LONDON — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned the U.K. that it needs to get tougher on irregular migration to protect the country’s borders. Orbán admitted border control was “not the nicest job” but essential to ensure only those permitted could enter a country. Speaking to the right-wing broadcaster GB News, the Hungarian leader was insistent that only a hard-line approach deters people from crossing irregularly. The U.K. government has struggled to combat irregular small boat crossings across the English Channel. Between 2018 and 2025, around 193,000 people were detected crossing, with the yearly peak hitting 46,000 in 2022. Asked for his advice on stopping migration, Orbán told the TV channel his secret was “determination.” “So if you decide that you stop them, stop them. So sometimes it’s not the nicest job, but if you decide that this is our borderline and nobody can cross it without our permission, you have to keep the line. You have to do so.” Last year, around 41,000 people entered the U.K. on small boats, with more than 3,000 people crossing the channel so far in 2026. Around 95 percent of people who arrive go on to claim asylum and are often housed in hotels, which has caused widespread controversy. “In Hungary, it’s very simple,” Orbán said. “If somebody is crossing the borderline without getting the permission prior of that from the authorities, it’s a crime and we treat them as crime makers.” London struck a  “one in, one out” agreement with Paris last July, which meant undocumented migrants arriving on small boats could be removed in exchange for asylum seekers who had a U.K. connection. However, this plan faced criticism after a man deported under the scheme returned to Britain, as well as for the treatment of those who returned to France. Pushed on whether Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Tory predecessor Rishi Sunak were too weak in their approach to migration, Orbán said: “I’m not as brave to criticize any leader of the U.K.”

BRITAIN’S LABOUR PARTY STARES INTO THE ABYSS IN ITS WELSH HEARTLAND In the old coalfields of south Wales, Britain’s center-left establishment faces being crushed by a nationalist left and populist right. POLITICO went to find out why. By DAN BLOOM and SASCHA O’SULLIVAN in Newport, South Wales Photo-Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO Eluned Morgan, the Welsh first minister, stood in a sunbeam at Newport’s Victorian market and declared: “Wales is ready for a new chapter.” Many voters agree. The problem for Morgan is: few think she’ll be the one to write it. This nation of 3 million people, with its coalfields, docks, mountains and farms, is the deepest heartland of Morgan’s center-left Labour Party. Labour has topped every U.K. general election here for 104 years and presided over the Welsh parliament, the Senedd, since establishing it 27 years ago. Yet Senedd elections on May 7 threaten not only to end this world-record winning streak, but leave Welsh Labour fighting for a reason to exist. One YouGov poll in January put the party joint-fourth with the Conservatives on 10 percent, behind Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru on 37 percent, Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK on 23 percent and the Greens on 13 percent. Other polls are less dramatic (one last week had Reform and Plaid equal, and Labour a closer third), but the mood remains stark.  The most common projection for the 96-seat Senedd is a Plaid minority government propped up by Labour — blowing a hole in Labour’s status as the default governing party and safe vote to stop the right, and echoing recent by-elections in Caerphilly (won by Plaid) and Manchester (won by Greens). POLITICO visited south Wales and spoke to 30 politicians and officials across Labour, Plaid and Reform. | Dan Bloom/POLITICO It would raise the simple question, said a senior Welsh Labour official granted anonymity to speak frankly: “What is the point in this party?’” POLITICO visited south Wales and spoke to 30 politicians and officials across Labour, Plaid and Reform, including interviews with all three of their Welsh leaders, for this piece and an episode of the Westminster Insider podcast. The conversations painted a vivid picture of a center-left establishment fighting for survival in an election that could echo far beyond Wales. While in the 1980s Welsh Labour could unite voters against Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives, now it is battling demographic changes, a decline in unionized heavy industry and an anti-incumbent backlash. All have killed old loyalties and habits. Squeezed by Plaid and Greens to their left and Reform to their right, some in Labour see parallels with other mainstream postwar parties facing a reckoning across Europe. This week, Germany’s conservative Christian Democrats and center-left Social Democrats lost to the Greens in the car production region of Baden-Württemberg; the latter barely scraped 5 percent. In the recent Manchester by-election, the Conservatives lost their deposit. Welsh Labour MPs fear a reckoning. One said: “We will have to start again. We rebuild. We figure out, what does Welsh Labour mean in 2026? What do we stand for?” NEW CHAPTER, SAME AUTHOR It takes Morgan 20 minutes to walk the 500 meters from Newport Market to our interview. Some passers-by flag her down; others she ambushes. We pass a baked goods shop (“Ooh, Gregg’s! That’s what I want!”) and Morgan emerges with a latte, though not with one of the chain’s famous sausage rolls. She introduces herself to one woman as “Eluned Morgan, first minister of Wales.” Her target looks vaguely bemused.  After the Covid pandemic, people are simply more aware of what the Welsh government actually does — which means Labour, as the incumbent, gets more blame when things go wrong. | Matthew Horwood/Getty Images A peer and ex-MEP who joined the Senedd in 2016, Morgan is a fixture of Wales’ Labour establishment who became first minister unopposed in August 2024 after her predecessor, Vaughan Gething, resigned over a donations scandal. “I didn’t have a mandate really, because I was just kind of thrown in,” she tells POLITICO midway up the high street. “I thought, right, I need a program, so I went out on the streets and took my program directly from the public without any filter.”  She is selling a nuts-and-bolts offer of new railway stations, a £2 bus fare cap and same-day mental health care. Morgan casts herself as the experienced option to beat what she calls the “separatists” of Plaid and the “concerning” rise of populism. She means Reform, which wants to scrap net zero targets and cut 580 Welsh civil service jobs. Yet paradoxically, she also paints herself as a vessel for change. “[People] want to see change faster,” she said in John Frost Square, named after the leader of an 1839 uprising that demanded voting rights for all men. She wants to show “delivery” and “hope.” Dimitri Batrouni, Newport Council’s Labour leader, suggested an Amazonification of politics is under way. “Our lives commercially are instant,” he said. “I want something, I order it, it’s delivered to my house … people quite naturally want that in their governments.” But after 27 years, many voters are rolling the dice on delivery elsewhere. Welsh Labour is promising to end homelessness by 2034, but previously made the same pledge by 2026. Around 6,900 people are still waiting two years or more for NHS treatment (though this figure was 10 times higher during the Covid-19 pandemic). Education rankings slumped in 2023. At Newport’s Friars Walk shopping center, retired mechanical engineer Roy Wigmore, 81, said all politicians are liars. “I’ve voted Labour all my life until now,” he said, “but I’ll probably vote for somebody else — probably Nigel Farage.” ‘SHIT, WELL, HE DIDN’T CALL ME’ Much of this anger is pointed at Westminster — which is why Labour has long tried to show a more socialist face to Wales.  It was the seat of Labour co-founder Keir Hardie as well as of Nye Bevan, who launched Britain’s National Health Service in 1948. “Welsh Labour” was born out of the first Senedd-style elections in 1999, when Plaid surged in south Wales heartlands while Tony Blair’s New Labour appealed to the middle classes. For years, this deliberate rebranding worked; Labour pulled through with the most seats even when the Tories ruled Westminster. Yet in 2024, the party boasted of “two Labour governments at both ends of the M4” — in London and in Cardiff — working in harmony. The emphasis soon flipped back when things went wrong in No. 10; Morgan promised a “red Welsh way” last May. She is “trying to find our identity again,” said the MP quoted above. Morgan appeared to disown the “both ends of the M4” approach, while declining to call it a mistake. “Look, that was a decision before I became first minister,” she said. A peer and ex-MEP who joined the Senedd in 2016, Morgan is a fixture of Wales’ Labour establishment who became first minister unopposed in August 2024 after her predecessor, Vaughan Gething, resigned over a donations scandal. | Matthew Horwood/Getty Images She tries to be playful in distancing herself from Keir Starmer. “He came down a couple of weeks ago and I was very clear with him, if you’re coming you need to bring something with you. Fair play, he brought £14 billion of investment,” she said. “If he wants to come again, he’ll have to bring me more money.” But she has also hitched herself to Starmer for now — unlike Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who has called for the PM to go. As we sat down, Morgan professed surprise at news that Sarwar called several Cabinet ministers beforehand. “Did he! Shit, well, he didn’t call me,” she said. “Look at the state of the world at the moment; actually what we need is stability,” she added. “We need the grown-ups in the room to be in charge, and I do think Keir Starmer is a grown-up.” ‘ELUNED WASN’T HAPPY’ Morgan has mounted a fightback since Plaid won October’s Caerphilly by-election.  She has hired Matt Greenough, a strategist who worked on London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s re-election campaign last year, said three people with knowledge of the appointment. One of the people said: “During Caerphilly, it became quite clear there were a lot of problems. Eluned wasn’t happy with Welsh Labour or the way the campaign was running. She did a lot of lobbying and got the Welsh executive to basically give her complete power over the campaign.” Morgan “was angry that the central party [in London] took control of the Caerphilly by-election,” another of the people added. (A Morgan ally disputed this reading of events, saying she would always take a bigger role as the election drew near, and that a wide range of Labour figures are involved in the campaign committee such as a Westminster MP, Torsten Bell.) Morgan also has more support these days from Labour’s MPs — who pushed last year for her to focus less on Plaid and more on Reform. That lobbying may have been a mistake, the MP quoted above admits now. “We were quite naive in thinking that the progressives would back us,” this MP said. Privately, Labour politicians and officials in Wales say the mood and prospects are better than the start of 2026. Though asked if Labour would win the most seats in the Senedd, Batrouni said: “Let’s look and see. It’s not looking good in the polls but … politics changes so quickly.” IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT KEIR STARMER The harsh reality is that Labour’s base in Wales began slipping long before Starmer, rooted in deindustrialization since the 1970s and 80s. Newport, near England on the M4 corridor, has a measure of prosperity that other parts of Wales do not. The 137-year-old market has had a makeover, Microsoft is building data centers and U.S. giant Vishay runs Britain’s biggest semiconductor plant. Here Labour is mostly expecting a fight between itself and Reform. At Newport’s Friars Walk shopping center, retired mechanical engineer Roy Wigmore, 81, said all politicians are liars. “I’ve voted Labour all my life until now,” he said, “but I’ll probably vote for somebody else — probably Nigel Farage.” | Jon Rowley/Getty Images Wales’ west coast and north west are more Plaid-dominated, with more Welsh speakers and independence supporters. But support for nationalists is spreading in the southern valleys. “All across the valleys you’re seeing places where Labour has dominated for 100 years plus but is now in deep, deep crisis,” said Richard Wyn Jones, professor of Welsh politics at Cardiff University. “It has long been the case that a lot of Labour supporters have had a very positive view of Plaid Cymru — they just didn’t have a reason to vote for them until now.” Wyn Jones attributes the change to trends across northern Europe, where traditional left-wing parties have been “unmoored” from working-class occupations. A growing service sector has brought more white-collar voters with socially liberal values. Carmen Smith, a 29-year-old Plaid campaigner who is the House of Lords’ youngest-ever peer, said Brexit had unhitched young, left-leaning voters from the idea of British patriotism: “There are a lot more young people identifying as Welsh rather than British.”  And after the Covid pandemic, people are simply more aware of what the Welsh government actually does — which means Labour, as the incumbent, gets more blame when things go wrong.  All the while, a left-behind contingent of socially conservative ex-Labour voters is turning to Reform UK. At the Tumble Inn, a Wetherspoons chain pub in the valley town of Pontypridd, retired gas engineer Paul Jones remembered: “You could leave one job, walk a couple of hundred yards and start another job … it was a totally different world. I wish we could get it back, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.” He hasn’t voted for years but plans to back Reform. THEY’VE BLOWN UP THE MAP All these changes will be turbocharged by a new electoral map. A previous Labour first minister, Mark Drakeford, introduced a more proportional voting system which will see voters elect six Senedd members in each of 16 super-constituencies. The results will reflect the mood better than U.K. general elections (Labour won 84 percent of Wales’ seats on a 37 percent vote share in 2024), but create a volatile outcome. In the mega-constituency for eastern Cardiff, Wyn Jones believes the six seats could be won by six parties: Labour, Plaid, Reform, the Conservatives, Greens and Liberal Democrats. Ironically, said the Labour MP quoted above, Welsh Labour is now polling so badly that it could actually win more seats under the new system than the old one. Trying to win the sixth seat in each super-constituency will hoover up many resources. The size of each patch changes how parties campaign, said Plaid’s Westminster leader Liz Savile Roberts: “We’ve had to go to places that I’ve never been to.” And the scale means activists have a weaker connection to the candidates they campaign for — compounded in Labour by many Senedd members stepping down. Just six people turned up to one recent Labour door-knocking session in a heartland seat. A left-behind contingent of socially conservative ex-Labour voters is turning to Reform UK. | Huw Fairclough/Getty Images After May 8, the new system will make coalitions or informal support deals more necessary to command a Senedd majority. Morgan declined to say if she would support Plaid’s £400 million-a-year offer to expand free childcare (which Labour says is unfunded), rather than see it voted down. “I’m certainly not getting into hypotheticals,” she said. “I’m in this to win it.”  Her rivals have other ideas. THE PRESIDENT IS COMING On the hill above Newport, a two-story presidential-style image of Rhun ap Iorwerth filled a screen at the International Convention Centre above the words: “New leadership for Wales.” The former BBC presenter, who took over Plaid’s leadership in 2023, strained not to make his February conference look like a premature victory lap. Members could’ve been fooled. They struggled to find parking. There were more lobbyists; more journalists. It is a slow burn for a party founded in 1925, which won its first Westminster seat in 1966. Ap Iorwerth ramped up the anti-establishment rhetoric in his conference speech while Lindsay Whittle, who won Caerphilly for Plaid in October’s by-election, bellowed: “Rich men from London, we are waiting for you!” Yet he insists his success is more than a protest vote, a trend sweeping Europe or a mirror of Reform’s populism. “I’d like to think that we’re doing something different,” Ap Iorwerth told POLITICO. While Morgan accuses him of “separatism,” he said: “We have a growing sense of Welsh nationhood and Welsh identity, at a time when there’s deep disillusionment in the old guard of U.K. politics and a sense of needing to keep at bay that populist right wing.” Ap Iorwerth said there is a “very real danger” that Labour vanishes entirely as a serious force in the Senedd. “The level of support that they have collapsed to is a level that most people, probably myself included, could never have imagined would happen so quickly,” he said. INDEPENDENCE DAY? But Plaid faces three big challenges to hold this pole position. The first is its ground game, stretched thin to cover the new world of mega-seats. On the hill above Newport, a two-story presidential-style image of Rhun ap Iorwerth filled a screen at the International Convention Centre above the words: “New leadership for Wales.” | Matthew Horwood/Getty Images The second is to remain distinct from Labour and the insurgent Greens while running a broad left-leaning platform focused on energy costs, childcare and the NHS. The third is to convince unionist voters that Plaid is not simply a Trojan horse for Welsh independence. Independence is Plaid’s core belief, yet Ap Iorwerth did not mention the word once in his speech, instead promising a “standing commission” to look at Wales’ future. He told POLITICO he would rather have a “sustained, engaging, deep discussion … than try to crash, bang, wallop, towards the line.”  But opponents suggest Plaid will push hard for independence if they win a second term in 2030 — like the Scottish National Party did after topping elections in 2007 then 2011. One conference attendee, Emyr Gruffydd, 36, a member for 19 years, said independence “is going to be part of our agenda in the future, definitely. But I think nation-building has to be the approach that we take in the first term.” Savile Roberts accepted that shelving talk of independence (which is still supported by less than half the Welsh population) is part of a deliberate strategy to broaden the party’s reach and keep a wide left-leaning appeal. “I mean, we know the people that we need to appeal to — it is the disenchanted Labour voters,” she said. For some shoppers in Newport — not Plaid’s home turf — it may be working. One ex-Labour voter, Rose Halford, said of Plaid: “All they want to do is make everybody speak Welsh.” But she’ll consider backing them: “They’re showing a bit more gumption, aren’t they?” TAXING QUESTIONS FOR PLAID If Plaid does win, that’s when the hard part begins. Ap Iorwerth would seek urgent talks about changing Wales’ funding formula from Westminster — but cannot say how much this would raise. And Plaid has vowed not to hike income tax, one of the few (blunt) tax instruments available to the Welsh government. Strategists looked at the issue before and feared it would prompt taxpayers to flee over the border to England. So Plaid promises vague financial “efficiencies” in areas such as child poverty, where spending exceeded £7 billion since 2022, and health. Whittle said: “There’s an awful lot of people pen-pushing in the health service. We don’t need pen-pushers.” Labour’s attack machine argues that Plaid and Reform UK alike would cut services. Ap Iorwerth insists his and Farage’s promises are different: “We’re talking about being effective and efficient.” But he admitted: “You don’t know the detail until you come into government.”  Ap Iorwerth jettisoned any suggestion that Plaid would introduce universal basic income, saying it is “not a pledge for government.” He added: “It’s something that I believe in as a principle. I don’t think we’re in a place where we have anything like a model that could be put in place now.” Ap Iorwerth would seek urgent talks about changing Wales’ funding formula from Westminster — but cannot say how much this would raise. | Matthew Horwood/Getty Images The blame game between Cardiff and Westminster will run hot. Ap Iorwerth voiced outrage this week at a leaked memo from Starmer in December, ordering his Cabinet to deliver directly in Wales and Scotland “even when devolved governments may oppose this.” FARAGE’S WELSH SURGE And then there’s Reform. Farage’s party has rocketed in the polls since 2024; typical branch meetings have swelled from a dozen members to several dozen. Since February, Reform has even had its own leader for Wales — Dan Thomas, a former Tory councillor in London who says he recently moved back to the area of Blackwood, in the south Wales valleys. Some party figures have observed a dip after the Caerphilly by-election, where Reform came second. Thomas insists: “I don’t think we’ve plateaued” — and even said there is room to increase a 31 percent vote share from one (optimistic) poll. “There’s still a Labour vote to squeeze,” he told POLITICO.  “We’re targeting all of Wales.” It is a measure of Plaid’s success that Reform UK often now presents the nationalist party as its main competition. “It’s a two-horse race [with Plaid], that’s what I say on the doors,” said Leanne Dyke, a Reform canvasser who was drinking in the Pontypridd Wetherspoons. James Evans, who is now one of Reform’s two Senedd members after he was thrown out of the Conservative group in January on suspicion of defection talks, argues his supporters are underrepresented in polling because they are “smeared” as bigots. Evans added: “Very similarly to what happened in America when Donald Trump was elected, I think there is a quiet majority of people out there who do not want to say they’re voting Reform, who will vote Reform.”  Reform has its own custom-built member app, ReformGo, as it canvasses data on where its supporters live for the first time. It sent a mass appeal by post to all registered Welsh voters in late 2025 (before spending limits kicked in). Welsh campaign director David Thomas is recruiting a brand new slate of 96 candidates, booking hotels for training days with interviews, written exercises and team-building. Daytime TV presenter Jeremy Kyle has helped with media training. English officials cross the border to help; Reform still only has three paid officials in Wales. FARAGE HAS AN NHS PROBLEM Lian Walker, a postal worker from the village of Pen-y-graig, would be a prime target for Reform. “There’s people who I see on the databases, they don’t work,” she said in Pontpridd’s Patriot pub, “but they get everything; new windows, earrings, T-shirts, shorts.” She supports Reform’s plans to deport migrants. But on the NHS, she says of Reform: “They want it to go private like America.” Labour and Plaid drive this attack line relentlessly. The full picture is more nuanced — but still exposes a tension between Farage and Thomas. But Farage has an advantage; the right is less split than the left. | Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images While Reform emphasizes it would keep the NHS free at the point of use, Farage has not ruled out shifting its funding from general taxation to a French-style insurance model, saying that would be “a national decision ahead of a general election.” Thomas, however, broke from this stance. He told POLITICO: “No, no. We rule out any kind of insurance system or any kind of privatization.” He added: “Nigel’s also said that devolved issues are down to the Welsh party, and I wouldn’t consider any kind of insurance-based or private-based system for the Welsh NHS.” Labour and Plaid are relying on an anti-Reform vote to keep Farage’s party out of power. Opponents have also highlighted the jailing of Nathan Gill, Reform’s former Welsh leader, for taking bribes to give pro-Russia interviews and speeches. But Farage has an advantage; the right is less split than the left. In Evans’ sprawling rural seat of Brecon and Radnorshire, two people with knowledge of the Conservative association said its membership had fallen catastrophically from a recent peak of around 400. On the other hand, the sheer number of defections makes Reform look more like a copycat Conservative Party. A former Tory staffer works for Evans; Thomas’ press officer is the Welsh Conservatives’ former media chief. Evans said last year that 99 percent of Reform’s policies were “populist rubbish,” but was allowed to see the policy platform in secret before he agreed to join (and has since contributed to it). While the long-time former UKIP and Brexit Party politician Mark Reckless led a policy consultation in the first half of 2025, former Conservative Welsh Secretary David Jones — who defected without fanfare last year — played a hands-on role behind the scenes working up manifesto policies, two people with knowledge of his work said. THE NIGEL SHOW Then there is Reform’s reliance on Farage himself.  The party deliberately left it late before unveiling a Welsh leader, said a Reform figure in Wales, and chose in Thomas a Welsh figure who would not “detract from Nigel’s overall umbrella and brand.” While Welsh officials and politicians worked on the manifesto, Farage himself was involved in signing it off — as were several others in London, said Evans, including frontbench spokespeople Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and Zia Yusuf. Thomas said: “Ultimately, it’s my decision to sign off the manifesto. Of course, Nigel was consulted because he’s our U.K. leader, and we want to ensure that what’s going on in Wales is aligned to the broader picture in the UK.” Reform’s Welsh manifesto promises to cut a penny off every band of income tax by 2030, end Wales’ “nation of sanctuary” plan to support asylum seekers, scrap 20mph road speed limits and upgrade the M4 and A55 highways. But costings have not been published yet — Reform has sent them to be assessed by the Institute for Fiscal studies, a nonpartisan think tank — and like other parties, Reform faces questions about how it will all be paid for. Asked if Reform would begin work on the M4 and A55 upgrades by 2030, Thomas replied: “We’d like to. But we all know in this country, infrastructure projects take a long time.” While Welsh officials and politicians worked on the manifesto, Farage himself was involved in signing it off — as were several others in London, said Evans, including frontbench spokespeople Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman and Zia Yusuf. | Huw Fairclough/Getty Images ‘I’VE GOT TO FOCUS ON WHAT I CAN CONTROL’ These harsh realities facing Wales’ would-be rulers are a silver lining for Labour. Morgan avoided POLITICO’s question about whether she believes the polls — “I’ve got to focus on what I can control” — but insisted many voters remain persuadable. “People will scratch the surface and say [our rivals] are not ready,” she said. Alun Michael, who led the first Welsh Labour administration in 1999, said the idea that the Labour vote has “collapsed completely” is wrong. “It’s always dangerous to go on opinion polls as a decider of what will happen in an election,” he said. Whoever does win will deserve a moment of levity. If Ap Iorwerth wins the most seats on May 7, he will drink an Aperol spritz; Thomas will have a glass of Penderyn Welsh whisky.  As for Morgan? She would like a cup of tea — milk, no sugar. Perhaps survival would be sweet enough.

BRUSSELS — Right-wing political groups in the European Parliament on Thursday sealed an agreement on EU rules to deport migrants staying illegally in the EU after negotiations within the centrist coalition collapsed.  The compromise deal, obtained by POLITICO, gives countries greater flexibility to establish deportation hubs in non-EU countries; allows detention for up to 24 months; broadens the definition of people considered security risks, along with provisions to deport and detain them; and allows the belongings of non-EU nationals to be searched and seized during deportations.  The text also says that filing appeals against the procedure doesn’t automatically halt the deportation process. It’s the latest in a series of laws aimed at streamlining and firming up EU migration rules following the 2024 EU election, which delivered a shift to the right. That includes a push to boost deportations and to allow countries to deport migrants to non-EU countries that aren’t the person’s country of origin.  Swedish lawmaker Charlie Weimers, lead negotiator for the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, said the compromise resulted from negotiations it held with the center-right European People’s Party and the far-right Patriots and Europe of Sovereign Nations groups.  “Now we see this cooperation taking form over time in different negotiations, we can accept that we have a stable majority on the center-right on migration issues,” Weimers said.   The lead negotiator on the law, Dutch liberal MEP Malik Azmani, had tried to find a compromise within the centrist coalition that gave Commission President Ursula von der Leyen a second term (the EPP, the liberals of Renew Europe, and the center-left Socialists and Democrats).  But on Wednesday evening Azmani halted negotiations and sent a compromise proposal to all political groups, igniting fury on the left and right. A Greens official referred to Azmani’s handling of the issue as “chaotic.” “Half of the text, we didn’t really negotiate it,” said the Patriots’ lead negotiator, Marieke Ehlers. “In the end, he [Azmani] presented his own ‘compromise’ that is not good enough for those on the right, but I would wager that it’s also not good enough for S&D.” On Thursday, EPP negotiator François-Xavier Bellamy circulated a new compromise text that relies on the support of right-wing and far-right groups. The text will be put to a vote in the civil liberties committee on Monday and will likely be ratified by the Parliament’s plenary at the end of March. The Parliament will then need to negotiate a deal with EU countries.  “Our compromise is very close to the Council, so I am very optimistic,” Weimers said of the prospect of a quick deal with member countries.

LONDON — Britain’s center-left government is taking direct inspiration from Denmark’s hardline treatment of migrants — and leaving some of its own MPs feeling queasy. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will face down assembled critics from refugee charities and beyond in a speech in London Thursday morning, making what she calls the “progressive,” Labour case for overhauling Britain’s asylum system. Mahmood is fresh from a fact-finding mission to Copenhagen — and wants to import many of the policies that helped Danish premier Mette Frederiksen see off a threat from the right. Frederiksen, head of Labour’s sister party, the Social Democrats, drove asylum claims to a forty-year low. At the 2022 election, she pushed back the radical right and bagged her party’s best result in decades. But at the same time, she has seen losses of socially liberal voters in cities — and faces a fresh test in a snap election later this month. Mahmood will on Thursday try to take on complaints from her own more liberal-minded colleagues, as the struggling Labour Party tries to halt the rise of the right-wing, poll-topping Nigel Farage in the U.K. She will lay out two nightmare visions, in her eyes, of where Britain could go if left-wing Labour MPs don’t hold their noses and back her changes on an issue that animates the British public. On one side is “Farage’s nightmare pulling up the drawbridge,” and on the other is the new left-wing kids on the block: the Greens. She describes leader Zack Polanski as conjuring a “fairy-tale of open borders.” On top of dramatic changes to only grant refugees temporary stay in Britain, Mahmood will announce harsher conditions for asylum seekers who break the law or can support themselves financially. New legislation will make welfare payments and accommodation rights conditional “only to those who play by our rules,” as Mahmood puts it. A senior Home Office official, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive policy details, estimates the changes could extend to thousands of individuals. They would not rule out asylum seekers deemed to have broken the law being forced into destitution and rough sleeping in the process. Mahmood will address critics who will balk at this by arguing that if citizens don’t trust the state to fix what is one of their top priorities then “there is no space for Labour values” to be realized. “Restoring order and control at our border is not a betrayal of Labour values, it is an embodiment of them, and it is the necessary condition for a Labour government to achieve anything it hopes to,” Mahmood is expected to tell the center-left IPPR think tank, according to extracts released in advance. Mahmood will on Thursday try to take on complaints from her own more liberal-minded colleagues, as the struggling Labour Party tries to halt the rise of the right-wing, poll-topping Nigel Farage in the U.K. | Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu via Getty Images She will add: “A loss of control breeds fear, and when fearful people turn inwards their vision of this country narrows. Their patriotism turns into something smaller, something darker, an ethno-nationalism emerges. The idea of a greater Britain gives way to the lure of a littler England. And other voices – voices to the far right – take hold.” ‘SOFT-LEFT’ JITTERS But Mahmood’s pitch may fall on unreceptive ears in her own party. The bulk of Labour MPs on the party’s so-called “soft-left” have only been made more jittery by the catastrophic defeat inflicted on them from the left in the Gorton and Denton by-election last week. In that contest, the triumphant Greens appealed to younger progressives as well as Muslim voters to overturn nearly a century of Labour representation in the south Manchester seat. Even worse, Farage’s Reform came second, pushing Keir Starmer’s ruling party into a distant third. Some Labour MPs responded to that loss by calling for Mahmood to water down her existing policies on migration — though whether this was really a salient issue in the campaign was disputed by a senior Labour activist involved. “The brand just isn’t in a good place at the minute. I think that was the key thing really,” was their diagnosis. “Gaza came up far more with that kind of crowd than indefinite leave to remain.” But the same activist did offer a word of caution: “The reforms need to be done in a way that bring people with them — which a lot of progressive voters don’t necessarily feel at the minute.” Even worse, Nigel Farage’s Reform came second, pushing Keir Starmer’s ruling party into a distant third. | Jonathan Brady/PA Images via Getty Images Unhappy Labour MPs are increasingly making their views on Mahmood’s Danish turn known. Former immigration barrister and leading critic of her approach Tony Vaughan wrote to Starmer this week expressing in detail his concerns that Mahmood’s settlement restrictions will damage the economy, while posing serious dangers to women, children and community cohesion.  Vaughan has also been approaching colleagues for backing, and has received support from some senior colleagues, according to two MPs. The Unison public services union — a key funder of Labour — has been organizing another letter among parliamentarians that has grown from an initial 40 signatuories. Sarah Owen, the Labour MP who chairs the Women and Equalities Committee, told POLITICO: “The letters are a sign of a failure of engagement from the department and the secretary of state and relevant ministers.” Another left-wing MP fears Mahmood’s pitch is simply “another attempt to chase Reform down a cul-de-sac.” They flagged vast differences between Denmark and Britain, arguing it is far larger and more diverse, with deep appeals based on family ties and language. LESSONS TO LEARN Those to the right of Labour strongly disagree — and back Mahmood’s Copenhagen inspiration. “Illegal immigration continues to be a major concern in constituencies like mine,” said Jo White, who leads the Red Wall caucus representing Labour’s former heartlands in England’s North and Midlands. “I am listening to my voters and where lessons can be learnt from countries like Denmark, we should take them.” Mahmood describes leader Zack Polanski as conjuring a “fairy-tale of open borders.” | Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images White added: “Shabana has recently visited Denmark, and seen their immigration system operating at first hand and she is right to look at what will work on British soil.” Indeed, Mahmood has put distance between herself and some aspects of the Frederiksen plan. The Home Office ruled out copying a jewelry law, which would see valuable items seized to cover the cost of asylum support, and will not follow Copenhagen’s “ghetto” demolition law targeting “parallel societies.” The senior British official quoted above said internal polling suggests “we’re exactly where the vast majority of the public are.” Luke Tryl, of the More in Common think tank, agreed on the possible success among voters for following the “Danish model.” “I very much think it can be a winner,” he said. “When we polled on asylum reforms even Green voters tended to back most of them.” Polling of Mahmood’s last round of hardline reforms in November, by the More in Common think tank, found that they were popular among Labour voters — and that most even went down well with Greens. ‘SAVE PUBLIC CONSENT’ There is one possibly uniting approach that Mahmood has touted, but is yet to outline: an expansion of Britain’s extremely limited legal routes for claiming asylum. On top of dramatic changes to only grant refugees temporary stay in Britain, Mahmood will announce harsher conditions for asylum seekers who break the law or can support themselves financially. | Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images “A huge part of this is to save public consent for the asylum system and to restore order and control so we can get the space to increase the number of safe and legal routes for those genuine refugees fleeing war and persecution,” said the senior official. There are plans underway to open new community sponsorship routes, an approach that proved popular in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Tryl said: “What we’ve found is the sponsorship models which do appear to be at the heart of their safe routes things are immensely popular — they particularly reduce opposition among conservative groups.”  Progressive observers will watch Mahmood closely to see if she twins her Danish-style hardline approach with a softer offering.

The Belgian government will press ahead with one of its key migration policies despite a court ruling suspending the measure, Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt said Wednesday. In a ruling last week, the country’s Constitutional Court put on hold a policy that restricted the reception in Belgium of asylum-seekers who have already received protection in another EU country. The court said that limiting the assistance being offered to asylum-seekers “may cause [them] serious harm that is difficult to repair” and may break EU law. It referred the policy to the EU’s top court. But in a statement Wednesday, Van Bossuyt argued that Belgian law makes it possible to continue with the policy, saying: “We will, of course, make use of these legal options. This is important in order to further reduce the influx and avoid overburdening the reception system.” Van Bossuyt, a member of the Flemish nationalist N-VA party of Prime Minister Bart De Wever, insisted the measure is already in line with EU law — and that it will be on an even stronger footing when the bloc’s new migration and asylum pact, which will change how the continent processes and relocates asylum-seekers, is implemented as of June 12. “Then we’ll have the possibility to tackle asylum and reception shopping even more explicitly,” Van Bossuyt argued. She said Belgium’s measures reduced the number of people coming to Belgium who had received protection elsewhere by 83 percent between September and December last year, compared with the same period in 2024. The Constitutional Court also suspended a measure that tightened provisions on family reunification.

BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned the strikes on Iran risk another Iraq- or Afghanistan-style quagmire, but said Berlin won’t lecture Washington as it seeks U.S. help to end the war in Ukraine. “Ultimately, we do not know whether the plan to bring about political change from within [Iran] through military strikes from outside will work,” Merz, who will meet U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday, said in Berlin Sunday. “Comparisons with Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are certainly only partially valid. But they do show how real the risks are in the medium term. We in Europe and Germany would also have to bear the consequences,” he added. The U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following the 2001 attacks on America by Al Qaeda triggered massive refugee flows to Europe, with Germany emerging as a key destination for asylum seekers. Far-right entities such as Alternative for Germany — now the largest opposition party — capitalized on rising anti-immigration sentiment to fuel their political rise. At the same time, Merz said, his government is in no position to lecture the U.S. given the failures of Europe’s own approach to Iran and Germany’s need to work with U.S. President Donald Trump to secure an end to the war in Ukraine. Merz said he “appreciated the important negotiating work” the U.S. is conducting with Russia under Trump to end the war in Ukraine, and said he hoped for “even closer” transatlantic relations to bring an end to the conflict. “Anyone who wants security, peace and justice in the Middle East must also want it in Europe,” Merz said. “That is why the German government is providing a large part of the support for Ukraine against Russian aggression as part of transatlantic burden-sharing. And that is why we are not lecturing our partners on their military strikes against Iran,” he added. “We want to work with them to establish a peaceful order with the necessary degree of realism, both in the Middle East and in Europe.”

LONDON — The self-styled “eco-populist” leader of Britain’s Greens rose to the top of his party with a promise to take on both Keir Starmer and Nigel Farage — and win. This morning, in one corner of north-west England at least, Zack Polanski and his newest MP, Hannah Spencer, have done just that.  Spencer convincingly won Thursday’s Gorton and Denton by-election with 40.6 percent of the vote, keeping Farage’s Reform in second place and pushing the governing Labour Party into third.  The Green vote climbed 27.4 percentage points on 2024’s result — and the win marks their first-ever by-election victory. It caps six months in which Polanski has presided over a leap in his party’s poll ratings and sought to retool its message. He has actively channeled Farage’s UK media strategy by putting himself front and center of an argument for change painted in primary colors — but faced accusations of stoking division in the process. “I don’t want everyone to agree with what I or the Green Party is saying,” Polanski told POLITICO in an interview in October. “What I do want everyone to know is, I’ll always say what I mean.” ‘REACHING THE CEILING’  Polanski won a landslide victory in the Greens’ heated leadership election last year, handing him the reins of a party that had already made inroads at the last election. “We were reaching a ceiling of where you could get to by [the] ground game alone,” Polanski reflected of the Greens’ past performance when speaking to POLITICO last year. “What maybe was holding us back was not being heard in the national media.”   Polanski has said he wants to “make sure that the media have an easy access point” to the party, and the Green leader seems willing to go to places where he’ll have to put up a fight, too — including a colorful on-air battle with Piers Morgan. He has overseen a steady polling uptick for the left-wing outfit, as borne out in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. “There’s a definite and obvious increase,” says YouGov’s Head of European Political and Social Research Anthony Wells.  “He’s already far better known than [predecessors] Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay were.”  “It’s not like the public are in love with him, but the public do … dislike him less than most of the party leaders,” Wells added. ‘WE KNOW HOW IT FEELS TO BE LOOKED DOWN ON’ Friday’s victory speech by Spencer, the party’s newest MP, shows how Polanski has also tried to foreground cost-of-living concerns, at the expense of the Greens’ traditional eco message. Spencer — a borough councillor, plumber and self-described “pretty normal person” — mixed attacks on billionaires with a direct appeal to Britain’s “white working class.” “We know how it feels to be looked down on, maybe because we didn’t do well at school, maybe because … we are shut out of places we should be in,” she said. “To people here in Gorton and Denton who feel left behind and isolated. I see you and I will fight for you.” The Greens campaigned hard, flooding the constituency with up to 400 volunteers a day. But Spencer and Polanski have also faced claims that they have pushed a “sectarian” message in directly appealing to the seat’s Muslim vote over the war in Gaza. “We are losing our country,” said Reform’s second-placed candidate Matt Goodwin in response to Spencer’s victory Friday. “A dangerous Muslim sectarianism has emerged. We have only one general election left to save Britain.” Green volunteers on the campaign trail were surrounded by boxes of leaflets draped in the Palestinian flag. They focused on Gaza as an issue, and the party actively highlighted comments by Starmer that had previously inflamed tensions between Labour and Muslim supporters. Leaflets were handed out to worshippers at the mosque at prayer times. Spencer rejected the charge of running a divisive campaign Friday morning, saying that “whilst our communities may sometimes be labeled in different ways, the thing everyone seems to have underestimated here, especially over the last few weeks, is how similar we all actually are.” CONVICTION POLITICS   As Farage bids to eclipse the Conservatives as a right-wing force in British politics, he has used regular defections to Reform UK to show he’s on the march. Polanski has tried similar, crowing about defections by ex-Labour councilors from the left.  In video campaigning, too, Polanski has taken a leaf out of Reform’s book. He peppered his leadership run with arresting monologues to camera, and has opted to weigh in on — rather than duck — the divisive issue of immigration.  Praising the contribution of migrants when polling shows the public want lower levels is a risky bet. The Green leader argues voters will respect a clear stance, even if they disagree. “People who know that their politicians are telling the truth and are speaking with conviction are always preferred,” he says.  Speaking to POLITICO in February, Spencer argued that the Greens were already neutralizing one Labour attack: that a vote for Polanksi’s party would simply let Reform in. “The whole Labour strategy sort of seems to be the tactical one again of vote Labour to keep Reform out, but everyone’s used to hearing them saying that about the Tories,” Spencer said. “And I think now people are thinking: why would we keep just doing that as a threat rather than voting for who we actually want to vote for?” Whether the victory Friday translates into electoral success beyond Gorton, however, remains an open question. May’s local elections will offer the first, broad-scale ballot box test of Polanski’s pitch.  Sam Blewett and Matt Honeycombe-Foster contributed reporting.

BRUSSELS — If Europe wants to cut migrant flows then changing the European Convention on Human Rights is the wrong way to go, the Council of Europe’s human rights chief Michael O’Flaherty told POLITICO in an interview Monday. “Changes to the way the European Convention [ECHR] is or is not interpreted is going to have no impact on migratory flows. So if it’s the migratory flows that you’re interested in then you’ve got to look somewhere else,” O’Flaherty said. His remarks come after 46 Council of Europe (CoE) members, including 27 EU countries, agreed in December to change how the ECHR is applied by the courts, calling for a stronger treaty response to human smuggling, border security and the expulsion of offenders. The nations aim to adopt a political declaration at a May summit in Chișinău, Moldova. The Strasbourg-based European Court for Human Rights, which enforces the ECHR across the Council member states, has faced mounting pressure from governments in recent months. In May 2025, nine EU countries signed a letter calling for the ECHR — which took effect in 1953 — to be reinterpreted to allow migrants who commit crimes to be expelled more easily. CoE Secretary-General Alain Berset pushed back, saying the courts mustn’t be “weaponized” for political gain. In December 2025, the prime ministers of two of the signatory countries, Mette Frederiksen of Denmark and Keir Starmer of the U.K., contributed a joint op-ed to the Guardian calling for the ECHR to be reformed. O’Flaherty on Monday warned against limiting human rights for migrants who commit crimes, calling it “very risky.” “There are some who would say that criminal migrants should have less human rights protection than others. I think that’s a very risky pathway to go down because today it’s criminal migrants. But who’s it going to be tomorrow? Is it going be the Roma community? Is it is going to the trans community? Is it going to be Jews?” O’Flaherty said. “Look at our European history. Once you mark out one group within society for lesser protection of human rights, you create a dreadful precedent.” The EU has been hardening its migration policy to counter the rise of far-right parties across the continent. In December it approved new measures allowing EU countries to remove failed asylum seekers, set up processing centers overseas, and create removal hubs beyond their borders. The European Commission followed up in January with a five-year migration strategy stressing “assertive migration diplomacy.” But O’Flaherty challenged the view that a tough line on migration will work as a firewall against the far right. “I see an increasing willingness to countenance migration policies that at a minimum put human rights at extreme risk,” he said. “I don’t consider that a lot of the strategies in migration management are … going to be particularly effective in seeking to do what they’re claimed to do, you know, like undermining the extreme right.” “Principles and values and rights are challenged. The most effective way to respond is by digging in ever deeper in defense of such principles, values and rights,” O’Flaherty said.

BERLIN — Germany will prolong its controversial border checks, even as Brussels is due to check whether the practice is in line with the bloc’s promise of free movement. “Border controls are one element of our reorganization of migration policy in Germany,” the country’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt told German tabloid BILD, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group. The conservative politician said checks would be extended for another six months beyond their provisional mid-March end date. Dobrindt moved to drastically bolster checks along the country’s national borders on his first full day in office last year. Experts argue the controls are largely symbolic and say they have little to do with an overall drop in the number of asylum claims over the last two years. But the checks have angered Berlin’s neighbors, in part for creating traffic headaches at border crossings, and led to tit-for-tat retaliation from Warsaw. A Berlin court also deemed the most controversial measure of Berlin’s border regime — namely turning away asylum seekers at its frontiers — to be in violation of European law. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has sought to crack down on migration under pressure from the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is now the largest opposition party in Germany’s federal parliament. The AfD is currently polling neck-and-neck with Merz’s conservatives. Border controls of the type implemented by Merz are generally allowed under EU law to respond to a serious threat to the public; they should, however, be temporary and a measure of last resort. A European Commission spokesperson told POLITICO that the executive body is obliged to issue an opinion on the necessity and proportionality of Germany’s border checks, but no specific timeframe has been set. Under European law, the Commission issues an opinion on internal border controls after they have been in place for 12 months under the same grounds. Germany first decided to allow temporary controls at all its land borders in September 2024 under the previous government led by former center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Dobrindt then tightened those controls last May, sending thousands of police officers to the borders. Berlin argued the checks were necessary due to “threats to public security and order posed by continued high levels of irregular migration and migrant smuggling, and the strain on the asylum reception system.”

Some European far-right parties and politicians have sparked a backlash by calling for a police force in their countries resembling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE, which enforces federal laws governing border control, customs, trade and immigration, has been mired in controversy after its agents killed two U.S. citizens in recent weeks, amid a push by the Trump administration to deport unauthorized immigrants. That has not deterred the Bavarian branch of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Belgian far-right Vlaams Belang party from proposing police units that resemble ICE, in calls that have stoked an outcry from political opponents. In January, the Bavarian arm of the AfD said it would put forward plans in regional parliament for a police unit focused on deporting immigrants who have entered the country illegally, as part of an array of steps to curb unauthorized immigration, according to an internal party document reported by German media. “In addition to state-run deportation flights, we are calling for the creation of an asylum, investigation, and deportation unit within the Bavarian police,” the AfD parliamentary group leader Katrin Ebner-Steiner said. The Bavarian Police Union said there is no legal basis for a deportation unit. Belgium’s Vlaams Belang plans to submit a proposal for a similar police unit in the coming days. While MP Francesca Van Belleghem rejected the comparison with ICE because, she said, the Belgian unit would remain part of the existing police and not a separate federal agency, the details of the plan suggest otherwise: Specialized officers in every police zone, full units in major cities and border areas, and agents actively hunting unauthorized immigrants. “Instead of only registering illegal immigrants when they are caught by chance, the unit would actively search for persons without legal status,” Van Belleghem told POLITICO, adding: “We do not allow our national proposals to be dictated by the international context.” In France, meanwhile, far-right firebrand and Reconquête party founder Éric Zemmour did not rule out the idea when asked in a TV interview whether France should have a police force similar to ICE. “It would need to be adapted to France and to French institutions. But we’ll have to be ruthless,” Zemmour told BFMTV. Political scientist Laura Jacobs from the University of Antwerp said that some far-right parties are careful and avoid association with Trump as it could hurt their image, but “are indeed referring to [a] similar police force.” “This fits within a broader trend … where strict measures and anti-immigration stances have become normalized, with far-right parties pushing the boundaries” inspired by Trump’s policies, Jacobs said. The far-right parties’ calls have been met with criticism from political opponents. People who promote such ideas “fell off the democratic spectrum and can never be normalized,” said German MEP Damian Boeselager from the Greens party. The Left’s co-president in the European Parliament, Manon Aubry, said: “Far-right policies form part of a continuum of violence that must be challenged from the outset, or else risk becoming generalized. If we even accept ICE model as part of the political debate, the fight is already lost.” The EU has been hardening its migration policy in an attempt to counter the rise of far-right parties. Last month, the European Commission presented a five-year migration strategy, stressing “assertive migration diplomacy” to push third countries to help stop unauthorized immigrants from entering Europe and to take back citizens who are not entitled to stay.