Category: Politico News

The EU is seeking to reset its often testy relationship with Israel next week, convening a summit on Monday of senior political figures for the first time in a decade.  The meeting format, known as the EU-Israel Association Council, has essentially been dormant since 2013, when Israel canceled a gathering in protest over the EU’s […]

ISTANBUL — FC Barcelona’s financial gymnastics must face a crackdown, according to European football’s most powerful executive. In an exclusive interview with POLITICO, Qatari tycoon Nasser al-Khelaifi, who is the president of Paris Saint-Germain football club, said the sport’s European governing body UEFA was set to probe Barcelona, after its controversial summer sale of commercial […]

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.  When asked who he’d vote for on the eve of Italy’s snap parliamentary elections, Renzo Ramacciani, a retired builder in his seventies, slapped his hand on the kitchen table and said, “Meloni.” Like many of his friends, until now he’s always voted for the Democratic Party (PD). […]

Johannes Nordin is a junior research fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy. Right before Russia’s Gazprom completely stifled gas flows through the Nord Stream I pipeline, G7 leaders had agreed in early September to implement a price cap on Russian energy exports. By leveraging Europe’s central position in the global maritime insurance […]

ROME — On a sultry summer evening, a few days after Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government fell apart, Italy’s right-wing political leaders gathered in a private room inside Rome’s Palazzo Montecitorio, the lower house of parliament. The group included some of Europe’s most colorful, outspoken, and unpredictable political mavericks: Silvio Berlusconi, the 85-year-old billionaire lothario […]

Belgium must pay compensation of around €100,000 to convicted terrorist Nizar Trabelsi for the damage he suffered by being extradited to the U.S., a Brussels appeals court ruled Tuesday. The court also ruled that the Belgian government should ask the American authorities to send back Trabelsi. Trabelsi, a Tunisian former professional footballer, was convicted in […]

Ukraine is putting pressure on the EU to include not just an oil price cap, but also an embargo on Russian gas in its next sanctions package. “While you are counting pennies, we are counting lives,” Oleg Ustenko, economic adviser of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, told POLITICO. EU ambassadors will discuss Ukraine at their meeting on […]

BERLIN — Germany will “probably” extend the runtime of two of its three remaining nuclear power plants until April, Economy Minister Robert Habeck said Tuesday, blaming energy supply issues in France for the decision. He also announced more money for ailing German energy suppliers — something that could require Finance Minister Christian Lindner to suspend […]

LIVERPOOL, England — As delegates amassed in Liverpool this week for the U.K. Labour Party’s annual get-together, the real drama was unfolding elsewhere. Monday morning saw the markets react brutally to the Conservative government’s tax-slashing mini-budget, with the pound plummeting to an all-time low and the cost of U.K. government borrowing forced sky-high. By lunchtime, […]

U.S. and allied intelligence agencies are stepping up efforts to detect any Russian military moves or communications that might signal that Vladimir Putin has ordered the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, according to five current and former U.S. officials. But any indications that the erratic Russian leader has decided to unleash the unthinkable — […]