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Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk gestures while speaking during the weekly Ministerial meeting in Warsaw.
Poland scraps right to asylum
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in recent days unilaterally suspended the right to asylum for migrants crossing into Poland from neighboring Belarus. Tusk said the move is temporary, meant to stop Russia from directing flows of migrants towards Poland in an effort to destabilize the country. In recent years, Poland and Belarus have nearly come to blows over the issue.
The decision, which has raised concerns among human rights groups, comes just before a major EU summit focused in part on crafting a coherent migration policy that balances the bloc’s supranational human rights laws with national-level concerns about rapid immigration from the Global South. In recent weeks, Germany, the bloc’s largest economy, imposed fresh border checks of its own.
Note: Tusk is no ultra-nationalist. A centrist former European Council president, Tusk was elected last year on a wave of discontent with the long-ruling, far-right Law and Justice party. But in Poland – as elsewhere in the decade since a wave of refugees from the Syrian civil war arrived – calls for tighter immigration policy have moved from the right-wing fringe to the mainstream discourse.
All of this as the numbers are actually falling. Illegal crossings detected byEU border authorities fell 42% in the first nine months of 2024, compared to the same period last year, authorities say. Migrant voyages via the Mediterranean fell drastically, but they in fact rose along eastern routes into the Czech Republic and Poland.
Looking ahead: EU leaders will meet to discuss the issue on Wednesday and Thursday.Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), President of the European Commission, stands in the plenary chamber of the European Parliament and speaks while Vikor Orban (Fidesz), Prime Minister of Hungary, can be seen in the background.
Von der Leyen lays into Orbán over Russia
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyenhad strong words on Wednesday for Hungary’s strongman, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, about his close relationship with Russia. After listing a fiery litany of grievances over Hungary’s democratic backsliding and undermining of EU support for Ukraine, she addressed Orbán directly. “There are still some who blame this war not on Putin’s lust for power but on Ukraine’s thirst for freedom, so I want to ask them: Would they ever blame the Hungarians for the Soviet invasion in 1956?”
The powerful rhetoric aimed at painful memories of Soviet tanks crushing freedom fighters in Budapest’s burning streets. Orbán, who had just delivered a relatively meek address about his plans for Hungary’s six-month EU presidency, denied von der Leyen’s accusation and denounced her for using the EU executive as a “political weapon.” Some left-wing MEPs sang the anti-fascist anthem “Bella Ciao,” prompting the parliament’s president, Roberta Metsola, to remind them “this is not Eurovision.”
Why did the gloves come off? Von der Leyen and her team of 26 commissioners are going before Parliament for confirmation hearings between Nov. 4 and 12. Parliament has taken von der Leyen to task in recent weeks for playing softball with Hungary and is preparing to sue the commission over its decision to unlock billions in frozen funds for Hungary last year. Taking Orbán to task might just be what she needs to smooth things over before the hearings.
We’re watching how her message plays, and whether Orbán might change his tune toward Russia — but we’re not holding our breath.
European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen.
Europe’s Commish chooses her team
European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen on Tuesday named the team that will work with her as she heads into her second term as the EU’s most powerful official.
What’s the Commission? It’s 27 officials, one from each member state, who propose and oversee EU laws. Think immigration, antitrust, trade, and tech regulation. A key responsibility is drafting the EU budget.
Foreign and defense portfolios went to arch-Russia hawks from the Baltics, while Spain, Italy, and France – which generally favor more state economic intervention – got industrial policy and competition-related files. The choice of a hard-right politician from Italy raised hackles on the left, but it’s part of Von der Leyen’s strategy of engaging the right, in particular Italian PM Giorgia Meloni, to head off a wider populist backlash.
She also nearly reached her goal of gender parity, noting that some member states failed to follow the protocol of nominating one female and one male candidate for each post.
“She’s lining up all her ducks,” says Eurasia Group expert Emre Peker. The big task? Implementing the new $800 billion annual do-or-die economic reform proposals of former ECB president Mario Draghi. “That money isn’t going to materialize out of thin air,” says Peker. It will have to come either from debt issuance, unpopular with the union’s fiscal hawks, or by taking money from popular economic support programs. Either option will be a bruising political fight.
European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager holds a press conference after Europe's top court ruling on Apple's fight against an order by EU competition regulators to pay a record 13 billion euros in back taxes to Ireland, in Brussels, Belgium September 10, 2024.
Take two: Brussels’ banner day vs. tech firms
It was Tech Two-fer Tuesday in Brussels, as EU regulators got twin wins in their ongoing regulatory battle with US tech giants.
Google lost its final appeal in a 2017 antitrust case that found the company’s search engine had illegally prioritized its own shopping platforms. Google must now pay $2.7 billion in fines.
Apple, meanwhile, was ordered to pay $14 billion in back taxes, after the EU’s top court ruled that the Irish government had once given the tech giant sweetheart incentives that amounted to “unlawful aid.”
To be fair, these numbers are pocket change for companies raking in hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue. And in both cases, the underlying offenses were rectified years ago – the Irish scrapped the sweetheart deal in 2015 and Google has since tweaked its ad algorithms.
But the rulings set a precedent as the EU flexes its unique muscle as a standard-setter in global tech regulation.
The next showdown: In July, Brussels said X had violated strict EU rules on harmful content. If the two sides can’t settle, the case will go to court. That seems likely, given that X owner Elon Musk responded to the charges by vowing to fight “censorship” and calling on the EU to perform a sex act on its “own face.”
Europe adopts first “binding” treaty on AI
The Council of Europe officially opened its new artificial intelligence treaty for signatories on Sept. 5. The Council is billing its treaty – called the Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law – as the “first-ever international legally binding treaty” aimed at making sure AI systems are consistent with international legal standards.
The US, UK, Vatican, Israel, and the European Union have already signed the framework. While the Council of Europe is a separate body that predates the EU, its treaty comes months after the EU passed its AI Act. The treaty has some similarities with the AI Act, including a common definition of AI, but it is functionally different.
Mina Narayanan, a research analyst at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, expressed skepticism about the new treaty’s effectiveness. She said the treaty is “light on details and reiterates provisions that have already been discussed in international fora.” That said, she found the treaty’s attempts to give some legal recourse for harm done by AI systems — including mechanisms to lodge complaints and contest decisions made by AI — somewhat novel.
But Nick Reiners, a senior geo-technology analyst at Eurasia Group, said the treaty isn’t especially binding, despite how it’s billed, since it requires parties to opt in. That’s a measure, he noted, that the UK and US lobbied for as they wanted a “lighter-touch approach.” Further, he said that carveouts from the treaty water down how strenuous it is, particularly regarding AI use for national security purposes. That makes Israel’s willingness to participate unsurprising since the treaty wouldn’t cover how it’s deploying AI in the war in Gaza.
Reiners said that despite its lack of involvement in creating this treaty, the EU would like to use it to “internationalize the AI Act,” getting companies and governments outside the continent in line with its priorities on AI.
While the treaty isn’t groundbreaking, “it shows how the Western world, in a broader sense, is continuing to expand the international rules-based framework that underpins the respect of human rights and the rule of law,” he said, “and this framework now takes account of AI.”
Why Putin agreed to the US-Russia prisoner swap
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from the Adriatic Sea.
What does the biggest prisoner exchange in decades tell us about Putin?
First, the huge prisoner exchange, the biggest that we've seen for decades. I think it's important to note that it exposes the nature of Russia and the West, because on the one side, Putin was desperate to get back convicted killers, murderers, and failed spies. I think that was very important for him in order to perhaps improve their other sacking morale of his security and intelligence services after significant setbacks that they've been suffering over the last few years, and then I think the success of securing the release of journalists, brave journalists, and brave defenders of freedom and democracy in Russia. I think it is a good day, both for the individuals, needless to say, that have been gotten their freedom, and also for the fact that it does expose the very difference of nature between Russia and the West.
What's the European reaction to what's happening in the Middle East?
Well, deep apprehension. The fact that it's not been impossible to secure the ceasefire in Gaza means that all of the other conflicts of the risk are escalating. That is Yemen, that is now Hezbollah-Israel, that is now obviously with the killing of Hamas leader in Tehran, which is quite a daring and provocative thing, the risk of it going really bad.
Let's hope that the wiser heads in Tehran and Washington primarily prevails in the next few days, but we don't know.
UK's new PM Starmer aims for closer EU ties
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from the Adriatic Sea.
How will the new UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer reset relations at home and abroad?
Well, I think overall there's going to be a lot of continuity in terms of foreign and security policies. They've already sent the defense secretary to Kyiv to say that if anything, it's going to be even stronger support. But in terms of Europe, it’s going to be a new nuance and new attempts. The new foreign secretary, David Lammy, has already been to Germany, he's been to Poland, he’s been to Sweden, and he's talked about a European pact, foreign and security issues, cooperating more closely. And he's been invited to a meeting with all of the foreign ministers. So that's where we are likely to see, some change in the months and perhaps years ahead.
How did Macron survive the snap election in France?
Yep, that remains to be seen. There was, of course, a surprise result in the sense that the extreme right came in third after first the left, which has some extreme element, and then President Macron's coalition. But it's a hung parliament. There's no clear answer who's going to govern. So, we'll have to wait and see what's going to be the governance of France. I think the emphasis has shifted from isolating the far right to isolating the far left and see some sort of stable government can be made out of that. Very much an open question.
Graphic Truth: 2024 Euro Cup of Approval
The Euro Cup kicked off on June 14 and is now down to the final eight, with the beautiful game having seen its fair share of victories and upsets in recent weeks. At the same time, battles have been waged on the political stage, with the far right surging first in European Parliament elections and then in the first round in France this past weekend.
All this talk of soccer and politics made us wonder … how well would these countries compete if the matches were decided based on national leader approval ratings?
Soccer powerhouses England and France are favored to dominate the Euros. But their leaders, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and President Emmanuel Macron, both of whom suffer from low approval ratings (and are watching their electorates head to the polls this weekend), wouldn’t generate the same optimism on the pitch.
What happens when we swap national sides for leaders – is your favorite team still in with a chance?