© OLIVIER HOSLET/EPA
The fact that Spain is swimming against the tide on European immigration issues became more evident than ever on Friday, when several EU leaders led by the prime ministers of Denmark and Italy — Mette Frederiksen and Giorgia Meloni — strongly criticized the Spanish government’s decision earlier this year to grant legal status to potentially hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants.
© FRANCOIS LENOIR (ACN)
The EU plans to fast-track antitrust approval for Project Bromo, a satellite venture meant to cut Europe's reliance on American space technology, Bloomberg reports. The news comes days after the White House ordered the Pentagon to slow Starshield, the military-grade Starlink service Ukraine's forces use, according to Reuters.
Project Bromo would merge the satellite businesses of Italy’s Leonardo and France’s Airbus and Thales into one company. Bloomberg calls it the bloc’s answer to SpaceX, and the EU sees it as a regional giant able to compete with US and Chinese rivals.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has backed the project, Eunews reports.
“These are the types of industrial champions we need if Europe is to lead in the space economy of tomorrow,” she said at an international space summit in Paris last month, citing Bromo by name.
Over the past year, the partners and EU officials have worked through potential competition concerns so they can be resolved before a formal application, according to Bloomberg. The companies have not yet applied, but Brussels expects them to in the coming weeks.
For large deals, regulators usually hold such preliminary talks to flag obstacles early. If the companies offer concessions, such as selling some assets, the deal could clear after a first-phase review of a little over a month. If competition concerns remain, the Commission could open an in-depth probe lasting several months.
A fast review is not a free pass. Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera has warned that the project cannot expect one, and unions and suppliers have raised concerns about jobs and competition, Bloomberg reports. Von der Leyen’s public backing drew criticism from some members of the European Parliament.
Her support “doesn’t mean we are not going to apply and to enforce our own regulation,” Ribera told Bloomberg TV.
The push is part of a wider European scramble for space autonomy. Ukraine wants to build a satellite system of its own that no single company controls.
This week showed why. After the Starshield order, the military-grade terminals stopped working on fast-moving objects, and now work only at speeds of up to 160 kph, a person in Ukraine’s Defense Ministry told Reuters. Ukrainian officials said the restrictions complicated strike missions against Russian forces and logistics in occupied territory and slowed the interceptor drones that shoot down Shaheds.
The EU will not lift sanctions on Russia while its war against Ukraine continues, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa said on Friday. Their statements came ahead of discussions at the European Council, where leaders were due to consider further support for Ukraine and the needs of its critical infrastructure before winter. The assurances followed Washington’s move to ease sanctions pressure in connection with a deal involving Russian diesel supplies.
Von der Leyen said the EU had supported the energy truce announced by US President Donald Trump, but accused Russia of failing to observe it. “We have seen that Russia did not respect it. Not a single minute. Instead, Russia escalated. We have to increase the pressure on Russia,” she said. She added that the Commission was working on a 22nd sanctions package and that the bloc would not lift any sanctions unless Russia stopped the war.
Costa also rejected any reduction in pressure. “We will not cancel any sanctions until Russia stops the war,” he said, calling for stronger support for Ukraine and increased pressure on Moscow to secure a genuine ceasefire. The statements set out the position of the Commission and European Council presidents; they were not, in themselves, a new sanctions decision by EU member states.
The US and EU sanctions regimes are separate. Washington’s decision concerns US restrictions associated with Russian diesel exports, while EU measures are adopted by the member states. Moscow said it had resumed diesel exports under the arrangement with the Trump administration, a development that has prompted concern in Kyiv and European capitals. The reported resumption of Russian shipments has brought renewed attention to the effect of energy revenue on the Kremlin’s ability to finance its war.
The Commission describes EU sanctions as a means of reducing Russia’s capacity to fund the war, imposing costs on its political leadership and weakening its economic base. The measures cover energy, trade and finance, alongside listings of individuals, companies and organisations. The EU’s sanctions framework against Russia has been expanded through successive packages since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The leaders’ statements came as Ukraine prepared for another winter of Russian attacks on energy infrastructure. The European Council meeting agenda included continued support for Ukraine and the operational needs of its critical infrastructure. Von der Leyen said the EU would continue to support Ukraine through the winter. She also referred to progress on Ukraine’s accession process, saying the remaining negotiation clusters should be opened by the end of the year.
The EU has recently added measures targeting Russia’s military-industrial sector. In October, it adopted a package of listings aimed at companies and individuals connected to the country’s war effort, as covered in EU Today’s report on the latest sanctions. The diesel arrangement has also followed earlier tensions over the use of sanctions and energy policy, including the US deal with Moscow.
The EU’s stated position is that its sanctions will remain in place until Russia ends the war. The Commission is preparing further measures, while any new package will require agreement among member states. Friday’s statements did not change the existing regime, but made clear that the US decision on Russian diesel would not, by itself, prompt Brussels to ease EU restrictions.
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Ursula von der Leyen has the answer. Borrow even more money. Borrow like there’s no tomorrow.
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The most remarkable thing about the rapid demise of the U.S. is that when it hits the bottom of the ocean floor economically, it will be in a better state than the EU. The panic among EU leaders, in particular Ursula von der Leyen, is breathtaking. Barely a week passes before she makes another crackpot policy announcement, gives herself a salary increase, or makes a statement about needing to give even more money to Ukraine. But in recent months these announcements have become more radical and existential, and we are seeing a new dawn now in the EU where the only solution to cover up the feral spending and borrowing is to fabricate a war with Russia and then blame Putin for the whole fiasco.
Every now and again we get a sober reminder about the economic situation of the U.S., EU and Russia. The recent news that Putin is going to sell around 2 million tonnes of diesel oil to “global markets” (as U.S. media phrases it), the lion’s share going to the U.S. before, during and just after the midterm elections in a bid to stabilise the price to help Trump. We will have to assume that countries who buy some of their diesel from the U.S. will continue doing so, but it might, in fact, be Russian oil.
There’s a lot of fake news buzzing around originating from Trump, who likes to distract journalists away from the top issues. It’s hard to see how the American public will respond to Trump’s latest decision to buy Russian diesel, but it’s hard to see this being a solution to the global oil crisis, let alone Trump’s record-low ratings. Will Trump really go ahead with a new wave of strikes on Iran after the midterms, as he has said? Or is it that his own intelligence agencies have picked up information that Iran is poised for a massive strike, and so therefore he is obliged to send even more troops, plus a carrier, to the region?
Regardless of how France and Germany get their diesel in the coming weeks, after Trump forced these governments to dip into their own reserves by threatening a U.S. export ban, it’s hard to see how the Achilles heel of most EU economies – crude oil products – can still be controlled by Moscow. While intellectually challenged figures like Mark Rutte make such stupid comments about how Russia could never win a war with NATO based on comparative GDP data, this latest move might be a huge wake-up call for Macron and Merz, the latter facing dismally low poll ratings. How do you continue to fund a war in Ukraine with the ‘frenemy’ relationship pushed to breaking point, such as is the case now with the U.S. having to buy diesel from Russia? EU countries loathe Putin, as the one hope they had to magically breathe new life into EU economies by taking Ukraine under its wing was shattered when Russian forces invaded. Putin is everything they are not. Nobody can deny Putin is a leader – the very thing that is so desperately lacking in EU countries. Leadership.
But the situation now has reached farce. With a global diesel crisis brought about by Trump’s war with Iran, EU countries are expected to buy diesel on the international market, topped up by Russia. In fact, buying oil from your enemy is nothing new. Countries have been doing this for decades. Even in Syria, we saw terror groups in the north-east of the country take over the oil infrastructure and then sell oil back to the Assad regime.
It’s hard to see how EU countries will draw a line in the sand between their geostrategic military objectives and their very realistic need for a stable oil supply. But in the midst of this chaos, Ursula von der Leyen has the answer. Borrow even more money. Borrow like there’s no tomorrow. Her latest proposal is to expand the current seven-year EU budget to 2 trillion euros, and there is only one way this can be achieved, as member states are never going to cough up more for the EU experiment. She will be forced to borrow from international banks to replace a previous loan of 750 billion euros for COVID. This is the solution for failing economies. Where once for so many years EU apparatchiks would defend the EU’s failure to implement its own rule book, in preference for constantly adopting new legislation, now this seems to have been replaced by ‘create a panic about Russia and make the EU a sort of executive of NATO without a single trace of democratic virtue’. Von der Leyen doesn’t stipulate what this massive increase is for, but we can assume some of it will be siphoned off for Ukraine. Madness on steroids. But hidden in the text is a new series of taxes which the EU itself could impose on individuals, and so in the smoke-and-mirrors confusion we see there is a back-door way to start taxing EU citizens, something Brussels never touched before. How long has the whole project got?
It is rarely a good sign when European politicians open their speeches by quoting Charles Dickens. So alarms should have sounded the moment European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared this to be the best and the worst of times at the start of her State of the European Union address on September 16.
Things went downhill from there: the EU leader painted a picture of the region that stands in complete contrast to the general experience of its people, amounting to a summary of the bloc’s worst achievements.
“Von der Leyen has achieved the feat of not mentioning a single measure to help Europeans cope with the soaring cost of living across Europe, at a time when an ever-growing number of people are now forced to choose between housing, food and transport,” said Manon Aubry, Co-President of The Left in the European Parliament.
In the lengthy address, von der Leyen laid out what she considered the EU’s successes, including raising military spending by almost 80% over the past five years and “reducing dependence” on Russian fossil fuels. However, this interpretation does not correspond to what people are experiencing, as outlined by The Left in a dedicated dossier. Growing military spending benefits only the arms industry. And attempts to replace cheaper Russian gas have essentially boiled down to committing to more expensive and environmentally devastating US LNG imports.
While recognizing growing energy prices, von der Leyen offered no tangible response to this problem plaguing EU households. On the other hand, she demonstrated notable concern for businesses, signaling the continuation of eroding labor and environmental protections along the lines implemented by right and far-right parties at the EU level.
The likelihood of maintaining the status quo was also noticeable when von der Leyen turned to the deadly wildfires that hit Europe this summer, devastating communities from Belgium and France to Spain and Greece. Trade unions and progressive analysts have warned for years that fire preparedness is severely impaired by a lack of planning and, specifically, shortages of firefighters. Yet there was no commitment in the address to invest more in essential public service workers. Instead, the EC President referred to the ongoing need for overall “fiscal sustainability” – meaning Europeans should expect no relief from austerity programs.
“The best of times is clearly reserved for billionaires, multinational energy companies, and war profiteers,” remarked Member of the European Parliament Marc Botenga from the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB-PVDA). “The other side of the coin for workers: austerity and rising prices.”
Based on the vision tabled by von der Leyen, there is also little to look forward to in Europe’s international and trade policy. “It’s hard to think of an area where the EU has been more inactive and less effective than in foreign affairs,” The Left wrote, referring to the union’s ongoing disregard of international law in relation to the genocide in Gaza and its approach to the Trump administration.
“The President has praised Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, she has stood with Trump as he bombed Tehran and the European Commission has sided with the USA as they brought the global economy to a standstill in the Strait of Hormuz,” the progressive bloc warned.
The EU’s relationship with the US has continued to be one of submission, with elected regional leaders going to great lengths (unsuccessfully) to appease Donald Trump. Even when the region announced it would stand firm against US threats – in Greenland or on tariffs – this did not translate into practice.
In the context of von der Leyen’s speech, this boiled down to announcing Canada would become the “first associate member of the EU” and listing trade agreements signed with India, Mercosur, and Indonesia – met by the people of these countries with understandable concern.
Von der Leyen’s speech showed no sign of breaking with disdain towards nations outside the West. In addition to continuing animosity toward China, it offered a glimpse into plans involving countries rich in critical materials. The EC President announced the launch of a European Corporation on Critical Raw Materials – designed to secure and stockpile supplies for Europe’s industry and defense – with obvious implications for mineral-rich territories like Ukraine, Greenland, and several African countries. For the more skeptical listeners, this also carried weird echoes of the East India Company.
The State of the EU’s vision, it goes without saying, comes with further promises of an even stricter migration framework – on the pretext of situations like the one experienced in Ceuta earlier this year – that allow the erosion of basic human rights like asylum. Von der Leyen’s speech pledged even more finances for Frontex and suggested that outsourcing migration enforcement to third countries will continue, as endorsed by recent EU legislation.
“This policy of externalizing migration control has contributed to grave human rights violations, arbitrary detentions and systematic violence against people on the move,” The Left warned, calling for a union rooted in solidarity rather than violence and militarization.
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