By ALEX PERRY in Paris Illustrations by Julius Maxim for POLITICO This article is also available in French When Patrick Pouyanné decided to spend billions on a giant natural gas field in a faraway warzone, he made the call alone, over a single dinner, with the head of a rival energy company. Pouyanné, the chairman and CEO of what was then called Total, was dining with Vicki Hollub, CEO of Houston-based Occidental Petroleum. It was late April 2019, and Hollub was in a David and Goliath battle with the American energy behemoth Chevron to buy Anadarko, like Occidental a mid-sized Texan oil and gas explorer. The American investor Warren Buffett was set to back Hollub with $10 billion, but it wasn’t enough. So Hollub flew to Paris to meet Pouyanné. Hollub’s proposal: Pouyanné would pitch in $8.8 billion in exchange for Anadarko’s four African gas fields, including a vast deep-sea reserve off northern Mozambique, an area in the grip of an Islamist insurgency. The Frenchman, who had previously approached Anadarko about the same assets, said yes in a matter of minutes. Advertisement “What are the strengths of Total?” Pouyanné explained to an Atlantic Council event in Washington a few weeks later. “LNG,” he went on, and the “Middle East and Africa,” regions where the company has operated since its origin in the colonial era. “So it’s just fitting exactly and perfectly.” Total, “a large corporation,” could be “so agile,” he said, because of the efficacy of his decision-making, and the clarity of his vision to shift from oil to lower-emission gas, extracted from lightly regulated foreign lands. In the end, “it [was] just a matter of sending an email to my colleague [Hollub],” he added. “This is the way to make good deals.” Six years later, it’s fair to ask if Pouyanné was a little hasty. On Nov. 17, a European human rights NGO filed a criminal complaint with the national counterterrorism prosecutor’s office in Paris accusing TotalEnergies of complicity in war crimes, torture and enforced disappearances, all in northern Mozambique. The allegations turn on a massacre, first reported by POLITICO last year, in which Mozambican soldiers crammed about 200 men into shipping containers at the gatehouse of a massive gas liquefaction plant TotalEnergies is building in the country, then killed most of them over the next three months. The complaint, submitted by the nonprofit European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), alleges that TotalEnergies became an accomplice in the “so-called ‘container massacre’” because it “directly financed and materially supported” the Mozambican soldiers who carried out the executions, which took place between June and September 2021. “TotalEnergies knew that the Mozambican armed forces had been accused of systematic human rights violations, yet continued to support them with the only objective to secure its facility,” said Clara Gonzales, co-director of the business and human rights program at ECCHR, a Berlin-based group specializing in international law that has spent the past year corroborating the atrocity. In response to the complaint, a company spokesperson in Paris said in a written statement: “TotalEnergies takes these allegations very seriously” and would “comply with the lawful investigation prerogatives of the French authorities.” Last year, in response to questions by POLITICO, the company — through its subsidiary Mozambique LNG — said it had no knowledge of the container killings, adding that its “extensive research” had “not identified any information nor evidence that would corroborate the allegations of severe abuses and torture.” This week, the spokesperson repeated that position. Advertisement Asked in May in the French National Assembly about the killings, Pouyanné dismissed “these false allegations” and demanded the company’s accusers “put their evidence on the table.” Questioned about the complaint on French television this week, he again rejected the allegations and described them as a “smear campaign” motivated by the fact that TotalEnergies produces fossil fuels. The war crimes complaint is based on POLITICO’s reporting and other open-source evidence. In the last year, the container killings have been confirmed by the French newspaper Le Monde and the British journalism nonprofit Source Material. The British Mozambique expert Professor Joseph Hanlon also said the atrocity was “well known locally,” and an investigation carried out by UK Export Finance (UKEF) — the British state lender, which is currently weighing delivery of a $1.15 billion loan to Total’s project — has heard evidence from its survivors.  The massacre was an apparent reprisal for a devastating attack three months earlier by ISIS-affiliated rebels on the nearby town of Palma, just south of the border with Tanzania, which killed 1,354 civilians, including 55 of Total’s workforce, according to a house-to-house survey carried out by POLITICO. Of those ISIS murdered, it beheaded 330. TotalEnergies has previously noted that Mozambique has yet to issue an official toll for the Palma massacre. In March, a French magistrate began investigating TotalEnergies for involuntary manslaughter over allegations that it abandoned its contractors to the onslaught.  After the jihadis left the area in late June, Mozambican commandos based at Total’s gas concession rounded up 500 villagers and accused them of backing the rebels. They separated men from women and children, raped several of the women, then forced the 180-250 men into two metal windowless shipping containers that formed a rudimentary fortified entrance to Total’s plant. There, the soldiers kept their prisoners in 30-degree-Celsius heat for three months. According to eleven survivors and two witnesses, some men suffocated. Fed handfuls of rice and bottle caps of water, others starved or died of thirst. The soldiers beat and tortured many of the rest. Finally, they began taking them away in groups and executing them. Only 26 men survived, saved when a Rwandan intervention force, deployed to fight ISIS, discovered the operation. A second house-to-house survey conducted by POLITICO later identified by name 97 of those killed or disappeared. Along with the new ECCHR complaint and the British inquiry, the killings are the subject of three other separate investigations: by the Mozambican Attorney General, the Mozambican National Human Rights Commission, and the Dutch government, which is probing $1.2 billion in Dutch state financing for TotalEnergies’ project. This week’s complaint was lodged with the offices of the French National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor, whose remit includes war crimes. The prosecutor will decide whether to open a formal inquiry and appoint an investigating magistrate.  Should the case move ahead, TotalEnergies will face the prospect of a war crimes trial.  Such an eventuality would represent a spectacular fall from grace for a business that once held a central place in French national identity and a CEO whose hard-nosed resolve made him an icon of global business. Should a French court eventually find the company or its executives liable in the container killings, the penalties could include fines and, possibly, jail terms for anybody indicted. How did TotalEnergies get here? How did Patrick Pouyanné? ‘POUYANNÉ PETROLEUM’ Born in Normandy in 1963, the son of a provincial customs official and a post office worker, Pouyanné elevated himself to the French elite by winning selection to the École Polytechnique, the country’s foremost engineering university, and then the École des Mines, where France’s future captains of industry are made. Following a few years in politics as a minister’s aide, he joined the French state petroleum company Elf as an exploration manager in Angola in 1996. After moving to Qatar in 1999 as Elf merged with Total, Pouyanné ascended to the top job at Total in 2014 after his predecessor, Christophe de Margerie, was killed in a plane crash in Moscow. Pouyanné led by reason, and force of will. “To be number one in a group like Total … is to find yourself alone,” he said in 2020. “When I say ‘I don’t agree,’ sometimes the walls shake. I realize this.” A decade at the top has seen Pouyanné, 62, transform a company of 100,000 employees in 130 countries into a one-man show — “Pouyanné Petroleum,” as the industry quip goes. His frequent public appearances, and his unapologetically firm hand, have made him a celebrated figure in international business. “Patrick Pouyanné has done an extraordinary job leading TotalEnergies in a complex environment, delivering outstanding financial results and engaging the company in the energy transition quicker and stronger than its peers,” Jacques Aschenbroich, the company’s lead independent director, said in 2023. Advertisement Marc-Antoine Eyl-Mazzega, director of energy and climate at the French Institute of International Relations, agreed. “His involvement is his strength,” he said. “He’s able to take a decision quickly, in a much more agile and rapid way.” Still, Eyl-Mazzega said, “I’m not sure everyone is happy to work with him. You have to keep up the pace. There are often departures. He’s quite direct and frank.”  Among employees, Pouyanné’s lumbering frame and overbearing manner has earned him a nickname: The Bulldozer. The moniker isn’t always affectionate. A former Total executive who dealt regularly with him recalled him as unpleasantly aggressive, “banging fists on the table.” The effect, the executive said, has been to disempower the staff: “The structure of Total is trying to guess what Pouyanné wants to do. You can’t make any decisions unless it goes to the CEO.” In a statement to POLITICO, TotalEnergies called such depictions “misplaced and baseless.” ‘DON’T ASK US TO TAKE THE MORAL HIGH GROUND’ What’s not in dispute is how Pouyanné has used his authority to shape Total’s answer to the big 21st-century oil and gas puzzle: how to square demand for fossil fuels with simultaneous demands from politicians and climate campaigners to eliminate them. His response has been diversification, moving the company away from high-emission fuels towards becoming a broad-based, ethical energy supplier, centered on low-carbon gas, solar and wind, and pledging to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The change was symbolized by Pouyanné’s renaming of the company TotalEnergies in 2021. A second, more unsung element of Pouyanné’s strategy has been moving much of his remaining fossil fuel operation beyond Western regulation.  Speaking to an audience at Chatham House in London in 2017, he said the catalyst for his move to favor reserves in poorer, less tightly policed parts of the planet was the penalties imposed on the British energy giant BP in the United States following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout, in which 11 men died and an oil slick devastated the Gulf of Mexico coast. Pouyanné declared that the fines — between $62 billion and $142 billion, depending on the calculation used — represented an excessive “legal risk” to oil and gas development in the West. While other, more troubled territories came with their share of dangers, Pouyanné put the cost of failure of any project outside the West at a more manageable $2 to $3 billion, according to his Chatham House remarks. As a way of assessing risk, it was efficient. “Other players would spend a lot of money on consultancies and write 70 reports to conclude that a project is risky,” Eyl-Mazzega said. “Pouyanné, on the other hand, is prepared to take risks.” Asked by the French Senate in 2024 how he chose where to invest, however, Pouyanné admitted that his math was strictly about the bottom line. “Don’t ask us to take the moral high ground,” he said. ‘A COLLAPSE WILL NOT PUT TOTAL IN DANGER’ The first oil and gas prospectors arrived in northern Mozambique in 2006 as part of a Western effort to broaden supply beyond the Middle East. When Anadarko found gas 25 miles out to sea in 2010, the talk was of Mozambique as the new Qatar. At 2.6 million acres, or about a third of the size of Belgium, Rovuma Basin Area 1 was a monster, thought to hold 75 trillion cubic feet of gas, or 1 percent of all global reserves. An adjacent field, Area 4, quickly snapped up by ExxonMobil, was thought to hold even more. To cope with the volume of production, Anadarko’s Area 1 consortium drew up a plan for a $20 billion onshore liquefaction plant. Together with ExxonMobil’s field, the cost of developing Mozambique’s gas was estimated at $50 billion, which would make it the biggest private investment ever made in Africa. But in 2017, an ISIS insurgency emerged to threaten those ambitions.  By the time Pouyanné was preparing to buy Anadarko’s 26.5 percent share in Area 1 two years later, what had begun as a ragtag revolt against government corruption in the northern province of Cabo Delgado had become a full-scale Islamist rebellion.  Insurgents were taking ever more territory, displacing hundreds of thousands of people and regularly staging mass beheadings. Even under construction, the gas plant was a regular target. It was run by Europeans and Americans, intending to make money for companies thousands of miles away while displacing 2,733 villagers to build their concession and banning fishermen from waters around their drill sites. After several attacks on plant traffic to and from the facility, in February 2019, the militants killed two project workers in a village attack and dismembered a contract driver in the road.  A further risk had its origins in a ban on foreigners carrying guns. That made the plant reliant for security on the Mozambican army and police, both of which had a well-documented record of criminality and repression. Initially, Pouyanné seemed unconcerned. The gas field was outside international law, as Mozambique had not ratified the Rome Statute setting up the International Criminal Court. And Pouyanné appeared to see the pursuit of high-risk, high-reward projects almost as an obligation for a deep-pocketed corporation, telling the Atlantic Council in May 2019, soon after he agreed the Mozambique deal, that Total was so big, it didn’t need to care — at least, not in the way of other, lesser companies or countries. “We love risk, so we have decided to embark on the Mozambique story,” he said. “Even if there is a collapse, [it] will [not] put Total in danger.” Advertisement In September 2019, when Total’s purchase was formally completed, the company declared in a press release: “The Mozambique LNG project is largely derisked.” In one of several statements to POLITICO, TotalEnergies explained the term echoed the boss’s focus on “the project’s commercial and financial fundamentals. To infer this was a dismissal of security concerns amounts to a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the sector operates.” Still, for workers at the project, it was an arresting statement, given that a Mozambique LNG worker had recently been chopped to pieces. Around the same time, the project managers at Anadarko, many of whom were now working for Total, tried to warn their new CEO of the danger posed by the insurgency. It was when they met Pouyanné, however, that “things then all started to unwind,” said one. Pouyanné regaled the team who had worked on the Mozambique project for years with a speech “on how brilliant Total was, and how brilliantly Total was going to run this project,” a second executive added. Pouyanné added he had “a French hero” running the company’s security: Denis Favier who, as a police commander, led a team of police commandos as they stormed a hijacked plane on the tarmac at Marseille in 1994, and in 2015, as France’s most senior policeman, commanded the operation to hunt and kill the Islamist brothers who shot dead 12 staff at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper in Paris. “This is easy for him,” Pouyanné said. Asked about the transition from Anadarko to Total, the company maintained it was responsive to all concerns expressed by former Anadarko workers. “We are not aware of any such dismissal of security concerns by TotalEnergies or its senior management,” the company said. “It is incorrect to state that advice from the ground was not listened to.” Still, after meeting Pouyanné, the old Anadarko team called their Mozambique staff together to brief them on their new boss. “Well, holy shit,” one manager began, according to a person present. “We’ve got a problem.” ‘VERY VULNERABLE’ A third former Anadarko staffer who stayed on to work for Total said that on taking over, the company also put on hold a decision to move most contractors and staff from hotels and compounds in Palma to inside its fortified camp — a costly move that Anadarko was planning in response to deteriorating security. “This was a danger I had worked so hard to eliminate,” the staffer said. “Palma was very vulnerable. Almost nobody was supposed to be [there]. But Total wouldn’t listen to me.” Other measures, such as grouping traffic to and from the plant in convoys and flanking them with drones, also ended. One project contractor who regularly made the run through rebel territory described the difference between Anadarko and Total as “night and day.” Then in June 2020, the rebels captured Mocimboa da Praia, the regional hub, and killed at least eight subcontractors. In late December that year, they staged another advance that brought them to Total’s gates. At that, Pouyanné reversed course and assumed personal oversight of the security operation, the first Anadarko manager said. Despite no expertise in security, “[he] had to get into every little last possible detail.” The second executive concurred. “It went from, ‘I don’t care, we’ve got the best security people in the business to run this’ to ‘Oh my God, this is a disaster, let me micromanage it and control it,’” he said. The company was “not aware of any … criticism that Mr. Pouyanné lacks the necessary expertise,” TotalEnergies said, adding the CEO had “first-hand experience of emergency evacuation … [from] when Total had to evacuate its staff from Yemen in 2015.” The insurgents’ advance prompted Pouyanné to order the evacuation of all TotalEnergies staff. By contrast, many contractors and subcontractors, some of them behind schedule because of Covid, were told to keep working, according to email exchanges among contractors seen by POLITICO. “Mozambique LNG did not differentiate between its own employees, its contractors or subcontractors when giving these instructions,” the company said, but added that it was not responsible for the decisions of its contractors. Advertisement Then, in February 2021, Pouyanné flew to Maputo, the Mozambican capital, to negotiate a new security deal with then Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi. Afterward, the two men announced the creation of the Joint Task Force, a 1,000-man unit of soldiers and armed police to be stationed inside the compound.  The deal envisaged that the new force would protect a 25-kilometer radius around the gas plant, including Palma and several villages. In practice, by concentrating so many soldiers and police inside the wire, it left Palma comparatively exposed. “It is incorrect to allege that Palma was left poorly defended,” the company said. “However, it is a fact that these security forces were overwhelmed by the magnitude and violence of the terrorist attacks in March 2021.” TotalEnergies added it is not correct to say that “Mr. Pouyanné personally managed the security deal setting up the Joint Task Force.” ‘TRAIN WRECK’ By this time, the company’s own human rights advisers were warning that by helping to create the Joint Task Force — to which the company agreed to pay what it described as “hardship payments” via a third party, as well as to equip it and accommodate it on its compound — Pouyanné was effectively making TotalEnergies a party to the conflict, and implicating it in any human rights abuses the soldiers carried out. Just as worrying was TotalEnergies’ insistence — according to a plant security manager, and confirmed by minutes of a Total presentation on security released under a Dutch freedom of information request — that all major security decisions be handled by a 20-man security team 5,000 miles away in Paris. That centralization seemed to help explain how, when the Islamists finally descended on Palma on March 24, 2021, Total was among the last to know. One Western security contractor told POLITICO he had pulled his people out 10 days before the assault, based on intelligence he had on guns and young men being pre-positioned in town. In the days immediately preceding the attack, villagers around Palma warned friends and relatives in town that they had seen the Islamists advancing. WhatsApp messages seen by POLITICO indicate contractors reported the same advance to plant security on March 22 and March 23. Advertisement Nonetheless, at 9 a.m. on March 24, TotalEnergies in Paris announced that it was safe for its staff to return. Hours later, the Islamists attacked. “Neither Mozambique LNG nor TotalEnergies received any specific ‘advance warnings’ of an impending attack prior to March 24,” the company said. Faced with a three-pronged advance by several hundred militants, the plant security manager said TotalEnergies’ hierarchical management pyramid was unable to cope. Ground staff could not respond to evolving events, paralyzed by the need to seek approval for decisions from Paris. Total’s country office in Maputo was also in limbo, according to the security manager, neither able to follow what was happening in real-time, nor authorized to respond.  ‘WHO CAN HELP US?!’ Two decisions, taken as the attack unfolded, compounded the havoc wreaked by the Islamists. The first was Total’s refusal to supply aviation fuel to the Dyck Advisory Group (DAG), a small, South African private military contractor working with the Mozambican police. With the police and army overrun, DAG’s small helicopters represented the only functional military force in Palma and the only unit undertaking humanitarian rescues. But DAG’s choppers were limited by low supplies of jet fuel, forcing them to fly an hour away to refuel, and to ground their fleet intermittently. Total, as one of the world’s biggest makers of aviation fuel, with ample stocks at the gas plant, was in a position to help. But when DAG asked Total in Paris for assistance, it refused. “Word came down from the mountain,” DAG executive Max Dyck said, “and that was the way it was going to be.” Total has conceded that it refused fuel to DAG — out of concern for the rescuers’ human rights record, the company said — but made fuel available to the Mozambican security services. DAG later hired an independent lawyer to investigate its record, who exonerated the company. Advertisement A second problematic order was an edict, handed down by Pouyanné’s executives in Paris in the months before the massacre, according to the plant security manager, that should the rebels attack, gate security guards at the gas plant were to let no one in. It was an instruction that could only have been drawn up by someone ignorant of the area’s geography, the man said.  If the Islamists blocked the three roads in and out of Palma, as conventional tactics would prescribe, the only remaining ways out for the population of 60,000 would be by sea or air — both routes that went through TotalEnergies’s facility, with its port and airport. By barring the civilians’ way, the company would be exposing them. So it proved. TotalEnergies soon had 25,000 fleeing civilians at its gates, according to an internal company report obtained under a freedom of information request by an Italian NGO, Recommon. Among the crowd were hundreds of project subcontractors and workers. Witnesses described to POLITICO how families begged TotalEnergies’ guards to let them in. Mothers were passing their babies forward to be laid in front of the gates. But TotalEnergies in Paris refused to allow its guards on the ground to open up. On March 28, the fifth day of the attack, Paris authorized a ferry to evacuate 1,250 staff and workers from the gas plant, and make a single return trip to pick up 1,250 civilians, who had sneaked inside the perimeter. That still left tens of thousands stranded at its gates. On March 29, a TotalEnergies community relations manager in Paris made a panicked call to Caroline Brodeur, a contact at Oxfam America. “He’s like, ‘There’s this huge security situation in Mozambique!’” Brodeur said. “An escalation of violence! We will need to evacuate people! Who can help us? Which NGO can support us with logistics?’” Thirty minutes later, the man called back. “Wait,” he told Brodeur. “Don’t do anything.” TotalEnergies’ senior managers had overruled him, the man said. No outsiders were to be involved. “I think he was trying to do the right thing,” Brodeur said in an interview with POLITICO. “But after that, Total went silent.” Over the next two months, the jihadis killed hundreds of civilians in and around Palma and the gas plant before the Rwandan intervention force pushed them out. The second former Anadarko and Total executive said the rebels might have attacked Palma, whoever was in charge at the gas project. But Total’s distant, centralized management made a “train wreck … inevitable.” Advertisement TotalEnergies said its response to the attack “mitigated as much as was reasonably possible the consequences.” Confirming the phone call to Oxfam, it added: “There was no effort by whoever within TotalEnergies to shut any possibility for external assistance down.” The company was especially adamant that Pouyanné was not at fault.  “The allegation that Mr. Pouyanné’s management of TotalEnergies exacerbated the devastation caused by the attacks in Mozambique is entirely unsubstantiated,” it said. “Mr. Pouyanné takes the safety and security of the staff extremely seriously.” In his television appearance this week, Pouyanné defended the company’s performance. “We completely evacuated the site,” he said. “We were not present at that time.” He said he considered that TotalEnergies, whose security teams had helped “more than 2,000 civilians evacuate the area,” “had carried out heroic actions.” ‘AN ALMOST PERFECT DINNER PARTY’  TotalEnergies’ troubles in Mozambique have come amid a wider slump in the country’s fortunes and reputation. Years of climate protests outside the company’s annual general meetings in central Paris peaked in 2023 when police dispersed activists with batons and tear gas. For the last two years, TotalEnergies has retreated behind a line of security checks and riot police at its offices in Défense, in the western part of Paris. Though the company intended 2024, its centenary year, as a celebration, the company succeeded mostly in looking past its prime. When Pouyanné took over in 2014, Total was France’s biggest company, and 37th in the world. Today, it is France’s seventh largest and not even in the global top 100.  Several French media houses chose the occasion of TotalEnergies’ 100th birthday to declare open season on the company, portraying it as a serial offender on pollution, corruption, worker safety, and climate change. Pouyanné has also presided over a rift with the French establishment. Last year, when he suggested listing in New York to boost the stock, French President Emmanuel Macron berated him in public. Advertisement The division grew wider a few weeks later when the French Senate concluded a six-month inquiry into the company with a recommendation that the formerly state-owned enterprise be partly taken back into public ownership.  The company has faced five separate lawsuits, civil and criminal, claiming it is breaking French law on climate protection and corporate conduct.  In a sixth case, brought by environmentalists in Paris last month, a judge ordered TotalEnergies to remove advertising from its website claiming it was part of the solution to climate change. Given the company’s ongoing investments in fossil fuels, that was misleading, the judge said, decreeing that TotalEnergies take down its messaging and upload the court’s ruling instead. The Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has also led protests against TotalEnergies’ East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline. That project, intended to pump oil 1,000 miles from Uganda across Tanzania to the Indian Ocean, is similarly embroiled in accusations of human rights abuses, drawing criticism from the European Parliament plus 28 banks and 29 insurance companies who have refused to finance it. Pouyanné has also taken hits to his personal brand. A low point came in 2022 when he chose the moment his countrymen were recovering from Covid and struggling with soaring fuel prices to defend his salary of €5,944,129 a year. He was “tired” of the accusation that he had received a 52 percent rise, he wrote on Twitter. His pay, he added, had merely been restored to pre-pandemic levels.  Overnight, the CEO became the unacceptable face of French capitalism. “Pouyanné lives in another galaxy, far, far away,” said one TV host. Under a picture of the CEO, an MP from the leftist France Unbowed movement wrote: “A name, a face. The obstacle in the way of a nation.” So heated and widely held is the contempt that in 2023 the company produced a guide for its French employees on how to handle it. Titled “An Almost Perfect Dinner Party,” the booklet lays out arguments and data that staff might use to defend themselves at social occasions. “Have you ever been questioned, during a dinner with family or friends, about a controversy concerning the Company?” it asked. “Did you have the factual elements to answer your guests?” ‘FALSE ALLEGATIONS’ The war crimes case lodged this week against TotalEnergies was filed in France, despite the alleged crimes occurring in Mozambique, because, it argues, TotalEnergies’ nationality establishes jurisdiction.  The case represents a dramatic example of the extension of international justice — the prosecution in one country of crimes committed in another. A movement forged in Nuremberg and Tokyo in the wake of World War II, the principles of international justice have been used more recently by national and international courts to bring warlords and dictators to trial — and by national courts to prosecute citizens or companies implicated in abuses abroad where local justice systems are weak. U.S. courts have ordered ExxonMobil and banana giant Chiquita to stand trial for complicity in atrocities committed in the late 1990s and early 2000s by soldiers or militias paid to protect their premises in Indonesia and Colombia, respectively. Exxon settled a week before the case opened in 2023. A Florida court ordered Chiquita to pay $38 million to the families of eight murdered Colombian men in June 2024; Chiquita’s appeal was denied that October.  In Sweden, two executives from Lundin Oil are currently on trial for complicity in war crimes after Sudanese troops and government militias killed an estimated 12,000 people between 1999 and 2003 as they cleared the area around a company drill site. The executives deny the accusations against them. Advertisement ECCHR has initiated several international justice cases. Most notably, in 2016, it and another legal non-profit, Sherpa, filed a criminal complaint in Paris against the French cement maker Lafarge, accusing its Syrian plant of paying millions of dollars in protection money to ISIS. Earlier this month, Lafarge and eight executives went on trial in Paris, accused of funding terrorism and breaking international sanctions — charges they deny. The war crimes complaint against TotalEnergies cites internal documents, obtained under freedom of information requests in Italy and the Netherlands, that show staff at the site knew the soldiers routinely committed human rights abuses against civilians while working for the company.  There were “regular community allegations of JTF [Joint Task Force] human rights violations,” read one, including “physical violence, and arrests/disappearances.” The report also referred to “troops who were allegedly involved in a [human rights] case in August [2021].” These were deemed so serious that TotalEnergies suspended pay to all 1,000 Joint Task Force soldiers and the army expelled 200 from the region, according to the internal document. The ECCHR complaint accuses TotalEnergies and “X”, a designation leaving open the possibility for the names of unspecified company executives to be added. Among those named in the document’s 56 pages are Pouyanné and five other TotalEnergies executives and employees. Favier, the company’s security chief, is not among them. TotalEnergies declined to make any of its executives or security managers available for interviews. In April 2024, when Pouyanné was questioned about his company’s Mozambique operation by the French Senate, he stated that while the government was responsible for the security of Cabo Delgado, “I can ensure the security of whichever industrial premises on which I might operate.” Asked about the container executions before the National Assembly this May, Pouyanné reaffirmed his faith in the Mozambican state, saying: “I think we help these countries progress if we trust their institutions and don’t spend our time lecturing them.” Apparently forgetting how he helped negotiate a security deal to place Mozambican soldiers on Total’s premises, however, he then qualified this statement, saying: “I can confirm that TotalEnergies has nothing to do with the Mozambican army.” A company spokesperson clarified this week: “TotalEnergies is not involved in the operations, command or conduct of the Mozambican armed forces.” In addition to the war crimes complaint, TotalEnergies’ Mozambique operation is already the subject of a criminal investigation opened in March by French state prosecutors. The allegation against the company is that it committed involuntary manslaughter by failing to protect or rescue workers left in Palma when ISIS carried out its massacre. Though POLITICO’s previous reporting found that 55 project workers were killed, TotalEnergies — through its subsidiary, Mozambique LNG — initially claimed it lost no one. “All the employees of Mozambique LNG, its contractors and subcontractors were safely evacuated from the Mozambique LNG Project site,” Maxime Rabilloud, Mozambique LNG’s managing director, told POLITICO last year. Advertisement That assertion notwithstanding, the death of at least one British subcontractor, Philip Mawer, is the subject of a formal inquest in the U.K.  In December 2024, the company’s Paris press office adjusted its position on the Palma attack. “TotalEnergies has never denied the tragedy that occurred in Palma and has always acknowledged the tragic loss of civilian lives,” it told POLITICO. For the first time, it also admitted “a small number” of project workers had been stationed outside its secure compound during the attack and exposed to the bloodbath.  A resolution to the French manslaughter investigation will take years. A decision on whether to open a formal investigation into the new claims against TotalEnergies for complicity in war crimes, let alone to bring the case to trial, is not expected until 2026, at the earliest. Should anyone eventually be tried for involuntary manslaughter, a conviction would carry a penalty of three years in prison and a €45,000 fine in France, escalating to five years and €75,000 for “a manifestly deliberate violation of a particular obligation of prudence or safety.” For complicity in war crimes, the sentence is five years to life. ‘CAN YOU ACTUALLY LOOK AT YOURSELF IN THE MIRROR?’ The war crimes accusation adds new uncertainty to the 20-year effort to develop Mozambique’s gas fields. In the aftermath of the 2021 Palma massacre, TotalEnergies declared a state of “force majeure,” a legal measure suspending all contracted work due to exceptional events. The following four and a half years of shutdown have cost TotalEnergies $4.5 billion, in addition to the $3.9 billion that Pouyanné originally paid Anadarko for the Mozambique operation. Billions more in costs can be expected before the plant finally pumps gas, which Total now predicts will happen in 2029. The manslaughter case and the war crimes complaint have the potential to cause further holdups by triggering due diligence obligations from TotalEnergies’ lenders, preventing them from delivering loans of $14.9 billion — without which Pouyanné has said his star project will collapse. Total also faces a Friends of the Earth legal challenge to a $4.7 billion U.S. government loan to the project. A TotalEnergies spokesperson said this week that the project was able to “meet due diligence requirements by lenders.” Advertisement All this comes as the situation on the ground remains unstable. After a successful Rwandan counter-attack from 2021 to 2023, the insurgency has returned, with the Islamists staging raids across Cabo Delgado, including Palma and the regional hub of Mocimboa da Praia. The International Organization for Migration says 112,185 people fled the violence between September 22 and October 13. Among those killed in the last few months were two gas project workers — a caterer, murdered in Palma, and a security guard, beheaded in a village south of town. TotalEnergies has consistently said that neither recent legal developments nor the upsurge in ISIS attacks will affect its plans to formally reopen its Mozambique operation by the end of the year. “This new complaint has no connection with the advancement of the Mozambique LNG project,” a spokesperson said this week. Pouyanné himself has spent much of this year insisting the project is “back on track” and its financing in place. In October, in a move to restart the project, the company lifted the force majeure.  Still, in a letter seen by POLITICO, Pouyanné also wrote to Mozambican President Daniel Chapo asking for 10 more years on its drilling license and $4.5 billion from the country to cover its cost overruns.  Mozambique, whose 2024 GDP was $22.42 billion — around a tenth of TotalEnergies’ revenues for the year of $195.61 billion — has yet to respond. A final issue for TotalEnergies’ CEO is whether a formal accusation of war crimes will fuel opposition to his leadership among shareholders. At 2024’s annual general meeting, a fifth of stockholders rejected the company’s climate transition strategy as too slow, and a quarter declined to support Pouyanné for a fourth three-year term. In 2025, several institutional investors expressed their opposition to Pouyanné by voting against his remuneration. In the statement, the TotalEnergies spokesperson pointed to the 2023 comments by Aschenbroich, the independent board member: “The Board unanimously looks forward to his continued leadership and his strategic vision to continue TotalEnergies’ transition.” Yet, there seems little prospect that his popularity will improve, inside or outside the company. “Patrick Pouyanné is everyone’s best enemy,” says Olivier Gantois, president of the French oil and gas lobby group UFIP-EM, “the scapegoat we love to beat up on.” Recently, the 62-year-old Pouyanné has begun to sound uncharacteristically plaintive. At TotalEnergies’ 2022 shareholder meeting, he grumbled that the dissidents might not like CO2 emissions, “but they sure like dividends.” At last year’s, he complained that TotalEnergies was in an impossible position. “We are trying to find a balance between today’s life and tomorrow’s,” he said. “It’s not because TotalEnergies stops producing hydrocarbons that demand for them will disappear.” Advertisement TotalEnergies’ articles of association require Pouyanné to retire before he reaches 67, in 2030, around the time that TotalEnergies currently forecasts gas production to begin in Mozambique. Henri Thulliez, the lawyer who filed both criminal complaints against TotalEnergies in Paris, predicts Pouyanné’s successors will be less attached to the project — for the simple reason that Mozambique turned out to be bad business. “You invest billions in the project, and the project has been completely suspended for four years now,” Thulliez says. “All your funders are hesitating. You’re facing two potential litigations in France, maybe at some point elsewhere, too. You have to ask: what’s the point of all of this?” As for Pouyanné, two questions will haunt his final years at TotalEnergies, he suggests. First, “Can shareholders afford to keep you in your job?” Second, “Can you actually look at yourself in the mirror?” Aude Le Gentil and Alexandre Léchenet contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — Airbus, Siemens, Novo Nordisk and other industry heavyweights are preparing a pledge to invest billions in Europe if the European Union follows through on plans to slash red tape and ease industrial hurdles. An industry declaration, of which POLITICO obtained a draft, showed more than two dozen of the bloc’s largest companies are planning to promise large-scale investments to help close the €800 billion investment gap that Europe has with other world regions — a gap that was central to Mario Draghi’s 2024 analysis of Europe’s lag on global competition. But first, the EU institutions should deliver on “ambitious reforms that foster innovation, investments, technological infrastructure, a clean and just transition, and security,” the companies will say. “This investment increase will only be realized in full if policy unlocks addressed by this declaration are implemented,” the draft declaration read. The declaration will be presented to European leaders as they gather in Copenhagen on Wednesday. Signatories are expected to include Airbus, Siemens, ASML, Novo Nordisk, thyssenkrupp, SAP, Equinor, Schneider Electric, Thales and Vodafone, and more than a dozen other large industrial firms. Exactly how much investment the companies are committing is still listed as “[xx]” in the draft declaration. “If all large European companies match this level of investment increase, Europe would be on track to close most of the ~€800 billion annual investment gap outlined by Draghi,” the text said. The list of “policy unlocks” they are demanding ranges from cutting red tape and offering more incentives for private investment to speeding up the clean-energy transition, strengthening Europe’s defense industrial base, and reducing reliance on foreign technology. The declaration is set to be endorsed at a Copenhagen Competitiveness Summit hosted by trade association Danish Industry. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk are scheduled to attend.

BERLIN — Less than five months since he became chancellor, Friedrich Merz’s options for ending Germany’s long economic stagnation already look slim. Merz came to power on a promise to bring a speedy end to Germany’s industrial malaise, but the economic outlook has only turned grimmer since he took office, and his political frailties aren’t helping. Business leaders are publicly venting their frustration. “The mood in our industry is no longer just tense —  it is furious, and it is disappointed,” Bertram Kawlath, president of VDMA, a lobby group for machinery and equipment manufacturers, said at a recent event in Berlin as Merz looked on. “The fear of reform looms large like the proverbial elephant in the room. This hesitation comes at a high price. More and more companies are facing deep cuts. Jobs are being lost.” Merz already faces an uncomfortable reality: He has few weighty options for delivering the sweeping reforms and the rapid turnaround that he staked his election victory on. Manufacturing firms that once powered the country’s postwar economic boom are shedding jobs. The total number of unemployed people reached 3.02 million in August — the highest figure in a decade. Following two straight years of economic contraction, economists expect little if any growth this year. German business morale is on the decline. A historic move by Merz and his allies to unleash hundreds of billions of euros in borrowing for infrastructure and defense last March is having a beneficial economic effect — but it’s not enough to fully make up for larger structural problems, economists say. That spending will help bring back anemic growth of 1.3 percent in 2026 and 1.4 percent in 2027, a group of German economic institutes predicted this week. “The German economy is still on shaky ground,” said Geraldine Dany-Knedlik of the German Institute for Economic Research. “It will recover noticeably in the next two years. However, given ongoing structural weaknesses, this momentum will not be sustained.” None of this can rightly be blamed on Merz’s government. The massive structural problems the chancellor is confronting — U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff wars, high energy prices, increased competition from China, an aging population — long predated his arrival or seem largely beyond his power to resolve. But that hasn’t stopped Merz from suffering the political consequences. Dissatisfaction in his government is growing, with a new poll showing only 26 percent of Germans approve of his performance. Merz’s main political opponent, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the largest opposition party in parliament, is increasingly hitting the chancellor hard on the economy and on his efforts to revive it through borrowing. In September, the AfD surpassed Merz’s conservatives and became the country’s most popular party for the first time since its inception more than a decade ago. | Ying Tang/Getty Images “You will go down as the most bankrupt of all chancellors in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany,” AfD co-leader Alice Weidel said in the Bundestag this week before going on to bemoan how “deindustrialization and exodus are affecting all industrial sectors.” The approach appears to be working. In September, the AfD surpassed Merz’s conservatives and became the country’s most popular party for the first time since its inception more than a decade ago, according to POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. ‘AUTUMN OF REFORMS’ Merz is keenly aware of the rising alarm among industry leaders and appears to have realized that his political survival depends on speedy action. After spending the first months of his chancellorship largely focused on foreign policy issues — particularly on rallying military aid for Ukraine in the face of the Trump administration’s faltering support — Merz has turned to domestic matters, conducting a series of high-profile meetings with business leaders and addressing the economy head-on. “We haven’t seen any real growth for many years,” Merz told members of a chamber of trade during a visit to his home region in western Germany earlier this month. “The first step toward improvement is to recognize that we are not just dealing with a temporary economic downturn, but with a structural growth crisis.” Merz then vowed to launch fundamental reforms in the fall. Some of his conservatives have dubbed the initiative “the autumn of reforms.” The problem for Merz is it’s unclear whether his coalition ― consisting of his conservative alliance and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) ― will be able to push through consequential legislation in the coming months. Lawmakers are considering granular moves to trim long-term unemployment benefits and to increase financial incentives for pensioners to work. But proposals on the most far-reaching and politically sensitive reforms — including a structural overhaul of the pension system and a more sweeping reform of the country’s constitutional spending restraints — have been outsourced to expert commissions. That makes quick, bold reforms unlikely given the complexity of the tasks involved.  Some SPD politicians are also expressing doubt that much will materialize from the “autumn of reforms,” calling it an empty political stunt. “I don’t really understand the term,” said Dagmar Schmidt, a SPD lawmaker. “We have not even entered negotiations.” In the meantime, Merz has called for more high-profile meetings, including a two-day coalition summit in a villa on the outskirts of Berlin focused on competitiveness. He is also planning talks with representatives of the troubled car and steel industries. This week, Merz also appointed a commissioner for foreign investment who said one of his first orders of business will be to organize an investor conference.  “I don’t really understand the term,” said Dagmar Schmidt, a SPD lawmaker. “We have not even entered negotiations.” | Britta Pedersen/Getty Images Meanwhile, business representatives say time for the truly ambitious reform needed is running out. “It’s like our economy is in intensive care and we need immediate treatment,” said Jörg Dittrich, president of the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts. Dittrich called on the government to immediately do away with unnecessary bureaucracy and overhaul Germany’s social security system to control surging costs. “We must not lose our competitiveness because we cannot afford to pay for all this,” Dittrich said. “We must ensure that we can continue to invest.” ‘THERE IS NO PLAN’ One reason Merz’s options are limited is his relative political weakness. With the rise of the political extremes, the chancellor’s ideologically divergent coalition has one of the narrowest parliamentary majorities in Germany’s postwar history. It was that weakness that forced Merz to undertake what may well end up being his most ambitious reforms even before taking office. In March, Merz used the outgoing parliament to push through a historic package of spending reforms that partially untethered Germany from the self-imposed spending restraints of its constitutional debt brake, creating a €500 billion infrastructure and climate fund and allowing for massive defense spending to face down the threat posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Merz decided to act at that moment because the country’s centrist parties still had the two-thirds majority needed to amend the constitution while the previous parliament was still in power. That’s a majority he no longer has, limiting his ability to undertake similarly sweeping constitutional reforms. But the bigger problem for Merz is that the spending reforms already passed are likely not enough to drive robust growth, economists say. For one thing, there are doubts as to whether Germany’s massive defense spending increase will stimulate much economic growth, as some have hoped. In the short term, every euro the German government spends on defense will lead to only 50 cents of additional economic activity, according to a study by economists at the University of Mannheim. In the longer term the effects are hard to predict, according to the authors. “To go out and say that this is really the recipe for the boom is really overselling it from an economic perspective,” said Tom Krebs, one of the authors of the study. “We can’t have that many tanks to compensate for all the other stuff that’s going wrong in the manufacturing sector.” While infrastructure spending has a greater multiplier effect, the €500 billion package is also not enough on its own to stimulate strong growth, as it is spread out over 12 years — and much depends on how it is used. “It’s still good, but it’s much less than people think it is,” said Krebs. Many economists agree that what Merz has done so far is not enough. A majority of economists rated the performance of Merz’s coalition as “rather negative” in a survey conducted by a leading economic institute.   “I think we need a sensible and strategic industrial policy, and we don’t have it,” Krebs said. “There is no plan.”

European companies are still paying vastly more for energy than they would in the U.S. or China, a new analysis has found, a year after a landmark report warned inaction would condemn the continent to economic stagnation. The findings come on the anniversary of the publication of a report by former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi, which found the EU was lagging behind rivals as a result of expensive power and gas, hampering firms’ competitiveness internationally. According to the new findings from the influential Center for the Study of Democracy think tank, set to be unveiled Tuesday in Washington, European countries have become more exposed to energy price shocks, with indicators surging more than fivefold in the past three years. “A year after Draghi called for stronger EU energy markets, our data shows affordability risks remain high, with retail prices still 40–70 percent above pre-crisis levels in much of Central and Eastern Europe,” said Martin Vladimirov, one of the report’s authors. Affordability is now by far the greatest threat to the EU’s energy resilience, outstripping the uncertainty created by Russia’s weaponizing of energy flows, by the climate transition and by system reliability. “It affects not only citizens’ trust, but also the capacity of businesses to compete globally,” the Center for the Study of Democracy assessment cautions. “For Europe to succeed in the next phase of its energy transition, it must ensure that clean energy is not only available, but accessible and economically viable for all.” Vulnerabilities in one domain also risk spilling over into others, adding to the major and often historical divides that already exist between EU countries, the report cautions. If the bloc fails to address the gulf between countries’ energy security, it threatens to entrench regional inequality and undermine its economic sovereignty and climate goals, it warns. In his report last September, Draghi wrote that “EU companies still face electricity prices that are 2-3 times those in the US. Natural gas prices paid are 4-5 times higher. This price gap is primarily driven by Europe’s lack of natural resources, but also by fundamental issues with our common energy market.” One key recommendation was a massive program of state and private investment in aging power grids, which experts warn are inefficient and a key source of extra costs. His inquiry called for €584 billion in additional funds for electricity infrastructure by 2030, and up to €2.29 trillion by 2050. It is unclear how much of that funding will be made available, but EU energy chief Dan Jørgensen has been tasked with planning an overhaul of Europe’s grids, to be presented later this year. However, one source of reassurance for officials will be the declining levels of exposure to geopolitical risk after efforts to diversify away from Russian oil and gas. Jørgensen has presided over the introduction of a new plan to phase out imports from the country by 2028, with new suppliers ramping up production to meet demand.

LONDON — In his first Downing Street speech, Keir Starmer promised to “deliver change.” Fourteen months on, he’s still figuring out the delivery part. The British prime minister is expected to revamp his No. 10 operation amid tumbling poll ratings and as a fraught political season gets underway. Nin Pandit, his most senior civil service aide, is being moved after 10 months to lead a new delivery team operating out of Downing Street. “Delivery” is the watchword for Starmer, who sold himself to voters as a businesslike problem-solver after years of political chaos. But several Labour officials, MPs and civil servants who spoke to POLITICO, all on condition of anonymity, questioned whether the structures Starmer has created for his major program of domestic change really are fit for purpose. Pandit is the latest in a growing list of civil servants and political aides with “delivery” in either their titles or remit. They include Liz Lloyd, Starmer’s director of policy, delivery and innovation, who works alongside Olaf Henricson-Bell, the director of the No. 10 policy unit; Pat McFadden, Starmer’s Cabinet ally and enforcer; Clara Swinson, who leads Starmer’s Mission Delivery Unit; and Michael Barber, the founder of Tony Blair’s delivery unit in 2001, who is advising the new PM.  Some officials think this big cast is a recognition that there is a problem. But some also see a cause: too many people with different ideas about getting things done. Then there is that overall vision — or lack of it (an accusation that Starmer’s allies deny vociferally). One Labour MP loyal to Starmer said: “We are like a piece of driftwood floating on the ocean looking at the view. It’s a nice view, but where are we going?”  On paper, Starmer — who returns from holiday to a flurry of activity this week — should be far more comfortable than his centrist allies such as France’s Emmanuel Macron or Germany’s Friedrich Merz. He has a huge House of Commons majority and probably won’t face an election until 2029. On the world stage, his careful diplomacy has nudged Donald Trump toward more U.K.-friendly statements on tariffs, Ukraine and Gaza. At home, though, Starmer faces populists both left and right, with Brexit veteran Nigel Farage’s Reform UK consistently ahead in the polls. Inflation has ticked up. Unpopular tax rises loom. Starmer’s backbenchers are nervous about planned welfare cuts and reforms for children with special needs. And migrants keep arriving on small boats across the English Channel. “If the first year is about stabilizing and fixing foundations, I think the next year is going to be about deep-seated reform — and then the benefits of that will come towards the end of the parliament,” Ravinder Athwal, who wrote Labour’s 2024 manifesto and left his role as an aide to Starmer in July, predicted in an interview with POLITICO’s Westminster Insider. So far, it has also meant bureaucracy. THE DELIVERY BUREAUCRATS Deep in the 19th century stone-fronted Cabinet Office lies the Mission Delivery Unit (MDU). Set up by Starmer last fall, this group of around 30 civil servants — led by Swinson, a Whitehall veteran who worked for Blair’s first delivery unit — measures progress against the PM’s “five missions” that pledged the highest growth in the G7, lower violent crime, better health and education systems, and a decarbonized electricity grid by 2030. On paper, Starmer — who returns from holiday to a flurry of activity this week — should be far more comfortable than his centrist allies such as France’s Emmanuel Macron or Germany’s Friedrich Merz. | Pool Photo by Manon Cruz via EPA Some officials argue her unit started at a disadvantage by being based in the Cabinet Office instead of No. 10 next door, making it less visible to the wider government machine. One person said at least some of the MDU’s staff began their work in the department’s basement. “I don’t know necessarily what their objective is,” said one government official. “From what I’ve seen, they kind of provide more of a monitoring service of how departments are getting on, rather than driving things from the center. But then there’s a question of whether that is the job of the policy team in No. 10.” Supporters point out the MDU was designed exactly to be this sort of monitoring service and that it was never intended to actually drive policy, which is led by Downing Street. Others were less charitable. A former government official described the MDU jokingly as “the slide pack department,” adding: “I genuinely don’t really know what they do.” A second government official complained: “The message you get from them is so fucking vague that you struggle to articulate it.”  The MDU is said to have a certain template in which departments have to submit their progress in order to be accepted. One Labour official said: “Oh my god, that fucking place. That unit is everything wrong with the civil service.”  A person who talks regularly to No. 10 said: “If the government is going to continue with missions as a thing, then it really needs to press a reset button and put a bit more oomph back under them. If the delivery unit remains where it is, as an adjunct in the Cabinet Office, away from the prime minister’s authority, then the reality of how Whitehall works is it’s never going to be given the priority it needs to actually be really pushing forward reform through the system.” TAKE IT TO THE BOARD Starmer’s “mission boards” have also come under question. These were set up with the aim of bringing in outside expertise to discuss the big hurdles facing the government. Each one is led by a Cabinet minister in charge of a mission — plus a sixth board led by Deputy PM Angela Rayner, on her pledge to build 1.5 million homes by 2029. Swinson and McFadden would customarily sit in on the meetings, though McFadden’s attendance rate has dropped off recently, said two people with knowledge of the boards. Several people who have worked with the boards argued their lack of decision-making ability has left them underpowered. The boards are “pointless,” said the first former government official quoted above: “They’re chaired by the cabinet ministers who are marking their own homework.” When more junior ministers join meetings to present their plans, they come across like a school “show-and-tell” day, the former official added. “They don’t actually achieve anything.” The person who speaks regularly to No. 10 quoted above said: “You either soup them up and make them more useful, or you put them out of their misery, quite frankly.” A second person who speaks regularly to No. 10 predicted that Starmer — who initially said he would chair the boards personally — “will have to” overhaul them. “There is a sense that the mission delivery boards aren’t working,” they added. “Pat largely doesn’t turn up to them anymore. They need to inject energy into them or rethink delivery across the PM’s priorities.” Allies of Rachel Reeves say the top finance minister is actively working on the government’s growth strategy ahead of her fall budget. | Will Oliver/EPA More broadly, civil servants do not “feel like an awful lot has changed,” said another person in regular discussions with senior officials. “It doesn’t feel like there’s been a revolution in how the government makes decisions. There were always units for how you do joined-up government … they’ve been trying to solve this for decades. This is just a different way of doing what other governments have been trying to do.” THE FINAL BOSS One element that is effective, several officials said, involves Starmer himself. Since last fall the PM has been leading regular “stock takes” with the five “mission lead” Cabinet ministers, plus Rayner, that can run for two to three hours each. He began by visiting Cabinet ministers in their own departments, though now they come to him in No. 10. There tend to be a dozen or fewer attendees, including McFadden, Barber and Swinson. The stock takes put pressure on departments to get their ducks in a row, said people with knowledge of them, and give Cabinet ministers face-time with Starmer to press their most urgent requests — including getting No. 10 to lean on other departments. “The prime minister wants” are still among the most powerful words in Whitehall. There is continuity, too. Supporters of the PM point out that the missions themselves still stand, two and a half years after Starmer unveiled them. The Cabinet ministers leading them have all remained in their jobs. Starmer’s “Plan for Change” — which attached “milestones” to the missions — is mentioned constantly in government press releases (under orders from No. 10), and the missions govern the structure of the “grid,” the weekly news planner circulated to senior communications officials. While roles as “business champions” for loyal, fresh-faced Labour backbenchers to sell the message were quietly scrapped in July, similar “mission champions” still exist. There are regional champions, as well as mission-specific ones — Rosie Wrighting on health, Dan Tomlinson on growth, Tom Hayes on net zero, and Sarah Smith on opportunity. Fellow new MP Linsey Farnsworth was the champion for tackling crime, but her role ended in the summer after she spoke out against planned welfare cuts and she has not yet been replaced, said one person with knowledge of the move. Some other Labour MPs, though, have long complained that Starmer’s overlapping missions, milestones and steps blur the message they are meant to send to the public. Events and crises can knock these long-term goals off course, too. A second former government official said: “They’ve been talking about nothing but small boats all summer.”  IT TAKES TIME These struggles should surprise no one, according to Michelle Clement, a lecturer at King’s College London who wrote “The Art of Delivery,” a study of Blair’s first delivery unit. “We’re in the equivalent of 1998,” she told POLITICO. Blair, frustrated by the pace of change on key domestic priorities, only set up his unit in 2001. Whitehall is still getting over life under five Conservative PMs in 14 years. “All of the change and churn that we saw in recent years of prime ministers does have an impact on the capacity of the state,” she added. Clement argues that Starmer has taken the right approach in creating “institutional ballast” to ensure he has people focusing on the important issues, while other staff focus on the urgent ones. Pandit will be “well-placed” to do policy delivery, she said, despite some negative briefing (denied by No. 10) to the BBC about her effectiveness. Lloyd, Clement said, was “one of the unsung heroes of the Blair years.” If Tony Blair remains the model for government delivery, No. 10 aides would do well to check out a 20 year-old debate clip still online. | Jessica Lee/EPA “People need to panic a bit less,” said a second Labour official, who argued a “huge amount” is being done but that some of it — like extending free school meals to 500,000 more children — doesn’t resonate with the Westminster bubble. Government-funded childcare hours increase from Monday, while Starmer is expected to put a renewed focus on his pledge to open hundreds of nurseries in spare school classrooms. A third Labour official said: “That’s our priority [this] week, not tittle tattle gossip.” MISSIONS: IMPOSSIBLE Others, though, question the overall direction. Starmer’s mission-led approach to government was inspired by Mariana Mazzucato, a professor at University College London who wrote “Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism.”  In an interview with POLITICO, she suggested the majority of Starmer’s five missions do not lay out clear and sufficiently direct means of changing the way the British economy works. “I don’t know what the economic strategy is, in terms of what economy we want,” she said. Mazzucato favors setting “moonshot” public sector goals that drive private investment and innovation “along the way” — just as John F. Kennedy’s pledge to land on the moon by the end of the 1960s began a chain of inventions that led to camera phones and baby formula. Mazzucato praised Labour’s net zero mission, but said overall that the party needs “a really ambitious positive strategy which resonates with people” — and that it should have had one from the start. “Growth is the result of a strategy,” she added. “So, beyond the narrative on growth, what kind of society, what kind of economy do we want? That’s not clear. I think if you asked anyone on the street, what is Labour’s strategy for the direction of economic growth — not the rate — it wouldn’t be totally clear.” Mazzucato suggested the government is thinking about delivery “in the Michael Barber way” of Blair’s first unit: more focused on key performance indicators than on serious economic reshaping. “It’s a productive critique,” she added. “I think they can still turn it around. It’s not like they’ve got the wrong DNA for thinking this way. They just don’t have it set up right.” Making the public notice is still a huge challenge, Mazzucato warned. “Biden’s agenda worked, actually, economically, but it didn’t work in terms of resonating with people.” Mazzucato remains in touch with the government in what she calls a “light touch” way. She last met Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the spring, has contact with the No. 10 policy team, and has worked closely with Cabinet Office Minister Georgia Gould. Much of the proof that Starmer’s government is delivering will come from 11 Downing Street. Allies of Reeves say the top finance minister is actively working on the government’s growth strategy ahead of her fall budget. A fresh overhaul of planning laws is an “attempt to grip” the system and shift the way it works, said one person who speaks to No. 11 regularly. “The Treasury is really trying to get other departments to kick into gear,” they added. No. 10, meanwhile, plans to add more firepower of its own. As well as an in-house delivery team, Starmer has been seeking a high-profile economic adviser for at least six months. It is widely reported that he will appoint Minouche Shafik, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England who resigned as Columbia University’s president after turmoil over the treatment of Gaza war protests on campus. Government-funded childcare hours increase from Monday, while Starmer is expected to put a renewed focus on his pledge to open hundreds of nurseries in spare school classrooms. | Robert Ghement/EPA Former Greater London Authority official Kate Webb also joined No. 10 recently to work on infrastructure and housing policy, a person with knowledge of the appointment said, after Nick Williams left a similar post earlier this year. LESSONS FROM HISTORY If Tony Blair remains the model for government delivery, No. 10 aides can turn to a 20 year-old debate clip that many of them will be familiar with. It was April 2005, just ahead of a general election, and Blair faced an angry grilling from a voter in a BBC debate. The man complained he wasn’t allowed to schedule a doctors’ appointment for later in the week — because Blair had set a target for patients to be seen within 48 hours. It meant the man had to be seen within two days. Blair was agog. It appeared to be an example of KPIs gone mad — but it was also a clear example of a public service target that had cut through with the public and was working. Unlike Starmer, however, Blair had eight years in office under his belt by that moment — and didn’t have Farage’s Reform UK breathing down his neck. Farage is now making moonshot promises of his own, including a vow to deport hundreds of thousands of people. Labour aides have been encouraged by recent press interviews with Farage that have tested how deliverable his pledges are. “People forget that it took a long time to make that change under Tony Blair,” said the second Labour official quoted above. “It would be great if the speed of delivery ramped up with the size of our majority. Sadly it doesn’t work like that.” With Farage eyeing that majority in 2029, Starmer has to find a way of proving that his own brand of “deliverism” works — and soon. Patrick Baker interviewed Ravinder Athwal for Westminster Insider.

LONDON — In James Bond films, Britain’s spies are kitted out with exploding pens and poisoned cigarettes. Nowadays, spies are more likely to work with AI-enabled drones, specially encrypted communications networks, and quantum sensors able to avoid signal jamming.  And they might be funded by the National Security Strategic Investment Fund — a secretive fund with ties to Britain’s intelligence agencies like GCHQ, MI5 and Bond’s MI6. After years of NSSIF operating largely from the shadows, the U.K. government is preparing to give a more prominent role to the fund — alongside a £330 million uplift to its financial firepower over four years. (NSSIF declined to comment when asked by POLITICO what its previous budget was. The figure is not publicly available.) That cash will “strengthen its ability to invest in companies which address our national security and defense requirements,” as part of a renewed focus on “the increasingly critical intersection between dual-use technologies and national security and resilience as international cooperation for technology supremacy intensifies,” the government said in its recently published Industrial Strategy. In turn, NSSIF is stepping up its public presence, hiring a communications officer and participating in more public events. The fund’s emergence from relative stealth at a time of heightened geopolitical tension and rapid technological change is no coincidence, according to several people familiar with its work who spoke to POLITICO. Some were granted anonymity due to the fund’s sensitivity. That not only reflects a growing consensus that future conflicts will be shaped by technology like AI as governments draw lessons from the war in Ukraine, they said, but that military advantage and economic growth both increasingly rely on adopting cutting edge innovation. More conventionally, they said, NSSIF’s combination of making strategic commercial bets and breaking down barriers for startups offers a blueprint for tackling the U.K.’s perennial challenge of turning its most promising startups into established leaders. The question now is whether its mission can survive a move into the spotlight. WHAT IS IT? When NSSIF was established in 2018, the world was “entering a period of strategic competition and the idea that the West, democracy, was ceding technological advantage” to authoritarian rivals, NSSIF senior investment partner Edmund Phillips told an event in London this month. The fund was the brainchild of Anthony Finkelstein, a cybersecurity expert and the government’s then-chief scientific adviser for national security. As of 2023, NSSIF had invested £220 million in funds and startups developing dual-use technologies, from quantum-enabled chips to networks of earth-observing satellites. | Marijan Murat/Picture Alliance via Getty Images “I was very, very interested in better ways that the U.K. national security community could innovate faster with greater effect … and also use that as a lever for U.K. growth,” Finkelstein told POLITICO, explaining that his thinking was influenced by In-Q-Tel, a U.S. venture fund that aims to create a pipeline of new technology for the CIA. After an unsuccessful attempt to create a joint fund with the U.S. and Australia, NSSIF was founded under Conservative Chancellor Phillip Hammond as a joint venture between the government and British Business Bank. “NSSIF invests commercially in advanced technology firms alongside co-investors, supporting long-term equity investment — ‘patient capital’ — and harnesses the government’s unique technology expertise,” a 2020 guidance document explains. “Its objectives include accelerating the adoption of HMG’s future national security and defence capabilities and the development of the U.K.’s dual-use technology ecosystem.” As well as channeling some money into other VC funds, NSSIF takes equity in startups identified as being essential to the U.K.’s sovereign needs. It also operates “work programs” to rapidly prototype and trial technology in government. “We’ve basically enabled those who had an understanding of the capabilities to actually take a stake in the companies,” one technology specialist who previously advised NSSIF explained. “Then the [Ministry of Defence] can say: … ‘at least I know that the U.K. will have the ability to manufacture x, because the capital investment is being made here and the skills are growing up here.’” In one example, Portugese drone maker Tekever announced a £400 million investment in the U.K. in May. Six months earlier, NSSIF had been among participants in a €70 million fundraising round for the company. As of 2023, NSSIF had invested £220 million in funds and startups developing dual-use technologies, from quantum-enabled chips to networks of earth-observing satellites. There are no more recent figures available, and NSSIF declined to provide one when asked by POLITICO. Many of its investments are kept under wraps, but for the most part “the technology isn’t secret. It’s who you do it to that’s secret,” Finkelstein said. HOW IT ALL WORKS Promising startups are drawn to NSSIF’s attention by a network of specially accredited (and security-cleared) venture capitalists on the lookout for tech which might one day solve a problem for the U.K.’s security and defense agencies. NSSIF’s sparse website lists 13 funds as “investment partners,” alongside which it regularly co-invests. Officials in NSSIF also provide insight to security officials about notable developments in the market, aided by close links in personnel. LinkedIn pages show staff are frequently drawn from the Foreign Office or stints in British consulates overseas. Finkelstein was succeeded as chief scientific adviser for national security by Alex van Someren, a managing partner at Amadeus Capital Partners, one of the first VC funds to partner with NSSIF and which regularly co-invests in companies. More important than NSSIF’s investment ability is its ability to connect companies with customers in government, Finkelstein said. “One of the biggest contributions that government can make to driving innovation … is to be an early user,” he said. A relationship with NSSIF helps startups understand the needs of the intelligence and defense community, while allowing it to shape technology at an early stage. “You can sit in the abstract and guess at what you think a customer might want, but you really have to have a conversation with them and actually get dug into the details,” explained Anne Glover, CEO of Amadeus Capital. According to David Sully, a former U.K. diplomat and founder of AI firm Advai, which received NSSIF investment, the fund’s support is vital in helping early-stage companies overcome the so-called “valley of death,” when startups are often crushed by high upfront costs. The ability to cut through Britain’s notoriously labyrinthine procurement process is invaluable to startups working in sensitive areas, echoed Steve Brierley, CEO of quantum computing firm Riverlane, which has also received NSSIF investment. Government contracts don’t just provide revenue, but credibility with private investors. Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently called for the U.K. to “drive innovation at a wartime pace.” | Pool photo by Andy Rain via EPA Ed Wood, vice-president of quantum startup Nu Quantum, another NSSIF beneficiary, said its support was “transformational” in allowing the company to invest. “During our first meeting with NSSIF in January 2023, we were told the investment process could be ‘stodge free’,” he said “Admittedly, we were a little sceptical, but the pace, clarity and energy of our NSSIF lead quickly proved otherwise.” COMING OUT OF STEALTH The expansion in NSSIF’s role comes as the U.K. and its NATO allies are determined to get cutting-edge tech to the frontlines faster in the wake of the war in Ukraine. At a summit in June, NATO leaders agreed to “significantly accelerate the pace at which the Alliance adopts new technological products, in general to within a maximum of 24 months.” Geopolitical tensions, including China’s weaponization of supply chains and President Trump’s trade threats, have also brought concerns about sovereignty and ensuring access to critical technologies front of mind. That’s forced national security officials on a “cultural journey” to recognize that preserving technological advantage requires actively building links with the private sector, Finkelstein said. Meanwhile, technology companies have become increasingly open to working with defense and intelligence agencies amid heightened geopolitical tension — and a historic increase to defense spending. According to NSSIF’s Phillips, “four or five years ago, you didn’t see a huge number of entrepreneurs wanting to tackle this space. They wanted to do climate change, health and various brilliant things … There is a cohort of entrepreneurs now who want to go after this.” That relationship will be essential to meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s recent call for the U.K. to “drive innovation at a wartime pace,” promising to allocate more of the country’s increased defense budget on cutting-edge technologies in the wake of a major Strategic Defence Review. That will require “innovation and procurement measured in months, not years,” the review said. The Ministry of Defence is undertaking major reforms to how it buys technology, including by creating a dedicated Defence Innovation unit, while the U.K.’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said last month it will work more closely with the MoD “to pull through innovative capabilities to mission at speed and foster a thriving and world-leading U.K. defence technology sector.” In a long-term plan last month, DSIT said backing dual-use technology through better use of procurement and a greater share of R&D funding would not just boost the U.K.’s security, but benefit the U.K.’s broader tech sector. Last week, DSIT told the U.K.’s national AI institute to refocus its work on security and defense, after rebadging the U.K.’s AI safety institute as the “AI Security Institute” earlier in the year. THE LIMITS OF SUCCESS In the U.S., startups backed by In-Q-Tel have been acquired by the likes of Google and Amazon, or else grown into giants in their own right such as Palantir. In the U.K., some people initially doubted whether NSSIF would find similar success, the investor cited above said. “I went from being mad to being farsighted,” Finkelstein recalled. “Modesty aside, they’ve done some quite successful startups.” As NSSIF expands its work, it can expect greater scrutiny of its record by ministers and the public. But DSIT said in a recent press statement that the fund has backed a number of startups which have reached billion-dollar “unicorn” status, crowding in private investment and creating jobs. “The main thing that it [NSSIF] needed to do is to be bigger,” Riverlane’s Brierley said, adding that the prospect of more money could be “really transformational” and allow NSSIF to participate in larger, later-stage funding rounds. Ministers have spoken publicly about replicating the NSSIF model to back other government missions, such as health or net zero. But five people close to NSSIF said that despite its success, it isn’t a silver bullet for the deep seated issues start-ups face in the U.K. While more cash and attention is welcome, NSSIF must ensure it retains its commercial approach and narrow focus on cutting-edge tech, they said. In June, startup Oxford Ionics accepted a $1.1 billion takeover from U.S. firm IonQ, lamented by some as another example of promising British startups moving abroad. (Oxford Ionics says it plans to keep its research base in the U.K.) But the deal is expected to see millions of pounds in profit returned to the Treasury, as NSSIF held equity in the company, which develops quantum systems. Sully, of Advai, argued that these are the type of commercial deals that NSSIF should be making, with returns reinvested to back the next generation of founders. What makes NSSIF unique is its commercial focus and “pure government self interest,” he said, arguing that it’s something the U.K. will have to get more comfortable with as NSSIF’s work grows. “We’re not as good at self interest as the U.S.,” he said.

Ulf Kristersson is the prime Minister of Sweden. The next long-term EU budget will be negotiated during the most challenging and defining moment for the continent since the end of the Cold War: Russia’s ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine, intensified hybrid attacks against European democracies and a global economy that is increasingly fragmented and unpredictable. These historically challenging conditions mean there can be no business as usual. Europe must tackle this new geopolitical and geoeconomic reality head on and, accordingly, its long-term budget must be visibly geared toward addressing today’s key challenges — not offer a continuation of the status quo. Europe needs a bold change of perspective, on par with the creation of the single market or the euro. And with little to no room in national budgets to manage an increase in the EU budget, focus needs to drastically shift from the distribution of funds to targeting necessary investments. Three main elements are particularly important here: The first is strengthening European security, defense, resilience and preparedness. We must constrain Russia’s capabilities, particularly through our support to Ukraine, which needs to be strong, enduring and predictable. Member countries also need to increase their national defense spending. Along these lines, the Swedish Parliament recently unanimously agreed on an investment plan toward spending 5 percent of GDP on defense. Similarly, the EU budget can and should be used to stimulate investment by means of promoting joint development and procurement. Furthermore, cohesion funds should be redirected toward improving cross-border military mobility. As for preparedness, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has put the spotlight on the need for robust and reliable supply chains and food security. Consequently, the European Common Agricultural Policy should be increasingly focused on achieving these objectives within the food sector. The second priority is migration management and internal security. High migration has caused major strains on our societies in recent years. Still, the number of irregular arrivals today is unacceptably high while returns remain too low. Thus, the next long-term budget must address the need for migration management, both by means of financing the full implementation of the Pact on Migration and Asylum, and by exploring further measures including third country partnerships. Such partnerships should focus on preventing irregular migration, increasing returns, and combating smuggling and trafficking networks. At home, the EU must further develop its capabilities to combat organized crime, terrorism and radicalization — both online and offline. Seven out of 10 criminal networks operate in more than three EU countries, which underscores the necessity for cross-border solutions, including the adequate financing of Europol and Eurojust. The third concern is leveraging private investment and boosting competitiveness. As the global economic playbook changes, Europe must do what is necessary to boost its economic strength. And while long-term competitiveness is primarily achieved by improving framework conditions, like simplification and deepening the single market, the bloc must also rapidly increase investment in research, innovation, new technologies, digitalization and AI. Key programs like Horizon Europe should be further developed to enhance Europe’s strategic position as a global center for innovation and excellence. And the green transition should remain a driver for growth. Europe must be capable of attracting the best researchers in the world. Swedish Parliament recently unanimously agreed on an investment plan toward spending 5 percent of GDP on defense. | Toms Kalnins/EPA Member countries already have a big responsibility to make the reforms needed to boost private investment. However, the bloc’s long-term budget should be used to leverage private investment to a much larger extent than it currently is. Rather than simply distributing funds across a range of sectors, it should use guarantees to encourage risk-taking in primarily innovative sectors and facilitate scale-up. In addition to these main policy priorities, a strong rule-of-law conditionality is also a must. In recent years, the EU has developed its rule-of-law toolbox and put it to effective use. Now is the time to further expand and develop the application of fundamental rights and include rule-of-law conditionality in the budget. Taxpayers must be able to trust that the EU’s funds are used appropriately and responsibly. Finally, we must do all this by using our existing resources far more efficiently — not by increasing the budget’s volume or by means of introducing new common debt instruments. Labeling something a priority means that other things are less important. And as a result, we must be ready to make the hard decisions — both as individual member countries and as a bloc. The world is rapidly changing. For a long time, calls to modernize the EU budget meant a step-by-step reprioritization. But this time, small steps won’t be enough. The bloc must rethink and reprioritize to both tackle the new challenges we face today and seize opportunities.