Ursula von der Leyen’s plan to slim down and reorganize the European Commission moves a step closer, with outside advisers calling for a stronger center, fewer bureaucratic silos and potentially far-reaching changes to some of Brussels’ most powerful departments.
Then, after Aleksandar Vučić’s defeat in Serbia, Zoya Sheftalovich and Nick Vinocur ask whether a new government can revive the country’s stalled EU path — and whether Brussels has some lessons to learn.
Plus, tobacco lobbying in the European Parliament has surged just as the EU rewrites its smoking and nicotine rules.
Finally, are you on team pumpkin decoration or team pumpkin carving? Nick has strong feelings; let us know yours! Message us on our WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29.
LONDON — Andy Burnham pledged to bring back hope when he entered Downing Street. Labour MPs are feeling it — for now.
The British prime minister is approaching 100 days in No. 10 this week with his party believing things are on the up.
Keir Starmer was toppled earlier this year after disastrous local election results precipitated a loss of confidence in his administration.
Disgruntled Labour MPs warned their new leader must show up, listen to them and accept some disagreement to avoid repeating his predecessor’s mistakes.
POLITICO sets out the four reasons Labour MPs are feeling more chipper under Burnham — but they still see potential pitfalls ahead.
Some of the dozen parliamentarians interviewed by POLITICO for this piece were granted anonymity to speak candidly about the internal party matters.
1) Disagreement is tolerated
MPs reckon Burnham’s administration is more willing to recognize different views within the broad church Labour Party.
Burnham himself told a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting that disagreement is fine as long as MPs speak to him about it, according to Simon Opher — a 2024-intake MP and member of Mainstream, the soft-left faction supported by Burnham when he was Greater Manchester mayor.
“It sounds weird, but that is a remarkable difference from what they had before,” Opher said, claiming he felt a “slight climate of fear” early in his political career.
Starmer infuriated MPs when weeks after taking office he suspended the whip from those who voted to scrap a two-child benefit cap — only to U-turn earlier this year.
By contrast, Kim Johnson, a member of Labour’s left-wing Socialist Campaign Group faction, points out she wasn’t sanctioned after abstaining on the government’s Courts and Tribunals Bill earlier this month because she believes it still weakens the right to trial by jury.
“You’re not feeling you can’t do that or risk losing the whip,” she said.
Burnham’s eyes are photographed as he delivers a speech at the Labour Conference in Liverpool on Sept. 29, 2026. | Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images
Of course, Burnham’s appetite for disagreement hasn’t been fully put to the test.
He entered No. 10 at the start of the summer recess, when MPs were away from Westminster, and there was a month-long conference recess when they returned to SW1 in September.
And MPs don’t want a totally laissez-faire regime.
“I didn’t get into politics to sit in a room and just agree with each other,” said another 2024-intake Labour MP. “I don’t think you get good policy by just sitting around like nodding dogs.”
But they said they “genuinely believe in collective responsibility,” and are “quite relaxed” about the consequences of voting against the whip.
Another backbench MP warns Burnham’s lax approach can only last so long.
“Andy is riding high still, he is not in [Nigel] Farage or [Zack] Polanski territory, he can afford for people to go ‘I don’t like this.’ It’s when the shit hits the fan, and the public are saying they’re not happy, then you begin to find the political patience wears out,” that backbencher added.
Burnham may yet regret his promise that the whips office will act as an HR department, the MP said, “because you want them to come down like a clonking fist.”
2) Ministers are more visible
Burnham’s team is making itself seen, his MPs report.
Whips have been calling them to check in, and Burnham himself has attended PLP sub-group meetings. Cabinet ministers have also been available for meetings.
Though another Socialist Campaign Group MP admitted “it’s a very low bar” for improvement. “Under Starmer, there was very little in terms of consultations, any discussions about anything at all.”
Mainstream member Alex Sobel said: “I’ve had more meetings with No. 10 — I’ve been to No. 10 North — in these three months than the entire time of the previous administration.”
One MP said: “People feel warmly towards Andy, which is half the battle. I think they trust his good intentions.” | Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images
Bill Esterson, who chairs the Energy Security Committee, said he had “regular conversations with No. 10” and that Burnham’s team had “engaged very fully” with committee chairs and the PLP more broadly.
A second 2024 intake MP said: “There’s definitely more of a concerted attempt for them to be reaching out and listening to us.” The days of being viewed “as the legal necessity to get legislation through” are over.
3) Burnham’s political instincts
MPs reckon they’ve had an upgrade when it comes to raw political instincts.
“There’s a feeling that we’ve got a guy up front who we can get behind,” said Opher.
“He understands how politics works,” he added, citing the decision to delay approval for drilling at the Jackdaw gas field until after the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, where Labour faced a challenge from the Greens. “Andy’s much more savvy on what he’s doing.”
Backbenchers also claim to feel more confident they won’t get caught in the Starmer flip-flop policy trap.
The unnamed Socialist Campaign Group MP quoted above is still smarting over the “absolutely awful” two-child benefit cap vote, where rebels lost the whip only for it later to become government policy.
The first 2024-intake MP reckons Burnham is better able to communicate difficult trade-offs, like alteringthe triple lock to fund social care.
4) Voters are giving Labour another chance
It is ultimately Burnham’s popularity with the public that has fed into the positive mood.
Many Labour MPs “agreed with the punters on the doorstep” about Starmer’s inadequacies, Opher said. Data showing Labour has retaken the opinion poll lead from Reform UK has boosted their optimism. “It doesn’t feel like a party that is about to be ripped apart,” he added.
The first 2024 intake MP said: “It has given us the right to be heard,” said the first 2024-intake Labour MP quoted above. “People feel warmly towards Andy, which is half the battle. I think they trust his good intentions.”
MPs say Burnham’s administration is willing to recognize different views within the Labour Party. | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Some flashpoints ahead…
1) The budget
Burnham can only coast on the good vibes for so long, and the first test of tough political choices comes Wednesday in the budget.
MPs on the left see the economic statement as a “crunch point” that will show if the chancellor will put his money where the PM’s mouth is.
“If there’s an attempt to take money from ordinary people who’ve got nothing and no attempt to get finances from people who have got far too much, then probably there will be some sort of opposition”, said the unnamed Socialist Campaign Group MP previously quoted. They hope to see the already trailed bank tax confirmed, or a wealth tax.
They warned that any decisions on what to cut and where to spend will pose “challenges from both sides of the PLP.”
“The measure of Andy Burnham is how he deals with it,” they added.
2) Welfare
Burnham wants to avoid a repeat of the botched attempt at welfare reform which severely weakened Starmer’s authority.
A long-awaited review by former Cabinet minister Alan Milburn into young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs) will be published shortly with recommendations.
Milburn — alongside Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden — has been trying to ensure communication is better.
“Pat has done an excellent job at building a consensus, rolling the carpet, setting out the argument, setting out the moral case, but he was doing that before the change of administration,” a third 2024-intake Labour MP said.
The second 2024 Labour MP quoted above said most colleagues “feel like it’s a decent stab at it and it’s not come out of the blue.” Reasonable critics “were just getting stonewalled” last year.
Esterson, who’s served in parliament since 2010, said regular engagement means “it’s not surprising that you get the benefit of the doubt far more often than if you don’t.”
3) Europe
Burnham’s admission that a future Labour manifesto could commit to a referendum on EU membership is already opening old Brexit wounds — and not in the way Labour wants.
The Socialist Campaign Group MP previously quoted is uneasy about its potential to spark further division. “It nearly ripped the country apart and I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to do [to] reignite that horribleness in each constituency,” they said.
The third 2024-intake Labour MP quoted above concurred. While people want a closer relationship with Europe, they believe rejoining is a “different kettle of fish” and jars with constituents who want “better public services and more economic growth” rather than continental renegotiations.
4) Energy
Energy policy has already become a flashpoint. The decision to approve the Jackdaw gas field was met with some dissent. A decision about the larger Rosebank oil and gas field is still looming.
Sobel told POLITICO’s London Playbook it “won’t make an impact on global prices and will give mixed messages in terms of investment in terms of both renewables and decarbonisation of home heating.”
Left-wing Labour MPs also signed a letter to Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh urging her to reject the licenses due to climate change. “Every second we continue pumping fossil fuels into the atmosphere makes the crisis more severe,” the letter organized by Chris Hinchliff said.
The second 2024-intake MP quoted thought ministers are acting in good faith.
“They’ve got one go at government and they seem to be doing their absolute best to give it a good whack,” they said.
As Europe plans its response to the neurological disease burden, a fundamental measurement gap is being overlooked — and the cost of ignoring it is being felt.
A briefing requested earlier this year by the European Parliament’s Committee on Public Health (SANT) put it plainly: neurological diseases are one of Europe’s most urgent and rapidly expanding health, social and economic challenges. Published in February 2026, it calls for a coordinated European plan linking prevention, early diagnosis, research and innovation.1 But before Europe considers what that plan should look like, a foundational question demands attention: are we measuring the right things?
Multiple sclerosis (MS), a chronic, progressive disease of the central nervous system that disrupts communication between the brain and the body, offers a revealing case study. Consider a woman in her mid-30s, working, raising a family, managing what her neurologist calls “stable” MS. She has not slept properly in years, her memory has been slipping and she is cutting her hours at work. Her last clinical note reads: “No change.” On paper, she is stable, but in reality she is anything but.
Her story is not unusual. According to research commissioned by Sanofi*, the gap between what health systems measure and what people with MS experience may be costing individuals, families and economies more than we realize.3
The stakes for Europe
Over 3 million people globally live with MS and Europe has the highest prevalence, at 133 per 100,000 people.2,3 The condition strikes primarily during prime working years, meaning hundreds of thousands of people are navigating a progressive, unpredictable disease at precisely the point when inadequate support is felt most acutely.3
That support begins with measurement. And right now, the tools used to assess MS in clinical practice do not fully capture what people with the disease experience.3
The consequences extend far beyond the clinic: 82 percent of people with severe MS rely on unpaid family caregiving, yet this burden rarely appears in standard health data or policy design.3 When the full impact of disease is not measured, health systems can underestimate need, delay support, and overlook the wider effects on work, welfare and family life.3
The measurement gap
The Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS), the primary tool used to measure MS disability, was developed in 1983 to assess walking ability. We now know that MS affects far more than mobility. Fatigue affects 94 percent of people with MS, while 75 percent report cognitive difficulties, but both are absent in the EDSS assessment.3 In a field where clinical consensus is rare, seven in ten neurologists agree: a more comprehensive approach is needed.3
Growing recognition of smouldering neuroinflammation has made the need for new methods of quantifying MS progression increasingly urgent. This slow, chronic disease activity can persist even when a patient appears clinically stable, with effects that are subtle, cumulative and easy to miss until significant damage has already occurred.4
This is why Sanofi initiated the development of the Smouldering Associated Worsening (SAW) Index+. The SAW Index Study — led by an international steering committee of leading MS clinicians, researchers and patient advocates — is due to complete in 2027. Based on hundreds of hours of in-depth qualitative research with people with MS, the goal of the SAW Index is to provide neurologists with a comprehensive measurement framework that bridges the gap between lived experience and what clinical tools are currently able to detect.
According to the European Multiple Sclerosis Platform, people with MS experience an average of 14 symptoms within the first five years of diagnosis, with fatigue, sensory problems, sleep disturbances, cognitive impairment and balance problems among the most common.5 These are precisely the experiences the SAW Index is designed to surface, replacing static labels like “moderately affected” with measurement metrics grounded in the experience and words of people with MS.
The cost of this gap
These aspects of MS can be challenging to quantify and are associated with substantial societal and economic burdens. Lifetime productivity loss per person with MS ranges from €394,000 in France to €668,000 in Germany.3 The cost profile shifts significantly as the disease progresses: in mild MS, direct healthcare costs dominate; in severe MS, indirect costs become the primary driver.3 Indeed, lost wages, absenteeism, early retirement, disability payments and the growing burden on unpaid carers outweigh medical costs in many countries, placing growing long-term pressure on social insurance and disability systems.3
Early identification of progression could change that trajectory, extending years of employment, preserving household income, and reducing long-term dependence on disability and social benefits.3,6 That is a cost-avoidance opportunity current measurement frameworks are missing.
Progress in motion
There is no single fix, but there is momentum.
MS care has advanced significantly in recent decades: diagnosis is happening earlier, treatment options have expanded and the focus is shifting from relapse control alone to slowing long-term disability progression.7 Furthermore, there is growing recognition of the importance of cognition, mental health, rehabilitation and the day-to-day realities that shape whether people living with MS can remain independent and active.8
The challenge now is to ensure policy keeps pace with that progress, and better measurement is part of the answer. If Europe wants health spending to deliver lasting value, it should see these improvements not as costs to be managed, but as investments in independence, participation, productivity and more sustainable health systems.
Time to act
The European Parliament’s SANT Committee has called for a fully funded European neurological health plan — one with the scale and ambition of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, aligning health, research and societal action in a unified framework.1 MS offers a clear and immediate test case for what that ambition looks like in practice.
But ambitious plans require accurate data. If Europe is serious about a coordinated response to neurological disease, getting measurement right is not a secondary concern; it is the foundation on which everything else depends.
The people living with MS across the continent cannot wait for the tools that measure their disease to catch up with the science that understands it. Neither should policymakers.
*Research commissioned by Sanofi. All editorial control retained by Economist Impact. +Sanofi initiated and funds the SAW Index Study.
Scalfari, A, et al. (2024) Smouldering-Associated Worsening in Multiple Sclerosis: An International Consensus Statement on Definition, Biology, Clinical Implications, and Future Directions. Ann Neurol 2024;00:1. DOI: 10.1002/ana.27034.
European Multiple Sclerosis Platform. (n.d.). Impact of multiple sclerosis symptoms (IMSS) [Fact sheet]. Accessed: October 2026
Montague T, Drummond J, Ng K, Parratt J. Advancements in multiple sclerosis. Intern Med J. 2025 Jun;55(6):895-904. DOI: 10.1111/imj.70023.
Giovannoni G, et al. MS care: integrating advanced therapies and holistic management. Front Neurol. 2024 Jan 30;14:1286122. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2023
Disclaimer
POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT
The sponsor is Sanofi.
The political advertisement is linked to driving action in how neurological disease is measured in the EU (using MS as a case study) and driving action around the briefing requested by the SANT committee aimed at strengthening brain health (Policy Recommendations to Tackle the Rising Burden of Neurological Diseases).
DUBLIN — The Irish capital, which doubles as Europe’s de facto tech capital, hosted two very different AI summits in the past week.
Most eyes were on the International AI Summit, the signature tech event of Ireland’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU, where top brass from the world’s biggest tech firms discussed ways to harness artificial intelligence and minimize safety risks.
But the weekend before, a very different conversation was taking place at the Workers’ AI Counter Summit, as Ireland’s tech workers demanded a say in how the burgeoning technology reshapes the workplace and society.
Ireland’s lucrative tech sector has been rattled by waves of AI-driven layoffs — and the country’s fledgling tech union has seen an exponential spike in sign-ups from workers who are worried about their future.
There’s an “awakening” happening right now among workers in Ireland’s tech sector, and a growing “awareness that they’re not bulletproof,” said Sinéad Gibney, a social democrat lawmaker who previously worked for Google.
“I do think what we will see is that parts of roles will be automated, which means that people will be competing more heavily for the same roles,” she said. “They won’t have the same labor power and therefore we’re going to see a drop in quality of work, we’re going to see more zero-hour contracts, in more places than we already see it.”
The labor movement brewing in Ireland, where many of the world’s tech giants have their EU bases, is part of a wider trend among tech workers globally, who have seen their work disrupted by rapidly evolving AI.
Rise in layoffs
Ireland’s dedicated union for tech workers, the Digital and Techworker Alliance (DATA), has seen a five-fold increase in membership since it was first founded in 2023.
In its first year and a half of existence, membership hovered around 270 people. In the past year-and-a-half, it’s jumped to more than 1,350 members, DATA organizer John Bohan told POLITICO. He added that this number tends to spike around layoffs and other actions.
“The tech industry was founded on the idea that it would never have a union, because they’re making people rich, and treat them really well,” Bohan said. “But post-Covid, workforce adjustments happened again and again, with layoffs and declining conditions in the sector. We started to see more people wanting to get organized around redundancies.”
The spike in sign-ups coincides with a wave of layoffs in Ireland’s tech bubble (and the tech sector globally), as companies corrected pandemic-era overhiring, and diverted investment to AI.
Ireland hosts the EU headquarters of most of the world’s largest tech companies, and more than 170,000 people are employed in the tech sector, according to the country’s statistics institute.
Social media giant Meta has roughly halved its workforce in Ireland since the pandemic, axing well over 1,000 roles to offset AI investment and boost efficiency. Separately, Meta subcontractor Covalen also announced massive layoffs earlier this year, cutting more than 700 people.
Video-sharing platform TikTok announced this year it would shed around 300 Irish jobs, mostly from its trust and safety team, shifting the work to other countries, outsourced vendors or automated AI solutions.
A report by the IMF earlier this year warned that Ireland’s labor market is “relatively more exposed” to AI than many advanced economies, partly due to its concentration of tech workers.
The AI race is also creating new jobs on the Irish market – as AI firms like Anthropic and OpenAI are setting up Irish bases and trying to lure Big Tech workers with even bigger salaries.
Amid the uncertainty and volatility of the AI boom, tech workers are turning to unions for the first time as a safety net. One tech worker who used to work in trust and safety at a big tech firm told POLITICO that there used to be a feeling that as a “pampered” tech worker you “can’t ask for your rights, because you already have it so much better.”
But as layoffs continue and teams get leaner, workers in fields like trust and safety “now have to deal with these issues with fewer and fewer resources”, and face a “constant threat of being chopped,” the worker said.
That’s causing an “undoing of a certain perspective that we have of ourselves as tech sector workers,” they said, “because of undeniable experiences that now put us in situations where we clearly see our rights being violated, even if we may have it so much or somewhat better than most people.”
A different tech worker who currently works for Covalen told POLITICO that there is a sense that “if they believe they can replace you with AI, they will do that.”
“All these Big Tech firms only care about profit, and what I have realized is the Irish government protects that Big Tech capital [rather than workers],” the Covalen worker said. “But the question is, what’s the government going to do when the tech bros change their mind and move elsewhere?”
Workers at the center
The speaker list at this week’s AI summit was a flex of the country’s strength as a tech hub, as top names from the world’s biggest companies like Google and Microsoft took to the stage.
Fionnuala Ní Bhrógáin, head of organizing and campaigning at Ireland’s Communications Workers’ Union (DATA’s parent union), was the only union voice on the line-up.
“The fact that 36 executives and industry bosses featured on the program, compared with just one trade union speaker — invited at the last minute after attention was drawn to the absence of workers’ voices — says a lot about the value the Irish government places on AI’s impact on workers,” she told POLITICO.
“The reality is that a meaningful conversation about AI’s future can only happen through genuine engagement with workers and collective bargaining,” Ní Bhrógáin added. “Without that voice, we risk deepening mistrust and resistance rather than creating the conditions for workers to shape these changes collectively.”
DATA organized its counter-AI summit the previous weekend, to put “workers at the center of the debate about power, AI, technology and the future of work.”
The event cut through the “hype and futurism of politicians and industry figures to focus on the real present harms faced by ordinary workers and communities,” DATA’s Bohan said.
The union is pushing for stronger legal protections for tech workers caught up in AI-driven layoffs in Ireland, including making it mandatory for employers to recognize unions during collective bargaining. It is also calling for a ban on cooling-off clauses that prevent laid-off workers from moving between Big Tech subcontractors.
A spokesperson for Ireland’s department for enterprise told POLITICO in a written statement that the government is “committed to strengthening collective bargaining and industrial relations” and has published an action plan to do so between now and 2030.
They said that employers already have to comply with obligations under Irish employment law, including consultation and notification procedures for collective redundancies, and workers who feel those rules have been broken can complain to the Workplace Relations Commission.
Firefighting to future-proofing
Naoise Ó Cearúil, a center-right Fianna Fáil lawmaker who chairs the AI committee, pointed out that while there have been high-profile job cuts in Ireland’s tech sector, “the actual net is that there has been an increase [in jobs], particularly over the past year and even five years.”
According to Ireland’s central statistics office, total employment in tech and related sectors surpassed 177,000 in the second quarter of this year, up from around 144,000 at the same time in 2021.
Ó Cearúil pointed out that many job losses were in trust and safety jobs like content moderation that are “very difficult mentally,” and now tech firms are able to “utilize AI and software to be able to do a lot of detection, rather than using humans.”
He has called for a national program to be established, to support workers whose jobs are at risk due to AI and automation.
A spokesperson for Ireland’s department of enterprise acknowledged that the country’s tech sector has “experienced significant adjustment in recent years,” but said the changes were generally part of wider global restructuring “rather than reflecting any Ireland-specific weakness.”
They said the Irish government is currently focused on “ensuring workers and businesses are equipped to adapt to technological change through investment in education, training, lifelong learning and digital skills.”
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