Europe is living through an “era of darkness” as multiple wars and competition between the U.S. and China trample the rules-based global order, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said Monday. 

Speaking at the College of Europe in Bruges, Stubb said the post-Cold War age has ended and the world now faces a pivotal moment, like those at the end of World War II in 1945 and the fall of communism in 1989. 

While he tends towards optimism, there are now “unfortunately, plenty of reasons to be pessimistic,” he told an audience of students at the institution, which Stubb himself attended in the 1990s. 

“In a sense, I began my studies during an era of light and you begin your studies in an era of darkness,” he said. “We used to be able to say that the three biggest killers of mankind, disease, famine and wars, have been defeated. That is not true anymore. The light has given way to darkness.”

Stubb, who has studied and written extensively on geopolitical upheaval, has been intimately involved in European efforts to navigate U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term — particularly when it comes to the question of a peace deal for Ukraine. 

He told his audience they would graduate into “a dog-eat-dog world” in which there are, by some estimates, 65 conflicts or wars playing out — “more than at any time after the Second World War.” 

Global security will “depend on what the big powers — namely the U.S. and China — end up doing. Will they choose co-operation or confrontation?” he said.

“The key question for all of us is to create a European security structure which makes sure that Russia does not attack its neighbors again,” he said. NATO will remain a vital security alliance but new processes should also be developed, he said, including “confidence building” measures between Russia and Europe to build “trust.”

Stubb urged the audience of future diplomats, politicians and officials not to be pessimistic, but to be ambitious for a new “era of light,” despite the challenges. He said that in 30 years’ time, the European Union could grow to 40 member countries from the current 27 — including the U.K. rejoining the bloc alongside Norway, Moldova and Ukraine.

DUBLIN — EU and Chinese officials are already discussing the next sectors for trade talks as Brussels prepares to review implementation of their latest understanding in January, EU trade chief Maroš Šefčovič told POLITICO on Friday.

“In January we can assess how it worked and if it delivered all parts of our agreement,” Šefčovič said, referring to an Oct. 9 pact by which China will voluntarily reduce exports of hybrid vehicles to the EU by almost half to 350,000 units in 2027.

That deal also lowers tariffs on European goods such as auto parts and footwear, and smooths exports of rare earth elements to the EU. 

After a scheduled January videoconference with his counterpart Wang Wentao, Šefčovič said he hopes the two can deliver results in March 2027 at their next round of in-person talks in Brussels. 

“I would like to see that we both have an understanding of what sectors we are going to focus on next,” he said.

The intense engagement with China comes as the bloc seeks to rebalance mutual economic ties, which EU officials say have been distorted by Chinese subsidies, market barriers and a surge in imports. Šefčovič stressed the urgency of the task, given that the EU’s trade deficit with China “reached almost €197 billion in the first half of this year. At this rate, we could break the 2022 record” of €397.3 billion.

“A part of our team is working on implementing all what we agreed, and [another] part of the team is talking to our Chinese counterparts on what should be the next sectors, next areas on what we want to focus the work on. Hopefully with another [Trade and Investment Consultation] in Brussels we can actually deliver the results,” he added. 

“The primary objective for us … is to rebalance the trade.”

At a press conference on Friday, the trade chief said the European Commission was looking to shield more sectors from Chinese overcapacity, with plastics the leading candidate for safeguard measures — a mix of quotas and tariffs.

“We are currently analyzing what would be the best candidates and sectors to be addressed” through safeguard measures, he said. “Currently, what I think is the closest, is the plastic sector.”

Brussels is also juggling requests from the EU’s 27 member countries, which all seek to protect the industries that are key to their economies.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told EU leaders last week that Brussels wants to shield the chemical and machinery sectors next, POLITICO reported.

Šefčovič added that the European Commission was looking at proposing new trade tools to nudge EU companies to diversify their suppliers, expected in early December.

“We would respect what we have heard from every single business: Keep it simple, no additional reporting,” he said. 

The EU executive is also looking to incorporate a proposal by France and Germany for a new tool that would allow Brussels within days to restrict — or even close — access to Europe for countries that severely distort the bloc’s single market. 

“It’s better to present a new instrument,” Šefčovič told POLITICO. “We could initiate it very quickly and … act very quickly.”

BRUSSELS — The EU’s influential competition regulators have taken on some of the planet’s most powerful companies, from Google to Gazprom. But they are steering clear of opening a case against the world soccer governing body, FIFA. 

A complaint lodged by the European Leagues professional soccer association in October 2024 accused FIFA of abusing its dominant position by imposing its international match calendar on other sporting stakeholders. It argued that FIFA’s dual role as a governing body and the organizer of its own competitions creates a conflict of interest, through which it enriches itself. The leagues broadened the complaint last month to cover the women’s game — but the Commission has yet to open formal proceedings.

Brussels has left the European Leagues complaint in the “freezer,” one senior EU official with knowledge of the file told POLITICO. 

The episode underscores the Directorate-General for Competition’s long-running reluctance to open investigations into sports federations, which current and former European officials say is due to sport’s special status in EU law — the treaties recognize its social and educational role — but also a deliberate policy choice to swerve potentially controversial cases in an emotionally charged sector.

Now, pressure is building against the competition department over the languishing European Leagues complaint, after a cross-party group of EU lawmakers urged the Commission to use its antitrust powers to rein in FIFA. 

In a letter to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, obtained by POLITICO and copied to competition chief Teresa Ribera, MEPs called for action. Bruno Gonçalves and Hannes Heide (both from the Socialists and Democrats) and Bogdan Zdrojewski (from the conservative European People’s Party) asked the Commission to take formal action, including in relation to the complaint lodged by the European Leagues, which represents 53 men’s and women’s professional football leagues across the continent.

The MEPs say the governing body’s application of the calendar “raises concerns about FIFA’s use of regulatory powers to advance FIFA’s own commercial interests,” and that those powers “must be exercised through transparent, objective, non-discriminatory and proportionate procedures, with effective safeguards against conflicts of interest.” The EU’s top court set that test for sports bodies in its landmark 2023 Super League ruling.

“FIFA is both referee and promoter of the show,” Gonçalves told POLITICO. “We have to make sure the referee doesn’t put business before people.”

Representatives for the European Leagues pressed their case in a meeting with Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera’s Cabinet in late April, but their overtures have so far been fruitless.

“The thinking has always been, on the one hand, that sports has a special status, so it is not a market comparable to others that normally are scrutinized by the competition directorate,” said one former senior EU official, who was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive file in order to protect relationships. 

“But also, sports cases get very political and the Commission feels that member states tend to take the side of the federations so it’s hesitant to pick this fight up,” the former official added.

The Vestager principles

Over the last 15 years, Brussels has opened blockbuster investigations into Gazprom’s behavior in Central and Eastern European gas markets; whether Google illegitimately hindered the development and market access of rival mobile operating systems; and Apple’s rules for app developers.

But the Commission’s caution on sports is long-standing. 

When then-competition chief Margrethe Vestager ordered the International Skating Union in 2017 to drop rules threatening speed skaters with lifetime bans for joining money-spinning rival events, she said the decision didn’t mean the Commission was “trying to be the referee in every dispute about sport.”

Many disputes, from doping penalties to deciding the precise scheduling of games, have “little or nothing at all to do with competition rules,” Vestager said at the time. National courts and competition authorities, she added, are “usually well placed to deal with competition disputes involving a sport federation.”

Those principles have since come to guide how the Commission’s competition department decides which sports disputes to take on. There is no shortage of candidates, with controversies in sports including tennis, padel and sailing, as well as soccer.

Any investigation would test recent case law. A pair of July rulings on FIFA’s agent rules went largely the governing body’s way. In those cases, the Court of Justice of the European Union accepted that federations can impose restrictions if they pursue legitimate aims proportionately.

Ben Van Rompuy, a competition law professor at Leiden University who helped bring the original ISU complaint, said there would likely be “little appetite” in Brussels to take up the leagues’ case.

When the ISU complaint reached the Commission, courts had said little about how competition law applied to sport. Since then, “we’ve had an abundance of such guidance,” and “national enforcement in front of the courts seems to work,” Van Rompuy said. That leaves less reason for the Commission to step in. The leagues have also sued in a Brussels court, which suggests “they themselves believe that the national courts could protect their rights.”

Measured against the Commission’s own criteria for prioritizing complaints, the case looks weak, Van Rompuy said. Its impact on the EU’s internal market is “extremely limited,” he added.

FIFA declined to comment on the European Leagues complaint and the EU lawmakers’ letter.

Commission spokesperson Ricardo Cardoso said international sports bodies have “a primary responsibility” for organizing global events, and that sport is mainly a matter for national governments, with the EU playing a supporting role.

When sports organizations act as undertakings, the EU legal term for entities carrying out economic activity, they are subject to the rules of competition, Cardoso said. He added that the Commission constantly monitors markets for possible breaches, and that “if any complaint is filed, the Commission will assess according to standard practice.”

Public and political criticism of FIFA has reached fever pitch over the last 12 months due to the governing body’s cozy relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and an ultimately aborted plot this summer to sell off parts of the World Cup tournament to private investors.

According to the letter from EU lawmakers, FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s commercial sell-off scheme “exposed serious shortcomings in transparency, accountability and institutional decision-making.”

BRUSSELS — Europe’s biggest media companies have asked regulators in Brussels and London to stop Meta from introducing new terms they say would let it copy publishers’ websites to build artificial intelligence, as a backlash that began in the U.S. spreads across Europe.

In a letter Monday, the European Publishers Council, whose members include POLITICO’s owner Axel Springer, called on EU competition boss Teresa Ribera and tech chief Henna Virkkunen to press Meta to put the terms on hold before they take effect Oct. 30.

The group wants Brussels to check them against EU copyright and competition law, and has requested an urgent meeting with the teams of both commissioners.

“The Commission remains committed to ensure that Meta’s practices fully comply with all applicable obligations under EU law, including competition rules and the Digital Markets Act,” Commission spokesperson Ricardo Cardoso told POLITICO, referring to the EU’s rulebook for Big Tech. He said Brussels was aware of both Meta’s changes and publishers’ concerns.

The U.K. competition watchdog has moved as well. British publishers have complained to the Competition and Markets Authority that Meta is so dominant they are compelled to accept its terms. 

The watchdog’s chief, Sarah Cardell, told British lawmakers on Tuesday that it had asked Meta to explain the changes and would meet the company on Wednesday. She named Meta as a possible candidate for Britain’s new rules for tech giants.

The terms cover businesses that use Meta’s tools to run Facebook pages, Instagram accounts or ads, which includes almost every newsroom. 

The fight began in the U.S. last week, when Nieman Lab, a journalism research outlet at Harvard, reported on the terms after receiving a tip from a small business owner.

As first written, they let Meta send automated programs to copy websites linked to those accounts and use the material to “train” its products, Nieman Lab concluded. There is no opt-out, and a business that continues to use Meta’s tools after Oct. 30 will be deemed to have consented.

Publishers say the terms would hand Meta content for free that other AI companies pay to license.

Rapid reaction

On Friday, Meta communications chief Andy Stone responded on X that the Nieman Lab report was “false” and that there was “no change to how Meta uses web crawlers.”

Stone said the update aimed to let Meta pull accurate product information from shopping sites for ads, not to scrape news sites. The company also said the crawling language already existed in other Meta terms and was just being gathered in one place.

Late Friday, however, Meta revised the terms and deleted the word “train,” saying the terms cover only its advertising and business products.

“We’ve heard you and want to clarify,” a spokesperson for Meta told POLITICO over the weekend, adding the change was “not about scraping news sites.”

Publishers say that changes little, however. 

Meta has given them verbal assurances that they can keep using its tools without surrendering their content to AI, but the terms themselves don’t guarantee that, the European Publishers Council’s letter says.

“Meta’s supposed Friday night correction is a farce,” said Jason Kint, who heads Digital Content Next, a U.S. publisher group whose members include Axel Springer. “Exactly what you’d expect from a gatekeeper notorious for abusing its market power.”

Others have gone further. 

“This is unscrupulous theft,” Germany’s newspaper and magazine associations said in a joint statement on Tuesday. They want Brussels to block the terms while it reviews them, warning that once articles are copied into AI systems, they can’t be clawed back.

Joseph Bambridge in London contributed reporting.

STRASBOURG — The EU will not ease sanctions on Russian fossil fuels even after the U.S. struck a diesel deal with Moscow, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday morning.

In a speech to EU lawmakers, she warned “Russia is not a trusted supplier of energy because it would, this is our experience, at any time weaponize energy dependencies to blackmail others,” arguing it was Russia that cut gas supply to Europe. “That is a lesson Europe certainly will not forget.”

Earlier this month, U.S. President Donald Trump announced an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to ease sanctions on imports of diesel fuel until April 2027, as global oil prices surge. 

A few days later, Trump defended the deal, arguing the EU had also purchased billions in fossil fuels from Moscow, without providing further details. 

Von der Leyen also addressed the trade imbalance with China.

She confirmed that the European Commission would present a new deterrent tool as soon as December. This tool is expected to be based on the one proposed by Berlin and Paris earlier this month and would empower the EU executive to restrict or even ban imports from countries seen as distorting the single market. It would require minimal consultation from member states, allowing faster action from Brussels.

This instrument would come alongside a diversification instrument and a solidarity mechanism which are already in the works.

“We see jobs lost in our industrial heartlands,” von der Leyen said, adding that the EU will continue to seek deals with Beijing after an agreement to cap Chinese hybrid imports. As POLITICO reported last week, the EU is expected to prioritize chemicals and industrial machinery in its efforts to protect European industry from Chinese competition.

Camille Gijs contributed to this article.