BRUSSELS — European banks and other finance firms should decrease their reliance on American tech companies for digital services, a top national supervisor has said. In an interview with POLITICO, Steven Maijoor, the Dutch central bank’s chair of supervision, said the “small number of suppliers” providing digital services to many European finance companies can pose a “concentration risk.” “If one of those suppliers is not able to supply, you can have major operational problems,” Maijoor said. The intervention comes as Europe’s politicians and industries grapple with the continent’s near-total dependence on U.S. technology for digital services ranging from cloud computing to software. The dominance of American companies has come into sharp focus following a decline in transatlantic relations under U.S. President Donald Trump. While the market for European tech services isn’t nearly as developed as in the U.S. — making it difficult for banks to switch — the continent “should start to try to develop this European environment” for financial stability and the sake of its economic success, Maijoor said. European banks being locked in to contracts with U.S. providers “will ultimately also affect their competitiveness,” Maijoor said. Dutch supervisors recently authored a report on the systemic risks posed by tech dependence in finance. Dutch lender Amsterdam Trade Bank collapsed in 2023 after its parent company was placed on the U.S. sanctions list and its American IT provider withdrew online data storage services, in one of the sharpest examples of the impact on companies that see their tech withdrawn. Similarly a 2024 outage of American cybersecurity company CrowdStrike highlighted the European finance sector’s vulnerabilities to operational risks from tech providers, the EU’s banking watchdog said in a post-mortem on the outage. In his intervention, Maijoor pointed to an EU law governing the operational reliability of banks — the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) — as one factor that may be worsening the problem. Those rules govern finance firms’ outsourcing of IT functions such as cloud provision, and designate a list of “critical” tech service providers subject to extra oversight, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft and Oracle. DORA, and other EU financial regulation, may be “inadvertently nudging financial institutions towards the largest digital service suppliers,” which wouldn’t be European, Maijoor said. “If you simply look at quality, reliability, security … there’s a very big chance that you will end up with the largest digital service suppliers from outside Europe,” he said. The bloc could reassess the regulatory approach to beat the risks, Maijoor said. “DORA currently is an oversight approach, which is not as strong in terms of requirements and enforcement options as regular supervision,” he said. The Dutch supervisors are pushing for changes, writing that they are examining whether financial regulation and supervision in the EU creates barriers to choosing European IT providers, and that identified issues “may prompt policy initiatives in the European context.” They are asking EU governments and supervisors “to evaluate whether DORA sufficiently enhances resilience to geopolitical risks and, if not, to consider issuing further guidance,” adding they “see opportunities to strengthen DORA as needed,” including through more enforcement and more explicit requirements around managing geopolitical risks. Europe could also set up a cloud watchdog across industries to mitigate the risks of dependence on U.S. tech service providers, which are “also very important for other parts of the economy like energy and telecoms,” Maijoor said. “Wouldn’t there be a case for supervision more generally of these hyperscalers, cloud service providers, as they are so important for major parts of the economy?” The European Commission declined to respond.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s top envoy to the EU told POLITICO that overregulation is causing “real problems” economically and forcing European startups to flee to America. Andrew Puzder said businesses in the bloc “that become successful here go to the United States because the regulatory environment is killing them.” “Wouldn’t it be great if this part of the world, instead of deciding it was going to be the world’s regulator, decided once again to be the world’s innovators?” he added in an interview at this year’s POLITICO 28 event. “You’ll be stronger in the world and you’ll be a much better trade partner and ally to the United States.” Puzder’s remarks come as the Trump administration launched a series of blistering attacks on Europe in recent days. Washington’s National Security Strategy warned of the continent’s “civilizational erasure” and Trump himself blasted European leaders as “weak” and misguided on migration policy in an interview with POLITICO. Those broadsides have sparked concerns in Europe that Trump could seek to jettison the transatlantic relationship. But Puzder downplayed the strategy’s criticism and struck a more conciliatory note, saying the document was “more ‘make Europe great again’ than it was ‘let’s desert Europe’” and highlighted Europe’s potential as a partner.

Denmark’s military intelligence service has for the first time classified the U.S. as a security risk, a striking shift in how one of Washington’s closest European allies assesses the transatlantic relationship. In its 2025 intelligence outlook published Wednesday, the Danish Defense Intelligence Service warned that the U.S. is increasingly prioritizing its own interests and “using its economic and technological strength as a tool of power,” including toward allies and partners. “The United States uses economic power, including in the form of threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will and no longer excludes the use of military force, even against allies,” it said, in a pointed reference to Washington trying to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark. The assessment is one of the strongest warnings about the U.S. to come from a European intelligence service. In October, the Dutch spies said they had stopped sharing some intelligence with their U.S. counterparts, citing political interference and human rights concerns. The Danish warning underscores European unease as Washington leverages industrial policy more aggressively on the global stage, and highlights the widening divide between the allies, with the U.S. National Security Strategy stating that Europe will face the “prospect of civilizational erasure” within the next 20 years. The Danish report also said that “there is uncertainty about how China-U.S. relations will develop in the coming years” as Beijing’s rapid rise has eroded the U.S.’s long-held position as the undisputed global power. Washington and Beijing are now locked in a contest for influence, alliances and critical resources, which has meant the U.S. has “significantly prioritized” the geographical area around it — including the Arctic — to reduce China’s influence. “The USA’s increasingly strong focus on the Pacific Ocean is also creating uncertainty about the country’s role as the primary guarantor of security in Europe,” the report said. “The USA’s changed policy places great demands on armaments and cooperation between European countries to strengthen deterrence against Russia.” In the worst-case scenario, the Danish intelligence services predict that Western countries could find themselves in a situation in a few years where both Russia and China are ready to fight their own regional wars in the Baltic Sea region and the Taiwan Strait, respectively.

BRUSSELS — The EU has struck a political agreement to overhaul the bloc’s foreign direct investment screening rules, the Council of the EU announced on Thursday, in a move to prevent strategic technology and critical infrastructure from falling into the hands of hostile powers. The updated rules — the first major plank of European Commission President’s Ursula von der Leyen’s economic security strategy — would require all EU countries to systematically monitor investments and further harmonize the way those are screened within the bloc. The agreement comes just over a week after Brussels unveiled a new economic security package. Under the new rules, EU countries would be required to screen investments in dual-use items and military equipment; technologies like artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and semiconductors; raw materials; energy, transport and digital infrastructure; and election infrastructure, such as voting systems and databases. As previously reported by POLITICO, foreign entities investing into specific financial services must also be subject to screening by EU capitals. “We achieved a balanced and proportionate framework, focused on the most sensitive technologies and infrastructures, respectful of national prerogatives and efficient for authorities and businesses alike,” said Morten Bødskov, Denmark’s minister for industry, business and financial affairs. It took three round of political talks between the three institutions to seal the update, which was a key priority for the Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU. One contentious question was which technologies and sectors should be subject to mandatory screening. Another was how capitals and the European Commission should coordinate — and who gets the final say — when a deal raises red flags. Despite a request from the European Parliament, the Commission will not get the authority to arbitrate disputes between EU countries on specific investment cases. Screening decisions will remain firmly in the purview of national governments. “We’re making progress. The result of our negotiations clearly strengthens the EU’s security while also making life easier for investors by harmonising the Member States’ screening mechanism,” said the lead lawmaker on the file, French S&D Raphaël Glucksmann. “Yet more remains to be done to ensure that investments bring real added value to the EU, so that our market does not become a playground for foreign companies exploiting our dependence on their technology. The Commission has committed to take an initiative; it must now act quickly,” he said in a statement to POLITICO. This story has been updated.

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

The Dutch government has quietly removed Google tracking tools from job listings for its intelligence services over concerns that the data would expose aspirant spies to U.S. surveillance. The intervention would put an end to Google’s processing of the data of job seekers interested in applying to spy service jobs, after members of parliament in The Hague raised security concerns. The move comes at a moment when trust between the Netherlands and the United States is fraying. It reflects wider European unease — heightened by Donald Trump’s return to the White House — about American tech giants having access to some of their most sensitive government data. The heads of the AIVD and MIVD, the Netherlands’ civilian and military intelligence services, said in October that they were reviewing how to share information with American counterparts over political interference and human rights concerns. In the Netherlands, government vacancies are listed on a central online portal, which subsequently redirects applicants to specific institutions’ or agencies’ websites, including those of the security services. The government has now quietly pulled the plug on Google Analytics for intelligence-service postings, according to security expert Bert Hubert, who first raised the alarm about the trackers earlier this year. Hubert told POLITICO the job postings for intelligence services jobs no longer contained the same Google tracking technologies at least since November. The move was first reported by Follow the Money. The military intelligence service MIVD declined to comment. The interior ministry, which oversees the general intelligence service AIVD, did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication. In a statement, Communications Manager for Google Mathilde Méchin said: “Businesses, not Google Analytics, own and control the data they collect and Google Analytics only processes it at their direction. This data can be deleted at any time.” “Any data sent to Google Analytics for measurement does not identify individuals, and we have strict policies against advertising based on sensitive information,” Méchin said. ‘FUTURE EMPLOYEES AT RISK’ Derk Boswijk, a center-right Dutch lawmaker, raised the alarm about the tracking of job applicants in parliamentary questions to the government in January. He said that while China and Russia have traditionally been viewed as the biggest security risks, it is unacceptable for any foreign government — allied or not — to have a view into Dutch intelligence recruitment. “I still see the U.S. as our most important ally,” Boswijk told POLITICO. “But to be honest, we’re seeing that the policies of the Trump administration and the European countries no longer necessarily align, and I think we should adapt accordingly.” The government told Boswijk in February it had enabled privacy settings on data gathered by Google. The government has yet to comment on Boswijk’s latest questions submitted in November. Hubert, the cybersecurity expert, said the concerns over tracking were justified. Even highly technical data like IP addresses, device fingerprints and browsing patterns can help foreign governments, including adversaries such as China, narrow down who might be seeking a job inside an intelligence agency, he said. “By leaking job applications so broadly, the Dutch intelligence agencies put their future employees at risk, while also harming their own interests,” said Hubert, adding it could discourage sought-after cybersecurity talent that agencies are desperate to attract. Hubert previously served on a watchdog committee overseeing intelligence agencies’ requests to use hacking tools, surveillance and wiretapping.  One open question raised by Dutch parliamentarians is how to gain control over the data that Google gathered on aspiring spies in past years. “I don’t know what happens with the data Google Analytics already has, that’s still a black box to me,” said Sarah El Boujdaini, a lawmaker for the centrist-liberal Democrats 66 party who oversees digital affairs. The episode is likely to add fuel to efforts to wean off U.S. technologies — which are taking place across Europe, as part of the bloc’s “technological sovereignty” drive. European Parliament members last month urged the institution to move away from U.S. tech services, in a letter to the president obtained by POLITICO. In the Netherlands, parliament members have urged public institutions to move away from digital infrastructure run by U.S. firms like Microsoft, over security concerns. “If we can’t even safeguard applications to our secret services, how do you think the rest is going?” Hubert asked. The country also hosts the International Criminal Court, where Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan previously lost access to his Microsoft-hosted email account after he was targeted with American sanctions over issuing an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ICC in October confirmed to POLITICO it was moving away from using Microsoft Office applications to German-based openDesk.

EU countries are taking a harder look at who builds, owns and works on key infrastructure like ports, IT and rail — and that concern is now spilling into a wave of legislation aimed at countries like China. Sweden is the latest to move, proposing this week to give local authorities new powers to block “hostile states” from bidding on infrastructure if their involvement could threaten national security. “It’s part of a defense issue,” a Swedish official told POLITICO, describing growing worries about countries like China gaining access to public infrastructure. “We are acting very quickly on that, since we see a risk that hostile states might try to infiltrate infrastructure such as ports, but also IT solutions and energy infrastructure.” It’s also a worry in Poland, Austria and inside EU institutions — all of which are rushing to put in safeguards to block, or at least monitor, third-country investment in key tech and transport infrastructure. What accelerated Sweden’s move was a recent EU court ruling involving Turkish and Chinese companies bidding on two railway projects. Judges concluded that suppliers from countries without a free-trade agreement with the EU do not enjoy the same rights as EU firms — a reading Stockholm took as both a green light and a warning signal. Sweden’s new rules are due to take effect in 2027. No specific cases were cited, but the investigation repeatedly pointed to China — which also sits at the center of very similar concerns in Poland. Warsaw has long been uneasy about the scale of Chinese involvement in its ports. A new draft bill put forward by the country’s president would “adapt the existing regulations concerning the operation of ports, and in particular the ownership of real estate located within the boundaries of ports.” The president argued that the current model — state-owned port authorities holding land and infrastructure and leasing it long-term to terminal operators — needs tightening if the country wants to maintain control over assets of “fundamental importance to the national economy.” Gen. Dariusz Łuczak, former head of Poland’s Internal Security Agency and now adviser to the Special Services Commission, told Polish media late last month that “the most important provisions are those concerning the early termination of perpetual use agreements.” However, it’s unclear if the legislation will pass as President Karol Nawrocki is broadly opposed to the government led by Prime Minster Donald Tusk. The EU is also moving. Ana Miguel Pedro, a Portuguese member of the European Parliament with the center-right European People’s Party, told POLITICO in the spring that the growing presence of Chinese state-owned companies in European port terminals “is not just an economic concern, but a strategic vulnerability.” Those concerns appear in the bloc’s new military mobility package, which calls for member countries to put in place “stricter rules on the ownership and control of strategic dual use infrastructure.” Transport Commissioner Apostolos Tzitzikostas also flagged the Chinese presence in ports and said it will feature in the European Commission’s upcoming ports strategy, due in 2026. Austria has also been pushed into the debate after long-distance trains built by Chinese state-owned manufacturer CRRC rolled onto the Vienna-Salzburg line for the first time — triggering a political backlash. The country’s Mobility Minister Peter Hanke said the EU must tighten procurement and digital-security rules for state-backed rail purchases — and Vienna plans to propose new legislation before the end of the year. The Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Industry is pushing Brussels to go even further. The European Rail Supply Industry Association argued that the bloc’s procurement rules are relics of an earlier era and asked the Commission to update them so companies from countries that shut out EU bidders cannot freely compete for European contracts. Sweden’s investigators saw the same risks. “Third-country suppliers without an agreement should not be given a more advantageous position than they have today and than other suppliers have,” Anneli Berglund Creutz, who led the Swedish government’s procurement review, told reporters. Contracting authorities, she added, should have the ability “to take into account the nationality of suppliers and to select suppliers from hostile states” — possibly excluding them “when that protects national security.”

The European Space Agency’s members approved a record €22.1 billion three-year budget and widened its mandate to include security and defense — a big change for an organization that had been dedicated “exclusively” to the peaceful use of space. “ESA’s intergovernmental framework provides the credentials and tools for developing space technologies and systems … for security and defence,” read the resolution adopted this week by the organization’s 23 members, according to a slide shared with reporters Thursday The ESA called the move a “historic change.” The war in Ukraine has shown the importance of space assets, both for intelligence gathering and secure communications. Europe is also looking to cut its reliance on U.S. companies, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX. In one example of the shift, the ESA’s new dual-use Earth observation project dubbed the European Resilience from Space, could have both civilian and military applications. Poland played a leading role in pushing for the ESA to be more involved in defense, the agency’s Director General  Josef Aschbacher told reporters. Warsaw and the organization are currently discussing setting up a new ESA centre in Poland that would focus on security. The budget includes €3.4 billion for Earth observation, €2.1 billion for secure communications and €900 million to develop European rocket launchers. That’s a significant increase compared to the previous budget of nearly €17 billion. “This is amazing,” Aschbacher said of the larger budget. Germany is the lead contributor, at about €5 billion, with France and Italy following at more than €3 billion each.

BRUSSELS — European governments struck a deal on Wednesday that clears the way for new rules protecting kids from child sexual abuse online. The agreement among countries puts an end to a years-long, heated lobbying fight that pitted privacy groups and even Elon Musk against law enforcement and child rights groups. The proposed law — which is now on track to pass by an April deadline, pending final talks with the European Parliament — would allow online messaging apps to scan content to stop the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and child grooming, and require platforms to do more to detect and take down content. Child rights groups say the deal struck by countries will go some way toward tackling the problem of child abuse online, even if it doesn’t go as far as they had hoped. To land an agreement, Danish diplomats who led negotiations in the Council of the EU softened their proposal to steer clear of a controversial “mandatory scanning” clause, which would have forced apps like Signal and WhatsApp to scan their services for illegal content. That idea — labeled “Chat Control” by privacy campaigners, who argued it would open the door to state surveillance — was also fought hard by end-to-end encrypted messaging apps. Signal had threatened to cease its services in Europe if the “Chat Control” proposal had moved forward. The compromise approved by EU ambassadors on Wednesday allows companies to decide voluntarily whether to scan their services, which is the current status quo under a temporary legal exemption that expires in April. It also places fresh obligations on platforms, including mandatory risk assessments. The deal clears the way for the Council to start negotiations with the European Parliament on a final text. Parliament reached its position on the law in 2023. Wednesday’s compromise doesn’t fully please either camp in the lobbying fight. Police and investigators fear illegal content will remain out of sight on end-to-end encrypted applications, while privacy activists say large-scale surveillance of communication will still expand. Privacy activists voiced concerns over the proposal, particularly over how targeted the scanning measures would be — a sign that they’ll continue to pressure negotiators in coming months. Andy Yen, CEO of the Swiss privacy-friendly tech maker Proton, said in a statement it is “vital we all remain vigilant” against attempts to introduce mandatory scanning “through the back door” during the negotiations. Ella Jakubowska, head of policy at digital rights group EDRi, said there’s “a lot still to fix in the Council’s text.” Meanwhile, ECLAG, a coalition of child rights groups, said it is “concerned by the absence of mandatory detection orders” in the Council compromise. Negotiators in the Council and Parliament have a hard deadline of April, when a temporary legislation allowing apps to scan for CSAM expires. The lead negotiator for the Parliament, Spanish lawmaker Javier Zarzalejos, said in a video posted on X that the negotiations are “urgent.” Cyprus will lead negotiations on behalf of the Council starting in January. A Cypriot official said it is “in full awareness of the April deadline.”

BRUSSELS — European Parliament members this week rubbished the EU executive’s Democracy Shield plan, an initiative aimed at bolstering the bloc’s defenses against Russian sabotage, election meddling and cyber and disinformation campaigns. The Commission’s plan “feels more like a European neighborhood watch group chat,” Kim van Sparrentak, a Dutch member of the Greens group, told a committee meeting on Monday evening. On Tuesday, EU Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath faced the brunt of that censure before the full Parliament plenary, as centrist and left-leaning lawmakers panned the plan for its weaknesses and far-right members warned that Brussels is rolling out a propaganda machine of its own. “We want to see more reform, more drive and more actions,” Swedish center-right lawmaker Tomas Tobé, who leads the Parliament’s report on the matter, told McGrath. The European Democracy Shield was unveiled Nov. 12 as a response to Russia’s escalating meddling in the bloc. In past months, Europe has been awash in hybrid threats. Security services linked railway disruptions in Poland and the Baltics to Russian-linked saboteurs, while unexplained drone flyovers have crippled public services in Belgium and probed critical infrastructure sites across the Nordics. At the same time, pro-Kremlin influence campaigns have promoted deepfake videos and fabricated scandals and divisive narratives ahead of elections in Moldova, Slovakia and across the EU, often using local intermediaries to mask their origins.   Together these tactics inform a pressure campaign that European security officials say is designed to exhaust institutions, undermine trust and stretch Europe’s defenses.  The Democracy Shield was a key pledge President Ursula von der Leyen made last year. But the actual strategy presented this month lacks teeth and concrete actions, and badly fails to meet the challenge, opponents said. While “full of new ways to exchange information,” the strategy presents “no other truly new or effective proposals to actually take action,” said van Sparrentak, the Dutch Greens lawmaker.  EU RESPONSE A WORK IN PROGRESS Much of the Shield’s text consists of calls to support existing initiatives or proposed new ones to come later down the line.   One of the pillars of the initiative, a Democratic Resilience Center that would pool information on hybrid warfare and interference, was announced by von der Leyen in September but became a major sticking point during the drafting of the Shield before its Nov. 12 unveiling.  The final proposal for the Center lacks teeth, critics said. Instead of an independent agency, as the Parliament had wanted, it will be a forum for exchanging information, two Commission officials told POLITICO.  The Center needs “a clear legal basis” and should be “independent” with “proper funding,” Tobé said Tuesday.   Austrian liberal Helmut Brandstätter said in a comment to POLITICO that “some aspects of the center are already embedded in the EEAS [the EU’s diplomatic service] and other institutions. Instead of duplicating them, we should strive to consolidate and streamline our tools.” EU countries also have to opt into participating in the center, creating a risk that national authorities neglect its work.  RIGHT BLASTS EU ‘CENSORSHIP’  For right-wing and far-right forces, the Shield reflects what they see as EU censorship and meddling by Brussels in European national politics.   “The stated goals of the Democracy Shield look good on paper but we all know that behind these noble goals, what you actually want is to build a political machinery without an electoral mandate,” said Csaba Dömötör, a Hungarian MEP from the far-right Patriots group.   “You cannot appropriate the powers and competence of sovereign countries and create a tool which is going to allow you to have an influence on the decisions of elections” in individual EU countries, said Polish hard-right MEP Beata Szydło.   Those arguments echo some of the criticisms by the United States’ MAGA movement of European social media regulation, which figures like Vice President JD Vance have previously compared to Soviet-era censorship laws.  The Democracy Shield strategy includes attempts to support European media organizations and fact-checking to stem the flood of disinformation around political issues. Romanian right-wing MEP Claudiu-Richard Târziu said her country’s 2024 presidential elections had been cancelled due to “an alleged foreign intervention” that remained unproven.  “This Democracy Shield should not create a mechanism whereby other member states could go through what Romania experienced in 2024 — this is an attack against democracy — and eventually the voters will have zero confidence,” he said.  In a closing statement on Tuesday at the plenary, Commissioner McGrath defended the Democracy Shield from its hard-right critics but did not respond to more specific criticisms of the proposal.  “To those who question the Shield and who say it’s about censorship. What I say to you is that I and my colleagues in the European Commission will be the very first people to defend your right to level robust debate in a public forum,” he said.