FAVERSHAM, U.K. — Frank Furedi, one of the European populist right’s intellectual darlings, has a nagging anxiety. What if they gain power, then blow it? A Hungarian-born sociologist who spent decades on the political fringes himself, Furedi now runs MCC Brussels, a think tank backed by Viktor Orbán’s Budapest government. It aims to challenge what he calls the European Union’s liberal consensus — and help sharpen the ideas of a rising populist right. Speaking in his home office in the English market town of Faversham, where he was recovering from a recent illness, the 78-year-old professional provocateur — who has risen to prominence in Europe’s right-wing circles — hailed what he sees as the impending collapse of Europe’s political center. But he also questioned whether the insurgent movements benefiting from that upheaval have the discipline needed to govern if they win. “You can win an election, but if you’re not prepared for its consequences, then you become your worst enemy,” he said during a two-hour conversation in his paper-strewn office. “You basically risk being doomed forever.” Across Europe, the movements Furedi is talking about are already testing the political mainstream. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is surging in Britain, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has a real shot at the French presidency, and the Alternative for Germany is consistently at or near the top of polls. In Italy and Hungary, Giorgia Meloni and Orbán have already shown what populists in power can look like. Inside his house in Faversham, the conversation turned from Europe’s populist surge to the ideas that might shape what comes next. As Furedi led the way up the stairs, a yapping cockerpoo was hauled away into some back room. At the top of the staircase was a framed poster of Hannah Arendt, the philosopher who understood the attraction of radical political movements for the disenfranchised and alienated — and the potential for those movements to veer into evil. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is surging in Britain, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has a real shot at the French presidency, and the Alternative for Germany is consistently at or near the top of polls. | Nicolas Guyonnet/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images But Furedi isn’t worried about a return of European totalitarianism — if anything, he thinks the current regime is where freedom of thought and speech are being crushed. His real fear is that Europe’s right-wingers arrive in power unprepared — failing to learn from the experience of the U.S. MAGA movement, which almost blew its chance after Donald Trump won power in 2016 but couldn’t execute a coherent vision for government.  “There’s a real demand for something different,” he said. “It’s the collapse of the old order, which is really what’s exciting.” But while Furedi is eager to watch it all burn down, he’s unconvinced by the right-wing parties carrying the torches.  “At the moment, all politics is negative,” he said, noting two exceptions where the right has managed to govern with stability: Meloni and Orbán.  “It’s a fascinating moment in most parts of Europe, but it’s a moment that isn’t going to be there forever,” he said. “But whether these movements have got the maturity and the professionalism to be able to project themselves in a convincing way still remains to be seen.”  POLITICAL PROGRAM Like Farage, Meloni and many of their ilk, Furedi is riding a political wave after a lifetime spent far from power or relevance. Since the 1960s he has been an agitator at the obscure edge of politics, first on the left as a founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party and its magazine Living Marxism, which attacked the British Labour Party for its centrism, later to become a writer for Spiked, an internet magazine that attacked Labour from the right.  His real fear is that Europe’s right-wingers arrive in power unprepared — failing to learn from the experience of the U.S. MAGA movement. | Heather Diehl/Getty Images He’s pro-Brexit, but thinks the EU should remain intact (albeit with diminished power). He despises doctrinaire multiculturalism, is a defender of women’s right to have an abortion, and thinks Covid and climate change reveal an undesirable timidity in the face of danger. He’s an implacable supporter of Israel, but thinks freedom of speech should extend even to abhorrent ideas, including Holocaust denial. He thinks the far right should support trade unions.  “I don’t see myself as right-wing. So even though other people might call me far-right, right, fascist or whatever, I identify myself in a very different kind of way,” he said. That evening he planned to watch Wuthering Heights. The best thing he’s seen recently? Sinners.  Under Furedi, MCC Brussels has gained notoriety — and some level of mainstream acceptance — as a far-right counterweight to the hefty centrist institutes that dot the city’s European Quarter.  The think tank promotes Hungary’s brand of right-wing nationalism and its rejection of European federalism, immigration policy and LGBTQ+ inclusion. But he insists the project isn’t about being a mouthpiece for Budapest so much as creating a place where right-wing ideas can be tested and hardened. Across all of politics, he laments, “ideas are not taken sufficiently seriously.”  MCC Brussels is fully funded by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a private higher education institution that has received massive financial backing from Orbán’s government. While Furedi acknowledges that the think tank’s publications frequently echo the Hungarian government — “we have our sympathies” — he denies that Orbán calls the shots.  MCC Brussels is fully funded by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a private higher education institution that has received massive financial backing from Orbán’s government. | János Kummer/Getty Images Hungary’s upcoming election, which threatens to end the prime minister’s 16-year rule, is unlikely to affect its funding. The college is floated by assets permanently gifted by the government, said John O’Brien, MCC Brussels head of communications.  OTHER MOVEMENTS’ WEAKNESSES In his eighth decade, Furedi worries he will run out of time to see “something nice happening.” But he’s convinced the political order he has spent his life attacking is ready to fold. To illustrate why, he points to Faversham. He arrived in the area in 1974 to study at the University of Kent, where he later became a professor. In the last few years the town has become a flash point for anti-immigration protests after a former care home was converted to house a few dozen refugee children.  Last summer and fall, left and right protest groups clashed over a campaign to hang English flags across the town. One Guardian reader reported hearing chants of “Sieg Heil” in the streets at night. To Furedi, the anger behind the clashes is the inevitable consequence of a narrow politics that has not only lost touch with the people it represents, but actively shut them out. “Our elites adopted what are called post-material values and basically looked down on people who were interested in their material circumstances,” he said. YouGov’s most recent seat-by-seat polling analysis in September put Farage’s Reform easily ahead in Faversham. But Furedi doesn’t give the party a lot of credit for winning people’s backing with a positive program for government. “I think Reform recognizes the fact that they have to be both more professional,” he said. But, he added, “You cannot somehow magic a professional cadre of operators.”  YouGov’s most recent seat-by-seat polling analysis in September put Farage’s Reform easily ahead in Faversham. | Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images The successes of the right are, in Furedi’s view, primarily based on being “beneficiaries of other movements’ weaknesses.”  The same was also true for Trump, he said. “It wasn’t like a love affair or anything of that sort. The U.S. president just happened to act as a conduit for a lot of those sentiments.” Is this a recipe for good government? “No,” he said. “One of the big tragedies in our world is that democracy in a nation requires serious political parties.”

When U.S., Mexican and Canadian soccer officials fanned out across the globe nearly a decade ago to sell the 2026 World Cup, they traveled in threes — one representative from each country — to underscore a simple message: North America’s three largest countries were in lockstep. “It was so embedded into everything we did that this was a united bid. Our success was tied to the joint nature of the bid. That was the anchor regarding the premise of what we were trying to do,” said John Kristick, former executive director of the 2026 United Bid Committee. The pitch worked. In 2018, FIFA members awarded the tournament to North America, marking the first time three countries would co-host a men’s World Cup. Bid strategists were delighted when The Washington Post editorial page approvingly called it ”the NAFTA World Cup.” The North American Free Trade Agreement is no more, a victim of President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw during his first term, and the successor U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is now teetering. At almost exactly the midway point of the 39-day tournament, trade ties that link the three countries’ economies will expire. The trilateral relationship is more frayed than it has ever been, tensions reflected in this year’s World Cup itself. Instead of one continental showcase, the 2026 World Cup increasingly resembles three distinct tournaments, with different immigration regimes, security plans and funding models, all a function of different policy choices in each host country. Soccer governing body FIFA “is the only glue that’s holding it together,” said one person intimately involved in the bid who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the sensitive political dynamics. The “United” in the United Bid, once the anchor of the entire project, now competes with three national agendas, each running on its own track. POLITICO spoke to eight people involved in developing a World Cup whose path from conception to execution reflects the crooked arc of North American integration. “When these events are awarded, they’re concepts. They’re ideas. They feel good,” said Lee Igel, a professor of global sport at NYU who has advised the U.S. Conference of Mayors on sports policy. “But between the award and the event itself, the world changes. Politics change. Leaders change.” THE TRUMP TOURNAMENT At the start of the extravagant December event that formally set the World Cup schedule, Trump stood next to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to ceremonially draw the first lottery ball. FIFA officials touted the moment at the Kennedy Center as a milestone: the first time the three leaders had appeared together in person, united by soccer. The trio also met for 90 minutes off stage in a meeting — facilitated by FIFA as part of World Cup planning. That novelty was notable. While each national government has named a “sherpa” to serve as its lead, those officials — including Canadian Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden and Mexican coordinator Gabriela Cuevas — have met only a handful of times in formal trilateral settings. At a January security summit in Colorado Springs, White House FIFA Task Force director Andrew Giuliani did not mention Canada or Mexico during his remarks. Only when FIFA security officer GB Jones took the stage was the international nature of the tournament acknowledged. “We have been and continue to work very closely with officials from all three host countries on topics including safety, security, logistics, transportation and other topics related to hosting a successful FIFA World Cup,” a FIFA spokesperson wrote via email. “This is one World Cup presented across all three host countries and 16 host cities, while showcasing the uniqueness of each individual location and culture.” The soccer federations behind the United Bid have been largely sidelined, with FIFA — rather than national governments — serving as the link between them. It has brought personnel of local host-city organizing committees for quarterly workshops and other meetings, and situated nearly 1,000 of its own employees across all three countries, according to a FIFA spokesperson who says they are “working seamlessly in a united effort.” (The number will swell to more than 4,000 when the tournament is underway.) But those FIFA staff are forced to navigate wildly varied fiscal conditions depending on where they land. Mexico, which will have matches in three cities, has imposed a tax exemption to stimulate investment in the World Cup and related tourist infrastructure in its three host cities. The Canadian government has dedicated well over $300 million to tournament costs, with more than two-thirds going directly to host-city governments. “The federal government are contributing significantly to both Vancouver and Toronto in terms of funding,” said Sharon Bollenbach, the executive director of the FIFA World Cup Toronto Secretariat, which unlike American host committees is run directly out of city hall. American cities, however, have been left to secure their own funding, largely through the pursuit of commercial sponsorships and donations to local organizing committees. Congress has allocated $625 million for the federal government to reimburse host cities in security costs via a grant program. But the partial government shutdown and an attendant decision by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to stop approving FEMA grants is exacerbating a logjam for U.S. states and municipalities — including not only those with World Cup matches but hosting team training camps — that rely on federal funds to coordinate counterterrorism and security efforts. That has left American host cities in very different financial situations just months before the tournament starts. Houston and Dallas-area governments can count on receiving a share of state revenue from Texas’ Major Events Reimbursement Program. The small Boston suburb of Foxborough, Massachusetts, however, is refusing to approve an entertainment license for matches at Gillette Stadium because of an unresolved $7.8 million security bill. Because of the budget squeeze, American cities have cut back on “fan festival” gatherings that will run extend during the tournament’s full length in Canadian and Mexican cities. Jersey City has canceled the fan fest planned at Liberty State Park in favor of smaller community events, and Seattle’s fan fest will be scaled down into a “distributed model” spread cross four locations. The tournament has become tightly intertwined with Trump, as FIFA places an outsized emphasis on courting the man who loves to be seen as the consummate host. Public messaging from the White House has focused almost exclusively on the United States’ role, and Trump rarely mentions Canada or Mexico from the Oval Office or on Truth Social. Since returning to office, Trump has had eight in-person meetings with FIFA President Gianni Infantino — besides the lottery draw at the Kennedy Center — whereas Sheinbaum and Carney have only had one each. While taking questions from the media during a November session with Infantino in the Oval office, Trump did not rule out the use of U.S. military force, including potential land actions, within Mexico to combat drug cartels. Guadalajara, which is set to host four World Cup matches, this weekend erupted in violence after Mexican security forces killed the head of a cartel that Trump last year labeled a “foreign terrorist organization.” A White House spokesperson wrote in a social-media post that the United States provided “intelligence support” to the mission. It is part of a more significant set of conflicts than Trump had with the United States’ neighbors during his first term. In January, Trump claimed that Sheinbaum is “not running Mexico,” while Carney rose to office promising Canadians he would “stand up to President Trump.” Since then, Trump has regularly proposed annexing Canada as the 51st state, as his government offers support to an Alberta separatist movement that could split the country through an independence vote on the province’s October ballot. The July 1 renewal deadline for the five-year-old USMCA has injected urgency into relations among the three leaders. Without an extension, the largely tariff-free trade that underpins North America’s economy would come into question, and governments and businesses would begin planning for a rupture. Trump, who recently called the pact “irrelevant,” has signaled he would be content to let it lapse. Suspense around the free trade zone’s future will engulf preparations for the World Cup, potentially granting Trump related in unrelated negotiations. “In the lead-up to mega-events, geopolitical tensions tend to hover in the background,” Igel said. “Once the matches begin, the show can overwhelm everything else, unless something dramatic like a boycott intervenes. But in the months before? That’s when you see the friction.” THE ORIGINS OF THE UNITED BID It was not supposed to be this way. When North American soccer officials first decided, in 2016, to fuse three national campaigns to host the World Cup into one, they saw unity as the strategic advantage that would distinguish their bid from any competitors. Each country had considered pursuing the World Cup on its own. Canada, looking to build on its success as host of the 2015 Women’s World Cup, wanted to host the larger men’s competition. Mexico, the first country to host it twice, wanted another shot. The United States dusted off an earlier bid for the 2022 tournament, which was awarded to Qatar. Sunil Gulati, a Columbia University economist serving as the U.S. Soccer Federation’s president, envisioned an unprecedented compromise: Instead of competing with one another they would work together — with the United States using its economic primacy and geographical centrality to ensure it remained the tournament’s focal point. The three countries’ economies had been deeply intertwined for nearly a quarter-century. Their leaders signed NAFTA in 1992, lowering trade barriers and snaking supply chains across borders that had previous isolated economic activity. But the trade pact triggered a broad backlash in the United States that allied labor unions on the left and isolationists on the right. That political disquiet exploded with the candidacy of Donald Trump, who called NAFTA “the worst trade deal” and immediately moved to renegotiate it upon taking office. Gulati, meanwhile, was pitching Emilio Azcárraga Jean, CEO and chair of Mexican broadcaster Grupo Televisa, and Canada Soccer President Victor Montagliani, on his own plan for regional integration. They agreed to sketch out a tournament that would have 75 percent of the games held in the U.S. with the remainder split between Canada and Mexico. “I’d rather have a 90 percent chance of winning 75 percent of the World Cup than a 75 percent chance of, you know, winning all of it,” Gulati told the U.S. Soccer board, according to two people who heard him say it. Montagliani and Mexico Football Federation President Decio de María joined Gulati to formally announce the so-called United Bid in New York in April 2017. The three federation presidents knew that the thrust of their pitch had to be more emotional and inclusive than “we are big, rich and have tons of ready-built stadiums,” as one of the bid organizers put it. Kristick laced a theme of “community” through the 1,500-page prospectus known to insiders as a bid book. “In 2026, we can create a bold new legacy for players, for fans and for football by hosting a FIFA World Cup that is more inclusive, more universal than ever,” declared a campaign video that the United Bid showed to the organization’s voting members. “Not because of who we are as nations, but because of what we believe in as neighbors. To bid together, countries come together.” It was a sentiment increasingly out of sync with the times. The same month that Gulati had stood with his counterparts in New York announcing the joint bid, Trump was busy demanding that Congress include funding for a wall along the border with Mexico. He told then-Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto and then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA, using aluminum and steel tariffs as a cudgel. Carlos Cordeiro, who displaced Gulati as U.S. Soccer president during the bid process in 2018, became the driving force of the lobbying effort to sell the idea to 211 national federations that would vote on it. In Cordeiro’s view, according to two Americans intimately involved in the bid at the time, the bid’s biggest challenge was assuring voters that the tournament would be more than a U.S. event dressed up with the flags of its neighbors. Teams fanned out across each of soccer’s six regional confederations to make their pitch, each presentation designed to paint a picture of tri-national cooperation, and returned to a temporary base in London to debrief. “It was very pragmatic. It was like Carlos, or another U.S. representative, would say this and talk about this. The Canada representative will then talk about this. The Mexico representative will talk about this. And it was very much trying to be even across the three in terms of who was speaking,” one person on the traveling team said. When the United Bid finally prevailed in June 2018, defeating a rival bid from Morocco, Trump celebrated it as an equal triumph for the three countries. “The U.S., together with Mexico and Canada, just got the World Cup,” he wrote on Twitter, now known as X. “Congratulations — a great deal of hard work!” THREE DIFFERENT TOURNAMENTS What began with a united bid is turning into parallel tournaments: with different fan bases, security procedures and off-field programs, all a function of different policy choices in each host country. Fans from Iran and Haiti are barred from entering the United States under travel restrictions imposed by Trump, while other World Cup countries are subject to elevated scrutiny that could block travel plans. (Official team delegations are exempt.) Canada and Mexico do not impose the same restrictions, creating uneven access across the tournament: fans traveling from Ivory Coast will likely find it much easier to reach Toronto for a June 20 match against Germany than one in Philadelphia five days later against Curaçao. “FIFA recognizes that immigration policy falls within the jurisdiction of sovereign governments,” read a statement provided by the FIFA spokesperson. “Engagement therefore focuses on dialogue and cooperation with host authorities to support inclusive tournament delivery, while respecting national law.” A fan who does cross borders will encounte a patchwork of security régimes depending on which government is in charge. Mexican authorities draw from deep experience policing soccer matches, with a mix of traditional crowd-control tactics and advanced technology like four-legged robots. The United States is emphasizing novel drone defenses and asked other countries for lists of its most problematic fans. Ongoing immigration enforcement actions in the U.S. have also prompted concern among the international soccer community and calls for a boycott of the tournament. The White House this month issued clarifying talking points to host cities to buttress the “shared commitment to safety, hospitality, and a successful tournament experience for all.” The document confirms that U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement “may have a presence” at the tournament to assist with non-immigration-related functions like aviation security and anti-human trafficking efforts. No where is the fragmentation more glaring among countries than on human rights. After previous World Cups were accused of “sportswashing” autocratic regimes in Qatar and Russia, the United Bid made “human rights and labor standards” a centerpiece of its proposal to FIFA. The bid stipulated that each host city by August 2025 must submit concrete plans for how the city would protect individual rights, including respect for “indigenous peoples, migrant workers and their families, national, ethnic and religious minorities, people with disabilities, women, race, LGBTQI+, journalists, and human rights defenders.” “Human rights were embedded in the bid from the beginning,” said Human Rights Watch director of global initiatives Minky Worden, who worked closely with Mary Harvey, a former U.S. goalkeeper and soccer executive who now leads the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, on the language. Harvey consulted with 70 civil-society groups across the three countries while developing the strategy. That deadline passed without a single U.S. city submitting their plan on time. Now just months before the kickoff, host cities have finally started to release their reports, creating a patchwork of approaches. While Vancouver’s report makes multiple references to respecting LGBTQ+ populations, Houston’s has no mention of sexual orientation and identity at all. The FIFA spokesperson says the organization has embedded inclusion and human rights commitments directly into agreements signed by host countries, cities and stadium operators, and that dedicated FIFA Human Rights, Safeguarding and Anti-Discrimination teams will monitor implementation and hold local organizers to account for violations. “All of these standards were supposed to be uniform across these three countries,” said Worden. “It wasn’t supposed to be the lowest common denominator with the U.S. being really low.”

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LONDON — “Her office was like something out of Black Mirror,” recalls a young official of her first trip to see the woman now leading Britain’s civil service. Wherever she looked in Antonia Romeo’s old sanctum at the Department for International Trade, Romeo’s face smiled back. “It was covered in pictures of her with famous people,” the footballer David Beckham among them, the official recalled. “I couldn’t concentrate on the meeting, because I was just looking at the wall thinking, ‘is that Imelda Staunton?’” If this kind of self-promotion sits awkwardly with Britain’s highly-strung reputation, it clashes violently with the stuffy etiquette of its civil service — where leaders are so notorious for self-restraint and false modesty that they were satirized in a TV drama called “Yes Minister.” Yet Romeo — who Prime Minister Keir Starmer named as the first ever female Cabinet secretary and head of Britain’s civil service on Thursday — is no ordinary civil servant. And that is exactly why Starmer wants her in the job. Now 51, she has been a state employee since her mid-20s, yet observers say she works more like a private sector CEO. A famed operator and prolific networker who has never hidden her ambition, she is seen as the opposite of Chris Wormald, who Starmer forced out with a bumper payoff last week after Labour aides complained he was a plodding functionary (a characterization rejected by his allies.) Her proposed appointment was met with a vicious briefing war in Whitehall. Bullying allegations resurfaced from her time as a diplomat in New York nine years ago (an investigation at the time found “no case to answer”), just as Starmer is accused of poor due diligence for other appointments. Former colleagues complain consistently about her self-regard, including claims that she asked staff to put framed Vogue and New Yorker articles about her in the Manhattan residence’s bathroom, and her all-guns-blazing approach to jolting the system into action. POLITICO spoke to 30 current and former politicians, political advisers and civil servants who have crossed paths with Romeo at all levels, most of whom requested anonymity to speak frankly. Several voiced discontent, while others vociferously defended her and dismissed the gripes about her (often from women) as misogyny. But even her staunchest critics acknowledge that Romeo has energy like almost no other civil servant and has a way of pushing Whitehall out of its comfort zone. Nearly a year after Starmer promised to “rewire” the state, his aides are now banking on her being the person to get it done. NOT YOUR USUAL CIVIL SERVANT In some ways, Romeo’s rise to the top looks conventional. Born in London, she studied at the fee-paying Westminster School followed by philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University. She was in the same year as Liz Truss, who went on to be Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister, and the veteran Conservative strategist Sheridan Westlake. Unlike most classmates, Romeo travelled in to school by Tube and would do homework in the lab where her mother, a biochemistry professor, worked full-time. Her parents kept her aware of the gender divide; while Romeo was a Brownie (Britain’s junior Girl Scouts), her father refused to let her gain the “house orderly” badge that involved sweeping and making tea. A fan of SoulCycle, skiing, game theory and (like Starmer) Arsenal football club, she had a brief stint in the management consultancy firm Oliver Wyman, where her husband John still works. She then joined the civil service in 2000 after seeing an advert in The Economist — her go-to publication — for an economist in the Lord Chancellor’s department. One of her early roles was as the private secretary for Labour peer Charles Falconer, who served as justice secretary in the mid-2000s. “It was a period of very difficult and massive constitutional and organizational reform,” he said. “She drove the reforms fearlessly, taking on every bit of the system to deliver … she took on No. 10 and the establishment of the civil service. “If it’s change you want, she is the person to have by your side. She’ll take the flak remorselessly. She gives you the right advice and she will 100 percent deliver. It is a total mystery that she wasn’t appointed 14 months ago.” There followed a steady rise through the ranks of government. She was mentored by the former Cabinet Secretary Jeremy Heywood, who she called an “inspiration” after his death in 2018, and landed the job of Britain’s consul general to New York in 2016 after she moved to the city with her family. Here, as a diplomat charged with promoting Britain overseas, Romeo began work on the sort of personal brand that would make most traditional civil servants shudder. She mingled with high society at parties hosted at the consul general’s residence in midtown Manhattan, where those invited or celebrated included Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour, fashion designer Stella McCartney and actor Joanna Lumley. One party hosted Rupert Murdoch and Theresa May in the room at the same time. One attendee recalled there being jokes about whether the media mogul was there to see Romeo or the prime minister. Another former official angrily recalled being unable to ascend the grand staircase of the Foreign Office in London one day because Romeo was posing for a photoshoot, including with Palmerston, the department’s cat. In 2017 Romeo won her first of three positions as a permanent secretary — leading a whole government department — at the Department for International Trade during the Brexit negotiations, briefly “commuting” (as some former colleagues put it) between London and New York. She later volunteered to pay back some travel expenses. Soon afterwards she was approached to guest edit the BBC’s flagship morning radio program, Today — an honor usually reserved for academics, business leaders and sports and music stars, including U2’s singer Bono and Yoko Ono. Romeo was personally keen to take part, said a person with knowledge of the request — but the government machine appears to have stepped in. Another person said: “There was a degree of consternation at the top of [Downing Street] that a civil servant would be putting themselves so directly in the limelight.” A third said: “No. 10 refused various requests for profiles or interview requests on her.”  (A government official contested this version of events, saying Romeo declined the request after it went through due process, rather than it being blocked by No. 10.) Romeo’s star continued to rise back in Whitehall, even if her public profile was dimmed. In Truss, her old uni contemporary who was the trade secretary, she had a match for directness and energy. One official recalled colleagues joking about Truss’s welcome photo with Romeo, where the new minister stood one step higher than her top civil servant. Romeo moved in 2021 to the top job at the Ministry of Justice, a department battling endless crises where a former colleague recalled her being effective — while (again) having an office with photos of herself with famous people. “She was quite overbearing on the comms teams for her personal comms,” the person added. “It’s not necessarily a criticism.” Another former official claimed she was “detested” by officials in the Treasury, with whom she had to negotiate difficult budgetary issues. Last year Romeo moved to head up the Home Office, perhaps the only department with more crises than justice, where she was appointed by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. Her closest Labour ally, though, has been Shabana Mahmood — with whom Romeo shared a frank approach in the justice department and who replaced Cooper at the Home Office in September. It was not just the politicians who followed; the Home Office’s new chief operating officer, Jerome Glass, moved from the justice department last June.  But Romeo has still not been free of criticism from some colleagues.  One government official complained to POLITICO that Romeo’s office reported an X account that was posting baseless conspiracy theories about her to the Home Office monitoring unit — which is more commonly used to track hostile social media sentiment that could lead to protests or extremism. BULLYING CLAIMS  The trickiest choice for Starmer — who appointed two men, former U.S. Ambassador Peter Mandelson and his former Director of Communications Matthew Doyle, despite knowing of their friendships with pedophiles — was how to navigate bullying claims against Romeo during her time in New York, which resurfaced in media reports this week. The Cabinet Office has repeatedly insisted there was only one formal complaint against Romeo during that period, and an investigation concluded there was “no case to answer.”  However, three people with knowledge of the process told POLITICO that more than 10 civil servants raised concerns about Romeo’s behaviour or conduct during her time in New York, some of which were drawn upon in the single formal complaint. Two of the people said that some staff did not enter standalone formal complaints because they could not be guaranteed that their identities would be kept from senior staff, including Romeo, as part of a process designed to prevent spurious accusations. Romeo was investigated by Tim Hitchens, the former ambassador to Japan, as part of a wider process ultimately decided on by the Cabinet Office in London. “It was essentially brushed under the carpet by the Cabinet Office, saying, ‘this is our business, not yours. Get lost,’” one of the three people said. (A government official disputed this, saying that as Romeo was on secondment, only the Cabinet Office could preside over an investigation.) A Cabinet Office spokesperson told POLITICO: “As we have repeatedly said, these claims were raised nine years ago and were thoroughly investigated. The allegations were dismissed on the basis that there was no case to answer. “Ahead of Dame Antonia’s appointment as Cabinet Secretary, a comprehensive due diligence process took place.” Government officials also point out that Romeo has held three permanent secretary roles in nine years without complaints, and that she was previously approved for the Cabinet secretary shortlist in 2024. SUPPORTERS POINT TO SEXISM And Romeo’s supporters see a successful civil servant whose critics’ petty gripes amount to sexism. She is a member of the Athenæum, a private member’s club on London’s Pall Mall which only began admitting female members in 2002. Plenty in Whitehall have long considered its own club of top officials to be pale, male and stale. Some male ministers have had plenty of photos of themselves in their offices, without being remarked on publicly. Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union for senior civil servants, said that while Romeo courts publicity, she is also ambitious, dynamic and inspirational. “There are a lot of traits in women leaders that are deemed as negative, that in men are considered good,” he said. “She gets a lot of shit that a lot of other civil servants don’t get.” Penman pointed to a 2023 report about former Justice Secretary Dominic Raab, who resigned following a bullying inquiry. It found that Romeo — as his department’s top civil servant — told Raab directly that there had been complaints about his behavior. (Raab said at the time that the inquiry “set a dangerous precedent” by “setting the threshold for bullying so low.”) Penman added: “She does not get the credit she deserves as the only permanent secretary who stood up to Raab.” Others in government during this time had a more nuanced recollection. One former official recalled that Romeo told civil servants not to refuse Raab’s requests. Another said: “I got the impression that she was trying to prove to the department that she was saying the stuff to Dom that they wanted her to say, but I don’t think she was a full agent of the department in that sense. She was trying to balance differing perspectives.” Keeping warring groups at bay like this is an essential part of the job of a permanent secretary, but it has also allowed conflicting myths about Romeo to run unchallenged. While some on the right have dubbed her the “queen of woke” for supporting diversity initiatives, one former colleague recalled that when the Ministry of Justice pulled out of a scheme run by the LGBTQ+ rights charity Stonewall, “Antonia to her credit didn’t complain, didn’t grumble. She just made it happen, and dealt with quite a bit of internal flak for it.” One official who worked with Romeo at the trade department described her as a “very political civil servant,” in a good way. When U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a series of tariffs including on whisky and shortbread, “she got that that was a problem and the first port of call was to get all the whisky and shortbread people in for a round table,” they said. “She just moved very quickly and ran with it where other permanent secretaries might have been too high and mighty to do the work.” Conservative Brandon Lewis, who served as justice secretary before Raab, said Romeo’s “focus and motivation” helped end a barristers’ strike and praised her as a “real leader.”  ‘DOES KEIR STARMER NEED A PAPER PUSHER? NO HE FUCKING DOESN’T’ Romeo’s supporters — and some of her critics — say her personality is exactly the reason Starmer needs her in the job. While political officials have a mixed opinion on Romeo, many are vicious about her predecessors for the opposite reasons.  Before he was sacked, one former Labour official complained Wormald was “truly abysmal” at driving change. When Simon McDonald, the former head of the diplomatic service, gave an interview to Channel 4 News warning Starmer off appointing Romeo, one former Tory official fumed: “Fuck me … How fucking cheap.” One Whitehall figure said of Romeo: “She’s got an ego. She loves publicity. That doesn’t make her bad at her job — and that’s the key element.  “There’s are lots of fucking boring personality types that couldn’t inspire and lead anyone. People are prosecuting her personality rather than how she does in the job.” Six former Cabinet secretaries — including Gus O’Donnell, whose nickname on Whitehall is “God” — issued a joint statement on Thursday night praising Romeo as an “excellent choice” for the role. “Dame Antonia’s track record shows she is very well placed to deliver the necessary changes,” they said. “As ever, the extremes are bullshit,” added a former government official. “I think she’s a serious person and very intelligent. She’s not going to save the world single handedly — nobody should — but the negative is very overdone.” Another former government official said: “She’s incredibly effective, thrusting, dynamic. Do I think she’s bent various rules in the past? Yes. Is she very egotistical and has a deep regard for her self-image? Yes. But bending rules and pushing things to the maximum is part of what makes her good. She’s not pale, male and stale like permanent secretaries we’re used to.” Other current and former officials are less effusive, pointing to other dynamic female permanent secretaries such as Sarah Healey, who leads the housing department without the same notoriety, and to government policies that have gone wrong during Romeo’s tenure.  While one former official praised her for knowing “a shit civil servant from a good one,” a current official said: “She has a reputation for firing people, which is great for Keir wanting to revamp the civil service, but you also have to lead. You have to come up with ideas.” Other officials warn that her greatest challenge may be convincing civil servants to back her approach — a task at which many of her predecessors have failed. One former senior government official perhaps summed it up best with the words: “I’ve never liked her, but I have to admire her.”  They added: “For all the women saying she’s no sister, actually I’ve kind of got an admiration for her … Does Keir Starmer need a paper pusher right now? No he fucking doesn’t.” One phrase was the most telling from Starmer as he welcomed Romeo to the job. The prime minister called her “the right person to drive the government to reform.” Downing Street officials are looking more broadly at how the role of Cabinet secretary works within the system, including studying work on reform by the Institute for Government, two people with knowledge of the conversations told POLITICO. A third person said Darren Jones, chief secretary to the prime minister, has been inviting senior civil servants who can provide examples of where they’ve jumpstarted the system to give presentations to a committee of Cabinet ministers. “She’s going to be in quite a strong position,” one supporter of Romeo said, “not quite unsackable, but in a position to dictate and have ideas.” She may soon find that a necessity.

BRUSSELS — One of the most toxic culture wars in the U.K. and U.S. is being brought to Brussels. Rights groups argue that debates about gender issues are being imported from the anglophone world into EU politics, with right-wing groups choosing to stoke arguments about transgender people in hopes of dividing the left. Conservative Christian organizations in the U.S. “saw that there was a fight happening there,” said Neil Datta, executive director and founder of the European Parliamentary Forum on Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF). “A fight that could be useful to them.” The EPF has been tracking the rise of what they call the “anti-gender” movement across Europe, and found that hundreds of groups targeting so-called gender ideology — including think tanks, church-run advocacy groups, political parties and media — had raised $1.18 billion between 2019 and 2023, up from $81 million between 2009 and 2018.  The groups cover a range of policies from abortion to sex education, with transgender rights making up a large part of the lobbying. LGBTQ+ groups argue the mainstream politicization of such debates is part of a rolling back of fundamental rights, while gender-critical groups believe that recognizing transgender people’s identities undermines women. In the U.S., the debate is driven mostly by the religious right, said Wendy Via, co-founder of the Global Project. | Lou Lampaert/AFP via Getty Images “It’s one of those subjects that is easy politically to attack because we’re talking about a small community of people that are widely misunderstood,” said Cianán Russell, senior policy officer at ILGA-Europe, the European branch of the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association. “It absolutely is our perception that there are more anti-trans actors getting access to spaces in Brussels and that the types of spaces that they are able to access are more institutionalized,” said Russell, adding that at least five events have taken place in the European Parliament in the past year. One of those included the “Seventh Transatlantic Summit,” a two-day event at the Parliament earlier this month that saw speakers “mock transgender people,” according to the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, a U.S.-based NGO. The summit organizers, Political Network for Values, told POLITICO’s EU Influence newsletter that it is “an international network that brings together politicians who share values.” A spokesperson added: “Among those values is respect for the dignity of every human being. We would never intentionally mock a person, regardless of their condition. On the other hand, using objective data from science in relation to the issue of ‘transgenderism’ is in no way mockery.” Speakers included Rodrigo Iván Cortés, founder of Mexico’s National Front for the Family, who has been convicted of gender-based political violence against a transgender U.S. representative. Another was the British Catholic priest Benedict Kiely, who the Global Project said compared transgender identity to people identifying as animals. Kiely declined to comment. Other events at EU institutions include a December visit by Chris Elston, also known as Billboard Chris, an Australian anti-trans influencer, who spoke at the Parliament after being invited by an Alternative for Germany lawmaker, Christine Anderson. MCC Brussels, a prominent think tank linked to the Hungarian government, co-hosted a panel at the end of last year in the Parliament titled “The Trans Ideology Threat,” hosted by Fidesz lawmaker András László, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The MCC event accused the EU of being “addicted to gender ideology,” despite what the organizers describe as an “an enormous backlash” across the EU. “For European elites, trans ideology is a key ‘EU value’ which no one is allowed to question.” MCC spokesperson John O’Brien said: “Far from it being that the right are stomping over trans rights, the truth is that the trans lobby train has been steamrolling over the rights of women and girls for years.” FROM THE US TO EUROPE The EPF’s Datta said the heated debate around trans issues has largely been imported to Brussels. “You find that this contestation takes place in certain ways in certain countries, like in the U.S or the U.K., where it’s become the most toxic. In Belgium, it’s not like that at all.” Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull pushed back on the idea that a backlash against transgender rights is being deliberately pushed by conservative activists who see it as an opportunity to splinter the left. | Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images Transgender peoples’ rights have been in the spotlight in the U.K. in recent months after the country’s Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex — a key argument of the “gender-critical” movement. The ILGA Rainbow Map, which monitors the legal and policy landscape for LGBTQ+ people across Europe, saw the U.K. drop from its highest spot in 2019 to 22 out of 49 countries in 2025.  In the U.S., the debate is driven mostly by the religious right, said Wendy Via, co-founder of the Global Project.  “The American groups behind Project 2025 [a right-wing wishlist for the second Donald Trump term] and their allies are increasingly working with European political figures and think tanks to target and dehumanize the trans community,” she said. “Cruelly stripping human rights protections from trans people is the first phase of their global imperative to erase the LGBTQ+ community entirely and take back the hard-won rights protections from women across the world,” Via said. Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, a gender-critical activist who spoke at the Parliament in November as part of MCC’s event, told Influence at the time that transgender rights are “very much not a grassroots movement, but a top-down, well-funded movement.” And she pushed back on the idea that a backlash against transgender rights is being deliberately pushed by conservative activists who see it as an opportunity to splinter the left. “I think it’s the other way around. I think it’s the arrogance of the left and the contempt that the left has for women that has enabled women to leave the left.”

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday threw his support behind Hungarian populist nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who is facing the most serious challenge to his rule in more than a decade in the parliamentary election set for April. “Viktor Orbán is a true friend, fighter, and WINNER, and has my Complete and Total Endorsement for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Hungary — HE WILL NEVER LET THE GREAT PEOPLE OF HUNGARY DOWN!” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. Relations between Budapest and Washington have reached “new heights of cooperation and spectacular achievement” under the two leaders, Trump wrote. Trump’s backing of Orbán is in line with the U.S. National Security Strategy unveiled in December, in which the Trump administration vowed to bolster “patriotic European parties.” Orbán has long been a close ally of Trump and was among the first European leaders to endorse his 2016 presidential bid. Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party has become a model for MAGA populists, especially for its hard-line approach to minority rights and migration. Trump also aligned himself with Orbán over Hungary’s decision to continue buying Russian oil, even as Europe sought to reduce dependence on Moscow’s energy supplies. The White House later gave Hungary a one-year exemption from U.S. sanctions on buying Russian oil. Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary election could threaten Orbán’s long grip on power, amid long-standing criticism over the erosion of democracy and rule-of-law issues. He faces a challenge from his former ally-turned-archnemesis, Péter Magyar, who leads the opposition Tisza party, currently running 12 points ahead in opinion polls. The election in Hungary, with a population of 9.6 million, represents the most consequential in Europe this year. Orbán has become a key disrupter in the EU, frequently clashing with Brussels and other European capitals on support for Ukraine, LGBTQ+ rights and Russia sanctions, many times stalling urgent decisions.

A Hungarian court on Wednesday sentenced German national Maja T. to eight years in prison on charges related to an assault on a group of right-wing extremists in Budapest two years ago. The case attracted national attention in Germany following the extradition of the defendant to Hungary in 2024, a move which Germany’s top court subsequently judged to have been illegal. Politicians on the German left have repeatedly expressed concern over whether the defendant, who identifies as non-binary, was being treated fairly by Hungary’s legal system. Hungarian prosecutors accused Maja T. of taking part in a series of violent attacks on people during a neo-Nazi gathering in Budapest in February 2023, with attackers allegedly using batons and rubber hammers and injuring several people, some seriously. The defendant was accused of acting alongside members of a German extreme-left group known as Hammerbande or “Antifa Ost.” The Budapest court found Maja T. guilty of attempting to inflict life-threatening bodily harm and membership in a criminal organization. The prosecution had sought a 24-year prison sentence, arguing the verdict should serve as a deterrent; the defendant has a right to appeal. German politicians on the left condemned the court’s decision. “The Hungarian government has politicized the proceedings against Maja T. from the very beginning,” Helge Limburg, a Greens lawmaker focused on legal policy, wrote on X. “It’s a bad day for the rule of law.” The case sparked political tensions between Hungary and Germany after Maja T. went on a hunger strike in June to protest conditions in jail. Several German lawmakers later visited to express their solidarity, and German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul called on Hungary to improve detention conditions for Maja T. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s illiberal government is frequently accused of launching a culture war on LGBTQ+ people, including by moving to ban Pride events, raising concerns among German left-wing politicians and activists over the treatment of Maja T. by the country’s legal system. Maja T.’s lawyers criticized the handling of evidence and what they described as the rudimentary hearing of witnesses, according to German media reports.

Hungarian prosecutors said they are bringing charges against Budapest Mayor Gergely Karácsony over his role in organizing a pride rally last June in the Hungarian capital, which authorities had previously banned. The case stems from Hungary’s 2021 “Child Protection Act,” a law that restricts the public depiction of homosexuality and gender transition for minors and has been widely criticized as curbing LGBTQ+ rights. In March, the Hungarian parliament passed an amendment to the 2021 act that effectively bans assemblies like Pride events. Karácsony, a Green politician and strong opponent of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, opposed the ban and invited people to join the 2025 Budapest Pride rally. The event took place in June, joined by over 100,000 participants, including several European politicians. Two months later, Karácsony was questioned by Hungary’s state police. Last December, he told his followers in a social media post he would face government charges for the case. According to the Budapest prosecutor’s office, Karácsony faces a fine, not a trial. The indictment says the Budapest mayor had published a video message announcing that the city’s Metropolitan Municipality would organize the rally, and inviting his followers to attend. The event qualified as an assembly outlawed under the new amendment, the prosecutors argue. By proceeding with the event, Budapest’s mayor is accused of committing the “misdemeanor of violating freedom of association and assembly,” the federal prosecutor office’s statement says. Budapest’s mayor expressed outrage over the prosecutor’s statement, writing on X: “Prosecutors are seeking to fine me without a trial for announcing and organizing Budapest Büszkeség.” In a separate post, he wrote: “I refuse to be intimidated or silenced. I will never accept that standing up for freedom, free speech, or love can be treated as a crime. Despite threats or punishment, I will continue to fight. Freedom and love cannot be banned!” Karácsony could not be immediately reached for comment. He is one of the ’10 to Watch’ in the POLITICO 28: Class of 2026.

urope has spent the last week rummaging around for leverage that would force U.S. President Donald Trump to back off his threats to seize Greenland from Denmark. While Trump now says he will not be imposing planned tariffs on European allies, some politicians think they’ve found the answer if he changes his mind again: boycott the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The quadrennial soccer jamboree, which will be hosted in the U.S., Mexico and Canada this summer, is a major soft-power asset for Trump — and an unprecedented European boycott would diminish the tournament beyond repair. “Leverage is currency with Trump, and he clearly covets the World Cup,” said Adam Hodge, a former National Security Council official during the Biden administration. “Europe’s participation is a piece of leverage Trump would respect and something they could consider using if the transatlantic relationship continues to swirl down the drain.” With Trump’s Greenland ambitions putting the world on edge, key political figures who’ve raised the idea say that any decision on a boycott would — for now, at least — rest with national sport authorities rather than governments. “Decisions on participation in or boycott of major sport events are the sole responsibility of the relevant sports associations, not politicians,” Christiane Schenderlein, Germany’s state secretary for sport, told AFP on Tuesday. The French sport ministry said there are “currently” no government plans for France to boycott. That means, for the moment, a dozen soccer bureaucrats around Europe — representing the countries that have so far qualified for the tournament — have the power to torpedo Trump’s World Cup, a pillar of his second term in office like the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. (Another four European countries will be added in spring after the European playoffs are completed.) While they may not be household names, people like Spain’s Rafael Louzán, England’s Debbie Hewitt and the Netherlands’ Frank Paauw may now have more leverage over Trump than the European Commission with its so-called trade bazooka. “I think it is obvious that a World Cup without the European teams would be irrelevant in sports terms — with the exceptions of Brazil and Argentina all the other candidates in a virtual top 10 will be European — and, as a consequence, it would also be a major financial blow to FIFA,” said Miguel Maduro, former chair of FIFA’s Governance Committee. Several of the European soccer chiefs have already shown their willingness to enter the political fray. Norwegian Football Federation president Lise Klaveness has been outspoken on LGBTQ+ issues and the use of migrant labor in preparations for the 2022 World Cup. The Football Association of Ireland pushed to exclude Israel from international competition before the country signed the Gaza peace plan in October. “Football has always been far more than a sport,” Turkish Football Federation President Ibrahim Haciosmanoglu, whose team is still competing for one of the four remaining spots, wrote in an open letter to his fellow federation presidents in September calling for Israel’s removal. Trump attempted Wednesday in Davos to cool tensions over Greenland by denying he would use military force to capture the massive, mineral-rich Arctic island. But during the same speech he firmly reiterated his desire to obtain it and demanded “immediate negotiations” with relevant European leaders toward that goal. Later in the day, in a social media post, Trump said he reached an agreement with NATO on a Greenland framework. His Davos remarks are unlikely to pacify European politicians across the political spectrum who want to see a tougher stance against the White House. “Seriously, can we imagine going to play the World Cup in a country that attacks its ‘neighbors,’ threatens to invade Greenland, destroys international law, wants to torpedo the UN, establishes a fascist and racist militia in its country, attacks the opposition, bans supporters from about 15 countries from attending the tournament, plans to ban all LGBT symbols from stadiums, etc.?” wondered left-wing French lawmaker Eric Coquerel on social media. Influential German conservative Roderich Kiesewetter also told the Augsburger Allgemeine news outlet: “If Donald Trump carries out his threats regarding Greenland and starts a trade war with the EU, I find it hard to imagine European countries participating in the World Cup.” Russia’s World Cup in 2018 faced similar calls for a boycott over the Kremlin’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, as did Qatar’s 2022 tournament over the Gulf petromonarchy’s dismal human rights record. While neither mooted boycott came to pass — indeed, the World Cup and the Olympics haven’t faced a major diplomatic cold shoulder since retaliatory snubs by countries for the Moscow 1980 and Los Angeles 1984 Summer Olympics — Trump’s seizure of Greenland would put Europe in a position with no recent historical parallel. Neither FIFA, the world governing body that organizes the tournament, nor four national associations contacted by POLITICO immediately responded to requests for comment. Tom Schmidtgen and Ferdinand Knapp contributed to this report.

Nationalist leaders lined up to endorse Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a campaign video released this week as the election race begins in earnest. The nearly two-minute clip, posted by Orbán, rolls out support from a who’s who of European and international conservatives, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, her deputy Matteo Salvini, French far-right leader Marine Le Pen, Alternative for Germany (AfD) co-leader Alice Weidel, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The coordinated show of support comes as Orbán heads into what is likely to be his most competitive election in more than a decade. Hungary’s President Tamás Sulyok confirmed Tuesday that the country will go to the polls on April 12. After nearly 20 years at the helm, Orbán faces mounting criticism at home and abroad over democratic backsliding, curbs on media freedom, and the erosion of the rule of law. His Fidesz party, which has governed since 2010, is now trailing the opposition Tisza Party, led by former Orbán ally Péter Magyar. “Together we stand for a Europe that respects national sovereignty, is proud of its cultural and religious roots,” Meloni said in the video, as she endorsed Hungary’s incumbent leader. “Security cannot be taken for granted, it must be won. And I think Viktor Orbán has all those qualities. He has the tenacity, the courage, the wisdom to protect his country,” Netanyahu added. Also featured are Spain’s Vox chief Santiago Abascal, Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ) leader Herbert Kickl, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, all key figures in the conservative, populist and far-right political sphere. Argentine President Javier Milei also appears in the video. POLITICO’s Poll of Polls puts Magyar’s Tisza on 49 percent, well ahead of Fidesz on 37 percent. Magyar has built momentum by campaigning on pledges to strengthen judicial independence, clamp down on corruption and offer voters a clear break from Orbán’s rule. In Brussels, Orbán has frequently clashed with EU institutions and other member states over issues including support for Ukraine, sanctions on Russia and LGBTQ+ rights, making him a polarizing figure within the bloc. The campaign video, featuring a slate of foreign leaders, positions his re-election bid in a broader international context, tying Hungary’s vote to themes of national sovereignty and political alignment beyond the country’s borders. POLITICO was able to confirm the video’s authenticity via representatives for Weidel and Salvini. Ketrin Jochecová, Nette Nöstlinger and Gerardo Fortuna contributed to this report.