Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed a visa-free travel regime with China, following Beijing’s earlier move to temporarily suspend the visa requirement for Russians.  “It [the no-visa policy] will be a positive boost for the development of our relations,” Putin said Tuesday while hosting Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang in the Kremlin. Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told journalists that the visa requirement for Chinese nationals would be dropped “very quickly.”  “The president has said so. All necessary preparations will soon be completed,” Peskov said.  Putin said the regime for Chinese citizens would be “reciprocal,” but didn’t share details. Russian nationals can currently remain in China for up to 30 days without a visa under a year-long trial policy announced by Beijing in September. Putin has been attempting to deepen relations with China since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, aiming to reduce the country’s reliance on the U.S. and Europe. Weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow and Beijing signed a “no-limits” partnership that declared the two powers have “no forbidden areas for cooperation.” Following the deal, Chinese exports to Russia spiked, with mutual trade now four times higher than it was a decade ago. Following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and the decision of Europe and Japan to halt air traffic with Russia, tourism between Russia and China has also grown, with China now among the top destinations for Russian travelers.  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the EU have previously accused China of supporting the Russian war effort in Ukraine, with the Ukrainian leader saying Beijing has supplied weapons. 

LONDON — Donald Trump’s war against the media has gone international.  Britain’s public service broadcaster has until 10 p.m. U.K. time on Friday to retract a 2024 documentary that he claims did him “overwhelming financial and reputational harm” — or potentially face a $1 billion lawsuit (nearly £760 million). It’s the U.S. president’s first notable battle with a non-American media organization. The escalation from Trump comes as the BBC is already grappling with the double resignations this past weekend of two top executives, Director General Tim Davie and news CEO Deborah Turness, amid the growing furor sparked by the release last week of an internal ombudsman’s report criticizing the Trump program as well as the BBC’s coverage of the Gaza war. Trump told Fox News he believes he has “an obligation” to sue the corporation because “they defrauded the public” and “butchered” a speech he gave. POLITICO walks you through the possible road ahead — and the potential pitfalls on both sides of the Atlantic.  WHY IS TRUMP THREATENING TO SUE?  The U.S. president is objecting to the broadcaster’s reporting in a documentary that aired on Panorama, one of the BBC’s flagship current affairs shows, just days before the U.S. presidential election.  The program included footage from Trump’s speech ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, which was selectively edited to suggest, incorrectly, that he told supporters: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you, and we fight. We fight like hell.”   But those lines were spoken almost an hour apart, and the documentary did not include a section where Trump called for supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”  “I really struggle to understand how we got to this place,” former BBC legal affairs correspondent Clive Coleman told POLITICO. “The first lesson almost you’re taught as a broadcast journalist is that you do not join two bits of footage together from different times in a way that will make the audience think that it is one piece of footage.” The U.S. president’s legal team claimed the edit on the footage was “false, defamatory, disparaging, and inflammatory” and caused him “to suffer overwhelming financial and reputational harm.”  BBC Chair Samir Shah apologized on Monday for the “error of judgment” in the edit. Trump’s lawyers said in their letter that they want a retraction, an apology and appropriate financial compensation — though their client’s subsequent comments suggest that may not satisfy him at this point. DO TRUMP’S CLAIMS STAND A CHANCE?  Trump’s lawyers indicated in their letter that he plans to sue in Florida, his home state, which has a two-year statute of limitations for defamation rather than the U.K.’s one-year limit — which has already passed.  The U.S. president is objecting to the broadcaster’s reporting in a documentary that aired on Panorama, one of the BBC’s flagship current affairs shows, just days before the U.S. presidential election. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images To even gain a hearing, the U.S. president would first need to prove the documentary was available there. The broadcaster confirmed the Panorama episode was not shown on the global feed of the BBC News Channel, while programs on iPlayer, the BBC’s catchup service, were only available in the U.K.  The Trump team’s letter to the BBC, however, claimed the clip was “widely disseminated throughout various digital mediums” reaching tens of millions of people worldwide — a key contention that would need to be considered by any judge deciding whether the case could be brought.  U.S. libel laws are tougher for claimants given that the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech. In U.S. courts, public figures claiming to have been defamed also have to show the accuser acted with “actual malice.”  The legal meaning doesn’t require animosity or dislike, but instead an intent to spread false information or some action in reckless disregard of the truth — a high burden of proof for Trump’s lawyers.  American libel standards tend to favor publishers more than those in Britain, so much so that in recent decades public figures angry about U.S. news reports have often opted to file suit in the U.K. That trend even prompted a 2010 U.S. law aimed at reining in so-called libel tourism. Yet Trump’s legal team is signaling it will argue that since the full video of Trump’s 2021 speech was widely available to the BBC, the editing itself amounted to reckless disregard and, therefore, actual malice.  BBC Chair Samir Shah apologized on Monday for the “error of judgment” in the edit. | Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images “The BBC’s reckless disregard for the truth underscores the actual malice behind the decision to publish the wrongful content, given the plain falsity of the statements,” his lawyers wrote.  However, a court battle wouldn’t be without risks for Trump. Prateek Swaika, a U.K.-based partner with Boies Schiller Flexner, said pursuing litigation “could force detailed examination and disclosure in connection” with Trump’s Jan. 6 statements —  potentially creating “more reputational damage than the original edit.”  COULD THE BBC SETTLE?  Trump has a long history of threatening legal action, especially against the press, but has lately had success in reaching out-of-court agreements with media outlets — including, most notably, the U.S. broadcasters ABC and CBS.  Trump’s latest claim is the flipside of his $20 billion suit against CBS’s “60 Minutes” over an interview with then-Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, which Trump claimed was deceptively edited to make Harris look good and therefore amounted to election interference.  CBS settled for $16 million in July, paying into a fund for Trump’s presidential library or charitable causes, though the network admitted no wrongdoing. The settlement came as CBS’ parent company, Paramount, was pursuing a corporate merger that the Trump administration had the power to block — and after Trump publicly said he thought CBS should lose its broadcast license, which is also granted by the federal government. The president doesn’t hold that same sway over the BBC, though the organization does have some U.S.-based commercial operations. Some news organizations have also opted to fight rather than settle past Trump claims, including CNN, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Some news organizations have opted to fight rather than settle past Trump claims, including CNN, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images “Litigation is always a commercial decision and it’s a reputational decision,” said Coleman, suggesting settlement talks may look appealing compared to fighting a case that could “hang over the heads of the BBC for many, many years, like a dark cloud.”  COULD THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT STEP IN?  Despite the BBC’s standing as a state broadcaster, the Labour government has so far taken a hands-off approach, perhaps unsurprisingly given Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s ongoing efforts to woo Trump on trade. No. 10 said on Tuesday that the lawsuit threat was a matter for the BBC, though Starmer subsequently reiterated his support for it generally. “I believe in a strong and independent BBC,” Starmer said at prime minister’s questions Wednesday. “Some would rather the BBC didn’t exist … I’m not one of them.” Perhaps eager to stay in Trump’s good books, the PM’s ministers have also avoided attacking the president and instead walked a diplomatic tightrope by praising the BBC in more general terms. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy on Tuesday reiterated the government’s vision of the BBC as a tool of soft power. The BBC documentary did not include a section where Trump called for supporters “to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” | Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images “At a time when the line between fact and opinion, and between news and polemic, is being dangerously blurred, the BBC stands apart,” Nandy told MPs Tuesday. “It is a light on the hill for people here and across the world.”  WHO WOULD FUND ANY PAYOUT?  The BBC is funded by the country’s license fee, which requires any household that has a TV or uses BBC iPlayer to pay £174.50 a year (some people are exempt from paying). In the year ending March 2025, this accounted for £3.8 billion of the corporation’s overall £5.9 billion in income. The remaining £2 billion came from activities including commercial ventures. Any licence fee revenue that funded a settlement with Trump would likely go down very poorly as a political matter, given looming tax increases in the U.K. as well as the U.S. president’s significant unpopularity with British voters. The corporation lost a €100,000 (£88,000) libel case earlier this year against former Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams after a Dublin jury found the broadcaster falsely connected him to a 2006 Irish Republican Army killing, showing there is a precedent for politicians winning cases.  Responding to a question as to whether license fee payers would fund any legal sum, Starmer said Wednesday: “Where mistakes are made, they do need to get their house in order and the BBC must uphold the highest standards, be accountable and correct errors quickly.” Singer Cliff Richard also received £210,000 in damages and around £2 million in legal costs from the BBC in 2019 over a privacy case, though those payments were within the scope of its legal insurance. MIGHT AN ALTERNATIVE PAYMENT WORK?  The BBC has paid damages to a foreign head of state before, including compensating then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in 2019 for an incorrect report. But Trump technically faces rules on accepting foreign payments. There’s every chance that a settlement to Trump could pass through another vehicle, as the with the CBS agreement. ABC’s settlement involved $15 million to a Trump-related foundation alongside $1 million for his legal fees.  Trump’s former attorney Alan Dershowitz suggested just that on Tuesday, saying if the corporation made a “substantial” contribution to a charity “that’s relevant to the president might put this thing behind them.” 

THE BOOM THAT BROKE MALTA A sprawling fraud trial involving former premier Joseph Muscat lays bare the costs of 12 years of gangbuster growth. By BEN MUNSTER in Paceville, Malta Illustrations by Naama Benziman for POLITICO If you’re looking for a prime example of the profound ugliness and moral decay inflicted on this tiny island nation by a decade of misrule, you could do worse than a visit to the coastal party district of Paceville. Sickly, meaty smells permeate the air, house music booms behind high walls, and throngs of tourists frequent strip clubs in ungainly new builds that, like malign vines, are beginning to encroach on the district’s neighboring suburbs. “It’s grab, grab, grab,” griped local Mayor Noel Muscat, who was up in arms last year about plans for a gargantuan luxury hotel near his own quiet constituency of Swieqi. The structure, he said, was both widely unpopular and conceptually incoherent: a tower so large it would cast a shadow over the very sliver of beach developers hope rich clients will pay a hefty sum to access. Advertisement But despite all that, most residents are likely to support it, he said — being merely happy that the value of their own adjacent properties will go up. Since the once-dominant ex-premier Joseph Muscat (no relation to Noel) took power in 2013, this tiny Mediterranean island nation has witnessed an astonishing economic boom, fueled by a no-holds-barred drive to court the world’s wealthy. But the giddy growth spurt has led to serious deformities — most visibly in the country’s increasingly stunted living environment. In towns like Paceville and countless others, weary locals complain that powerful construction firms have been allowed to run roughshod over politicians and planning laws, erecting foreboding skylines over the tiny island’s once-pristine coast, while critical infrastructure rots. Politics has degraded in tandem, producing endless corruption scandals and a persistent feeling of impunity as major trials continued to produce zero high-level convictions. A Eurobarometer survey last year in Malta reported that some 95 percent of respondents believed corruption to be “widespread.” That all appeared to change in May 2024, when Joseph Muscat and 33 others were charged in connection with a sprawling, international fraud that seemed to epitomize this disregard for Malta’s towns and cities. Top officials, including the former premier, were accused of stealing thousands of euros in taxpayer money intended for the overhaul of three crumbling state-run hospitals. They deny the charges. To activists, the scale of the so-called Vitals case made it the first real shot to hold accountable a government they say has spent the past 10 years plundering the public purse with impunity. But as proceedings wear on inconclusively after a full year and a half, there is growing anxiety about the prospects for the trial, which has run aground amid an array of baffling procedural blunders and a ferocious political counteroffensive. An opaque and vulnerable justice system has left prosecutors floundering with a hole-ridden charge sheet, and the government, for all its critics, continues to trounce the weak opposition — enjoying ironclad support from swaths of the population that have grown rich off its policies. As change looks increasingly improbable, it’s raised an uncomfortable question: When corruption becomes so lucrative that it entrenches itself at the heart of politics, can it ever be rooted out? ORIGINAL SIN  Squeezed between Sicily and North Africa, Malta’s half-a-million citizens occupy a mass of urban sprawl barely a fifth the size of London — less a country than a city-state marooned in the Mediterranean, indelibly shaped by millennia of foreign rule.  From 40,000 feet above sea level, that history rolls into view as a near-unbroken series of parchment-yellow settlements stretching from coast to coast across three tiny islands, punctuated by patches of dry scrub and deep red earth from which little grows. Upon closer inspection, you’ll see the eclectic architectural legacy of a panoply of imperial invaders — the Phoenicians, Romans, Normans, Arabs, Spanish Habsburgs, Napoleon, and the British Empire — and their baroque palaces, Umayyad forts, and colonial-era barracks. Since the departure of the British in 1964, the island’s inhabitants have been in search of a homegrown national identity beyond textiles and piracy. The 20th century saw a bitter conflict over language, political violence and a long flirtation with Libya-style nonalignment. The country finally hitched its fortunes to Europe in 2004 with its entry into the EU — but its true transformation began in 2013 with the election of Joseph Muscat on a sweeping platform of renewal after years of economic hardship. Advertisement Muscat was the dynamic young leader of the Labour Party, which along with the Nationalist Party is one of two century-old factions that command fanatical bases of support in Malta. Muscat’s strategy was to exploit the tiny nation’s newfound access to the world’s largest trading bloc, catering to an increasingly footloose global elite. Under his watch, the government radically changed its business model, selling passports to wealthy foreigners and making it trivially easy to set up financial services, crypto and internet gaming firms that could then operate across the EU.  Malta quickly became a playground for international investors. Between 2013 and 2024, the stock of foreign direct investment — much of it in shell companies, trusts and holding companies — surged from €9.6 billion to a staggering €460 billion, 68 times faster than Malta’s equally breakneck domestic growth. At the same time, gross domestic product per capita leaped by almost 70 percent, over four times the European average, creating a class of newly prosperous citizens who were hard-pressed to quibble with the new order.  But prosperity also brought an increasing coziness between business and politics. The perception of corruption crept up steadily. Desmond Zammit Marmarà, a former Labour lawmaker-turned-critic, said he was routinely solicited for bribes (he assured POLITICO he turned them down), and observed a tendency in the public sector to fraudulently inflate budgets. Another former Labour lawmaker lamented that centuries of colonial domination had taught his countrymen that it was a virtue to rob the state.  Unease over this new dynamic figured most prominently in the construction sector. Upon taking office, Labour supercharged an anything-goes approach to development kicked off by the previous government. The dream was to transform Malta into a cosmopolis for the super rich — a Mediterranean Dubai of luxury hotels and towering office blocks. Malta’s urban landscape soon witnessed an extraordinary transformation. Cranes filled the heavens, sawdust choked the thoroughfares, and neat rows of 19th-century townhouses gave way to graceless slabs of glass and steel. The endless construction brought in waves of migrant workers, tourists and businessmen, all flocking to the new country being built piecemeal over the old one, dramatically swelling the population in summertime and causing an enduring housing crisis.  Critics said the whole system was broken and corrupt. A planning process spread across a tangle of local bodies, public institutions and ministerial portfolios was easily exploited by developers looking to ram through at times legally dicey projects, often with the tacit support of government and municipal officials. According to Emanuel Delia, the co-founder of the rule-of-law nongovernmental organization Repubblika, the policy changes featured a mix of genuine deregulation — for instance around building limits for real estate — and “selective enforcement” of existing rules that favored firms with close ties to government. Just this summer, Malta’s National Audit Office triggered a fresh round of public outrage when it alleged that Muscat’s powerful chief of staff, Keith Schembri, had helped Malta’s land authority conceal an evaluation report on behalf of a large developer in 2019, costing the taxpayer nearly €16 million. Schembri has denied any wrongdoing. In Delia’s view, Malta has fallen victim to a kind of “amoral familism” in which wealthy and well-connected clans put enriching themselves and their relatives above all else. Some locals, while acknowledging the blight of overdevelopment, privately defended it on those terms, arguing that those who exploited the flawed rules were blameless — victims of financial incentives too attractive to resist. THE VITALS SCANDAL On the face of it, the plans in 2015 to privatize three crumbling hospitals took the same logic that characterized Muscat’s boom — quick growth through private deals — and applied it to Malta’s failing public services.  As outlined by top officials, the idea was to hand over Karin Grech, Gozo General and St. Luke’s hospitals to a homegrown health care consortium, Vitals Global Healthcare, which would renovate the hospitals along the lines of a “health tourism” model that it could export across Europe. But despite the €456 million infusion from the government, Vitals failed to deliver on many of its commitments, according to a scathing report by the National Audit Office in 2021. In 2017, after dozens of deadlines were missed, the concession was handed over to a local subsidiary of the U.S.-based Steward Health Care, which then missed its own deadlines and declared bankruptcy amid a hail of lawsuits in 2024, prompting federal investigations in the U.S. The concession itself was ultimately annulled after a Maltese court deemed it “fraudulent.” According to the audit office and a 1,200-page magisterial inquiry, it was a ruse from the get-go. Advertisement In reality, Vitals was a thinly capitalized shell company conjured by a group led by Shaukat Ali, a prominent Pakistani businessman who was “involved at the highest levels of Colonel Gaddafi’s notoriously corrupt regime in Libya,” the inquiry concluded. Ali, it said, concealed the involvement of key Muscat allies — Schembri, the former chief of staff, and Konrad Mizzi, a former energy minister. The whole thing, in the NAO’s words, was “fraudulently contrived” ahead of time to rig the public tender for the hospital concessions, forgoing the usual due diligence process — and bypassing ministers who might have raised a stink. Through a series of holding companies registered in the names of his business associates (and his multiple wives), Ali also held beneficial ownership of the Steward subsidiary that would take over from Vitals, according to the inquiry. Kickbacks from the concession allegedly flowed through this opaque network into bank accounts held by Muscat, Schembri, Mizzi and a sprawling supporting cast of consultants and middlemen spanning several continents. Muscat, Schembri, Mizzi, Ali and all the other 31 co-defendants have pleaded not guilty.  Investigators allege the arrangement impoverished the three privatized hospitals. Today, Gozo General, which caters to Malta’s second-largest island, reportedly remains derelict and rife with hazards. Karin Grech Hospital, named after a young girl murdered in 1977 by a mailed explosive intended for her father, barely survives in a state of desolate, cobwebbed disrepair as a clinic for the elderly. St. Luke’s, a limestone colossus with serried square windows in the style of a Victorian orphanage, stands unused beside it on a bleak promontory.  Lawyers representing Muscat, Mizzi and Schembri did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did Steward Health Care. Ali, through a lawyer, declined to comment, citing a court gag order. He has previously told the Times of Malta that “I feel that we have become the victims of a political football and the subject of vile allegations made by mendacious people.”  FAILED STING The Vitals scandal first trickled into public view through a series of investigative articles and a court case launched as a Hail Mary by a beleaguered opposition leader. Outcry built over the mishandling of the hospitals contract, and in 2019, Repubblika, the anti-corruption NGO, pushed for a broader trial, using a rule allowing civilians to trigger magisterial inquiries.  But since then, the judicial process has continuously run aground under strange and suspicious circumstances.   One notable incident took place bright and early on Jan. 7, 2022, just as the investigation was mounting. In Burmarrad, in the north of the island, a Maltese police convoy blazed down a lonely stretch of rural road, past off-licenses, a 16th-century church and a used car showroom, before taking a swift turn into a narrow side street.  Advertisement As dawn trickled in, the convoy approached its target: Muscat’s family home. It was meant to be the first shot across the bow as the probe got underway — but when the officers arrived to begin their search, trailed by several court experts, Muscat was ready and waiting, having been tipped off after news leaked that the raid was imminent. Far from an explosive and telegenic confrontation, the ex-premier cordially welcomed the officers, led them to his dining room and presented them with a sheaf of preprepared documentary evidence — then, in the aftermath, took to Facebook to blast the raid as an intolerable affront to his privacy. According to Robert Aquilina, the other co-founder of Repubblika, as well as police and court officials familiar with the investigation, the origin of the leak was a covert war between the magistrate’s office and the politically appointed police commissioner.  The police had shown scant initial interest in examining the journalistic allegations around Vitals and offered support for the investigation only when directly ordered to by the court, the police and court officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals. That fostered an atmosphere of mutual distrust, prompting prolonged chaos, procedural stonewalling and repeated leaks of the investigative agenda. That’s how Muscat was able to get ahead of the raid; his phone was even wiped clean weeks in advance.  Jason Azzopardi, a prominent lawyer and former politician, testified in separate proceedings last year that he believed the leak came directly from Police Commissioner Angelo Gafà, based on a conversation he had with an unnamed person close to the commissioner. Gafà has in turn accused the inquiring magistrate of keeping him in the dark.  A spokesperson for the Malta Police Force said it “categorically rebuts the baseless allegations” regarding its relationship with the judiciary, which it said it cooperated with fully. The spokesperson added that Gafà was appointed following a public call and an independent selection process.  Advertisement To Aquilina, the co-founder of Repubblika, the affair provided an object lesson in state capture. The 47-year-old activist and notary has a taste for private nooks in public places, and on a morning last year he was sipping a dark coffee in the grand foyer of a hotel just off one of the main thoroughfares of the Maltese capital, Valletta. Sharply dressed, with browline glasses and the studied calm of a veteran conspirator, Aquilina likened the trial to the Italian “Maxi-Trial” of the 1980s, in which hundreds of Sicilian mobsters were rounded up and tried en masse in a specially built courtroom-bunker. But the difference, he said, is that “in Italy, the Mafia has infiltrated the state over many years — in our case, the Mafia has been elected.” CHILLING EFFECT Mafia-style violence, or the threat of it, has also pervaded the Vitals proceedings, which have been menaced by the memory of Daphne Caruana Galizia, a relentless investigative journalist who was among the first to uncover discrepancies in the Vitals concession, and was killed by a roadside bomb attached to the underside of her Peugeot 108 in 2017. After a concerted effort by her bereaved sons and a sprawling group of civil society activists, including Aquilina, the murder was connected to a businessman close to the Muscat government, and several low-level mobsters were recently convicted for carrying it out. Nevertheless, the events have left a conspicuous chilling effect on broader accountability efforts.  For instance, a number of independent court experts critical to the Vitals inquiry are refusing to testify locally. A Serbian court expert, Miroslava Milenović, declined to return to court after Muscat sued her following a dramatic hearing in which she admitted she wasn’t registered in Malta as a chartered accountant. Another, Jeremy Harbinson, has asked to testify from London, saying he would never return to Malta because he fears for his safety. Two people familiar with the matter said Harbinson has been nervous about visiting the country since 2022, when his hotel room was mysteriously broken into and his passport stolen during a trip to assist with the raid on Muscat’s residence. Schembri has since asked the police to investigate Harbinson, too. Neither he nor Milenović could be reached for comment. Aquilina himself told POLITICO that he requires constant police protection — which the police removed in July — and recently had to bat off domestic violence claims, which were ultimately dropped. The police said the removal of protection followed a threat-to-life assessment led by a multidisciplinary oversight committee.  Aggressive interventions by top politicians have also weighed heavily on the proceedings, with figures on both sides of the spectrum exploiting the intensely tribalistic nature of Maltese politics. Even the government has weighed in, seizing on the alleged unreliability of the court experts to dismiss the trial as a stitch-up. As it got underway last May, Prime Minister Robert Abela — Muscat’s successor — went so far as to blast the inquiry as a politically motivated attack by “establishment” forces. In a statement, Abela defended his comments, arguing that the former premier was entitled to the presumption of innocence — but then doubled down, urging POLITICO to “have a closer look at the happenings within the court process.” He also asserted, without offering evidence, that the court experts who refused to testify were hired by way of “opaque” processes and paid “millions of euros.”  Advertisement While some have condemned such comments as judicial interference, they also speak to genuine puzzlement at various aspects of the inquiry that have lent credence to the defendants’ claims of victimhood, including the apparent rift between the police and magistrates’ office, the absence of the court experts and seeming inconsistencies within the inquiry itself.  Consider the case of Central Bank of Malta Governor Edward Scicluna, who served as finance minister under Muscat and stands accused — in one of several parallel trials associated with a raft of lesser charges — of fraud and misappropriation, which he denies. In light of the institutional discord, Scicluna was never interrogated by the police and was notified of the charges against him via a leak to the media. The inquiry’s assessment of him is also contradictory and appears not to back up the fraud claims. Activists worry these sorts of discrepancies could bolster defense lawyers’ arguments that the body of evidence presented in the inquiry is inadmissible. Currently, the parallel proceedings are grinding through a preliminary information-gathering phase; an effective attack on the inquiry’s credibility could result in the evidence being thrown out before the prosecution gets to present it before a jury — killing the proceedings stone dead.  FINAL THROES  Indeed, some are nervous the whole thing will be a flop. Aquilina reckons it could go on until 2028 — and even then, he’s not optimistic much will come of it.  The grinding pace of the trial isn’t just an activist’s lament: It’s reflected in continued criticism from international organizations, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Council of Europe, which have accused Malta of being too slow in implementing anti-corruption reforms. The EU’s own annual rule-of-law report has consistently highlighted an absence of high-level convictions.  Prime Minister Abela rejected these institutional slights, arguing that he had strengthened Malta’s anti-corruption and anti-money-laundering authorities, bolstered the independence of the police and magistrates, and changed the rules around magisterial inquiries to prevent the system being “abused for partisan political aims.” (Critics say he made it harder for NGOs to trigger them.) He also pointed to recent praise from the Council of Europe and added that his administration had improved protections for journalists.  Advertisement “Our robust anti-corruption strategy has also served as a deterrent and the efficacy of such a strategy should not be measured by the volume of arraignments or convictions, but rather by the way such a strategy minimizes or eliminates corruption at the roots,” Abela said. He also emphasized that his government was pushing new legislation to support “sensible and responsible planning” and force “individuals who have erred in the past” to pay retroactive compensation.  But for those aching for a complete overhaul of Malta’s cozy culture of business, politics and corruption, there’s little cause for optimism. Despite the endless scandal, Labour maintains a consistent lead in the polls — a testament to the economic growth that took hold under its watch. The question is whether it can survive its links to Muscat. The former premier has been out of government since he resigned in 2020, after the investigation into the Caruana Galizia killing singled out a prominent tycoon with links to his ally, Schembri. (Both Muscat and Schembri have denied any involvement in the killing.) But he still looms large over the Labour Party, and many people made rich by his policies feel like they “owe” him, said one government official. On the flip side, recent polls suggest that the Nationalist Party is narrowing the gap under new leadership, with some arguing that Abela’s continued contact with Muscat-era officials — the premier said last month that he still talks to Schembri — could alienate moderates.  But a change in government might not matter much. Senior Labour and government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, argued that Labour’s problems were not unique and that the courting of foreign investors began under the Nationalist government that secured EU accession. It’s true enough: The country’s most influential property tycoon, Joseph Portelli, who is unconnected to the hospitals scandal, makes a point of donating money to both parties. (Portelli says he expects nothing in return.) The status quo is indeed sustained by an irresistible economic logic. In the view of Alexander Demarco, the deputy governor of Malta’s central bank, supporting the vast numbers of foreigners who enter the country requires continuous development — and on such a tiny island, the only way for developers to build is up. Blocking builders of high-rises could be a “serious impediment to economic growth,” he said, while emphasizing that such development should be limited to special areas. The Vitals debacle, meanwhile, continues apace. Recently, an international arbitration court ruled against government efforts to recoup some $466 million from Steward. Abela, during a heated parliamentary debate, said the judgment proved no money was stolen. Opposition lawmakers argued that the ruling — which explicitly holds “no view” on whether collusion occurred — did no such thing. Advertisement Still, some dare to hope that the trial around the deal, whatever its outcome, will serve as a break from a culture of impunity that has thwarted efforts to strengthen Malta’s institutions. “When there’s a public inquiry, people realize that politicians are not gods, and that they can be held accountable,” said Matthew Caruana Galizia, an investigative journalist and one of the three sons of Daphne, the murdered journalist.  The bigger struggle will be to keep the momentum going. “While these people are being brought to trial, it’s also the system itself being brought to trial,” Caruana Galizia said. “Unless something is done about this impunity … there will be more of this kind of crime, more corruption, more contract killings.” ‘A COUNTRY HAS TO SURVIVE’ All of this, perhaps, is the inevitable fate of a tiny, resource-poor, services-heavy economy whose politicians have little to offer beyond privileged access to a market captured by private interests. Scicluna, the central bank governor, echoed that sentiment last year atop Valletta’s lush botanical gardens. A professorial 79-year-old who was summoned to serve under Muscat in 2013 after a long stint as a TV pollster, the former finance minister said he was proud of his tenure, during which he reduced Malta’s deficit and boosted financial stability. In his view, Malta’s woes are the result of bad actors exploiting loopholes created by otherwise legitimate government policy.  “If you bought a boat because you made a lot of profit from a government contract, then good luck to you — this is how people get rich,” he said. He took pains to add that he was referring to “legitimate” contracts. Advertisement But on the whole, Malta’s transformation has been to the good, he said. Under the cool evening sun, he turned to gaze over a low-rise wall giving way to a precipitous drop, and gestured below at a vista of seemingly boundless delights: sparkling Mediterranean waters dotted with colorful fishing boats, deep creeks giving way to soaring defensive ramparts, a small town of old limestone villas and pretty churches.  Right below, a little closer, he pointed out the wide bay and array of inlets that lie to Valletta’s east. These, he said, were the basis of a grand natural harbor that once made it such an attractive target for foreign fleets.  “A country has to survive,” he murmured, acknowledging that tiny nations have always had to find canny ways to win the protection of bigger powers. Now, of course, the Ottoman corsairs rot in the depths, and the bays are filled with gleaming superyachts and mountainous cruise ships. Perhaps such latter-day conquerors of Malta recognize that to get at the island today, there’s no need for a hard-fought siege. Instead, its leaders simply invite them in.

Andrea Dugo is an economist at the European Centre for International Political Economy. In the late 1400s, Italy was the jewel of Europe. Venice ruled the seas; Florence dominated art and finance; and Milan led in trade and technology. No corner of the Western world was more advanced. Yet, within decades, both its political independence and economic primacy were gone. Europe today risks a similar fate. Once the envy of the world, the bloc’s lead has eroded. The EU isn’t just politically divided, it’s also falling behind in industries that will define the rest of this century. Young talent is fleeing for the U.S. and Asia, while its economy increasingly resembles an open-air museum of past achievements. Whether in growth, technology, industry or living standards, Europe is in jeopardy of becoming a province in a world defined by others. And it stands to learn from Italy’s decline. The warning signs are unmistakable: Since 2008, the EU’s GDP expanded by just 18 percent, while the U.S. grew twice as fast and China grew nearly three times bigger. Tourism across the continent is still booming, of course, but the millions chasing their Instagram-able escapes aren’t enough to offset stagnation, and also bring costs. The bloc’s fall in living standards echoes Renaissance Italy as well. Around 1450, Italy’s income per person was 50 percent higher than Holland’s. A century later, the Dutch were 15 percent richer, and by 1650, they were nearly twice as rich. Modern Europe is slipping even faster than that. In 1995, Germany’s GDP per capita was 10 percent higher than America’s, whereas today, the U.S. is 60 percent higher. At this pace, Germany’s prosperity levels could shrink to a third of its transatlantic partner’s within a generation. Much like in Renaissance Italy, this economic malaise reflects a deep technology gap. Once the queen of the seas, Venice clung to old technology and paid the price. Its galleys, superb in calm Mediterranean waters, were no match for the ocean-going caravels that carried Spain and Portugal across the world. Modern Europe is now doing the same: On artificial intelligence, the EU invests barely 4 percent of what the U.S. does. Today, OpenAI is valued at $500 billion, while Europe’s biggest AI startup Mistral is worth just $15 billion. And though it pioneered the science in quantum, Europe trails behind in commercialization — a single U.S. startup, IonQ, raised more capital than all the bloc’s quantum firms combined. Even when it comes to batteries, Sweden’s much-touted Northvolt collapsed in March, only to be snapped up by a Silicon Valley startup. Traditional industries are faltering too. Taken together, Germany’s top three carmakers are worth just an eighth of Tesla. Ericsson and Nokia, once world leaders in mobile network technology, lag behind Asian rivals in 5G. And France’s Arianespace, once dominant in satellite launches, now hitches rides on tech billionaire Elon Musk’s rockets. The problem isn’t invention, though — it’s scale. Despite its top engineers and universities, nearly 30 percent of the bloc’s unicorns have transferred to the U.S. since 2008, taking its most entrepreneurial spirits with them. It seems the continent sparks ideas, while America fuels them and profits — yet another pattern that mirrors Italy, which supplied talent as others built empires. Its greatest explorers like Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci and Verrazzano had also trained at home, only to sail under foreign flags. The prescriptions are known. Former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi detailed them in his report on the EU’s future. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images The fundamental issue in both cases is political. Like Italy’s warring city-states in the 1500s, today’s Europe is divided and feeble. Capitals quarrel over energy, debt, migration and industrial policy; a common defense strategy remains only an aspiration; and ambitious plans for joint technology spending or deeper capital markets get drowned in debate. This disunity is what doomed Italy as it fell prey to foreign powers that eventually carved up the peninsula. And the bloc’s current divisions leave it similarly vulnerable to global competitors, as Washington dictates defense; Russia menaces the continent’s east; China dominates supply chains; and Silicon Valley rules the digital economy. But is this all fated? Not necessarily. The EU has built institutions Renaissance Italy could never have dreamed of: a single market, a currency, a parliament. It still hosts world-class research institutions and excels in advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, green energy and design. The continent can still lead — but only if it acts. Sixteenth-century Italy had no such chance. Geography trapped it in the Mediterranean while trade routes shifted to the Atlantic, and commerce stagnated. New naval technologies left its fleets behind, and its brightest minds sought their fortunes abroad. But Europe faces no such limit. Nothing is stopping it other than its own political timidity and fractiousness. The bloc needs to accept costs now in order to avoid the greatest of costs later: irrelevance. It needs to invest heavily in frontier technologies like AI, quantum, space and biotech, while also building real defense and creating deep capital markets so that start-ups can scale up at home. The prescriptions are known. Former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi detailed them in his report on the EU’s future. What’s missing is political will. Once Europe’s beating heart, Italy eventually became a land of visitors rather than innovators. And history’s lesson is clear: Its culture endured, but its power withered. The EU still has time to avoid that destiny. Europeans can either wake up or resign themselves to becoming a continent of monuments and echoing memories.

PARIS — The blame game and finger pointing following Sunday’s heist at the Louvre Museum kicked off almost as quickly as the seven-minute robbery itself.   France’s far right was quick to assign fault to President Emmanuel Macron and his allies for the brazen, broad-daylight theft of the French crown jewels, accusing them of being soft on crime and failing to sufficiently protect the nation’s heritage.  MEP Marion Maréchal proposed eliminating the €200 cultural vouchers offered to French high school students, a measure put in place under Macron, and redirecting those funds toward protecting France’s “national treasures.” She later called France the “laughingstock of the world” and called on Culture Minister Rachida Dati — who has acknowledged “failures” in securing the world’s most visited museum in several interviews — to demand the resignations of the museum’s director and head of security. “The responsibility lies with 40 years of abandonment during which problems were swept under the rug … We always focused on the security of cultural institutions for visitors, much less for that of the artworks,” Dati told broadcaster M6 on Monday. Jean-Philippe Tanguy, a high-ranking official with the country’s biggest far-right party, the National Rally, accused the French “political and media system’s … soft-on-crime ideology” of being “responsible” for the heist.   In a series of angry social media posts, he claimed that “French museums, like our historic buildings and churches, are DELIBERATELY not secured to the same standard as the treasures they contain.” National Rally President Jordan Bardella called the incident a “humiliation” before asking: “How far will the breakdown of the state go?” Meanwhile, conservative lawmaker Alexandre Portier announced plans to propose a parliamentary inquiry into the protection of French heritage and museum security, as first reported by POLITICO.  Security concerns have long been a point of contention within the museum. Trade unions have repeatedly sounded the alarm over what they describe as poor working conditions and understaffing among security personnel — who have gone on strike several times, most recently in June, amid growing visitor numbers driven by mass tourism. In a bid to modernize the museum’s aging infrastructure, Macron in January announced an ambitious renovation project featuring a new entrance and a dedicated room for the Mona Lisa. The plan — dubbed Louvre — Nouvelle Renaissance — also includes security upgrades such as next-generation surveillance cameras, enhanced perimeter detection and a new central security control room, according to the culture ministry.  As of Monday, the perpetrators remain at large — and the Louvre was closed to the public for a second consecutive day. 

BRUSSELS — Montenegro wants the EU’s help in fighting Russian disinformation as the Balkan nation moves toward membership of the bloc. The small country, which has set an ambitious goal to join the EU by 2028, is increasingly a target for disinformation from those hoping to disrupt its membership bid, Montenegrin President Jakov Milatović told POLITICO in an exclusive interview in Brussels. “I’m very much hoping that in the future we would be getting bigger support from the EU to really fight disinformation and misinformation,” Milatović said, adding he had pitched the idea to EU policymakers and member countries. Moldova, another EU candidate country, has been a favorite target of the Kremlin’s meddling, including vote-buying and disinformation. That led the EU to deploy last month its new cyber reserve — a team of private-sector cybersecurity experts — to Chişinǎu and allocate millions in funding for a hub to fight disinformation. Milatović, who was in Brussels to meet with European Council President António Costa, said “malign influence from third countries” could pose a risk to Montenegro’s accession, and urged the EU to be proactive in countering such threats. “Sometimes, I feel that pro-European politicians in the region of the Western Balkans are a bit left alone by the partners in the EU,” he said, adding that he encountered disinformation “on a daily basis.” ‘END OF THE RACE’ Montenegro applied to join the EU in 2008 and was granted candidate status in 2010. It has closed seven of 33 accession chapters since then and is on track to close five more by December, a senior Montenegrin diplomat confirmed to POLITICO. With a population of 600,000, the tiny Adriatic nation has sought to position itself as the obvious next member of the 27-nation bloc. But it faces potential obstacles, including pro-Serb parties in its parliament, tensions with neighboring Croatia and skepticism in some corners of the EU about enlargement. Tellingly, the issue is not even on the agenda of next week’s European Council summit. French President Emmanuel Macron called in 2023 for the EU to reform itself before letting in new members. But Milatović said that behind closed doors, Macron had come around to the idea of Montenegro’s membership. “I believe that two years ago, before President Macron started speaking with me, he had … one opinion,” Milatović said. “After so many discussions that I had with him,” however, Macron was now “optimistic … about Montenegro’s position in the EU.” “And I believe this is the case also with all the other EU leaders,” Milatović added. “Montenegro is now perceived as a front-runner. But … I do want to see the end of the race, in a sense.” Another potential sticking point is the country’s reliance on Russian tourists and investors. Montenegro has yet to introduce visas for Russians, who can enter the country visa-free for 30 days, and Russians remain the largest foreign investors. “What we are trying to do is sort of postpone it [visas] as much as we can, so that we still keep our tourism sector alive,” Milatović said, adding he was “absolutely” concerned by the influx of Russian cash. “We are a bit in a vacuum now because … we don’t have full access to EU funds.” That said, Montenegro will align its visa regime with the EU “very soon,” he said. Ultimately, while much of the onus is on Podgorica to unite its political forces and deliver promised reforms, the EU also needs to prove “enlargement is alive” and “reforms pay off,” Milatović warned. “The last country that entered was Croatia more than 10 years ago. And in the meantime, the United Kingdom left,” Milatović said. “So this is why I believe that now is the time to revive the process, to also revive a bit the idea of the EU as a club that still has a gravity toward it.”

Five months ago, Portugal’s snap national election saw the far-right Chega party become the second-largest force in the country’s parliament. On Sunday, 9.3 million Lusitanian voters are headed back to the polls, this time for nationwide local elections. The race is set to be a nail-biter, with the top candidates in the big cities of Lisbon and Porto tied in the polls. Meanwhile, the far right is poised to make major advances in the country’s neglected southern and interior regions, where voters are increasingly backing the party’s antiestablishment and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Though boasting lawmakers in both the Portuguese and European parliaments, Chega has yet to conquer any city halls. Sunday’s elections could be decisive in expanding the far-right party’s presence beyond Lisbon and Brussels. They may also underscore a European trend of extremist forces consolidating power, campaigning on mainstream politicians’ inability to tackle issues like the bloc-wide housing crisis. IT’S THE HOUSING CRISIS, STUPID Indeed, the top issue in every Portuguese city — no matter its size or location — is the high cost of housing. The problem is particularly critical in Lisbon, where average home prices have shot up by nearly 80 percent over the last five years and are currently hovering at €5,769 per square meter. Incumbent Mayor Carlos Moedas — a former European commissioner — has sought to justify his tenure by drawing attention to the 2,881 families his administration provided with new homes, but unimpressed critics estimate 150,000 homes are needed. Moedas has also been criticized for not doing enough to stop locals from being displaced by wealthy tourists. His challenger, Socialist Party candidate Alexandra Leitão, has made tackling excessive tourism a top priority, and is promising to crack down on short-term rentals and impose a moratorium on new hotels until the city can devise a plan to deal with the challenge.  The two are currently neck and neck in the polls, but one issue that could break the tie is discontent over the mayor’s handling of last month’s deadly funicular disaster. This week, victims’ families complained that no one from City Hall had reached out to them since the catastrophe, and Moedas is under fire for his controversial decision to delay any hearings regarding the accident until after the elections. In Portugal’s second-largest city, Sunday’s election marks the first time center-right Mayor Rui Moreira won’t be on the ballot in 12 years. | Pool photo by Estela Silva/EPA Even if he isn’t punished by voters, the crash could still complicate his path to a second term: The mayor isn’t expected to secure a governing majority, and his ability to form either a minority or coalition government will hinge on Chega’s support. Given that the far-right party’s lead candidate Bruno Mascarenhas brought an unsuccessful censure motion against Moedas for his response to the disaster, negotiations could prove tricky. MEANWHILE, IN PORTO … In Portugal’s second-largest city, Sunday’s election marks the first time center-right Mayor Rui Moreira won’t be on the ballot in 12 years. Instead, conservative Pedro Duarte is and former Member of the European Parliament and Socialist Party candidate Manuel Pizarro are locked in a tight race that is similarly dominated by the housing crisis. Duarte wants to use tax breaks to goad the owners of the city’s 20,000 vacant homes to rent them out at affordable prices, but Pizarro argues his own plan to build 5,000 affordable homes on municipal land could be implemented much faster. Duarte also has a radical proposal to raise the tourist tax to make public transport free for all city residents — but Pizarro’s counterplan to slash the speed limit on Porto’s innermost ring road could prove more controversial. With neither candidate expected to secure a governing majority, Chega may ultimately determine the winning vision. BEYOND THE BIGGEST CITIES As the most-voted party in 60 cities in last May’s snap national election, Chega’s candidates are now poised to enjoy similar success in many of those municipalities. Polls indicate far-right influencer and MP Rita Matias is in a three-way tie to govern Sintra, Portugal’s second-most populous municipality, where housing prices are increasing due to growing demand from displaced Lisbon residents. Chega’s candidates have even greater odds of winning Elvas, a former fortress city on the Spanish border, and semirural communities like Viana do Alentejo and Benavente. The problem is particularly critical in Lisbon, where average home prices have shot up by nearly 80 percent over the last five years and are currently hovering at €5,769 per square meter. | Jorge Castellanos/Getty Images But the far-right party is most focused on the Algarve region, where locals are struggling to balance the country’s lowest average wages with a steadily increasing cost of living due to the presence of foreign tourists and retirees. By promoting the narrative that seasonal migrants are to blame for local woes, Chega has gained traction among southern electors who feel abandoned by the hyper-centralized Portuguese state. And while the latest polls still suggest conventional parties will stave off Chega’s bid to take Faro, the far right could win in other southern cities and gain enough council seats to make some municipalities virtually ungovernable.  Polls will close on the Portuguese mainland at 8 p.m. GMT, with exit poll projections published an hour later, when voting ends in the Azores archipelago. The country’s electoral system is remarkably efficient, so a final tally is expected before midnight.

[1] https://digitalreport.protectedplanet.net/ [2] Satellite sea surface temperature measurements began in 1982; ocean heat content estimates are derived from in situ observations that started in 1960. [3] https://marine.copernicus.eu/osr9-summary/flipbook/ [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/world/europe/spain-beach-blue-dragon-sea-slugs.html#:~:text=The%20arrival%20of%20the%20tiny,what%20they’re%20dealing%20with. [5] https://marine.copernicus.eu/osr9-summary/flipbook/ [6] https://marine.copernicus.eu/osr9-summary/flipbook/

Brussels’ upcoming plan to take on the EU’s housing crisis will include measures curbing real estate speculation, Housing Commissioner Dan Jørgensen announced Monday. “There is no room in Europe for selfish speculation on a basic need like our homes,” the commissioner said at a high-level conference on housing affordability in Copenhagen, stressing the need to tackle the “financialization” of the EU’s housing stock. According to Eurostat, home prices across the EU have shot up nearly 60 percent since 2010, while rental costs have increased nearly 30 percent. Experts attribute the spike to the dramatic slowdown in public housing construction, and to the marked uptick in speculative practices in urban areas where affordable housing stock has shrunk. Jørgensen confirmed the EU’s first-ever plan to take on the crisis — which is expected to be unveiled later this year — will include a revision of state aid rules, allowing national governments to use public funds to build homes for middle-class Europeans priced out of the market. As public cash alone will be insufficient, the commissioner explained these funds will need to be combined with private investment. Stressing that such investments need to “balance steady returns with social responsibility,” he said the Commission was working with the European Investment Bank and other financial institutions to ensure homes built through public-private schemes are genuinely affordable. In addition to measures aimed at slashing byzantine EU and national rules delaying the construction of new homes, Jørgensen announced the upcoming plan will also target short-term rentals. The conversion of housing stock into tourist flats is seen as a major factor in rising costs, with authorities moving to ban these properties altogether in places like Barcelona. The commissioner vowed to address the “complex” issue “firmly but fairly.” “This crisis presents a defining test for our European democracy,” Jørgensen said. ” It is a fight we cannot afford to lose.”

LONDON — Thought writing a 10,000-word dissertation was tricky? Try managing Britain’s embattled university sector.  As students pack their bags, sort their kitchenware and prepare for the time of their lives at campuses across the U.K., university officials face the headache of keeping their struggling institutions economically viable — all while politicians take potshots at them. “The underlying financial settlement for universities is not really sustainable,” warned Universities UK International Director Jamie Arrowsmith, an organization representing 141 universities.  International students provide significant income to the sector by paying considerably higher tuition fees than domestic students. However, Labour’s bid to slash migration levels means international students are in the firing line. It’s a stark contrast from Tony Blair’s New Labour government in the 2000s, which was “actively encouraging the growth of the international student population,” according to Labour peer and former Universities Minister Margaret Hodge. She recalled writing to Blair espousing how this expansion would increase the U.K.’s soft power: “If you wanted to create good diplomatic connections and promote peace across the world, those student relationships paid off fantastically.” A string of policy changes has left institutions searching elsewhere for cash, as Prime Minister Keir Starmer focuses on disadvantaged British youngsters. A white paper due this fall will outline specific higher education reforms, including calls for universities to contribute more to economic growth. The sector warns it could all be undermined if the government keeps discouraging overseas students from coming to Britain. PULLING UP THE LADDER  Britain’s universities have an enviable reputation. The QS World University Rankings in June put 17 U.K. universities in the top 100, while a London Economics report calculated higher education contributed more than £265 billion in the 2021/22 academic year. It’s little wonder students across the globe want to study here. Anxious about populist parties like Reform UK, Tory and Labour governments have seen fewer foreign students as a way to get numbers down. | Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images But while international students starting in 2021/22 brought net economic benefits of £37.4 billion, they’re also counted in immigration figures — and that’s a headache for the government. Anxious about populist parties like Reform UK, Tory and Labour administration have seen fewer foreign students as a way to get numbers down.  They were banned from bringing family members on all but post-graduate research routes back in January 2024. That decision by then-Conservative PM Rishi Sunak followed 135,788 visas being granted to dependents of foreign students in 2022, nearly nine times the 2019 figure. Arrowsmith said he understood why the policy was introduced, but warned it had hit “the U.K.’s attractiveness” to prospective foreign students, particularly when “other countries have had more open and welcoming policies over the last three to four years.” Home Office figures in October 2024 showed the effect — with an 89 percent drop in visa applications for dependents between July to September 2023 and the same period in 2024. Tory peer and former Universities Minister, David Willetts, said he understood concerns about dependents, but thought it should be made clearer to voters that students are only temporary migrants. “My constituents, when I was an MP, who worried about migration, were worried about [people] coming to Britain to settle, to use the NHS,” he said. “They weren’t worried about a Chinese student doing physics for a couple of years.” Fellow Tory peer and former Universities Minister Jo Johnson concurred, saying people were more concerned with illegal immigration. “They’re a very special category of immigration that’s more akin to tourism or temporary visitors.”  Now, Labour is wearing Conservative clothing.  The Home Office marked the new academic term this week by directly contacting tens of thousands of foreign students, warning them not to outstay their visas and telling them they “must leave”  if they have “no legal right to remain.”  The immigration white paper published this May also planned to reduce the graduate visa — where international students can remain in the U.K. after finishing their qualification — from two years to 18 months in most cases. Ministers have also mooted a levy on fees universities receive from foreign students to reinvest in domestic training. A graduation student sits outside Senate House at Cambridge University. | Joe Giddens/PA Images via Getty Images Johnson, however, said the Treasury didn’t like raising money for a specific purpose, meaning the Department for Education “may be being rather optimistic” in assuming revenue would go towards skills.  Hodge was similarly sceptical: “If it were linked to encouraging international students, but recognizing there might be a cost to public services, I think I’d feel more comfortable,” she said. “At the moment, I’m not sure that it’s anything else other than raising more money.” The moves have also upset the main higher education union. “Unfortunately, the government remains wedded to a funding model that leaves international students propping up U.K. higher education,” said University and College Union (UCU) General Secretary Jo Grady in a statement to POLITICO. She added: “Their fees are essential to the financial stability of the sector, so it is economically illiterate that Labour has refused to lift the Tories’ visa restrictions.”  STRAPPED FOR CASH Though Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson insisted the government will “always welcome international students where they meet the requirements to study,” some have taken the hint — and given the U.K. a pass.  In 2023/24, 732,285 overseas students studied at U.K. higher education providers, a 4 percent drop from the 2022/23 record high and the first fall since 2012/13. The number of student visas granted also fell from its record in 2022 of 484,000 by 5 percent in 2023 and 14 percent in 2024. The drop-off was particularly acute among EU students. After Brexit, European students weren’t eligible for home student status, meaning they paid international fees and couldn’t acquire a student loan.  This led to a 50 percent drop in accepted applicants for U.K. undergraduate study from EU countries in 2021/22, which continued to fall the following two years.  Universities still need to pay their bills.  In 2022/23, U.K. higher education providers had an income of £50 billion, of which 52 percent came from tuition fees — international students paid 43 percent of that figure.  The decline “has … been increasingly difficult,” said Arrowsmith, stressing “one of the main sources of funding that was helping to mitigate the reduction in resource is … no longer quite as stable.”  Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson insisted the government will “always welcome international students where they meet the requirements to study.” | Andy Rain/EPA While international fees rose without any cap, domestic tuition fees were frozen from 2017 until this fall at £9,250. Despite rising to £9,535, the hike in employers’ national insurance contributions hampered extra savings — forcing universities to tighten their purse strings. A Universities UK survey of 60 institutions in May found 49 percent closed courses to reduce costs, up from 24 percent in spring 2024. In the same month, the Office for Students, which regulates higher education, forecast a third consecutive year of financial decline in 2024/25.  “Inflation has been particularly high,” argued Arrowsmith, “That really exacerbated the situation,” particularly when there were “increased expectations” on academic research. It’s little surprise the House of Commons’ Education Committee is investigating potential insolvency within higher education institutions.  The Department for Education reiterated that the independence of universities meant they must ensure sustainable business models. But Willetts and Hodge disagreed on whether increasing domestic fees would improve the situation. Willetts “would love to see a healthy, proper increase in the fees” to put universities “in a stronger position” rather than relying on overseas students. However, Hodge said the “incredibly expensive” university experience was “almost getting to the cost of going to bloody Eton” and the debt was “putting working-class kids off.” OUT OF THE IVORY TOWERS  To show young people university isn’t their only option, the government launched Skills England and funded a growth and skills levy supporting apprenticeships.  But universities don’t think this should come at the expense of international students. And it seems the public agrees. British Future research found 54 percent of people thought international students enhanced the reputation of U.K. universities overseas, while 61 percent thought the government should increase or keep the amount of overseas students the same. Domestic students were supportive, too. “British students appreciated the opportunity of studying with students from other countries,” said Willetts. “It enriched the experience.” Education wonks believe focusing too much on domestic skills could come back to bite ministers — and excessive policy changes prevents what international students, and employers, want most of all: clarity. “They need certainty and stability if they’re going to make decisions,” argued Arrowsmith, stressing frequent alterations under different administrations made “prospective students think twice [about Britain] as a destination.”  The UCU echoed this and felt Britain should be open for business.  “We are also calling on universities to join us in the fight for a more open border policy that will protect the sector, help contribute tens of billions of pounds to the economy, enrich our society and bolster the U.K.’s global standing,” said Grady. A government spokesperson said: “We recognize the valuable contributions which genuine international students make to the economy and the university sector and we want them to continue to come to the U.K.” But they argued: “We are simply tightening the rules so those wishing to stay in the U.K. must find a graduate-level job within 18 months, which is fair for both students and to British workers and taxpayers.”