BRUSSELS — Russia’s drones and agents are unleashing attacks across NATO countries and Europe is now doing what would have seemed outlandish just a few years ago: planning how to hit back. Ideas range from joint offensive cyber operations against Russia, and faster and more coordinated attribution of hybrid attacks by quickly pointing the finger at Moscow, to surprise NATO-led military exercises, according to two senior European government officials and three EU diplomats. “The Russians are constantly testing the limits — what is the response, how far can we go?” Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braže noted in an interview. A more “proactive response is needed,” she told POLITICO. “And it’s not talking that sends a signal — it’s doing.” Russian drones have buzzed Poland and Romania in recent weeks and months, while mysterious drones have caused havoc at airports and military bases across the continent. Other incidents include GPS jamming, incursions by fighter aircraft and naval vessels, and an explosion on a key Polish rail link ferrying military aid to Ukraine. “Overall, Europe and the alliance must ask themselves how long we are willing to tolerate this type of hybrid warfare … [and] whether we should consider becoming more active ourselves in this area,” German State Secretary for Defense Florian Hahn told Welt TV last week. Hybrid attacks are nothing new. Russia has in recent years sent assassins to murder political enemies in the U.K., been accused of blowing up arms storage facilities in Central Europe, attempted to destabilize the EU by financing far-right political parties, engaged in social media warfare, and tried to upend elections in countries like Romania and Moldova. But the sheer scale and frequency of the current attacks are unprecedented. Globsec, a Prague-based think tank, calculated there were more than 110 acts of sabotage and attempted attacks carried out in Europe between January and July, mainly in Poland and France, by people with links to Moscow. “Today’s world offers a much more open — indeed, one might say creative — space for foreign policy,” Russian leader Vladimir Putin said during October’s Valdai conference, adding: “We are closely monitoring the growing militarization of Europe. Is it just rhetoric, or is it time for us to respond?” Russia may see the EU and NATO as rivals or even enemies — former Russian President and current deputy Kremlin Security Council head Dmitry Medvedev last month said: “The U.S. is our adversary.” However, Europe does not want war with a nuclear-armed Russia and so has to figure out how to respond in a way that deters Moscow but does not cross any Kremlin red lines that could lead to open warfare. That doesn’t mean cowering, according to Swedish Chief of Defense Gen. Michael Claesson. “We cannot allow ourselves to be fearful and have a lot of angst for escalation,” he said in an interview. “We need to be firm.” So far, the response has been to beef up defenses. After Russian war drones were shot down over Poland, NATO said it would boost the alliance’s drone and air defenses on its eastern flank — a call mirrored by the EU. Even that is enraging Moscow. Europeans “should be afraid and tremble like dumb animals in a herd being driven to the slaughter,” said Medvedev. “They should soil themselves with fear, sensing their near and agonizing end.” SWITCHING GEARS Frequent Russian provocations are changing the tone in European capitals. After deploying 10,000 troops to protect Poland’s critical infrastructure following the sabotage of a rail line linking Warsaw and Kyiv, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Friday accused Moscow of engaging in “state terrorism.” After the incident, the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said such threats posed an “extreme danger” to the bloc, arguing it must “have a strong response” to the attacks. Last week, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto slammed the continent’s “inertia” in the face of growing hybrid attacks and unveiled a 125-page plan to retaliate. In it he suggested establishing a European Center for Countering Hybrid Warfare, a 1,500-strong cyber force, as well as military personnel specialized in artificial intelligence. “Everybody needs to revise their security procedures,” Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski added on Thursday. “Russia is clearly escalating its hybrid war against EU citizens.” WALK THE TALK Despite the increasingly fierce rhetoric, what a more muscular response means is still an open question. Part of that is down to the difference between Moscow and Brussels — the latter is more constrained by acting within the rules, according to Kevin Limonier, a professor and deputy director at the Paris-based GEODE think tank. “This raises an ethical and philosophical question: Can states governed by the rule of law afford to use the same tools … and the same strategies as the Russians?” he asked. So far, countries like Germany and Romania are strengthening rules that would allow authorities to shoot down drones flying over airports and militarily sensitive objects. National security services, meanwhile, can operate in a legal gray zone. Allies from Denmark to the Czech Republic already allow offensive cyber operations. The U.K. reportedly hacked into ISIS’s networks to obtain information on an early-stage drone program by the terrorist group in 2017. Allies must “be more proactive on the cyber offensive,” said Braže, and focus on “increasing situational awareness — getting security and intelligence services together and coordinated.” In practice, countries could use cyber methods to target systems critical to Russia’s war effort, like the Alabuga economic zone in Tatarstan in east-central Russia, where Moscow is producing Shahed drones, as well as energy facilities or trains carrying weapons, said Filip Bryjka, a political scientist and hybrid threat expert at the Polish Academy of Sciences. “We could attack the system and disrupt their functioning,” he said. Europe also has to figure out how to respond to Russia’s large-scale misinformation campaigns with its own efforts inside the country. “Russian public opinion … is somewhat inaccessible,” said one senior military official. “We need to work with allies who have a fairly detailed understanding of Russian thinking — this means that cooperation must also be established in the field of information warfare.” Still, any new measures “need to have plausible deniability,” said one EU diplomat. SHOW OF FORCE NATO, for its part, is a defensive organization and so is leery of offensive operations. “Asymmetric responses are an important part of the conversation,” said one NATO diplomat, but “we aren’t going to stoop to the same tactics as Russia.” Instead, the alliance should prioritize shows of force that illustrate strength and unity, said Oana Lungescu, a former NATO spokesperson and fellow with London’s Royal United Services Institute think tank. In practice, that means rapidly announcing whether Moscow is behind a hybrid attack and running ‘no-notice’ military exercises on the Russian border with Lithuania or Estonia. Meanwhile, the NATO-backed Centre of Excellence on Hybrid Threats in Helsinki, which brings together allied officials, is also “providing expertise and training” and drafting “policies to counter those threats,” said Maarten ten Wolde, a senior analyst at the organization.  “Undoubtedly, more should be done on hybrid,” said one senior NATO diplomat, including increasing collective attribution after attacks and making sure to “show through various means that we pay attention and can shift assets around in a flexible way.” Jacopo Barigazzi, Nicholas Vinocur, Nette Nöstlinger, Antoaneta Roussi and Seb Starvecic contributed reporting.

LUXEMBOURG — Europe’s new migration rules hit early turbulence Tuesday, with countries split over who should shoulder how much responsibility. Migration and home affairs ministers met in Luxembourg to hash out the technicalities of a new proposal on so-called return hubs and cross-border deportation powers. But on the sidelines, the political implications of who has the capacity to accept more asylum-seekers dominated. The European Commission was due to say on Wednesday which countries are struggling with migration and what help they should receive, though that’s now delayed. As set out in the new EU law governing asylum and migration — agreed in 2023, with an implementation deadline of June next year — the Commission will say which countries are under “migratory pressure.” The other governments can then choose to either accept migrants from those countries or support them with funding and staff. But countries seem far more willing to part with cash than open their doors.  Belgian Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt said on the sidelines of the meeting it will give financial contributions, as its system for accepting asylum seekers is “full.” Finnish Interior Minister Mari Rantanen, of the far-right Finns Party, said her country will “obviously” not take migrants from other EU member countries. Government policy in the Netherlands is to pay rather than receive people. Sweden’s Migration Minister Johan Forssell strongly hinted his country is not keen to take in any more migrants, with Forssell complaining it has already received “so many” asylum-seekers in the last decade. Comments like those foreshadow an obvious problem: That every country will be willing to spend cash, but not take in migrants. In that scenario, a complex system of “offsets” could kick in — and they would instead handle some asylum claims for the countries that need help, rather than receiving people who’ve been relocated. The track record of Italy and Greece — likely to be designated as recipients of that support — has not helped matters. Last year, the two countries handled only a tiny percentage of the migration cases they were supposed to as set out by the so-called Dublin rules, which stipulate which country should handle asylum applications (typically the applicant’s country of entry to the EU). Governments were also unable to agree on a system of mandatory recognition of asylum decisions taken in other EU countries, Danish Migration Minister Rasmus Stoklund, who’s currently leading discussions, said in Luxembourg. Denmark proposed a change to the Commission’s original draft, but national governments remain “too divided,” he said.  Magnus Brunner, the EU commissioner for migration, said that there is “a lot of cooperation” and will among countries to reform the system. | Sven Hoppe/Getty Images Magnus Brunner, the EU commissioner for migration, said there is “a lot of cooperation” and desire among countries to reform the system. He added that “time is of the essence” — an unsurprising comment in light of a call last year by EU leaders for “determined action” on deportations and a June deadline looming. Failure could also come with grave political costs for the EU’s center ground.  A situation where member countries refuse to implement the rules they agreed in the EU’s flagship migration pact would “fundamentally undermine the credibility of the common European asylum system,” said Alberto-Horst Neidhardt, senior policy analyst at the European Policy Centre. “If that happens, as an immediate result, you would have internal border controls reinstated across the Schengen area, you would have systematic pushbacks at the external borders … the systemic implications of this would certainly threaten the Union and … there would be certainly a political spiral because the far right would claim vindication,” Neidhardt said. That’s a worst-case scenario, but this is a “very different political context” than in 2015, when the EU faced its last migration crisis, he said. “National governments are much more self-interested.”

BRUSSELS — Passengers arriving in the EU from third countries on Sunday should brace for long waits as the bloc’s new automated registration Entry/Exit System procedure goes live. “Airlines feeding into the big hubs run on tight schedules, so even a few minutes delay at border control can throw off connections,” said Montserrat Barriga, director general of the European Regions Airline Association lobby. The system will be rolled out gradually over six months, meaning not all crossing points will use it immediately. Non-EU nationals will need to stop for a longer time before a passport control officer or use self-service kiosks at airports, ports and international rail terminals to provide fingerprints and have their photo taken. On subsequent internal Schengen border crossings, travellers will not need to repeat the registration, as their data on file will be used to record their entries and exits digitally. Biometric data is retained in the EES system for three years, which is extended to five if no exit has been recorded. The system is being introduced in all Schengen zone countries — EU countries as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland — EU members Ireland and Cyprus aren’t included. EES will replace the current system of manually stamping passports, which doesn’t allow for automatic detection of people who have exceeded their authorized stay of 90 days within 180 days. “The Entry/Exit System is the digital backbone of our new common European migration and asylum framework,” said Commissioner for Internal Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner. In the first six months, the two systems will coexist, meaning travelers may have to go through both passport and EES procedures. It becomes fully operational on April 10, when it will replace manual passport stamps.  That’s making national authorities nervous about possible chaos. Paris is bracing for more problems than other EU countries because France is the world’s leading tourist destination, with over 100 million visitors in 2024. “If tomorrow we had to pass all the passengers of a long-haul flight from China through EES, you’d triple the waiting time at the border,” said a French interior ministry official, speaking on the condition of being granted anonymity. Non-EU nationals will need to stop for a longer time before a passport control officer or use self-service kiosks at airports. | Thierry ROge/AFP via Getty Images “The additional formalities required by the EES will inevitably increase waiting times for travelers from third countries,” they added. The EU said the EES could be temporarily suspended during the first six months of implementation if wait times become too long or there are technical issues. “That’s why the phased rollout is so important, it gives airports and airlines some breathing space to adapt,” Barriga said. The Independent reported that only three countries — Estonia, Luxembourg and the Czech Republic — will have the EES in place for all arrivals and departures on Sunday. Germany announced that only Düsseldorf Airport would implement EES from Sunday, with Munich and Frankfurt airports following later. In Italy, Rome Fiumicino and Milan Malpensa Airports will be using the system as of Monday. The Netherlands will implement EES at Rotterdam The Hague Airport on Oct. 27 and at Amsterdam Schiphol on Nov. 3. Spain will only use the system for one flight into Madrid on Sunday, before gradually spreading it. According to the French official, France will hire an additional 230 border guards at the 120 French entry points to the Schengen area to handle the extra workload as the system is gradually introduced. Some airports have disclosed details about their capabilities. Brussels Airport, for example, said it has 61 self-service EES registration kiosks. “It is important to underline that the management of border crossing points lies with the member states, not with airport operators,” said Federico Bonaudi, director of facilitation at airport lobby ACI Europe. For months, the lobby has expressed concerns about “the uncertainty about how the system will perform when all the member states connect to it” as of Sunday. “Thus far, only partial tests have been done,” Bonaudi said. “The persistent understaffing of border police in certain member states” is among the concerns raised by ACI Europe. In addition, “the communications campaign targeting the travelling public to raise their awareness has been launched late in our view.” Despite these issues, “at this stage, all the necessary legal safeguards and tools have been put in place to minimize disruptions and delays on the first day of operations and the days ensuing,” Bonaudi added. The Commission set up a preregistration app aimed at making border crossings faster. However, Sweden is the only country that has confirmed it will use the app. Victor Goury-Laffont contributed reporting.

BERLIN — Germany’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt invited European Union counterparts to a migration summit on Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain in the Bavarian Alps, to draft proposals for stricter migration rules. Dobrindt, the Bavarian conservative in charge of executing German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s tough-on-migration turn, is set to host talks with interior ministers from France, Poland, Austria, Denmark and the Czech Republic on July 18. Also invited is the EU’s new migration czar, Austrian conservative Magnus Brunner, a spokesperson for the interior ministry in Berlin told POLITICO’s Berlin Playbook. “Citizens rightly expect order, and more control and cooperation from politicians instead of powerlessness. We want to send this signal,” Dobrindt told POLITICO. The aim of the summit is a declaration containing concrete ideas — including on border protection and deporting rejected asylum-seekers to so-called third countries, or countries outside the EU — that are to be jointly pushed forward at the European level, according to the interior ministry. Germany was long among the EU countries with a more liberal approach toward migration. But the current government, led by Merz, has vowed to drastically cut the inflow of asylum-seekers under pressure from the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), now the largest opposition party in Germany’s parliament. Just days after taking office this spring, Merz’s interior minister beefed up checks on Germany’s borders and vowed German police would turn away undocumented immigrants, including asylum-seekers — a move most experts deemed against EU law. The border crackdown fomented tensions between Germany and its neighbors, with politicians in France, Poland and Austria criticizing Merz’s government for inhibiting the free movement of people and goods within the Schengen Area. Earlier this week, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Warsaw’s patience with Germany “is becoming exhausted” as he announced new checks on his country’s borders with Germany and Lithuania. Dobrindt and Merz defended the national border checks by arguing they are a temporary step while they work toward migration reforms on the EU level. “We must strengthen the possibility of repatriation,” Dobrindt told German magazine Focus in an interview earlier this week. “This requires the removal of the connecting element, as entailed in the CEAS, according to which refugees must have a connection to the country to which they are returned,” he continued, referring to the Common European Asylum System. “We want to abolish this and at the same time expand our strategic partnerships with third countries,” he added, without naming specific countries. In a similar move in May, the European Commission proposed changing EU law to allow the deportation of migrants to countries outside the EU — a proposal that human rights groups sharply criticized. In separate comments, Dobrindt also told Focus he wants to close a deal with the Taliban-led government in Afghanistan to deport Afghans who were found to have committed crimes in Germany. He would consider making “agreements directly with Afghanistan to enable repatriations,” he said. All diplomatic and political ties between Berlin and Kabul were cut when the Taliban returned to power in 2021.

Political posturing over migration has delivered yet another blow to Europe’s beleaguered free-travel zone. Faced with right-wing demands at home to control the flow of people arriving from outside the EU’s borders, the leaders of Poland and Germany are seeking easy wins which might placate populists — but put the once-sacred Schengen area on life support. Warsaw’s patience with Germany sending migrants back to Poland “is becoming exhausted,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, as he announced the imposition of checks on his country’s borders with Germany and Lithuania from July 7. Almost four decades after the introduction of the borderless travel area that encompasses 450 million people from 29 countries — four of which aren’t in the EU — supposedly temporary border controls in the name of exceptional security concerns are increasingly the norm, creating the impression Schengen exists more in name than in substance. But with the rise of far-right parties and several years of migration from Ukraine — and before that, the Middle East — carveouts to the border-free zone rules have become an easy solution for politicians looking to show they mean action. “We consider the introduction of controls necessary,” Tusk said, pointing the finger at Germany’s “unilateral” action. In May, the conservative-led government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz ramped up checks on Germany’s borders, including with Poland, following pressure from Berlin’s own opposition party, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Warsaw’s patience with Germany sending migrants back to Poland “is becoming exhausted,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. | Rafal Guz/EPA German police will turn away more undocumented immigrants, including asylum seekers, Merz said. The move further bolstered border controls the previous government had already put in place October 2023. The crackdown riled Germany’s neighbors, including Poland, despite Merz’s promises to step up Berlin’s relationship with Warsaw — an alliance he considers key for driving a united European defense policy. While politicians have warned Germany’s controls could chip away at the free movement of people and goods within the Schengen area, critics have also called the border measures largely symbolic. Poland’s Fakt newspaper said that German authorities returned 1,087 people to Poland between May 1 and June 15 this year, pointing out that those numbers aren’t significantly different from last year’s. According to German police union figures, the new checks led to 160 asylum applicants being rejected in the first four weeks. It’s a small fraction of total refusals — on average, up to 1,300 people per week are rejected for lacking the necessary documentation. Germany’s move, however, has created a political problem for Tusk’s ruling centrist Civic Coalition. Having narrowly lost the presidential election to the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, it’s feeling the hot breath of rightwing opposition parties that want a tougher stance on migration. Civic Coalition and PiS are currently neck-and-neck in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls and the hard-right Confederation has surged since the last general election in 2023. All 3 Years 2 Years 1 Year 6 Months Smooth Kalman Polish civilian vigilante groups tied to right-wing parties are staging patrols along the frontier with Germany. “Poland’s western border is ceasing to exist,” Mariusz Błaszczak, a senior PiS politician, warned last week. He blamed Tusk’s “servility toward Berlin.” Sławomir Mentzen, a Confederation leader, accused the Polish Border Guard of cooperating with Germany in accepting illegal migrants. The government has denounced those attacks. “Don’t play politics with Poland’s security. This is not the time or place for such actions,” Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s interior minister, said on X.  Poland’s retaliatory controls have also put Merz’s border policy in the firing line, with Germany’s left-wing opposition painting Warsaw’s decision as a clear setback. “This is a devastating signal for a German government and a ‘foreign chancellor’ Merz, who promised to regain trust in Europe,” Chantal Kopf, a lawmaker for the Greens, told POLITICO. Knut Abraham, a member of Merz’s conservatives and the government’s coordinator for the German-Polish relationship, in an interview with Welt also warned against lasting checks. While they are “necessary as a political signal that migration policy in Germany has changed … the solution cannot be to push migrants back and forth between Poland and Germany or to cement border controls on both sides,” he said. Merz on Tuesday defended Germany’s border checks. “We naturally want to preserve this Schengen area, but freedom of movement in the Schengen area will only work in the long term if it is not abused by those who promote irregular migration, in particular by smuggling migrants,” he said.

Poland will introduce temporary controls on its borders with Germany and Lithuania as of July 7, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday. The move follows rising tension over illegal migration within the European free travel zone. Tusk warned on Monday that his country would reimpose checks on the Polish-German border if it found that Germany was sending irregular migrants to Poland, Lithuanian media reported. He also said his country would take measures to prevent illegal border crossings from the Lithuanian side, as Poland had “a lot of effort, money, sweat and, unfortunately, some blood, to make the eastern border with Belarus air-tight.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday defended Germany’s border checks. “We naturally want to preserve this Schengen area, but freedom of movement in the Schengen area will only work in the long term if it is not abused by those who promote irregular migration, in particular by smuggling migrants,” he said. The interior ministers of Germany and Poland had discussed the situation during a lengthy phone call on Monday evening, Merz said in Berlin. “We are also talking to the Polish government about joint controls in the respective border hinterland,” the chancellor said. In response to Polish media reports, Merz said he wanted to clarify that Berlin did not push back asylum seekers who had already arrived. “Some people here are claiming that there is, so to speak, regular repatriation tourism from Germany to Poland … That is not the case,” he said. This story is being updated.

BERLIN — Austrian Chancellor Christian Stocker said he sees German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as a key partner in drastically cutting irregular migration to Europe even as tensions simmer between their countries over Berlin’s domestic border crackdown. “We need a solution to ensure that procedures take place at the external [European Union] border,” Stocker told POLITICO’s Berlin Playbook Podcast, speaking of asylum claims. “Protecting our internal borders in the Schengen area cannot be the last answer. This can only be an emergency solution,” he said ahead of planned talks with Merz in Berlin on Friday. “I am very happy that I have a partner in Friedrich Merz who sees these things very similarly,” Stocker added. Stocker said he viewed Austria as “a pioneer” in promoting stricter European policies on asylum claims. Germany has long pushed back on some of the tougher European migration proposals, but Merz’s arrival has shifted that paradigm. Under pressure from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) opposition party, Merz’s conservative-led government has vowed to drastically cut the inflow of asylum seekers to the country. Just days after taking office this spring Merz’s interior minister increased checks on Germany’s borders — including with Austria — and said German police would turn away more undocumented immigrants, including asylum seekers. The border crackdown led to tensions between Germany and its neighbors, with politicians in France, Poland and Austria criticizing Merz’s government for inhibiting the free movement of people and goods within the Schengen area. Ultimately, the number of asylum seekers turned away at Germany’s borders was low, leading critics to disparage Merz’s crackdown as largely symbolic. Stocker downplayed the suggestion that Germany’s border controls had created significant tensions between the two countries, instead siding with Merz to form a tough-on-migration axis within Europe. “I believe that these restrictions do not have a major impact,” he said of the border controls. “If there is a need to control an internal border, and we have done so ourselves … I cannot deny other countries doing the same. In other words, these border controls are ultimately a solution that is not intended to be permanent, but sometimes it is a necessary one.” Germany has long pushed back on some of the tougher European migration proposals, but Friedrich Merz’s arrival has shifted that paradigm. | Oliver Matthys/EPA Prior to the European Council summit in Brussels on Thursday, Merz attended a gathering of anti-immigration European leaders that included Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen. “We are back on board with the topic of migration,” an official from the German chancellery said. Stocker, whose centrist coalition is also under pressure from the far right, said he favors the Commission’s plan to overhaul the EU’s deportation system, called for heightened controls on the bloc’s external borders, and urged that asylum procedures take place on Europe’s borders instead of within member states. “It’s a matter of coordinating our positions, while also coordinating how we deal with the issues discussed in the European Council at the European level,” Stocker said ahead of his Friday meeting with Merz.