LONDON — When Prime Minister Andy Burnham arrived a few minutes late to a meeting with regional mayors on Thursday, his Cabinet ally Angela Rayner had a name for it. She joked they were on “Andy Time.”

The rest of Britain is beginning to learn what that feels like.

Burnham entered 10 Downing Street three months ago promising a “new economic model.” However, the prime minister’s first budget next Wednesday will ask voters to wait a bit longer for it.

John Healey, Burnham’s top finance minister, is expected to announce cuts to business regulation, new steps to move power out of Whitehall and targeted cost-of-living help as energy bills surge due to the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

But while London’s banking sector is resigned to a tax rise, Healey is broadly not expected to completely overhaul tax regimes that many in Burnham’s center-left Labour Party have long seen as unfair. These include business rates, which treat high street shops more harshly than out-of-town delivery warehouses; capital gains tax, which charges less on income from assets than from work; and council tax on homes, which is based on valuations from 1991. 

Healey and his allies are already rolling out a pitch for lower-key changes to tax and spending than his predecessor, Rachel Reeves, insisting budgets are about more than their bottom-line “scorecard.” They point instead to thinning the “sludge” of business bureaucracy and helping “bloody-minded” entrepreneurs.

The reason behind this is about much more than war dragging on the British economy and keeping inflation high. Many radical reforms just aren’t ready yet. 

Next Wednesday will mark just 100 days since Burnham took office, after a whirlwind special election that ended the Greater Manchester mayor’s decade-long absence from parliament.

Burnham’s much-touted “10-year plan” to rewire Britain’s public realm is far from finished; its publication date is edging closer to Christmas. And many granular details of his plan for reform — including higher defense spending, welfare reforms and ownership of the water sector — will only come at a multi-year spending review some time in 2027. Healey is still trying to decide when that will happen.

POLITICO spoke to 22 current and former government officials, MPs and people who speak regularly to Downing Street to map out Burnham and Healey’s strategy, most of whom were granted anonymity to speak frankly. 

Several offered the view that Healey’s budget was designed to act as a stepping stone toward the 10-year plan and spending review, while not spooking the bond markets — which Burnham complained Britain was “in hock to” last year. That is despite Britain inching closer to a general election that the prime minister must call by summer 2029.

“They want it to be a non-event,” one person who speaks regularly to both 10 and 11 Downing Street said of the budget. 

Expectation management

This narrative has already left Healey’s allies bristling.

People are “accusing us of not making decisions and kicking the can down the road when actually this budget is incredibly difficult,” said one government official. This person added: “This is the first budget of this country that will have come to the House of Commons for scrutiny while the war in the Middle East is raging and an illegal invasion of Ukraine continues by Russia. The idea that this is by any means small is quite difficult to stomach.”

A second U.K. government official argued the budget would be “as ambitious as possible within the political context.” But a third government official said they believed the budget would be more “steady as she goes” than finished solutions to Britain’s problems.

Ruth Curtice, a former Treasury official who is now chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, a think tank focused on living standards, added: “In some ways it’s quite surprising to have such a small budget, given we have a new prime minister and chancellor and quite a lot has happened in the world since the last one.”

The opposition Conservative Party is preparing to seize on this “deferral budget” theme. Tory strategists are ready to paint it as a cowardly act from an administration they claim prefers sweeping vision to hard decisions. “Why act tomorrow when you can act today?” said one shadow cabinet minister. “Have some balls!”

Cameron Brown, a former Tory special adviser in the Treasury, was more sympathetic. “There’s no need to crystallize any kind of savings or cuts now,” when the spending review is looming anyway, he argued. Brown predicted a “tight and concise” but “intellectually coherent” package: “[Healey] will have some buffer at the end, a nice little cost of living package, Labour MPs will be happy, he’ll target the bad people — gamblers and banks — and he’ll push things down the road a bit.”

A Labour official voiced concern that a cautious budget could lose the goodwill Burnham has built with the public — as happened to his predecessor Keir Starmer, who promised “change” in his 2024 manifesto.

And Reeves’ former Political Secretary Matt Pound urged “caution” on deferring too many decisions to the 2027 spending review. “The truth is that they could end up putting a monumental amount of pressure on that spending review,” he told POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast in an interview released Friday. “There are already a lot of pressures they will need to fund.”

Hard to get

“Energy” will be the key thread linking Healey’s messages for the budget, a fourth U.K. government official said — from “breathing space” help with bills to building a more resilient infrastructure network. 

There will also be a “fiscal devolution roadmap” on budget day, setting out terms of how regional mayors can get more power and money and drawn up partly by Burnham’s new Manchester outpost, No. 10 North. Legislation to let them impose tourist taxes will be published in the coming weeks. And officials have talked behind the scenes about procurement and boosting Britain’s heavy industries; the budget needs to find almost £5 billion to plug a hole in a defense investment plan unveiled under Starmer.

Targeted cost-of-living measures appear likely to include scrapping “standing charges” on domestic gas bills, which cost the average household just over £100 a year. Burnham said Wednesday that he had asked Healey to look at the issue — though any help could be eclipsed by a predicted £276 rise in domestic bills this January.

The other message will be that the Treasury can do big, consequential things without raising taxes. Healey will make “a political argument that actually there are other types of budgets that you can have,” said the first government official quoted above, “busting through some of that sludge and ripping up a lot of that red tape.” Cash-strapped chancellors have reached for regulatory reform before, with mixed success.

MPs are looking closely at cost-of-living support. One backbencher in an affluent seat said any help had to be significant, because even their well-off constituents were struggling to take the holidays they wanted. Defense, by contrast, barely comes up on the doorstep: “There are hardly any votes in it, but it’s just something we have to do.”

There has been heavy engagement with Labour MPs, whose detachment from No. 10 helped force Starmer out in July. Treasury ministers Torsten Bell and James Murray are among those engaging while Chief Secretary to the Treasury Emma Reynolds handles tricky negotiations with Cabinet ministers, alongside No. 10 chief of staff James Purnell.

Healey has negotiated with Cabinet ministers and spoken to union leaders, banks and MPs — though not lobbyists. “No one can get to Healey,” said one. “It’s very smart. Let him do his job.”

Markets will look at the “headroom” — a snapshot of the buffer between Healey’s five-year plans and his self-imposed fiscal rules. The fourth official quoted above said Treasury officials have considered having only a small “headroom” buffer compared to the £21.7 billion left by Reeves, as it could be increased in future years. 

Reeves’ former political secretary, Pound, warned against this, telling Westminster Insider: “If the headroom is so low that it’s clear that they can’t clear the defense investment plan, for example, or the wider defense pressures, then I think that that could then start to have a bit of a knock-on effect that would be quite negative.”

However, headroom is merely a snapshot, often out of date by the time it is published. It is likely to be buffeted further by any events in the Middle East arising from the U.S. midterm results on Nov. 3.

And as with all budget briefings, some opposition politicians believe there is an element of expectation management. Conservatives suspect that headroom will come out higher than predicted — which Healey can paint as a victory.

Time is ticking

Then it’ll all be over — and Westminster will immediately start preparing for the next step.

A date was never confirmed for Burnham’s 10-year plan (beyond the latter part of 2026), but some officials believe it has already slipped slightly from the original intention. 

Downing Street and Cabinet Office officials remain determined to publish it in December, though some in Whitehall worry it might be delayed. “Knowing the things on the horizon and how big they are, I genuinely don’t see how you could make space for it,” said one official in another department.

While some Cabinet Office civil servants were first tasked to work on the plan in August, others only joined the team this month as it has grown, according to one person with knowledge of the staffing. Burnham’s ally Louise Haigh, the first secretary of state, is leading three “task forces” ahead of the plan on the cost of living, public control of utilities and the renewal of run-down high streets.

The 10-year plan won’t have all the answers, though. POLITICO reported this week that while it will contain a high-level vision, priorities and principles for the water industry’s future, much of the granular detail of how future ownership models will work is expected in the 2027 spending review. 

One Labour figure who has spoken to the government about the water industry said they believed ministers will choose “different horses for different courses” — an array of ownership models for various firms depending on how stricken they are. A second Labour figure talking to the government said: “You can’t do this in two years.”

The Labour official quoted earlier in this story said they feared the 10-year plan would be a let-down. “These big plans governments are always throwing forward to have a habit of turning out quite thin,” this person said. “At which point we all realize there was never a big plan all along.”

There are other plans to come, including an imminent plan to reform the welfare system by the former Labour Cabinet minister Alan Milburn, and a white paper in December that is due to set out a timetable, legislation and borders for plans to move more power outside Whitehall.

Devolution is one area where Burnham has moved quickly, pleasing many regional mayors. But some officials in the union movement fear that Burnham’s initial focus on devolution risks taking up bandwidth that could have been spent on other issues. A fifth government official added that they were worried all the conversations between different public bodies could crowd out the push for growth. They said: “I sit on Teams calls that are 30 people, all from different arms of the state. Sometimes I think — ‘You do know none of us are making this money?’”

‘Rubber hits the road’

Then there is the 2027 spending review. 

It will set out how the state allocates money across its arms for the next three to five years — turning these plans and the difficult trade-offs they require into reality.

The Treasury has previously confirmed it will set out the entire pathway to lift U.K. defense spending from 2.6% of GDP this year to 3.5% by 2035. It is also likely to address questions about Burnham’s pledge to create a state-funded national service for social care, funded by reducing the rise in the state pension.

There will be months of to-and-fro between Whitehall departments and a Treasury looking for cuts, efficiency savings or both to balance the books.

“The spending review is when the rubber hits the road,” said the fifth government official quoted above. “It’s already beginning. Departments are beginning to work out sacrificial lambs to offer up.”

Three people with knowledge of the conversations said Healey still hasn’t decided when in 2027 he wants to hold the spending review, though it is broadly expected no earlier than the summer. He has been privately musing with allies about the options.

Curtice said Healey’s options are essentially to hold a small fiscal event followed by a spending review next summer, or to hold a spending review with an annual budget simultaneously in fall 2027.

She added: “The big question we’ve posed for this budget — that we’re not necessarily expecting an answer to — is what is the spending total for the spending review that we know needs to come next year? Until we know the answer to that question, we don’t really know whether we can believe the path of tax and borrowing that is set out in the budget.”

Senior Conservatives argue the spending review will be so difficult that Burnham could call a snap election before it is due. He has insisted he will only force it in 2029.

Until then, much of the spending review work will fall to Reynolds. Her predecessor Darren Jones argued the existence of the 10-year plan and spending review meant it would be sensible for next week’s budget to be a little low-octane.

“The prime minister’s been clear that the 10-year plan is going to be the political strategy for the government,” Jones told POLITICO. “So I think it makes sense to do all of your public spending decisions after the publication of the 10-year plan. It would be odd if this October’s budget tried to deal with all the big trade-offs on defense, mayoral budgets, or more ownership of public utilities.

“So I think in many ways, actually the 10-year plan is more interesting this autumn in terms of the political strategy of the government. 

“And then 2027 will be the year in which ministers will have to start thinking about how to implement that strategy operationally, including in public spending decisions.”

Much of that will fall to Burnham himself.

Crowdsourcing

Rayner’s joke about “Andy Time” was not without cause.

Unlike Starmer, Burnham gets into the weeds of an issue even if it derails his schedule. The prime minister chews things over with colleagues so much that some have joked they could just remove his Downing Street desk, said the third government official quoted above. By contrast, Starmer used to retreat to No. 10’s first-floor study to read away from the hubbub.

Burnham’s approach can lead to Downing Street making decisions late in the day. One former No. 10 official said: “A Prime Minister needs to do 80 things in a day and if that goes to 60, then you end up massively behind.”

The flipside is that ministers and officials know what their leader actually wants from them — even if they are left to work out the detail.

“It’s like we’ve woken up from a political coma,” one backbench MP enthused. “I know what the prime minister thinks,” added the third government official quoted above.

Aides used to complain that Starmer, by contrast, tried to be efficient but would end meetings without setting a clear political direction. “Keir was always a stickler for time, even if the issue wasn’t resolved,” as one former colleague put it.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, suggested this week that Burnham was failing to flesh out the detail behind his vision. “Talking about it is not making a decision,” she said of social care reform at prime minister’s questions. Burnham was visibly frustrated—insisting he was making the long-term decisions other politicians duck.

And for the prime minister’s allies and most of his MPs, the vibes remain good. The No. 10 environment is more relaxed and open. Junior ministers, in meetings over bacon sandwiches, feel they can share their views and be heard.

“There’s definitely still a buzz,” said the person who talks regularly to Downing Street, who was quoted earlier in this story. “But you don’t want to spend too much time buzzing while Rome burns. There’s a reality check that I feel is going to come imminently.”

Patrick Baker, Sascha O’Sullivan, Esther Webber and Emilio Casalicchio contributed reporting.

The Ceuta migration crisis put human rights at the bloc’s external borders to the test, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights warned in a report Thursday.

The Vienna-based agency warned that there are serious risks to fundamental rights at the bloc’s external borders and the sudden arrival of thousands of migrants to the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in July “put the balance between protecting fundamental rights and safeguarding the EU’s external borders to the test.”  

In late July, more than 70,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into Ceuta in the space of 48 hours, leading to questions about how the EU should deal with sudden mass movements that may be engineered or used against the bloc. In her State of the Union address, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised a European emergency response framework, which she said should allow for “time-limited and strictly defined flexibility in standard procedures.”

Greece has called for a measure suspending asylum applications in emergency situations — something that could amount to pushbacks, which are banned under international law. Several countries have thrown their support behind the idea, while others question whether this type of measure should be taken at the level of the EU, rather than in national capitals.

In its report, the agency said any emergency measure should comply with EU and international law, both of which guarantee the right to seek asylum and the principle of non-refoulement — a “cornerstone of refugee protection,” it added.

At a meeting of EU leaders last week, von der Leyen said the Commission would come up with a proposal for the emergency framework before the end of the year. 

“We will always uphold our values and fundamental rights, but we will never compromise on protecting our borders,” she said.

The agency’s report also highlighted other fundamental rights concerns at the EU’s external borders, including the implementation of rights monitoring mechanisms as part of migration reforms, restrictions on search and rescue organizations, and investigations into rights violations at the borders.

According to the agency’s numbers, 12 EU countries opened 322 preliminary criminal investigations between 2020 and 2025, but only nine of those resulted in a conviction.

Gaps in those investigations “lead to a perception of impunity, which risks undermining the rule of law, one of the fundamental values on which the Union is founded,” the report stated.

Czech President Petr Pavel says a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine was “quite close” – until President Donald Trump lifted sanctions on Russian diesel. 

In an interview conducted on Tuesday with the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, which includes POLITICO, Pavel said coordinated U.S.-European sanctions on Russian oil, oligarchs, and other industries were putting Russia “under strain.” But the deal Trump announced earlier this month, in which Russia would supply hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel to the U.S., gave Russia “time to breathe.”

“It will be much harder now,” said Pavel. “Russia uses this momentum to get out of pressure, and it’s kind of a moral boost for them.”

The White House on Wednesday said Trump “successfully negotiated” the deal in order to supply the global market with “massive amounts of diesel and bring prices down.”

The deal quickly drew backlash and, at one point, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators urged Trump to rescind the deal.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post to social media that the deal “plays into Russia’s hands” and allows Russia “to kill more, wage war for longer, have even less respect for America, and inflict even greater losses and damage on the world.” He accused Trump of using peace talks in Florida as a “smokescreen” as the administration pursued its deal with Russia.

Zelenskyy’s criticism was the latest indicator of rising tensions between Kyiv and Washington. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustrations with Zelenskyy, accusing him of elongating the war. By contrast, of late he has spoken warmly of Putin and said this week that “Russia frankly has been fine on Ukraine.” 

But Pavel offered the Ukrainian president words of support on Wednesday. 

“I believe that President Zelensky and the whole of Ukraine is a victim of a conflict,” said Pavel. “So, I would be probably the last to blame Ukraine for being guilty of the conflict. It was not Ukraine who attacked Russia. It was not Ukraine who was threatening Russia.”

He added that Trump shows a more open approach to Russia than any European leader. 

“To some extent, he may be attracted by Vladimir Putin as a leader with authority, but I don’t think that … President Trump sees it from a position of a struggle between democracy and autocracies because he’s looking at it simply from the point of view of economic prosperity for the United States,” Pavel added.  

Though Pavel indicated concerns about the diesel deal, he declined to say the U.S. had betrayed Ukraine or other European partners. 

“I don’t know yet if we can call it betrayal, but I would call it a mistake,” he said. “Because … it’s now giving Russia a new hope: New hope that they can disregard Europe, they can disregard Ukraine, they can focus on making a deal with the United States, potentially with China, and arranging all things up to their priorities and strategies. I believe that it’s clearly against our interest in Europe.”

Pavel also didn’t rule out a future in which European countries would buy Russian oil, but added that it “will take time” before that happens. 

“If one day Russia is a country respecting other countries’ sovereignty and borders, why not have regular business with such a country? But Russia is not there yet,” he said. 

The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network harnesses the resources of the company’s newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, The Telegraph, Onet and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms: online, print, TV and audio.

BRUSSELS — There is a growing realization among European governments that they may soon need to nominate someone to face Russian leader Vladimir Putin in direct talks on a peace deal for Ukraine. 

The main problem is deciding who should take on such a hazardous task.

The question gained urgency this week after U.S. presidential envoy Steve Witkoff traveled to Russia to offer Putin a three-way summit with Donald Trump and Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an effort to press for a ceasefire. 

“President Putin disregards the European Union as an authority,” Czech President Petr Pavel said Tuesday in an interview with the Axel Springer Global Reporters’ Network, of which POLITICO is a part. “He doesn’t want to talk to Ursula von der Leyen, he doesn’t talk to Kaja Kallas. He stopped talking to other European leaders, including Emmanuel Macron.”

He added that the EU should “identify a person or a group of people who would speak for Europe. Not necessarily representatives of the EU or NATO, but simply leaders who would be given a mandate by the others to negotiate.”

In recent days, Trump has dismayed Ukraine and its European allies by talking over their heads with Putin and appearing increasingly willing to take Russia’s side in the almost five-year war. 

That has reignited debate in Brussels and beyond about the need for Europe to have its own direct line to the Kremlin to safeguard the region’s interests and bolster Ukraine’s ability to resist a lopsided deal. 

“Much as it sticks in the craw, I do think a channel of some kind to Putin would be a good thing to have,” said David Lidington, a distinguished fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “I am not optimistic that it would achieve anything much in the short term, but to have a channel which can then be used as and when an opportunity arises is not a bad thing.”

Diplomats and officials disagree on who would be the best person to represent Europe.

Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, has negotiated directly with Trump on trade, while the president of the European Council, António Costa, has previously opened a line of communication with the Kremlin through his office. EU High Representative Kaja Kallas is another potential player who speaks for European interests as a whole. 

But the Brussels bubble needs to accept that a deal with Putin and Trump won’t be dictated by EU protocols, in the view of a diplomat from a European Union country who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

“We cannot show up with two or three people all speaking on behalf of the EU,” the diplomat said. “The choice of who ends up representing the EU will be based on what would provide the most value, not personal power struggles or narcissistic preferences.”

Will Stubb step up?

One name outside the EU’s machinery that is gaining attention is Alexander Stubb, the president of Finland. Two key factors count in his favor: He has arguably the best relationship with Trump among EU leaders, and Finland has long experience of dealing with Russia — the two countries share a 1,300 kilometer border and have been at war in the past.

“Stubb is of interest because of Finnish knowledge of and traditional dialogue with Russia,” the diplomat said. “They know more than anyone on our side [about] what it takes to feel secure in such a situation.”

A second EU diplomat noted that Stubb was “the only person who has come forward so far” to show high-level political leadership, and could serve as a European envoy at a future peace summit. Stubb was in Norway with Zelenskyy and Witkoff on Tuesday for negotiations ahead of the U.S. envoy’s visit to Russia to meet Putin. 

Also attending the gathering in Oslo was von der Leyen’s most senior aide, Bjoern Seibert, who has joined meetings of national security advisers as part of the Coalition of the Willing to support Ukraine.

A third European diplomat said it was vital that the EU itself be represented in the talks, instead of a small grouping of powerful countries such as Germany, France and the U.K.

That means both Seibert and Pedro Lourtie, the top aide to Costa, must have seats at the table during preparatory talks, the diplomat said, and that EU member countries must be properly updated on progress.

Calling Costa

According to a fourth EU diplomat, European leaders asked Costa at last week’s summit in Brussels whether it might be time for him to talk to Putin. “Costa said, no, he’s not going to talk to Putin now,” they said. “But Costa should start talking to Putin if we want to play a role in the negotiations. By not speaking, we are playing into the hands of our opponents.”

The fourth diplomat said Costa would be a better choice than von der Leyen or Kallas, who are both seen as too invested in the Ukrainian side to represent the EU effectively at leader level. Kallas in particular has been outspoken in her criticism of Trump. “Costa comes across as more of an honest broker,” they summarized.

The European Commission insists the EU is already present at the peace talks, flagging Seibert’s presence in Oslo on Tuesday. “The main aim [in Oslo] was to explore if the parameters are there for a possible move to trilateral or even multilateral talks with Ukraine and Russia present at the same table,” European Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho told reporters on Wednesday. 

She said the talks had focused on territory, security and post-war prosperity for Ukraine; Witkoff is expected to debrief Ukraine and the Europeans after his trip to meet Putin. “What is very important is that we are sitting at the table, that we are able to present our position, and that we can engage in what is a shared objective to put an end to this horrific war,” she added. 

Gerardo Fortuna and Paul Ronzheimer contributed to this report.

French President Emmanuel Macron will “solemnly” address the French people Sunday evening following violent scenes across the country that resulted in hundreds of arrests and millions of euros in damage.

Clashes broke out Saturday in France on the latest day of demonstrations that emerged from last month’s student protests, which had featured school blockades and calls for better study conditions. The movement has since grown into nationwide protests against rising living costs — and has become a political issue as the campaign for next year’s presidential election heats up.

Footage showed widespread looting, burned-out cars and smashed store windows. Rioters set fire to the town hall in Limoges, a city in central France, causing the roof to partially collapse. One demonstrator died after suffering a heart attack.

“More than 2,000 people have been taken into custody,” Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez wrote on X Sunday afternoon. “More than 600 police officers, gendarmes, and firefighters have been injured amid these scenes of violence.”

Before addressing the nation at 8 p.m., Macron will meet Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu and the ministers responsible for handling the crisis.

U.S. President Donald Trump seized on the violence to blame migration. “France is burning! The immigration of people from an entirely different world, people with hatred in their hearts, has shattered that once great country,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Sunday afternoon.

“Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!” he added.

Earlier in the day, U.S. Vice President JD Vance had called out European leaders: “Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion” but “ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility.”

He called on Americans to pay attention, as “this is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.” The U.S. faces crucial midterm elections to both houses of Congress on Nov. 3.

The French government has struggled to deal with the crisis in recent weeks — Lecornu described it as “urban violence” — and is now hoping the student movement will fade due to a two-week school holiday that started Friday.

Guillaume Guérin, the mayor of Limoges, criticized the government’s handling of the demonstrations, saying the national police “simply had no more ammunition left.”

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained a Swedish citizen in the Pskov region near the Estonian border on Thursday.

The man is accused of crossing the border illegally, according to a press release published by the FSB. The accused also faces allegations of “organizing activities of a terrorist organization” and “mercenarism”.

The FSB also published videos of the Swedish citizen, in which he confirms his identity and says he is 35 years old. He also states that he signed a contract with the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s Aidar Battalion in order to carry out acts of sabotage in Russia.

The Aidar Battalion and the Ukrainian army have so far not commented on the allegations, but his relatives confirmed to Swedish television that he had visited Ukraine sporadically and fought there.

“The Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Embassy in Moscow are investigating these reports,” the Swedish Foreign Ministry said in comments.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.

In the meantime, the Swedish embassy in Moscow advised its citizens against visiting Russia as “a sharp deterioration in the security situation may limit the Embassy’s ability to provide consular support.”

Earlier this week, the FSB detained a correspondent for Japan’s Hokkaido Shimbun in Sakhalin on suspicion of espionage, accusing him of gathering information about Russia’s defense capabilities.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi rejected Russia’s allegations. “There is no such fact,” she told reporters.

BRUSSELS — The EU border agency Frontex is suspending a support program for deported migrants after its budget for the year ran out earlier than anticipated, emails seen by POLITICO show. 

The border agency paused new applications for reintegration support under its program on Oct. 2 after estimating that costs had “reached a level that does no longer ensure full financial coverage,” according to an email sent by Executive Director Hans Leijtens to staff on that date.

The program, which has operated since 2022, offers financial assistance, healthcare, vocational training and counseling to people who are returned to their home countries after being refused the right to stay in the EU. Reintegration support forms part of the EU’s plan to boost returns of unsuccessful asylum-seekers.

The suspension comes as the EU seeks to step up deportations from the bloc — a leading pillar of EU migration policy, and the object of new legislation adopted earlier this month — and weeks before the European Commission is expected to propose expanding the mandate of the border agency, including its role in returns and reintegration.

Frontex cannot resume the program without additional cash. The agency asked the Commission for more funds, but is waiting for clarity on the EU budget for 2027, and the next seven-year budget starting in 2028, the emails said.

“There is no point in talking about a more ambitious European return policy without also talking about the resources needed to deliver it,” Frontex spokesperson Chris Borowski told POLITICO. “Ambition and funding have to go hand in hand.”

Borowski confirmed that the agency had suspended new cases, but stressed that individuals already been accepted into the program wouldn’t be affected and that Frontex would also continue to offer EU countries “other forms of assistance” on returns, such as operational and technical support.

“Returns do not end when a plane lands. Helping people rebuild their lives after returning to their home countries is an important part of making migration management work. It takes planning, people and money,” he said.

With 2,368 new cases per month on average, the agency took on significantly more migrants seeking reintegration support than it expected. Cases in September were 63% higher than Frontex’s target, according to Leijtens’ email to staff. In the first half of this year, the agency took on around 75% more cases than it did in the same period last year.

In previous years, Frontex was able to assign additional funds from other parts of its budget, the email says — signaling the agency has had to search to find the cash to keep the program running in the past.

“Frontex does not have the necessary appropriations to cover the needs further as MFF allocations did not consider that Frontex would be expected to take over EURP funding at the scale we have seen today,” Leijtens wrote, referring to Multiannual Financial Framework, the EU’s seven-year budget.

The agency has raised the issue with the Commission but “no further commitments could be made onwards,” according to the email.

The program’s suspension raises questions about the future of the bloc’s migration approach. Reintegration is “the key ingredient” to making the EU’s returns strategy work, Lukas Gehrke, the director of the U.N.’s migration organization’s global office in Brussels, told POLITICO.

Forced returns are expensive and come with a higher risk of human rights infringements, whereas reintegration support boosts voluntary returns, reduces people’s propensity to attempt to reach the EU again, and tends to ease cooperation with the country to which they return, he argued.

“That means every euro spent on return with reintegration is a euro spent in a more sustainable way,” Gehrke said.

‘Do not argue or defend the EU policy’

In emailed guidance on how to communicate the suspension to migrants who applied for support, seen by POLITICO, staff were told to “acknowledge the institutional problem” with reintegration program funding “so the returnee does not feel personally targeted or punished.”

Counselors should be transparent, validate migrants’ disappointment, wait for their emotions to pass and shift the conversation to what they could still do upon their return, the guidance read, advising: “Do not argue or defend the EU policy.”

Potential returnees “may feel deceived, leading to anger, despondency, or complete withdrawal from the return process,” it also warned.

Expanding the agency’s Frontex mandate featured in the Commission’s five-point plan to address sudden mass movements of people, in the aftermath of migration crisis in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta. Besides stepping up the agency’s role in returns and reintegration, the plan also noted an intention to charge Frontex with monitoring the bloc’s external borders and add capacity to quickly deploy forces in the event of an emergency.

“The Commission will propose that Frontex becomes a genuinely European capability with the scale, tools and agility to support Member States wherever and whenever needed,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote in a letter to EU leaders ahead of a summit on Thursday and Friday, where migration is likely to be a flashpoint.

The plans have already raised concerns that the border agency’s mandate is being expanded more quickly than its resources.

Strengthening the border agency’s emergency response capacities, for example, comes with a tradeoff as staff that can be deployed on a moment’s notice cannot be deployed elsewhere, Leijtens, Frontex’s executive director, said at an event earlier this month.  “If they’re in Narva in Estonia, you can’t use them in Italy right now.”

Zoya Sheftalovich contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS ― Political pressure is leaving Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz poorly placed to break the deadlock over the EU’s next seven-year budget.

As EU leaders gather for a two-day summit in Brussels from Thursday, the heads of the bloc’s two largest countries hold the keys to breaking the impasse between capitals that has persisted for months, as a Germany-led group advocating a smaller budget clashes with those like France which are resisting reductions.

“Delays and persisting divisions in the Council [representing EU governments] are worrying,” said Siegfried Mureșan, co-leading the European Parliament’s work on the MFF, the multiannual financial framework. “The EU budget can only be built through compromise … The faster we adopt the budget, the faster we can implement it and become more competitive, safer, help farmers and researchers and protect our borders and cyberspace.”

Sealing agreement on the EU’s long-term central budget, worth approximately €2 trillion, is the biggest challenge over the next few months facing leaders, all of whom must sign up to the final numbers. While it isn’t just up to Macron and Merz, getting the chiefs of the bloc’s two most powerful countries to overcome their differences would be a massive step in making all the pieces of the jigsaw slot into place.

But with Macron soon to leave office and Merz under severe pressure domestically, officials and diplomats in Brussels, Paris, and Berlin are playing down hopes of a Franco-German breakthrough this week.

“If the French and German leaders come hand in hand, I think that could change the game,” an EU diplomat, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said. “You need [Italian Prime Minister Giorgia] Meloni and [Polish Prime Minister Donald] Tusk, but it starts with Merz and Macron.”

While Merz and Macron may talk bilaterally during the summit, according to an Elysée official, there were no firm plans for a more formal sit-down, two EU diplomats said, adding they were expecting them to use the two-day meeting to hash out positions.

Domestic political weakness makes both leaders less likely to yield ground, three EU diplomats said.

Backfiring

For the French president, who leaves office next year, the fear is that making big concessions — like accepting cuts demanded by Berlin — could be weaponized by presidential candidates vying to replace him.

“Macron should not appear too conciliatory” in budget talks, said an ally of the French president. “It would backfire in the presidential campaign.”

Indeed, Macron may be wary of striking a deal that could lead to attacks from far-right leader Marine Le Pen or far-left rival Jean-Luc Mélenchon, both of whom argue that France receives too little value for its contributions to the EU pot.

During a press conference in Brussels on Wednesday evening, Le Pen accused negotiators of speeding up talks as “an attempt to stifle future democratic choices before they even take place” — effectively warning Macron against locking in an agreement before France’s April presidential election and votes in other major EU countries, such as Spain, which goes to the polls next month, and Italy, which is due to hold a poll next year.

“All this is not serious,” Le Pen told reporters on the 26th floor of The Hotel in Brussels.

It’s complicated

Merz faces similar political pressures.

Following humiliating state election defeats to the far-right Alternative for Germany party, the Chancellor is wary of concessions that could be framed as sending more taxpayer money to Brussels. Berlin prefers no deal at all to one that increases the overall budget, Merz said.

But Paris and Berlin’s positions may not be as far apart as public statements suggest.

“It’s complicated because France and Germany both need to step outside of their comfort zone,” said the Macron ally. “But it will end with a deal between France and Germany,”

France’s Europe minister Benjamin Haddad told reporters on Tuesday that discussions should focus on raising money via taxes, or “own resources” as they’re known in the EU —such as online gambling levies—rather than “massive cuts.”

However, Paris also wants to “stabilize national contributions” ― in other words, keep its own payments level.

Berlin was “open to examine new own resources, but we are more skeptical than the French that it will generate enough money,” a German official said.

France is betting that when push comes to shove, Merz will give in to pressure from other countries — and German captains of industry — to abandon his demands for far-reaching cuts.

“I see that there is also a real debate in Germany as well on the fact of having a position that would only be focused on cuts to the detriment of future policies,” an Elysée official said Wednesday. This week, Germany’s industrial lobby BDI and top industry groups urged their government to defend a more ambitious EU budget.

Macron and Merz showed unity earlier this month by jointly urging the European Commission to toughen its stance on China. But they still struggle to agree on another major deal—first reported by POLITICO in July—where Berlin accepts stronger “Made in Europe” rules in exchange for France backing relaxed car emission targets and the 2035 combustion engine ban.

EU Industry chief Stéphane Séjourné told POLITICO on Tuesday he supported the deal to finalize both files. Macron recently called the agreement “imminent,” suggesting progress depended on German coalition talks. But their failure to present an agreement at this week’s Paris car show confirms Paris and Berlin still disagree on terms, with the Elysée confirming negotiations remain ongoing.