This is Eddy Wax, with Nicoletta Ionta and the rest of Euractiv’s newsroom. Welcome back to The Capitals.
Scoop! In one week, this newsletter will relaunch under a brand-new name. Watch this space.
Need-to-knows:
- Ukraine: The Coalition of the Willing meets in Paris today to talk security guarantees
- Tech: French regulators fine Google and Shein record sums over cookie breaches
- Health: Experts warn US isolationism is draining Europe of expertise and funding
But first, we turn our attention to a storm brewing in France.
Today’s edition is powered by European Hydrogen Week
Shaping a competitive net-zero future at the European Hydrogen Week!
The EU Hydrogen Week 2025 is the place to be for discussions on a net-zero future and the legislation needed to support the hydrogen economy. Join us in Brussels and be part of the latest in climate policy, technology and market trends for hydrogen!
In the capital
Political turbulence has blown across the border to Brussels.
French MEPs on both the far-right and far-left announced efforts yesterday to bring down the European Commission – largely aimed at a domestic audience.
In Paris, confidence votes have plagued the government for the past year, and with yet another prime minister expected to be ousted next week, the European Parliament, which already held one censure vote against the Commission in July, is importing similar tactics.
Manon Aubry, who co-leads the Left group on behalf of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party, is gathering signatures for her motion – obtained by my colleague Nicoletta – condemning the Commission’s handling of Gaza and accusing it of ignoring Israel’s breaches of international law.
On the other flank, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen said her MEPs in the Patriots group will file their own motion next week, this one against the Mercosur trade deal. She pitched it as a litmus test of support for French farmers – a line clearly designed for voters back home.
But the gestures are mostly theatre. When senior MEPs met Ursula von der Leyen behind closed doors in Parliament yesterday, neither Aubry nor Le Pen’s ally Jordan Bardella turned up, and their substitutes did not raise the issue.
These moves from the political fringes aren’t likely to shift Brussels. But their real audience isn’t the Berlaymont; it’s France. Should they succeed in hauling von der Leyen back into Parliament, however, they will have manufactured another spectacle for the evening news.
As Elisa Braun and Laurent Geslin explain in this piece, Le Pen is pursuing a new confrontational strategy to force Emmanuel Macron into calling new elections.
Yet Brussels is closing in on her too. A public document shows the budgetary control committee wants Le Pen’s new far-right EU grouping – Patriots for Europe – to pay back more than €4.3 million in funds allegedly misspent between 2019 and 2024 by Identity & Democracy, considered its previous incarnation.
The Patriots have denounced the case as a “baseless witch-hunt,” insisting that ID was a “separate” legal entity, and threatened to lawyer up. Euractiv was first to report that EU prosecutors have also launched a criminal investigation into the spending.
Le Pen is already banned from holding public office, after a conviction for misusing other EU funds. And as her party gets closer than ever to power in Paris, she is getting into more hot water in Brussels.
Got a tip, rumour, or story idea? Drop me a line by email – or, for the more discreet, via Signal at @EddyWax.94
EU to US: Ready when you are
As the Coalition of the Willing – led by France and the UK – gathers in Paris on Thursday, European leaders are once again looking to Washington for clarity on security guarantees for Ukraine.
For months, the US has said that Europe must shoulder most of the responsibility for any post-war security arrangements for Kyiv. “We are willing and able, and we are ready,” the Élysée, which will host the talks, told reporters on the eve of the meeting.
All that’s now needed is confirmation they “indeed have the support of the US,” which promised to provide a backstop. The Europeans will call Trump after their meeting, at 2 p.m. and will then hold a press conference at 3 p.m.
But plans to station European troops in Ukraine after the war have raised questions about possible gaps elsewhere in Europe’s defences. Trump on Wednesday even floated sending more American troops to Poland.
The viral spread of MAGA ideology
Europe is bracing for the fallout from the Trump administration’s assault on US health policy, as Washington dismantles USAID, distances from the WHO, and brings its Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in line with anti-vaccination views.
The politics are already proving contagious: Romania’s far right grew out of an anti-vaxx movement, while Italy’s government flirts with sceptics. Brussels may glimpse an opening to lead in research, but that hope is overshadowed by America’s ideological virus spreading across the Atlantic, as Brenda Strohmaier reports.
European officials are sounding the alarm over weakened defences against pandemics and stalled breakthroughs in cancer and antimicrobial research.
Europe’s second-most hated trade pact
The Mercosur trade deal still faces stiff resistance, but even its fiercest critics – Paris, Dublin, Warsaw, and Rome – were more muted on Thursday, my colleague Alice Bergoënd reports. That could bode well for Berlin and the Commission, eager to get the deal ratified.
An ecstatic Manfred Weber dubbed it the “anti-Trump agreement” last night. Yet while Mercosur, which must still clear both the Council of Ministers and Parliament, remains contentious, the deal struck with Washington is arguably far more disliked. MEPs savaged it in a heated exchange with the EU’s top trade civil servant Sabine Weyand on Wednesday, Thomas Møller-Nielsen reports.
Weyand – who drew headlines last month for saying there had been no real negotiation with Washington and that Brussels had accepted a lopsided arrangement due to reliance on US security – dodged lawmakers’ questions on those remarks.
Von der Leyen – who rebuffed Weyand last week when she denied any Ukraine linkage – repeated her mantra in a closed-door meeting with MEPs on her State of the Union address: the deal may be imperfect, but it’s better than none. “If she doesn’t work on this line, then I think she will be booed on Wednesday in the chamber,” one person in the room told me.
In a new op-ed for Euractiv, Apostolos Thomadakis of the Centre for European Policy Studies argues that the EU traded away long-term competitiveness for short-term calm.
Krah testifies in spy trial
Maximilian Krah, a lawmaker in Germany’s far-right AfD, testified on Wednesday in the trial of his former aide, accused of spying for China and allegedly passing 500 EU documents to Beijing between 2019 and 2024.
Krah admitted in court he had given staff – including the aide, identified as Jian G – full access to his personal and professional emails, calendars, and documents, sometimes against Parliament rules, because he “hates” admin work. He said he was stressed out as AfD’s lead candidate during the 2024 EU election and wanted to motivate staff by allowing them to work independently.
Seven hearings are scheduled this month, with G facing up to ten years in prison if convicted.
The capitals
BERLIN
Friedrich Merz said he will convene crisis meetings with Germany‘s ailing auto and steel industries to jumpstart his government after a tense summer. His coalition hopes that an “autumn of reforms” centred on paring back welfare, will help boost the country’s competitiveness. The chancellor and Macron are set to meet Franco-German business leaders today to discuss Europe’s economic resilience and AI.
PARIS
French regulators have levied record fines against Google (€325 million) and Shein (€150 million) for failing to secure user consent on cookies. The decision – ordering Google to adjust its ad practices – comes after Trump threatened tariffs on countries that impose digital regulations targeting US tech companies.
BRUSSELS
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at his Belgian counterpart, calling Bart De Wever a “weak leader” after Belgium announced plans to recognise Palestine at the UN General Assembly this month. De Wever tied the move to Hamas freeing hostages and relinquishing its grip in Gaza, but Netanyahu, nonetheless, accused him of feeding “the terrorist crocodile.”
ROME
The US cautioned allies against stretching NATO’s new 5% defence spending target – a move seen as targeting Italy’s bid to count its €13.8 billion Strait of Messina bridge as a military expense. Critics here seized on the rebuke, with Green lawmaker Angelo Bonelli dismissing claims of the bridge’s strategic value as “a fairy tale.”
WARSAW
Trump hosted President Karol Nawrocki at the White House yesterday. On his unsuccessful efforts to broker peace in Ukraine, the US president said he would speak to Putin in the coming days before deciding on further sanctions. He also admitted that he expected it would be “much easier” to end the war.
LISBON
Portuguese PM Luis Montenegro launched an investigation last night after this city’s iconic Gloria funicular derailed and crashed, killing at least 15 people and injuring more than a dozen others.
Also on Euractiv
A plan to link the power grids of Cyprus, Greece, and Israel through one of the world’s longest undersea cables has hit fresh trouble. Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides said Wednesday that EU prosecutors have opened a probe into the €1.9 billion project, long plagued by cost overruns and political squabbles.
Nicosia’s finance ministry deems the scheme unsustainable, Ankara brands it illegal, and Athens insists it must proceed. With Israel distracted by war and no private investors in sight, the “strategic” link risks becoming yet another stranded Mediterranean project.
Agenda
Informal meeting of energy ministers in Copenhagen
Costa visits Bulgaria; meets PM Jeliazkov
Coalition of the Willing meets in Paris
Metsola attends the G7 Speakers’ summit; meets US House Speaker Johnson and Ukrainian Rada chief Stefanchuk
Contributors: Sarantis Michalopoulos, Jeremias Lin, Elisa Braun, Magnus Lund Nielsen, Alex Brzozowski, Nick Alipour, Sofia Sanchez Manzanaro, Thomas Møller-Nielsen, Chris Powers, Aleksandra Krzysztoszek
Editors: Christina Zhao, Sofia Mandilara
