HOUSTON — Oil companies and the world’s largest energy consumers face a significant challenge to rebuild global petroleum supply chains and inventories once the critical Strait of Hormuz bottleneck opens, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said Monday. “We’ve got a lot of oil and gas now that is not flowing into the market,” Wirth said at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference in Houston. “Physical supply chains don’t respond immediately, so even if the strait opens at some point, it will take time to rebuild inventories of the right grades of crude and the right types of fuel.” Wirth cautioned that Iran’s attacks on oil tankers and the broader damage of the Middle East war did greater damage to oil and gas markets than the Russia-Ukraine war. Asian nations are running low on diesel and jet fuel. The war has held up deliveries of LNG, fertilizer and other products. Part of the challenge, Wirth said, will be taking a read of the damage. It’s unclear how much production has been shut in, Wirth said, and how badly some facilities were damaged. At the same event, Energy Secretary Chris Wright reiterated to oil executives that he anticipated the global disruption to oil and gas flows would be “short-term,” but he encouraged companies to ramp up production. “Markets do what markets do,” Wright said. “Prices went up to send signals to everyone that can produce more: ‘Please, produce more.’”

BRUSSELS — United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday there are “reasonable grounds” to believe both sides in the U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran may have committed war crimes, as attacks and retaliatory strikes on energy facilities intensify. Speaking exclusively to POLITICO on a visit to Brussels before Thursday’s European Council summit, Guterres said: “If there are attacks either on Iran or from Iran on energy infrastructure, I think that there are reasonable grounds to think that they might constitute a war crime.”  Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars natural gas field on Wednesday, then Tehran launched a retaliatory strike on a major energy complex in Qatar. Beyond that, Guterres said the growing civilian casualties left both sides in the conflict open to possible war crimes charges. “I don’t see any difference. It doesn’t matter who targets civilians. It is totally unacceptable,” he said. Representatives for the U.S. and Israeli governments did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Guterres’ remarks. America and Israel began a bombing campaign on Feb. 28, killing Iran’s supreme leader and sparking ongoing retaliatory missile-and-drone attacks from Tehran on sites across the Middle East. Having called for deescalation in the region, Guterres appeared to blame Israel for driving the conflict forward, and called on U.S. President Donald Trump to persuade Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu to bring it to an end. “The war needs to stop … and I believe that it is in the hands of the U.S. to make it stop. It is possible [to end the war], but it depends on the political will to do it,” Guterres told host Anne McElvoy for an episode of the EU Confidential podcast publishing Friday morning. “I am convinced that Israel, as a strategy, wants to achieve a total destruction of the military capacity of Iran and regime change. And I believe Iran has a strategy, which is to resist for as much time as possible and to cause as much harm as possible. So the key to solve the problem is that the U.S. decides to claim that they have done their job. “President Trump will be able to convince … those that need to be convinced that the work is done. That the work can end,” Guterres added. The secretary-general also attributed America’s decision to launch strikes on Iran to Israel. “I have no doubt that this was something that corresponds to Israel’s strategy … to draw the United States into a war. That objective was achieved. But this is creating dramatic suffering in Iran, [and] in the region, even in Israel. And it is creating a devastating impact in the global economy and whose consequences are still too early to foresee. So, we absolutely must end this conflict,” he said. But finding an off-ramp might prove difficult, and relations between the U.N. and the Trump administration remain frosty.   Asked if he had spoken with Trump since the conflict began three weeks ago, Guterres responded emphatically: “No, no, no … I speak with those I need to speak to. But this is not a soap opera.” He claimed, however, to have been “in contact with all sides,” including with the Trump administration, since hostilities spread across the Gulf.  “It’s vital for the world at large that this war ends quickly,” Guterres said. “This is indeed spiraling out of control and the recent attacks represent an escalation that is extremely dangerous.” Trump said on his Truth Social site that the U.S. had not authorized the attack by Israel on the South Pars site, and that Israel had “violently lashed out,” raising questions about how much influence the U.S. has over its ally. “My hope is that the United States will be able to understand that this has gone too far,” Guterres said. The conflict was primarily benefitting Russia, Guterres added, with Moscow welcoming the distraction from its own war on Ukraine. “Russia is the biggest beneficiary of the Iran crisis,” Guterres said. “Russia is the country that is gaining more with what’s happening in this horrible disaster. Russia is already the winner.” Meanwhile, European leaders, including U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, have said they won’t be sending ships to the Persian Gulf in response to Trump’s appeal for help to open the Strait of Hormuz. France has said it will only contribute support vessels “when the situation is calmer.” Guterres applauded the restraint shown by the Europeans, despite Trump’s anger at their refusal to actively support the war or help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime artery that Iran has largely sealed off, driving up global energy prices. “I think these countries made their own reading of the situation, and I believe they took a decision not to get too much involved, knowing that the most important objective is the deescalation,” he said. Listen to the full episode of EU Confidential on Friday morning.

The Bank of England warned it may have to take a tougher line on interest rates as the spike in energy prices caused by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran pushes inflation higher. “Monetary policy cannot reverse this shock” to world energy supply, Governor Andrew Bailey said in a statement on Thursday, after the Monetary Policy Committee voted unanimously to leave the Bank rate unchanged at 3.75 percent. “Monetary policy must, however, respond to the risk of a more persistent effect on U.K. consumer price inflation,” Bailey added. The Bank had only last month declared victory over inflation, which has been above its 2 percent target for over four years. However, its latest analysis suggests headline inflation will rebound back above 3 percent in the next three months and could add as much as 0.75 percentage points to the consumer price index over the summer, as higher fuel bills percolate through the economy. “The MPC is alert to the increased risk of domestic inflationary pressures through second-round effects in wage and price-setting, the risk of which will be greater the longer higher energy prices persist,” the Bank stressed. However, it also acknowledged that the energy price spike is likely to hurt economic growth, and that it is “assessing the implications for inflation of the weakening in economic activity that is likely to result from higher energy costs.” Until the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, most analysts had predicted that a slowing economy and growing prospects of easing inflation would allow the MPC to cut rates at Thursday’s meeting. However, the invasion and the ensuing turmoil in world commodity markets have turned the situation on its head, by closing a vital chokepoint at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, through which irreplaceable volumes of oil, gas and fertilizer pass every day. As a result, the Bank warned that there is now a real threat of higher energy prices causing a broader rise in prices across the economy. Food prices face a similar risk. ALREADY OUT OF DATE? The situation is changing so fast that the Bank’s latest forecasts could already be out of date. The Bank said they were based on the situation as of March 16, when Brent oil futures were only at $100 a barrel. But a succession of strikes on key energy installations around the Persian Gulf since then has already pushed prices up by another 12 percent. “The news flow around the war in Iran looks more worrying for global markets with each passing day,” Deutsche Bank strategist Jim Reid said in a note on Thursday. Analysts argued ahead of the meeting that the Bank would prefer to err on the side of keeping policy tight in the face of the new risks, given lingering concerns about its credibility due to its slow response to the inflation shock in 2022. Inflation peaked at 11.1 percent back then, the highest rate posted by any major economy. The Bank’s change in outlook will make life doubly uncomfortable for the Labour government, which had hoped that its efforts to close the U.K. budget deficit would be rewarded with lower inflation and lower interest rates. Instead, the government’s key 10-year borrowing costs have risen by nearly half a percentage point since the war started, and they leaped again on Thursday, first in response to Iranian attacks on a Qatari gas field, then to the BoE’s statement. At 4.89 percent, the 10-year gilt yield is now at its highest in 15 months. The pound, by contrast, was steady against the dollar and euro after the decision. The Office for Budget Responsibility earlier this month already cut its forecasts for U.K. growth this year. That implies lower tax receipts which, combined with higher borrowing costs, threaten a new two-way squeeze on Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ fiscal arithmetic, less than six months after she had to raise taxes sharply at her latest budget.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul on Wednesday warned of a dangerous spiral of unintended consequences if the Middle East war escalates further. “There is a real risk of escalation, which could plunge not only this region but the entire world into a major crisis,” Wadephul said during a joint press conference with his French counterpart, Jean-Noël Barrot, in Berlin. The German government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz was initially far more supportive of the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran than many other EU countries, but Merz and his ministers have recently become far more openly critical of the war as the conflict has expanded and the economic and security impacts on the EU’s biggest economy have become clearer. Wadephul suggested some of the risks of the war — including the potential for a food crisis — had not been fully considered. “The fertilizer supply from this region [the Middle East] alone is so essential that a prolonged disruption would threaten to trigger a food crisis across large parts of Africa,” Wadephul said. “And that must fill us with concern for the people who would suffer, and of course also for the resulting refugee flows.” Germany is expected to be among the EU countries most impacted if the escalating war in the Middle East creates a new refugee crisis. Wadephul also said he wishes for a change of leadership in Iran “toward a humane, dignified regime,” but expressed doubt that this goal can be achieved through military force. ” I just don’t believe it can be brought about militarily from the outside,” he said. “We now face a major task to work together with our partners in the United States and Israel to find a point where the military objectives these two have set for themselves are achieved, and where we can then move toward de-escalation and a resolution of the hostilities, while at the same time, of course, ensuring security for the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf States.” Trump had warned NATO allies on Sunday that the alliance faces a “very bad future” if their countries refuse to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, pressing European allies to support an American effort to reopen the key maritime corridor. European leaders, however, rejected participation in such a mission.

Hungary is pressing the European Union to suspend tariffs and extra duties on fertilizer imports from Russia and Belarus as the war in Iran threatens to drive up global food prices. Such a move would boost a key source of revenue in funding Moscow’s war of aggression against Ukraine. In a letter to European commissioners on Monday, Hungarian Agriculture Minister István Nagy warned that rising global fertilizer prices and supply uncertainty exacerbated by the war in Iran risk squeezing EU farmers and pushing up food costs. He called for the levies on Russian and Belarusian products to be temporarily reduced to zero, warning that Hungary could face lower crop yields if access to cheaper imports remains restricted. The country produces only nitrogen fertilizers domestically and relies on foreign supplies of phosphorus and potash. The EU tightened duties on fertilizers from Russia and Belarus in 2025 after imports rose in the years following Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The increase raised concern that Russia was redirecting gas exports hit by sanctions into fertilizer production to sustain export revenues. Russian shipments to the EU were still worth around €2 billion last year, but volumes fell sharply in early 2026 as the new levies began to bite. Iran’s effective blockage of the Strait of Hormuz is driving up the cost of fertilizer by tying up supplies of both the fuel and raw materials needed to produce it. Budapest is also pushing the EU to relax its ban on Russian gas to ease price pressures — an idea roundly rejected by Brussels.

BRUSSELS — Europeans should eat less meat and farms must be taxed for their planet-warming pollution if the bloc is to reach its climate goals, the EU’s scientific advisers argue in a set of far-reaching recommendations that are unlikely to get a warm welcome from farmers.  In a 350-page report published Wednesday, the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change also calls on the EU to scrap farm subsidies for climate-damaging practices, arguing sweeping measures are necessary to reduce agriculture’s contribution to global warming. To aid farmers, they propose scaling up financial support to help them transition toward greener alternatives as well as aid to cope with increasing droughts and climate disasters.  Yet environmental policies that so much as touch on agriculture have become politically toxic in recent years, with Brussels and EU capitals reluctant to address farm emissions in the face of large-scale tractor protests and intense lobbying campaigns.  Still, sticking with business as usual isn’t an option, said the board’s chair Ottmar Edenhofer.  “In order to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 within the EU, the sector has to contribute to emissions reduction,” he said.  “And if we do this in a smart way during the transition process, in a gradual way, pricing the emissions but also using the revenues to support the transition … I think this is a beneficial pathway for the whole sector and for the whole of society.”  While politically sensitive, the board’s recommendations are not revolutionary.  Plenty of scientists and even the World Bank have in recent years urged governments to ensure their citizens eat less meat and to cut environmentally harmful subsidies in order to rein in greenhouse gas emissions from food, which account for about a third of all planet-warming pollution.  And Denmark is on track to become the first country to tax agricultural pollution after Copenhagen and farmers’ associations agreed in 2024 to impose a carbon price on livestock emissions from 2030.  Yet the board’s reports carry weight. The independent consortium of scientists is tasked by EU law with providing guidance on climate policy; past recommendations have proven influential, with the board’s 2023 advice on setting a 2040 emissions-slashing target of at least 90 percent playing a major role in leading the EU to enshrine this goal in law last week.  The entire food system, from farming to consumption to waste management, produces 31 percent of the bloc’s emissions. | Quentin Top / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images The recommendations on agriculture also come just as the EU drafts new policies that could incorporate some of the board’s advice — from the bloc’s next long-term budget and an upcoming revision of the EU farm subsidy program, to a slate of new green legislation designed to meet the new 2040 target, and a plan to increase resilience to climate disasters. CAPPING CAP PAYMENTS The Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), a behemoth that absorbs around a third of the EU’s budget, is a key target of the report. The current framework contains provisions around climate and biodiversity, but has failed to sufficiently slash greenhouse gas emissions. The entire food system, from farming to consumption to waste management, produces 31 percent of the bloc’s emissions. More than half of that occurs during food production — think super-polluting methane released by cows as well as fertilizer use, tractor fuel and more.  The CAP, the scientists warn, still incentivizes climate-harming practices through its vast subsidy system. The EU should therefore gradually phase out payments that are tied to livestock production, a type of income support for farmers that consumes 5 percent of the current CAP budget, they say.  In fact, they add, the EU should reconsider the entire idea of subsidies based on farmland size, worth 39 percent of the CAP budget or more than €100 billion, as they “incentivize agricultural production over other land use” such as forestry, and thus drive up emissions. On top of reforming the CAP, the EU should introduce a carbon pricing mechanism covering agriculture, building on the Emissions Trading System architecture that has successfully halved industry and power plant pollution, the scientists say.  But they argue that agricultural carbon pricing should consist of three separate systems — one each for energy-related farm emissions, non-CO2 pollution such as methane, and agricultural emissions and carbon dioxide removals from land.  The EU also needs to address consumer demand to tackle food emissions, the board says. In particular, Europeans eat too much red meat, driving up methane pollution.  The scientists recommend the EU set up national guidelines for climate-friendly diets and set mandatory standards for marketing and sustainability labeling of food to push consumers toward greener choices.  CLIMATE-PROOFING FARMS To sweeten the deal for farmers, the board suggests that with the money saved from a reformed CAP and generated through carbon pricing, the EU should support them in the transition toward climate-friendly practices and in adapting to a warmer world.  Whether the promise of funding would be enough to placate farming lobbies that have launched massive tractor protests across Europe at any hint of additional burdens for farmers is uncertain. Political appetite for green legislation has also declined in both Brussels and capitals amid a shift toward industry- and security-focused policies.  As part of its Green Deal, the European Commission in 2020 launched a Farm to Fork Strategy designed to make the bloc’s food system more environmentally friendly. The plan, however, was effectively abandoned following a backlash from lobby groups and conservative politicians.  Political appetite for green legislation has also declined amid a shift toward industry- and security-focused policies. | Marijan Murat/picture alliance via Getty Images Only last week, EU institutions struck a deal to ban vegetarian products from using certain meat-related terms.  But Edenhofer believes that there is political space to enact the board’s recommendations, pointing to Denmark’s tripartite deal establishing a carbon tax — an agreement between the government, farmers and environmental groups — as a hopeful example.  “We acknowledge that this is very complicated, but … we need a regulatory system which incentivizes emission reductions in the agri-food system,” Edenhofer insisted.

Governments and lobby groups in Italy, Ireland and Hungary are raising concerns over the continuing near-standstill in maritime freight transport in the Strait of Hormuz as the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran escalates. The strait, a major international waterway for oil, gas and fertilizers, has been a no-go zone for a week now, after Iran retaliated against a joint U.S.-Israeli strike and the conflict spilled into the surrounding region. The narrow stretch of water lies partly in Iranian territorial waters. Tehran has said the waterway technically remains open but warned that U.S. and Israeli vessels would be targeted, adding it “cannot guarantee the safety of ships from all countries.” “The attack on Iran has opened a Pandora’s box,” Irish Agriculture Minister Martin Heydon told the Irish Independent, warning that the surge in the price of fertilizers could hit at the worst time of the year, during planting season. The Middle East is also an important market for Irish food and drink exports. Heydon did not rule out government support packages for farms and food producers, but said it is too soon to talk about it. The disruption is also raising concerns in Italy, where the largest farmers’ lobby Coldiretti on Tuesday warned that “the disruption of trade routes linked to the war involving Iran is already causing serious damage to exports.” “The main concern is the markets of the Middle East, where the total value of Italian agri-food exports exceeds €2 billion,” Coldiretti wrote in a press release, adding that particular concern surrounds perishable products like fruits, vegetables or flowers. “The halt in maritime traffic in the Gulf comes at the peak of the flower export season,” added Coldiretti. Meanwhile, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose country goes to the polls next month, announced Monday that Hungary will renew fuel price caps “to protect Hungarian families, Hungarian entrepreneurs and Hungarian farmers” following what he described as an “international oil price explosion.”

A week after it began its strikes on Iran, the Trump administration’s efforts to stem the rise in energy prices have yet to turn the tide — and analysts warn the worst of the price shocks may still be to come. The U.S. benchmark oil price eclipsed $90 a barrel on Friday for the first time since 2023, up more than $20 since the war began Saturday and the market’s highest one-week jump in history. The price increase has already started to appear for American consumers, with prices at the gas pump up 32 cents a gallon from a week ago. The unyielding price increases — which analysts attributed to the continued disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s crude passes each day — comes as President Donald Trump is under rising pressure to contain the economic impact of the war on Americans, eight months ahead of the midterms, where affordability issues are top of mind. “Crude WILL go to $200 [a barrel], en route higher, unless traffic through the Strait resumes,” said Rory Johnston, an oil analyst who writes the newsletter Commodity Context, in a post on X. “Not clickbait, but rather brutal physics and necessary economic incentives.” The White House has announced several measures aimed at calming the oil markets this week, including temporarily easing sanctions on India’s purchase of Russian oil and offering naval escorts and political risk insurance to oil and gas tankers traversing the Strait of Hormuz. None of those measures has succeeded, however, as traders boost prices on news of disruptions to supply. Iran has succeeded in damaging several oil tankers, Iraq and Kuwait have already throttled oil production because their crude tankers can no longer get to market, and China has warned it could stop exporting fuel amid supply concerns. The longer that ships avoid the Strait of Hormuz, Gulf countries will start to run out of storage capacity and be forced to shut in their production, said Claudio Galimberti, chief economist at research firm Rystad Energy. “If the Strait of Hormuz remains closed for, let’s say, three weeks, then you will have shut in 15 million barrels a day of production in the Middle East,” Galimberti said at a Rystad conference in Washington on Thursday. “That takes us from a position of comfortable oversupply as of [last] Friday to one of incredible deficit, the size of which we’ve never seen.” Galimberti noted that oil may be slow to flow even if shipping traffic resumes, given the difficult and expensive processes required to restart production. “If it’s shut for weeks or months, then it’s going to take weeks and probably months to bring it back to the same level,” he said. Still, the administration has said it sees little cause for long-term alarm. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Friday morning that Americans should expect gas prices to come down again soon. “It’s weeks, I would say, in the worst case,” Wright told Fox News. “It’s weeks, not months.” Wright acknowledged that prices are “more than we’d like them to be,” but noted they remain far lower than the record levels hit after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during the Biden administration, when global crude supplies were much tighter. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that record U.S. oil production, new supplies from Venezuela and efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz will keep a lid on prices. “President Trump’s entire energy team, from the White House to the National Energy Dominance Council to Secretaries Wright and Bessent, have a game plan to keep oil prices stable throughout Operation Epic Fury,” Leavitt said. Market analysts are painting a much more dire picture of the situation, however. Six days into the conflict, oil and gas tankers remain largely unwilling to transit the strait, cutting off a key supply route between major oil producers in the Gulf and their customers in Asia and beyond. Even with the price increases this week, markets may not be pricing in the true impact of an extended closure of the strait, said Andon Pavlov, director of oil and tanker research at commodity tracking firm Kpler. “There is a widespread expectation across the market that the alternative of not opening the Strait of Hormuz is just so apocalyptically bad that eventually something will happen,” he said in a Thursday webinar. “Is it going to happen? Every day makes it less and less likely.” Even if the Trump administration can get the price of oil under control, that does not guarantee that the price of gasoline comes down with it, said Catherine Wolfram, a former deputy assistant secretary for climate and energy economics at the Treasury Department. “Economists talk about what’s called rockets and feathers — that gas prices go up like rockets when oil prices go up, but then if oil prices go back down … they go back down like feathers,” said Wolfram, who is now a professor of energy economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. “Especially if you’re coming into the period when [gas prices] tend to rise because of summer driving, they might just stay high, even if oil prices go back down,” she said. The Development Finance Corporation announced new details Friday on the insurance program aimed at getting tankers moving again, which it said would cover losses up to $20 billion. “We are confident that our reinsurance plan will get oil, gasoline, LNG, jet fuel, and fertilizer through the Strait of Hormuz and flowing again to the world,” DFC CEO Ben Black said in a statement. Ben Cahill, an oil analyst and nonresident fellow at Arab Gulf States Institute, said the insurance backstop does not alleviate the fear of being attacked by Iranians, who are “obviously desperate and backed into a corner.” “The measures taken could alleviate some of the risks and maybe drive down some of the costs associated with shipping insurance, but the fundamental problem is still there,” he said. In order to get shipping moving again, “you need a fundamental change in the trajectory of the conflict,” Cahill added. Wright acknowledged in an interview with ABC News on Thursday night that shipping companies have not been willing to transit the strait even with U.S.-backed insurance. “Right now, the biggest issue is just physical security,” he said. “You don’t want to run a large tanker ship through the Strait of Hormuz today, but that’ll change in the not too distant future.” Wright said the U.S. military would begin providing escorts to oil tankers “as quickly as we can,” but its immediate focus was on suppressing Iranian attacks. “First we’ve got to get their ability to cause trouble way down, and then as soon as it’s reasonable to do it, we’ll escort ships through the straits and get the energy moving again,” he said.

Andrej Babiš built his fortune making fertilizer. But another, lesser-known arm of his business empire has helped bring more than 170,000 children into the world across Europe. The Czech prime minister’s name is rarely attached to FutureLife, one of Europe’s largest IVF clinic networks, spanning 60 clinics in 16 countries from Prague to Madrid to Dublin. But is just one part of a commercial empire that spans nitrogen-based fertilizers and industrial farms, assisted reproduction, online lingerie stores and more. And the Czech leader holds this portfolio while sitting at the table negotiating EU budgets, health rules and industrial policy. Yet in Brussels, nobody can answer a deceptively simple question: Which of the companies associated with Babiš receives EU money — and how much? “We might be giving him money and we don’t even know,” said Daniel Freund, a German Green lawmaker who led the European Parliament’s inquiries into Babiš during his first term as Czechia’s prime minister from 2017 to 2021. In 2021, the Parliament overwhelmingly adopted a resolution condemning Babiš over conflicts of interest involving EU subsidies and companies he founded. Under EU rules, member countries are responsible for checking conflicts of interest and reporting on who ultimately benefits from EU funds. But there is no single EU-wide register linking ultimate beneficial owners to all EU payments — making cross-border oversight difficult. The issue has resurfaced as Babiš returns to power and once again takes a seat among other EU heads of state and government in the European Council. In that exclusive body, he helps negotiate the bloc’s long-term budget, agricultural subsidies and other funding frameworks that shape the sectors in which his companies might operate. For years, debates over Babiš’s conflicts of interest have revolved around a single name — Agrofert, the agro-industrial empire that EU and Czech auditors found had improperly received over €200 million in EU and national agricultural subsidies. The payment suspensions and repayment demands continue: This week, Czech authorities halted some agricultural subsidies to Agrofert pending a fresh legal review of the company’s compliance with conflict-of-interest rules. Babiš has consistently rejected accusations of wrongdoing. His office said he “follows all binding rules” and that “there is no conflict of interests at the moment,” adding that Agrofert shares are managed by independent experts and that he “is not and will never be the owner of Agrofert shares.” In a parliamentary debate earlier this month, he dismissed the controversy as politically motivated, accusing opponents of having “invented” the conflict-of-interest issue because they were unable to defeat him at the ballot box. But critics argue that the renewed focus on Agrofert obscures a far broader commercial footprint. “Agrofert is only half of the problem,” said Petr Bartoň, chief economist at Natland, a private investment group based in Prague. “The law does not say ‘thou shalt not benefit from companies called Agrofert.’ It says you must not benefit from any companies subsidized by or receiving public money.” The concern, critics argue, arises from the sheer number of companies and sectors with which Babiš remains associated. THE INVISIBLE PILLAR Separate from Agrofert sits Hartenberg Holding, a private-equity vehicle Babiš co-founded with financier Jozef Janov in 2013. He holds a majority stake in the fund through SynBiol, a company he fully owns and which, unlike Agrofert, has not been transferred into any trust arrangement. With assets worth around €600 million, Hartenberg invests in health care, retail, aviation and real estate. Yet it has attracted only a fraction of the scrutiny directed at the agricultural holding, according to Lenka Stryalová of the Czech public-spending watchdog Hlídač státu. “Alongside Agrofert, there is a second, less visible pillar of Babiš’s business activities that is not currently intended to be placed into blind trusts,” she said. That pillar includes FutureLife, whose 2,100 specialists help individuals and couples conceive across Czechia, Slovakia, the U.K., Ireland, Romania, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Estonia. The clinics operate in a policy-sensitive space shaped primarily by national health reimbursement systems and insurance rules, rather than decisions taken directly in Brussels. Those systems, however, function within a broader EU regulatory framework governing cross-border care and state aid. Hartenberg owns 50.1 percent of FutureLife. The company said in a statement that Babiš has no operational role, no board seat and no decision-making authority. It added that FutureLife clinics operate like other health care providers and, where applicable, are reimbursed by national public health insurance systems under the same rules as other providers. Like thousands of other companies, some FutureLife entities received pandemic-era wage support under Czechia’s Covid relief programs. There is no evidence of any irregularity in those payments.  But health care is only one corner of the portfolio. Through Hartenberg, Babiš-linked capital also flows into everyday retail life. Astratex, a Czech-founded online lingerie retailer that began as a catalogue business before moving fully online in 2005, now operates localized e-shops across roughly 10 European markets and generates tens of millions of euros in annual revenue. Hartenberg acquired a controlling stake in 2018, marking one of the fund’s early expansions into cross-border digital retail. In Czechia, shoppers may also encounter Flamengo florist stands, a network of around 200 outlets selling bouquets, potted plants and funeral flower arrangements inside supermarkets and shopping malls. Hartenberg acquired a majority stake in the chain in 2019, backing its expansion and push into online delivery. Other online businesses linked to Babiš include sports equipment, and wool and textile retailers. Through Hartenberg, Babiš has also invested in urban development and real estate. Hartenberg was an early majority investor in the project company behind Prague’s Císařská vinice, a premium hillside development of villas and apartments near Ladronka park, partnering with developer JRD to finance construction. JRD Development Group said the project company is now 100 percent owned by JRD and that neither Babiš nor companies linked to him hold any direct or indirect ownership interest. The firm added that the development has not received EU funds or other public financial support. None of the Hartenberg businesses have ever been accused of misusing EU subsidies. But the long-running “Stork’s Nest” case, first investigated more than a decade ago and still unresolved, shows how difficult it can be to follow Babiš’s business web. The alleged fraud involved a €2 million EU subsidy provided in 2008 to the 31-room Čapí Hnízdo (Stork’s Nest) recreational and conference center in central Czechia, then part of Babiš’s Agrofert conglomerate. Prosecutors have accused Babiš and his associates of manipulating the center’s ownership and concealing his control of the business in order to obtain the subsidy. Babiš has always denied wrongdoing, telling POLITICO in 2019 that the case was politically motivated. He was acquitted in 2023, but an appeals court later overturned that verdict and ordered a retrial, which remains pending. Today, the resort itself is no longer part of Agrofert. It is owned by Imoba, a company fully controlled by Babiš’s SynBiol, the same holding that controls Hartenberg. Hartenberg itself holds no stake in Stork’s Nest. Taken together, Babis’ non-Agrofert portfolio spans health care reimbursement systems, online retail regulation, aviation safety oversight, real estate and city-planning decisions across multiple EU jurisdictions. In theory, a Czech consumer could encounter Babiš-linked companies at nearly every stage of life: the fertilizer on the fields that grow the wheat, the bread on the supermarket shelf, the bouquet for the wedding, the apartment in Prague and even the clinic that helps bring the next generation into the world. And at the end, perhaps, the flowers once more. WHY BRUSSELS CAN’T KEEP TRACK During Babiš’s previous term, the European Commission concluded that trust arrangements he put in place did not eliminate his effective control over Agrofert. A leaked legal document reported by POLITICO this month has since renewed accusations that his latest trust setup does not fully address those concerns either. Babiš rejects that interpretation, saying the arrangement complies with Czech and EU law and insisting he has done “much more than the law required” to distance himself from the company. The Commission said it does not maintain a consolidated list of companies ultimately owned or controlled by Babiš across member countries. Nor does it hold a comprehensive accounting of EU funds received by companies linked to him beyond Agrofert. Instead, responsibility for collecting beneficial ownership data lies primarily with national authorities implementing EU funds. The Commission can audit how member countries manage conflicts of interest and take measures to protect the EU budget if needed, but it does not itself aggregate that information across borders. The Commission confirmed to POLITICO that it has asked Czech authorities to explain how conflicts of interest are being prevented in relation to companies under Babiš’s control beyond Agrofert. Czech Regional Development Minister Zuzana Mrázová on Thursday acknowledged receiving the Commission’s letter earlier this month, saying it will be answered in line with applicable legislation and adding that, in her view, the prime minister has done everything necessary to comply with Czech and EU law. “From my perspective, there is no conflict of interest,” she said. Freund argues that the corporate complexity has become a problem in its own right. “The tracking of beneficial owners or beneficial recipients of EU funds is at the moment very difficult or sometimes even impossible,” said the EU lawmaker. Part of the difficulty lies in Europe’s fragmented ownership registers, which exist on paper across the EU but don’t speak the same language or even list the same owners. Freund described them as “inconsistent,” with some national databases listing Babiš in connection with certain companies while others do not. Babiš’s defenders argue that his steps regarding Agrofert go beyond what Czech law strictly requires. Critics counter that the law was never written with billionaires running multi-sector empires in mind and that resolving the conflict of interest identified by auditors in relation to Agrofert does not settle the wider concerns raised by the scale of his business interests. “For some reason, the perception has been created that once Agrofert is resolved, that resolves the conflict of interest,” Bartoň said. “As if the president were the arbiter of what needs and needs not be dealt with.” In reality, many companies owned through Hartenberg and Synbiol structures continue to operate in areas shaped by public spending, regulation and political decisions without being part of any divestment or trust arrangement. Those assets “still not only [pose] conflict of interest,” said Bartoň, but they are “not even in the process of being dealt with.” From fertilizer to fertility to funeral flowers, the structure is easy enough to trace in everyday life. It is far harder to trace on paper. Ketrin Jochecová contributed to this report.

Czechia’s farm payment authority said today that it will review whether Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s steps to sever ties with his agriculture empire, Agrofert, are legal. Babiš pledged in December to divest from Agrofert, one of Central Europe’s largest agri-food and chemicals groups, in order to avoid conflicts of interest in both Prague and Brussels — and to comply with a condition set by Czech President Petr Pavel, who required the move before approving Babiš’s government. “The State Agricultural Intervention Fund (SZIF), following the transfer of shares of the Agrofert group into the trust fund (RSVP Trust), requested an independent legal analysis from an external law firm,” said SZIF, a fund responsible for distributing EU Common Agricultural Policy payments in Czechia, including subsidies to Agrofert, in a press release. “The analysis is intended to assess whether the legal arrangement through RSVP Trust is in compliance with national and European legislation,” the agency said, adding that there is no set deadline to complete it. Babiš’s solution to place Agrofert in a trust fund — a step he formally completed last week — has come under renewed scrutiny after a leaked legal document suggested that ownership would transfer to his children not after his death, as he had previously claimed, but once his political career ends. The Czech opposition and Transparency International argue that under this setup, Babiš would continue to hold major personal and family stakes in Agrofert throughout his life, potentially steering his decisions both in Czechia and at the EU level. It’s a scenario the EU already knows well. Back when Babiš first served as prime minister from 2017 to 2021, he similarly placed Agrofert into trust funds. Yet in 2021, both Czech courts and the European Commission found that he still retained influence over them and was therefore in violation of EU conflict of interest rules. In a separate matter, SZIF is also reviewing how to handle the €280 million that Agrofert received during Babiš’s first term. The agriculture ministry, under former minister Marek Výborný, said in October 2025 that it would begin recovering the funds, but the process has not moved since then. “No decision has been made requiring us to return any subsidies. In fact, at this time we are not aware of any decision having been issued. We are convinced that we are entitled to the subsidies we applied for,” Pavel Heřmanský, Agrofert spokesperson, told POLITICO. Babiš’s office did not respond to a request for comment. The Czech agriculture ministry declined to comment.