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

LONDON — Britain will reduce its aid sent to Africa by more than half, as the government unveils the impact of steep cuts to development assistance for countries across the world. On Thursday the Foreign Office revealed the next three years of its overseas development spending, giving MPs and the public the first look at the impact of Labour’s decision to gut Britain’s aid budget in order to fund an increase in defense spending. Government figures show that the value of Britain’s programs in Africa will fall by 56 percent from the £1.5 billion in 2024/25 when Labour took office to £677 million in 2028/9. It follows the move to reduce aid spending from 0.5 to 0.3 percent of gross national income. However, the government did not release the details of the funding for specific countries, giving Britain’s ambassadors and diplomats time to deliver the news personally to their counterparts across the world ahead of any potential backlash from allies. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told MPs that affected countries want Britain “to be an investor, not just a donor” and “want to attract finance, not be dependent on aid,” as she pointed to money her department had committed to development banks and funds which will help Africa raise money. The decision shows a substantial shift in the government’s focus, moving away from direct assistance for countries, and funneling much of the remaining money into international organizations and private finance initiatives. Chi Onwurah, chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Africa, told POLITICO that she was “dismayed at the level and extent of the cuts to investment in Africa and the impact it will have particularly on health and economic development.” She added: “I hope the government recognizes that security of the British people is not increased by insecurity in Africa and increased migration from Africa, quite the opposite.” Ian Mitchell from the Center for Global Development think tank noted the move was “a remarkable step back from Africa by the U.K.” NEW PRIORITIES Announcing the cuts in the House of Commons, Cooper stressed that the decision to reduce the aid budget had been “hugely difficult,” pointing to similar moves by allies such as France and Germany following the U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to dramatically shrink America’s aid programs after taking office in January 2025. She insisted that it was still “part of our moral purpose” to tackle global disease and hunger, reiterating Labour’s ambition to work towards “a world free from extreme poverty on a livable planet.” Cooper set out three new priorities for Britain’s remaining budget: funding for unstable countries with conflict and humanitarian disasters, funneling money into “proven” global partnerships such as vaccine organizations, and a focus on women and girls, pledging that these will be at the core of 90 percent of Britain’s bilateral aid programs by 2030. A box with the Ukrainian flag on it awaits collection in Peterborough, U.K. on March 10, 2022. | Martin Pope/Getty Images Only three recipients will see their aid spending fully protected: Ukraine, the Palestinian territories and Sudan. Lebanon will also see its funding protected for another year. All bilateral funding for G20 countries will end. Despite the government’s stated priorities, the scale of the cuts mean that even the areas it is seeking to protect will not be protected fully. An impact assessment — which was so stark that ministers claimed they had to rethink some of the cuts in order to better protect focus areas such as contraception — published alongside the announcement found that there will likely be an end to programs in Malawi where 250,000 young people will lose access to family planning, and 20,000 children risk dropping out of school. “These steep cuts will impact the most marginalized and left behind communities,” said Romilly Greenhill, CEO of Bond, the U.K. network for NGOs, adding: “The U.K. is turning its back on the communities that need support the most.” Last-minute negotiations did see some areas protected from more severe cuts, with the BBC World Service seeing a funding boost, the British Council set to receive an uplift amid its financial struggles, and the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) — the aid spending watchdog that had been at risk of being axed — continuing to operate with a 40 percent budget cut. GREEN THREAT Though the move will not require legislation to be confirmed — after Prime Minister Keir Starmer successfully got the move past his MPs last year — MPs inside his party and out have lamented the impact of the cuts, amid the ongoing threat to Labour’s left from a resurgent Green Party under new leader Zack Polanski. Labour MP Becky Cooper, chair of the APPG on global health and security said that her party “is, and always has been, a party of internationalism” but today’s plans would “put Britain and the world at risk.” Sarah Champion, another Labour MP who chairs the House of Commons international development committee said that the announcement confirmed that there “will be no winners from unrelenting U.K. aid cuts, just different degrees of losers,” creating a “desperately bleak” picture for the world’s most vulnerable. “These cuts do not aid our defense, they make the whole world more vulnerable,” she added. Her Labour colleague Gareth Thomas, a former development minister, added: “In an already unsafe world, cutting aid risks alienating key allies and will make improving children’s health and education in Commonwealth countries more difficult.” The announcement may give fresh ammunition to the Greens ahead of May’s local elections, where the party is eyeing up one of its best nights in local government amid a collapse in support for Labour among Britain’s young, progressive, and Muslim voters. Reacting to the news that Britain will cut its aid to developing countries aimed at combatting climate change, Polanski said: “Appalling and just unbelievably short-sighted. Our security here in the U.K. relies on action around the world to tackle the climate crisis.”

Opposition parties, NGOs and academics are accusing Czechia’s new government of preparing to introduce a Russia-style law, which would stifle dissent by tightening disclosure rules on foreign financing for NGOs. Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš’s right-wing government has described the creation of a public register for NGO subsidies as a key government program priority. “This is not any kind of foreign agents law, but rather about making funding transparent,” he told journalists last week. “We want to do this and we will do it,” said Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Petr Macinka about the proposed legislation on Monday. However, Czech opposition parties, academics and NGOs say the new rules, along with the expected severe penalties, would stigmatize and burden civil society instead of enhancing transparency. They also say it could be used by the government to justify repressive measures — like in Georgia and Russia — such as silencing independent NGOs and imprisoning opposition figures. They expect the proposal will follow the contours of a draft version — yet to be presented in parliament — which was first disclosed by media outlet Seznam Zprávy and later seen by POLITICO. It would create a database of NGOs with foreign ties and require them to disclose detailed information about their activities, staff and funding. However, NGOs wouldn’t have to label themselves as foreign-funded. Fines for noncompliance would start at 1 million Czech koruna (€40,000) for administrative errors, rising to 15 million Czech koruna (€600,000) for more serious violations. The text was drawn up by MPs from the ruling coalition as a preliminary working draft, rather than by the government as an official bill. Czech Minister of Justice Jeroným Tejc told POLITICO that the leaked version “was not prepared by anyone from the Ministry of Justice, and personally I do not consider it suitable for discussion.” Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Lipavský called the working draft a “Russian recipe for totalitarianism.” Danuše Nerudová, an MEP for the European People’s Party and former Czech presidential candidate, warned in a statement to POLITICO that “it stigmatizes civil society, nongovernmental organizations, experts and the media, and it introduces a principle into the Czech environment that belongs more in authoritarian regimes.” Czechia’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs Jan Lipavský speaks to media arriving for a Ministerial Council meeting of the OSCE on December 4, 2025 in Vienna, Austria. | Georg Hochmuth/APA/AFP via Getty Images) “When laws of this kind are drafted so broadly … the extreme vagueness of those legislative terms always means they want to create a tool that they can, but don’t have to, use against whoever they want,” said Nadiia Ivanova, head of the Human Rights and Democracy Centre at the NGO People in Need. Babiš dismissed comparisons to the Russian law, and said the working draft version would undergo changes. Macinka was more combative on Monday: “When you’re out of arguments, you just bring up Russia, that’s a classic,” he said. After the public backlash, Tomio Okamura, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, clarified that a government ministry will now take over and finalize the legislation before introducing it in parliament. The Prime Minister’s Office did not reply to a request for comment.

STRASBOURG — The European Parliament on Tuesday honored a host of political heavyweights from across the continent — and Irish rock band U2. The European Order of Merit, handed out for the first time this year to recognize people who have contributed to EU values, has three ascending ranks: Member of the Order, Honourable Member of the Order, and Distinguished Member of the Order. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Polish President Lech Wałęsa received the top distinction. Among those awarded the second-highest honor were Moldovan President Maia Sandu, the Vatican’s Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, and former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö. Among those recognised in the Member of the Order category are Greek basketball star Giannis Antetokounmpo; José Andrés, founder of the NGO World Central Kitchen; and the four members of U2. Bono, known for his anti-poverty activism and philanthropy, has long expressed support for the EU, even waving the bloc’s flag at concerts. In a 2018 speech, he warned the union was under attack and called for it to be defended. Merkel, who served as chancellor from 2005 to 2021, was praised for her steady leadership, especially during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term. But her legacy has come under renewed scrutiny in recent years over Germany’s increased dependence on Russian gas during her tenure, with criticism mounting particularly since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. When Parliament President Roberta Metsola mentioned Merkel was being honored, it drew a loud chorus of boos. Martin Schirdewan, the co-chair of The Left group in the Parliament, said of the decision to honor Merkel: “Rewarding the hand that imposed social cuts, deepened inequality, and exported austerity from Germany to Greece is not really the best choice for an award.” Recipients of the prize will receive a badge, ribbon and certificate signed by Metsola at a ceremony in May.

BRUSSELS ― The EU is planning to spend as much as €16 million over the next four years to fly its top officials by private jet, according to a tender document. This is an increase of €3 million from the previous four-year period and is 50 percent higher than the period before that, which ended in 2021. “In a time where ordinary people can’t afford traveling during their summer holidays, this sends a very weird signal,” said Green MEP Rasmus Andresen. It’s “embarrassing,” and “doesn’t fit” the EU’s climate goals. The contract, whose buyers are named as the European Commission, Parliament, Council and the European External Action Service, is described as being “fully or partially financed with EU funds.” For the highest officials within these institutions, international travel is a key part of their role as they hold discussions with foreign leaders and make speeches around the world. But while the EU prioritizes commercial transport, the Commission said, sometimes it deems that impossible or too dangerous ― especially when staff travel to conflict zones. No company has yet been awarded the contract for “non-scheduled air-taxi transport services” worth €15.67 million despite it being out for tender for more than a year. The four-year contract from 2021 amounted to just over €12 million. That previous agreement, which was due to expire at the end of 2025, has been extended until June while the tender procedure continues, the Commission said. The increase in the estimated cost takes into account “the broader geopolitical context and increased volatility in international affairs, which may generate more short-notice travel needs,” a Commission spokesperson said. Market developments, including “higher aircraft charter rates and fuel costs,” have also been factored into the projections, the spokesperson said. “It is important to stress that charter air taxi services are not the primary means of transport,” adding that they’re used “only when scheduled commercial flights are incompatible with official agendas or when urgent, unforeseen political developments require rapid travel or when this is necessary for security reasons.” The EU already stumped up extra cash for private jet use in 2021, with the previous contract — which ran from 2016 to 2021 — set €10.71 million as the maximum value that could be spent on private jets. At the time, the Commission said the rise was down to a potential increase in demand, largely because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Prices in the eurozone have risen roughly 30 percent between 2016 and 2026. “If the Commission is serious about its leadership on climate change, it should start by leading by example, closing the tax loopholes that allow the most polluting form of flying to remain one of the least regulated, and it certainly should not increase its own use of private jets,” said Diane Vitry, aviation director at the NGO Transport and Environment. Private jets polluted “five to 14 times more than commercial flights and 50 times more than trains per passenger,” she said. In its response, the Commission said that increased private jet spending was not a row-back of its climate ambitions and that it retained its commitment “to be a front runner in the transition towards a climate-neutral society.” EU officials have faced criticism for their use of private jets in the past. The bloc’s joint presidents used one to fly to U.N. climate talks in Egypt in 2023, according to data seen by POLITICO that revealed heavy use of private flights by the then-Council President Charles Michel. The EU’s commitment to tackling climate change is being questioned by NGOs which criticize the bloc for prioritizing competitiveness and red-tape cutting. A key piece of climate legislation, the EU’s tough rules on car emissions, has been watered down in recent weeks. “Increasing spending on private jets for top officials in times of financial constraints and climate crisis is not only scandalous but also irresponsible,” said Green MEP Tilly Metz. “Sustainable forms of traveling such as high-speed trains are available and must become the rule also for EU’s political elite,” she added. “For overseas travel commercial flights can easily be used, no need for PJs!” Max Griera contributed reporting.

Call it “bots on the ground.” One in three Germans think their country should allow artificial intelligence to make life-or-death decisions on the battle field, according to The POLITICO Poll. A third of respondents in Germany said they favor AI systems to be used in weapons in place of human decision makers, even if these systems are less transparent, the poll showed. The results suggest a cultural shift, as the government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz no longer explicitly excludes lethal decisions without human checks. It also puts Germany in a different category than some of its allies: In the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and France, 26 percent of respondents said militaries could rely on AI rather than human decision — or roughly a quarter of people. Forty-seven percent of German respondents still favored human involvement in the use of weapons, even if they are slower than AI. But that figure was 10 percentage points lower than responses to the same question in the U.K., eight points lower than in the U.S. and Canada, and five percentage points lower than in France.  Almost half of respondents in Germany (46 percent) said cybersecurity and artificial intelligence capabilities mattered as much as traditional military power to win wars. The online survey, conducted for POLITICO by the independent London-based polling company Public First, comes as political leaders, security chiefs and industry officials gather in Germany for the Munich Security Conference. Part of their discussions get into how technologies like AI are changing the nature of warfare and national security strategies. The relatively high acceptance of so-called lethal autonomous weapons systems — also known as “killer robots” — is surprising when considering Berlin’s slow uptake of new technologies and its deep cultural attachment to data protection, which is being put under pressure by new AI applications. Germany has also had a fiery public debate over killer robots in past years. In 2021, a survey commissioned by an NGO coalition campaigning against killer robots said only 19 percent of respondents approved of such autonomous weapon systems, and 68 percent expressed ethical concerns about lethal decisions made without human control. Three years earlier, in 2018, 72 percent of respondents were against autonomous weapon systems. Berlin’s governing coalition, which took office last year, no longer explicitly excluded lethal decisions without human control in its coalition agreement — unlike the center-to-left coalition government that preceded it. AI-enabled weapons have changed the war in Ukraine, where drones have become a chief vector for armies to hit critical military and strategic targets, often operating independently.  Germany is preparing to spend €267.7 million on a new drone system from defense startup Helsing, but field data from deployments in Ukraine showed its drones have performed far below expectations, POLITICO reported last month. United Nations Secretary General António Guterres has long opposed these weapons, calling them “politically unacceptable and morally repugnant.” But years of discussions between governments at the U.N. have so far not yield clear rules on their use. The EU has its AI Act in place since 2024 to deal with the risks stemming from AI, but those rules don’t apply to military applications, which are a sovereign competence of member countries. This edition of The POLITICO Poll was conducted by Public First from Feb. 6 to 9, surveying 10,289 adults online, with at least 2,000 respondents each from the U.S., Canada, U.K., France and Germany. Results for each country were weighted to be representative on dimensions including age, gender and geography. The overall margin of sampling error is ±2 percentage points for each country. Smaller subgroups have higher margins of error. The survey is an ongoing project from POLITICO and Public First, an independent polling company headquartered in London, to measure public opinion across a broad range of policy areas. You can find new surveys and analysis each month at politico.com/poll. Have questions or comments? Ideas for future surveys? Email us at poll@politico.com. Sam Clark reported from Brussels. Anouk Schlung contributed reporting from Berlin. Pieter Haeck contributed reporting from Brussels.

BRUSSELS — The U.S. is reorienting its foreign funding program to export MAGA ideology to Europe — and a growing set of far-right and conservative think tanks and political groups are lining up to take Washington’s money. U.S. State Department officials have held early talks about government funding with representatives of the new MAGA-supporting French think tank Western Arc and Britain’s Free Speech Union, an advocacy group. Those approaches were informed by a list provided to U.S. officials by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation of groups the MAGA-aligned think tank described as “like-minded.” Other far-right and conservative groups in Italy and Brussels told POLITICO they would also be interested in support from a U.S. administration they see as an ally. POLITICO spoke to representatives from 10 European think tanks and policy groups, all of them aligned in some way with far-right politics. They described a burgeoning ecosystem of ideologically-aligned organizations that had rapidly professionalized in recent years and were working to build cooperation with similar groups across the Atlantic. With U.S. President Donald Trump’s second presidency giving European nationalists and hardline conservatives a champion at the head of the world’s largest economic and military power, groups on both sides of the Atlantic want to seize the moment. Their ambition is to repurpose the soft-power tools America once deployed to spread the gospel of liberalism, to expand their reach and power and ultimately rebuild the West in their image — a project both sides call a “civilizational alliance.” FRENCH CONNECTION Nicolas Conquer, a former media director for Republicans Overseas France, launched Western Arc, a self-described “MAGA-inspired” think tank in Paris in December. Conquer, a French-American citizen, said he had discussed specific projects that could receive funding with several U.S. State Department officials. Western Arc pledges to connect “ideas, people and projects” across the Atlantic to “organize western civilizational renewal.” Its mission statement aligns closely with language from the U.S. National Security Strategy, released earlier that month, as well as a prior essay from Samuel Samson, a senior adviser for the U.S. State Department. Conquer said he had been in touch with Samson and others in the U.S. State Department in the past few months and was exploring ideas for projects of mutual interest, such as stakeholder mapping or transatlantic trips for targeted groups, including around the 250th anniversary celebrations of U.S. independence this July. “There is this logic, which I think is very healthy, of project-based funding,” Conquer said.  The U.S. State Department did not answer a detailed list of questions. But in response to a query about U.S. funding of European organizations, a spokesperson said: “This is a transparent, lawful use of resources to advance U.S. interests and values abroad.”  Samson made headlines last year for proposing the use of American taxpayer funds to support far-right leader Marine Le Pen. He traveled to European capitals last May to meet with NGOs and civil society groups. U.S. State Department officials approached The Heritage Foundation in the second half of last year to ask which organizations in Europe would be viable targets for funding, said Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow Paul McCarthy. Throughout the postwar era the U.S. has supported projects that promoted democratic ideals and American-style liberalism. | Andrew Harnik/Getty Images “We’ve suggested some institutions, just a few names of organizations back in the late summer, early fall. And maybe that formed the basis of it,” he said.  The amount of money discussed at that time was “tiny.” That was before the U.S. National Security Strategy laid out a policy of “cultivating resistance” in Europe and boosting organizations that stood against left wing “censorship” and migration policies that it said were “transforming the continent and creating strife.” “Once they got the imprimatur in the national strategy, it’s really taking off right now,” said McCarthy, while stressing he had no inside knowledge of the State Department’s latest plans. Last week the FT reported that U.S. Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers was pushing a funding program for think tanks and institutes, with a focus on London, Brussels, Paris and Berlin. In December she met with Toby Young, a British social commentator and founder of the Free Speech Union.  “We’ve discussed the possibility of the State Department funding some of the FSU’s sister organisations in other parts of the world, but not the organisation I run,” Young said. He would not be drawn on which organizations he meant, but the British Free Speech Union is affiliated with similar bodies in Australia, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand, indicating the U.S. State Department’s plans may not be confined to Europe. AMERICAN TRADITION U.S. government funding for European institutions is not a new phenomenon: Throughout the postwar era the U.S. has supported projects that promoted democratic ideals and American-style liberalism. Since the 1950s, Radio Free Europe floated the sounds of capitalist freedom into Eastern Europe, all on the U.S. taxpayer dime. This, along with U.S. philanthropic funding, helped many think tanks and other organizations grounded in mainstream liberal values flourish in Europe. Many became highly-networked policy shops that acted as a pseudo civil service, crafting reports and laws that could be transposed into ministerial proclamations. The right has taken note of that playbook. “There was a time when the right were incredibly unprofessional, unconnected, and so concerned with their own national concerns that it’s very difficult for them to see beyond that,” said John O’Brien, head of communications at MCC Brussels, a think tank funded by a private educational institute in Hungary with close ties to the government of Trump ally Viktor Orbán. That has rapidly changed, O’Brien said. Though unlike many networks of progressive institutions, the right has yet to set up a WhatsApp group for collaboration — “If there is, we’re not part of it,” said O’Brien — right-wing operatives and thinkers meet regularly at major events, like the CPAC and NatCon summit series.  They also invite one another to co-host meetings or attend events as panelists. From the U.S. side, The Heritage Foundation, which authored Trump’s Project 2025 blueprint for government, is a frequent guest of the European right.  On Tuesday, The Heritage Foundation’s McCarthy appeared on a panel in Rome co-hosted with the Fondazione Machiavelli. McCarthy said The Heritage Foundation was fostering ties with groups in Europe through joint summit hosting and research. Their aim is to push back against “European federalism” and the “green transition madness” while fostering a vision for families that excludes gay couples, trans rights and promotes higher birth rates.  U.S. government funding for European institutions is not a new phenomenon: Throughout the postwar era the U.S. has supported projects that promoted democratic ideals and American-style liberalism. | Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images Collaboration among such groups is “growing,” said Fondazione Machiavelli President Scalea. On its website, the center advertises formal partnerships or signed memoranda with a series of other right-wings groups: The Heritage Foundation, the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, Hungary’s Oeconomus Economic Research Foundation, and the Center for Fundamental Rights, which organizes CPAC. “But it’s most like a friendship,” he said. “Since we have common missions, we have shared values and shared views of the future … We’re not formally intertwined, we have no institutional bond and link, we are not exchanging money or resources … We are just working together because this is making it more effective for everyone else.” Scalea added that his institute had a “lot of commonality with the Trump administration.” So far he hasn’t heard directly from the U.S. government about funding being made available to organizations like his, but he said he would look at any funding proposal. “We will see. But for now, we do not have any concrete opportunity or thing to look at.” ‘EUROPEAN INDEPENDENCE’ This year, Trump has poured accelerant on existing tensions between Europe and the U.S. by pressuring Denmark to cede control of Greenland, the world’s largest island. That left many right-wing groups walking a narrow line between standing up for European sovereignty and maintaining their ideological alliance with the White House. But calls for “European independence” by leaders such as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have presented right-wingers with an opportunity to frame themselves as the true defenders of the Western alliance. “It’s quite important, especially in this moment, to maintain a unity inside the Western world,” said Francesco Giubilei, president of Nazione Futura, another Italian think tank that has partnered with The Heritage Foundation. “It’s not easy. We understand that sometimes the position of Trump is different from the position of Europe. But we think that if in this moment, we create a split between the United States and Europe, we are doing a favor for China, we are doing a favor for Russia.”  Some of the organizations POLITICO contacted said they weren’t interested in funding from a foreign government. But where European laws prevent direct foreign funding of political parties, some are finding other means of collaboration. Gerald Otten, a lawmaker with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, traveled to Washington in January as part of a delegation from the German Bundestag. Prior to his visit he had been invited by the U.S. embassy to discuss possible joint work. AfD officials are planning to travel to the U.S. for an event in March billed as a “counter Davos” by Republican member of Congress Anna Paulina Luna. Markus Frohnmaier, a leading AfD foreign policy lawmaker and trustee of co-chair Alice Weidel, will meet Rogers on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference this week. Scalea, of the Fondazione Machiavelli, said having Trump in the White House gave groups in Europe a sense they were no longer on the fringes.  “We have an ally, a powerful voice,” he said. “It’s not just a conspiracy theory that we are saying mass migration is making us weaker as a nation, but it’s something that is said also by the leader of our alliance. This is obviously useful for us.”

ATHENS — Greece’s parliament is expected to pass double-edged legislation on Wednesday that will help recruit tens of thousands more South Asian workers, while simultaneously penalizing migrants that the government says have entered the country illegally. Greece’s right-wing administration seeks to style itself as tough on migration but needs to pass Wednesday’s bill thanks to a crippling labor shortfall in vital sectors such as tourism, construction and agriculture. The central idea of the new legislation is to simplify bringing in workers through recruitment schemes agreed with countries such as India, Bangladesh and Egypt. There will be a special “fast track” for big public-works projects. The New Democracy government knows, however, that these measures to recruit more foreign workers will play badly with some core supporters. For that reason the bill includes strong measures against immigrants who have already entered Greece illegally, and also pledges to clamp down on the non-government organizations helping migrants. “We need workers, but we are tough on illegal immigration,” Greece’s Migration Minister Thanos Plevris told ERT television. The migration tensions in Greece reflect the extent to which it remains a hot button issue across Europe, even though numbers have dropped significantly since the massive flows of 2015, when the Greek Aegean islands were one of the main points of arrival. More than 80,000 positions for immigrants have been approved by the Greek state annually over the past two years. There are no official figures on labor shortages, but studies from industry associations indicate the country’s needs are more than double the state-approved number of spots, and that only half of those positions are filled. The migration bill is expected to pass because the government holds a majority in parliament. Opposition parties have condemned it, saying it ignores the need to integrate the migrants already in Greece and adopts the rhetoric of the far right. Under the new legislation, migrants who entered the country illegally will have no opportunity to acquire legal status. The bill also abolishes a provision granting residence permits to unaccompanied minors once they turn 18, provided they attend school in Greece. “Whoever is illegal right now will remain illegal, and when they are located they will be arrested, imprisoned for two to five years and repatriated,” Plevris told lawmakers. Human-rights groups also oppose the legislation, which they say criminalizes humanitarian NGOs by explicitly linking their migration-related activities to serious crimes.  The bill envisages severe penalties such as mandatory prison terms of at least 10 years and heavy fines for assisting irregular entry, providing transport for illegal migration, or helping those migrants stay. “Whoever is illegal right now will remain illegal,” Thanos Plevris told lawmakers. | Orestis Panagiotou/EPA Wednesday’s legislation also grants the migration minister broad powers to deregister NGOs based solely on criminal charges against one member, and will allow residence permits to be revoked on the basis of suspicion alone — undermining the presumption of innocence. Greece’s national ombudsman has expressed serious concerns about the bill, arguing that punishing people for entering the country illegally contravenes international conventions on the treatment of refugees. Lefteris Papagiannakis, director of the Greek Council for Refugees, was equally damning. “This binary political approach follows the global hostile and racist policy around migration,” he said.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission on Friday announced an investigation into Slovakia over the dismantling of its whistleblower protection office. In its latest rule-of-law spat with Bratislava, the EU executive criticized leftist-populist leader Robert Fico for trying to replace the office with a new institution whose leadership would be politically appointed. “The Commission considers that this law breaches EU rules,” it wrote in an official note on Friday. Brussels’ move comes amid strong pressure from lawmakers and NGOs to act against Fico’s crackdown against independent institutions and suspected fraud involving EU farm funds. Zuzana Dlugošová, the head of the whistleblower protection office, said that she had repeatedly warned Slovak officials that the plans were in contradiction with EU law. “If expert feedback had been taken into account, Slovakia could have avoided EU infringement proceedings. Still, we believe that this process itself can help foster a more professional and substantive debate on how whistleblower protection should be properly set up in Slovakia,” Dlugošová said. Slovakia’s permanent representation in Brussels and interior ministry did not immediately respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment. Brussels has given Bratislava one month to respond to its queries before taking further action — which could potentially include cutting EU payouts to Slovakia after a multi-layered process. Since returning to power in 2023 for a fourth term, Fico’s Smer party has taken steps to dismantle anti-corruption institutions, including abolishing the Special Prosecutor’s Office, which handled high-profile corruption cases, and disbanding NAKA, an elite police unit tasked with fighting organized crime. “The European Commission’s decision … sends a clear message: protecting whistleblowers is not optional — it is a core obligation of every EU Member State,” Czech MEP Tomáš Zdechovský said in written remarks to POLITICO. Before launching the probe, the EU executive had pressed Slovakia to roll back on its anti-democratic crackdown. EU Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin encouraged Fico not to dismantle the whistleblower protection office during a meeting in Bratislava in December, according to two Commission officials with knowledge of proceedings who were not authorized to go on the record. Nevertheless, in December 2025, the Slovak parliament pushed through a bill that cut short the current director’s tenure and weakened protections for whistleblowers. It was set to enter into force in on Jan. 1 but Slovakia’s top court paused the disputed decision to review whether it complies with the constitution. German Green MEP Daniel Freund welcomed the Commission’s move but urged it to go even further. “The Commission needs to do more. Fico’s government has dismantled the special prosecutor for corruption, has dismantled the national crime agency and has changed the penal code to have hundreds of convicted corruption offenders walk free,” Freund told POLITICO. Slovakia is already subject to another infringement procedure, launched by the Commission in November, over a reform that enshrines only two genders in the constitution.

Vice President JD Vance on Friday said the United States will stop funding any organization working on diversity and transgender issues abroad. Vance called the policy, which has been widely expected, “a historic expansion of the Mexico City Policy,” which prevents foreign groups receiving U.S. global health funding from providing or promoting abortion, even if those programs are paid for with other sources of financing. President Donald Trump reinstated the Mexico City Policy last year, following a tradition for Republican presidents that Ronald Reagan started in 1984. Democratic presidents have repeatedly rescinded the policy. “Now we’re expanding this policy to protect life, to combat [diversity, equity and inclusion] and the radical gender ideologies that prey on our children,” Vance told people attending the March for Life in Washington, an annual gathering of anti-abortion activists on the National Mall. The rule covers non-military U.S. foreign assistance, making the Mexico City Policy “about three times as big as it was before, and we’re proud of it because we believe in fighting for life,” Vance said. That means that any organizations receiving U.S. non-military funding will not be able to work on abortion, DEI and issues related to transgender people, even if that work is done with other funding sources. POLITICO reported in October that the Trump administration was developing the policy. The State Department made the rule change Friday afternoon. Vance accused the Biden administration of “exporting abortion and radical gender ideology all around the world.” The Trump administration has used that argument to massively reduce foreign aid since it took office a year ago. Vance said the Trump administration believes that every country in the world has the duty to protect life. “It’s our job to promote families and human flourishing,” he said, adding that the administration “turned off the tap for NGOs whose sole purpose is to dissuade people from having kids.” Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Africa Subcommittee, called the new aid restrictions “the best and most comprehensive iteration” of the Mexico City Policy since Reagan. Smith, who opposes abortion, was also speaking at the March for Life. But domestic and international groups deplored the expanded policy, noting that it would make women and girls in some parts of the world more vulnerable. “History shows that the Mexico City policy not only diminishes access to essential services for women and girls, but also breaks down networks of organizations working on women’s rights, and silences civil society,” the International Crisis Group, which works to prevent conflicts, said in a statement. “This expansion will amplify those effects and is set to compound the global regression on gender equality that we have seen accelerate in the last year,” the group added. The expanded Mexico City Policy, which international groups have called the ‘global gag rule’ because of the restrictions it imposes, will limit how humanitarian groups and other organizations “can engage in advocacy, information dissemination and education related to reducing maternal mortality, sexual and reproductive health, and reducing stigma and inequalities anywhere in the world, with any funding they receive,” said Defend Public Health, a network of volunteers fighting against the Trump administration’s health policies. “This would effectively coerce them into denying that transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people exist,” the group said. Alice Miranda Ollstein contributed to this report.