STRASBOURG — EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos is facing fresh allegations that she collaborated with the Yugoslav secret police in the 1980s, after a member of the European Parliament claimed to have new proof. The allegations, which came up during the Slovenian commissioner’s confirmation hearing in the Parliament in 2024 and which Kos then denied, have resurfaced ahead of Slovenia’s March 22 election with support from Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s own party. Slovenian MEP Romana Tomc, a vice president of the center-right European People’s Party — the largest group in the Parliament — said Thursday she had written to the Commission claiming to have fresh evidence that Kos collaborated with Yugoslavia’s spy agency and demanding an investigation. Tomc told POLITICO Kos was not honest when “claiming that she didn’t collaborate in the secret service … We have to do something with this information.” A spokesperson for the EPP said: “Romana Tomc has kept the EPP Group closely informed about the latest revelations concerning Commissioner Marta Kos. The Group will examine the matter carefully. For now, we note that Commissioner Kos has not denied these new revelations. The ball is now in her court.” Kos did not respond to POLITICO’s repeated requests for comment. But a Commission official said Kos “went through the extensive and thorough vetting process” to become a commissioner, adding that the Parliament “approved Commissioner Kos’s appointment in the same process as all 27 Commissioners.” An official close to the commissioner’s office, who was granted anonymity to speak about the sensitive allegations, told POLITICO: “She [Kos] is very aware political opponents will use these kinds of things to score points in the Slovenian elections, but she is laser-focused on her job as enlargement commissioner.” Kos will appear before the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee on Monday to discuss enlargement, and is also expected to face questions about the allegations. At the Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday, Tomc presented a book by Slovenian author Igor Omerza showing documents they said proved Kos worked with the Yugoslav spy agency. The Slovenian MEP’s questions to the Commission include whether the EU executive intends to investigate the claims against Kos and whether further revelations could affect the commissioner’s “credibility.” “I was never a collaborator or informant of the secret service of Yugoslavia,” Kos told MEPs at her hearing in 2024, calling the allegations “lies” and “disinformation.” Slovenia heads to a vote later this month, pitting the governing left-liberal coalition, which Kos formerly belonged to, against the right-wing Slovenian Democratic Party, to which Tomc belongs. The latter is currently leading in the polls. Gabriel Gavin contributed to this report from Brussels.

Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar is accusing the Kremlin of supporting the election campaign of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán with a new barrage of disinformation videos that are supposed to appear on Thursday. Orbán is the EU leader closest to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and a persistent obstacle to Brussels’ support for Ukraine — but he now faces the toughest fight of his political career in Hungary’s April 12 election, where polls put him about 10 points behind Magyar.   Magyar — a former member of Orbán’s Fidesz party, who understands its playbook — said on Tuesday he’d received information that the attack would take the form of “14 AI-generated smear videos,” and complained that the disinformation campaign had been produced “with the help of Russian intelligence services.” People in Magyar’s Tisza party and analysts in Budapest have long expected the race to get dirty as it enters the final stretch. Magyar’s tactic is to sound the alarm on the alleged impending smear attacks against Tisza before they land, hoping to blunt their impact. That’s the same strategy he adopted in mid-February, when faced with the prospect that his opponents could release a sex tape featuring him. He went public and accused Fidesz of planning to release a tape “recorded with secret service equipment and possibly faked, in which my then-girlfriend and I are seen having intimate intercourse.”   For now, that intervention seems to have worked, and such a video has not yet been released. BLOWING THE WHISTLE On Thursday, just as Magyar arrives to campaign in a constituency on the Danube close to Budapest, his team expects Fidesz to target the local candidate and her family with AI-generated videos which will be promoted via fake accounts. Magyar announced his concerns on social media, and called on Orbán “to immediately halt the planned election fraud and order Russian agents out of Hungary.” “By advancing what’s going to happen, we hope to neutralize it … whenever we had any information, [Magyar] made it public right away,” Zoltan Tarr, Tisza’s No. 2 and a long-time Magyar confidant, told POLITICO. “The system is not 100 percent waterproof or leakproof. And we always get some hints of what will be Fidesz’s next move,” he added. It’s too early to assess whether this strategy of going public will be successful for the sex tape and future smear campaigns, said Péter Krekó, executive director of Political Capital, an independent policy research consultancy. But he added that anticipating Fidesz’s moves had worked “really well” to build Magyar’s “Teflon image” because no scandals had yet “burnt” him. Tisza has also raised the specter of foreign interference, openly accusing Orbán of inviting Russian spies to meddle in the election, following reports by independent media VSquare and journalist Szabolcs Panyi. Fidesz denies the allegations. “The left-wing allegation linked to journalist Szabolcs Panyi, claiming Russian interference in the elections, is false,” the Hungarian government’s international communications office told POLITICO in a statement. “No information supports the presence or activities in Hungary of the specific individuals named by Szabolcs Panyi, or of any other persons allegedly engaged in such activities. Other countries’ intelligence services also have no concrete information regarding this matter.” Fidesz members insist Magyar is financed by Ukraine with the aim of installing a puppet government that will be loyal to Kyiv and Brussels. They accuse Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of interfering in the election by blocking Russian oil imports via the Druzhba pipeline and threatening the life of Orbán. The latter allegation came after the Ukrainian leader insinuated he would refer Orbán to Ukrainian troops for a direct talk “in their own language.” The leading Fidesz lawmaker in the European Parliament, Tamás Deutsch, turned the tables and accused Tisza of spreading false information. “As part of this serious interference, the pro-Ukrainian and pro-Brussels Tisza party is spreading disinformation through sympathetic media outlets in Brussels and Hungary,” he told POLITICO. “Hungary and its government will not accept pressure or interference in its democratic processes and will do their utmost to stand up for the interests of the Hungarian people.” FORCING RESIGNATIONS Because the deadline to register candidates for the April 12 vote has passed, the names on the party lists can’t be changed. For this reason, analysts say, Fidesz may now try to dig up dirt on Tisza candidates in the 106 constituencies to knock them out of the race with no hope of replacement. “There are some people who have had certain issues in their lives in the past. Nothing criminal, but perhaps they had a company that had to be closed down, or they went through a divorce, or something similar. These things then can be used as hooks to try to infiltrate the psyche of the candidate, creating false narratives around them,” said Tisza’s Tarr. The campaign that Magyar alleges will be launched on Thursday targets a candidate for the fifth district in Pest, Orsolya Miskolczi. He has not given further details, but Kontroll, a media platform close to Tisza whose publisher is Magyar’s brother, suggested in an article that Fidesz will try to link Miskolczi to a high-level corruption scandal in the Hungarian National Bank, where her husband worked as a legal advisor. The Financial Times on Wednesday reported the Kremlin had endorsed a plan by a communications agency under western sanctions to support Fidesz in the election, including by targeting controversial Tisza candidates. The objective of such smear campaigns “is to push us as far as possible and break us, or force us to give up,” Tarr said, adding the muckraking also targets family members and takes a psychological toll. “They are singling out some of us in the hope that one might resign,” he added.

BUDAPEST — When will the sex tape drop?  Talk to voters here about an election shaping up to be the most consequential for Hungary in decades, and it isn’t long before the conversation turns to the alleged secretly recorded intimate footage of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s challenger, Péter Magyar. In mid-February, journalists began receiving messages containing a still photo of a bedroom with the caption “coming soon.” The image has circulated widely on social media, but no video has surfaced. Magyar has said he suspects his opponents are planning to release a sex tape “recorded with secret service equipment and possibly faked, in which my then-girlfriend and I are seen having intimate intercourse.” The opposition leader and head of the center-right Tisza party has accused Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party of preparing a smear campaign in what is already a toxic race. And now that the deadline has passed for candidate nominations on Saturday, political analysts expect the smear campaigns and disinformation efforts to intensify. Once the nomination stage ends, a damaged candidate cannot simply withdraw and be replaced. So will the tape appear soon? And if it does, how will it affect a campaign in which polls show Fidesz trailing by around 9 percentage points? Could it sway the outcome? “We can’t be sure about its impact until we have the content,” said Péter Krekó, executive director of Political Capital, an independent policy research consultancy. “I would not dare to predict because it’s dependent on what’s on the tape.”  Péter Magyar, opposition leader and head of the center-right Tisza party has accused Viktor Orbán’s ruling Fidesz party of preparing a smear campaign in what is already a toxic race. | Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images Hungarian politicians have won elections after sex scandals. In 2017, Zsolt Borkai, the Fidesz-affiliated mayor of Győr and a former Olympian, was implicated in a major scandal after an anonymous blog published photos of him attending a group sex party on a yacht in the Adriatic Sea. Borkai was reelected narrowly two years later, though he subsequently stepped down.   Magyar is “very good with preemptive communication,” said Krekó. “He has tried to get ahead by admitting he was involved in a consensual sexual relationship. That was wise because it potentially minimizes his losses in advance.” A prominent opposition activist, who is not a Tisza member but supports Magyar, said he is unsure whether the tape would damage the effort to unseat Orbán. He requested anonymity to avoid straining his relationship with Magyar. “There’s already little enthusiasm for him personally,” he said. “There isn’t a popular embrace. For many on the left and center of the political spectrum, Magyar and Tisza are just useful vehicles to use to get rid of Orbán.” In the activist’s view, a Tisza victory would reflect a broad anti-Orbán coalition rather than affection for Magyar — similar to Labour’s 2024 victory in Britain, which was less about public enthusiasm for Keir Starmer than a desire to end Conservative rule. And so maybe voters wouldn’t care what baggage Magyar brought with him. WILL VLADIMIR PUTIN SAVE ORBÁN?  It isn’t just a sex tape people are bracing for. With nominations now closed, András Rácz, an analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations, is watching for Russian influence operations to ramp up.  So far, that front has been relatively quiet. But Rácz thinks that will change. Speaking at a panel discussion in Budapest this week, he predicted a significant increase in Russian disinformation efforts aimed at helping the Hungarian prime minister.  “Orbán’s government has been the best asset Russia has ever had in the EU and NATO,” he said. “It would be foolish for them not to do everything they can to keep Orbán in power.”  “Orbán’s government has been the best asset Russia has ever had in the EU and NATO,” András Rácz said. | Pool photo by Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images Szabolcs Panyi — an award-winning journalist for Direkt36, an independent, non-profit investigative outlet — similarly expects intensified activity in the final weeks of the race. Citing multiple European national security sources, he has reported that a team of Kremlin-linked “political technologists” has been tasked with influencing Hungary’s election. The effort, he says, will be overseen by Sergei Kiriyenko, the first deputy chief of staff to Russian President Vladimir Putin. How successful such an effort will be remains unclear. In September, Russia launched an influence campaign against Moldova’s ruling party, co-founded by President Maia Sandu, in an attempt to swing a parliamentary election toward a pro-Russian party. In the end, it failed: Moldova’s pro-Western governing party retained its majority, decisively defeating the pro-Russian opposition. There is, however, a key difference between Moldova and Hungary. Moldovan authorities mounted a large-scale effort to counter the Russian campaign. Hungary’s ruling party is unlikely to do the same.

The EU’s envoy to Kyiv accused Moscow of war crimes, describing the “humanitarian calamity” unfolding as Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure leave some hundreds of thousands of people without heat amid sub-zero temperatures. “Let’s make it very clear — this has been really a war crime to hit and freeze people in their own homes, ordinary civilians,” EU Ambassador to Ukraine Katarina Mathernová said in an interview. Mathernová’s accusations on POLITICO’s EU Confidential podcast last week mark some of the strongest to date from an EU official since Russian President Vladimir Putin began a winter siege on Ukraine’s electric grid. Yet the diplomat, in post since September 2023, is known for her unvarnished descriptions of Ukrainians’ daily struggles on social media and a rigorous accounting — laced with righteous anger — of Russian attacks. As the full-scale invasion grinds toward the end of its fourth year on Tuesday, Mathernová’s mission is as much about sharing Ukrainians’ perspective with the EU as it is transmitting Brussels’ lines to Kyiv. Russia’s systematic bombardment of energy plants has turned the Ukrainian capital into a “frontline city,” she said, describing a city dotted with thousands of Red Cross tents offering tea, phone charging stations and even cots to ride out frigid nights. “Kids do homework there,” she said. “People telework or simply come to get warm.” She pointed to a particularly ruinous attack on Feb. 3, when Russia fired five ballistic rockets that destroyed one of Kyiv’s largest thermal power plants. That left some 350,000 without heat, with temperatures dropping as low as minus 20 degrees Celsius. Mathernová is fighting against an “information fog” that has obscured Kyiv’s acute plight, she said from her office in the capital — before the interview itself was interrupted by an air raid siren. That occurrence has become so commonplace that she displayed more concern about the audio quality than her own safety. The EU’s embassy in Kyiv was itself bombed last summer, and nights punctuated by sirens leave everyone from government officials and foreign diplomats to everyday Ukrainians with the cumulative damage from sleep deprivation. “I think we all suffer from PTSD by now,” she said. UKRAINE IN THE EU ‘HOUSE’ Yet amid this inhumane grind, Mathernová is optimistic that the prospect of some form of EU membership in 2027 could keep Ukrainians’ resolve intact. As POLITICO reported this month, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen floated the idea of “reverse enlargement” to guarantee Ukraine’s spot in the EU, even if it hasn’t met all the accession criteria — or if it faces a persistent block from Hungary. The EU “has always been very creative in terms of finding legal and institutional workarounds to difficult situations historically,” she said, pointing to the “variable geometry” of systems like Schengen and the eurozone, which include some full EU members but not all. Mathernová offered an analogy of Ukraine being brought into a house, “not all the rooms in the house being available immediately at the outset.” They could continue working “with the ultimate goal of having a full membership.” She added: “My understanding is that this is what colleagues in Brussels are working on.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has consistently ruled out anything less than equal EU membership, saying in November that “it has to be fully fledged.” However, Mathernová predicted Ukrainians would accept such an arrangement “if we don’t let various narratives and disinformation about it, like this is not a full membership, etc.,” take hold. “I think if it’s a matter of anchoring Ukraine in the EU as part of its peaceful future, I’m sure they would.” Yet just days after the interview, Mathernová was back to documenting Ukraine’s violent present. On Facebook, with a video of her standing in the snow, she detailed a new overnight toll: 345 drones 50 missiles of various kinds 12 ballistic missiles used just against Kyiv!

MUNICH, Germany — French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday called on Europeans to become stronger — and on the U.S. to show some respect. “A stronger Europe would be a better friend for its allies,” the French president told a packed hall at the Munich Security Conference. “Europe has to become a geopolitical power. We have to accelerate and deliver all the components of a geopolitical power: defense, technologies and de-risking from all the big powers.” “I don’t talk about France or Germany becoming a geopolitical power, but Europe as a whole,” he said. The French president has consistently called on Europeans to be more independent, popularizing the term “strategic autonomy” since entering office in 2017. Macron hammered that idea home in Munich, attending the conference for the first time since 2023. Prior to the conference, a person close to the president said France hopes that Europeans will continue pushing for more independence from the U.S., even if Trump’s threat to annex Greenland has abated for now. “We mustn’t let the momentum fade,” the aide said, nothing that in past crises such as Trump’s Oval Office ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, European outrage quickly waned following calming words from Washington.  In clear rebuke of last year’s bruising attack on Europe by U.S. Vice President JD Vance, Macron on Friday painted a positive picture of the continent, rejecting accusations that EU countries are stifling free speech with digital regulations. Instead, he argued that social media and online platforms, mostly American-owned, are amplifying foreign interference and disinformation that is undermining democracy. In a sign of the importance he placed on the Munich event, he was accompanied by Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, Deputy Defense Minister Alice Rufo and Deputy Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad. NUCLEAR UMBRELLA Macron also teased a much-anticipated speech on France’s nuclear doctrine, which is expected in the coming weeks. POLITICO first reported the address would take place in Brest, where French nuclear submarines are stationed.  Europe needs to rebuild a new defense architecture, and that includes nuclear deterrence, especially now that the New START treaty limiting the American and Russian arsenals has expired, the French president said. Earlier on Friday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz confirmed that talks were ongoing with Paris about how France’s nuclear weapons could contribute to Europe’s security. Pressed about Merz’s comments, Macron said he will provide more “details” in his upcoming speech. France and some European countries are looking to see “how we can articulate our national doctrine with special cooperation, common security interest, this is what we’re doing for the first time in history [with Germany],” Macron told the audience. Despite multiple reports, including by POLITICO, that the Future Combat Air System is at a dead end, Macron said he still “believed” in the fighter jet project with Germany and Spain. Earlier this week, Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius struck a much less enthusiastic tone. A defense official also told POLITICO on Friday that Airbus, one of the project’s main contractors, was weighing participation in the rival Global Combat Air Programme led by Italy, the U.K. and Japan. Macron also backed more promising European defense industrial cooperations, such as a project to jointly develop deep precision strike capabilities known as ELSA with a group of European countries including Germany and Poland, and another one called JEWEL with Germany about early-warning systems to track missiles.  Victor Goury-Laffont and Jordyn Dahl contributed to this report.

German prosecutors have charged a Ukrainian national as a suspect in an alleged Russian-linked parcel-bomb sabotage plot, authorities said on Monday. Prosecutors say Yevhen B. recruited two accomplices to send parcels from Cologne toward territory in Ukraine not occupied by Russia. The parcels contained tracking devices and incendiary materials intended to ignite in Germany or en route. The alleged plot was thwarted before any explosions occurred. Yevhen B. was arrested in Switzerland last May and was extradited to Germany in December. The fresh indictment adds to mounting European concern over alleged Russian hybrid operations — including sabotage, cyberattacks and disinformation — since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Reported Russia-linked arson and serious sabotage incidents across Europe rose to 34 in 2024, up from 12 the previous year and just two in 2022, according to earlier investigations. The Russian Embassy in Berlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Moscow has previously denied involvement in similar incidents. Russia often recruits Ukrainians for espionage-related activities. Norway’s security services said on Feb. 6 that they expect Russian intelligence activity to intensify in 2026. Likely targets include military sites, allied exercises and support for Ukraine. NATO and EU officials are set to debate transatlantic defense cooperation and Russia’s influence at the Munich Security Conference that starts on Friday.

Donald Trump has aborted his threat to take Greenland by force but online the war is just getting started. The United States president in January shocked Europe with threats of tariffs to support his right to own Greenland, an autonomous territory of the Danish kingdom. While the intensity of those threats has subsided for now, Danish and European officials say the small island remains vulnerable to the power wielded by the U.S. administration online. With a population of under 60,000, the tiniest drop of misinformation can spread quickly and significantly affect public opinion — especially when the false narrative is coming not from anonymous Russian troll farms but from the most powerful politician in the Western world. “Greenland is a target of influence campaigns of various kinds,” Denmark’s Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard told POLITICO, with one goal of such campaigns “to create division in the relationship between Denmark and Greenland.” In the last year disinformation has increased in Greenland, said Thomas Hedin, editor-in-chief of Danish fact-checker TjekDet. While the influx has lacked any “structured campaign,” including from Russia, Hedin cited as an example of disinformation the idea that the U.S. could buy Greenland — a message repeated by Trump but that is impossible under the Danish constitution, Hedin said. The fact that Greenland is not part of the EU means that the bloc’s social media law — which obliges platforms to consider and mitigate threats of misinformation to civic discourse — does not apply to Greenland, Denmark’s digital ministry told POLITICO.  While polls show that Greenlandic people still favor integration with Europe, German Greens lawmaker Sergey Lagodinsky said the EU needs to prepare for a “new type of hybrid confrontation” over the island. “It’s no more combatting Russian trolls trying to hack the system. If pointed at the EU and Greenland, the disinformation campaigns on U.S. platforms become the system,” he said. RIPE FOR EXPLOITATION The relationship between Denmark and Greenland is particularly ripe for exploitation, said Signe Ravn-Højgaard, co-founder and CEO of Denmark-based Digital Infrastructure Think Tank, who conducted an analysis on the misinformation landscape in Greenland.   With a population the size of a Brussels municipality, news travels fast in Greenland and there are few media outlets that can debunk information. Most people rely on Facebook, said Ravn-Højgaard. With only a few shares, a fake news story can reach the entire population.   “It’s completely different from how it is in Denmark,” she said. If in a city of 20,000 people, 5,000 people believe something false, “it’s not a danger to the democracy of Denmark.” But in Greenland, “that would firstly, quickly spread to everyone, and secondly, it’s a large percentage of the population,” she said.   Organized foreign interference campaigns haven’t appeared in Greenland yet, according to two researchers that POLITICO spoke to, but misinformation has been spreading. Two members of the Greenlandic government, Fisheries Minister Peter Borg and Labour Minister Aqqaluaq Egede, pleaded with the public to “stand in unity” on social media in the face of threats from the U.S.   EU lawmakers have also sounded the alarm. Greens lawmaker Alexandra Geese said to “expect influence operations using state-of-the-art propaganda campaigns as well as hate and harassment campaigns against political figures in Greenland and Denmark.” TRANSPARENCY While Denmark said it has no legal obligation to enforce the bloc’s platform law, the Digital Services Act, on Greenland territory, several lawmakers say that should change. Geese said that the EU should enforce the law, “making sure algorithms respect users’ choices rather than acting in the interest of the same tech oligarchs who are investing in Greenland’s minerals.” That’s despite the fact that the EU has struggled to show tangible results elsewhere so far. The European Commission hasn’t concluded any of its investigations on risks to elections and civic discourse despite having probes open on four platforms including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, TikTok and X. As well as getting platforms to make changes to their systems, the DSA could also help bring transparency to the online ecosystem. The law requires platforms to be transparent about paid ads and data — something Greenland is lacking, said Ravn-Højgaard. Ravn-Højgaard cited paid ads that ran on Facebook ahead of the territory’s election in March 2025, which were not available on the platform’s transparency database. Lagodinsky said the EU should set up an “ad hoc expert group explicitly focused on Greenland.” Brussels should also increase support to fact-checking networks and civil society organizations, he said, similar to the support offered in countries like Moldova and Ukraine.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced Tuesday his government will ban children under the age of 16 from accessing social media. “Platforms will be required to implement effective age verification systems — not just check boxes, but real barriers that work,” Sánchez said during an address to the plenary session of the World Government Summit in Dubai. “Today our children are exposed to a space they were never meant to navigate alone … We will protect [minors] from the digital Wild West.” The proposed ban, which is set to be approved by the country’s Council of Ministers next week, will amend a draft bill currently being debated in the Spanish parliament. Whereas the current version of the legislation seeks to restrict access to social media to users aged 16 and older, the new amendment would expressly prohibit minors from registering on platforms. Spain joins a growing chorus of European countries hardening their approach to restricting kids online. Denmark announced plans for a ban on under-15’s last fall, and the French government is pushing to have a similar ban in place as soon as September. In Portugal, the governing center-right Social Democratic Party on Monday submitted draft legislation that would require under-16’s to obtain parental consent to access social media. Spain’s ban is included in a wider package of measures that Sánchez argued are necessary to “regain control” of the digital space. “Governments must stop turning a blind eye to the toxic content being shared,” he said. That includes a legislative proposal to hold social media executives legally accountable for the illegal content shared on their platforms, with a new tool to track the spread of disinformation, hate speech or child pornography on social networks. It also proposes criminalizing the manipulation of algorithms and amplification of illegal content. “We will investigate platforms whose algorithms amplify disinformation in exchange for profit,” Sánchez said, adding that “spreading hate must come at a cost — a legal cost, as well as an economic and ethical cost — that platforms can no longer afford to ignore.” The EU’s Digital Services Act requires platforms to mitigate risks from online content. The European Commission works “hand in hand” with EU countries on protections for kids online and the enforcement of these measures “towards the very large platforms is the responsibility of the Commission,” Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said Tuesday when asked about Sánchez’s announcement. The EU executive in December imposed a €120 million fine on Elon Musk’s X for failing to comply with transparency obligations, and a probe into the platform’s efforts to counter the spread of illegal content and disinformation is ongoing.

The center-right European People’s Party is eyeing “better implementation” of the Lisbon Treaty to better prepare the EU for what it sees as historic shifts in the global balance of power involving the U.S., China and Russia, EPP leader Manfred Weber said on Saturday. Speaking at a press conference on the second day of an EPP Leaders Retreat in Zagreb, Weber highlighted the possibility of broadening the use of qualified majority voting in EU decision-making and developing a practical plan for military response if a member state is attacked. Currently EU leaders can use qualified majority voting on most legislative proposals, from energy and climate issues to research and innovation. But common foreign and security policy, EU finances and membership issues, among other areas, need a unified majority. This means that on issues such as sanctions against Russia, one country can block agreement, as happened last summer when Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico vetoed a package of EU measures against Moscow — a veto that was eventually lifted. Such power in one country’s hands is something that the EPP would like to change.  As for military solidarity, Article 42.7 of the Lisbon Treaty obliges countries to provide “aid and assistance by all the means in their power” if an EU country is attacked. For Weber, the formulation under European law is stronger than NATO’s Article 5 collective defense commitment. However, he stressed that the EU still lacks a clear operational plan for how the clause would work in practice. Article 42.7 was previously used when France requested that other EU countries make additional contributions to the fight against terrorism, following the Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015.  Such ideas were presented as the party with a biggest grouping in the European Parliament — and therefore the power to shape EU political priorities — presented its strategic focus for 2026, with competitiveness as its main priority.  Keeping the pulse on what matters in 2026  The EPP wants to unleash the bloc’s competitiveness through further cutting red tape, “completing” the EU single market, diversifying supply chains, protecting economic independence and security and promoting innovation including in AI, chips and biotech, among other actions, according to its list 2026 priorities unveiled on Saturday. On defense, the EPP is pushing for a “360-degree” security approach to safeguard Europe against growing geopolitical threats, “addressing state and non-state threats from all directions,” according to the document. The EPP is calling for enhanced European defense capabilities, including a stronger defense market, joint procurement of military equipment, and new strategic initiatives to boost readiness. The party also stressed the need for better protection against cyberattacks and hybrid threats, and robust measures to counter disinformation campaigns targeting EU institutions and societies. On migration and border security, the EPP backs tougher asylum admissibility rules, faster returns, and strengthened external borders, including reinforced Frontex operations and improved digital systems like the Entry/Exit System.  The party also urged a Demographic Strategy for Europe amid the continent’s shrinking and aging population. The text, initiated by Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), member of the EPP, wants to see demographic considerations integrated into EU economic governance, cohesion funds, and policymaking, while boosting family support, intergenerational solidarity, labor participation, skills development, mobility and managed immigration.  Demographic change is “the most important issue, which is not really intensively discussed in the public discourse,” Weber said. “That’s why we want to highlight this, we want to underline the importance.” 

Germany and Italy on Friday backed an organization dedicated to fighting hybrid threats and disinformation, weeks after the United States exited it and called it “wasteful.” Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Russia has hammered Europe with hybrid attacks ranging from cyberattacks, destruction of property and transport links, disinformation, drone incursions and even attempted assassinations. Analysts argue the aim of the hybrid campaign is to reduce European support for Ukraine.  Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz met in Rome to adopt a “plan of action for strategic bilateral and EU cooperation.” In the joint plan, the two countries committed to “strengthening” the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats. The center was one of dozens of organizations from which U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew in early January on the grounds that they were “wasteful, ineffective, and harmful.” Meloni and Merz committed to “exchange on hybrid threats, information resilience and strategic communications,” as well as prioritizing a wide range of cybersecurity policies such as the protection of critical infrastructure, cyber capacity building projects and tackling cybercrime. They also said they will “prioritize disruptive and dual-use technologies” for cyber defense. The two European leaders also pushed to boost the EU’s intelligence-sharing capacities, in particular the “hybrid fusion cell” within the EU Intelligence and Situation Centre (EU INTCEN).