that this year. There seems to be a sense here from regulators that the current rules don’t create a level playing field between the broadcasters, the video on demand, the video sharing, and so they may look to put more requirements on that. How steeped in the details are you there? And how would Netflix react to more rules put on Netflix at this moment? Well, first and foremost, we comply with all the rules that apply to us in terms of how we’re regulated today. We have seen by operating around the world that those countries where they lean more into incentives than the strict regulatory scheme, that the incentives pay off. We’ve got multibillion dollar investments in Spain and the UK, where they have really leaned into attracting production through incentives versus regulatory mandates, so we find that that’s a much more productive environment to work in. But the core for me is that obviously they’re going to evolve the regulatory models, but as long as they remain simple, predictable, consistent — the single market, the benefit of the single-market is this — as long as these rules remain simple, predictable and consistent, it’s a good operating model. I think the more that it gets broken up by individual countries and individual mandates, you lose all the benefits of the single market. There’s a lot of talk in Brussels right now about simplification, getting rid of a lot of red tape. Do you think the rules that you’re governed by would benefit from a similar kind of effort to simplify, of pulling back on a lot of these patchwork of rules, even at the EU? Look, I think it doesn’t make it a very healthy business environment if you don’t know if the rules are going to change midway through production, so for me, having some stability is really important, and I understand that we’re in a dynamic market and a dynamic business, and they should reflect the current operating models that we’re in too. We want to work closely with the regulators to make sure that what they’re doing and what we’re doing kind of reflect each other, which is trying to protect the healthy work environment for folks in Europe. When you meet with regulators here, is there a message you’re going to be delivering to them or what do you want them to walk away with in terms of the bottom line for you in terms of your business at this moment in the EU? I think some things are well understood and other things I think are less so. I think our commitment to European production is unique in the world. Both in our original production but also in our investment in second right’s windows that we pre-invest in films that compel production. Tens of millions of dollars’ worth of film production is compelled by our licensing agreements as well beyond our original production. And the fact that we work with local European producers on these projects — I think there’s a misconception that we don’t. And the larger one is the economic impact that that brings to Europe and to the world with our original program strategy that supports so many, not just the productions themselves but even tourism in European countries. Think about President [Emmanuel] Macron pointing out that 38 percent of people who went to France last year cited “Emily in Paris” as one of the top reasons they went. We’ve seen that in other countries. We saw it in Madrid with the “Casa de Papel.” And so it’s one of those things where it really raises all boats across the economies of these countries. Regulators often focus on the competition between streaming services, but as you know very well, younger audiences are spending more time on platforms like YouTube. Do you think policymakers are underestimating that shift? Would you like to see that taken into account more in the regulatory landscape? One of the things that we saw in recent months with the Warner Brothers transaction is a real deep misunderstanding about what YouTube is and isn’t. YouTube is a straightforward direct competitor for television, either a local broadcaster or a streamer like Netflix. The connected television market is a zero-sum screen. So whichever one you choose, that’s what you’re watching tonight. And you monetize through subscription or advertising or both, but at the end of the day, it’s that choosing to engage in how you give them and how, and how that programming is monetized is a very competitive landscape and it includes YouTube. I think what happens is people think of YouTube as a bunch of cat videos and maybe some way to, to promote your stuff by putting it on there for free. But it turns out it is a zero-sum game. You’re going to be choosing at the expense of an RTL or Netflix. I think in this case it’s one of these things where recognizing and understanding that YouTube is in the same exact game that we are. Do you feel like you’re on different planes though, in the eyes of regulators at this moment? I don’t think that they see them as a direct competitor in that way. I think they think of that as an extension of social media. And the truth is when we talk about them as a competitor, we’re only talking about them on the screen. I’m not talking about their mobile usage or any of that. You know, about 55 percent of all YouTube engagement now is on the television through their app. So to me, that’s the thing to keep an eye on. As you get into this, it’s a pretty straightforward, competitive model and we think probably should have a level playing field relative to everybody else. Who do you view as Netflix’s main competitors today? Look, our competitive space is really the television screen. When people pick up the remote and pick what to watch, everyone is in that mix. We identified YouTube — this isn’t new for us — we identified YouTube as a competitor in the space 10 years ago, even before they moved to the television. And I think, for the most part, TikTok forced their hand to move to the television because they were kind of getting chased off the phone more or less by TikTok. I think that’s the other one that regulators should pay a lot of attention to is what’s happening with the rise of TikTok engagement as well. It’s not directly competitive for us, but it is for attention and time and to your point, maybe the next generation’s consumer behavior. Last question on regulation: With the EU looking at the rules again, there’s a tendency always to look to tinker more and more and do more. Is there a point at what regulation starts affecting your willingness to invest in European production? Well, like I said, those core principles of predictability and simplicity have really got to come into play, because I think what happens is, just like any business, you have to be able to plan. So, if you make a production under one set of regs and release it under another, it’s not a very stable business environment. The topic that dominated a lot of your attention in recent months was obviously the merger talks with Warner Brothers Discovery. I know you’ve said it didn’t work for financial reasons. I want to ask you a little bit about the political dynamics. How much did the political environment, including the Susan Rice incident, how much did that complicate the calculus in your mind? I think it complicated the narrative, not the actual outcomes. I think for us it was always a business transaction, was always a well-regulated process in the U.S. The Department of Justice was handling it, everything was moving through. We were very confident we did not have a regulatory issue. Why would that be? It’s because it was very much a vertical transaction. I can’t name a transaction that was similar to this that has ever been blocked in history. We did not have duplicated assets. We did have a market concentration issue in the marketplace that we operate in. And I think that’s the feedback I was getting back from the DOJ and from regulators in general, which was, they understood that, but I do think that Paramount did a very nice job of creating a very loud narrative of a regulatory challenge that didn’t exist. But looking back to those early days of the merger discussions, did you have an appreciation for what might follow in terms of that complicated narrative? Yeah. Look, I think it opens up the door to have a lot of conversations that you wouldn’t have had otherwise, but that’s okay. A lot great things came out of it, the process itself. I would say in total, we had a price for where we thought this was good for our business. We made our best and final offer back in December and it was our best and final offer. So that’s all. But what came out a bit that’s positive is, we’ve had really healthy conversations with folks who we hardly ever talked to, theater operators, as a good example. I had a great meeting in February with the International Union of Cinemas, and the heads from all the different countries about what challenges they have, how we could be more helpful, or how they could be helpful to us too. I think we’ll come out of this with a much more creative relationship with exhibitions around the world. And by way of example, doing things that we haven’t done before. I don’t recommend testifying before the Senate again, but it was an interesting experience for sure. Probably a good learning experience. Hopefully not in the future for anything that you don’t want to be there for, but yes. Yeah, exactly. We’ve always said from the beginning, the Warner transaction was a nice-to-have at the right price, not a must-have-at-any-price. The business is healthy, growing organically. We’re growing on the path that we laid out several years ago and we didn’t really need this to grow the business. These assets are out there through our growth period and they’re going to be out there and for our next cycle growth as well and we’ve got to compete with that just like we knew we had to at the beginning. This was I think something that would fortify and maybe accelerate some of our existing models, but it doesn’t change our outcome. Are there regrets or things you might have wished you’d done differently? I mean honestly we took a very disciplined approach. I think we intentionally did not get distracted by the narrative noise, because we knew, we recognized what it was right away, which is just narrative noise. This deal was very good for the industry. Very good for both companies, Warner Brothers and Netflix. Our intent was obviously to keep those businesses operating largely as they are now. All the synergies that we had in the deal were mostly technologies and managerial, so we would have kept a big growth engine going in Hollywood and around the world. The alternative, which we’ve always said, is a lot of cutting. I think regulators in Europe and regulators in the U.S. should keep an eye on horizontal mergers. They should keep a close eye on [leveraged buyouts]. They typically are not good for the economy anywhere they happen. What were you preparing for in terms of the EU regulatory scrutiny with Warner Brothers? What was your read on how that might have looked? I think we’re a known entity in Europe. Keep in mind, like in Q4 of last year, we reported $3.5 billion or $3.8 billion in European revenues. So 18 percent year-on-year growth. The EU is now our largest territory. We’re a known entity there. The reason we didn’t take out press releases, we had meetings in Europe as we know everybody. We talked to the regulators, both at the EU and at the country level. And I do think that in many of the countries that we operate in, we’re a net contributor to the local economy, which I think is really important. We’ve got 12 offices across Europe with 2,500 people. So we’re members of the local ecosystem, we’re not outsiders. With President Trump, he demanded that Netflix remove Susan Rice from the board or pay the consequences. Did that cross a line for you in terms of political interference? It was a social media post, and we didn’t, no, it did not. It was not ideal, but he does a lot of things on social media. So you didn’t interpret it as anything bigger than that. I mean, he does that one day, he could obviously weigh in on content the next day. How does somebody like you manage situations like that? I think it’s really important to be able to separate noise from signal, and I think a lot of what happens in a world where we have a lot of noise. There was so much attention to you going to the White House that day. And we didn’t learn until several days later that you didn’t actually have the meetings that were predicted. Before you arrived in Washington that day, had you already made the decision not to proceed? Not before arriving in Washington, but we knew the framework for if this, then that. So, yeah, I would say that it was interesting, but again, we don’t make a big parade about our meetings with government and with the regulators. I had a meeting on the books with the DOJ scheduled several weeks before, meeting with Susie Wiles, the president’s chief of staff, scheduled several months before, unrelated to the Warner Brothers deal. And that was just the calendar that lined up that way. We didn’t know when Warner Brothers would make the statement about the deal. It’s all very dramatic, like it belongs on Netflix as a movie. There was paparazzi outside of the White House waiting for me when I came out. I’ve never experienced that before. Yeah, it’s a remarkable story. I would tell you, and I’m being honest with you, there was no political interference in this deal. The president is interested in entertainment and interested in deals, so he was curious about the mechanics of things and how things were going to go or whatever, but he made it very clear that this was under the DOJ. So it’s just like we all spun it up from the media? How do you explain it all? First of all, Netflix is clickbait. So people write about Netflix and it gets read. And that’s a pretty juicy story. And [Trump] said, and by the way, like I said, he makes statements sometimes that lead to the beliefs of things that do and sometimes that don’t materialize at all. But I found my conversations with him were 100 percent about the industry, protecting the industry. And I think it’s very healthy that the president of the United States speaks to business leaders about industries that are important to the economy. To what degree did the narrative or the fact that David Ellison had a relationship or seemed to have a relationship with people in Washington who were in power, that that might have swayed or changed the dynamic at the end with where Warner Brothers went though? I can’t speak to what their thinking is on it. I feel like for me, it’s very important to know the folks in charge, but I wouldn’t count on it if you’re doing something that is not in the best interest of the country or the economy. You talked with Trump in the past about entertainment jobs. Were there specific policies you’ve advocated to him or anything that he brought up on that point? He has brought up tariffs for the movie and television industry many times. And I’ve hopefully talked to him the way out of them. I just said basically the same thing I said earlier. I think that incentive works much better. We’re seeing it in the U.S. things like the states compete with each other for production incentives and those states with good, healthy incentive programs attract a lot of production, and you’ve seen a lot of them move from California to Georgia to New Jersey, kind of looking for that what’s the best place to operate in, where you could put more on the screen. And I do think that having the incentives versus tariffs is much better. Netflix is now buying Ben Affleck’s AI company. What areas do you see AI having the most potential to change Netflix’s workflow? My focus is that AI should be a creator tool. But with the same way production tools have evolved over time, AI is just a rapid, important evolution of these tools. It is one of those. And the idea that the creators could use it to do things that they could never do before to do it. Potentially, they could do faster and cheaper. But the most impact will be if they can make it better. I don’t think faster and cheaper matters if it’s not better. This is the most competitive time in the history of media. So you’ve gotta be better every time out of the gate. And faster and cheaper consumers are not looking for faster and cheaper, they’re looking for better. I do think that AI, particularly InterPositive, the company we bought from Ben, will help creators make things better. Using their own dailies, using their own production materials to make the film that they’re making better. Still requires writers and actors and lighting techs and all the things that you’d use to make a movie, but be able to make the movie more effective, more efficient. Being able to do pick up shots and things like this that you couldn’t do before. It’s really remarkable. It’s a really remarkable company. As AI improves, do you see the role of human voice actors shrinking at Netflix? What’s interesting about that is if you look at the evolution of tools for dubbing and subtitling, the one for dubbing, we do a lot of A-B tests that people, if you watch something and you don’t like it, you just turn it off. The one thing that we find to be the most important part of dubbing is the performance. So good voice actors really matter. Yeah, it’s a lot cheaper to use AI, but without the performance, which is very human, it actually runs down the quality of the production. Will it evolve over time? Possibly, but it won’t evolve without the cooperation and the training of the actual voice actors themselves too. I think what will happen is you’ll be able to do things like pick up lines that you do months and months after the production. You’ll be able to recreate some of those lines in the film without having to call everybody back and redo everything which will help make a better film. You’re in the sort of early stages of a push into video podcast. What have you learned so far about what works and what doesn’t? It’s really early. The main thing is we’ve got a broad cross-section of podcasts. It’s nowhere near as complete as other podcast outlets yet. But the things that we leaned into are the things that are working. We kind of figured they would. You’ve got true crime, sports, comedy, all those things that we do well in the doc space already. And I really am excited about things where people can develop and deepen the relationship with the show itself or the [intellectual property] itself. Our Bridgerton podcast is really popular, and people really want to go deeper and we want to be able to provide that for them. I think a video podcast is just the evolution of talk shows. We have tried to and failed at many talk shows over the years, and for the most part it’s because the old days of TV, when 40 million people used to tune in to the Tonight Show every night, [are over]. What’s happened now is that it’s much smaller audiences that tune into multiple shows in the form of a podcast every day. And then they come up to be way bigger than the 40 million that Johnny Carson used to get. They’re all individual, and it’s a deeper relationship than it is a broad one. So instead of trying to make one show for the world, you might have to make hundreds or thousands of shows for the whole world.

Anton, a 44-year-old Russian soldier who heads a workshop responsible for repairing and supplying drones, was at his kitchen table when he learned last month that Elon Musk’s SpaceX had cut off access to Starlink terminals used by Russian forces. He scrambled for alternatives, but none offered unlimited internet, data plans were restrictive, and coverage did not extend to the areas of Ukraine where his unit operated. It’s not only American tech executives who are narrowing communications options for Russians. Days later, Russian authorities began slowing down access nationwide to the messaging app Telegram, the service that frontline troops use to coordinate directly with one another and bypass slower chains of command. “All military work goes through Telegram — all communication,” Anton, whose name has been changed because he fears government reprisal, told POLITICO in voice messages sent via the app. “That would be like shooting the entire Russian army in the head.” Telegram would be joining a home screen’s worth of apps that have become useless to Russians. Kremlin policymakers have already blocked or limited access to WhatsApp, along with parent company Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Microsoft’s LinkedIn, Google’s YouTube, Apple’s FaceTime, Snapchat and X, which like SpaceX is owned by Musk. Encrypted messaging apps Signal and Discord, as well as Japanese-owned Viber, have been inaccessible since 2024. Last month, President Vladimir Putin signed a law requiring telecom operators to block cellular and fixed internet access at the request of the Federal Security Service. Shortly after it took effect on March 3, Moscow residents reported widespread problems with mobile internet, calls and text messages across all major operators for several days, with outages affecting mobile service and Wi-Fi even inside the State Duma. Those decisions have left Russians increasingly cut off from both the outside world and one another, complicating battlefield coordination and disrupting online communities that organize volunteer aid, fundraising and discussion of the war effort. Deepening digital isolation could turn Russia into something akin to “a large, nuclear-armed North Korea and a junior partner to China,” according to Alexander Gabuev, the Berlin-based director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. In April, the Kremlin is expected to escalate its campaign against Telegram — already one of Russia’s most popular messaging platforms, but now in the absence of other social-media options, a central hub for news, business and entertainment. It may block the platform altogether. That is likely to fuel an escalating struggle between state censorship and the tools people use to evade it, with Russia’s place in the world hanging in the balance. “It’s turned into a war,” said Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the internet Protection Society, a digital rights group that monitors Russia’s censorship infrastructure. “A guerrilla war. They hunt down the VPNs they can see, they block them — and the ‘partisans’ run, build new bunkers, and come back.” THE APP THAT RUNS THE WAR On Feb. 4, SpaceX tightened the authentication system that Starlink terminals use to connect to its satellite network, introducing stricter verification for registered devices. The change effectively blocked many terminals operated by Russian units relying on unauthorized connections, cutting Starlink traffic inside Ukraine by roughly 75 percent, according to internet traffic analysis by Doug Madory, an analyst at the U.S. network monitoring firm Kentik. The move threw Russian operations into disarray, allowing Ukraine to make battlefield gains. Russia has turned to a workaround widely used before satellite internet was an option: laying fiber-optic lines, from rear areas toward frontline battlefield positions. Until then, Starlink terminals had allowed drone operators to stream live video through platforms such as Discord, which is officially blocked in Russia but still sometimes used by the Russian military via VPNs, to commanders at multiple levels. A battalion commander could watch an assault unfold in real time and issue corrections — “enemy ahead” or “turn left” — via radio or Telegram. What once required layers of approval could now happen in minutes. Satellite-connected messaging apps became the fastest way to transmit coordinates, imagery and targeting data. But on Feb. 10, Roskomnadzor, the Russian communications regulator, began slowing down Telegram for users across Russia, citing alleged violations of Russian law. Russian news outlet RBC reported, citing two sources, that authorities plan to shut down Telegram in early April — though not on the front line. In mid-February, Digital Development Minister Maksut Shadayev said the government did not yet intend to restrict Telegram at the front but hoped servicemen would gradually transition to other platforms. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said this week the company could avoid a full ban by complying with Russian legislation and maintaining what he described as “flexible contact” with authorities. Roskomnadzor has accused Telegram of failing to protect personal data, combat fraud and prevent its use by terrorists and criminals. Similar accusations have been directed at other foreign tech platforms. In 2022, a Russian court designated Meta an “extremist organization” after the company said it would temporarily allow posts calling for violence against Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine war — a decision authorities used to justify blocking Facebook and Instagram in Russia and increasing pressure on the company’s other services, including WhatsApp. Telegram founder Pavel Durov, a Russian-born entrepreneur now based in the United Arab Emirates, says the throttiling is being used as a pretext to push Russians toward a government-controlled messaging app designed for surveillance and political censorship. That app is MAX, which was launched in March 2025 and has been compared to China’s WeChat in its ambition to anchor a domestic digital ecosystem. Authorities are increasingly steering Russians toward MAX through employers, neighborhood chats and the government services portal Gosuslugi — where citizens retrieve documents, pay fines and book appointments — as well as through banks and retailers. The app’s developer, VK, reports rapid user growth, though those figures are difficult to independently verify. “They didn’t just leave people to fend for themselves — you could say they led them by the hand through that adaptation by offering alternatives,” said Levada Center pollster Denis Volkov, who has studied Russian attitudes toward technology use. The strategy, he said, has been to provide a Russian or state-backed alternative for the majority, while stopping short of fully criminalizing workarounds for more technologically savvy users who do not want to switch. Elena, a 38-year-old Yekaterinburg resident whose surname has been withheld because she fears government reprisal, said her daughter’s primary school moved official communication from WhatsApp to MAX without consulting parents. She keeps MAX installed on a separate tablet that remains mostly in a drawer — a version of what some Russians call a “MAXophone,” gadgets solely for that app, without any other data being left on those phones for the (very real) fear the government could access it. “It works badly. Messages are delayed. Notifications don’t come,” she said. “I don’t trust it … And this whole situation just makes people angry.” THE VPN ARMS RACE Unlike China’s centralized “Great Firewall,” which filters traffic at the country’s digital borders, Russia’s system operates internally. Internet providers are required to route traffic through state-installed deep packet inspection equipment capable of controlling and analyzing data flows in real time. “It’s not one wall,” Klimarev said. “It’s thousands of fences. You climb one, then there’s another.” The architecture allows authorities to slow services without formally banning them — a tactic used against YouTube before its web address was removed from government-run domain-name servers last month. Russian law explicitly provides government authority for blocking websites on grounds such as extremism, terrorism, illegal content or violations of data regulations, but it does not clearly define throttling — slowing traffic rather than blocking it outright — as a formal enforcement mechanism. “The slowdown isn’t described anywhere in legislation,” Klimarev said. “It’s pressure without procedure.” In September, Russia banned advertising for virtual private network services that citizens use to bypass government-imposed restrictions on certain apps or sites. By Klimarev’s estimate, roughly half of Russian internet users now know what a VPN is, and millions pay for one. Polling last year by the Levada Center, Russia’s only major independent pollster, suggests regular use is lower, finding about one-quarter of Russians said they have used VPN services. Russian courts can treat the use of anonymization tools as an aggravating factor in certain crimes — steps that signal growing pressure on circumvention technologies without formally outlawing them. In February, the Federal Antimonopoly Service opened what appears to be the first case against a media outlet for promoting a VPN after the regional publication Serditaya Chuvashiya advertised such a service on its Telegram channel. Surveys in recent years have shown that many Russians, particularly older citizens, support tighter internet regulation, often citing fraud, extremism and online safety. That sentiment gives authorities political space to tighten controls even when the restrictions are unpopular among more technologically savvy users. Even so, the slowdown of Telegram drew criticism from unlikely quarters, including Sergei Mironov, a longtime Kremlin ally and leader of the Just Russia party. In a statement posted on his Telegram channel on Feb. 11, he blasted the regulators behind the move as “idiots,” accusing them of undermining soldiers at the front. He said troops rely on the app to communicate with relatives and organize fundraising for the war effort, warning that restricting it could cost lives. While praising the state-backed messaging app MAX, he argued that Russians should be free to choose which platforms they use. Pro-war Telegram channels frame the government’s blocking techniques as sabotage of the war effort. Ivan Philippov, who tracks Russia’s influential military bloggers, said the reaction inside that ecosystem to news about Telegram has been visceral “rage.” Unlike Starlink, whose cutoff could be blamed on a foreign company, restrictions on Telegram are viewed as self-inflicted. Bloggers accuse regulators of undermining the war effort. Telegram is used not only for battlefield coordination but also for volunteer fundraising networks that provide basic logistics the state does not reliably cover — from transport vehicles and fuel to body armor, trench materials and even evacuation equipment. Telegram serves as the primary hub for donations and reporting back to supporters. “If you break Telegram inside Russia, you break fundraising,” Philippov said. “And without fundraising, a lot of units simply don’t function.” Few in that community trust MAX, citing technical flaws and privacy concerns. Because MAX operates under Russian data-retention laws and is integrated with state services, many assume their communications would be accessible to authorities. Philippov said the app’s prominent defenders are largely figures tied to state media or the presidential administration. “Among independent military bloggers, I haven’t seen a single person who supports it,” he said. Small groups of activists attempted to organize rallies in at least 11 Russian cities, including Moscow, Irkutsk and Novosibirsk, in defense of Telegram. Authorities rejected or obstructed most of the proposed demonstrations — in some cases citing pandemic-era restrictions, weather conditions or vague security concerns — and in several cases revoked previously issued permits. In Novosibirsk, police detained around 15 people ahead of a planned rally. Although a small number of protests were formally approved, no large-scale demonstrations ultimately took place. THE POWER TO PULL THE PLUG The new law signed last month allows Russia’s Federal Security Service to order telecom operators to block cellular and fixed internet access. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said subsequent shutdowns of service in Moscow were linked to security measures aimed at protecting critical infrastructure and countering drone threats, adding that such limitations would remain in place “for as long as necessary.” In practice, the disruptions rarely amount to a total communications blackout. Most target mobile internet rather than all services, while voice calls and SMS often continue to function. Some domestic websites and apps — including government portals or banking services — may remain accessible through “whitelists,” meaning authorities allow certain services to keep operating even while broader internet access is restricted. The restrictions are typically localized and temporary, affecting specific regions or parts of cities rather than the entire country. Internet disruptions have increasingly become a tool of control beyond individual platforms. Research by the independent outlet Meduza and the monitoring project Na Svyazi has documented dozens of regional internet shutdowns and mobile network restrictions across Russia, with disruptions occurring regularly since May 2025. The communications shutdown, and uncertainty around where it will go next, is affecting life for citizens of all kinds, from the elderly struggling to contact family members abroad to tech-savvy users who juggle SIM cards and secondary phones to stay connected. Demand has risen for dated communication devices — including walkie-talkies, pagers and landline phones — along with paper maps as mobile networks become less reliable, according to retailers interviewed by RBC. “It feels like we’re isolating ourselves,” said Dmitry, 35, who splits his time between Moscow and Dubai and whose surname has been withheld to protect his identity under fear of governmental reprisal. “Like building a sovereign grave.” Those who track Russian public opinion say the pattern is consistent: irritation followed by adaptation. When Instagram and YouTube were blocked or slowed in recent years, their audiences shrank rapidly as users migrated to alternative services rather than mobilizing against the restrictions. For now, Russia’s digital tightening resembles managed escalation rather than total isolation. Officials deny plans for a full shutdown, and even critics say a complete severing would cripple banking, logistics and foreign trade. “It’s possible,” Klimarev said. “But if they do that, the internet won’t be the main problem anymore.”

LONDON — Keir Starmer wants the public to know he’s going to move fast and fix things.  Speaking to an audience of young people last month, the U.K. prime minister said that unlike the previous Conservative government, which took eight years to pass the country’s Online Safety Act, Labour will legislate fast enough to keep up with the breakneck speed of technological change and its associated harms.  “We’ve taken the powers to make sure we can act within months, not years,” he said.   His words came after the government decried Elon Musk’s X for allowing deepfaked nude images to flood its platform. “The action we took on Grok sent a clear message that no platform gets a free pass,” Starmer said.  Labour showcased its bold new approach last week, tabling two legislative amendments that seek to grant ministers sweeping powers to change the U.K.’s online safety regime without needing to pass primary legislation through Parliament — meaning MPs and peers would have next to no opportunity for scrutiny.  While Labour argues this is necessary to deal with the onslaught of online harms brought about by technology — particularly AI — digital rights activists and civil liberties campaigners fear executive overreach, and say Labour is confusing fast action for good policy, especially as it mulls the possibility of a social media ban for under-16s.  GOVERNMENT HANDS ITSELF NEW POWERS The first amendment, to the Crime and Policing Bill, would empower any senior government minister to amend the Online Safety Act near unilaterally for the purposes of “minimizing or mitigating the risks of harm to individuals” presented by illegal AI-generated content.   The second amendment, to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, looks to go even further, giving ministers the ability to alter any piece of primary legislation to restrict children’s access to “certain internet services.”   The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has said it wants to act “at pace” in response to the findings of its consultation, the “key focus” of which is whether to ban social media for under-16s, a policy idea which has picked up momentum in multiple countries since Australia introduced a ban at the end of last year.  Amendments like those tabled this week are commonly referred to as Henry VIII clauses, which allow ministers to largely bypass Parliament. They are not entirely new: successive governments since the 1980s have increasingly relied on statutory instruments for lawmaking, according to the Institute for Government.   But such clauses bring problems that could last long after Starmer’s premiership. The government may have good intentions when it comes to online safety, but the measures proposed are “storing up trouble for years to come at a very worrying moment where anti-democratic parties [around the world] are gaining traction,” Anna Cardaso, policy and campaigns officer at civil liberties organisation Liberty told POLITICO.  “When you create a law, you have to think about what a future government could do with those powers. A future government might not be motivated purely by reducing harms to children, or might have a very different view of what counts as harm,” agreed James Baker, advocacy manager at digital rights organisation Open Rights Group.   Baker pointed to steps taken by the Trump administration in the U.S. to target websites hosting LGBTQ+ content and reproductive health advice.   There are also questions to be asked about proportionality under the Human Rights Act, he argued, not least because the evidence base on how children are affected by social media is muddy at best — a DSIT-commissioned study published in January found little high-quality evidence of a correlation between time spent on social media and poorer reported mental health, for example.   Although the government hopes its use of Henry VIII powers will speed things up, the move is vulnerable to challenge in the courts — not only from human rights campaigners concerned about the impact on privacy and freedom of expression, but also from tech companies navigating any new regulations.   “The inevitable consequence of such broad regulatory discretion is an explosion in litigation,” Oliver Carroll, legal director at law firm Bird & Bird, said.   ‘FIRE-FIGHTING’ The government has backed away from plans to introduce primary legislation dedicated to artificial intelligence, with ministers instead looking to regulate AI at the point of use on a sector-by-sector basis.   Primary legislation on AI would have allowed parliamentarians and other stakeholders to “debate and hammer out the fundamental principles and a framework of regulation,” Liberty’s Anna Carsado said. “But instead, they’ve dodged the hard thing, and they’re just firefighting emergency by emergency by statutory instrument.”   The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill amendment gets its first outing in the House of Commons today, where it stands a good chance of surviving thanks to Labour’s 158-seat majority. Both amendments will also have to pass the House of Lords, where they could meet more resistance.  DSIT did not respond when contacted by POLITICO for comment.  

BRUSSELS — The right to use Swiss franc banknotes and coins will be enshrined in Switzerland’s constitution after voters on Sunday backed a measure designed to safeguard the use of cash in society. Preliminary official estimates revealed 69 percent of voters backed the legal amendment, which the government proposed as a counter to a similar initiative by a group called the Swiss Freedom Movement. The Swiss Freedom Movement triggered the national referendum after its initiative to protect cash collected more than 100,000 signatures, triggering a national referendum. Its initiative secured only 46 percent of the final vote after the government said some of the group’s proposed amendments went too far. The vote means Switzerland will join the likes of Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia, which have already written the right to cold, hard cash in their constitutions. Austrian politicians are also debating whether to follow suit, as people’s payment habits become increasingly digital — especially since the pandemic. The trend has fanned Big Brother conspiracy theories that governments aim to control populations by withdrawing cash altogether. The European Central Bank’s plans to issue a virtual extension of the euro have fanned those fears, prompting the EU’s executive arm to propose a bill that will cement physical cash in societies across the bloc. Switzerland, too, has seen a drop in cash payments over the past decade. More than seven out of 10 payments at the till were in cash in 2017. In 2024, cash only featured in 30 percent of in-shop transactions, according to data from the Swiss National Bank. The Swiss Freedom Movement has previously pursued campaigns to sack unpopular government ministers, ban electronic voting, and protect citizens from professional or social retribution if they refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19 — none of which made it to the ballot box.

The Bank of Russia is suing the European Union for keeping its state assets frozen “for an indefinite period” to serve as collateral against a €90 billion loan to Ukraine. The lawsuit will test rare emergency powers that the European Commission used last year to keep Russian state assets across the bloc, worth some €210 billion, on ice through a qualified majority. The legal loophole nullified vetoes that Kremlin-friendly countries in the EU, such as Hungary, would otherwise have had. EU leaders agreed in mid-December to raise common debt without Hungary, Slovakia and Czechia to finance Kyiv’s defense against Russian forces. Ukraine will only have to pay back the loan once Moscow ends the conflict and pays war reparations. If the Kremlin refuses, EU leaders reserve the right to tap the cash value of the frozen assets to pay itself back. In a statement Tuesday, the Bank of Russia blasted the EU’s “unlawful actions against the Bank of Russia’s sovereign assets,” saying the regulation violates “the basic and inalienable rights to access justice” and the “principle of sovereign immunity of states and their central banks.” The central bank also argued the Council of the EU committed “serious violations” of its own procedures by adopting the measure by qualified majority rather than unanimity. The Commission plans to issue a statement in response to the lawsuit, which the central bank filed at the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg. Russia’s central bank filed a separate lawsuit in Moscow last year against Brussels-based financial depository Euroclear, where the bulk of its assets lie immobilized under EU sanctions after Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission will adopt the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA) on Wednesday, finally backing the landmark measure that would define a European preference in green public procurement after several delays. Haggling over the planned regulation went right down to the wire, with a meeting of cabinet chiefs that began on Monday spilling into Tuesday, the day before Ursula von der Leyen’s College of Commissioners will now sign off on an agreed text. According to one Commission official, another 44 changes were made to the draft at the meeting that ran into overtime. Paula Pinho, the Commission’s chief spokesperson, confirmed at Tuesday’s regular midday briefing that “commissioners are expected to adopt a proposal for an Industrial Accelerator Act.” The landmark measure would define a “Made in EU” preference in green public procurement — while pushing back a decision for six months on whether friendly third countries can be included in its scope. This means that, even after Wednesday’s announcement, countries like the U.K. or Switzerland will still need to lobby to get inside the tent. The IAA would also set restrictions on inward investment for dominant players in strategic green industries. These would mainly have China in mind, and cover batteries and energy storage, electric vehicles and components, solar photovoltaic, and the extraction, processing and recycling of critical raw materials, according to a draft obtained by POLITICO last week. An earlier version of the proposal, which is being overseen by Industry Commissioner Stéphane Séjourné, was panned last month by as many as nine departments of the EU executive. By the end of last week that was down to three, including the Commission’s powerful trade department, according to one person familiar with the discussion. They were granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks. Germany also led a rearguard action by 10 EU countries — which styled themselves as the Friends of Industry — who support less industry regulation and more open trade, with Economy Minister Katherina Reiche saying it would create “a regulatory wasteland that nobody can understand anymore.” With so many changes being made at the last minute, including dropping entire industries like tech from the purview of the legislation, critics say the bill is nowhere near ready for prime time and is at risk of being heavily revised when it goes for review by the Council of the EU, which represents the bloc’s 27 member countries, and European lawmakers. Additional reporting by Gerardo Fortuna.

As European health systems grapple with how to deliver increasingly advanced therapies, rare disease patients in Sweden still face everyday challenges — from securing a diagnosis to accessing appropriate care. Although rights are strong on paper, families often find themselves stitching together services across a decentralized system. Ågrenska is a national competence center in Sweden working to bridge those gaps. It supports people with rare diagnoses and their families in navigating health and social services. “But there’s a limit to what one organization can do,” says Zozan Sewger Kvist, Ågrenska’s CEO. POLITICO Studio spoke with her about where the Swedish system falls short and what must change across Europe to ensure patients are not left behind. POLITICO Studio: From Ågrenska’s experience working with families of rare disease patients across Sweden, where does the system most often break down? Zozan Sewger Kvist: For 25 years the families have been telling us the same thing: the system doesn’t connect. Zozan Sewger Kvist, CEO, Ågrenska The breakdown is most evident in health care, especially when transitioning from pediatric to adult care. But it also happens when patients are transitioning between schools, social services and medical teams. No one is looking at their care from a holistic point of view. Families become their own project managers. They are the ones booking appointments, chasing referrals, explaining the diagnosis again and again. It’s a heavy burden. That’s largely why our organization exists. We provide families with the knowledge, networks and tools to navigate the system and understand their rights. But there’s a limit to what one organization can do. In a perfect world, these functions would already be embedded within public care. > Without clear national coordination, it becomes much harder to monitor whether > families are actually receiving the support they are entitled to. PS: Access to rare disease care varies widely within many European countries and Sweden is no exception. In practical terms, what do those regional disparities look like? ZSK: Swedish families have the same rights across the country, but regional priorities differ. That leads to unequal access in practice. For example, areas with university hospitals tend to have stronger specialist networks and rehabilitation services. In more rural parts of the country, especially in the north, it is harder to attract expertise, and families feel that gap directly. In practical terms, that can mean something as basic as access to rehabilitation. In some regions, children receive coordinated physiotherapy, speech therapy and follow-up. In others, families struggle to access rehabilitation at all. And that’s a big issue because a lot of Sweden’s health care runs through rehabilitation — without it, referrals to other services and treatments can stall. PS: Would a comprehensive national rare disease strategy meaningfully change outcomes across regions? ZSK: The problem is compliance, not regulation. Sweden has strong rules but regions have almost full freedom to organize care, which makes consistency difficult. As it stands, without clear national coordination, it becomes much harder to monitor whether families are actually receiving the support they are entitled to. A national rare disease strategy would not solve everything but it would set expectations such as what the minimum level of care should look like, what coordination should include and how outcomes are followed up. A draft national strategy was developed in 2024, and there was real momentum. Patient organizations, health care experts and the government were all involved. Everyone was optimistic the framework would provide guidance and accountability. After some delays, work on the national strategy has resumed, so hopefully we will see it implemented soon. > Families often feel they need to take on a coordinating role themselves. They > describe an endless search — calling clinics, repeating their story, trying to > connect the dots. PS: Families often describe a long and fragmented path to diagnosis. Where does that journey tend to go wrong, and what would shorten it most? ZSK: Coordinated multidisciplinary teams would make the biggest difference — teams that can look at the whole condition, not just one symptom at a time. The challenge is that rare diseases often affect multiple organ systems. Several specialists may be involved, but they do not always work together, and it may not be clear who is taking responsibility for the whole case. When no one holds that overview, delays multiply. Sweden also lacks a fully integrated national health record system, so specialists may be looking at different pieces of the same case without seeing the full picture. Families often feel they need to take on a coordinating role themselves. They describe an endless search — calling clinics, repeating their story, trying to connect the dots. PS: Sweden participates in the European Reference Networks, yet you’ve suggested they’re underused. What’s missing in how Sweden leverages that expertise? ZSK: The ERNs are a strong, established framework for connecting specialists across borders. Swedish experts participate, but we are not using that structure to its full potential. Participation often appears project-based rather than long-term. Neighboring countries such as Norway, Denmark and Finland are more proactive in leveraging these collaborations. I would like to see Sweden invest more in turning these networks into durable partnerships that support clinical practice — not just research initiatives. > Rare disease care needs sustained political and financial follow-through. > Without that, families will continue to carry burdens that the system should > be managing. PS: Sweden often falls behind other EU countries in terms of access to orphan medicines (drugs that treat rare diseases). What needs to change in Sweden’s approach to ensure patients aren’t left behind? ZSK: Families are very aware of how access compares across Europe. They follow these discussions closely, and when a treatment is available in one country but not another, it is difficult for them to understand why. In Sweden, reimbursement decisions often come down to cost-effectiveness calculations. That makes access an ethical as well as an economic question. But for a family, it is hard to accept that a few additional years of life or stability are weighed against a financial threshold. Some families choose to cross borders for treatment. But that can be quite a complex, expensive process, depending on the kind of treatment. I think greater transparency and clearer communication about the criteria and long-term impact — not only the immediate cost — would make difficult outcomes easier to understand. PS: You’ve worked with families for decades. Have things materially improved — and what worries you most if reforms stall? ZSK: Unfortunately, I cannot say that things have materially improved. When I look back at the challenges families described 15 or 20 years ago, many of them are still the same. There have been some positive developments. Digital access means families are more informed and can connect more easily with others in similar situations. That has strengthened their voice. But structurally, many of the underlying gaps remain. Rare disease care needs sustained political and financial follow-through. Without that, families will continue to carry burdens that the system should be managing. Disclaimer POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT * The sponsor is Alexion Pharmaceuticals * The entity ultimately controlling the sponsor: AstraZeneca plc * The political advertisement is linked to policy advocacy around rare disease governance, funding, and equitable access to diagnosis and treatment across Europe More information here.