BERLIN — German customs officers arrested five men Monday for allegedly violating European Union embargoes on Russia by exporting industrial goods to Russian arms manufacturers. The defendants arranged for around 16,000 deliveries to Russia, according to the ongoing investigation, with illegal transactions amounting to at least €30 million, the office of Germany’s Federal Public Prosecutor General said in a press release. The arrests come as authorities in Kyiv urge European leaders to crack down on exports of industrial goods and parts that Russia can use to manufacture weapons deployed in the war on Ukraine. Among the five people charged are two suspects with dual German-Russian citizenship and one with dual German-Ukrainian citizenship. Central to the investigation is a trading company in the northern German city of Lübeck owned by a suspect identified by the court as Nikita S. “Since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, he and the other defendants have used the company to conspiratorially procure goods for Russian industry and export them to Russia on numerous occasions,” said prosecutors. “To conceal their activities, the defendants used at least one other shell company in Lübeck, fictitious buyers inside and outside the European Union, and a Russian company as the recipient, for which Nikita S. also holds a position of responsibility.” The “end users” of the exported goods included at least 24 listed defense companies in Russia, prosecutors said. Russian government agencies allegedly supported the procurement, according to the statement. The exports involved, among other things, mechanical and technical components for Russian arms production, such as ball bearings and semiconductor devices, according to a report by public broadcaster ARD.

President Donald Trump has set his sights on several targets in the Western Hemisphere beyond Venezuela — from Mexico with its drug cartels to the political cause célèbre of Cuba. But one place is oddly missing from Trump’s list: Nicaragua. This is a country led not by one, but two dictators. A place where the opposition has been exiled, imprisoned or otherwise stifled so much the word “totalitarian” comes to mind. A place the first Trump administration named alongside Cuba and Venezuela as part of a “troika of tyranny.” Yet it’s barely been mentioned by the second Trump administration. That could change any moment, of course, but right now Nicaragua is in an enviable position in the region. That got me wondering: What is the regime in Managua doing right to avoid Trump’s wrath? What does it have that others don’t? Or, maybe, what does it not have? And what does Nicaragua’s absence from the conversation say about Trump’s bigger motives? Current and former government officials and activists gave me a range of explanations, including that the regime is making smart moves on battling drug trafficking, that it’s benefiting from a lack of natural resources for Trump to covet and that it doesn’t have a slew of migrants in the U.S. Taken together, their answers offer one of the strongest arguments yet that Trump’s actions in the Western Hemisphere or beyond are rarely about helping oppressed people and more about U.S. material interests. “The lesson from Nicaragua is: Don’t matter too much, don’t embarrass Washington and don’t become a domestic political issue,” said Juan Gonzalez, a former Latin America aide to then-President Joe Biden. “For an administration that doesn’t care about democracy or human rights, that’s an effective survival strategy for authoritarians.” Some Nicaraguan opposition leaders say they remain optimistic, and I can’t blame them. Trump is rarely consistent about anything. He’s threatening to bomb Iran right now because, he says, he stands with protesters fighting an unjust regime (albeit one with oil). So maybe he might direct some fury toward Nicaragua? “The fact that Nicaragua is not at the center of the current conversation doesn’t mean that Nicaragua is irrelevant,” Felix Maradiaga, a Nicaraguan politician in exile, told me. “It means that the geopolitical interests of the U.S. right now are at a different place.” Nicaragua is run by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, a husband and wife who take the term “power couple” somewhat literally. They are now co-presidents of the Central American nation of 7 million. Over the years, they’ve rigged elections, wrested control over other branches of the government and crushed the opposition, while apparently grooming their children to succeed them. It has been a strange and circular journey for a pair of one-time Sandinista revolutionaries who previously fought to bring down a dynastic dictatorship. Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have fled the impoverished country, some to the United States. Meanwhile, the regime has enhanced ties to Russia, China and other U.S. adversaries, while having rocky relations with Washington. Nicaragua is part of a free trade agreement with Washington, but it has also faced U.S. sanctions, tariffs and other penalties for oppressing its people, eroding democracy and having ties to Russia. Even the current Trump administration has used such measures against it, but the regime hasn’t buckled. Nicaraguan officials I reached out to didn’t respond with a comment. Several factors appear to make Nicaragua a lower priority for Trump. Unlike Venezuela, Nicaragua isn’t a major source of oil, the natural resource Trump covets most. It has gold, but not enough of that or other minerals to truly stand out. (Although yes, I know, Trump loves gold.) It’s also not a major source of migrants to the U.S. Besides, Trump has largely shut down the border. Unlike Panama, another country Trump has previously threatened, it doesn’t have a canal key to global commerce, although there’s occasional talk of building one. Nicaragua may be placating the president and his team by taking moves to curb drug trafficking. At least, that’s what a White House official told me when I sought comment from the administration on why Nicaragua has not been a focus. “Nicaragua is cooperating with us to stop drug trafficking and fight criminal elements in their territory,” the official said. I granted the White House official anonymity to discuss a sensitive national security issue. It’s difficult to establish how this cooperation is happening, and the White House official didn’t offer details. In fact, there were reports last year of tensions between the two countries over the issue. A federal report in March said the U.S. “will terminate its Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) operations in Nicaragua in 2025, partly due to the lack of cooperation from Nicaragua’s agencies.” The DEA didn’t reply when I asked if it had followed up with that plan, but it’s possible the regime has become more helpful recently. The U.S. and Nicaragua’s cooperation on drugs has waxed and waned over the years. In any case, although drug runners use Nicaraguan territory, it’s not a major cartel hub compared to some other countries facing Trump’s ire, such as Mexico. Some Nicaraguan opposition activists have been hoping that U.S. legal moves against Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro would expose narcotrafficking links between Managua and Caracas, providing a reason for the U.S. to come down harder on the regime. They’ve pointed to a 2020 U.S. criminal indictment of Maduro that mentioned Nicaragua. But the latest indictment, unveiled upon Maduro’s Jan. 3 capture, doesn’t mention Nicaragua. When I asked the White House official why the newer indictment doesn’t mention Nicaragua, the person merely insisted that “both indictments are valid.” A spokesperson for the Department of Justice declined to comment. Nicaraguan opposition leaders say that although the new indictment doesn’t mention the country, they still hope it will come up during Maduro’s trial. My sense, though, is that Ortega and Murillo are cooperating just enough with the U.S. that the administration is willing to go easy on them for now. It probably also doesn’t hurt that, despite railing frequently against Washington, Ortega and Murillo don’t openly antagonize Trump himself. They may have learned a lesson from watching how hard Trump has come down on Colombia’s president for taunting him. Another reason Nicaragua isn’t getting much Trump attention? It is not a domestic political flashpoint in the U.S. Not, for example, the way Cuba has been for decades. The Cuban American community can move far more votes than the Nicaraguan American one. Plus, none of the aides closest to Trump are known to be too obsessed with Nicaragua. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has long denounced the Nicaraguan regime, but he’s of Cuban descent and more focused on that island’s fate. Cuba’s regime also is more dependent on Venezuela than Nicaragua’s, making it an easier target. Ortega and Murillo aren’t sucking up to Trump and striking deals with him like another area strongman, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele. But, especially since the U.S. capture of Maduro, the pair seem bent on proving their anti-imperialist credentials without angering Trump. The results can be head-scratching. For example, in recent days, the regime is reported to have detained around 60 people for celebrating Maduro’s capture. But around the same time, the regime also reportedly freed “tens” of prisoners, at least some of whom were critics of Ortega and Murillo. Those people were released after the U.S. embassy in the country called on Nicaragua to follow in Venezuela’s recent footsteps and release political prisoners. However, the regime is reported to have described the releases as a way to commemorate 19 years of its rule. Alex Gray, a former senior National Security Council official in the first Trump administration, argued that one reason the president and his current team should care more about Nicaragua is its ties to U.S. adversaries such as Russia and China — ties that could grow if the U.S. ignores the Latin American country. Russia in particular has a strong security relationship with the regime in Managua. China has significantly expanded its ties in recent years, though more in the economic space. Iran also has warm relations with Managua. Nicaragua is the “poster child” for what Trump’s own National Security Strategy called the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which warns the U.S. will deny its adversaries the ability to meddle in the Western Hemisphere, Gray said. The White House official said the administration is “very closely” monitoring Nicaragua’s cooperation with U.S. rivals. But even that may not be enough for Trump to prioritize Nicaragua. Regardless of what his National Security Strategy says, Trump has a mixed record of standing up to Russia and China, and Nicaragua’s cooperation with them may not be as worrisome as that of a more strategically important country. With Trump, who himself often acts authoritarian, many things must fall in place at the right moment for him to care or act, and Nicaraguan opposition activists haven’t solved that Rubik’s Cube. Many are operating in exile. (In 2023, Ortega and Murillo put 222 imprisoned opposition activists on a plane to the U.S., then stripped them of their Nicaraguan citizenship. Many are now effectively stateless but vulnerable to Trump’s immigration crackdown.) It’s not lost on these activists that Trump has left much of Maduro’s regime in place in Venezuela. It suggests Trump values stability over democracy, human rights or justice. Some hope Ortega and Murillo will be weakened by the fall of their friend, Maduro. The two surely noticed how little Russia, China and others did to help the former leader. Maybe Nicaragua’s co-dictators will ease up on internal repression as one reaction. “When you get this kind of pressure, there are things that get in motion,” said Juan Sebastian Chamorro, a Nicaraguan politician forced out of the country. “They are feeling the heat.”

PARIS — U.S. actor George Clooney was awarded French citizenship following a request from the country’s foreign affairs minister, according to an official document seen by POLITICO. In a letter dated Oct. 20 sent to France’s interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, who handles citizenship procedures, Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Noël Barrot proposed that the Hollywood superstar, his wife Amal and their children be granted citizenship through the so-called “citoyen émérite” process. This allows “a French-speaking foreigner who contributes through his or her outstanding work to the influence of France and the prosperity of its international economic relations” to become a citizen through a request from the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Barrot underlines the Clooney family is “permanently based” in the south of France, where their children attend school, and that the couple “maintains personal and professional ties with [France].” The letter points to the Clooneys’ philanthropic work and notes that “through their life paths and commitments, they embody the values of solidarity, freedom, and creativity that France promotes around the world.” It also states that “Mr. Clooney’s professional activity generates enormous financial benefits from which the French film industry profits.” A spokesperson for France’s foreign affairs minister confirmed that the request to offer the Clooney family citizenship, which was officially granted on Dec. 26 according to France’s official public records, had been made by Barrot. A spokesperson for George Clooney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. George Clooney and his wife Amal — a human rights lawyer — run the Clooney Justice Foundation, an organization devoted to “providing free legal aid in defense of free speech & women’s rights in over 40 countries.” In Europe, the foundation’s activities and the actor’s activism have put him at odds with Russian authorities and Hungary’s Viktor Orban, whom Clooney described as an example of the “anger and hate.” In the U.S., Clooney has held close ties with Democratic Party officials and played an important role in urging former President Joe Biden to step down from the 2024 Presidential campaign. He has also feuded with current President Donald Trump, who called him a “fake movie actor” on his Truth Social network in April. This provision, used to grant Clooney citizenship, has enabled several public figures to obtain French passports in the past, including Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel and Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov. Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, minister delegate to the interior minister, said she is embarrassed by the development and thinks it “sends the wrong message.” She added she would “look into” the whole procedure. Victor Goury-Laffont contributed to this report.

LONDON — The U.K. Foreign Office will review “serious information failures” that led to ministers being unaware of “abhorrent” social media posts by the British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah, Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Monday evening. Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday said he was “delighted” Abd El-Fattah was back in the U.K. after he was released from prison in Egypt after successive British governments had campaigned for his release. The case has been a “top priority for my government since we came to office,” Starmer added. But Downing Street was later forced to condemn Abd El-Fattah after social media posts emerged, in which he said he considered “killing any colonialists and specially Zionists heroic,” and called British people “dogs and monkeys.” In a letter to a U.K. parliamentary committee, Cooper said she, Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy “were all unaware” of historic tweets by Abd El-Fattah. “We consider them to be abhorrent,” she said. Abd El-Fattah on Monday “unequivocally” apologized for the tweets. Cooper said current and former ministers were “never briefed on these tweets when they spoke publicly about the case,” and civil servants in charge of the case “were also unaware” of them. In her letter to the foreign affairs committee Cooper said she was “deeply concerned” that the re-emergence of the historic posts — and the social media posts by senior politicians on Boxing Day welcoming Abd El-Fattah’s reunion with his family — had “added to the distress felt by Jewish communities in the UK.” It was clear there had been an “unacceptable failure” and that long-standing due diligence procedures had been “completely inadequate for this situation,” she added. A senior Foreign Office civil servant has been asked to review the “serious information failures in this case” and the broader systems in place in the department for carrying out due diligence on high-profile consular and human rights cases to make sure they are “functioning properly for the future,” Cooper said. Successive U.K. ministers campaigned for the release of Abd El-Fattah, who was convicted of “spreading fake news” in Egypt in 2021 for sharing a Facebook post about torture in the country. He was granted British citizenship in December 2021 through his London-born mother, when the opposition Conservatives were in power. The Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK are now calling for Abd El-Fattah to be stripped of U.K. citizenship and deported.

This article is also available in French and German. President Donald Trump denounced Europe as a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people in an interview with POLITICO, belittling the traditional U.S. allies for failing to control migration and end the Russia-Ukraine war, and signaling that he would endorse European political candidates aligned with his own vision for the continent. The broadside attack against European political leadership represents the president’s most virulent denunciation to date of these Western democracies, threatening a decisive rupture with countries like France and Germany that already have deeply strained relations with the Trump administration. “I think they’re weak,” Trump said of Europe’s political leaders. “But I also think that they want to be so politically correct.” “I think they don’t know what to do,” he added. “Europe doesn’t know what to do.” Trump matched that blunt, even abrasive, candor on European affairs with a sequence of stark pronouncements on matters closer to home: He said he would make support for immediately slashing interest rates a litmus test in his choice of a new Federal Reserve chair. He said he could extend anti-drug military operations to Mexico and Colombia. And Trump urged conservative Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, both in their 70s, to stay on the bench. Trump’s comments about Europe come at an especially precarious moment in the negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, as European leaders express intensifying alarm that Trump may abandon Ukraine and its continental allies to Russian aggression. In the interview, Trump offered no reassurance to Europeans on that score and declared that Russia was obviously in a stronger position than Ukraine. Trump spoke on Monday at the White House with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for a special episode of The Conversation. POLITICO on Tuesday named Trump the most influential figure shaping European politics in the year ahead, a recognition previously conferred on leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Trump’s confident commentary on Europe presented a sharp contrast with some of his remarks on domestic matters in the interview. The president and his party have faced a series of electoral setbacks and spiraling dysfunction in Congress this fall as voters rebel against the high cost of living. Trump has struggled to deliver a message to meet that new reality: In the interview, he graded the economy’s performance as an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” insisted that prices were falling across the board and declined to outline a specific remedy for imminent spikes in health care premiums. Even amid growing turbulence at home, however, Trump remains a singular figure in international politics. In recent days, European capitals have shuddered with dismay at the release of Trump’s new National Security Strategy document, a highly provocative manifesto that cast the Trump administration in opposition to the mainstream European political establishment and vowed to “cultivate resistance” to the European status quo on immigration and other politically volatile issues. In the interview, Trump amplified that worldview, describing cities like London and Paris as creaking under the burden of migration from the Middle East and Africa. Without a change in border policy, Trump said, some European states “will not be viable countries any longer.” Using highly incendiary language, Trump singled out London’s left-wing mayor, Sadiq Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants and the city’s first Muslim mayor, as a “disaster” and blamed his election on immigration: “He gets elected because so many people have come in. They vote for him now.” The president of the European Council, António Costa, on Monday rebuked the Trump administration for the national security document and urged the White House to respect Europe’s sovereignty and right to self-government. “Allies do not threaten to interfere in the democratic life or the domestic political choices of these allies,” Costa said. “They respect them.” Speaking with POLITICO, Trump flouted those boundaries and said he would continue to back favorite candidates in European elections, even at the risk of offending local sensitivities. “I’d endorse,” Trump said. “I’ve endorsed people, but I’ve endorsed people that a lot of Europeans don’t like. I’ve endorsed Viktor Orbán,” the hard-right Hungarian prime minister Trump said he admired for his border-control policies. It was the Russia-Ukraine war, rather than electoral politics, that Trump appeared most immediately focused on. He claimed on Monday that he had offered a new draft of a peace plan that some Ukrainian officials liked, but that Zelenskyy himself had not reviewed yet. “It would be nice if he would read it,” Trump said. Zelenskyy met with leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom on Monday and continued to voice opposition to ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace deal. The president said he put little stock in the role of European leaders in seeking to end the war: “They talk, but they don’t produce, and the war just keeps going on and on.” In a fresh challenge to Zelenskyy, who appears politically weakened in Ukraine due to a corruption scandal, Trump renewed his call for Ukraine to hold new elections. “They haven’t had an election in a long time,” Trump said. “You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.” Latin America Even as he said he is pursuing a peace agenda overseas, Trump said he might further broaden the military actions his administration has taken in Latin America against targets it claims are linked to the drug trade. Trump has deployed a massive military force to the Caribbean to strike alleged drug runners and pressure the authoritarian regime in Venezuela. In the interview, Trump repeatedly declined to rule out putting American troops into Venezuela as part of an effort to bring down the strongman ruler Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump blames for exporting drugs and dangerous people to the United States. Some leaders on the American right have warned Trump that a ground invasion of Venezuela would be a red line for conservatives who voted for him in part to end foreign wars. “I don’t want to rule in or out. I don’t talk about it,” Trump said of deploying ground troops, adding: “I don’t want to talk to you about military strategy.” But the president said he would consider using force against targets in other countries where the drug trade is highly active, including Mexico and Colombia. “Sure, I would,” he said. Trump scarcely defended some of his most controversial actions in Latin America, including his recent pardon of the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a decades-long sentence in an American prison after being convicted in a massive drug-trafficking conspiracy. Trump said he knew “very little” about Hernández except that he’d been told by “very good people” that the former Honduran president had been targeted unfairly by political opponents. “They asked me to do it and I said, I’ll do it,” Trump acknowledged, without naming the people who sought the pardon for Hernández. HEALTH CARE AND THE ECONOMY Asked to grade the economy under his watch, Trump rated it an overwhelming success: “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.” To the extent voters are frustrated about prices, Trump said the Biden administration was at fault: “I inherited a mess. I inherited a total mess.” The president is facing a forbidding political environment because of voters’ struggles with affordability, with about half of voters overall and nearly 4 in 10 people who voted for Trump in 2024 saying in a recent POLITICO Poll that the cost of living was as bad as it had ever been in their lives. Trump said he could make additional changes to tariff policy to help lower the price of some goods, as he has already done, but he insisted overall that the trend on costs was in the right direction. “Prices are all coming down,” Trump said, adding: “Everything is coming down.” Prices rose 3 percent over the 12 months ending in September, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index. Trump’s political struggles are shadowing his upcoming decision on a nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, a post that will shape the economic environment for the balance of Trump’s term. Asked if he was making support for slashing interest rates a litmus test for his Fed nominee, Trump answered with a quick “yes.” The most immediate threat to the cost of living for many Americans is the expiration of enhanced health insurance subsidies for Obamacare exchange plans that were enacted by Democrats under former President Joe Biden and are set to expire at the end of this year. Health insurance premiums are expected to spike in 2026, and medical charities are already experiencing a marked rise in requests for aid even before subsidies expire. Trump has been largely absent from health policy negotiations in Washington, while Democrats and some Republicans supportive of a compromise on subsidies have run into a wall of opposition on the right. Reaching a deal — and marshaling support from enough Republicans to pass it — would likely require direct intervention from the president. Yet asked if he would support a temporary extension of Obamacare subsidies while he works out a large-scale plan with lawmakers, Trump was noncommittal. “I don’t know. I’m gonna have to see,” he said, pivoting to an attack on Democrats for being too generous with insurance companies in the Affordable Care Act. A cloud of uncertainty surrounds the administration’s intentions on health care policy. In late November, the White House planned to unveil a proposal to temporarily extend Obamacare subsidies only to postpone the announcement. Trump has promised on and off for years to unveil a comprehensive plan for replacing Obamacare but has never done so. That did not change in the interview. “I want to give the people better health insurance for less money,” Trump said. “The people will get the money, and they’re going to buy the health insurance that they want.” Reminded that Americans are currently buying holiday gifts and drawing up household budgets for 2026 amid uncertainty around premiums, Trump shot back: “Don’t be dramatic. Don’t be dramatic.” SUPREME COURT Large swaths of Trump’s domestic agenda currently sit before the Supreme Court, with a generally sympathetic 6-3 conservative majority that has nevertheless thrown up some obstacles to the most brazen versions of executive power Trump has attempted to wield. Trump spoke with POLITICO several days after the high court agreed to hear arguments concerning the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, the automatic conferral of citizenship on people born in the United States. Trump is attempting to roll back that right and said it would be “devastating” if the court blocked him from doing so. If the court rules in his favor, Trump said, he had not yet considered whether he would try to strip citizenship from people who were born as citizens under current law. Trump broke with some members of his party who have been hoping that the court’s two oldest conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, might consider retiring before the midterm elections so that Trump can nominate another conservative while Republicans are guaranteed to control the Senate. The president said he’d rather Alito, 75, and Thomas, 77, the court’s most reliable conservative jurists, remain in place: “I hope they stay,” he said, “’cause I think they’re fantastic.”

BRUSSELS — After years of being treated as an outlier for its hardline stance on migration, Denmark says it has finally brought the rest of the EU on board with its tough approach. Europe’s justice and home affairs ministers on Monday approved new measures allowing EU countries to remove failed asylum seekers, set up processing centers overseas and create removal hubs outside their borders — measures Copenhagen has long advocated. The deal was “many years in the making,” said Rasmus Stoklund, Denmark’s center-left minister for integration who has driven migration negotiations during his country’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU. Stoklund told POLITICO that when he first started working on the migration brief a decade ago in the Danish parliament, his fellow left-wingers around the bloc viewed his government’s position as so egregious that “other social democrats wouldn’t meet with me.” Over the last few years, “there’s been a huge change in perception,” Stoklund said. When the deal was done Monday, the “sigh of relief” from ministers and their aides was palpable, with people embracing one another and heaping praise on both the Danish brokers and Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission that put forward the initial proposal, according to a diplomat who was in the room. Sweden’s Migration Minister Johan Forssell, a member of the conservative Moderate party, told POLITICO Monday’s deal was vital “to preserve, like, any public trust at all in the migration system today … we need to show that the system is working.” Stockholm, which has in the past prided itself on taking a liberal approach to migration, has recently undergone a Damascene conversion to the Danish model, implementing tough measures to limit family reunification, tightening rules around obtaining Swedish citizenship, and limiting social benefits for new arrivals. Forssell said the deal was important because “many people” around Europe criticize the EU over inaction on migration “because they cannot do themselves what [should be done] on the national basis.” The issue, he said, is a prime example of “why there must be a strong European Union.” SEALING THE DEAL Monday’s deal — whose impact will “hopefully be quite dramatic,” Stoklund said — comes two years after the EU signed off on a new law governing asylum and migration, which must be implemented by June. Voters have “made clear to governments all over the European Union, that they couldn’t accept that they weren’t able to control the access to their countries,” Stoklund said. “Governments have realized that if they didn’t take this question seriously, then [voters] would back more populist movements that would take it seriously — and use more drastic measures in order to find new solutions.” Stockholm has recently undergone a Damascene conversion to the Danish model, implementing tough measures to limit family reunification, tightening rules around obtaining Swedish citizenship, and limiting social benefits for new arrivals. | Henrick Montgomery/EPA Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner, the Danish Council presidency and ministers were at pains to point out that Monday’s agreement showed the EU could get deals done. After the last EU election in 2024, the new Commission’s “first task” was to “bring our European house in order,” Brunner said. “Today we’re showing that Europe can actually deliver and we delivered quite a lot.” WHAT’S NEW The ministers backed new rules to detain and deport migrants, including measures that would allow the bloc and individual countries to cut deals to set up migration processing hubs in other nations, regardless of whether the people being moved there have a connection with those countries. Ministers supported changes that will allow capitals to reject applications if asylum seekers, prior to first entering the EU, could have received international protection in a non-EU country the bloc deems safe, and signed off on a common list of countries of origin considered safe. Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia are on that latter list, as are countries that are candidates to join the EU. But the deal also leaves room for exceptions — such as Ukraine, which is at war. Asylum seekers won’t automatically have the right to remain in the EU while they appeal a ruling that their refuge application was inadmissible. The next step for the measures will be negotiations with the European Parliament, once it has decided its position on the proposals. Max Griera contributed reporting.

Laurence Tubiana is the CEO of the European Climate Foundation, France’s climate change ambassador, and COP30 special envoy for Europe. Manuel Pulgar-Vidal the World Wildlife Fund’s global climate and energy lead and was COP20 president. Anne Hidalgo is the mayor of Paris. Eduardo Paes is the mayor of Rio de Janeiro. In April, former U.K. prime minister Tony Blair wrote that our net zero policies are “doomed to fail.” This narrative — that the world is losing faith in climate action — has gained a lot of traction. But it is simply not true. Across the world, strong and stable majorities continue to back ambitious climate policies. In most countries, more than 80 percent of citizens support action, and according to research published in “Nature Climate Change,” 69 percent of people globally say they’re willing to contribute 1 percent of their income to help tackle the climate crisis. The problem isn’t a collapse in public support — it is the growing disconnect between people and politics, which is being fueled by powerful interests, misinformation and the manipulation of legitimate anxieties. Fossil fuel lobbies are working overtime to delay the green transition by sowing confusion and polarization. But this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference COP30, taking place in Belém, Brazil, is our chance to change this. It is an opportunity to be remembered not just for new pledges or targets but for rebooting the relationship between citizens and the climate regime, a chance to truly be the “People’s COP.” To that end, a new proposal, supported by the Brazilian Presidency and detailed in a policy paper sets out a vision for embedding citizen participation directly into the U.N. process — a Citizens’ Track. It calls for a dedicated space where ordinary people can be heard, where they can share how they’re organizing, what solutions they’re building to address the climate crisis, and what a sustainable future means to them. There are a number of reasons why this must happen: First, citizens are crucial for implementation. They provide the political mandate as well as the practical muscle. Communities have the power to accelerate or obstruct new renewable projects, support or resist the mining of transition minerals, object to or defend policy options, and make daily choices that determine whether the transition succeeds. But framing citizens as critical partners isn’t just pragmatic, it also defines the kind of transition we want to build — one of economic empowerment and social justice. A people-led approach cultivates a vision of more democracy not less, more agency not less, more protection not less. This kind of participation can be a deliberate counterweight to the forces of homogenization and alienation, which have hollowed out trust in globalization, and ground the transition in diversity, creativity and shared responsibility. This is not an anti-business agenda — it’s one that balances relationships between citizens, governments and finance, ensuring decisions are made with people and not for them. Second, participation builds fairness and resilience. A space at the multilateral level dedicated to advancing the peoples’ agenda offers a structured way to confront the questions that often fuel the political backlash against climate and environmental regulations: Who pays? Who benefits? Who’s left behind? More importantly, what can be done to resolve these trade-offs? When such concerns are ignored, resentment grows. The farmers’ protests across Europe, for instance, have been targeting the perceived unfairness of climate policies — not their goals. Elsewhere, communities are worried about the everyday realities of employment, growing costs and cultural change. A Citizens’ Track would allow these anxieties to surface, be heard and then addressed through dialogue and cooperation rather than division. Finally, participation also restores connection and hope. For too long, the climate movement has warned of catastrophe without offering a compelling vision of the future. A Citizens’ Track could fill that void, offering a modern, technology-enabled framework for deliberation and for reconnecting politics and people in an age of polarization. The farmers’ protests across Europe, for instance, have been targeting the perceived unfairness of climate policies — not their goals. | Mustafa Yalcin/Getty Images In an era dominated by algorithms that amplify outrage, a citizens’ process could invite reflection, reason and shared imagination. Everyone wants to know the truth. Everyone wants to live in a world of stronger communities. No one wants to inhabit a reality defined by manipulation, cynicism and emotional violence. A Citizens’ Track points to a different future, where disagreement is met with respect, rather than hostility. This is a vision that builds on a quiet revolution that’s already underway. More than 11,000 participatory budgeting initiatives have been implemented worldwide in the last three decades, allowing communities to decide how public resources are spent. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has tracked over 700 citizens’ assemblies and mini-publics, and found that participation has accelerated sharply in the last decade, with digital platforms enabling tens of millions of people to deliberate key issues. From Kerala, India’s People’s Plan of decentralized government to participatory ward committees in South Africa and Paris’ permanent citizens assembly, citizen’s voices are being institutionalized in local, regional or national governance all over the world. And now is the time to elevate this approach to the multilateral level. Initiatives like these form already a distributed movement, an informal ecosystem of participation shaping the future one action at a time — but they remain disconnected. By opening a dedicated space that aggregates these discreet citizen and community efforts, COP30 could inject renewed energy into the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. A decade ago, the Lima–Paris Action Agenda opened the door for cities, businesses and civil society to contribute to global progress. Today, the next step is clear. We cannot let governments off the hook on climate. Nor can we wait for them. This is the future a Citizens’ Track can deliver — and the legacy Belém must leave behind.

BRUSSELS — The EU is preparing to further tighten visa rules for Russian citizens, effectively ending the issuance of multi-entry Schengen permits in most cases, three European officials told POLITICO. The move, which represents another step in the bloc’s efforts to punish Moscow for its ongoing war in Ukraine, will mean that Russians generally only receive single-entry visas, with some exceptions for humanitarian reasons or for individuals who also hold EU citizenship. Brussels had already made it harder and more expensive for Russians to obtain visas, suspending its visa facilitation agreement with Moscow in late 2022 following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Some member countries, such as the Baltic states, have gone even further by banning or severely restricting Russians from stepping onto their soil altogether. However, visa issuance remains a national competence, meaning that while the European Commission can make the process harder, it cannot impose a total, sweeping ban on Russian visitors. In 2024, more than half a million Russians received Schengen visas, according to data from the Commission — a marked increase from 2023, though still far below prewar levels, with more than 4 million issued in 2019. Hungary, France, Spain and Italy continue to liberally grant tourist visas to Russian nationals. The new, stricter rules, part of a package of measures intended to reduce the number of Russians entering the bloc, are expected to be formally adopted and implemented this week. Separately and as part of its 19th package of sanctions, the EU plans to restrict the movements of Russian diplomats, requiring them to inform states in advance if they travel across the Schengen Area as a way to counter the Kremlin’s “increasingly hostile intelligence activities.” The Commission is also set to unveil its new bloc-wide visa strategy next month, which will set out common recommendations, including encouraging member countries to better leverage their visa policy against hostile countries and implement stricter criteria for Russians and other nationals.

About six in 10 jobless people in Belgium have a non-Belgian background, new figures show, as the right-wing government moves to tighten rules for migrants and the unemployed.  Employment Minister David Clarinval, who released the statistics Wednesday in response to a question from Socialist MP Sophie Thémont, called them “rather astonishing.”  “We know … [migrants] have a much lower command of the national languages,” he said. “They may have difficulty understanding the institutional system. So, we clearly need to focus on these people and pay particular attention to them.”  He added, “The main message is that everyone must work, including people of foreign origin.”   The figures classify individuals as having a non-Belgian background if they were born with another nationality or if at least one parent holds another nationality, even if they now hold Belgian citizenship. About 41.5 percent of Belgium’s unemployed are Belgian, while nearly 13 percent have North African roots, followed by migrants from southern EU countries.   Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, a Flemish right-winger who took office in February, has called Belgium’s immigration policy the “source of all misery” and has introduced strict new rules, including mandating higher income requirements and longer waiting periods for family reunification visas.   De Wever’s government is also moving forward with a plan to cut off unemployment benefits for those who have been jobless for more than 20 years starting next year. In the future, claimants will only be allowed to receive benefits for up to two years. The changes mean 180,000 Belgians are set to lose their unemployment benefits next year, saving the state just under €2 billion.

KYIV — Oleksandra Avramenko lowers her car window, not for fresh air but to listen. Stuck in morning traffic in downtown Kyiv, on the right bank of the Dnipro River, she leans toward the whine of motorcycles weaving through the lanes. “Whenever I hear that noise, I cringe,” she says. “They sound just like the drones.”    It has been more than three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, and over a decade since the war first erupted in Donbas. Kyiv has adapted to the new normal: constant sirens, interceptions and explosions on one side, cafés and bars buzzing with people on the other. Theaters sell out their shows and children have begun the new school year in shelters. At night, many families keep a spare mattress in hallways or bathrooms, following official advice to sleep between at least two walls, away from windows, in case a missile hits.   But beneath those routines lies a deeper unease — that the rest of Europe is tired, turning its attention away from the war and viewing it as something that should simply end, no matter the cost to Ukraine. And with that feeling comes the worry: that the European dream that once felt within reach is suddenly slipping away.  Avramenko, a 33-year-old policy advisor, feels this shift each time she returns to Kyiv across Poland, the main transit hub for Ukrainians heading in and out of the European Union. She now lives in Northern Europe, where she moved five years ago for her husband’s job, but has no plans to apply for EU citizenship — “Ukrainian already means European,” she says. Kyiv has adapted to the new normal: constant sirens, interceptions and explosions on one side, cafés and bars buzzing with people on the other. | Aleksandr Gusev/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images The 12-hour train ride from Kyiv to the EU frontier is crowded with women and children and haunted by the risk of drone strikes from the east. The men aboard are regarded with suspicion.  The border checks feel heavier than in the early days of Russia’s invasion. Polish officials ask why travelers are leaving Ukraine, how long they plan to stay, what their purpose is. Belongings are unpacked in search of contraband. “Back then, people opened their homes. Today, the questions are sharper,” Avramenko says.   She stresses she feels no resentment; like most Ukrainians, she is grateful for Poland’s support. But the shift captures a wider mood. Confidence in swift EU accession has sunk to its lowest point since the invasion, with just over half of Ukrainians believing membership will come in the next decade, down from more than 70 percent in 2022, according to an August poll.  Nearly one in five now think the EU will never admit Ukraine at all.  ‘WHY DON’T THEY CARE LIKE BEFORE?’    In 2022, balconies across Europe sprouted Ukrainian flags. Aid convoys streamed eastward. Strangers opened their doors to refugees.  Four days into the invasion, with Russian tanks closing in on Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed Ukraine’s application for EU membership. “We are fighting for our rights, our freedoms, our lives — and for our survival,” he said in an address that week. “We are also fighting to be equal members of Europe. So now, prove that you are with us. Prove that you are Europeans, and then life will win over death, and light will win over darkness.”   A month later, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen traveled to Kyiv to deliver the bloc’s first answer. “Ukraine belongs in the European family,” she declared, handing Zelenskyy a membership questionnaire. “This is where your path toward the European Union begins … we will accelerate this process as much as we can.”   That political backing is still there, but public enthusiasm has waned. As recently as April, von der Leyen mused that Ukraine could join the bloc before 2030. Yet as the accession process grinds forward, Ukrainians are watching nervously as public enthusiasm in parts of Europe falters, making the early momentum harder to sustain.   Neighboring Poland, one of Ukraine’s loudest political champions, is the starkest example.    A survey carried out in early summer found that only 35 percent of Poles back Kyiv’s EU accession, down from 85 percent in 2022. More than half of the population says they would prefer the war to end even if it means ceding territory to Russia.   Most Poles also believe that the scale of assistance offered to Ukrainian refugees has already gone too far, according to a study from the start of the year. That’s despite evidence refugees have had a positive impact on Poland’s economy by filling labor gaps and boosting growth.   The pattern repeats elsewhere in Europe.    In Germany, a majority still supports sending aid to Ukraine, but 52 percent believe Kyiv should give up occupied lands for peace. Across the continent, countries like Italy and France maintain official support, but their publics are increasingly skeptical about welcoming Ukraine as an EU member.   “Everyone asks: What’s happening in Poland, in Germany? Why don’t they care like before?” Avramenko says. She knows EU governments still pledge support, but she worries that for the broader public, Ukraine has become background noise.   That sense of fading attention abroad jars against the reality in Kyiv, where the war remains impossible to ignore.   On Sept. 7, Russia launched its largest air attack on Ukraine yet, with 810 drones and missiles setting fire to government offices and wrecking residential areas across the country. Only a fraction slipped past Kyiv’s dense air defenses — enough to kill three civilians, including a baby.   A week earlier, another strike tore through a Kyiv apartment block, killing 22, among them four children.   ‘WE CHOSE OUR FUTURE HERE‘ As dusk settles over the city’s Maidan Square, a few dozen demonstrators unfurl banners at the foot of the Independence Monument, their voices carrying through the warm evening air. Under martial law, mass protests against government policies have all but vanished; this is only the second one allowed to go ahead since the invasion.   Bohdan Fomin, a 30-year-old soldier from Mariupol, a city in Ukraine’s southeast, grips a handwritten sign demanding better treatment for troops. His hometown, once a thriving port of half a million people, was pulverized in 2022 and remains under Russian occupation — the reason he believes Ukraine must resist to the end, without concessions.   “If Ukraine is forced to cede territory, I will have no home to return to,” he says. “We chose our future more than 10 years ago, here, at Maidan. For us, it’s like getting back home — to Europe. Without that, I cannot imagine Ukraine.” Fomin is adamant the gathering is not against President Zelenskyy’s government. “Protests have been a part of our culture since our independence,” he says, nodding at the “dialog police” who watch quietly from the edges, tasked with speaking to the demonstrators rather than dispersing them. It’s a detail he cites as proof this is not a rebellion against the state.  Later that evening, Olena Herasymiuk joins the crowd. The 34-year-old poet’s works have become touchstones of the country’s wartime literature, and she has spent much of her adult life circling back to this square.  Family members and loved ones of fallen Ukrainian soldiers pay tribute to their memory at Independence Square on Sept. 27, 2025 in Kyiv, Ukraine. | Danylo Dubchak/Frontliner/Getty Images As a student in 2014, she stood there when the first sharp cracks rang out. At first she didn’t realize they were sniper bullets slicing past her head. Then she saw people falling, injured and dead. That moment, she says, never left her. It pushed her into writing poetry as testimony and into a volunteer battalion where she evacuated the wounded from battlefields.    “Ukrainians are Europeans in every sense,” she says. “We don’t want to be slaves. We are free, liberal and open — and we have only one path, the European path.”    She has buried friends and written poems about them. One classmate, Daria, went to war as a drone engineer and never came back. To keep going, she clings to small rituals. “Every morning, I wake up, and my first thought is about the dead,” she says. “That’s why I make myself have a coffee. It’s a reminder of how to stay alive, how to stay human. Without that, I would go crazy.”    ‘IF THEY ARE ERASED, EUROPE LOSES THEM TOO’   The insistence on Ukraine’s being central to the story of Europe spills from the street and into the country’s culture and politics.  Across town from Maidan Square, in a bustling bar with live music, Lina Romanukha scrolls through her Instagram profile. It’s filled with collages cut from decade-old magazines and sketches drawn over the past three years. Both, she says, help her cope with the experience of war.  When Russian troops advanced on Kyiv in February 2022, she fled to her parents’ house in western Ukraine. Within weeks she returned to the capital, convinced she could be more useful here.  Now 41, the curator and artist describes nights under drone attacks as “Russian roulette.” At first she went to shelters; now she doesn’t bother. “You can’t live like that forever. If it comes to my building, it comes,” she says.    Her answer to that fatalism: culture. Romanukha curated an exhibition that digitizes Ukraine’s monuments — not only those in Kyiv or Lviv, but also in Crimea, Donbas and other territories now under Russian control.   In the halls of Kyiv’s Pechersk Lavra — the centuries-old monastery that has itself survived wars and sieges — visitors use virtual reality to step into reconstructions of the ancient Greek city of Chersonesus in Sevastopol, wander through the Khan Palace in Bakhchysarai, or stand before the Mariupol drama theater where hundreds were killed in 2022. Each reconstruction is paired with music by Ukrainian composers: It’s Romanukha’s way of insisting culture survives even if the stone and marble do not.    But for Romanukha, the project is not just about the past. It’s a way of telling Europeans that Ukraine’s heritage is also theirs, that their future belongs together. The very act of placing occupied sites on the map reads like a form of defiance. Russia may hold the land, but the memory — and the claim to Europe — remains Ukrainian. “These monuments are part of European civilization,” Lina says. “If they are erased, Europe loses them too.”   For all the uncertainty about her country’s future, she calls herself a “blind optimist.” She dreams of a Ukraine restored to its 1991 borders, rebuilt with EU and international help.   “It’s a dream,” she admits, but one she refuses to let go of.