European consumer group Euroconsumers along with Football Supporters Europe have filed a complaint with the European Commission accusing FIFA of abusing its monopoly over World Cup ticket sales to impose excessive prices and unfair conditions on fans. The complaint, obtained by POLITICO, alleges breaches of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which prohibits abuses of a dominant market position. “FIFA has a complete monopoly over World Cup ticket sales,” said Romane Armangau, a spokesperson for Euroconsumers. “They are using that power to charge prices that would not exist in a normal competitive market, while hiding information from buyers and manipulating them into rushed decisions.” The groups point to a range of alleged abusive practices, including limited transparency on ticket categories and seat allocation, a “variable pricing” system that can push prices higher over time, and the actual scarcity of tickets advertised from $60. “When you buy that ticket, you don’t actually know what you’re buying,” Armangau said. “It means attending the 2026 World Cup has become financially out of reach for most ordinary supporters,” she added, pointing to tickets to the final that now start at more than $4,000. Fans can also face additional costs, including resale fees of around 15 percent, according to the complaint. The groups further accuse FIFA of using “dark patterns” — design and marketing tactics that create artificial urgency — to pressure fans into buying tickets. The filing lands as pressure on FIFA is already building in Brussels. In an interview with POLITICO earlier this month, EU Sports Commissioner Glenn Micallef warned of the safety risks for fans travelling to the 2026 World Cup, citing concerns linked to the war in Iran. He said FIFA had yet to provide renewed assurances for supporters, stressing that “since one of the hosts of this biggest sporting event in the world is party to a war, it’s only legitimate that assurances are given.” Micallef also criticized FIFA’s partnership with U.S. President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace,” a body widely seen in Europe as an attempt to sidestep the United Nations. The complaint to the EU leans on a December 2023 Super League court ruling, which said FIFA and UEFA can fall under EU competition law when they organize and market competitions as economic activities. The filing argues that reasoning applies here too, because FIFA is the sole seller of World Cup tickets and is allegedly abusing that dominant position. While Brussels has previously scrutinized sports governing bodies, targeting FIFA’s ticketing and pricing practices would open a new front. Euroconsumers and its partners are urging the European Commission to intervene, including by imposing price caps and forcing greater transparency over ticket sales. “We are asking the Commission to act immediately with interim measures,” Armangau said. “Once those matches are played, the harm to fans cannot be undone.”

LONDON — Keir Starmer’s keeping Britain out of the war in Iran — but he can’t duck the conflict’s grave economic consequences. In a sign of growing fears about the impact of the war on Britain, the prime minister chaired a rare meeting of the government’s emergency COBRA committee Monday night, joined by senior ministers and Governor of the Bank of England Andrew Bailey. Starmer’s top finance minister, Rachel Reeves, will update the House of Commons on the economic picture Tuesday, as an already-unpopular administration worries that chaos in the Middle East is shredding plans to lower the cost of living and get the British economy growing. For Starmer’s government — headed for potentially brutal local elections in May — the crisis in the Gulf risks a nightmare combination of a rise in energy prices, interest rates, inflation and the cost of government borrowing that threatens to undermine everything he’s done since winning office. Economists are now warning that even if Donald Trump’s promise of a “complete and total resolution of hostilities” with Iran were to bear fruit, the effects on the British economy could still last for months. Already there are signs of a split within Starmer’s party over how to respond. Labour MPs want the government to think seriously about action to protect households — but Starmer and Reeves have long talked up the need for fiscal responsibility, and economics are warning that there’s little room for maneuver. Fuel prices displayed at a Shell garage in Southam, Warwickshire on March 23, 2026. | Jacob King/PA Images via Getty Images Jim O’Neill, a former Treasury minister who served as an adviser to Reeves, told POLITICO the government should “not get sucked into reacting to every external shock” and “concentrate on boosting our underlying growth trend.” WHY THE UK IS SO HARD HIT Just before the outbreak of war, there was reason for Starmer and Reeves to feel quietly optimistic about the long-stagnant British economy. The Bank of England had expected inflation to fall back sustainably toward its two percent target for the first time in five years, giving the central bank the space to carry on cutting interest rates.  With the Iran war in full flow, it was forced to rewrite those forecasts at the Monetary Policy Committee’s meeting last week — and now sees inflation at around 3.5 percent by the summer. The U.K. is a big net importer of energy and also needs constant imports of foreign capital to fund its budget and current account deficits. That’s made it one of first targets in the financial markets’ crosshairs. The government’s cost of borrowing has risen by more than half a percentage point over the last month. That threatens both the real economy and Reeves’ painstakingly-negotiated budget arithmetic. Higher inflation means higher interest rates and a higher bill for servicing the government’s debt: fiscal watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates a one-point increase in inflation would add £7.3 billion to debt servicing costs in 2026-2027 alone. The effect on businesses and home owners is also likely to be chilling. Britain’s banks are already repricing their most popular mortgages, which are tied to the two-year gilt rate. Hundreds of mortgage products were pulled in a hurry after the MPC meeting last week, something that will hit the housing market and depress Reeves’ intake from both stamp duty and capital gains. Duncan Weldon, an economist and author, said: “Even if this were to stop tomorrow, the inflation numbers and growth numbers are going to look materially worse throughout 2026. “If this continues for longer… it’s an awful lot more challenging and you end up with a much tougher budget this autumn than the government would have been hoping to unveil.” DECISION TIME The U.K.’s economic plight presents an acute political headache for Starmer, as he faces a mismatch between his own party’s expectations about the government’s ability to help people and his own scarce resources. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has promised to keep looking at different options for some form of assistance to bill-payers hit by an energy price shock. A pain point is looming in July, when a regulated cap on energy costs is due to expire and bills could jump significantly. One left-leaning Labour MP, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said: “They [ministers] need to be treating this like a financial crisis. They need plans for multiple scenarios with clear triggers for government support.” A second MP from the 2024 intake said “it’s right that a Labour government steps in, particularly to help the most vulnerable.” Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves at the first cabinet meeting of the new year at No. 10 Downing St. on Jan. 6, 2026 in London, England. | Pool photo by Richard Pohle via Getty Images This demand for action is being felt in the upper echelons of the party too, as Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy recently argued Reeves’ fiscal rules — seen as crucial in the Treasury to reassure the markets — may need to be reconsidered if prices continue to rise and a major support package is needed.  One Labour official said there are clear disagreements with Labour over how to go about drawing up help and warned “the fiscal approach is going to be a massive dividing line at any leadership election.” The same official pointed to recent comments by former Starmer deputy — and likely leadership contender — Angela Rayner about the OBR, with Rayner accusing the watchdog of ignoring the “social benefit” of government spending. Despite the pressure, ministers have so far restricted themselves to criticizing petrol retailers for alleged profiteering, and have been flirting with new powers for markets watchdog the Competition and Markets Authority. The government said Reeves would on Tuesday set out steps to “help protect working people from unfair price rises,” including a new “anti-profiteering framework” to “root out price gouging.” But Starmer signaled strongly in an appearance before a Commons committee Monday evening that he was not about to unveil any wide-ranging bailout package, telling MPs he was “acutely aware” of what it had cost when then-Prime Minister Liz Truss launched her own universal energy price guarantee in 2022.  O’Neill backed this approach, saying: “I don’t think they should do much… They can’t afford it anyhow. The nation can’t keep shielding people from external shocks.” Weldon predicted, however, that as the May elections approach and the energy cap deadline draws nearer, the pressure will prove too much and ministers could be forced to step in. The furlough scheme rolled out during the pandemic to project jobs and Truss’s 2022 intervention helped create “the expectation that the government should be helping households,” he said. “But it’s incredibly difficult. Britain’s growth has been blown off-course an awful lot in the last 15 years by these sorts of shocks.” Geoffrey Smith, Dan Bloom, Andrew McDonald and Sam Francis contributed to this report.

What makes a tree important? Is it the ability to withstand storms, wars and human greed through the centuries? The people that rest in its shade, the lovers who carve their names, the playing children creating eternal memories? Or is it just what country it grows in? The organizers of the European Tree of the Year contest, a relatively niche event on the Brussels social calendar, have been grappling with these questions for years. The competition, which started in 2002 as a national event in Czechia before expanding to Europe in 2011, has over the years crowned an Estonian oak that stood in the middle of a football pitch; a lone pine that survived a flood in a Czech village; and a 500-year-old Romanian lime tree that is part of local folk legend. The contest’s last four winners, however, all grew in Poland. “From the beginning, the competition was not about the beauty of the trees, but about the stories and the communities. [But] the last four years, it became difficult because it turned into a competition between nations,” said Petr Skřivánek, who runs the event on behalf of the Environmental Partnership Association, a Czech NGO. Poland’s recent success is largely due to Make Life Harder, the country’s most popular Instagram meme account, which has been promoting the contest to its 1.7 million followers since 2021. The enthusiastic response has been both a blessing and a curse. “It’s really good because it can really attract visitors. But any time the website is down, I know it’s because they posted a link to it,” Skřivánek said. His routine as the overwhelmed website administrator is itself the subject of memes from the account. “You don’t only vote for the tree that you like, but you have to vote for another tree — so you don’t just express support on a national level,” said Michal Wiezik, a Renew MEP who has been an ambassador for the contest since 2019. “But the Polish were able to crack the system.” Things took a nastier turn last year, when a whiff of online hooliganism arrived to disturb the sylvan community. MEP Michal Wiezik attends a European Parliament meeting in Brussels on Jan. 27, 2025. | Martin Bertrand/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images La Revuelta, a comedy talk show on Spain’s La 1 public broadcaster, launched a campaign to support their nation’s champion, the Pine of Juan Molinera. The program identified a Polish tree — Heart of the Dalkowskie Hills —  as its main competition. During the segment, as comedian Lalachus sang a cover of Eros Ramazzotti’s La cosa más bella (“The most beautiful thing”) in praise of the Spanish contestant, another comic held up signs saying “The Polish tree smells like armpits” and “The tree from Poland, what a load of shit.” Make Life Harder shared the clips on Instagram, unleashing a bitter feud on social media. (Neither Make Life Harder, RTVE nor Lalachus replied to requests for comment from POLITICO.) The tension ultimately spread to the European Parliament, which hosted the awards ceremony. “The atmosphere was not good in the venue. And on the stream, it was not nice either,” Skřivánek said. Spain finished third; Poland won. “I hope this was the first year and the last year when this competition became a space for spreading hate and being aggressive to others,” said Anna Gomułka in accepting the award for Heart of the Dalkowskie Hills. “We felt we had to defend our honor. At some point, voting became an expression of patriotism,” Gomułka wrote in an email to POLITICO. To avoid such tensions in future and to make the online vote more suspenseful, the organizers are now using a system of “tree points” in which trees from smaller countries get more points for each vote than trees from larger countries. As a result of the changes, the 2026 competition “was really less nationalist compared to previous years,” Skřivánek said. This year’s winner will be named Tuesday during a ceremony in Brussels.

Many describe our geopolitical moment as one of instability, but that word feels too weak for what we are living through. Some, like Mark Carney, argue that we are facing a rupture: a break with assumptions that anchored the global economic and political order for decades. Others, like Christine Lagarde, see a profound transition, a shift toward a new configuration of power, technology and societal expectations. Whichever perception we adopt, the implication is clear: leaders can no longer rely on yesterday’s mental models, institutional routines or governance templates. Johanna Mair is the Director of the Florence School of Transnational Governance at the European University Institute in Florence, where she leads education, training and research on governance beyond the nation state. Security, for example, is no longer a discrete policy field. It now reaches deeply into energy systems, artificial intelligence, cyber governance, financial stability and democratic resilience, all under conditions of strategic competition and mistrust. At the same time, competitiveness cannot be reduced to productivity metrics or short-term growth rates. It is about a society’s capacity to innovate, regulate effectively and mobilize investment toward long-term objectives — from the green and digital transitions to social cohesion. This dense web of interdependence is where transnational governance is practiced every day. The European Union illustrates this reality vividly. No single member state can build the capacity to manage these transformations on its own. EU institutions and other regional bodies shape regulatory frameworks and collective responses; corporations influence infrastructure and supply chains; financial institutions direct capital flows; and civic actors respond to social fragmentation and governance gaps. Effective leadership has become a systemic endeavour: it requires coordination across these levels, while sustaining public legitimacy and defending liberal democratic principles. > Our mission is to teach and train current and future leaders, equipping them > with the knowledge, skills and networks to tackle global challenges in ways > that are both innovative and grounded in democratic values. The Florence School of Transnational Governance (STG) at the European University Institute was created precisely to respond to this need. Located in Florence and embedded in a European institution founded by EU member states, the STG is a hub where policymakers, business leaders, civil society, media and academia meet to work on governance beyond national borders. Our mission is to teach and train current and future leaders, equipping them with the knowledge, skills and networks to tackle global challenges in ways that are both innovative and grounded in democratic values. What makes this mission distinctive is not only the topics we address, but also how and with whom we address them. We see leadership development as a practice embedded in real institutions, not a purely classroom-based exercise. People do not come to Florence to observe transnational governance from a distance; they come to practice it, test hypotheses and co-create solutions with peers who work on the frontlines of policy and politics. This philosophy underpins our portfolio of programs, from degree offerings to executive education. With early career professionals, we focus on helping them understand and shape governance beyond the state, whether in international organizations, national administrations, the private sector or civil society. We encourage them to see institutions not as static structures, but as arrangements that can and must be strengthened and reformed to support a liberal, rules-based order under stress. At the same time, we devote significant attention to practitioners already in positions of responsibility. Our Global Executive Master (GEM) is designed for experienced professionals who cannot pause their careers, but recognize that the governance landscape in which they operate has changed fundamentally. Developed by the STG, the GEM convenes participants from EU institutions, national administrations, international organizations, business and civil society — professionals from a wide range of nationalities and institutional backgrounds, reflecting the coalitions required to address complex problems. The program is structured to fit the reality of leadership today. Delivered part time over two years, it combines online learning with residential periods in Florence and executive study visits in key policy centres. This blended format allows participants to remain in full-time roles while advancing their qualifications and networks, and it ensures that learning is continuously tested against institutional realities rather than remaining an abstract exercise. Participants specialize in tracks such as geopolitics and security, tech and governance, economy and finance, or energy and climate. Alongside this subject depth, they build capabilities more commonly associated with top executive programs than traditional public policy degrees: change management, negotiations, strategic communication, foresight and leadership under uncertainty. These skills are essential for bridging policy design and implementation — a gap that is increasingly visible as governments struggle to deliver on ambitious agendas. Executive study visits are a core element of this practice-oriented approach. In a recent Brussels visit, GEM participants engaged with high-level speakers from the European Commission, the European External Action Service, the Council, the European Parliament, NATO, Business Europe, Fleishman Hillard and POLITICO itself. Over several days, they discussed foreign and security policy, industrial strategy, strategic foresight and the governance of emerging technologies. These encounters do more than illustrate theory; they give participants a chance to stress-test their assumptions, understand the constraints facing decision-makers and build relationships across institutional boundaries. via EUI Throughout the program, each participant develops a capstone project that addresses a strategic challenge connected to a policy organization, often their own employer. This ensures that executive education translates into institutional impact: projects range from new regulatory approaches and partnership models to internal reforms aimed at making organizations more agile and resilient. At the same time, they help weave a durable transnational network of practitioners who can work together beyond the programme. Across our activities at the STG, a common thread runs through our work: a commitment to defending and renewing the liberal order through concrete practice. Addressing the rupture or transition we are living through requires more than technical fixes. It demands leaders who can think systemically, act across borders and design governance solutions that are both unconventional and democratically legitimate. > Across our activities at the STG, a common thread runs through our work: a > commitment to defending and renewing the liberal order through concrete > practice. In a period defined by systemic risk and strategic competition, leadership development cannot remain sectoral or reactive. It must be interdisciplinary, practice-oriented and anchored in real policy environments. At the Florence School of Transnational Governance, we aim to create precisely this kind of learning community — one where students, fellows and executives work side by side to reimagine how institutions can respond to global challenges. For policymakers and professionals who recognize themselves in this moment of rupture, our programs — including the GEM — offer a space to step back, learn with peers and return to their institutions better equipped to lead change. The task is urgent, but it is also an opportunity: by investing in transnational governance education today, we can help lay the foundations for a more resilient and inclusive order tomorrow.

Biotechnology is central to modern medicine and Europe’s long-term competitiveness. From cancer and cardiovascular disease to rare conditions, it is driving transformative advances for patients across Europe and beyond . 1         Yet innovation in Europe is increasingly shaped by regulatory fragmentation, procedural complexity and uneven implementation across  m ember s tates. As scientific progress accelerates, policy frameworks must evolve in parallel, supporting the full lifecycle of innovation from research and clinical development to manufacturing and patient access.  The proposed EU Biotech Act seeks to address these challenges. By streamlining regulatory procedures, strengthening coordination  and supporting scale-up and manufacturing, it aims to reinforce Europe’s position in a highly competitive global biotechnology landscape .2       Its success, however, will depend less on ambition than on delivery. Consistent implementation, proportionate oversight and continued global openness will determine whether the  a ct translates into faster patient access, sustained investment and long-term resilience.  Q: Why is biotechnology increasingly seen as a strategic pillar for Europe’s competitiveness, resilience and long-term growth?  Gilles Marrache, SVP and regional general manager, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, Africa and Canada, Amgen:  Biotechnology sits at the intersection of health, industrial policy and economic competitiveness. The sector is one of Europe’s strongest strategic assets and a leading contributor to  research and development  growth . 3    At the same time, Europe’s position is under increasing pressure. Over the past two decades, the EU has lost approximately 25  percent of its global share of pharmaceutical investment to other regions, such as the  United States  and China.   The choices made today will shape Europe’s long-term strength in the sector, influencing not only competitiveness and growth, but also how quickly patients can benefit from new treatments.  > Europe stands at a pivotal moment in biotechnology. Our life sciences legacy > is strong, but maintaining global competitiveness requires evolution .” 4   > >  Gilles Marrache, SVP and regional general manager, Europe, Latin America, > Middle East, Africa and Canada, Amgen. Q: What does the EU Biotech Act aim to do  and why is it considered an important step forward for patients and Europe’s innovation ecosystem?  Marrache: The EU Biotech Act represents a timely opportunity to better support biotechnology products from the laboratory to the market. By streamlining medicines’ pathways and improving conditions for scale-up and investment, it can help strengthen Europe’s innovation ecosystem and accelerate patient access to breakthrough therapies. These measures will help anchor biotechnology as a strategic priority for Europe’s future  —  and one that can deliver earlier patient benefit  —  so long as we can make it work in practice.  Q: How does the EU Biotech Act address regulatory fragmentation, and where will effective delivery and coordination be most decisive? Marrache: Regulatory fragmentation has long challenged biotechnology development in Europe, particularly for multinational clinical trials and innovative products. The Biotech Act introduces faster, more coordinated trials, expanded regulatory sandboxes and new investment and industrial capacity instruments.   The proposed EU Health Biotechnology Support Network and a  u nion-level regulatory status repository would strengthen transparency and predictability. Together, these measures would support earlier regulatory dialogue, help de-risk development   and promote more consistent implementation across  m ember  s tates.   They also create an opportunity to address complexities surrounding combination products  —  spanning medicines, devices and diagnostics  —  where overlapping requirements and parallel assessments have added delays.5 This builds on related efforts, such as the COMBINE programme,6 which seeks to streamline the navigation of the In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation , 7 Clinical Trials Regulation8 and the Medical Device Regulation9 through a single, coordinated assessment process. Continued clarity and coordination will be essential to reduce duplication and accelerate development timelines .10 Q: What conditions will be most critical to support biotech scale-up, manufacturing  and long-term investment in Europe?  Marrache: Europe must strike the right balance between strategic autonomy and openness to global collaboration. Any new instruments under the Biotech Act mechanisms should remain open and supportive of all types of biotech investments, recogni z ing that biotech manufacturing operates through globally integrated and highly speciali z ed value chains.   Q: How can Europe ensure faster and more predictable pathways from scientific discovery to patient access, while maintaining high standards of safety and quality?   Marrache: Faster and more predictable patient access depends on strengthening end-to-end pathways across the lifecycle.  The Biotech Act will help ensure continuity of scientific and regulatory experti z e, from clinical development through post-authori z ation. It will also support stronger alignment with downstream processes, such as health technology assessments, which  are  critical to success.   Moreover, reducing unnecessary delays or duplication in approval processes can set clearer expectations, more predictable development timelines and earlier planning for scale-up.    Gilles Marrache, SVP and regional general manager, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, Africa and Canada, Amgen. Via Amgen. Finally, embedding a limited number of practical tools (procedural, digital or governance-based) and ensuring they are integrated within existing  European Medicines Agency and EU regulatory structures can help achieve faster patient access . 11 Q: What role can stronger regulatory coordination, data use and public - private collaboration play in strengthening Europe’s global position in biotechnology?  Marrache: To unlock biotechnology’s full potential, consistent implementation is essential. Fragmented approaches to secondary data use, divergent  m ember   state interpretations and uncertainty for data holders still limit access to high-quality datasets at scale. The Biotech Act introduces key building blocks to address this.   These include Biotechnology Data Quality Accelerators to improve interoperability, trusted testing environments for advanced innovation, and alignment with the EU AI Act ,12  European Health Data Space13 and wider EU data initiatives. It also foresees AI-specific provisions and clinical trial guidance to provide greater operational clarity.  Crucially, these structures must simplify rather than add further layers of complexity.   Addressing remaining barriers will reduce legal uncertainty for AI deployment, support innovation and strengthen Europe’s competitiveness.  > These reforms will create a moderni z ed biotech ecosystem, healthier > societies, sustainable healthcare systems and faster patient access to the > latest breakthroughs in Europe .” 14 > > Gilles Marrache, SVP and regional general manager, Europe, Latin America, > Middle East, Africa and Canada, Amgen.  Q: As technologies evolve and global competition intensifies, how can policymakers ensure the Biotech Act remains flexible and future-proof?  Marrache:  To remain future-proof, the Biotech Act must be designed to evolve alongside scientific progress, market dynamics and patient needs. Clear objectives, risk-based requirements, regular review mechanisms and timely updates to guidance will enhance regulatory agility without creating unnecessary rigidity or administrative burden.  Continuous stakeholder dialogue combined with horizon scanning will be essential to sustaining innovation, resilience and timely patient access over the long term. Preserving regulatory openness and international cooperation will be critical in avoiding fragmentation and maintaining Europe’s credibility as a global biotech hub.  Q: Looking ahead, what two or three priorities should policymakers focus on to ensure the EU Biotech Act delivers meaningful impact in practice?  Marrache: Looking ahead, policymakers should focus on three priorities for the Biotech Act:    First, implementation must deliver real regulatory efficiency, predictability and coordination in practice. Second, Europe must sustain an open and investment-friendly framework that reflects the global nature of biotechnology.  And third, policymakers should ensure a clear and coherent legal framework across the lifecycle of innovative medicines, providing certainty for the use of  artificial intelligence   —  as a key driver of innovation in health biotechnology.  In practical terms, the EU Biotech Act will be judged not by the number of new instruments it creates, but by whether it reduces complexity, increases predictability and shortens the path from scientific discovery to patient benefit. An open, innovation-friendly framework that is competitive at the global level will help sustain investment, strengthen resilient supply chains and deliver better outcomes for patients across Europe and beyond. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- References 1. Amgen Europe, The EU Biotech Act Unlocking Europe’s Potential, May 2025. Retrieved from https://www.amgen.eu/media/press-releases/2025/05/The_EU_Biotech_Act_Unlocking_Europes_Potential 2. European Commission, Proposal for a Regulation to establish measures to strengthen the Union’s biotechnology and biomanufacturing sectors, December 2025. Retrieved from https://health.ec.europa.eu/publications/proposal-regulation-establish-measures-strengthen-unions-biotechnology-and-biomanufacturing-sectors_en 3. EFPIA, The pharmaceutical sector: A catalyst to foster Europe’s competitiveness, February 2026. Retrieved from https://www.efpia.eu/media/zkhfr3kp/10-actions-for-competitiveness-growth-and-security.pdf 4. The Parliament, Investing in healthy societies by boosting biotech competitiveness, November 2024. Retrieved from https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/partner/article/investing-in-healthy-societies-by-boosting-biotech-competitiveness#_ftn4 5. Amgen Europe, The EU Biotech Act Unlocking Europe’s Potential, May 2025. Retrieved from https://www.amgen.eu/docs/BiotechPP_final_digital_version_May_2025.pdf   6. European Commission, combine programme, June 2023. Retrieved from https://health.ec.europa.eu/medical-devices-topics-interest/combine-programme_en  7. European Commission. Medical Devices – In Vitro Diagnostics, March 2026. Retrieved from https://health.ec.europa.eu/medical-devices-vitro-diagnostics_en 8. European Commission, Clinical trials – Regulation EU No 536/2014, January 2022. Retrieved from https://health.ec.europa.eu/medicinal-products/clinical-trials/clinical-trials-regulation-eu-no-5362014_en 9. European Commission, Simpler and more effective rules for medical devices – Commission proposal for a targeted revision of the medical devices regulations, December 2025. Retrieved from https://health.ec.europa.eu/medical-devices-sector/new-regulations_en#mdr 10. Amgen Europe, The EU Biotech Act Unlocking Europe’s Potential, May 2025. Retrieved from https://www.amgen.eu/docs/BiotechPP_final_digital_version_May_2025.pdf   11. AmCham, EU position on the Commission Proposal for an EU Biotech Act 12. European Commission, AI Act | Shaping Europe’s digital future, June 2024. Retrieved from https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai 13. European Commission, European Health Data Space, March 2025. Retrieved from https://health.ec.europa.eu/ehealth-digital-health-and-care/european-health-data-space-regulation-ehds_en 14. The Parliament, Why Europe needs a Biotech Act, October 2025. Retrieved from https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/partner/article/why-europe-needs-a-biotech-act -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT * The sponsor is Amgen Inc * The ultimate controlling entity is Amgen Inc * The political advertisement is linked to advocacy on the EU Biotech Act. More information here.

BRUSSELS — Anxiety is growing over Europe’s unusually low gas storage levels as the war in Iran threatens to spark a fight among countries over dwindling global energy supply. 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 under 30 percent as of March, the lowest since 2022. With gas prices soaring after Iranian attacks effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow passage through which 20 percent of the world’s liquefied natural gas passes, of which 6 percent was bound for Europe —  the task of refilling those reserves by the winter carries a greater risk. Behind the scenes, government officials and industry lobbyists warn countries could rush to meet those targets all at once if the rules aren’t loosened, driving up demand and allowing traders to exploit soaring prices. That’s the dynamic that caused traders to bid up gas prices to over €300 per megawatt hour in 2022, with the lofty new storage targets compounding the sharp rise in demand that followed Russia’s supply cuts. Analysts say the difficulty in restocking those reserves will also be made more difficult by stiff competition from Asia, which is more directly exposed than Europe to the gas shipments that once flowed through the Persian Gulf. That could lead to higher mid-year gas prices, undercutting the incentive for traders to sell in the winter and store in the spring and summer. Officials stress it’s still early days. But already, multiple European governments have considered invoking existing carve-outs that allow them to relax storage targets in order to reduce the scope for bulk buying, according to three European energy officials familiar with the matter. Meanwhile, at least three countries believe the EU executive should introduce flexibilities beyond the existing framework, including lowering the target by as much as 30 percent, two of the officials said. The countries also sought a new EU mechanism to coordinate gas purchases, they added. Such policies would allow countries to fill up for the coming winter more comfortably. “With a lower target we would not be driving the demand for very high storage level filling, [and] driving the prices up,” said one of the people. The Commission hasn’t yet ruled on how best to respond, the people said. But it too has explicitly flagged the issue, both at a summit of energy ministers on Monday and previous gatherings of ambassadors and national energy experts over the past week, according to the people cited above and an EU official. A Commission spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment. In public, officials remain sanguine. For instance, Germany’s reserves are running at 22 percent capacity after Berlin pushed to lower its storage goals last year, but the country’s economy minister, Katherina Reiche, has downplayed the issue. Others are more nervous. “The status quo is unsustainable — existing mechanisms do not sufficiently ensure the security of gas supply because the incentives to fill gas storage facilities are inadequate,” Sebastian Heinermann, the managing director of German storage association INES, said in a statement Tuesday. Gas industry lobby group Eurogas has also warned that tough EU regulations governing cargoes of liquefied natural gas — which can be shipped to the highest bidder, as opposed to fixed supplies of pipeline gas — makes selling to Europe less appealing to many exporters. That further squeezes the EU’s chances of securing desperately needed fuel on an ever-tightening market.

President Donald Trump has often frustrated European allies with his overt entreaties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and harsh words for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But behind the seeming imbalance is a longer-term strategic goal – countering China. The Trump administration believes that incentivizing Russia to end the war in Ukraine, welcoming it back economically and showering it with U.S. investments, could eventually shift the global order away from China. It’s a gamble – and one Ukrainians are concerned with – but it underscores the administration’s belief that the biggest geopolitical threat facing the United States and the West is China, not Putin’s Russia. While countering China isn’t the only reason the administration wants a truce, it does help explain why after more than 15 months of fruitless talks and multiple threats to walk away, the president’s team – special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner – keep looking for a breakthrough. A Trump administration official, granted anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations, said finding a “way to align closer with Russia” could create “a different power balance with China that could be very, very beneficial.” The administration’s desire to use Ukraine peace negotiations to counter China has not been previously reported. But many observers believe this plan has little hope of succeeding – at least while Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping remain in charge. And the idea of giving Russia economic incentives to grow closer to the U.S. is concerning for Ukraine, said a Ukrainian official, granted anonymity to discuss diplomatic matters. “We had such attempts in the past already and it led to nothing,” they said. “Germany had [Ostpolitik, Germany’s policy toward the East], for that and now Russia is fighting the deadliest war in Europe.” And when it comes to banking on breaking apart China and Russia, the Ukrainian official noted that both countries “have one [thing] in common which you can not beat – they hate the U.S. as a symbol of democracy.” Still, the strategy is in keeping with the administration’s broader foreign policy initiatives aimed at least in part in countering Chinese influence. Taking out Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and pressuring Cuba’s government to the brink of collapse all diminishes China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere. The administration threatened Panama, which withdrew from Chinese leader Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative a month after Trump took office and called Peru’s deal with China surrounding its deepwater port in Chancay a “cautionary tale.” And striking Iran shifted China’s oil import potential, as Tehran supplied Beijing with more than 13 percent of its oil in 2025, according to Reuters. Indeed, the Trump administration official noted that between Venezuela, Iran and Russia, China was buying oil at below-market rates, subsidizing its consumption “to the tune of over $100 billion a year for the last several years.” “So that’s been a massive subsidy for China by being able to buy oil from these places on the black market, sometimes $30 a barrel lower than what the spot market is,” the person said. Even as there are reports that Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran, the U.S. and Russia keep talking. Witkoff and Kushner met with Kirill Dmitriev, a top adviser to Putin, last week. The Russians called the meeting “productive.” Witkoff said they’d keep talking. These negotiations and the broader efforts to counter China now take place under the spectre of Trump asking several countries, including China, for help securing the Strait of Hormuz. The National Security Strategy, released in November, spilled a fair amount of ink on China, though it often doesn’t mention Beijing directly. Many U.S. lawmakers — from both parties — consider China the gravest long-term threat to America’s global power. “There is a longstanding kind of U.S. strategic train of thought that says that having Russia and China working together is very much not in our interests, and finding ways to divide them, or at least tactically collaborate with the partner who’s less of a long term strategic threat to us,” said said Alexander Gray, Trump’s National Security Council chief of staff in his first term. Gray, who is currently the CEO of American Global Strategies, a consulting firm, compared the effort to former Secretary of State and national security adviser Henry Kissinger, who spearheaded President Richard Nixon’s trip to China during the Cold War in an effort to pull that country away from the Soviet Union. The State Department declined to comment for this report. However, a State Department spokesperson previously told POLITICO that China’s economic ties with Latin American countries present a “national security threat” for the U.S. that the administration is actively trying to mitigate. The White House declined to comment. Fred Fleitz, another Trump NSC chief of staff in his first term, noted that the president has “pressed Putin to end the war to normalize Russia’s relationship with the U.S. and Europe,” and wants Russia to rejoin the G8. “It is clear that Trump wants to find a way to end the war in Ukraine and to coexist peacefully with Russia,” said Fleitz, who now serves as the vice chair for American Security at the America First Policy Institute. “But I also believe he correctly sees the growing Russia-China alliance as a far greater threat to U.S. and global security than the Ukraine War and therefore wants to find ways to improve U.S.-Russia relations to weaken or break that alliance.” Others, however, remain skeptical. Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the goal to break Russia and China is “appealing in theory, but in practice the partnership between Moscow and Beijing is iron-clad.” “Obviously there is nothing wrong with testing diplomacy and President Trump is a dealmaker. But history probably suggests that this won’t really result in much,” Singleton added. “The likely outcome [with Russia] is limited tactical cooperation with the U.S., not some sort of durable break with Beijing.” And China seeks to keep Russia as an ally and junior partner in its relationship as a counter to Western powers. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reaffirmed the relationship in a press conference this month, saying, “in a fluid and turbulent world, China-Russia relationship has stood rock-solid against all odds.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, shortly after his confirmation, hinted at the broader strategy, saying in an interview, that “a situation where the Russians are permanently a junior partner to China, having to do whatever China says they need to do because of their dependence on them” is not a “good outcome” for Russia, the U.S. or Europe. But Rubio, like the Trump administration official given anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations, both acknowledged that fully severing those ties would be a tough lift. “I don’t know if we’ll ever be successful at peeling them completely off a relationship with the Chinese,” Rubio said in February of last year. Adam Savit, director for China policy at the America First Policy Institute, argued that “Russia matters at the margins, but it won’t be a decisive variable in the U.S.-China competition,” and that the “center of gravity is East Asia.” “Russia gives China strategic depth, a friendly border, energy supply, and a second front in Ukraine to sap Western attention,” he said. “Getting closer to Russia could complicate China’s strategic position, but Moscow is a declining power and solidly the junior partner in that relationship.”

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.

By Anna Wiederkehr and Erin Doherty Many Americans give their country positive reviews. Some of the United States’ closest allies give far less flattering ratings. The POLITICO Poll, conducted across five countries, reveals a stark disconnect between how Americans see their country and how several top allies do. As the Trump administration’s aggressive posture abroad disrupts the longstanding world order, the United States’ global reputation appears far worse than Americans realize. In the U.S., the divergence is especially sharp along partisan lines. Americans who voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 overwhelmingly give the country high marks on the world stage. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This article is part of an ongoing project from POLITICO and Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London, to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas. You can find new surveys and analysis each month at politico.com/poll. Have questions or comments? Ideas for future surveys? Email us at poll@politico.com. Those who backed former Vice President Kamala Harris, however, offer negative assessments far closer to America’s allies. The results paint a lopsided picture, with Americans — driven by the president’s own supporters — increasingly on an island in how they view the country. It’s not just The POLITICO Poll that reveals this growing mismatch. Leaders across Europe and Canada are increasingly voicing their concern about Trump’s efforts to upend longtime alliances. The poll was conducted Feb. 6 to Feb. 9 in the United States, Canada and the three largest economies in Europe: France, Germany and the United Kingdom. We’ve turned the results from several key questions into ratings, comparing answers across countries. Here’s America, reviewed: “THE US PROTECTS DEMOCRACY” U.S. 4.9/10 About half of Americans, 49 percent, said the U.S. protects democracy, including three in four who backed Trump in 2024. On the contrary, just 35 percent of voters who backed Harris agreed. Featured review GERMANY 1.8/10 “I see no need for the Americans to now want to save democracy in Europe. If it would need to be saved, we would manage on our own.” —German Chancellor Friedrich Merz Dec. 9, 2025 Other reviews U.K. 3.4/10 CANADA 2.5/10 FRANCE 2.1/10 Question: “Thinking about the US, do you agree or disagree with the following? The US protects democracy.” The U.S. has long seen itself as a defender of democracy — both at home and abroad. But that reputation may be fraying amid growing unease among longtime allies about whether the U.S. still protects the democratic principles it once championed. When U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro earlier this year, Trump pointed to Maduro’s disputed election as part of the rationale for the operation, even as some allies and international experts questioned the legality of Washington’s intervention. “THE US IS MOSTLY A FORCE FOR STABILITY IN THE WORLD” U.S. 3.6/10 A 36 percent plurality of Americans said the U.S. is mostly a force for stability — more than double the share of adults in the other countries who said the same. Featured review FRANCE 1.5/10 “We have the Chinese tsunami on the trade front, and we have minute-by-minute instability on the American side. These two crises amount to a profound shock — a rupture for Europeans.” — French President Emmanuel Macron February, 2026 Other reviews U.K. 1.8/10 CANADA 1.4/10 GERMANY 1.3/10 Question: “Which of the following comes closest to your view on the US’s role in the world?” Options: The US is “mostly a force for stability in the world”, “sometimes a force for stability, sometimes a threat,” “mostly a threat to global stability,” “not very important to global stability either way,” or “don’t know.” The surveyed nations have been among the hardest hit by Trump’s sweeping trade agenda, resulting in strained economic and diplomatic relationships. The steep levies — and Trump’s repeated broadsides against U.S. allies — have left them doubting Washington’s reliability as both a partner and a stabilizing force. It’s not just that allies no longer see the United States as a force for stability. Sizable shares, including a 43 percent plurality in Canada, say the country is mostly a threat to global stability. At the Munich Security Conference last month, a number of global leaders openly questioned the United States’ standing in the international order. “THE US CAN BE DEPENDED UPON IN A CRISIS” U.S. 5.7/10 A 57 percent majority of Americans said the U.S. can be depended on in a crisis, more than double the share of adults in Canada, Germany and France who agree. Featured review CANADA 2.7/10 “It is clear that the United States is no longer a reliable partner. It is possible that, with comprehensive negotiations, we will be able to restore some trust, but there will be no turning back.” —Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney March 28, 2025 Other reviews U.K. 3.8/10 FRANCE 2.7/10 GERMANY 2.5/10 Question: “How would you rate The US on the following scales? Can be depended upon in a crisis | Can not be depended upon in a crisis” with the option to choose two levels of agreement on either side or a middle point between the two. The ratings displayed are a sum of the agreement of the levels on either side. The most common view among the close allies surveyed, in fact, was that the U.S. cannot be depended on in a crisis. That’s the opinion of a 57 percent majority in Canada, 51 percent majority in Germany, and pluralities in France (47 percent) and the U.K. (42 percent). Their concerns come as the Trump administration has clashed with allies over defense spending, trade and the scope of collective security agreements. Trump has repeatedly cast doubt over America’s commitments in Europe, fueling questions about whether Washington can be relied upon. “HAS THE MOST ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY” U.S. 5.3/10 Most Americans — 53 percent — said their country has the most advanced technology in comparison to the European Union and China. But top NATO allies disagree. Featured review U.K. 3.5/10 “China is a vital player on the global stage, and it’s vital that we build a more sophisticated relationship. … “Our international partnerships help us deliver the security and prosperity the British people deserve, and that is why I’ve long been clear that the UK and China need a long term, consistent, and comprehensive strategic partnership.” — UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer January, 2026 Other reviews CANADA 3.7/10 FRANCE 3.6/10 GERMANY 3/10 Question: “Comparing China, the EU, and The US, if you had to choose, which would you say…: Has the most advanced technology” with the option to choose China, the EU or the U.S. Trump sees the U.S. in close competition with China on technological advancements, repeatedly touting America as the global leader in artificial intelligence and chip production. But a majority of respondents in the other countries said China, not the United States or the European Union, has the most advanced technology: 54 percent in Canada, 55 percent in Germany, 53 percent in the U.K. and 50 percent in France. That perception gap could have real-world consequences. If longtime allies view Beijing as the technological leader, it could complicate Trump’s ability to rally partners around policies to try to curb China’s growth. ABOUT THE SURVEY The POLITICO Poll was conducted by Public First from Feb. 6 to 9, surveying 10,289 adults online, with at least 2,000 respondents each from the U.S., Canada, U.K., France and Germany. Results for each country were weighted to be representative on dimensions including age, gender and geography. The overall margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points for each country. Smaller subgroups have higher margins of error.

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.