ROME — Italian right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s crushing defeat in Monday’s referendum on judicial reform has shattered her aura of political invincibility, and her opponents now reckon she can be toppled in a general election expected next year. The failed referendum is the the first major misstep of her premiership, and comes just as she seemed in complete control in Rome and Brussels, leading Italy’s most stable administration in years. Her loss is immediately energizing Italy’s fragmented opposition, making the country’s torpid politics suddenly look competitive again. Meloni’s bid to overhaul the judiciary — which she accused of being politicized and of left-wing bias — was roundly rejected, with 54 percent voting “no” to her reforms. An unexpectedly high turnout of 59 percent is also likely to alarm Meloni, underscoring how the vote snowballed into a broader vote of confidence in her and her government. She lost heavily in Italy’s three biggest cities: In the provinces of Rome, the “no” vote was 57 percent, Milan 54 percent and Naples 71 percent. In Naples, about 50 prosecutors and judges gathered to open champagne and sing Bella Ciao, the World War II anti-fascist partisan anthem. Activists, students and trade unionists spontaneously marched to Rome’s Piazza del Popolo chanting “resign, resign.”  In a video posted on social media, Meloni put a brave face on the result. “The Italians have decided and we will respect that decision,” she said. She admitted feeling some “bitterness for the lost opportunity … but we will go on as we always have with responsibility, determination and respect for Italy and its people.” In truth, however, the referendum will be widely viewed as a sign that she is politically vulnerable, after all. It knocks her off course just as she was setting her sights on major electoral reforms that would further cement her grip on power. One of her main goals has been to shift to a fixed-term prime ministership, which would be elected by direct suffrage rather than being hostage to rotating governments. Those ambitions look far more fragile now. The opposition groups that have struggled to dent Meloni’s dominance immediately scented blood. After months on the defensive, they pointed to Monday’s result as proof that the prime minister can be beaten and that a coordinated campaign can mobilize voters against her. Matteo Renzi, former prime minister and leader of the centrist Italia Viva party, predicted Meloni would now be a “lame duck,” telling reporters that “even her own followers will now start to doubt her.” When he lost a referendum in 2016 he resigned as prime minister. “Let’s see what Meloni will do after this clamorous defeat,” he said.  Elly Schlein, leader of the opposition Democratic Party, said: “We will beat [Meloni] in the next general election, I’m sure of that. I think that from today’s vote, from this extraordinary democratic participation, an unexpected participation in some ways, a clear political message is being sent to Meloni and this government, who must now listen to the country and its real priorities.”  Former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, leader of the populist 5Star Movement heralded “a new spring and a new political season.” Angelo Bonelli , leader of the Greens and Left Alliance, told reporters the result was “an important signal for us because it shows that there is a majority in the country opposed to the government.” ‘PARALLEL MAFIA’ The referendum itself centered on changes to how judges and prosecutors are governed and disciplined, including separating their career paths and reshaping their oversight bodies. The government framed the reforms as a long-overdue opportunity to fix a system where politicized legal “factions” impede the government’s ability to implement core policies on issues such as migration and security. Justice Minister Carlo Nordio called prosecutors a “parallel mafia,” while his chief of staff compared parts of the judiciary to “an execution squad.”   A voter is given a ballot at a polling station in Rome, Italy, on March 22, 2026. | Riccardo De Luca/Anadolu via Getty Images Meloni’s opponents viewed the defeated reforms differently, casting them as an attempt to weaken a fiercely independent judiciary and concentrate power. That framing helped turn a technical vote into a broader political contest, one that opposition parties were able to rally around. It was a clash with a long and bitter political history. The Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) investigations of the 1990s, which wiped out an entire political class, left a legacy of mistrust between politicians and the judiciary. The right, in particular, accused judges of running a left-wing vendetta against them. Under Meloni’s rule that tension has repeatedly resurfaced, with her government clashing with courts, saying judges are thwarting initiatives to fight migration and criminality. Meloni herself stepped late into the campaign, after initially keeping some distance, betting that her personal involvement could shift the outcome. She called the referendum an “historic opportunity to change Italy.” In combative form this month, she had called on Italians not squander their opportunity to shake up the judges. If they let things continue as they are now, she warned: “We will find ourselves with even more powerful factions, even more negligent judges, even more surreal sentences, immigrants, rapists, pedophiles, drug dealers being freed and putting your security at risk.” It was to no avail, and Meloni was hardly helped by the timing of the vote. Her ally U.S. President Donald Trump is highly unpopular in Italy and the war in Iran has triggered intense fears among Italians that they will have to pay more for power and fuel. The main upshot is that Italy’s political clock is ticking again. REGAINING THE INITIATIVE For Meloni, the temptation will be to regain the initiative quickly. That could even mean trying to press for early elections before economic pressures mount and key EU recovery funds wind down later this year. The logic of holding elections before economic conditions deteriorate further would be to prevent a slow bleeding away of support, said Roberto D’Alimonte, professor of political science at the Luiss University in Rome. But Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella has the ultimate say about when to dissolve parliament and parliamentarians, whose pensions depend on the legislature lasting until February, could help him prevent elections by forming alternative majorities. D’Alimonte said Meloni’s “standing is now damaged.” “There is no doubt she comes out of this much weaker. The defeat changes the perception of her. She has lost her clout with voters and to some extent in Europe. Until now she was a winner and now she has shown she can lose,” he added. She must now weigh whether to identify scapegoats who can take the fall — potentially Justice Minister Nordio, a technocrat with no political support base of his own.  Meloni is expected to move quickly to regain control of the agenda. She is due to travel to Algeria on Wednesday to advance energy cooperation, a trip that may also serve to pivot the political conversation back to economic and foreign policy aims. But the immediate impact of the vote is clear: A prime minister who entered the referendum from a position of strength but now faces a more uncertain political landscape, against an opposition newly convinced she can be beaten.

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

BRUSSELS — Dozens of wannabe EU translators who were forced last year to resit a grueling entry exam because a technical blunder have now been incorrectly disqualified, they said. Some of the nearly 10,000 would-be Eurocrats who did the online test last year and who had to repeat the exercise a few months later because of a “set-up defect” were told they were being disregarded because they hadn’t completed all the exams. They say this was an error and that they’ve done everything that was requested. “I did sit all of them! So I do not understand! How can they be so careless? What do we do?” wrote one applicant on a Facebook group for candidates. Messages in this group and a separate private Whatsapp chat suggest dozens of people are affected. POLITICO has chosen not to name the people who wrote messages because the Facebook group is private. The tests are run by the European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO), an interinstitutional body that organizes recruitment for institutions including the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. The exams are a gateway to a career in the EU civil service. “I regret to inform you that your participation [in the process] has come to an end, since you failed to sit at least one of the tests scheduled for the competition,” according to letters sent to two candidates POLITICO spoke to, and screenshotted by several others on the Facebook group for linguist candidates. There are scores of messages from candidates online who received that message and say they did take part in all of the required exams. Some of those candidates say they contacted TestWe, the platform that runs the online tests, which confirmed to them they had completed all of their tests. “This is just SOOOO ridiculous,” wrote another person on Facebook, who said she had also been falsely identified as not completing all of the tests.  Two candidates who were affected told POLITICO they are aware of dozens of people who received the email. “I was already very annoyed when I had to resit the test,” said one candidate who sat the Spanish-language competition last year and asked to remain anonymous. “Now we see all these errors, all these inconsistencies. I have proof of all the exams I sat. I just don’t think it’s fair.” The translator tests include exams on language knowledge and verbal and numerical reasoning. | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images “We had to wait 1 year for this crap,” one frustrated person with an anonymous username wrote on the Facebook group. Another candidate who took part in the Greek language competition, and who asked not to be named because they are considering taking legal action, said: “I took it for granted that this was just a mix up with the emails they sent. But it’s been more than a week now and we don’t have any news.” POLITICO contacted the European Commission about the issue but did not immediately receive a reply to a request for comment. ‘NOW OR NEVER’ The translator tests include exams on language knowledge and verbal and numerical reasoning. Successfully passing those tests and getting onto the EPSO reserve list allows people to apply for specific open positions within the institutions.  The competitions to get on the reserve list only take place once every several years. “You feel that if you lose this chance, most probably, with all the transformations in the industry like AI, it’s now or never for many of the candidates,” said the Greek-language candidate. To complicate things further, the reserve lists featuring the successful candidates for some languages — Dutch, Maltese and Danish — of the most recent competitions have already been published, leading candidates to worry that those people have an advantage for jobs. “The ones who did not have this issue will actually engage in the recruitment process and might have more chances, and that could create an issue as well,” the Greek candidate added. “How is it so difficult to arrange a test?” wrote another anonymous user on the Facebook group.

LONDON — Keir Starmer’s ill-fated decision to pick Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. — despite known links to Jeffrey Epstein — has thrown his government into turmoil. And it’s prompting intense scrutiny of a system designed to stop precisely that outcome. As the U.K. prime minister faces continued blowback for appointing Mandelson to the diplomatic post, POLITICO spoke to seven national security experts, current and former officials and MPs familiar with the security vetting system that governs sensitive roles. They say the Mandelson case — in which the veteran politician was given the job despite his ties to late convicted sex offender Epstein — highlights a slew of long-running problems with a set-up meant to ensure candidates for key posts are free from the kind of risks that have now blown up in Starmer’s face. In reality, they say, the process suffers from political pressure, a lack of robust due diligence, a reliance on trust, and stretched resources. Some were granted anonymity to speak candidly about this sensitive issue.  A security official who has undergone the same process as Mandelson — known as Developed Vetting (DV) — said: “If the process was done properly — and he still passed — then everyone who has been through DV needs re-vetting. Because, if Mandelson can pass, anyone can.” For his part, Mandelson — who did not respond to a request for comment for this piece — has said he “deeply regrets” his continued association with Epstein and the “lies” that the “monster” told him. He has said none of the Epstein emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice “indicate wrongdoing or misdemeanor on my part.” He has apologized “unequivocally” for his association with Epstein and “to the women and girls that suffered.” A QUESTION OF TIMING A full DV check is supposed to be a grueling affair, gatekeeping the most senior and sensitive Whitehall jobs. Candidates must actively declare any potential security risks they are aware of. They are routinely subjected to a deeply-personal interview on every aspect of their life, including those which could potentially make them a blackmail target.  Self-declaration forms are filled in, candidates are interviewed, and referees are quizzed to cross-examine the information provided. DV covers everything from a candidate’s foreign travel to their pornography habits. It presses them on any drug taking or affairs, and can probe their entire financial history. Criminal records must be declared and are scrutinized. “The process requires a vast amount of information, including a full travel history, where you’ve been and with whom, and any foreign associates,” the security official quoted at the beginning of this piece said. “It’s intrusive by design. Any normal person would feel uncomfortable, let alone someone with a history.” DV is carried out by United Kingdom Security Vetting (UKSV), a body in the Cabinet Office. The questions it asks and the information it collects are confidential and shared only with UKSV and the Foreign Office’s own security team. The prime minister does not have access to its findings. A full DV check is supposed to be a grueling affair, gatekeeping the most senior and sensitive Whitehall jobs. | Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images But Mandelson’s appointment has raised questions over both the sequencing and scope of this vetting. The pick for the U.S. ambassador job was announced to much fanfare in December 2024 — before DV had taken place.  Ahead of the announcement, No.10 Downing Street instead asked the Cabinet Office’s internal Proprietary and Ethics Team (PET) to run a more limited “due diligence” check on the ambassadorial choice, alongside five other candidates then under consideration by the government.  The vast majority of the information the Cabinet Office relied on for the exercise was in the public domain. A summary was then handed to Downing Street, who proceeded with the appointment, after No.10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney emailed three further questions to Mandelson on his relationship with Epstein. Only then did developed vetting begin. Matthew Savill had a long career working in Whitehall and vetting before joining the RUSI security think tank — and is among those raising alarm bells about the sequencing of this process in Mandelson’s case.  “There is a huge question over how Mandelson was appointed and publicly announced before vetting,” he said. “There is no way that that doesn’t slightly tip the balance towards acceptance. If you’re going to hold up the appointment or deny them the clearance, it becomes an issue.”  At the time Mandelson was announced for the job, the fact of his association with Epstein was public knowledge — although the full extent of his longer-term ties to the disgraced financier had yet to be made public in the U.S. Department of Justice’s release of the Epstein Files. “None of us knew the depths and the darkness of that relationship,” Starmer said earlier this month in a speech apologizing to Epstein’s victims for appointing Mandelson. The pick for the U.S. ambassador job was announced to much fanfare in December 2024 — before DV had taken place. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Emily Thornberry, chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, grilled Foreign Office boss Olly Robbins about the process last November, weeks after Mandelson had been fired as ambassador over the publication of correspondence between him and Epstein.  Robbins acknowledged that Mandelson — a veteran Labour politician who had held multiple government posts under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown — had “jumped the queue” for vetting, with a process done “faster than some people’s clearances will have been.” But he said: “That was not because the process was different; it was because we advanced him up the queue.” Robbins — who was Mandelson’s line manager — told the committee that he had a conversation with Mandelson about his “conflicts of interests” during the process, and the contents of that “needs to be between us.” Thornberry remains unconvinced that enough time was granted to allow full developed vetting to take place — and fears political timescales were at play. “It all had to be sorted out and tickety-boo by the swearing in with the president [Trump] at the beginning of January,” she tells POLITICO. “So there was very little time — and there was Christmas in between. Normally, as I understand it, DV takes months. Keir Starmer’s ill-fated decision to pick Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to the U.S. has thrown his government into turmoil. | Zeynep Demir/Anadolu via Getty Images “What we did get out of our inquiry was that he wasn’t given a panel interview the way that a non-political appointee would do, and so therefore any questions asked of him seem to have been done pretty informally by [Starmer’s then-Chief of Staff] Morgan McSweeney — which is pretty low-level accountability.” The Cabinet Office declined to comment on the record for this piece. TOOLS FOR THE JOB Others are questioning whether the DV process is robust enough to account for a candidate who may give misleading answers.  Starmer has accused Mandelson of lying to him “repeatedly” about the extent of his ties to Epstein — and that, say those familiar with the vetting process, shows one of its fundamental weaknesses: a reliance on trust over hard information. One former government special advisor who has been through DV said that the interview they faced was “like going to the GP and they ask how many units [of alcohol per week] you have. Nobody fully tells the truth, and I guess they can only go by what you provide them with, unless they can get good data.” In contrast with some U.S. counterparts, British officials remain wary of leaning on polygraph tests to weigh the veracity of answers given in interviews. Instead, the DV process relies on the strength of the intelligence that feeds into it — and the honesty of the person subject to the checks. “There is no lie detector — which the U.K. has been pretty skeptical about in comparison to the U.S. which uses them a lot. If you lie and there’s something that only you know about, which your references don’t, then you might get through vetting,” Savill said. There is only a limited role in the process for Britain’s Intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6.  There is only a limited role in the process for Britain’s Intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6. | Mike Kemp/In Pictures Ltd./Corbis via Getty Images Savill said there are two places where spooks might feed into vetting: a “box check,” in which UKSV runs a candidate and their family’s details against security service records, “to see if they turn up in some capacity;” and during the due diligence check by the Proprietary and Ethics Team (PET) in the Cabinet Office. “This is a point at which you might consult the agencies in the background,” Savill said. Political party whips can also feed into this process.  But, he warned, “questions around political figures that have national security implications are radioactive in the intelligence community.” Britain’s Wilson Doctrine — the convention that MPs’ and Lords’ communications should not be intercepted by the intelligence services — continues to place “pretty significant constraints on how intelligence and politics interact.” PET did not consult the security services during its due diligence process for Mandelson. The Cabinet Office declined to comment on security matters relating to Mandelson’s appointment or any engagement with the intelligence community. There is also some consternation among security experts that Mandelson’s known Russian connections were not viewed as a sufficient risk to stop his clearance. The former Labour politician had a long-standing relationship with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. “I know people who haven’t even gotten their parliamentary clearance because they’ve travelled to Russia once for work, or they’ve had a parent who’s been born in that region but has no links there whatsoever,” the former special advisor quoted above said. “That’s the level of paranoia there is, and about Russia in particular.” Carve-outs for areas of acute sensitivity are possible under the vetting process. Mandelson’s clearance would likely have seen him inducted into STRAP, a high-level, U.K. security clearance allowing access to top-level intelligence material. Obtaining this clearance involves looking at the foreign exposure of an individual — and can result in a subject being denied access to certain pieces of intelligence if deemed a risk. The former Labour politician had a long-standing relationship with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. | Getty Images Savill noted that given that the U.S.-U.K. relationship is “so key,” its ambassador is expected to have access to a vast swathe of intelligence and “it would be really difficult to do his job without this.” ‘FAILED TO GET A GRIP’ UKSV itself continues to feel political heat over its performance — and major questions about the resourcing of DV checks persist.  Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee reported in 2023 that ministers had repeatedly complained to UKSV over delays in granting clearances. “The Cabinet Office has failed to get a grip of vetting services since it took over responsibility in 2020,” the watchdog said. “It has not assessed the impact across government that delays to vetting can have when staff are unable to progress work because they do not have the appropriate level of security clearance.” Savill argues that “national security vetting has largely been a car crash for the past decade.” He cites a combination of short-staffing, botched IT upgrades and a lack of capacity for what can be expensive and intrusive work into people’s backgrounds. “It raises the question if DV is fit for the modern era for people who are attempting to evade scrutiny,” Savill added.   At the same time, Savill said there can be quite “a high bar to get over when denying a DV” clearance to a candidate, which leads to emphasis on what’s known as “aftercare” — regular checks on a person’s circumstances to keep an eye on issues identified during vetting. “There has been criticism that DV lets a lot of people through the gate and then it puts a lot of emphasis on checking up on them afterwards,” he said. “The problem is the presumption is towards giving a DV — it is a bit like a trial, the presumption is towards innocence.” SHAKE-UP STARTS Earlier this month, the British government folded to political pressure and agreed to release vast swathes of internal documentation relating to Mandelson’s appointment — but the work to overhaul vetting is only just beginning. Emily Thornberry, chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, grilled Foreign Office boss Olly Robbins about the process last November, weeks after Mandelson had been fired as ambassador. | Nicola Tree/Getty Images Starmer’s administration has promised to publish Mandelson’s due diligence report, a conflict of interest form he had to fill out, and information provided to UKSV by the Foreign Office. But it is unlikely that the information contained in Mandelson’s DV process will ever see the light of day. Further documents deemed to be “prejudicial to U.K. national security or international relations” will be referred to Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), while an ongoing police investigation into misconduct in public office allegations against Mandelson — who appears to have forwarded on government policy advice to Epstein while serving in Gordon Brown’s government — leaves some elements in limbo. Officers have not yet interviewed Mandelson and he has denied wrongdoing. In a bid to get back on the front foot after days of damaging headlines, the government has signaled that it’s open to a shake-up of vetting. Morgan McSweeney — Starmer’s chief of staff, who was forced to resign over the scandal — called for the process to be “fundamentally overhauled” in his parting statement.  Darren Jones, the minister who leads the Cabinet Office, vowed last week that the government would tighten the process for appointments like Mandelson’s. It will, Jones said, include assurances that “where the role requires access to highly classified material, the selected candidate must have passed through the requisite national security vetting process before such appointments are announced or confirmed.” “This cannot simply be a gesture but a safeguard for the future,” he said. In the meantime, the questions about this particular appointment — and how seriously the vetting process was taken by the politicians calling the shots — continue to mount. “What is extraordinary is that I cannot see how a vetting team could have given him a positive outcome of that process,” a former senior British security official said of Mandelson’s appointment:   “Whatever Starmer and [former No.10 chief of staff Morgan] McSweeney think of him and his abilities — that’s not the issue. The issue is whether you lack integrity and/or are a security risk.”

U.S. President Donald Trump is considering John Hurley, a senior official at the U.S. Treasury, for the role of ambassador to Germany, the Financial Times reported Friday. Hurley, who currently holds the position of undersecretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, has been interviewed by the White House for roles including ambassador to Germany, according to the FT report.  The post has been held on an interim basis by a career diplomat since July 2024. According to the Financial Times report, no decision has yet been made on whether Hurley will get the German ambassador job, and he remains in his position at the Treasury. Top U.S. officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio are in Germany at the Munich Security Conference. Trump has appointed an eclectic mix of European ambassadors since returning to the White House for his second term, including several with banking or investment backgrounds.  The Trump administration has had a rocky relationship with Germany. Vice President JD Vance met last year with the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party; and a German parliamentary delegation visiting Washington late last month saw center-left MPs frozen out by the U.S. State Department.  Hurley was officially confirmed for his current role in July and has been involved in levying sanctions against Russia, including against a provider of cybercrime services. He was previously an investor and an officer in the U.S. Army, earning a Bronze Star during the first Gulf War.

LONDON — While MPs in Britain’s Labour Party were trooping to its windswept conference in September, six of Angela Rayner’s closest aides were renting a villa together in Crete. Their boss had just quit as deputy prime minister over a tax scandal, prompting a reset of Keir Starmer’s Downing Street. Yet as they scrolled social media on their sun loungers, Rayner’s allies saw the party faithful in Liverpool calling for her return. One of the aides even took a call on the Greek island from reality TV show “I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!” (Rayner rejected the offer to avoid harming a return to frontline politics.) The Rayner exile was short-lived. Four and a half months later, she is again wielding serious power in Westminster while Starmer’s premiership faces fresh turmoil. The 45-year-old former trade union organizer has become a focal point of the party’s “soft left,” a loose grouping of MPs who believe the party should swing away from centrism. She’s been brokering compromises with No. 10 on grassroots issues such as employees’ and leaseholders’ rights. Her supporters now widely believe Rayner is likely to run for the leadership — which would make her Britain’s next prime minister, and first woman from Labour to do the job — if Starmer falls. Chance has been on her side. Prominent figures from Rayner’s tribe within Labour appear to be ruled out; Energy Secretary Ed Miliband (a former party leader) has repeatedly insisted he will not run again, while Starmer blocked Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from running as an MP, stopping him from getting into the leadership stakes altogether. Yet Rayner’s entire future — indeed, whether she can run at all — hinges on another game of chance. An investigation by Britain’s tax authority over the scandal that prompted her resignation remains ominously incomplete. Several allies believe she cannot run until it is finished. POLITICO spoke to 17 MPs, ministers and allies of Rayner, granted anonymity to speak frankly, about her carefully-planned return to the front lines — and how it could all be scuppered over the timing of a tax bill. Even if it clears her, Rayner will be haunted by September’s findings from Britain’s ministerial ethics advisor, Laurie Magnus, who said her behavior failed the “highest possible standards of proper conduct” for a minister. That means Britain could find itself with a prime minister still fresh from scandal — even though a different scandal, the friendship between former U.S. Ambassador Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein, appears to be hastening the demise of the current one. TAX SHADOW LOOMS OVER EVERYTHING Somewhere in the sprawling network of offices for HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), Britain’s tax authority, investigators are mulling a decision that will ripple far beyond their remit. Rayner stepped down as the PM’s second in command in September after failing to pay the correct amount of tax on the purchase of a second home. She paid the lower rate after advice from her lawyers, but failed to heed their warning that she should consult a tax expert. When she did ask — after journalists investigated — the expert concluded she should have paid the higher rate. Rayner stepped down as Keir Starmer’s second in command in September. | Darren Staples/Getty Images Rayner insists it was an honest mistake and that her first home had been in trust for her disabled son, but HMRC is now investigating whether she failed to take “reasonable care.” It would likely add a fine to her outstanding tax bill if so. Until the decision, Rayner is in limbo.  She has not yet paid HMRC because she does not know how much she will owe. There has been to and fro with HMRC asking follow-up questions and no end date is known, one person with knowledge of her thinking said. She has given no media interviews since soon after the scandal broke and hopes not to until it is resolved, the person added. “There’s a recognition that while the HMRC stuff is outstanding, it’s difficult to see how she can run,” said one MP allied to her. “That would stop her, I think,” said a separate long-time ally. Yet a contest may not wait for her. Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who represents the more right-leaning Blairite wing of the party, has made no secret of his ambition to run, and Starmer faces a difficult by-election on Feb. 26. Rayner is already saving up to pay HMRC, planning a small number of after-dinner speeches which will boost her private income. She has chosen a ghost writer for her memoir, which is due in the second half of 2026, and begun work on it. Her allies accept that the publication timeline is likely to drift if she returns to the front bench — just as a book on William Shakespeare by Tory former PM Boris Johnson was delayed far beyond its original deadline. Rayner has also set up the Office of Angela Rayner Limited with her long-serving aide Nick Parrott, to handle staffing and support for her activities as a high-profile figure. Allies believe the public will have some sympathy for Rayner over the circumstances of her resignation, as her ambition had been to keep her son out of the public eye. A second MP allied to Rayner said her team “don’t seem at all fazed or panicked” by what HMRC will uncover. “The mood is that they need HMRC to expedite this so that she can pay what she owes and put it behind her,” they said. But trying to move before HMRC makes a decision would be nightmarish. One government official said: “Angela would get 80 MPs [needed for a nomination] easily but she just couldn’t do it with the HMRC thing hanging over her.” The long-time ally quoted above said: “Why are HMRC taking so long to do it? It’s easy to get into conspiracy theories, isn’t it?” Trying to move before HMRC makes a decision would be nightmarish. | John Keeble/Getty Images Even if she is cleared by HMRC, it would put Downing Street’s independent adviser on ministerial standards, Laurie Magnus, in an awkward position. He ruled that Rayner had breached the ministerial code in September and he remains in post until December 2027. Magnus would be answerable to whoever is prime minister. “If she was elected with a clear majority of Labour MPs, I wouldn’t have thought the advisor would rush into difficult, sensitive territory,” said Alistair Graham, the former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life.  But Graham added: “He would have a discussion — ‘first of all, do you want me to stay in office, or do you want to appoint your own person?’ And then he might say, ‘well, there is the outstanding issue of my previous decision about your behavior.’ I don’t know quite where that conversation might lead to.” A Cabinet minister added: “People come back from scandal and think they’re invincible. They’re really not.” ‘SHE’S NEVER REALLY BEEN AWAY’ Despite all this, Rayner is already back at the heart of the action in Westminster. She had a few weeks of silence until her resignation speech in October, when she promised to continue bringing “determination, commitment and my socialist values” to parliament. Since then Rayner has effectively acted as a shop steward for Labour’s back benchers, winning concessions from No. 10 on leasehold reforms and workers’ rights, and helping secure a role for parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee to examine the release of messages to and from Mandelson. Her allies also let it be known that she had voiced concerns about Starmer’s planned cuts to jury trials. A second ally of Rayner said: “She’s never really been away.” She plans to turn her next focus to reforms of special needs education for children due to her personal experience, the person with knowledge of her thinking said, and could wade into other unexpected areas as government legislation winds up to the end of the parliamentary session in May. Allies say Rayner has chosen her interventions carefully, focusing on areas where she can win and help the government. On paper, Rayner is an ordinary backbench MP for the first time in a decade. She has only three staff in parliament, though recently received a £50,000 donation for staffing costs from a local refrigeration firm. Despite her long-standing relationship with Starmer (he said in 2023 that “whenever my back’s against the wall, Angela will get in touch”), she appears to push her campaigns through parliamentary channels rather than privately lobbying the PM. The person with knowledge of her thinking said the pair do speak, though not as much as when she was in government. Yet at the same time, MPs and the media treat her as though she is still in the Cabinet. Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar called for Starmer to quit on Monday. | Adam Vaughan/EPA “She can pick up the phone to any member of the Cabinet any time she wants, and they’ll take her call,” said the first MP ally quoted above. A second long-time ally said: “Half the time it’s ministers in the Cabinet coming to her to bail them out.” When Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar called for Starmer to quit on Monday, Rayner was one of the senior figures he phoned to test the mood beforehand. When No. 10 launched an operation for Cabinet ministers to back Starmer on social media and prevent a coup, Rayner was contacted — by the government and journalists alike — asking if she would join in. She did. Like with her interventions on policy, Rayner and her allies can argue that she is being helpful to the prime minister. But at the same time, her actions will endear her to Labour’s membership of around 250,000 people who will decide the result of any leadership race. A third long-time ally of Rayner said: “Putting her love of the party above her personal ambition looks good to the membership. She’s a ridiculously smart and astute woman and she won’t want to be the one pulling the trigger [on Starmer].” But points of tension may yet emerge. Rayner is planning to travel to Scotland to campaign for Sarwar ahead of the May elections, at a time when it will now be politically difficult for Starmer to do the same. She is also due to appear at an event in mid-March with a new group called Mainstream, two people with knowledge of the planning said. Leading figures in the group have been critical of Starmer’s leadership. Allies are also quick to contrast what they call Starmer’s managerial approach to politics with Rayner’s “soul.” While Starmer came to politics later from a career in law, Rayner’s background is well-known in Westminster: she left school pregnant and without qualifications aged 16 in Stockport, near Manchester, worked as a carer and then moved into politics through the trade union movement. The third long-time ally quoted above said: “She has done politics in the gritty way, not the sterile move into politics Keir did — he didn’t have to make friends and alliances and cliques. Angela has all of those in spades. She has people everywhere — in Labour, unions, think tanks and lobbying shops — who will be willing to do things for her.” This could also help her in a likely leadership battle against Streeting, who will struggle to win over a section of members on Labour’s left and faces his own difficult questions about his past ties to Mandelson. This week Streeting pre-emptively released friendly texts between himself and the former ambassador discussing the woes of the government. Rayner, by contrast, has said privately that she exchanged no texts or WhatsApps with Mandelson at all since at least summer 2024, including in any groups, one person who has spoken to her said. WHAT ABOUT THE PUBLIC? But even many of Rayner’s allies fear winning over her own party is not the problem. “She’s already the party’s darling,” said one Labour official allied to Rayner. “She needs to do something to rehabilitate herself with the public.” One Conservative shadow Cabinet minister said they feared a Rayner leadership more than one led by Ed Miliband. | Leon Neal/Getty Images Rayner’s blunt style as deputy leader (she once called Tories “scum” at a conference reception) led to relentless attacks on her by opposition parties. Now, however, she is ranked by the polling firm YouGov as the second-most popular Labour politician, behind only Burnham. One Conservative shadow Cabinet minister said they feared a Rayner leadership more than one led by Miliband, as she could shore up Labour’s northern heartlands from the right-wing Reform UK while holding off a left-wing drift to the Green Party and other rivals. Allies believe she may also win some support from the small “Blue Labour” faction of socially conservative MPs, saying her political stance is more complex than the picture painted of her.  “She shape-shifts around,” said the second MP ally quoted above. An MP from the Blue Labour group added it was about more than left or right: “She is genuine. She invites fascination — from the media, from the voters. She should play a part.” Yet there is a looming question of what kind of prime minister she would be — especially as she has previously adapted to fit the times, having served both under left-winger Jeremy Corbyn and his successor Starmer. Allies point to her time as Starmer’s deputy, leading meetings with foreign delegations that went far beyond her usual brief and having a good relationship with civil servants. The first long-time ally quoted above blamed “snobbishness,” based on Rayner’s working-class background, for claims she would be unable to do the job. They said: “She’s been deputy prime minister, she’s run a big department. Why wouldn’t she be able to manage right across government?” But one Labour MP voiced fears about how the markets would react, especially if traders do not know the detail of a more left-wing platform. “I’m not sure even Angela knows what Angela wants to do,” they said. And the biggest question of all remains not just whether Rayner will be able to run — but whether she will want to. “She’s definitely gearing up after May to stand,” said the first long-time ally quoted above. But allies also say she struggles with intense media coverage and her complex family situation. The third long-time ally quoted above predicted that even with Burnham and Miliband out of the picture, and if other soft left MPs (including the former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh) do not run, the chances of Rayner entering a leadership race were still only “90 percent.” A second Cabinet minister said: “Angela has a big role to play in the future, but I’m not convinced that she wants to be leader.”  She might end up having to make up her mind sooner than she would like.

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš is facing new accusations that he never fully severed ties with his agricultural empire, after publicly promising to do so in order to avoid major conflicts of interest in both Prague and Brussels. On taking up the Czech premiership in December, Babiš pledged to cut all links with his company Agrofert, one of Central Europe’s largest agri-food and chemicals groups. President Petr Pavel required him to take that step before approving his government, and Babiš insisted his children would only take Agrofert stakes after his death. The commitment was meant to address long-standing conflict-of-interest concerns. During Babiš’s previous term, EU and national auditors found the company had improperly received at least €208 million in EU and national agricultural subsidies, triggering payment suspensions and repayment demands. At the EU level, the stakes are heightened by the fact that as prime minister, Babiš is now helping to negotiate the bloc’s next long-term budget, including farm spending from which Agrofert has previously benefited. Babiš’s pledges of a total rupture with Agrofert are now coming into question, even though the prime minister insists he has done much more than the law required. A leaked legal document that purports to map out his new relationship with the company describes a trust structure that removes him from day-to-day decision-making only while he remains in office, and that transfers decision-making powers to a family-run governance mechanism once his political career ends. The 18-page document, dated Dec. 17, was first reported by Czech outlet Seznam Zprávy. POLITICO has seen a copy. The document says the trust is meant to ensure “independent administration during the period in which the [establisher of the trust] holds the office of a member of the Government.” Once that period ends — whether through Babiš’s departure from office or, eventually, his death — the business would automatically transition to “family administration” Opposition lawmakers seized on the document as evidence that Babiš would still have strong personal and family interests tied to Agrofert during his lifetime, potentially motivating his decisions on both the domestic and EU levels. “The news about Andrej Babiš’s unresolved conflict of interest is really just the proverbial cherry on top,” Pirate party parliamentary leader Olga Richterová said in a legislative debate in Prague on Tuesday. “It is becoming clear that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. The old practices used when Agrofert was previously parked in trust funds appear set to be applied again in a very similar way.” Danuše Nerudová, a European Parliament lawmaker from the Mayors and Independents party, told POLITICO the arrangement preserves a personal incentive to protect family business interests. “His companies benefited improperly from EU agricultural subsidies in the past,” she said. “That incentive does not disappear simply because the structure is renamed.” Given the implications for the EU budget, the European Commission said it was monitoring developments and underlined its rule that “anybody nominated in a member state to be involved in budget implementation … shall not take any action which may bring their own interests into conflict with those of the union.” POLITICO requested comment from Babiš’s office, but did not receive a response before publication. Danuše Nerudová told POLITICO the arrangement preserves a personal incentive to protect family business interests. | Martin Divisek/EPA Babiš responded to the Seznam Zprávy story in another newspaper. He did not deny the authenticity of the document and its reference to a continued family interest, but claimed he was doing nothing wrong. “What I said earlier clearly applies. I did much more than the law required of me. The shares of the company that I built for almost 30 years will never be returned to me,” he told the Deník N newspaper. POLITICAL DEBATE IN PRAGUE When Babiš made his pledge to keep out of Agrofert last year, his language was definitive. “I have decided to irrevocably give up the Agrofert company,” Babiš said in December. “I will never own it, I will not have any economic relations with it, and I will not be in any contact with it.” He added: “My children will only get Agrofert after my death.” Babiš reiterated his defense this week, telling Czech news agency ČTK that the Agrofert shares would never return to him and that he would not benefit from them for the rest of his life. He said the arrangement complied with both Czech and European law, and accused critics of trying to deprive him of his property. The prime minister has previously insisted any conflict would be resolved once the trust takes effect. He missed a self-imposed early-January deadline to complete the share transfer, saying he was still awaiting approval from financial authorities in two EU countries. David Kotora, executive director of Transparency International Czech Republic, said the trust “is currently an inactive shell” because the share transfer has not taken place. Once activated, he said, it would still fail EU standards. “This structure clearly cannot withstand European regulations concerning conflicts of interest in the redistribution of public funds,” Kotora said. During the parliamentary session on Tuesday, Babiš dismissed the renewed scrutiny as a “festival of hypocrisy.” “This is not a spontaneous defense of democracy. It’s political theater,” he said, stressing that Agrofert is not receiving any subsidies until the trust is in effect. “You invented the conflict of interest because you’re incapable of beating me.” Lawmakers from Babiš’s ANO party have rallied behind him, rejecting assessments of unresolved conflicts of interest. In a joint statement to POLITICO, MEPs Ondřej Knotek and Klára Dostálová said the prime minister had taken steps “well beyond what is required by Czech and European law.” He has relinquished ownership and control of Agrofert permanently, they said, and would not benefit from the company for the rest of his life. “If someone finds this insufficient,” they added, “it is no longer about the essence of the matter, but about an effort to constantly question it.” Economist Petr Bartoň, a regulatory and public policy expert, noted Czech conflict-of-interest rules were never designed for politicians with business empires on the scale of Agrofert. “The law does not aim to permanently separate politicians from their assets,” Bartoň said. “It aims to manage conflicts while they are in office.” Promises to go further, he added, may have political value but “no legal force.” Ketrin Jochecová contributed to this report.

The EU’s elite recruitment competition opens Thursday for the first time in seven years. But would you pass it? The assessment is meant to inject new blood into Brussels’ corridors of power, with successful applicants eligible for roles at grade “AD-5,” which come with a monthly pay packet of between €5,973 and €6,758, as well as the chance to progress through the bureaucracy and take up influential roles. Tens of thousands of people are expected to take the exam. So take our version of the test and find out if you’d make the grade. Some are based on actual questions and some we’ve made up. *Disclaimer 1. The actual tests contain verbal/numerical/abstract reasoning skills questions (can you solve problems using words/numbers/diagrams); and digital skills questions (do you know anything about tech). We’ve skipped these in favor of the third part, EU knowledge. *Disclaimer 2. Passing this test does not mean you get an EU job (or a job at POLITICO).

BRUSSELS — Disgraced British politician Peter Mandelson is facing demands to be stripped of his pension as a former European commissioner if investigators found he broke EU rules over his contact with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.  Mandelson served as a European commissioner between 2004 and 2008 and is now at the center of a spiraling scandal in Britain. Newly released files showed how Mandelson, who was a senior British minister at the time, helped provide Epstein, then a financier, with information about a €500 billion bailout to save the euro in 2010.  The European Commission is looking into whether Mandelson broke its rules, which apply even after commissioners have left office, though ethics campaigners have called for a full fraud inquiry by independent investigators. Mandelson should lose the commissioner’s pension to which he is entitled if he’s found to have breached the rules, the campaigners said.  “Given the severity of allegations concerning Peter Mandelson’s deplorable relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the European Commission and European Anti-Fraud Office must pursue an immediate investigation to establish any potential misconduct both during and beyond his tenure as European Commissioner,” Nick Aiossa, director at Transparency International, a leading anti-corruption campaign group, told POLITICO. “Should it do so, Mandelson must be stripped of his Commissioner’s pension.” Daniel Freund, a Green MEP from Germany, condemned the lack of action and investigations against “the most powerful people on earth” over their links to the disgraced financier. “That EU commissioners were somehow involved with this universe is just outrageous,” he told POLITICO. “Taking away the pension would be justified if he broke any EU rules.” Mandelson, 72, was entitled to an inflation-linked pension reportedly worth £31,000 a year when he turned 65 for his four years as a European commissioner. This is on top of other any pensions from his time as an elected politician in the U.K. and in other roles. Mandelson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He has previously said he was wrong to have continued his association with Epstein and apologized “unequivocally” to Epstein’s victims. In a statement, the EU’s anti-fraud office, known as OLAF, said: “We cannot provide details regarding cases which OLAF may or may not be treating. This is to protect the confidentiality of any possible investigations and of possible ensuing judicial proceedings, as well as to ensure respect for personal data and procedural rights.” In London, Britain’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Mandelson should lose the severance payment he was entitled to when his career as U.K. ambassador to the United States ended over the Epstein scandal. Speaking to Times Radio, Streeting also suggested Mandelson could potentially be stripped of related pension entitlements. The opposition Reform UK party said Mandelson should lose the pension he’s entitled to receive as a former government minister. Noah Keate contributed to this report.