Activists and MEPs want notoriously corrupt foreign officials to face EU visa-bans and asset-freezes, in a proposal backed by Estonia.

People guilty of “serious corruption” including “bribery, misappropriation of public funds, and the laundering of their proceeds” should be added to an existing EU list of global human rights abusers, said 71 MEPs in a letter to EU leaders dated 21 October.

The human rights blacklist includes Russian judges who tormented dissidents, Taliban virtue-enforcers, African warlords, and extremist Israeli settlers among the 151 individuals and 34 entities it names.

But the fact the EU did not have “corruption” as a criterion for inclusion, unlike similar legislation in Western allies Australia, Canada, the US, and UK, left a loophole, the MEPs warned.

“This allows corrupt foreign officials already sanctioned by other Western partners to continue to benefit from EU institutions and its financial systems,” they said.

The anti-corruption bolt-on would have a moral and a strategic value, said Polish rightwing MEP and former interior minister Mariusz Kamiński, who co-signed the letter.

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Any talk of EU sanctions on Israel is in limbo until a new government emerges, as experts warn that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could attack Iran in a “matter of days” to improve his chances of retaining power.

Netanyahu is to stay on in a caretaker role for several weeks or months of coalition talks after inconclusive elections on Tuesday (27 October), which saw his rightwing bloc win the most seats (53 seats out of 120), but fall short of a majority.

The elections took place amid ongoing Israeli aggression in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.

And this was expected to continue or get worse in the post-election power struggle, as Netanyahu courted the eight defector-MPs he needed to stay in power, by playing on security fears.

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Finland’s president has caused a minor EU diplomatic fiasco by phoning Russian president Vladimir Putin out of the blue.

Finland’s Alexander Stubb sat down together with Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre in Helsinki on Tuesday (27 October) and “initiated” the call to Putin, in what was already a submissive gesture in protocol terms.

Their discussion lasted 90 minutes and was “frank and substantive”, Stubb’s readout said, while Støre said he had “stressed the importance of de-escalation”.

But Putin told them he would make zero concessions, for instance on Ukrainian territories he claims are now Russian.

Putin “assessed the current situation in the Ukraine conflict zone, reiterating its root causes and emphasising that a just and lasting peace would be possible only if the interests of the Russian Federation are considered in full and without any conditions attached”, the Kremlin readout said.

Putin also belittled them by saying “the EU and Nato’s confrontational policies … result in prolonging the hostilities”.

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Some Belgian spies have questioned EUobserver’s report of a cover-up in favour of an allegedly corrupt Belgian ex-EU commissioner, while international commentary focused on his possible Russia ties.

EUobserver revealed on Friday (23 October) that Hugues Brulin, a director in the Belgian intelligence service (VSSE), had exchanged WhatsApp messages with ex-EU commissioner Didier Reynders, which may have been part of a criminal conspiracy to block VSSE reports into Reynders’ alleged wrongdoing.

But according to “several” VSSE sources who spoke to Belgian daily Le Soir, Brulin, who had been the number three in the VSSE hierarchy, had been in charge of logistics, Human Resources, and IT, but did “not have the power to block enquiries or put his nose into dossiers”.

Brulin did have access to secret dossiers only in case the number one and two directors in the VSSE were absent, and he had to sign off on special operations, called “BIMs” in VSSE jargon, which included measures such as phone wiretaps or home intrusions to place bugs, but this situation occurred just once during his tenure, Le Soir said.

But even if that was all true, Brulin still used to have the power to end the careers of VSSE officers who had looked into Reynders, on grounds of flimsy infractions, as happened in at least three cases, according to EUobserver’s sources.

“This article feels like a liberation. I don’t know if it really is one, but it feels like one … Thanks again in the name of all the normal, honest, taxpaying Belgians,” one ex-VSSE contact told EUobserver, commenting on last Friday’s revelations.

And besides which, there are allegations that Reynders had other VSSE insiders who might have been better placed to act.

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The peaceful departure of Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić could open a positive new chapter in Western Balkans history, even as France drifts in the opposite direction.

Vučić acknowledged defeat shortly after 9.30PM on Sunday (25 October), when exit polls put his SNS party on 105 seats in parliament out of 250, behind the reformist Student List movement, led by cardiologist Ilija Srdanović, on 135 to 140, even though the final results were far from clear.

“Serbia is free! People, BRAVO!,” the Student List posted on X.

It had been a tense night in Belgrade, with a heavy police presence in front of government buildings, scuffles at polling stations, and with student and other citizens’ patrol groups monitoring voting, as well as over 300 formal international observers.

MEPs and US senators had also warned Vučić (who had once worked at the top levels of the brutal dictatorship of Slobodan Milošević) on X not to resort to violence to try to steal the vote.

But it seems that the landslide was so huge and the turnout so massive (over 69 percent) that there was nothing to be done.

And the popular eruption of joy seen afterward all over Serbia was also reminiscent of the fall of Viktor Orbán in elections in Hungary in April.

Serbian nationalism, Western Balkan corruption, and Russian interference will not disappear from the region overnight, but with the nationalist-populist Vučić gone there is more chance of normalisation of Kosovo relations and less risk of a Bosnia break up.

And there is every chance that a positive reform momentum, rewarded by the EU, could spread from Serbia into neighbouring states and help bring more Western Balkan countries into Europe, after Montenegro is due to join in 2027.

It is the fourth defeat in national elections for pro-Russian and/or far-right parties in Europe this year, after Hungary, but also Sweden and Latvia.

And that is a good trend for progressives, in the run-up to the election super-cycle of late 2026/2027, which will see similar battles unfold in Spain, France, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Slovakia, Poland, and Italy in the next 12 months.

“If we have peace, whatever the outcome, it will be beneficial and blessed. If we have unrest, anger, and hatred, whatever the outcome, it will be disastrous for everyone,” said Serb Orthodox Church patriarch Porfirije earlier on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the spectacle of a peaceful, democratic transition of power in Serbia will not be welcomed by Moscow’s authoritarian rulers.

But if it is an example to Russian people, then it is also a powerful, alternative model for any students, leftwing activists, or ethnic minorities in France, Italy, or further afield in Europe, who spent a second weekend rioting in multiple towns in protest at social inequality.

If the far-right was to take power in France in April, spurred on by racial tension and civil unrest, it would quickly wipe out any gains made on Sunday in Serbia, in terms of EU stability, Western Balkans’ enlargement prospects, and Russian influence in Europe.

But if young people in the EU want fairer societies, then the students of Serbia, who began today’s tectonic shift in small protests two years ago in the provincial town of Novi Sad, have shown them that the path to victory lies in non-violent resistance and patience.

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 ‘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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The EU’s top diplomat has backed the idea of a Black Sea naval mission to protect grain ships from Russian drones – but this would require a much bigger effort than Europe’s existing Red Sea operation, while air-policing might be more effective.

“The EU should send a mission to the Black Sea,” said EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas in the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday (20 October).

“To protect merchant shipping, not to escalate, not to scare anyone, but to make sure that we will supply safely fuel, merchandise at normal prices, anything we need. This is how it should be,” she said.

Some “six attacks in 10 days by suspected Russian drones marks a dangerous and unacceptable escalation,” in the region, Kallas added, with “rescuers
still searching for seven sailors missing after the drone attack on two tankers near Romania’s Black Sea coast”.

The Russian attacks were costing Ukraine €60m a day in lost exports of grain and fertiliser, Kallas also said.

And Russia had changed its tactics to start targeting people instead of cargo, said Sidharth Kaushal, from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) defence think-tank in London.

“Before, they targeted ports, not civilians, or vessels at sea. They realised that threat to life is a much more effective deterrent to commercial shipping than threat to cargo,” he told EUobserver.

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I went to bed on Saturday (17 October) glued to my X feed on the French riots and it was impossible not to react emotionally to images of familiar landmarks in Paris in flames.

It was a mistake to have followed things on the far-right propaganda tube of racist US oligarch Elon Musk, which both glorified and reviled its AI-curated clips of violent clashes between mostly white policemen and young black or Arab men.

But in any case, I felt pity for police facing Molotov cocktails and cobble stones and angry about their use of stun grenades that left young people maimed.

I was shocked to see public buildings and luxury shops in Lyon, Marseille, and Paris set on fire and looted in what looked like pure criminality, rather than liberté, égalité, fraternité.

But the anarchist adrenaline in me also said: “Fuck Louis Vuitton! A shop that sells luggage for the price of most families’ monthly incomes is a perfect symbol of the social inequality at the heart of this eruption of public anger”.

I woke up on Sunday thankful to learn from professional media, such as the BBC, that even if Paris looked like a war zone, no one had been killed, and even though police had made over 1,800 arrests, aggressive thugs were a fraction of the hundreds of thousands of people who had peacefully protested for better living conditions and education.

But the political harm of Saturday’s X-streamed violence, which also broke out in Italy and Belgium, was still enormous and it will help the EU and French people’s enemies – the far-right in Europe, Russian president Vladimir Putin, and US president Donald Trump.

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EU leaders will mouth hollow criticism of West Bank settlers at next week’s summit, while staying mute on Israel’s genocide in Gaza – in sharp contrast to the 2026 Nobel peace prize.

The EU “strongly condemns the continued and growing settler violence against Palestinian civilians and calls for accountability”, they aim to say in a declaration in Brussels on Thursday (15 October), according to a draft seen by EUobserver on Friday.

And they are to warn of “legal, economic, and reputational consequences for [Israeli] businesses participating” in building a settlement in the E1 area of the West Bank, which would destroy the two-state solution by chopping the region in half.

It remains to be seen if Slovenia’s pro-Israeli prime minister, Janez Janša, will sign up, after he ranted on X in August that he would veto this type of thing.

But even if Janša agreed, it would still amount to EU impunity for settlers, as there was no mention of banning settler imports or even blacklisting more settler extremists.

“The EU keeps condemning illegal settlements that it trades with, financing the very occupation and abuses it claims to oppose. How does that make any sense?,” said Claudio Francavilla from Human Rights Watch.

The summit draft also voiced “grave concern over developments in Gaza”, where “protection of civilians must be ensured”, and urged Israel to let in more aid.

Israel has killed some 1,450 people in Gaza since an October 2025 ceasefire.

It has killed over 74,000 Palestinians and displaced 1.8 million people in Gaza since 2023, but the EU leaders’ passive-tense language did not blame Israel for civilian deaths or mention Gaza “accountability”.

And that will put our 27 prime ministers and presidents at odds this Thursday with Europe’s moral compass, international law, and public opinion.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee gave the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday to Navi Pillay, a South African judge, who had chaired a UN commission that found Israel guilty of “genocide” in Gaza and worked for the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, which has indicted Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes.

She was “a bigot … propagating blood libels,” he said on X.

Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar said: “[Nazi propaganda chief] Joseph Goebbels is probably applauding in hell.”

And US president Donald Trump joined their Nobel-bashing by imposing sanctions on the ICC.

But three other Nobel laureates, from Colombia, DR Congo, and Liberia were among global VIPs who also wrote to the European Commission on Friday urging trade sanctions on Israel, in a sign of wider revulsion.

And “if the EU was serious about fulfilling its obligations under international law, or indeed in terms of its own stated values and policies, it would go much, much further [in terms of sanctions],” said H. A. Hellyer, from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think-tank in London.

Palestine solidarity marches in Berlin, London, Rome, and Warsaw on Saturday showed that ordinary Europeans wanted their elected politicians to take action.

Some 83 percent of Germans and 88 percent of Italians now disapproved of Netanyahu, said the Pew Research Centre in June.

Blood and rubble

The latest EU summit draft pledged support for Palestinian elections.

“The European Union stands ready to support the electoral process, including by the deployment of an EU Election Observation Mission,” it said.

But EU words were being buried in blood and rubble faster than the summit statements could be updated.

The Palestinian vote would have to be postponed until at least late 2027 due to the “security and economic conditions” created by Israel in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority warned France, also on Friday.

Meanwhile, the EU summit will fall two weeks before Israeli elections on 27 October and the leaders’ empty words might be tactical – so as not to throw meat to far-right Israeli zealots in a rabid atmosphere.

But Europe’s quietism is also due to Germany and Italy’s internal politics and its psychopathological mix of World War 2-guilt, raging far-right populism, and transatlantic realpolitik.

“I don’t think this [the draft EU summit text on the Middle East] is a strategy, so much as a statement of the lowest common denominator in EU foreign policy,” RUSI’s Hellyer said.

And going back to the Nazi slurs against the 2026 Nobel, Israeli author Gideon Levy said in the Haaretz daily on Saturday: “No, Sa’ar … If Goebbels has a reason to applaud, it is upon seeing what has happened to the country that arose from the ashes of the Holocaust.”

“Goebbels is applauding perpetrators of genocide around the world, particularly the one in Gaza,” said Levy.

So long as Berlin and Rome don’t realign their compasses, Europe’s silent blessing for Palestinian erasure will feed Israeli hardliners’ schizoid and delusional sense of self-righteousness.

“As long as Israel is not willing to … admit, at least partially, to its crimes, it will never change,” Levy said.

Russia might not have directly interfered in Latvia’s election, but the vote still showed how the Ukraine war was distorting European democracy.

Latvia’s VDD intelligence service did not detect any of Russia’s classic interference tactics in the run-up to Saturday’s (3 October) vote, such as a spike in disinformation, vote buying, or a manufactured security scare.

The centre-right prime minister Andris Kulbergs retained power with 35.8 percent of the vote, even if coalition-building might take a while.

And voters’ concerns included the cost of living and failing healthcare, in what also sounded normal.

But despite the ordinary appearances, Russia’s war in Ukraine still influenced the election in fundamental ways, in a strange new normal for Europe that most of us had hardly imagined just five years ago.

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