First published in Deník N.

Even if Israelis vote out the current government, an ideological shift will endure, says Beth Oppenheim, a policy fellow in the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The London-based analyst explains how once-fringe ideas have crept into the political mainstream and the limitations of liberalism.

In this interview:

• Why Netanyahu’s departure would not bring about fundamental change.
• How 7 October has put diplomacy permanently off the table.
• What to expect if a new government was elected in Knesset (Israeli parliament) elections.
• The lessons Europe can draw from all this.

You say Israel’s illiberal and ethnonationalist turn represents a transformation beyond Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu; these ideologies would not disappear even with him gone. In your analysis of Israeli politics, you avoid the traditional left–right political spectrum – why?

Beth Oppenheim: In the Ideas of Israel project for ECFR, I wanted to unpack this binary we often see on the question of Netanyahu’s leadership. He dominates Israeli politics, but the debate about the prime minister often obscures more interesting trends like the rightward shift of Israeli politics. Often, the opposition is referred to as the liberal bloc, whom the right wing label as leftists – but this is inaccurate.

The pro-Netanyahus form a government coalition, while the opposition bloc is actually rather ideologically diverse. So in my research I wanted to go beyond the reductive question of Netanyahu to understand how parties behave in elections; I wanted to see where all these different parties’ ideologies and visions fit in. 

And this led you to categorise Israeli parties into four groups: the liberal Zionists, the nationalists, the ultra-Orthodox camp, and the religious nationalists. Could you describe each group? Let’s start with the liberal Zionists, who are considered the most left-wing of the Jewish Israeli camps…

Of course. The liberal Zionists include figures such as Yair Golan, Yair Lapid and Gadi Eisenkot.

Eisenkot (Yashar party) is a former general in the military. Despite this, many on the right brand him as a leftist. 

Lapid (Yesh Atid party) comes from a liberal centrist tradition in the mould of his father. Like Eisenkot, he is very secular. A secular vision for Israel and an emphasis on liberal democratic institutions unite the camp of liberal Zionists.

Golan (The Democrats party) is the left flank of this camp. In Europe, he wouldn’t be seen as far left, but within the Israeli spectrum, he is seen as radical. He has security credentials, too, but he’s the only liberal Zionist who talks about a political settlement with the Palestinians. 

The two-state solution is not really on the menu in the Jewish Israeli political mainstream – that’s now the preserve of the far-left fringe; it’s not a mainstream discussion anymore. 

“The two-state solution is not really on the menu in the Jewish Israeli political mainstream”

The liberal Zionists are united around their secularism and their commitment to the liberal democratic institutions, but there’s one big caveat: when it comes to the Palestinian issue, their liberalism is more circumscribed. 

They are not talking about the ongoing occupation and the effect that that has on Israel’s democratic standing. But of course, they’re very united in their opposition to Netanyahu.

The liberal Zionist camp lacks a coherent platform other than this; they basically advocate for good governance, but don’t offer a robust vision. 

And that cannot be said about the nationalists, whose vision is quite clear, right?

Traditionally, the nationalist camp was the mainstream right wing. Today’s main contenders are prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu.

Meanwhile, former prime minister Naftali Bennett is running on a joint list with Lapid’s Yesh Atid, called Beyachad (‘Together’). Bennett and Lapid joined forces despite coming from different ideological traditions. They have very different ideas about the country, but they’re coming together to present a more technocratic agenda, get Netanyahu out and normalise Israeli politics. 

The nationalist camp descends from the Revisionist Zionist tradition based on Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s vision: a liberal democratic outlook fused with ultra-nationalist convictions. So to take a Revisionist Zionist view is to take a hawkish and hardline approach towards Arabs, while keeping a commitment to liberal democratic values. But affinity for liberalism and democratic values has really withered away over recent decades, not only under Netanyahu.

And then there is the ultra-Orthodox camp, without which the current government would never have completed a full term.

The ultra-Orthodox group does not fit easily on the left-to-right political spectrum, which in the Israeli understanding is defined by hawkishness on Palestinians and security.

They are made up of two Ashkenazi parties – Degel HaTorah and Agudat Yisrael – and Sephardic party Shas. What unites them is strict religious observance of Jewish law and their commitment to separation from secular society or modernity.

“The ultra-Orthodox camp is predominantly non-Zionist, but not necessarily anti-Zionist”

Interestingly, the ultra-Orthodox camp is predominantly non-Zionist, but not necessarily anti-Zionist since they didn’t endorse the creation of Israel in its secular form. They engage with the state, but in a limited way – they’re very transactional and pragmatic.

And the ultra-orthodox camp work within state apparatus to advance sectoral interests, yeshiva education, the military service exemption, and subsidies to maintain a somewhat introverted separation from the rest of society.

They are mostly passive when it comes to issues of foreign policy and security policy, but they do not support loss of Jewish life for nationalist ends – they don’t believe that the state in its current form is sacred. And so they don’t, for instance, endorse the loss of Jewish life for territorial expansion.

That leaves us with the last category: the religious nationalist camp.

Religious nationalists draw together ultra-orthodox religious observance, but with ultra-nationalism.

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• Russian journalists reveal what the Kremlin and US are discussing.
• Starshield was supposedly fixed, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
• Russians advance in Rai-Oleksandrivka towards Sloviansk.
• Russia loses two combat Sukhoi aircraft in accidents in one day.
• Map of the day: Rai-Oleksandrivka
• Videos of the day: Kramatorsk evacuation; Russian Su-30 crashes; how helicopters hunt drones.

Russian journalists have described the nature of talks between the Kremlin and the US. A demilitarised zone in Donbas. A Ukraine without Nato membership but is allowed to join the EU membership in return. Sanctions against Russia eased, Russian gas in Europe and news talks on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. And America makes its own deals with Russia.

This is how, according to The Economist, the US proposal to the Kremlin for ending the war sounded, presented in Moscow on Wednesday (21 October) by Steve Witkoff, Trump’s negotiator.

It sounds like something Russia might welcome, but that does not appear to be the case. At least not according to the findings of the Russian exile website Verstka, which a day later published an extensive report on the mood among Russia’s Kremlin-linked elite.

The article, signed by the newspaper’s editorial board, contains numerous quotes from government officials and people close to the regime, whose views on the prospect of swiftly reaching a peace deal and ending the fighting are sceptical.

Verstka wrote that war fatigue was mounting among these people, whose names it naturally did not disclose, but that they fully defer to Russian president Vladimir Putin and are waiting to see what he agrees with US president Donald Trump.

“It can be said with certainty that American sympathies have shifted to our side. We have been working on this for a year and a half,” a source close to the foreign ministry told the journalists, describing Moscow’s strategy.

Russia achieved this through the following argument: since Ukraine considers itself a victim — which it undoubtedly is, editor’s note — and asks for assistance, but is unwilling to make concessions in return for that assistance, it is no longer in fact a victim, but a player with ambitions of its own, which Western taxpayers are unwilling to fund.

Incidentally, the Slovak government uses very similar rhetoric and arguments.

According to the same source, Moscow will emphasise during the talks the hopelessness of Ukraine’s supposed situation.

Another quoted voice was a political strategist directly linked to the Kremlin, who pointed out that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner did not directly take part in the talks in St Petersburg on 21 October, reportedly due to illness.

Nevertheless, this source also praised the US approach, even if Trump’s dispute with Ukraine proved only short-lived: “We have nothing to lose from these solutions. And we could gain both an improved budget and an advantage on the battlefield.” At the same time, the domestic political strategist saw no fundamental changes that could lead to an end to the fighting.

The extent of the irrationality prevailing within the regime was illustrated by statements from another unnamed representative of a formally non-governmental organisation working directly with the Kremlin.

In his analysis, he claimed that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky had created a dictatorial system from which neither elections nor a coup could remove him, and that the war would not end while he remained in office. He also cited reports by Russia’s foreign intelligence service claiming that Kyiv was cooperating with Mexican drug cartels.

Another government official had low expectations of the Americans: “For almost two years now, we have been saying that Trump is supposedly one of us and that the talks are constructive, but they have produced no results. We are fighting, burning, drowning, suffering alongside our homeland.”

The man spoke of a “peace wing”, allegedly comprising people in the presidential administration responsible for domestic policy and economic circles, but this did not mean that there was any open opposition to the war.

“There is no escape from the ship. We are waiting for them to have had enough of the war,” the official said.

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An Egyptian national who sought protection in Italy after arriving on the island of Lampedusa in August may end up dealing a constitutional blow to the EU’s asylum laws after seeking legal counsel.

The Egyptian, who is not named, had his asylum claim rejected even though he did not understand his translator. His is appealing.

“Not even European Union law can conflict with our supreme principles,” his lawyer, Claudia Avenia told EUobserver earlier this week.

Aside from his own personal circumstances, his legal case is raising serious issues that could have a knock-on effect on the EU’s new asylum and migration pact, which kicked into force this past June across all 27 EU member states.

Because he is from Egypt, he was shuffled through a fast track asylum procedure. EU laws require the accelerated process from nationals who have a 20 percent chance or less of getting asylum in Europe. Egypt fits into this category.

A new EU law also meant that he was technically not yet legally inside the EU as authorities carried out health checks, identification and other assessments during a so-called pre-screening phase.

It means he was banned from stepping outside a reception centre, where he was being housed.

Lawyers describe it as the legal fiction of non-entry, similar in scope to certain areas of international airports. Rights experts had earlier warned, when the EU rules were being drafted, that this would lead to defacto detention.

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Two leading Jewish groups want the EU’s next antisemitism tsar to also brief diplomats on foreign policy – despite the controversy it caused for the last one, Katharina von Schnurbein.

“EU external decisions have direct consequences for Jews living in Europe. Diplomats should hear from the person who sees those consequences every day,” said Pinchas Goldschmidt, who heads the Conference of European Rabbis (CER) in Munich, Germany.

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) in Brussels also told EUobserver: “The [EU antisemitism] coordinator should ensure that this objective is systematically reflected in all relevant EU policies, including external action and foreign policy.”

They spoke as von Schnurbein prepared to leave her EU post after 10 years to become a German “federal government commissioner for Jewish life in Germany and the fight against antisemitism” on 28 October.

The 53-year-old German baroness was highly active at events in EU capitals, had three staff, and travelled on missions to Israel, Serbia, Switzerland, and the US.

She also worked next door to European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in her Brussels HQ and had close ties with the Israeli government.

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The series continues as we report on developments following April’s historic election and on the steps taken since then by the Tisza government. This week, we cover the following topics:

• Orbán’s former right-hand man in custody.
• What did we learn from Tisza’s first budget?
• Ursula von der Leyen to give a speech on the anniversary of the revolution.
• Poll of the week: more than four million people back Tisza.

Orbán’s ex-right-hand man in custody

The last time a central bank governor was taken into custody in Hungary was in 1944, during the German occupation, as Válasz Online pointed out. This 82-year hiatus ended on Wednesday (21 October), when György Matolcsy was taken into police custody.

But Matolcsy is not simply a former central bank governor; he is one of the architects of Orbán’s economic policy, a key figure in the former prime minister’s system, and together with his family he has in recent years become one of the symbols of Fidesz’s taste for luxury.

Who is György Matolcsy?

“I have a very strong emotional relationship with Matolcsy. I owe him a great deal, I have learned a great many things from him. Matolcsy is an economist of historic stature,” prime minister Péter Magyar quoted ex-prime minister Viktor Orbán’s words from an interview last November, after the former central bank governor had been taken into custody.

Matolcsy was a member of the Hungarian Socialist Workers’ Party (MSZMP), and after the regime change he became prime minister József Antall’s chief adviser. In 1999 he joined Orbán’s advisory board, and from 2000 to 2002 he served as economy minister in the first Orbán cabinet.

Even after the 2002 election defeat he remained loyal to Orbán, and in 2010 he became minister for national economy, meaning he was put in charge of both the finance and economy portfolios at the head of a merged super-ministry. It was at this time that Orbán called him his right-hand man.

Matolcsy was the architect of Orbán’s “unorthodox economic policy”; he oversaw the nationalisation of private pension funds, the sending home of the IMF from Hungary, and the introduction of high sectoral surtaxes.

The great bank heist

He was appointed central bank governor in 2013, and by 2016 the foundations scandal had already broken. It emerged that 266bn forints’ worth (€840m) of public assets had been shifted into the foundations of the Hungarian National Bank (MNB). These foundations bought buildings and works of art, and also granted substantial benefits to their own leaders.

Later, the foundations’ money was entrusted to an asset management company, which obtained further funds and thus came to control assets of around 500bn forints, of which some 400bn forints (€1bn) – was public money.

This asset manager built up an international corporate network, behind which stood the central bank governor’s son, Ádám Matolcsy, and his circle. The asset manager bought into risky foreign companies, spending a significant part of its resources. The Matolcsy family visibly became very rich, and Ádám also amassed a notorious Porsche collection.

György Matolcsy’s mandate expired in 2025, and after his departure the State Audit Office also concluded that abuses may have taken place at the central bank. For a long time, however, no police investigation was launched.

The current case

The current charges relate to a case that unfolded in the final days of Matolcsy’s activity as central bank governor. Matolcsy wanted to ensure that his family would control the roughly 500bn forints (€1.25bn) of central bank assets even after he no longer held office.

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Europeans made their preference clear. Parliament voted. So why are we still changing the clocks?

On Sunday (25 October), Europeans will once again turn their clocks back by one hour. The familiar ritual will again raise the same question: did the European Union not decide years ago to end seasonal clock changes?

The question entered the European agenda largely from the bottom up.

Citizens repeatedly contacted and petitioned the European Parliament, raising concerns about health, sleep disruption and the continuing usefulness of changing the clocks twice a year.

A citizens’ initiative presented to the Finnish Parliament in 2017 gave the issue further momentum. Finland could not end the practice alone because it was regulated at EU level.

On 8 February 2018, the European Parliament called on the EU Commission to assess the existing directive and, if necessary, propose its revision.

84% public support for ending clock changes…

The commission subsequently launched a public consultation. It received approximately 4.6 million responses from citizens, the highest number ever recorded for an EU consultation at that time. Among those who participated, 84 percent supported ending the twice-yearly clock changes.

The consultation was not a referendum, and participation varied considerably between member states. Nevertheless, millions of Europeans sent a clear political message.

Jean-Claude Juncker highlighted the issue in his 2018 State of the Union address. Shortly afterwards, the commission proposed ending seasonal clock changes while allowing each member state to choose permanent summer time or permanent standard time.

…and MEPs agree

In March 2019, the European Parliament approved the proposal in plenary by 410 votes to 192, with 51 abstentions. The final clock change was expected in 2021.

Yet 2021 came and went, and Europeans continued adjusting their clocks every March and October.

Parliament has not reversed its position, and the commission has not formally withdrawn its proposal. The file remains blocked because member state governments have never agreed on a common position in the Council.

No simple solution for 27 states

Ending the clock change sounds simple until governments must decide what replaces it. Should countries remain permanently on summer time or standard time? What happens if neighbouring countries make different choices? How would a patchwork of time zones affect transport, aviation, trade and the single market?

These are legitimate questions.

A poorly coordinated decision could create new problems while solving the old one. Some governments also requested a more detailed assessment of the consequences. The pandemic and the crises that followed then pushed the issue further down the political agenda.

However, the crisis cannot explain indefinite inaction. Eight years after the Commission presented its proposal, the Council has still not adopted a position. Without it, negotiations with Parliament cannot move towards a final agreement.

This is where a practical question about clocks becomes a problem of democracy, accountability and political communication.

Citizens were encouraged to participate. Millions did. Parliament responded adequately. The commission presented the consultation as evidence that Europe was listening. Its president announced that clock-changing would stop, and Parliament endorsed the proposal with a clear majority.

Then the process got  stuck.

Twice a year, Europeans are reminded of this promise, but receive little to no explanation about who is blocking progress, which governments support which option or how the disagreement might be resolved.

Simply saying that “the EU failed” would, however, hide who has the concrete political responsibility. The EU is a complex, multilevel decision-making system in which responsibility is shared among different institutions and member state governments. Parliament adopted its position, while national capitals failed to agree in the council.

Those governments should explain their positions instead of allowing “Brussels” to absorb the blame like often happens, for their collective indecision.

The European Commission also has certain responsibility because her proposed legislation left the most difficult question, the choice of permanent time, to individual countries. 

In any case, the EU risks turning, or did turn,  an example of successful citizen agenda-setting into an example of participatory failure.

The issue may not be Europe’s most urgent challenge right now, but credibility and a positive image is also built through implementation of citizens’ demands such as this one.

People notice when a widely announced change does not happen, especially when it impacts directly and negatively their daily life. They also notice when nobody explains why.

Member state governments should state publicly whether they favour permanent summer time, permanent standard time or retaining the current system. The council should put the issue back on its agenda and strive to achieve an agreement.

And if this is not possible, Europeans deserve a clear explanation why their participation led nowhere.

France is facing one of its worst political, social and fiscal crises in years, and there is a sense things will get worse before they get better.

What started in September as high-school protests over teacher shortages and poor education standards in the Paris suburbs later grew into a much wider revolt over soaring fuel and living costs, a public sector pay freeze and a proposed austerity budget.

Last Saturday (17 October), public anger exploded into nationwide riots. More than half a million people took to the streets across France. Most marched peacefully. But violence broke out on the sidelines in several cities, with looting, arson and clashes with police.

When things finally calmed down, nearly 2,400 people had been arrested, interior minister Laurent Nuñez later said.

But even as protesters demand more teachers, smaller classes, higher wages and cheaper fuel, investors have been selling off French government bonds, worried that France cannot rein in its spending.

The gap between French and German 10-year borrowing costs, an important gauge of financial stability in the eurozone, reached almost 151 basis points on Tuesday, the widest since the eurozone debt crisis of 2011-2012.

But French politics is too divided to agree on the spending cuts bond traders want to see. And with presidential elections due in April, a quick resolution looks unlikely.

That leaves the central bank. The European Central Bank (ECB) could buy up French debt to bring borrowing costs down. It may even be forced to, if bond market panic spreads. But bailing out France is politically explosive, and depends on the judgement of the bank’s 27-member governing council. 

For the time being, the ECB “is unlikely to say or do anything helpful,” Shahin Vallée, a senior associate fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), wrote in a recent blog post.

Vallée, who is now an advisor to institutional investors, previously worked for Herman Van Rompuy who was European Council president during the eurozone crisis. He then joined Emmanuel Macron, France’s economy minister at the time, as advisor.

That background means he can speak with authority on everything from macroeconomics and bond markets to French politics and fiscal woes. EUobserver reached out to him to see what comes next.

Last week you were in Bangkok, where the IMF urged rich and poor countries to cut deficits and get debt under control. Is that the right medicine for France?

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“The ‘job’ … has been mostly accomplished,” said a senior official in Belgium’s spy service, Hugues Brulin, in a WhatsApp message to the Belgian then EU commissioner, Didier Reynders.

“Bravo for the work you did,” said Reynders.

It was back in 2022, and, at least on the surface, they were chatting about a staff reshuffle inside Belgium’s intelligence service, La Sûreté de l’Etat/Veiligheid van de Staat (VSSE) — which was already a peculiar thing for Brulin to be doing on WhatsApp with an EU official.

But their messages, seen by EUobserver and published in full below, were now also evidence in a Belgian police investigation into Reynders on money-laundering charges, which painted them in the light of a potentially criminal conspiracy.

They reconfirmed that Belgian authorities were looking into wider allegations of Reynders’ possible collusion with Russia.

Brulin’s real “job” had been to stop the VSSE from probing Reynders and his potential Russia links, according to five former and current Belgian intelligence officers who spoke to EUobserver.

And Brulin also WhatsApp-ed Reynders on how to “counterattack” a Russia whistleblower.

The 68-year-old liberal politician from Liège, in French-speaking southern Belgium, had had a glittering career before his sudden fall from grace in December 2024, when Belgian police raided his properties, and before he was subsequently charged in 2025 with having laundered some €1m via the ING Bank, using lottery tickets and cash deposits.

Reynders had been EU justice commissioner from 2019 until 30 November 2024 (just four days prior to the police raid) and Belgium’s foreign and defence minister from 2011 to 2019.

And Belgium had vetted and cleared him to read “top secret” national, EU, and Nato documents.

Meanwhile, Europe was scandalised to learn, on 10 October, that Germany’s former spy chief had been arrested for selling secrets.

But if a man with Reynders’ CV was also found guilty of corruption and foreign collusion, it would be yet another security fiasco for Western allies.

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Europe is a work in progress. Its future depends on the ability of people, institutions and businesses to work together across national borders and political divides.

The European project is far from perfect, but it remains the strongest alternative to a continent defined by division and confrontation.

Europe has advanced through dialogue, negotiation and compromise. Challenging established ideas is part of that process. So is recognising that criticism alone cannot deliver change. The task is to improve what we have built and find common ground on what comes next.

That responsibility extends well beyond the EU institutions and the Brussels bubble.

Businesses, civil society, universities, national governments, media and citizens all have a stake in Europe’s future. The single market and the euro, for example, are not merely institutional achievements. They are also the products of economic cooperation and the participation of businesses and citizens across the continent.

Strengthening Europe’s competitiveness and prosperity should be understood in the same way: as a shared undertaking, not an agenda reserved for political and economic elites. A stronger Europe requires participation, initiative and a willingness to contribute. It cannot be built by those who remain on the sidelines.

Europe needs more Connectors

Construction usually brings to mind roads, bridges and buildings — the concrete structures that link cities, countries and communities. But Europe also relies on less visible infrastructure: the networks, institutions and platforms that bring people together, build trust and turn ideas into action.

Media, civic organisations, universities and professional networks all play a role in this process. They connect perspectives, create opportunities for dialogue and help people identify shared interests across sectors and borders. They make cooperation possible where distance, competing priorities or a lack of understanding might otherwise stand in the way.

These Connectors are essential to Europe’s ability to act collectively. They help businesses engage with policymakers, give citizens access to informed public debate and enable organisations to exchange knowledge and develop partnerships. Their value lies not only in the connections they create, but also in what those connections make possible.

Pan-European media has a particular role to play. Outlets such as EUobserver do more than report on European affairs. They provide a space where different perspectives meet, complex policy debates become accessible and stakeholders can better understand the choices shaping the continent. In doing so, they can help connect the communities that make the European project work.

This is also the thinking behind our initiative to develop a media product dedicated to the business community. The aim is to create opportunities for organisations to communicate their priorities, strengthen their visibility and engage with the people and ideas shaping Europe’s economic future.

But the ambition goes beyond communication. It is about building relationships between businesses and the wider European ecosystem, encouraging the exchange of ideas and helping organisations find common ground around shared challenges and opportunities.

A competitive and prosperous Europe needs more than sound policies and strong institutions. It needs people and organisations willing to connect, cooperate and contribute. Media can help bring them together.

Europe is still under construction. Let’s connect its Connectors

To explore how we can connect your organisation with the people and ideas shaping Europe, contact us at connector@euobserver.com. 

Earlier this week, EU officials said in unusually staunch terms that they would not buy Arctic oil and gas.

Even if someone (Norway) decided to drill new oil or gas wells in the Barents Sea, which is well above the Arctic Circle, the EU would not purchase it.

The goal is to dissuade investors. It costs many billions of euros to develop gas or oil at scale in the harsh conditions of the far north.

If there is no offtake market in continental Europe, no-one is going to take the risk.

The thing is, EU buyers already buy gas (and oil) from the Arctic. A lot of it.

Most of the gas, some 12 million tonnes so far this year, comes from Russia’s Yamal LNG plant, which sits on the shore of the biggest estuary you have never heard of, the Gulf of Ob (Obskaya Guba in Russian).

But that will end 10 weeks from now, when the EU ban on Russian LNG kicks in.

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The European Parliament overwhelmingly supported an increased budget and scope for the Erasmus+ student-exchange programme under the new EU budget on Thursday (22 October).

The plenary in Strasbourg opted for a €7bn increase in Erasmus+’s budget compared to the commission’s proposal, by 454 votes, with 34 abstentions, against 93, mostly from right-wing parties.

And it was an audacious move, seeing as ‘frugal’ EU capitals are pushing for €150bn of cuts to the commission’s draft.

But even a “slight increase” in Erasmus+ funds would mean more opportunities for thousands of people, said Bogdan Zdrojewski, a Polish centre-right MEP, who was the rapporteur on the file, during a parliamentary debate earlier on Wednesday.

Celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2027, Erasmus+ enables young people to study, live, and work in foreign countries both inside the 27 EU states and the programme’s 160 “associate” states worldwide.

Some 17 million people have taken part since it began, with an estimated 1 million babies also born to couples who met on exchange, in what the commission has long used as a flagship PR project for creating a feel-good factor about the EU.

Meanwhile, the UK will rejoin the programme in 2027, which means EU students will once more have the opportunity to also spend a semester in Britain, which hosts some of Europe’s and the world’s top universities.

And the parliament would also welcome Canada’s full participation in a few years’ time, Zdrojewski told press on Wednesday.

The EU Parliament would like to expand Erasmus+ to more vocational training. “Erasmus+ will be a programme for Europeans no matter what age, what stage of life,” Zdrojewski said.

And students from poorer homes should get more support to live in pricey cities abroad, he added.

The share of Erasmus+ participants who had fewer opportunities to travel under the present structure stood at 15 percent in 2023 – up from 10 percent only two years earlier, according to a commission evaluation.

“Far too often, it is still the parents’ financial situation that determines who can take part in Erasmus+ and who cannot,” said Sabrina Repp, a German socialist MEP, in Wednesday’s debate in Strasbourg.

Working students often cannot afford to quit their current job to go abroad, she added: “That is precisely what we must change.”

The EU budget talks are to be finalised early next year.

Some 83 percent of Erasmus+ participants say they gained professional skills that helped them in the labour market.

But in order for those opportunities to be available more widely, “we need more funding for this programme,” also said Lucia Yar, a Slovak liberal MEP in the Strasbourg debate.

• Soldiers told the New York Times how they survived six months in the kill zone.
• Basic rules for survival.
• Modern warfare: masses of equipment versus courageous individuals.
• Following peace talks, the humanist Putin sent ballistic missiles to Ukraine.
• Map of the day: the successful Operation Vivaldi.
• Videos of the day: the underground Operation Veles into the Russian rear and an aerial drone duel.

Soldiers speak about their six months in the kill zone. When the 128th Mechanised Brigade asked at a training ground last autumn who was willing to go into the ‘kill zone’, the term used for the most dangerous stretches of the 1,200-km front, two soldiers volunteered.

And the rest visibly breathed a sigh of relief.

Hennadiy and Mykhailo, whose story was reported by the New York Times, spent a long six months “at zero” rather than one, and described in detail how they managed to survive on the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region.

Their account shows how, despite drone warfare, the basic work — holding or capturing new positions — is still done by infantry, which remains indispensable even in this war, where a technological advantage can mean the difference between life and death.

Both set out by car from the village of Prymorske and, when they were about 1.5 km from their destination, began a slow and extremely dangerous journey.

It was most dangerous when they had to move.

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The EU’s border force Frontex is getting overhauled next Tuesday (27 October) by a European Commission determined to give the Warsaw-based agency a larger role in deportations, more resources, and more agility to deploy.

The Brussels-executive has already proposed increasing the agency’s budget to €12bn, spread out over seven years. The money is being discussed as part of a larger drawn out EU budget fight among EU states.

Budget tussles aside, the commission has already dropped clues into what it wants from the new agency, following demands from its political masters at the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP).

The EPP had wanted to expand the border force to 30,000 from the proposed 10,000. But it is unlikely the 30,000 will be met given the difficulty of finding recruits.

Frontex currently has around 1,250 officers, who are directly employed by the agency. Its standing corps also includes officers provided by member states on long- and short-term assignments. That means they are not all on the Frontex payroll.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, ahead of this month’s EU summit, instead spoke of a “substantial increase” of the Frontex standing corps, without committing to a number.

She also called for European Border and Return Reserve, a Quick Reaction Force for crisis deployment, a Return Coordination Centre to accelerate and improve returns including from foreign states, and social media snooping to gauge any possible Ceuta-like mass arrivals.

The agency is also likely to get more personal data sharing powers with the EU police force Europol.

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The European Parliament on Thursday (22 October) backed a three-year delay to the EU’s methane rules for oil and gas importers, two years more than the European Commission proposed last week.

MEPs also voted to extend the delay to European oil and gas producers, which goes beyond the commission’s plans.

The text now forms parliament’s position for negotiations with member states, whose ambassadors failed to agree on Wednesday.

Under the amendments, tabled by the conservative European People’s Party (EPP), importers would only have to prove that their oil and gas meets EU monitoring standards from 2031, instead of 2027 under the current law.

Reporting on methane intensity would also be delayed from 2028 to 2031.

A separate amendment from a cross-party group of 36 Romanian and Bulgarian MEPs, which also passed, delays reporting obligations for EU operators by three years, to 2030.

MEPs also approved an amendment, tabled by Dutch Socialist MEP Mohammed Chahim, that the extra time should not apply to oil, gas and coal from countries under EU sanctions, which in practice means Russia.

A far-right Patriots for Europe proposal to suspend the regulation altogether was rejected, as was a push by the conservative ECR group to delay parts of the rules even longer.

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) has received the EU’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

Reacting to EU Parliament president Roberta Metsola’s announcement of the prize winner on Thursday (22 October), the Hague-based court said it is “thankful” for the recognition of the court and its officials.

“This award comes at a time when the court and its officials face unprecedented challenges, including sanctions aimed at disrupting the court’s judicial mandate,” ICC president judge Tomoko Akane told EUobserver in a statement.

The parliament’s recognition “underscores the importance of […] support to enable the Court to carry out its mandate independently and impartially, in the service of justice and the victims of the gravest crimes,” said the Japanese judge.

The court’s win comes after US president Donald Trump put his weight behind Israeli efforts to discredit the international judicial body by extending sanctions against it.

The ICC investigates and tries individuals charged with war and human-rights related crimes. When it issued an arrest warrant in 2024 for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes, the US responded by sanctioning its judges.

EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the win, saying:
“For victims of the world’s gravest crimes, justice means a voice. The ICC must be free to pursue its mission, independently, and without pressure or intimidation. Europe stands firmly behind president Tomoko Akane, the Court’s judges and officials, and their vital work for a world governed by rules.”

New sanctions against the court were announced by the Trump administration this month after the Nobel Peace Prize went to Navi Pillay, a former ICC judge who concluded in a UN report that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Tomoka said: “While this prize recognises the work of the court in combating impunity and ensuring fair trials, it is also an important recognition of the role of international justice as a cornerstone of lasting peace. In a world marked by rising conflicts, there is no peace without justice and no security without law.”

Strasbourg stands for justice

French MEP Chloé Ridel initiated the ICC’s nomination for the Sakharov Prize on behalf of the Socialists & Democrats parliament group.

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A high-ranking EU politician has gone on hunger strike over the humanitarian crisis in besieged Oleshky in Ukraine.

Pina Picierno, an Italian MEP and a vice-president in the EU parliament, told EUobserver she is refusing to eat solid food to draw attention to the besieged Ukrainian town.

Eight kilometres from Kherson, Oleshky is reported to now have 1,700 inhabitants, down from 24,000 people before Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The EU says the town is without access to food, medicine, clean water and basic care.

The only route to escape is tapped with mines and rife with attack drones, Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha warned last Saturday (17 October).

Saying that Russia wants to make Oleshky a “death trap”, the Ukrainian minister urged the UN and International Red Cross to secure evacuation corridors and immediate humanitarian access to Oleshky.

“Families are starving, surviving on leftover garden vegetables, preserves and even snails,” he said.

Pope calls Putin over Oleshky

The Vatican has attempted to mediate, with Pope Leo calling last week for Russian president Vladimir Putin to arrange a humanitarian ceasefire to allow in aid. 

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Last week, Elsene became the fifth  municipality to vote for an end to fossil-fuel advertising, joining Saint-Gilles, Jette, Schaerbeek and Molenbeek.

Four of those five votes came in the space of just four months, and together, these municipalities are home to roughly 370,000 people: one-third of the Brussels-Capital Region’s population.

All five are making the same demand: that the Brussels region bans fossil-fuel advertising across the entire city, from metro stations to regional roads. More motions are already being tabled, and by the end of the year, a majority of Brussels’ 19 municipalities could be on record calling for a ban.

While local politicians are taking the lead, the outlook a little higher up the chain looks less promising. 

Europe’s ad town and the EU’s lobby town

Everyday tens of thousands of officials, MEPs, assistants and diplomats brave Brussels morning rush hour on their way to work on the laws that will decide whether Europe meets its climate targets.

Along the way they pass numerous temptations, bus shelters and metro walls selling them petrol cars, weekend flights and gas contracts, normalising the ongoing mass-consumption of these products. 

Once they reach their offices, they meet the same industry again, this time in person. The seven biggest oil and gas companies alone have declared lobbying budgets of almost €64m.

Fossil Free Politics research shows EU Commissioners and their cabinets had nearly 900 meetings with fossil fuel lobbyists in the last term. That’s nearly once every working day, showing just how embedded the industry is in the daily rhythm of Brussels life.

Some files come under particularly heavy pressure, with one egregious example being how a secretive alliance of eleven large multinational enterprises worked to tear down the EU’s flagship human rights and climate law last year, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).

The fossil fuel industry is currently mounting an extremely intense lobbying campaign to delay and dilute the EU Methane Emissions Regulation over the past year.

Over 80 percent of all commission meetings with external interest representatives on this regulation involved fossil fuel lobbyists, and the European Parliament is no better. All 17 MEPs who called for the methane regulation to be reopened in an April 2026 letter to the commission had met with fossil fuel lobbyists in the preceding year.

And those are only the declared figures.

Lobbyists roaming the corridors

Safe to say, the real total is almost certainly higher. According to new research by Reclaim Finance, on two out of every three days, the fossil-fuel lobbyists present at the European Parliament had no meetings scheduled with MEPs. They roam the corridors and cafés in the building, aiming to bump into the MEPs they wish to influence.

The councillors behind these fossil ad ban motions are not pretending that a few billboards will single-handedly solve the climate crisis, but they refuse to continue letting public spaces be misused by the fossil, automotive and aviation industry to freely promote their propaganda; as for the latter, especially since the advertised destinations are often precisely those places that have been the victims of severe climate disruptions..  

“The summer of 2026 was a painful awakening to the harsh reality of the consequences of the climate crisis,” said Mathias Gyselen, the Ecolo-Groen councillor who tabled Schaerbeek’s motion in September.

“Heatwaves, heat islands and heat deaths are unfortunately becoming the new normal in the city. Doing nothing is no longer an option.”

They are right. Advertising is how the fossil fuel industry keeps its social licence, presenting itself as part of the solution while expanding the very products driving the crisis.

Not just the five sub-municipalities of the Brussels capital acknowledge this, but over 70+ cities worldwide have taken steps to clear their streets from fossil fuel advertising, among them Amsterdam, Sydney, Stockholm and Edinburgh.

The problems with advertisements, and multi-million euro lobby strategies, are not just that they very much harm the planet, they are also fundamentally undemocratic. 

Residents, community groups and civil society organisations cannot match the industry’s firepower. They do not have the budgets, the staff or the open doors that put them across the table from lawmakers week after week.

Europe has dealt with this before.

‘Godfathers of climate chaos’

Tobacco lobbyists no longer get privileged access to health ministers, nor can cigarette brands buy billboards. For many similar reasons the world wants to end fossil fuels, the EU banned tobacco advertising because promoting a deadly product was incompatible with public health.

UN secretary-general António Guterres made the same comparison in 2024 when he urged every country to ban fossil fuel advertising, naming fossil-fuel companies as the “godfathers of climate chaos”

Municipal motions are not binding, so the decision now lies with the Brussels-Capital Region, which controls advertising in the metro, along regional roads and on its own infrastructure. A first obvious step is that it should listen to its municipalities and introduce a city-wide ban.

But the message is also addressed to the institutions on the other side of the Rue de la Loi.

If the streets of Europe’s capital are being cleared of fossil fuel promotion, the corridors of its institutions should be too. That means limiting the industry’s access to decision-makers, closing the revolving door, and rejecting fossil fuel sponsorship and partnerships, just as the EU did with tobacco.

The municipalities of Brussels have shown what local democracy looks like. Now it is up to the region and the EU institutions to show that Europe’s capital is not for sale; not on its billboards, and not in its corridors of power.

For years, Serbia’s opposition has struggled to turn public discontent into a credible challenge to Aleksandar Vučić’s political dominance. On Sunday (25 October), a student-led movement that began with demands for accountability after a deadly train station collapse will attempt to do what established opposition forces have repeatedly failed to achieve: translate civic mobilisation into political change.

The upcoming parliamentary elections are about more than the (re)distribution of seats. They represent the endeavour citizens want and need in a democratic society.

For several years now, “the students operate according to the principles of direct democracy,” senior research associate at the University of Belgrade, Vasiljević told EUobserver. They gather in “plenums” and make collective decisions.

The motor behind that movement was anger. The lack of accountability after the collapse of a canopy at Novi Sad railway station on 1 November 2024, which killed 16 people was the main trigger.

Since then, protests have been taken place around in the country. Eventually, they grew into a nationwide challenge to the government. The student movement even marched from Belgrade to Brussels and Strasbourg to appeal to the EU institutions.

“It brought some irreversible changes that will have a lasting impact on society,” said Vasiljević.

And these changes could be now transposed into politics. “The country has been held captive for far too long by one ruling party and, in fact, one ruling elite,” Miloje Savić, a volunteering poll observer, told EUobserver.

For many Serbs, as for Savić, the students’ organisation represent “a tectonic shift in how society is organised and how it should function.”

The Student List, now the electoral vehicle for the mobilisation, has given people frustrated with established politics a new focus for their demands. The main idea being that political participation can be rebuilt from the ground up.

“It is not a good time to be living in Serbia. And during my life, I can’t remember a time when it was,” Ivan Bartoš, a 31-year-old organiser of student protests in Bački Petrovac told EUobserver.

Serbia, as many European countries, is suffering from an ageing population. It brings to the social debate a generational difference. On one side, the middle-aged and “corrupted” regime led by Vučić, on the other, a proposal of change without real political experience.

And the question that is heard in the run-up to the elections is “does Serbia need a professional politician who has been trained for years in kleptocracy, or is society willing to take a risk?”

Vučić’s ‘men in black’?

Yet the movement’s rise has exposed a fundamental tension: society may be changing faster than the institutions through which change must be delivered.

“The institutions have been captured and controlled by the regime. There is not enough institutional space to accommodate these political changes,” Vasiljević said.

Previous Serbian elections have been accompanied by allegations of vote-buying, voter intimidation and ballot-box stuffing. After the last ones, held in December 2023, European MP’s called for “independent investigations into the irregularities”.

Knowing what is at stake, the Student List is trained an unprecedented number of poll monitors (15,000), seeking to protect the vote and document potential irregularities.

Attacks on opposition representatives by groups of unidentified men dressed in black have repeatedly raised concerns during the rule of Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS).

The media are not safe either.

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Poland’s governing coalition voted in parliament to loosen abortion law on Tuesday (20 October) – but the country’s conservative president is expected to block the change.

Poland has one of Europe’s harshest abortion laws, allowing only two exceptions to a general ban: in case of rape or danger to the woman’s health.

The amendments, passed by a narrow majority, would allow for abortions in cases of severe deformation of the foetus, and partially decriminalise helping others terminate their pregnancy.

Currently, doctors fear facing up to three years in prison for performing an illegal abortion. At least six women have died because they were denied an abortion in the last six years.

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Offices of staff in the Patriots for Europe (PfE) group were raided in France and Belgium on Wednesday (21 October).

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) told EUobserver that searches were carried out “as part of an ongoing investigation into the use of European funds by a former political group in the European Parliament”.

But the law enforcement body said it would not release details of the investigation for now, to avoid jeopardising the integrity of the case.

The far-right PfE group in the European Parliament, led by Jordan Bardella of the French National Rally (RN) party, posted a statement on social media claiming that on Wednesday morning, the EPPO carried out searches in administrative offices at the European Parliament premises in Brussels and Strasbourg.

“It would appear that these searches are linked to the complaint lodged against the Identity and Democracy Group (ID) dissolved in 2024,” said PfE’s X post.

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