EUROPE’S CENTER ISN’T HOLDING ANYMORE Despite recent election wins for moderates in the Netherlands, Germany and the U.K., the far right is stronger than ever. By TIM ROSS in Jaywick, England Illustration by Merijn Hos for POLITICO In recent elections, voters in Europe have given hope to embattled centrist politicians across the Western world.   Donald Trump may have romped back into the White House, but the international movement of MAGA-aligned populists has run into trouble across the Atlantic. At elections in the U.K., France, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania — and in a sprawling vote across 27 EU countries for the European Parliament — mainstream candidates defeated populist hardliners and far-right nationalists.  “There remains a majority in the center for a strong Europe, and that is crucial for stability,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, after the EU Parliament elections last year. “In other words, the center is holding.”   Sixteen months later, that hold is looking anything but secure.    Hard-right and far-right politicians are now leading the polls in France, the U.K. and even Germany. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s approval rating is a dire 21 percent. His French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, is even lower, at 11 percent — and the mood is so grim that this fall’s spectacular theft at the Louvre is being treated by some as a giant metaphor for a country unable to manage its challenges.   Even von der Leyen’s own EU conservatives now rely on the votes of far right lawmakers to get her plans approved in Brussels. One outraged centrist likened the shift to those German politicians who enabled Adolf Hitler to take power. Populists at the extremes, meanwhile, cast themselves as the obvious alternative for populations that want change. And now they can expect Trump to help: In a brutal rupture of transatlantic norms, a new U.S. National Security Strategy aims to use American diplomacy to cultivate “resistance” to political correctness in Europe — especially on migration — and to support parties it describes as “patriotic.” Trump himself told POLITICO he would endorse candidates he believed would move Europe in the right direction. On that rightward trajectory, in the next four years the political map of the West faces its most dramatic upheaval since the Cold War. The implications for geopolitics, from trade to defense, could be profound.   “What [Europeans are] getting from Trump is the strategy of maximum polarization that hollows out the center,” said Will Marshall from the Progressive Policy Institute, the centrist American think tank that backed Bill Clinton in the 1990s. “The old established parties of left and right that dominated the post war era have gotten weaker,” he said. “The nationalist or populist right’s revolt is against them.”  Nowhere is this recent transformation more dramatic than in the U.K.   As the sun sinks toward the horizon over a calm sea one Thursday evening in November, half a dozen regulars huddle around the bar in the Never Say Die pub, a few yards from the beach at Jaywick Sands, on the east coast of England.   Built in the 1930s as a resort 70 miles from London, Jaywick is now the most deprived neighborhood in the country. The area had such a bad image that in 2018 a U.S. MAGA ad used a photograph of a dilapidated Jaywick street to warn of the apocalyptic future facing America if Trump’s candidates were not elected.   Jaywick was named England’s most deprived neighbourhood in October — for the fourth time since 2010. | Tolga Akmen/EPA It is here among the pebbledashed bungalows and England flags hanging limp from lampposts that a new political force — Nigel Farage’s rightwing Reform UK — has built its heartland.   At the bar, Dave Laurence, 82, says he doesn’t vote, as a rule, but made an exception for Farage, who was elected to represent the area last year. “I quite like him. He’s doing the best he can,” Laurence says as he sips his pint of lager, with ’80s pop hits playing in the background. “I’ll vote for him again.”  Laurence freely describes himself as “racist” and says he would never vote for a Black person, such as the center-right Conservative Party’s leader Kemi Badenoch. What troubles him most, he says, is the number of immigrants who have arrived in the U.K. during his lifetime, especially those crossing the Channel in small boats. Soon, Laurence fears, the country will be “full of Muslims and they’ll fucking rebel against us.”  With its anti-establishment, immigration-fighting agenda, Farage’s Reform UK offers voters a program tightly in tune with far-right parties that have gained ground across the West. According to opinion polls, Farage now has a real chance of becoming the U.K.’s next prime minister if the vote were held today. (A general election is not due until 2029).   It’s startling to note that as recently as July 2024, Starmer’s Labour Party won a historic landslide and some of his triumphant election aides traveled to the U.S. to advise Democrats on strategy. Today, Starmer is derided as “First Gear Keir” as he fights off leadership rivals rumored to be trying to oust him. And Reform isn’t the only force remaking British party politics. To the left of Labour, the Greens have also made recent gains in the polls under a new leader calling himself an “eco-populist.”   Farage’s stunning rise from the sidelines to the front of a political revolution carries lessons well beyond Britain’s borders. Europeans raised in the old school of mainstream politics fear that the traditional centerground — their home turf — will not hold.   ‘DURABLY UNSTABLE’   Macron, for his part, tried to counter the rise of the hard right by calling a snap election for the French National Assembly last year. The gamble backfired, delivering a hung parliament that has been unable to agree on key economic policies ever since. Macron is now historically unpopular.   French lawmakers’ clashes over the budget have toppled three of Macron’s picks as prime minister since the summer of 2024. A backlash against his plan to raise the pension age has forced ratings agencies to mull a damaging downgrade. Macron, who himself became president by launching a new centrist movement to rival the political establishment, now has no traditional party machinery to help bolster his position. “He’ll leave a political landscape that is perhaps durably unstable. It’s unforgivable,” said Alain Minc, an influential adviser and former mentor to the French president.  The chaos gives populists their chance. The main politicians making any running in conversations about the next presidential election belong to the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen and its youthful party president Jordan Bardella, who are riding high in the polls at 34 percent.   In Germany, too, the center ground is steadily eroding.   Though Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives won a snap election in February, his ideologically uneasy coalition, which consists of his own conservative bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), holds one of the slimmest parliamentary majorities for a government since 1945, with just 52 percent of seats. That leaves the Merz coalition vulnerable to small defections within the ranks and makes it hard for him to achieve anything ambitious in government. The far-left Die Linke party and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) both surged at the last election, too, with AfD winning the best result in a national election for any far-right party since World War II.  Merz’s attempt to defang the AfD by moving his conservatives sharply to the right on the issue of migration seems to have backfired. The AfD has only continued its rise, surpassing Merz’s conservatives in many polls.   The rise of the far-right is a cultural shock to many centrist Germans, given the country’s deeply entrenched desire to avoid repeating its past. “For a long time in Germany we thought with our history, and the way we teach in our schools, we would be a bit more immune to that,” one concerned German official said. “It turned out we are not.”   Even in the Netherlands, where centrist Rob Jetten won a famous but narrow victory over the far-right firebrand Geert Wilders in October, there are reasons for mainstream politicians to worry. Wilders’ Freedom Party is still one of the biggest forces in the land, winning the same number of seats as Jetten’s D66. He could well return next time, just as Trump did in the U.S.   WHERE DID ALL THE VOTERS GO?   According to polling firm Ipsos, a large proportion of voters in many Western democracies now have little faith in the political process. While they still believe in democratic values, they are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working for them.   A large survey questioning around 10,000 voters across nine countries found 45 percent were dissatisfied, fueling support for the extremes. Among voters on the far left (57 percent) and the far right (54 percent), levels of dissatisfaction were highest of all.   The countries with the highest rates of dissatisfaction in the Ipsos study were France and the Netherlands, where political upheaval has taken its toll on faith in the system.   Anti-riot police officers stand next to a demonstration called by far-right activist Els Rechts against the Netherlands’ current asylum policy, in September in The Hague. | Josh Walet/ANP via Getty Images Alongside the coronavirus pandemic and the aftermath of lockdowns, the biggest drivers of dissatisfaction were the cost of living, immigration and crime, according to Gideon Skinner from Ipsos. Trust in politics fell in the 90s and took another hit in the late 2000s at the time of the financial crash, he said.   “There may be specific things that have made it worse over the last couple of years but it’s also a long-term condition,” Skinner told POLITICO. “It’s something we do need to worry about and there is not a silver bullet that can fix it all.”  Perhaps the greatest problem for incumbent centrists is that in most cases their economies are so moribund that they lack the fiscal firepower to spend money addressing the issues disillusioned voters care about most — like high living costs, ailing public services and migration.  THE INEQUALITY EMERGENCY   The financial crisis of 2008 and the coronavirus lockdowns of 2020-21 left many governments strapped for cash. In the U.K., for example, the economy was 16 percent smaller than it should have been a decade after the 2008 crash if prior growth trends had continued, according to Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King’s College London.   “Crucially, the impact of the financial crisis, like the impact of so much else in our politics, was massively unequal,” Menon said. “Prosperous places with high productivity, with well-educated workforces suffered far, far less than poorer parts of the country.”   Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz submitted a study to the G20 in November warning that the world was facing an “inequality emergency.” Fueled by war, pandemic and trade disruptions, the crisis risks preparing the ground for more authoritarian leaders, his report said.   In many Western countries, the centerground is more than just a metaphor. It is in capital cities like London, Paris and Washington that power and money accumulate and the economic and political elites seek to maintain their grip on the status quo.   The further you travel from these centers out to areas in decline, the more likely you are to find support for radical politics.   As Menon notes, Britain’s 2016 revolution — the referendum vote to leave the European Union after almost half a century of membership — can be mapped onto the culinary geography of the country.   “Pret a Manger” is a smart national chain of sandwich and coffee shops, catering for hungry commuters and office workers in wealthy, successful British cities. “Places that had a Pret voted Remain,” Menon said. Parts of the U.K. where median wages were lower were disproportionately likely to vote to leave the EU.   IMMIGRATION, IMMIGRATION, IMMIGRATION   After the Brexit vote in 2016, immigration slid from the top of the priority list for British voters and Farage himself took a step back. Both have now returned, as Farage rides a wave of headlines about irregular migrants landing in small boats from France.   From January to May this year, there were a record 14,800 small boat crossings, 42 percent more than in the same period in the previous year, according to Oxford University’s Migration Observatory.   For Laurence, in the Never Say Die pub, the small boats represent the biggest issue of all. “What’s going to happen in 10 years’ time? What’s going to happen in 20 years’ time when the boat people are still coming over?” he asked.   A decade ago, German Chancellor Angela Merkel opened the doors to hundreds of thousands of refugees arriving into Europe from Syria, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq. The AfD surged in the months that followed, permanently changing German politics. At February’s election, the AfD won a record 21 percent of the vote, finishing in second place behind Merz’s conservative bloc.  “The fundamental failure that is common to the whole [centrist] transatlantic community is on immigration,” said Marshall from the Progressive Policy Institute. “All of the far-right movements have made it their top issue.”   It is the perceived threat that waves of migration pose to traditional national cultures which drives much of the support for the far right. Trump’s White House is now primed to join the European nationalists’ fight. According to a new U.S. National Security Strategy document released in December, Europe is facing “civilisational erasure” from unrestricted immigration, as well as falling birthrates. The analysis draws on the so-called great replacement theory, a racist conspiracy theory. Free speech — in the MAGA definition, at least — is another casualty of conventional centrist rule in Europe, as political correctness veers into “censorship,” the U.S. document said. Protesters demostrate under the motto “Loud against Nazis” in early February in Berlin. After years of decline, The Left party  pulled off a stunning revival in the general election later that month. | John MacDougall via AFP/Getty Images In his interview with POLITICO earlier this week, Trump aligned himself fully with the strategy paper. European nations are “decaying” and their “weak” leaders can expect to be challenged by rivals with American support, he said. “I’d endorse,” he added. In Brussels, the double-punch of the president’s interview and the strategy document left diplomats and officials feeling bruised and alarmed all over again, after a period in which they allowed themselves to hope that the transatlantic alliance wasn’t dying. One EU diplomat was blunt in assessing Trump’s new method: “It’s autocracy.” THE STOLEN JEWELS  Sometimes, it takes a random news event — ostensibly unconnected to politics — to crystalize the national mood. In Paris, the theft of France’s priceless crown jewels from the Louvre provided just such an opportunity, morphing into an indictment of an establishment that can’t get the job done, even when the job simply involves thoroughly locking the windows at the world’s most famous museum. National Rally leader Jordan Bardella called the incident a “humiliation” before asking: “How far will the breakdown of the state go?”   In Britain, just a month after Starmer’s victory last year, riots broke out across the country, fueled by far-right extremists. The catalyst was the murder of three young girls aged 6, 7 and 9, in Southport, northwest England, by a Black teenager wrongly identified at the time on social media — in posts amplified by the far-right — as a Muslim.   At the time, Farage suggested the police were withholding the truth about the suspect, earning him the fury of mainstream politicians. While stressing he did not support violence, Farage railed against what he called “two-tier policing,” a phrase popular among far-right commentators who claim police treat right-wing protesters more harshly than those on the left.  It’s an opinion that resonates in Jaywick. Chennelle Rutland, 56, is walking her two dogs along the beachfront, admiring the view as the sun sets, flaring the sky orange, then purple. The colors catch the surface of the flat sea. “It’s one rule for one and one rule for the other,” she says. “The whites have got to shut up because if you do say anything, you’re ‘racist’ and ‘far right.’”   Far-right activist Tommy Robinson invited his supporters to attend the “Unite The Kingdom” rally in September. | Christopher Furlong/Getty Images It would be wrong to characterise residents of Jaywick as simply ignorant or full of rage. Many who spoke to POLITICO there were cheerful, happy with their community and up to speed with the news. But, just as they’d soured on their country’s centrist establishment, they were also tuning out its favored news sources.   In Jaywick, some of Farage’s voters prefer GB News, Britain’s answer to Fox News, which launched in 2021, or learn about current affairs from YouTube and other social media. The BBC — for decades the mainstay of the British media landscape — has lost a portion of its audience here. Right-wing commentators and politicians attack it as biased. Trump has lately joined in, threatening to sue over a BBC edit that he said deceptively made it look as if he was explicitly inciting violence. The BBC’s director general and head of news both resigned. In the process, another piece of Britain’s onetime centerground was giving way.   WHAT NEXT?   There are reasons for centrists to hope. In Rome, Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right Brothers of Italy party has become less extreme in power, and the worst fears of moderates about a group with its historic roots in neo-fascism have not come to pass. She remains popular, and while pushing a culture war at home, she has avoided the wrath of the EU leadership and kept Trump onside.   Populists and nationalists don’t always win. Trump lost in 2020. In the Netherlands, Wilders lost in October this year, though only by a whisker. Romania’s Nicușor Dan won the presidency as a centrist in May, but again only narrowly defeating his far-right opponent.   Structural obstacles may also slow the radicals’ progress. The U.K.’s first-past-the-post voting system makes it hard for new parties to do well. The two-round French system has so far stopped Le Pen’s National Rally from gaining power as centrists combine to back moderates. In Germany, a similar “firewall” exists under which center parties keep the far-right out.   After the Brexit vote in 2016, immigration slid from the top of the priority list for British voters and Farage himself took a step back. Both have now returned. | Tolga Akmen/EPA Even as he enjoys a sustained lead in the polls and wins local elections in the U.K., Farage has not convinced voters that Reform would do a good job. Even some of his supporters worry he will be out of his depth in government.   The problem, for the centrists who are in power, is that a lot of voters seem to think they, too, are out of their depth. And, whether that involves dealing with migration, combatting inequality, or just boosting the security around the Mona Lisa, it’s a reputation they’ll need to fix in order to survive — no easy task given the intractability of the challenges facing the rich world.  The next year will see more elections at which the centrists — and their populists rivals — will be tested. In Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, long seen as the far-right bad boy of EU politics, is fighting to keep power at an election expected in April. There are regional votes in Germany where the AfD is on track to prosper. France may require yet another snap election to end its political paralysis. Trump’s diplomats and officials will be ready to intervene. Farage’s party, too, will be on the ballot in 2026: It is expected to make gains in Wales, Scotland and local votes elsewhere next spring. After that, his sights will be on the U.K. general election expected in 2029, by which time European politics may look very different.   “Of course I know Mr. Orban and of course I know Giorgia Meloni, of course I know these people,” Farage told POLITICO at a recent Reform rally. “I suspect that after the next election cycle in Europe there will be even more that I know.” Natalie Fertig in Washington, Clea Caulcutt in Paris and James Angelos in Berlin contributed to this report.  

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

THE HAGUE — Frans Timmermans rose to the pinnacle of European Union politics. But it was his own Brussels legacy that sabotaged his attempt to defeat the far right. Timmermans resigned as the leader of the GreenLeft-Labor alliance Wednesday night after a stunning underperformance in the Dutch general election, with the party losing five seats since the last election and ending up in fourth place. “It’s clear that I, for whatever reason, couldn’t convince people to vote for us,” Timmermans said in a speech in Rotterdam after the exit polls were published Wednesday night. “It’s time that I take a step back and transfer the leading of our movement to the next generation.” The pan-European Party of European Socialists considered Timmermans living proof that progressive, left-wing politics are in for a comeback after a decade of losing ground to the right. To them, Timmermans was an international statesman with a real a chance at scoring the Netherland’s premiership, 23 years since the last government led by Social Democrats. But for Dutch voters, he was unable to shake his reputation as an outsider and elitist. And it was precisely that international experience that doomed him as a stodgy statesman in The Hague. As a European commissioner for nearly a decade, half of it spent as Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s second-in-command, Timmermans delivered the flagship EU Green Deal package to fight climate change. The ailing GreenLeft-Labor alliance — which only recently began an official merger process — also put stock in Timmermans, bringing him back home to lead the charge against the surge of far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) in the national election of 2023. But his party failed to win the top slot, and was sidelined in government formation. Party leaders on the right demonized Timmermans and ran a hate campaign against him. | Remko de Waal/ANP/AFP via Getty Images Party leaders on the right demonized Timmermans, branding him as a green fanatic who would misspend taxpayer cash, should he be given the chance to govern. Dilan Yeşilgöz, the leader of Mark Rutte’s liberal People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), called him “arrogant” and “elitist” on several occasions — as did other leaders. Hopes for Timmerman rose again this past June when the right-wing government, led by Geert Wilders’ PVV, collapsed. With all major parties now pledging to sideline the far right, and with favorable polls placing his party second after PVV, Timmermans seemed to have another shot at leading the next Dutch government. But much as he tried, Timmermans failed to get rid of his EU past and lead his own country. BRUSSELS ARROGANCE During the EU election in 2019, Timmermans was the lead candidate of the European Socialists, campaigning across EU countries and on many occasions speaking the local tongue — as he is fluent in six languages. This impressive international flair earned him supporters in Brussels — but not so much in his home country. Since his return to Dutch politics, Timmermans’ problem has been that he is seen as an intellectual focused on foreign affairs, coming from the outside to lecture Dutch voters, campaign expert Alex Klusman and Leiden University politics professor Sarah de Lange told POLITICO ahead of the vote. “He has a handicap, because he’s perceived as this relatively well-off cosmopolitan” — an image that creates tension with the idea of defending “the interests of ordinary Dutch citizens,” said de Lange. Over the years, Timmermans has grappled with being seen as arrogant after years of keeping his head out of the country — first, as state secretary of EU affairs and minister of foreign affairs for seven years, followed by his tenure at the European Commission for nine years, said Klusman, who is the CEO of the BKB campaigning agency. When he came back to the Netherlands in 2023, Dutch citizens saw Timmermans as someone who was lecturing them — “telling them what to do, and at the same time somebody who had lost complete contact with what the Netherlands had become,” Klusman said. By that time, Klusman pointed out, the country had become widely dominated by right-wing politicians distrustful of the EU. Timmermans indeed worked hard to change his image. He sought to convey a more energetic, healthier politician campaigning across the country. | Dingena Mol/ANP/AFP via Getty Images For a man who had been in charge of devising the core of the Green Deal — now used in a counter-campaign by portraying it as killing Europe’s businesses — it was not a smooth landing. An article by Dutch newspaper NRC ahead of the vote argued that GreenLeft-Labor is increasingly associated with words like elitist, cosmopolitan and moralistic. “This image, partly the result of years of hard work by Geert Wilders, has stuck with many voters,” the analysis said. “GreenLeft-Labor is finding it difficult to shake that off.” Timmermans himself was keenly aware of that image, which he fought hard to leave behind. The perception of him as an outsider in his own country, Timmermans said when asked by POLITICO prior to the Dutch vote, “was very relevant two years ago when I came back — but last year, year-and-a-half, this has not been an issue.” “People remember that I was in government, that I was in the European Commission. But it’s no longer ‘the guy who comes to lecture us,’ because I’ve been active in Dutch politics again for two full years in the forefront of national politics,” he added. FAILED MAKEOVER Timmermans indeed worked hard to change his image. He sought to convey a more energetic, healthier politician campaigning across the country, while living in his hometown Maastricht to show he is connected to his roots. That makeover included dramatic weight loss after a gastric bypass surgery he underwent a year ago — which he descrribed at length in an interview with Dutch daily De Telegraaf, known to be especially critical of Timmermans, to try make him more palatable to right-wing voters.  But, according to Klusman, key for Timmermans were the “two years of humbleness lessons” doing parliamentary work as opposition leader after he lost the election in 2023. “In the beginning, he would never say that he wasn’t right, that he made a wrong remark or a wrong position in a debate,” said Klusman. But “now he’d think, and then he’d say, ‘no, I made a mistake.’” Timmermans began to listen instead of lecture, Klusman added. As the EU’s Green Deal architect, he brought the message home by focusing on the social aspects of climate change — for example, Timmermans tapped the narrative that building out renewable energy will reduce the energy bills for Dutch households. But despite all efforts, personal opinion ratings a few days before the election showed the wider Dutch population did not like Timmermans, giving him among the lowest grades on Oct. 27. “He is clearly not perceived as a new Timmermans,” said de Lange. “He’s very much perceived as the same figure he was in 2023” — as a party leader with strong credentials as a minister and a commissioner — “but far less as a fighter in politics and campaigning,” she concluded. Eva Hartog and Hanne Cokelaere contributed to this report.

PARIS — Emmanuel Macron was on a plane to Egypt when France faced the most serious crisis of his time in office. So why did the French president leave the country early Monday morning while there was such uncertainty at home? The answer, according to several current and former French officials, was to ensure his legacy. With fewer than 20 months left in the Elysée Palace, Macron is laser-focused on cementing his place in the history books — and believes he’s earned that distinction for his work in the Middle East, they said. The French president wasn’t going to miss his chance to be there for Monday’s peace summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik, even with his house on fire and irrespective of it forcing his twice hand-picked prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, to push back presenting his draft budget by a day, nearly missing the deadline. French officials in recent days have been working hard to craft a narrative that the Gaza peace plan pushed by U.S. President Donald Trump was triggered by Macron’s own proposal and his lead role in pushing for recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly last month.  That’s why Macron really wanted to make it to the summit in Egypt, said a government adviser who, like others quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. An ally of Lecornu said the president was “very, very focused” on Gaza.  The French political system is designed so that the president can represent the country on the world stage while the prime minister looks after matters at home. But these are exceptional circumstances in France, with Lecornu resigning after just 14 hours before being reappointed and some politicians even speculating that Macron might not even see out his time in office. At first sight, Macron appears to be following in the footsteps of former presidents, such as François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, who pivoted to the international stage in the later years of their terms after losing their parliamentary majorities.   But Macron hasn’t let go of domestic policy. Unlike his predecessors, he isn’t adopting a “hands-off attitude,” said an early Macron backer.      “Macron has become very attentive to his European and international visibility,” said a former French official. “It’s what he’s got left to give himself the impression that he still has influence.” At first sight, Macron appears to be following in the footsteps of former presidents. | Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images CHARM IN SHARM The Elysée last week went into lobbying mode, ramping up briefings with academics and journalists to drive home that Macron had been key to the success of Trump’s peace plan. “The Elysée’s priority was to spread the idea that their plan was very useful,” said a former diplomat, referencing the Franco-Saudi roadmap to end the war in Gaza. At the U.N. General Assembly last month, Macron risked drawing U.S. and Israeli ire with his push for Palestinian statehood, which was followed by close to a dozen Western states doing the same. His speech on the U.N. stage drew comparisons in Paris with other occasions when France stood up to Washington, in particular former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin’s landmark 2003 address rejecting Washington’s march to war in Iraq. While in Egypt, Macron played carefully with the optics of power, of which he is an astute reader, to avoid being seen as playing second fiddle to Trump. He chose not to stand on the podium behind the U.S. president, instead sitting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Middle Eastern leaders, a move that was noted by Trump. Talking to reporters on the sidelines of the summit, Macron spoke about the efforts needed to keep the ceasefire in Gaza alive and the contribution France could make. Asked about national politics, he presented himself as “the guarantor of French institutions,” but could not help but lash out at opposition parties for trying to destabilize his prime minister. WINNING THE BATTLE, LOSING THE WAR Many officials say the French president is trying to remain above the fray. But there are several explanations as to why he’s doing so that go beyond the legacy argument. Some attribute it to the Jupiterian strategy of shrouding his office in mystique, communicating in grand gestures, and refusing to sully himself with the mudslinging of domestic politics.  One government official said Macron is “probably letting tensions dial down” and he is remaining silent to protect the institutional checks and balances of the French state.  Macron has cycled through centrist and center-right prime ministers in the past year. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Others say the silence is strategic, even magnanimous. They say the president recognizes just how unpopular he is — a recent poll put his approval rating at 14 percent — and is trying to prevent his allies from being tarnished by his political toxicity.  But Macron never really lets go of anything. In his meeting with opposition parties last week, Macron made it very clear who calls the shots when, according to a presidential aide, he offered to partially delay his flagship pension law, which pushed back the age of retirement to 64 from 62 for most workers.  Macron has cycled through centrist and center-right prime ministers in the past year to fend off challenges to that law and other achievements such as his tax cuts. Many saw his decision to reappoint the loyal Lecornu, just days after he resigned in the aftermath of his 14-hour government, as the sharpest example of his dogged refusal to hand over power despite his camp losing last summer’s snap election.   Macron ended up being forced to sell off the crown jewel he had jealously been guarding, the pensions reform, at least for now. Lecornu announced Tuesday that he would freeze the law raising the retirement age until 2027, in order to secure support from the Socialist Party and survive a no-confidence vote on Thursday.  Macron might yet save his pensions reform as there are doubts swirling that the suspension might not pass through parliament.  But fighting tooth and nail to ensure his legacy might also destroy it if Macron can’t secure the future of his centrist movement and his potential successors, such as former prime ministers and likely presidential candidates Edouard Philippe and Gabriel Attal.   Macron’s handling of the current crisis will almost certainly affect the campaign of any centrist trying to stop Marine Le Pen, or someone else from the far-right National Rally, from winning the presidency.  “What image are we projecting? We’re in favor of pension reform, and then we give up. It’s not clear,” said the Lecornu ally quoted above. “The only one who appears to know what she represents is Marine Le Pen,” they said. “She has a populist message, but it’s simple and consistent: This circus must stop.” Pauline de Saint Remy and Giorgio Leali contributed reporting.

Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced a major crackdown against protesters on Sunday as violent anti-government demonstrations took place across the country following the ruling party’s landslide win in the local elections. “No one will escape responsibility. This includes political responsibility,” Kobakhidze said, according to Georgian news agency Interpress. Georgia held municipal elections on Saturday that saw the ruling populist party Georgian Dream secure a sweeping victory across all 64 municipalities, results which are contested over a lack of independent scrutiny of the ballot. Dozens of opponents and activists were jailed in the run-up to the vote. Anti-government protesters stormed the presidential palace on Saturday during a massive pro-democracy demonstration, prompting police to reportedly fired tear gas and water cannons. The country has suffered from major political unrest since the 2024 national elections when the Georgian Dream party was accused of tampering with the votes,  fueling a bitter battle between the government and opposition parties. The ruling party halted EU accession talks shortly after the 2024 elections, a move that triggered a wave of anti-government protests that have been met with mass arrests. Kobakhidze on Sunday accused the EU ambassador to Georgia of interfering in national politics and supporting an “attempt to overthrow constitutional order.” EU Ambassador to Georgia Paweł Herczyński “should come out, distance himself and strictly condemn everything that is happening on the streets of Tbilisi,” said Kobakhidze, adding that the envoy “bears special responsibility in this context.”

BERLIN — U.S. President Donald Trump is using the leverage of American military strength to weaken the European Union, said center-right European People’s Party (EPP) leader Manfred Weber. “For the first time, we have a president who, as we saw this summer, is weakening Europe’s economic power by playing the military card,” Weber said on German public television Wednesday night, referring to earlier talks on a trade deal between the EU and the U.S. “Trump clearly used this method to divide Europe and weaken [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen’s position in the talks.” Weber suggested Europe is too militarily dependent on the U.S. — and too weak on its own — to push back against the demands of the Trump administration and, at the same time, confront the threat posed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We are naked in a world of storms, because we have not prepared ourselves for today’s world,” the EPP leader said. “We were in a weak position during the trade deal … because half of Europe — the Balkans, Poland, Romania — are simply really afraid of Putin. And the only thing that can protect them at the moment is American military power.” Europeans, Weber added, are now facing the hard reality of being “unable to defend ourselves against the drones that are coming.” Moscow has been accused of violating NATO airspace on several occasions in recent weeks, including in Poland and Estonia, in what constitutes a new phase of escalating tensions between the West and Russia. Major Danish airports were briefly closed early Thursday morning due to what authorities said were drones. On trade, Weber said he would have liked to see the EU and its chief negotiators show more self-confidence in talks with Trump over the summer, including by not backing down on the bloc’s digital tax for U.S. tech giants. But, he added, this was unrealistic due to the bloc’s military dependence on the U.S. Weber called on the leaders of the EU’s 27 member countries to strengthen the bloc and show more visionary leadership. “If we had a [Helmut] Kohl and a [François] Mitterrand today who created the euro back then, they would be paving the way for a European army,” he said. “That kind of leadership, that kind of visionary approach, is lacking at the moment.” Today, he went on, this is the job of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron. “It must be said that all of our top politicians are so caught up in national politics, so under pressure … that unfortunately, we do not have a generation of leaders in office right now who are capable of taking the big steps that are needed,” he added.

BRUSSELS — With four years still to go until the end of their mandates in the European Parliament, Italy’s center-left MEPs are already breaking up with Brussels. In the cafés and pizzerias of the EU quarter, they are plotting their return to “the beautiful country” — a move only exacerbated by regional elections this fall. The left-leaning Democratic Party (PD) lawmakers’ near-total obsession with local politics is making them increasingly irrelevant in the European Parliament, where they are seen as punching below their weight.  Despite being the biggest national group in the Socialists and Democrats caucus, the PD is frequently outmaneuvered by smaller delegations with more discipline and a better knowledge of the Brussels machine. (The situation is also not helped by two of the Italians being suspended.) The future election of the S&D group leader — currently Spain’s Iratxe García Pérez — during the midterm reshuffle in 2027 will be a litmus test of who matters the most inside the Socialist party. It should be a moment for the Italian left to step up, but it is an open secret in Brussels that the PD’s heavyweights are more interested in power games back home.  Ever since its creation in 2007, the PD — currently the largest opposition party to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing Brothers of Italy — has been ridden by tribal warfare, ideological divides and personality clashes.  This is proving a major liability in the Socialist power struggles in Brussels, where internal unity often matters more than size. “The Germans and Spaniards are fewer, but they matter more,” said a PD lawmaker who, like others quoted in this story, was granted anonymity to breach confidences. “Unlike the Spanish and German delegations, the PD don’t vote united. It’s not clear who they respond to,” echoed a non-Italian Socialist party insider. Party lifers who have made a name for themselves in Italy are seen as out of touch in a city that thrives on technical expertise and behind-the-scenes schmoozing with foreign colleagues.  “The PD have three or four microgroups within the delegation, and we notice that some have tensions with [party leader] Elly Schlein,” said a Socialist MEP from another delegation.  The future election of the Socialist group leader — currently Spain’s Iratxe García Pérez — during the midterm reshuffle in 2027 will be a litmus test for the party. | Ronald Wittek/EPA Critics say that a majority of Italy’s center-left MEPs spend more time canvassing in their domestic constituencies than operating in the rarefied backrooms of Brussels’ power centers. Only a handful have a permanent flat in the EU capital, sniped another PD insider.  “The new MEPs appear to be on loan to the European Parliament,” said David Allegranti, an Italian journalist and PD expert. “They needed a one-year placement, but they’re coming back for the regional elections this year — and potentially for the national vote in 2027,” he added.  Such is the extent of their political machinations to return to frontline national politics that the Italian daily Il Foglio compared the PD’s Brussels squad to the Count of Monte Cristo, the Alexandre Dumas character who spent years plotting his escape (and revenge) from a prison cell on a rocky fortress island.  But unlike Dumas’ hero, the MEPs are not seeking vengeance. They want a road back to political relevance.  TIME TO GO HOME The first, and so far the only, PD lawmaker to have left Brussels is Matteo Ricci, who is contesting a local election on Sept. 28 and 29 in the Marche region in central Italy.  A PD bigwig and former mayor of Bari, Antonio Decaro, chair of the European Parliament’s environment and food safety committee, has announced he will run for the presidency of his native Puglia region in the fall.  If he wins the election, his party colleague Annalisa Corrado — a Schlein loyalist — is the favorite to take up his post as the head of the European Parliament’s powerful environment committee.  Other bigwigs, such as the former mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, and the ex-governor of Emilia-Romagna, Stefano Bonaccini, are rumored to be trying to return to Rome as national MPs in the upcoming general election in 2027, according to multiple PD insiders. It is also important to note that it is not only the Socialists who are pining for their homeland. EU lawmaker Pasquale Tridico from the anti-establishment 5Star Movement will contest the election to lead the Calabria region in October. “Few of them speak English and are interested in European topics,” the PD lawmaker said of his colleagues. “This reflects badly on the whole delegation.” The PD has “three or four microgroups within the delegation, and we notice that some have tensions with PD party leader Elly Schlein,” said one Socialist MEP. | Michele Maraviglia/EPA Despite the exodus, the PD does have some powerful and respected figures within the European Socialists, who have built a good reputation.  Disputing the notion that the PD punches below its weight, a third Socialist MEP pointed to Italian colleague Camilla Laureti’s position as vice chair of the S&D and to Fabrizia Panzetti clinching the powerful secretary-general post.  The chair of the PD’s delegation, Nicola Zingaretti, declined to be interviewed for this story. NOT PULLING THEIR WEIGHT Italian politicians with big ambitions rarely dream of becoming MEPs. What is generally seen as a second-rate job, however, became a safe haven for a handful of political has-beens who were left jobless at home — and weren’t completely in sync with PD leader Schlein’s lurch to the left. By picking a mix of party lifers, local caciques and media celebrities, the PD emerged from the 2024 European election as the largest Socialist delegation in Parliament. But this didn’t translate into real power in Brussels. To everyone’s surprise, Schlein refused to claim the Socialist leadership last summer even though this is generally awarded to the largest national delegation. In exchange, she secured an informal agreement with the other delegations that the PD would lead the group in the second half of the parliamentary mandate starting in mid-2027. However, with over a year left until the reshuffle, this promise is unlikely to materialize. The Spanish delegation is eager to retain control of the group and is pushing to extend the mandate of incumbent García Pérez to secure stability. Meanwhile, the German delegation is also expected to vie for the position — especially if it does not secure the European Parliament presidency. The Parliament president job is meant to go to a Socialist MEP in 2027, according to an informal agreement struck last year with the center-right European People’s Party. Yet, such an outcome would reignite calls to replace the incumbent Socialist European Council President António Costa with an EPP figure in the midterm reshuffle.   One high-up Socialist MEP suggested that the Italians would likely give away the presidency to a Spaniard or a German in exchange for keeping the secretary-general post. “[The PD’s group has] people that are very popular in Italy … [but they] have not managed to build beyond that [in Brussels], which limits their potential,” said a fourth Socialist MEP.

BERLIN — The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party nearly tripled its support in municipal elections in Germany’s most populous state on Sunday, according to initial results. The results in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in Germany’s west, underscored the party’s growing appeal to voters outside its strongholds in the states of the former East Germany, where it is the strongest political force. AfD leaders now see the more populous west of the country — including the declining industrial cities of North Rhine-Westphalia, home to steel factories and a diminishing coal industry — as the key to expanding the party’s base, particularly with working-class voters increasingly defecting to the far right. The AfD won nearly 15 percent of votes in the state, coming in third place, according to the initial results. In the last municipal elections in North Rhine-Westphalia five years ago, the party won 5.1 percent of votes. In the city of Gelsenkirchen, a former center of heavy industry, the AfD candidate appeared set to face a center-left politician in a runoff for mayor. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) still came out clearly ahead of all other parties with 33 percent of the total vote, according to initial results. Merz’s coalition partners in the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — once the dominant political power in North Rhine-Westphalia’s industrial centers — came in second with around 22 percent, according to an early tally. These vote shares are slightly lower than results for the parties in the state’s municipal elections five years ago. The elections, while having no direct effect on national politics, were widely seen as a barometer of the national mood, coming roughly four months after Merz took office. Some of Germany’s conservative and centrist politicians expressed relief that the CDU and SPD performed as well as they did, since both parties have seen their national poll numbers slump while the AfD’s have risen. “All Christian Democrats will be delighted with this result,” Hendrik Wüst, the conservative premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, said in a televised interview shortly after the polls closed. At the same time, Wüst added, the AfD’s strong result “cannot allow us sleep peacefully.” Centrist politicians must ask themselves “what the right answers are when it comes to poverty and migration,” Wüst said. “Are all parts of our welfare system really fair? What about problems with housing costs? Some issues have been allowed to drag on for a very long time.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union still came out clearly ahead of all other parties with 33 percent of the total vote, according to initial results. | Andreas Arnold/Getty Images In Germany’s federal election in February, the AfD came in second with 20.6 percent of the vote, the best national result for a far-right party in Germany’s postwar history. The AfD’s success rested largely on its dominance in the former East Germany, where it came first in virtually all regions. Since then the AfD has become even more popular despite being designated as an extremist party by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, intensifying a simmering debate as to whether the party should be banned under the provisions of Germany’s constitution. AfD leaders are now intent on increasing their support in the former West Germany. Turnout in the North Rhine-Westphalia municipal elections increased significantly to 58 percent on Sunday, according to exit poll data, suggesting the party may have mobilized new voters. AfD politicians celebrated the results. “A huge success,” Alice Weidel, a national party leader, wrote on X. “We have cemented our voter base,” Enxhi Seli-Zacharias, an AfD politician in North Rhine-Westphalia, added in a televised interview. “It is no longer purely a vote of frustration.”

PARIS — Marine Le Pen is primed to play a major role in toppling French Prime Minister François Bayrou on Monday — but he will, at least, leave his post untarnished by a futile attempt to strike political trade-offs with the far-right leader. That’s a lesson Bayrou learned from his predecessor, Michel Barnier. Facing exactly the same challenge of trying to force through a painful round of billions of euros of budgetary belt-tightening, Barnier tried to haggle with Le Pen. It ended in disaster, and he became the Fifth Republic’s shortest-lived prime minister when he departed in December last year. Bayrou, who still has his eye on a long-shot bid for the presidency, is essentially exiting on his own terms, while Barnier is still smarting from being humiliated by Le Pen. Le Pen sealed Barnier’s political execution over an elegant Italian lunch in early December with her telegenic protégé Jordan Bardella.   In something of a last-minute Hail Mary to save his trimmed-down social security budget package, Barnier agreed to backtrack on cuts to medical reimbursements, something Le Pen had demanded the previous day. He even put out a cringeworthy statement, spelling out that it was a concession to Le Pen. Le Pen said she would go off and think about it. Le Pen and Bardella decided to do that thinking at the chic white-tablecloth Marco Polo restaurant in Paris’ 6th arrondissement, a favorite haunt for politicians and actors near the French Senate.  The two sat inside the dimly lit interior accented by rich wood and scarlet velvet and weighed the options in front of them. They decided it was non.  After her meal, Le Pen phoned the prime minister back to say, “I’ve got good and bad news for you,” Barnier recounted in an interview with POLITICO.  She was — confusingly — dropping a demand she had never made, Barnier remembers. But she wanted more measures that he couldn’t stomach.   “I said: Stop, this is not serious … I’m not going to belittle myself,” he said.   FRUITLESS NEGOTIATIONS For Barnier, it was a brutal defeat. Two days later he was kicked to the curb by opposition lawmakers after failing to get them to agree on a plan to put France’s social security finances in order.  Bayrou is almost certain to suffer the same ignominy. But he seems to have spared himself weeks of fruitless negotiations. For Barnier, it was a brutal defeat. Two days later he was kicked to the curb by opposition lawmakers after failing to get them to agree on a plan to put France’s social security finances in order. | Julien de Rosa/AFP via Getty Images “Barnier emerged tortured and weakened from his premiership,” said a government adviser, who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “This way he [Bayrou] spares himself the damage that was visited on Barnier.”  Though Bayrou may leave holding his head a bit higher than Barnier, it appears he too miscalculated by gambling Le Pen would be easier to control after her embezzlement conviction saw her banned from running for political office.   Le Pen’s party isn’t stopping at Bayrou. Her National Rally party is calling on President Emmanuel Macron to resign and wants a vote of no-confidence against European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.   It’s a far cry from the early days of Le Pen’s tenure at the helm of the National Rally, when she tried to remake the party’s image into one of a reasonable, respectable political force open to compromise that was ready to govern.  LE PEN’S PIVOT  During Barnier’s first weeks as prime minister, a path toward bringing the National Rally into the fold seemed both feasible and inevitable.  The surprise snap elections in 2024 ended with the National Rally holding a record number of seats, so ignoring them was impossible — especially considering that in naming Barnier prime minister, Macron had spurned the pan-left coalition that won the most seats in the contest, but fell short of an absolute majority.  Though Bayrou may leave holding his head a bit higher than Barnier, it appears he too miscalculated by gambling Le Pen would be easier to control after her embezzlement conviction saw her banned from running for political office. | Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA So Barnier began his tenure with a risky move: He told parliament that he would respect and engage with “all political forces,” effectively stepping over the invisible cordon sanitaire firewall that for years saw mainstream political parties band together against the far right.  For a long time, Barnier’s team thought the strategy was working. Le Pen’s trajectory, many thought, would follow the same path taken by Italian premier Giorgia Meloni from the post-fascist fringes of the right closer to the mainstream.  “We had a real relationship of confidence,” said one of Barnier’s advisers.  But the honeymoon in this marriage of convenience didn’t last long. There were soon disagreements about legislation and top jobs in parliament, according to insiders.  The Le Pen camp felt misled.  “Barnier assured them that they wouldn’t be despised, so National Rally lawmakers believed him — at first,” said a high-level conservative adviser who knows the National Rally well.  Le Pen sealed Barnier’s political execution over an elegant Italian lunch in early December with her telegenic protégé Jordan Bardella. | Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA But while Barnier said he would treat the National Rally like any other party, he kept them at arm’s length, meeting Le Pen only twice during his time as prime minister. His team “were afraid of being sullied” by the stain of working too closely with the far right, said the same adviser.  Barnier weathered the opprobrium of dealing with the National Rally, but never fully grasped the party’s ambitions after becoming the largest single opposition party in the National Assembly, one National Rally senior adviser said.  Everything changed on Nov. 13, with Le Pen on trial on charges of embezzling European Parliament funds, when French prosecutors called on the judges to immediately ban her from running for public office for five years if convicted. She was eventually found guilty and handed the sentence  “They needed something, a way to take vengeance,” said Antoine Vermorel-Marques, a conservative lawmaker and Barnier protégé. “Barnier suffered the blowback.”  LESSONS LEARNED  Whether Le Pen could have been convinced to go down the Meloni path with Barnier remains unclear.  Barnier never appeared to fully grasp the power dynamics within the National Rally, and at times it seemed the two sides could not bridge the apparent cultural or even class divides between them.   “There was no proximity with the National Rally,” said Marie-Claire Carrère-Gée, a former minister from the Barnier government. “Even with the Socialists we were closer.” She noted that the veteran conservative had friends and was on first-name terms with politicians across the aisle.   Could it have gone differently? Unlikely, say insiders.  Vermorel-Marques said Barnier emerged from the debacle saying Le Pen was simply “dangerous.” One former National Rally politician said Barnier suffered his fate because Macron “had it coming” after naming a prime minister from a party that won a relatively small fraction of seats in the 2024 snap election.   “Someone needed to take the fall, so I took the fall, but all of this is very far from the interests of the nation,” Barnier said himself.   He insists he has no regrets and has learned his lesson. But while Bayrou may not have stumbled across the same tripwire, it’s still Le Pen who looks set to push him out on Monday.

TIRANA, Albania — While the rest of Europe bickers over the safety and scope of artificial intelligence, Albania is tapping it to accelerate its EU accession. It’s even mulling an AI-run ministry. Prime Minister Edi Rama mentioned AI last month as a tool to stamp out corruption and increase transparency, saying the technology could soon become the most efficient member of the Albanian government. “One day, we might even have a ministry run entirely by AI,” Rama said at a July press conference while discussing digitalization. “That way, there would be no nepotism or conflicts of interest,” he argued. Local developers could even work toward creating an AI model to elect as minister, which could lead the country to “be the first to have an entire government with AI ministers and a prime minister,” Rama added. While no formal steps have been taken and Rama’s job is not yet officially up for grabs, the prime minister said the idea should be seriously considered. Ben Blushi, a former ruling party politician and author with a keen interest in AI, said he believes there is nothing to fear from the technology, and that AI-run states are a real possibility that could turn our concept of democracy on its head. “Why do we have to choose between two or more human options if the service we get from the state could be done by AI?” Blushi said. “Societies will be better run by AI than by us because it won’t make mistakes, doesn’t need a salary, cannot be corrupted, and doesn’t stop working.” Albania has long grappled with corruption in all facets of society, and politics is no exception. The ruling party has seen its fair share of officials charged with and convicted of corruption. Opposition leader Sali Berisha is currently facing a corruption trial, and former prime minister and president Ilir Meta is behind bars. AI ALREADY IN PLAY AI is a tool, not a miracle, according to Jorida Tabaku, a member of Albanian parliament with the opposition Democratic Party. She said that in the right hands, it can transform governance — but that in the wrong hands, it becomes “a digital disguise for the same old dysfunction.” While she supports digital innovation and AI, Tabaku said the entire governance system needs a reset before AI could be rolled out. AI is already being used in the administration to manage the thorny matter of public procurement, an area the EU has asked the government to shore up, as well as to analyze tax and customs transactions in real time, identifying irregularities.  Albania has partnered with Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer of OpenAI and the creator of ChatGPT, who was born in southern Albania. | Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for WIRED The country’s territory is also being monitored by smart drones and satellite systems, which use AI to check for illegalities on construction sites and public beaches and for cannabis plantations in more rural areas. Additionally, there are plans to use AI to combat problems on Albanian roads by using facial recognition technology to digitally issue a prompt to a driver’s mobile device to slow down, as well as to send details of speeding fines via text message or email. The country currently has one of the highest rates of fatal traffic accidents in Europe, according to the state statistics agency, mainly due to speeding. There are also aspirations to use AI in health care, education and digital identification of citizens. But Tabaku said that there must be public consultation and clarity around how the technology will be applied, how much it costs — and most importantly, who is programming the algorithms. “If the same actors who benefited from corrupt tenders are the ones programming the algorithm, then we’re not heading into the future. We’re hard-wiring the past,” she said. “You can’t fix a rigged system by putting it in the cloud,” Tabaku said. “In a country where 80 percent of the budget runs through public contracts — and a third are handed out without real competition — AI won’t clean up corruption. It will just hide it better,” she said. HEY SIRI, HOW QUICKLY CAN WE JOIN THE EU? Albania made headlines in 2024 when the prime minister announced that AI was being used to help Albania along its path to membership in the European Union. After formally opening negotiations in 2022, the country started aligning with the EU acquis, comprising some quarter of a million pages of laws, rules and standards. With Rama’s landslide victory in the 2025 general elections on a ticket trumpeting EU membership by 2030, the race is on to get the work done.  The idea is that AI would take care of the translation, and then do the hard work of identifying divergences in national and EU laws — the first time it has been used in the EU membership process. Albania has partnered with Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer of OpenAI and the creator of ChatGPT, who was born in southern Albania. “We reached out to her in the first week after ChatGPT was launched when we became aware of its existence,” Rama said. Thanks to that collaboration, “Negotiations with the EU are being conducted with the assistance of artificial intelligence,” the prime minister said. Rama noted that Croatia, which he said “excelled” in EU integration, took seven years to complete the process — whereas Albania aims to do so in five, completing the paperwork by 2027. Odeta Barbullushi, a former adviser to Rama on EU integration and a professor at the College of Europe in Tirana, agreed that the “sheer volume of the EU aquis is overwhelming and the number of staff needed to translate this in a traditional manner would be massive.” For the technical translation tasks, she said, AI can be “beneficial” and “truly accelerate” the process. But it cannot do the whole job, she added. “The process of the actual adoption and alignment with the EU acquis is essentially a political process and as such, needs political oversight and policy orientation,” Barbullushi said. Rama and Murati’s company, Thinking Machines, did not reply to request for comment. VIRTUAL PUBLIC SERVANTS AND BABY LEADERS The AI push comes amid a broader focus on digitalization in Albania. Rama announced in July that he wants the country to be cashless by 2030, shifting to digital-only payments. The country also recently moved 95 percent of all citizen services online through a portal called e-Albania. Logging onto the platform, users are greeted by a cheerful AI “virtual public servant” that helps them file tax documents, download birth certificates and apply for licenses and permits. While several cyberattacks from Iran have hit the platform, and some elderly citizens have struggled to come to grips with it, Rama says it has managed some 49 million transactions in five years, saving 2.4 million Albanians in the country and 2.8 million in the diaspora more than €600 million. But AI is not just being used for practical purposes in Albania.  In May, some 47 heads of state and government from around Europe descended on Tirana for the European Political Community summit, and were treated to a nearly two-minute video welcoming them to the country in their own language.  But this was a video with a difference. Using AI, the Albanian government had generated an electronic baby version of each leader, which spoke with a child’s voice in their mother tongue. “Benvenuti in Albania,” said baby Giorgia Meloni in Italian. “Dobrodošli u Albaniju,” said baby Aleksandar Vučić in Serbian. Some members of the audience smiled and laughed, while others remained stony-faced. International media were fascinated with the eccentric use of AI at an official event. But beyond the entertaining and obscure, it’s not clear if Albania has the actual capacity to take this leap. Gerond Taçi, a local AI expert, said that the country lacks expertise, people, know-how, data centers and money. The rollout of such technology will also require a step-by-step plan with appropriate controls and legal changes, not to mention a “plan for disaster recovery,” Taçi said. “But there is no other way. The adaptation must go forward, and the Albanian people must be aware of this and be ready for the transition,” he concluded.