BRUSSELS — EU leaders were supposed to spend Thursday mapping out how to boost Europe’s economy. Instead, they were left scrambling to deal with two wars, a deepening transatlantic rift and a standoff over Ukraine. Twelve hours of talks, a few showdowns and many, many coffees later, here’s POLITICO’s rapid round-up of what we learned at the European Council. 1) Viktor Orbán’s not a man for moving … The most pressing question ahead of this summit was whether Hungary’s prime minister could be convinced to drop his veto to the EU’s €90 billion loan for Ukraine. He wasn’t. The European Commission had attempted to appease Orbán in the days running up to the summit by sending a mission of experts to Ukraine to inspect the damaged Druzhba pipeline, which supplies Russian oil to Hungary and Slovakia. Orbán has argued that Ukraine is deliberately not addressing the issue, and tied that to his blocking of the cash. Asked whether he saw any chance for progress on the loan going into the summit, Orbán’s response was simple: “No.” Twelve hours later, that answer was much the same. 2) … But he does like to stretch his legs. In one of the most striking images to have come out of Thursday’s summit, the Hungarian prime minister stands on the sidelines of the outer circle of the room while the rest of the leaders are in their usual spots listening to a virtual address from Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (on screen) speaks to EU leaders via video at the European Council summit in Brussels, March 19, 2026. | Pool photo by Geert Vanden Wijngaert/OL / AFP via Getty Images The relationship between the two has descended into outright acrimony after the Hungarian leader refused to back the EU loan and the Ukrainian leader made veiled threats — which even drew the (rare) rebuke of the Commission. Faced with Zelenskyy’s address, the Hungarian decided to vote with his feet. 3) The new kid on the block is happy to be a part of this European family, dysfunctional as it may be. This was the first leaders’ summit for Rob Jetten, the Netherland’s newly-installed prime minister. Ahead of the meeting, he said he was “very much looking forward to being part of this family.” His verdict after the talks? That leaders differ greatly in their speaking style, with some quite efficient while others take longer to get to the point — but he welcomed the jokes of Belgian’s Bart De Wever, “especially when the meeting has been going on for hours.” 5) Though not everyone was so charitable. Broadly speaking, Orbán digging in his heels did not go down well. Sweden’s prime minister told reporters after the summit that leaders’ criticism of the Hungarian in the room was “very, very harsh,” and like nothing he’d ever heard at an EU summit. Jetten said the vibe in the room with EU leaders was “icy” at points, with “awkward silences.”  6) The EU’s not giving up on the loan. Despite murmurs ahead of the talks of a plan B in the works, multiple EU leaders as well as Costa and Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen were adamant that the loan was the only way to go — and that it will happen, eventually. “We will deliver one way or the other … Today, we have strengthened our resolve,” von der Leyen. Costa added: “Nobody can blackmail the European Council, no one can blackmail the European Union.” Top EU diplomat Kaja Kallas arrives at the European Council summit on March 19, 2026. | Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images 7) Kaja Kallas wants to avoid a messy entanglement. In her address to the bloc’s leaders, Kallas, the EU’s top diplomat, stressed the importance of not getting caught up in the conflict in the Middle East. “Starting war is like a love affair — it’s easy to get in and difficult to get out,” she said, according to two diplomats briefed by leaders on the closed-door talks. At the same time, Kallas reiterated the importance of the EU’s defending its interests in the region but said there was little appetite for expanding the remit of its Aspides naval mission, currently operating in the Red Sea. 8) But it was all roses with the U.N. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres joined the Council for lunch, thanking them for their “strong support for multilateralism and international law.” In an an exclusive interview with POLITICO on the sidelines of the summit, Guterres applauded the restraint shown by the Europeans, despite Donald Trump’s anger at their refusal to actively support the war or help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime artery that Iran has largely sealed off, driving up global energy prices. 9) Kinda. One senior EU official told POLITICO that the lunch meeting was “unnecessary.” “With all appreciation for multilateralism and its importance … considering the role the U.N. is not playing in international crises right now, it is unnecessary,” said the official, granted anonymity to speak freely. 10) Celery is a very versatile vegetable. Also on the table while they picked over the future of the multilateral world order was a pâté en croûte with spring vegetables and fillet of veal with celery three ways. Three ways! And for dessert? A mandarin tartlet with cinnamon. 11) Cyprus and Greece want the EU to get serious about mutual defense. Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis asked the EU to think about a roadmap for acting on the bloc’s mutual defense clause, according to two EU diplomats and one senior European government official. The clause, Article 42.7, is the EU’s equivalent of NATO’s Article 5. Its existence and potential use has recently come into focus since British bases in Cyprus were attacked by drones. 12) And the Commission hopes it’s already got serious enough about migration. Von der Leyen said that while the EU has not yet experienced an increase in migrants as a result of the conflict in Iran, the bloc should be prepared. “There is absolutely no appetite … to repeat the situation of 2015 in the event of large migration flows resulting from the conflict in the Middle East,” said one national official. The Commission chief emphasized that the mistakes of the 2015 refugee crisis won’t happen again. 13) Von der Leyen likes to cross her Ts.   Speaking of emphasis — “temporary, tailored and targeted” was how von der Leyen described the EU’s short-term actions to minimize the impact on Europe of the recent energy price spikes after the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. The moves will impact four components that affect energy prices: energy costs, grid charges, taxes and levies and carbon pricing, she said. 14) The ETS is here to stay — with some modifications. While EU leaders agreed to make some adjustments to the Emissions Trading System — the bloc’s carbon market — most forcefully backed the continuation of the system itself. “This ETS is a great success. It has been in place for 20 years and is a market-based and technology-neutral system. So we are not calling the ETS into question,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz told reporters after the talks had concluded. While the Commission will propose some adjustments to the ETS by July, these are merely adjustments, not fundamental changes, the German leader said. In the run-up to the summit, some EU countries, including Italy, floated the idea of weakening the ETS to help weather soaring energy prices. 15) No matter what, EU leaders want to get home — ASAP. While Costa has so far ensured every European Council under his watch lasts only one day instead of the once-customary two, this time around, that goal was looking optimistic. However, at the end of the day, leaders’ dogged determination to get out of there prevailed (even if that meant kicking a discussion on the long-term budget to April). À bientôt!

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

BERLIN — Only last week German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was “on the same page” as U.S. President Donald Trump over the goals of the Iran war. He is no longer sounding so enthusiastic. Europe’s most powerful leader went out on a limb to stick close to Washington in the early days of the conflict, while his peers such as Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the U.S.-Israeli strikes as illegal. But Merz is now having to perform an abrupt U-turn as the economic and security impacts of the war on the EU’s biggest economy become clearer, and is publicly airing his fears that Trump has no exit strategy to end the fighting in the Persian Gulf. On Friday, during a visit to Norway, Merz struck his most critical tone to date. He argued the war raised “major questions” about security and added: “It is having a massive impact on our energy costs, and it has the potential to trigger large-scale migration.” That’s a far cry from his trip to Washington last week. Visiting Trump in the Oval Office, Merz voiced his support for Trump’s war aims. He gave a fawning chuckle when the president bragged of the damage U.S. airstrikes had inflicted on Iran and declared that Berlin was fully aligned with Washington regarding the need to eliminate the dictatorship in Tehran. But the chancellor no longer appears to be in a laughing mood as the repercussions of the war — now set to enter its third week — increasingly threaten myriad German and European interests. Merz’s political isolation among key European allies and growing pressure from his center-left coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), have pushed the chancellor to take a tougher line on the war in recent days. Merz increasingly fears the Iran war will deepen his country’s formidable economic woes — with Germany’s already-ailing manufacturing sector taking another hit thanks to soaring energy costs. He also worries it could set back European efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and potentially unleash a new refugee crisis just as he is battling to prevent the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party from becoming the country’s most popular political force. The ramifications of the Iran war on Ukraine are also sending shivers through Berlin. Merz on Friday condemned the Trump administration’s decision late Thursday to ease oil sanctions on Russia in an effort to bring down global oil prices, fearing the move will only serve to refill the Kremlin’s war chest and sustain Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He called the move “wrong.” “We want to ensure that Russia does not exploit the war in Iran to weaken Ukraine,” Merz added. ‘ENDLESS WAR’ Merz has sent mixed messages on Iran since the U.S. and Israel launched their attacks. The day after the first assault, Merz expressed doubts that they would succeed in toppling the regime in Tehran and warned of an Iraq-style quagmire. Still, he said, Germany was in no position to “lecture” its allies and supported their goal of regime change. Those mixed messages have even led to confusion on the German position within Iran’s government. “We don’t know what the real position of Germany is,” the Iranian ambassador to Germany, Majid Nili Ahmadabadi, told POLITICO. “We are hearing different voices from within the government.” But Merz took a somewhat tougher line on the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Wednesday this week when, standing alongside Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš in Berlin, he expressed concern that the U.S. and Israel have no plan for ending the conflict. “We have no interest in an endless war,” Merz said at the time. That shift is at least partly due to growing pressure within the EU and inside his own coalition government, with center-left SPD lawmakers increasingly attacking Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) for being soft on Trump and the Iran strikes.  “The CDU position is increasingly losing ground,” said René Repasi, an SPD lawmaker in the European Parliament. Repasi said that European Council President António Costa’s criticism of the U.S. and Israeli strikes earlier this week illustrated Berlin’s isolation. “He knows that the majority of member states are behind him,” Repasi said of Costa. This week, even Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — a frequent Trump ally — joined the chorus of EU leaders condemning the attacks on Iran as against international law. Merz hasn’t gone that far — and is unlikely to do so. But SPD politicians in Berlin say Merz’s tougher rhetoric in the past couple days is due at least partly to pressure they’ve applied. “There were different rounds within the coalition where we insisted very strongly that we should clearly reject this war,” Adis Ahmetovic, the leading foreign policy lawmaker for the SPD, told Deutschlandfunk radio earlier this week. ‘ECONOMIC AND REFUGEE FEARS’ But Merz is also being driven by the economic risks of a prolonged war, particularly as Germany’s energy-intensive manufacturing sector — which was already sputtering before the war started — is particularly vulnerable to cost spikes. “Growth prospects are likely to continue to deteriorate,” Veronika Grimm, one of the country’s leading economists, wrote in an essay for German newspaper Handelsblatt. “For Germany, this means that hopes for a return to growth are once again being dampened.”  Germany is also expected to be among the EU countries most impacted if the escalating war in the Middle East creates a new refugee crisis. Germany would be the most popular destination for Iranians fleeing the war, with 28 percent of Iranians identifying it as their most likely destination, according to a study by the Berlin-based Rockwool Foundation. That is due largely to the fact that Germany is already home to a large population of Iranian refugees. These challenges come as Merz’s conservatives face a series of state elections in which rising anxiety over the economy and war abroad are playing a key part — and are helping propel the far right. In view of the rising risks, Merz on Friday said he would work to develop a plan for ending the war through talks with the G7 and Israel. “Germany is not a party to this war, and we do not want to become one,” Merz said. “And in that regard, all our efforts are focused on ending the war.”

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

LONDON — Britain’s center-left government is taking direct inspiration from Denmark’s hardline treatment of migrants — and leaving some of its own MPs feeling queasy. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will face down assembled critics from refugee charities and beyond in a speech in London Thursday morning, making what she calls the “progressive,” Labour case for overhauling Britain’s asylum system. Mahmood is fresh from a fact-finding mission to Copenhagen — and wants to import many of the policies that helped Danish premier Mette Frederiksen see off a threat from the right. Frederiksen, head of Labour’s sister party, the Social Democrats, drove asylum claims to a forty-year low. At the 2022 election, she pushed back the radical right and bagged her party’s best result in decades. But at the same time, she has seen losses of socially liberal voters in cities — and faces a fresh test in a snap election later this month. Mahmood will on Thursday try to take on complaints from her own more liberal-minded colleagues, as the struggling Labour Party tries to halt the rise of the right-wing, poll-topping Nigel Farage in the U.K. She will lay out two nightmare visions, in her eyes, of where Britain could go if left-wing Labour MPs don’t hold their noses and back her changes on an issue that animates the British public. On one side is “Farage’s nightmare pulling up the drawbridge,” and on the other is the new left-wing kids on the block: the Greens. She describes leader Zack Polanski as conjuring a “fairy-tale of open borders.” On top of dramatic changes to only grant refugees temporary stay in Britain, Mahmood will announce harsher conditions for asylum seekers who break the law or can support themselves financially. New legislation will make welfare payments and accommodation rights conditional “only to those who play by our rules,” as Mahmood puts it. A senior Home Office official, granted anonymity to discuss sensitive policy details, estimates the changes could extend to thousands of individuals. They would not rule out asylum seekers deemed to have broken the law being forced into destitution and rough sleeping in the process. Mahmood will address critics who will balk at this by arguing that if citizens don’t trust the state to fix what is one of their top priorities then “there is no space for Labour values” to be realized. “Restoring order and control at our border is not a betrayal of Labour values, it is an embodiment of them, and it is the necessary condition for a Labour government to achieve anything it hopes to,” Mahmood is expected to tell the center-left IPPR think tank, according to extracts released in advance. Mahmood will on Thursday try to take on complaints from her own more liberal-minded colleagues, as the struggling Labour Party tries to halt the rise of the right-wing, poll-topping Nigel Farage in the U.K. | Rasid Necati Aslim/Anadolu via Getty Images She will add: “A loss of control breeds fear, and when fearful people turn inwards their vision of this country narrows. Their patriotism turns into something smaller, something darker, an ethno-nationalism emerges. The idea of a greater Britain gives way to the lure of a littler England. And other voices – voices to the far right – take hold.” ‘SOFT-LEFT’ JITTERS But Mahmood’s pitch may fall on unreceptive ears in her own party. The bulk of Labour MPs on the party’s so-called “soft-left” have only been made more jittery by the catastrophic defeat inflicted on them from the left in the Gorton and Denton by-election last week. In that contest, the triumphant Greens appealed to younger progressives as well as Muslim voters to overturn nearly a century of Labour representation in the south Manchester seat. Even worse, Farage’s Reform came second, pushing Keir Starmer’s ruling party into a distant third. Some Labour MPs responded to that loss by calling for Mahmood to water down her existing policies on migration — though whether this was really a salient issue in the campaign was disputed by a senior Labour activist involved. “The brand just isn’t in a good place at the minute. I think that was the key thing really,” was their diagnosis. “Gaza came up far more with that kind of crowd than indefinite leave to remain.” But the same activist did offer a word of caution: “The reforms need to be done in a way that bring people with them — which a lot of progressive voters don’t necessarily feel at the minute.” Even worse, Nigel Farage’s Reform came second, pushing Keir Starmer’s ruling party into a distant third. | Jonathan Brady/PA Images via Getty Images Unhappy Labour MPs are increasingly making their views on Mahmood’s Danish turn known. Former immigration barrister and leading critic of her approach Tony Vaughan wrote to Starmer this week expressing in detail his concerns that Mahmood’s settlement restrictions will damage the economy, while posing serious dangers to women, children and community cohesion.  Vaughan has also been approaching colleagues for backing, and has received support from some senior colleagues, according to two MPs. The Unison public services union — a key funder of Labour — has been organizing another letter among parliamentarians that has grown from an initial 40 signatuories. Sarah Owen, the Labour MP who chairs the Women and Equalities Committee, told POLITICO: “The letters are a sign of a failure of engagement from the department and the secretary of state and relevant ministers.” Another left-wing MP fears Mahmood’s pitch is simply “another attempt to chase Reform down a cul-de-sac.” They flagged vast differences between Denmark and Britain, arguing it is far larger and more diverse, with deep appeals based on family ties and language. LESSONS TO LEARN Those to the right of Labour strongly disagree — and back Mahmood’s Copenhagen inspiration. “Illegal immigration continues to be a major concern in constituencies like mine,” said Jo White, who leads the Red Wall caucus representing Labour’s former heartlands in England’s North and Midlands. “I am listening to my voters and where lessons can be learnt from countries like Denmark, we should take them.” Mahmood describes leader Zack Polanski as conjuring a “fairy-tale of open borders.” | Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images White added: “Shabana has recently visited Denmark, and seen their immigration system operating at first hand and she is right to look at what will work on British soil.” Indeed, Mahmood has put distance between herself and some aspects of the Frederiksen plan. The Home Office ruled out copying a jewelry law, which would see valuable items seized to cover the cost of asylum support, and will not follow Copenhagen’s “ghetto” demolition law targeting “parallel societies.” The senior British official quoted above said internal polling suggests “we’re exactly where the vast majority of the public are.” Luke Tryl, of the More in Common think tank, agreed on the possible success among voters for following the “Danish model.” “I very much think it can be a winner,” he said. “When we polled on asylum reforms even Green voters tended to back most of them.” Polling of Mahmood’s last round of hardline reforms in November, by the More in Common think tank, found that they were popular among Labour voters — and that most even went down well with Greens. ‘SAVE PUBLIC CONSENT’ There is one possibly uniting approach that Mahmood has touted, but is yet to outline: an expansion of Britain’s extremely limited legal routes for claiming asylum. On top of dramatic changes to only grant refugees temporary stay in Britain, Mahmood will announce harsher conditions for asylum seekers who break the law or can support themselves financially. | Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images “A huge part of this is to save public consent for the asylum system and to restore order and control so we can get the space to increase the number of safe and legal routes for those genuine refugees fleeing war and persecution,” said the senior official. There are plans underway to open new community sponsorship routes, an approach that proved popular in response to the invasion of Ukraine. Tryl said: “What we’ve found is the sponsorship models which do appear to be at the heart of their safe routes things are immensely popular — they particularly reduce opposition among conservative groups.”  Progressive observers will watch Mahmood closely to see if she twins her Danish-style hardline approach with a softer offering.

BRUSSELS — The EU doesn’t want to be dragged into the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran. It might not have a choice. With a drone striking a British airbase in Cyprus, Europe’s geographic proximity to the conflict might override many of its governments’ initial skepticism about Donald Trump’s decision to, as he put it on Monday, “eliminate the grave threat posted to America by this terrible terrorist regime.” So far, the EU’s response has been focused narrowly on the impact on EU citizens in the Middle East — especially as Tehran has launched a wave of counter-strikes across the region — and the spillover effects of increased energy prices, disruption to air and sea transport, and a potential influx of refugees. As if to illustrate how Brussels sees its limited role in the crisis, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described on Monday the range of fields she was focusing on “from energy to nuclear, from transport to migration to security.” She said: “We must be prepared for the fallout.” In the absence of leverage with the Israelis or Trump, von der Leyen convened a “security college” on Monday: a less-common formation of commissioners where several of them provide updates to their colleagues on issues related to the current crisis. After the meeting, the Commission said in a statement that it planned to respond to the Iran conflict by supporting EU countries and protecting Europeans from its “adverse consequences.” The EU is “exchanging information on what is happening and monitoring the situation,” said an EU diplomat with knowledge of the discussions, granted anonymity to discuss the confidential talks. “We should have, in normal times, been talking to the American administration. We should have had an adult conversation with the Israelis. None of that seems to be possible … The EU finds itself limited to a side role.” In practice, the Commission’s aims amount to helping capitals evacuate their citizens from the region and monitoring any disruptions to air traffic and key maritime routes such as the Strait of Hormuz, through which shipments of oil and liquefied natural gas from Gulf states pass. Intelligence assessments point toward a heightened risk of Iran mounting terror attacks in Europe, a second EU diplomat said. DEFENSE CLAUSE The EU will also monitor prices and supply levels of energy. The Commission is to convene an energy task force with EU countries, liaising with the International Energy Agency, with a first meeting expected this week. But the EU has yet to publicly address the topic of how to bolster Cyprus’ defenses. Nicosia has not activated the EU’s 42.7 collective defense clause ― similar to NATO’s Article 5 where all members come to the assistance of one of their allies ― as France did in the wake of the Bataclan terror attacks in Paris in 2015. If Cyprus did so, the move could signal the bloc becoming a party to the war. It was left to Greece to respond to the threats to Cyprus, with Athens sending two frigates and a pair of F-16 fighter jets to the island, which is less than 500 kilometers from Israel. Cyprus, which holds the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, will on Tuesday host a meeting of the Integrated Political Crisis Response (IPCR) group to “look into the implications of the evolving situation,” according to a third EU diplomat aware of the preparations. The IPCR was previously convened to respond to the Covid pandemic and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, among other crises. The uncomfortable truth is that the EU doesn’t have enough leverage in the region to make any meaningful moves. “This is something the U.S. and Israel have been gearing up for against their arch nemesis Iran. The EU was not prepared in the run-up to it,” said the first EU diplomat. “We now sit there like spectators because we are not an active player in this war.” Gabriel Gavin contributed reporting.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t even pretending there is a master plan for what happens after the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Indeed, chaos and internal strife in Tehran — and beyond — would suit him just fine. For years, Netanyahu has been the driving force behind military action and sabotage against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program and its clerical government. Now that Khamenei is dead, Netanyahu is close to realizing his greatest political ambition by neutralizing the Iranian threat. The Israeli day-after plan now leaves a lot to luck, and to the bravery of millions of Iranians. From Tabriz to Zahedan, the people of Iran are supposed to overthrow the brutal security apparatus of their regime in mass street protests, without any clear idea of what type of government could succeed the theocracy. On Saturday night, Netanyahu urged Iranians to “unshackle themselves from tyranny,” seizing a “once in a generation chance” to overthrow the dictatorship. “Take to the streets en masse” and “get the job done,” he added. Cleaving to the same strategy, U.S. President Donald Trump is insisting the Iranians have their “single greatest chance” to “take back” their country. Netanyahu thinks he comes out on top, even if the popular uprising he is calling for plunges the nation into violent disorder. In an ideal world, a friendly regime appears in Tehran. But Israel often makes the Realpolitik judgment that turmoil can bolster its interests too. That has been obvious in Lebanon and in Syria. Netanyahu has not assisted the Lebanese authorities in their efforts to discipline Hezbollah’s Shiite militia, or to get them to disarm. He has done quite the reverse, continuing air raids and drone strikes. Similarly, he’s stirred up trouble for the new leadership in Damascus by backing the Druze minority. In the Palestinian territories, Netanyahu is often accused of exploiting the divisions between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. The logic is clear. If countries are consumed by internal political strife — even civil war — they can’t get their acts together and turn on Israel. So it would be a mistake to think that Netanyahu’s only desirable endgame is stability in Tehran. Instability could work too. If Iran is too weak to run uranium enrichment centrifuges, and to support Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, that is also a victory. The goal of the Iran war, according to Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser Ophir Falk, is simple: “To win.” And in a text exchange with POLITICO he added that winning would be when “the threat posed by the Ayatollah regime and its proxies is removed.” When asked what the Israeli government thinks is happening inside the embattled regime, Falk replied, almost nonchalantly: “We’ll see what happens.’ Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told POLITICO that what Netanyahu and Trump had outlined didn’t amount to a plan — just optimism.  “Bibi [Netanyahu] wanted the war and Trump was anxious to do something exceptional. But I don’t see any plan other than the hope that the government will collapse,” he said. ‘YOU BREAK IT, YOU OWN IT’ The strategy of smashing an enemy with overwhelming force, and then hoping there will be a smooth succession to a benevolent regime has a poor track record, and there are already signs that things will be messy in Iran too. According to Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, Netanyahu assured his cabinet ministers that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death would shorten the military operation. | Majid Saeedi/Getty Images Ahead of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, Gen. Colin Powell famously cautioned U.S. President George W. Bush: “If you take out a government, take out a regime, guess who becomes the government and regime and is responsible for the country? You are. So if you break it, you own it.” That seems not to be resonating with Netanyahu and Trump, who are taking the view that the Iranian people now “own it.” That’s a big gamble, however. According to Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, Netanyahu assured his cabinet ministers that Khamenei’s death would shorten the military operation, as it would embolden the regime’s opponents to rise up.  Few doubt most Iranians’ desire for change, but for the regime to fall something would have to snap within the security services. For now, the political and military backbone of the state is showing resilience in its command structure, and massive public unrest in recent years and months has been met with brute force, mass arrests and executions. To whom are the Revolutionary Guards meant to surrender and seek an amnesty? Although Iran has lost many of its top leaders, it is has still managed to launch retaliatory attacks across the Gulf and eastern Mediterranean. The Revolutionary Guards vowed to “revenge” after promising to conduct “the most devastating offensive” in Iranian history, saying it had carried out the sixth phase of its Operation True Promise IV against U.S. bases throughout the Middle East and against Israel.  REGIME RESILIENCE That all suggests the regime’s structure is holding for now, even after Khamenei’s death. “We had prepared for such moments and have plans in place for all scenarios, even for the time after the martyrdom of revered Imam Khamenei,” said Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s parliamentary speaker. “You’ll see that after the leadership council is formed, the power and integrity of officials, defensive forces and the people will be beyond imagination,” he added in a video broadcast by state television. Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council , announced a three-man council would be set up on Sunday, comprising Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian; the hard-line head of the judiciary, Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei; and Alireza Arafi, a jurist member of Iran’s Guardian Council and head of the Basij, a volunteer paramilitary force. The council will govern while the 88-member Assembly of Experts picks a new leader. And that could happen soon. No doubt Israel will be trying to disrupt the interim council and the process of picking a successor to Khamenei, much as it did with its decapitation strategy last year in Lebanon when it kept targeting possible successors to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah deposed in 1979, is styling himself as an interim leader. | Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images But so far, different arms of the Iranian state, many of which were allowed to operate semi-autonomously under Khamenei and weren’t micromanaged, still appear to be cohering and functioning. Former Prime Minister Olmert was also cautious about potential collapse. “I will be surprised if Iran will change its nature after this phase,” he said. [Syrian leader Bashar]Assad killed more than half a million of his citizens and got rid of millions who became refugees and it took 10 years for his regime to collapse. Iran is 90 million. The regime will kill many and even then may not lose control,” he added. Still, he acknowledged that the U.S.-Israeli war can set back Iran as a military power in the region and “that in itself is not bad at all.”  NO UNIFIED OPPOSITION The big question remains: Can this work without a unified opposition? “Can external military pressure realistically rely on an Iranian public that lacks cohesive leadership, particularly when facing a regime that has operated for 47 years under the disciplined control of the [Revolutionary Guards]?” asked Danny Citrinowicz, a former head of the Iran branch of Israeli defense intelligence and now a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank. “There is no unified, organized opposition capable of immediately capitalizing on elite disarray. Public dissatisfaction is real and widespread, but fragmentation and repression limit its political translation.” Khamenei is gone, but “predictions of regime collapse would likely be premature,” he said. “The greatest danger may be a prolonged campaign that fails to produce dramatic internal change in Iran and lacks a clearly defined termination mechanism, resulting in an open-ended conflict with no visible conclusion on the horizon,” he added. There are various feuding contenders jostling to take the helm should the Islamic Republic collapse. Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah deposed in 1979, is styling himself as an interim leader who can chart the course to democracy. The Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization opposition — previously listed as a terror group by the U.S. and EU — also casts itself as waiting in the wings. The situation is complicated further by the potential for regional and ethnic unrest among communities such as the Kurds and the Baluchis.   Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy said he feared the military intervention would sow chaos in the Middle East for years to come with unforeseen consequences and will be come to be seen as a “defining moment in Israel’s reach for regional domination.” 

BERLIN — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has warned the strikes on Iran risk another Iraq- or Afghanistan-style quagmire, but said Berlin won’t lecture Washington as it seeks U.S. help to end the war in Ukraine. “Ultimately, we do not know whether the plan to bring about political change from within [Iran] through military strikes from outside will work,” Merz, who will meet U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday, said in Berlin Sunday. “Comparisons with Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are certainly only partially valid. But they do show how real the risks are in the medium term. We in Europe and Germany would also have to bear the consequences,” he added. The U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan following the 2001 attacks on America by Al Qaeda triggered massive refugee flows to Europe, with Germany emerging as a key destination for asylum seekers. Far-right entities such as Alternative for Germany — now the largest opposition party — capitalized on rising anti-immigration sentiment to fuel their political rise. At the same time, Merz said, his government is in no position to lecture the U.S. given the failures of Europe’s own approach to Iran and Germany’s need to work with U.S. President Donald Trump to secure an end to the war in Ukraine. Merz said he “appreciated the important negotiating work” the U.S. is conducting with Russia under Trump to end the war in Ukraine, and said he hoped for “even closer” transatlantic relations to bring an end to the conflict. “Anyone who wants security, peace and justice in the Middle East must also want it in Europe,” Merz said. “That is why the German government is providing a large part of the support for Ukraine against Russian aggression as part of transatlantic burden-sharing. And that is why we are not lecturing our partners on their military strikes against Iran,” he added. “We want to work with them to establish a peaceful order with the necessary degree of realism, both in the Middle East and in Europe.”

LONDON — The Green Party’s decisive victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election thrusts Hannah Spencer — a plumber and plasterer by trade — into the British political spotlight. The 34-year-old is the first MP to win office for her party since Leader Zack Polanski vowed to retool the environmentalist party as a vehicle for progressives hoping to take chunks out of Labour. Spencer shows the Greens moving away from their archetypal middle class image and focus on the environment, and her campaign has put cost-of-living concerns, her own relatability, and left-wing anger at the war in Gaza front and center the center. “People already know how much we care about the climate crisis and the environment,” Spencer told POLITICO in February. Instead, the Greens are hoping to combine their climate credentials with wider topics, “linking it to other things we really care about.” ‘I FIXED HOMES FOR A LIVING’ When Spencer was announced as the Green Party’s candidate, her working class backstory was core to her messaging. “I didn’t go to university to study politics,” she said at the party’s campaign launch last month. “I’m a plumber here in Manchester. I fixed homes for a living. I spend my days in people’s kitchens, in their bathrooms, and their front rooms.” Spencer left school at 16 — a far cry from a university-dominated Commons — and took an apprenticeship, eventually setting up her own business: Hannah’s Household Plumbing.  Responding to questions about the authenticity of her working class roots during the campaign, she told the New Statesman: “I’ve been a plumber for nearly 20 years. What do they want, to see a toilet I’ve fixed?”  “They want to keep Westminster for a small club of posh boys that all went to the same schools or studied at Oxbridge,” she argued. “That’s why things have been run into the ground – we’ve had too many politicians that don’t know what it’s like to graft.” Spencer also qualified as a gas engineer and plasterer — the latter while the by-election campaign was in full flow. The owner of four greyhounds, Spencer took the dogs — Olive, Forrest, Judy and Will — on the campaign trail, and has spoken about the impact of campaigning against dog racing on her politics. “I’d turn up and hand out leaflets, kindly explaining but also listening to people,” she told the Manchester Evening News. Spencer is by no means a political newbie. In 2023, she became a local councilor for the Greens on Trafford Council. She later stood in the Greater Manchester mayoralty and a Cheshire parliamentary constituency at the general election in 2024, coming fifth place in both. Last year, she became the Greens’ leader on the council, and endorsed Polanski for party leader, gaining a position as migration and refugee support spokesperson soon after his win.  During the campaign, Spencer faced criticism for a 2021 online post saying she was “glad” to have left the area due to the number of “money-laundering takeaways” — though the Greens insisted that was a catalyst for her bid to improve the constituency. Her campaign has also come under fire from rival parties for targeting Muslim voters, and repeatedly attacking Labour over support for Israel. A campaign video released entirely in Urdu included a photo of Starmer with India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Reform UK on the right argued Friday that “Islamists” had helped Spencer win power. Spencer has shot back that the Greens want to make the U.K. political system accessible to everyone, and has insisted it’s her rivals — with a focus on immigration and attacks on the Greens’ drug policies — as stoking division. In her victory speech Friday, the trained plumber also apologized to customers for whom she’ll now have to cancel work. At least she’ll have a good reason this time. Sam Francis contributed reporting.

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.