MADRID — The Spanish government has won a significant victory in a long-running legal dispute with international investors over its decision more than a decade ago to scrap renewable energy subsidies.

This week, a Belgian court overturned a ruling that ordered the Spanish government to pay investors nearly €76 million.

It was a major win for Spain, which has been fighting attempts to freeze its assets around the world from clean energy investors who claim they are owed at least €2 billion in subsidies.

The dispute dates back to 2013, in the middle of the European debt crisis, when cash-strapped Spain, then under a new conservative government, decided to remove subsidies for renewable energy. Investors who had poured money into Spanish renewables said this was a breach, as they had invested on the understanding they would receive the subsidies.

The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes ruled that Spain must pay the money, but the European Commission has told Spain doing so would constitute unlawful state aid.

The standoff has played out all over the world, with investors attempting to freeze Spanish assets in multiple jurisdictions. In June, U.S. investment fund Blasket Renewable Investments LLC issued subpoenas demanding documents from Adidas, Hilton Hotels, and other entities involved in Spain’s Football World Cup participation to help with its bid to freeze Spanish assets.

In the end, the team went back home with its assets intact, along with the World Cup.

Spain also has cases going on in courts in Australia, Germany and the U.S.

In 2023, a British court ordered an embargo on an international school in London owned by the Spanish state. The Belgian court’s original decision was one of the few examples where investors were successful, and the decision this week to overturn it will set a precedent for other challenges.

The case

Spain’s defense persuaded a Belgian court to lift an embargo imposed in 2025 on state-owned air-navigation company Enaire for €75.76 million, according to documents seen by POLITICO.

The case was also brought by Blasket, which bought the dispute from an investment fund called RREEF. The European Commission intervened in support of Spain.

RREEF, which was originally linked to Deutsche Bank, invested in Spanish wind and solar power under a 2007 regulatory framework that guaranteed subsidies for renewable energy. In 2013, amid the economic crisis, the government of then-Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, of the conservative People’s Party, cut those subsidies to reduce electricity costs.

International investors turned to arbitration, arguing that the Energy Charter Treaty, an international agreement signed in the 1990s, guaranteed them fair and predictable treatment. The funds sought more than €10 billion in compensation, according to sources at Spain’s Environment Ministry.

The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, part of the World Bank, which handled most of the arbitration cases, ruled against Spain, though it reduced the amount sought in many cases. The total awards came to about €2 billion. In its 2019 ruling, the tribunal ordered Spain to pay RREEF €59.6 million, plus interest and costs.

Most of the claims, including RREEF’s, were sold to Blasket, which began seeking to enforce the awards. The funds have searched for Spanish assets that could be seized to satisfy the claims.

Spain says it cannot pay because the European Commission has determined that doing so would constitute unlawful state aid. The funds invested through companies based in Luxembourg, and the EU’s top court ruled that the Energy Charter Treaty did not apply to disputes between EU investors and EU member states; EU law governed instead.

In August 2026, the Commission opened infringement proceedings against Spain over a €23 million payment on an award involving a Japanese company, which was not based in the EU.

On June 17, 2025, Blasket secured a Belgian court order freezing €75.76 million belonging to Enaire, the state-owned company that manages air navigation in Spain. Enaire receives payments from Eurocontrol, the Brussels-based European organization that collects air-navigation charges from airlines and distributes the proceeds.

That arrangement made it possible to freeze Spanish public funds in Belgium. After a legal dispute, Spain deposited €75,759,538 on May 4, 2026.

The freeze was a high-profile win for investors pursuing Spain. They have secured other attachments in the United Kingdom and are engaged in ongoing U.S. court disputes over enforcement of the awards.

Spain appealed, and the European Commission intervened on its behalf. The Belgian state also argued that the attachment breached EU law. The Belgian court has now ruled in Spain’s favor, lifting the freeze and ordering Blasket to pay the legal costs.

That leaves Spain in a stronger position against international investors seeking to enforce the awards — at least within the EU.

BRUSSELS — Center-right lawmakers in the European Parliament are intensifying efforts to weaken two EU climate laws, a campaign that could undermine the bloc’s push to cut planet-warming emissions.

The European People’s Party, the largest group in Parliament, will this week push for a three-year delay to rules on emissions of the climate pollutant methane, a change the fossil fuel sector and the U.S. government have lobbied hard for.

A growing number of EPP lawmakers now also want to delay — or scrap altogether — a new carbon price on transport and heating, known as ETS2, according to a document obtained by POLITICO. That puts them in line with several EU member countries, including Italy and Poland, which pushed for a delay to the new carbon price at a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels last week.

Both policies are central pillars in the EU’s effort to reduce its planet-warming emissions. A successful repeal of ETS2 in particular would be a blow to EU climate goals, as it covers around 40% of the bloc’s greenhouse gas emissions.

But it would also be a major victory for conservative and pro-business lawmakers and national governments that have been campaigning for less stringent EU climate laws in the name of industrial competitiveness.

Ax the tax

The EU Emissions Trading System, launched in 2005, requires power plants and factories in sectors like steel, chemicals and cement to acquire carbon allowances for every ton of carbon they emit. The total number of allowances is reduced each year, eventually reaching zero.

ETS2 applies the same idea to suppliers of fuel for transport and heating from 2028.

The cap-and-trade scheme will be a powerful tool for reducing emissions from these highly polluting activities. But many policymakers worry it will raise the cost of gasoline, diesel and natural gas and add to voters’ cost-of-living pressures.

Nine national delegations of the EPP — the Polish, Spanish, Italian, French, Romanian, Croatian, Slovenian, Slovak and Estonian — are now calling for ETS2 to be repealed, according to draft amendments obtained by POLITICO. “ETS2 should be deleted,” the amendment, sponsored by Polish EPP lawmaker Adam Jarubas, argues.

Another amendment in the same draft, backed by 10 national delegations, takes a softer approach and asks for ETS2 to be “postponed until 2031.”

EU legislators are already reviewing a proposed reform of the EU’s original Emissions Trading System, which makes amending ETS2 — which is contained in the same legislation as the first ETS — much simpler.

No majority in Parliament or among member countries currently supports delaying or repealing ETS2, but a string of elections next year raises the likelihood that more right-wing governments will be in power before ETS2 comes into force, adding momentum to the push to scrap or delay it.

Methane delay

Last week, the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, proposed a year-long delay to rules that will require oil and gas importers to monitor, report, and eventually reduce emissions of the potent greenhouse gas.

The delay — which affects monitoring requirements and later obligations on methane intensity — followed months of lobbying from industry and member countries, which claimed the Commission provided insufficient clarity on how to comply. The U.S. government also pushed to delay the rules, which are currently due to come into force on Jan. 1, 2027.

But the proposed delay requires support from both governments and lawmakers, some of whom want to go well beyond the Commission’s revised timeline.

On Tuesday, European lawmakers voted to fast-track parliamentary discussions around the Commission’s proposed delay, laying the groundwork for a fresh vote Thursday. At that vote, the EPP is expected to campaign for a three-year delay of the rules, as well as possible further adjustments, according to one lawmaker familiar with the matter.

Dimitris Tsiodras, a European lawmaker, echoed industry concerns that compliance risks could deter cargoes from Europe if left unaddressed. “We cannot afford to put our energy supplies at further risk,” he told lawmakers.

Right-wingers against the rules will still face opposition from left-leaning lawmakers. Jutta Paulus, a German Greens lawmaker who steered the parliament’s position on the legislation in 2024, announced on Tuesday that her party would table an amendment to reject the delay altogether.

However, the EPP could reach an outright majority if it joined with right-wing and far-right groups.

The party is already exploring a deal with those groups if the Socialists and Democrats — the Parliament’s second-largest group — don’t cooperate with its push for a longer postponement, according to two people familiar with the matter. S&D lawmakers opposed extending the delay earlier this month, but a group spokesperson said the party has yet to adopt a formal position in negotiations.

A parliamentary push for a three-year delay could also invigorate member countries’ efforts to delay the rules further.

Member countries are currently divided, though many, including heavyweight France, support the one-year delay proposed by Brussels, according to two diplomats briefed on the matter.

Poland, Slovakia and Czechia, meanwhile, would prefer a three-year delay, but their luck in campaigning for an extension may depend on where Germany lands, the people said. Berlin is currently split between its socialist-controlled environment ministry and its center-right-controlled energy ministry, leaving countries uncertain whether they can formulate a joint position tomorrow, they added.

Italy is also trying to decide whether to opt for one year or more, two diplomats familiar with the matter said.

PARIS — A wave of mass protests swept across France Saturday, with dozens of peaceful marches taking place alongside scenes of violent clashes between demonstrators and police forces.

The demonstrations were also a battleground for candidates ahead of next year’s high-stakes presidential election: The far-right’s Marine Le Pen sided with law enforcement while the far-left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon backed protesters. 

Throughout the day, media reported incidents in the country’s largest cities including Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille and Paris. Dozens of rioters clashed with law enforcement on the capital’s Place de la République, next to a much larger number of demonstrators gathered for an authorized march that started from Paris’s central square.

Media also reported looting across multiple cities later in the day.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu posted a message on X backing police forces and slamming violent rioters. He accused “ultra-left groups” of “organizing violence” and said looters would be brought to justice. Lecornu is overseeing a crisis meeting on Saturday evening, AFP reported.

French President Emmanuel Macron echoed Lecornu’s comments on Saturday evening, although he didn’t mention “ultra-left groups.”

“No place for violence in our Republic,” he said. “We will stand together against those who seed chaos, who only seek to tear down our institutions and who prevent those who peacefully express their demands from doing it.”

Students, farmers and members of the Yellow Jacket movement, among others, took to the streets on Saturday in a “convergence of struggles” to protest rising living costs, sluggish wages and deep disagreements with the government.

About 800,000 protestors took to the streets across the country, according to organizers. France’s interior ministry said 550,000 people took part in the protests.

“A very large majority of people are protesting without violence,” Paris’s police prefecture said on Saturday afternoon.

Saturday’s demonstrations grew out of the student protests that began last month with school blockades and calls for better study conditions, more teachers and more funding. The movement has since spread nationwide — and become a political issue as the campaign for next year’s presidential election heats up.

In recent weeks, the government has struggled to deal with the crisis — which Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu described as “urban violence” — and is hoping the student movement will now fade because of a two-week school holiday that started Friday evening.

“The mobilization is marked by a very strong involvement of the ultra-left movement, which is only looking to cause disorder,” Nuñez’s office said Saturday, adding that the minister reiterated his “instructions of utmost  firmness” to local prefects and police forces.

Footage showed Lyon’s tourist board office engulfed in flames on the city’s Place Bellecour. A police station was vandalized in Marseille, where a group of “rioters” also entered city hall, Mayor Benoît Payan said. He toldBFMTV that “damage was objectively fairly limited,” although the act of vandalism was “unacceptable.” The headquarters of right-wing TV channel CNews in Paris was also targeted, authorities said.

The government has defended the law enforcement response to the student protests despite numerous allegations of police brutality, including incidents that left one teenager with a severed hand and another blind in one eye. Nuñez said the use of “stun grenades” was authorized on Saturday, after a temporary ban on their use against students.

About 163 people had already been arrested in Paris by mid-afternoon, authorities said.

The far-left France Unbowed slammed the police response to the protests.

The party’s presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon participated in the demonstrations in Paris and backed protesters — he also criticized the media for only showing violent clashes while “everything is proceeding peacefully, with tens of thousands of people calmly taking part.”

On the other side of the political spectrum, far-right leaders Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen pledged support for the police. “Legitimate social demands have once again been hijacked by the far left,” Le Pen said, as an increasing number of polls show she could end up in the second round against Mélenchon.

Bardella said on Saturday that protests were made up entirely of “chaos professionals,” adding: “As we said, working France, which is taking the full brunt of inflation and cost-of-living struggles, did not take to the streets today.”

The police and protesters clashed in other European countries on Saturday, too. A student-led protest against corruption and unemployment in Albania’s capital Tirana reportedly turned violent, asdid another one in Brussels.

This story was updated. Victor Goury-Laffont contributed reporting.

An Israeli surveillance technology firm has run a large-scale operation to infect mobile phones with spyware using online advertisements to hack the devices, researchers said on Thursday.

An investigation by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and cybersecurity firm Confiant Threat Intelligence laid bare an ad-based infection technique developed by an Israeli company that researchers named “AdFection.” The hacks weaponized legitimate online ad systems for espionage purposes, allowing spyware manufacturers to connect to millions of devices and identify, track and target victims.

“Plugging into the online ads ecosystem provides the mercenary spyware industry a stealthy delivery system,” said Bill Marczak, senior researcher at The Citizen Lab. He said the findings were “surely just the tip of the iceberg” of how online ads are abused for espionage.

Researchers discovered critical details of the hacking tools by analyzing devices belonging to journalists and staff at the Al Jazeera media network, finding that 45 devices of journalists and staff were targeted and some infected with Israeli-made spyware known as Candiru.

At the heart of the hacking campaign is the Israeli company Discover-Tech that describes itself as an advertising business. Citizen Lab researchers said the company facilitated surveillance for commercial spyware operators. Its platform, called Controlium, allegedly allowed spyware makers like Candiru — which in 2025 was acquired by Integrity Labs — to identify, track and target devices by loading advertisements on websites and apps.

Discover-Tech and Integrity Labs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The scale is striking: An analysis of four billion advertising records found that Discover-Tech’s ads appeared across nearly 200,000 websites and mobile apps in dozens of countries over four months. Among the websites that featured the ads were institutional sites of NATO, the United Nations, the European Parliament, European Commission and Council of the EU.

The technique exploits real-time bidding — the automated system used by platforms such as Google to sell advertising space and target users. Rather than persuading victims to click a malicious link, attackers can exploit advertisements to identify and potentially infect devices without any interaction from the user — a technique known as “zero-click” infections.

Discover-Tech’s advertisements directed millions of devices to servers associated with Candiru, potentially enabling large-scale surveillance and reconnaissance, researchers said. That does not mean all those devices were infected.

Citizen Lab, based in Toronto, is a globally recognized research group that previously uncovered spyware scandals targeting Catalan political figures, a member of the European Parliament and the inner circle of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The findings triggered calls for further investigation on Thursday. “The possibility that EU institutions have been exposed should set off alarm bells across Brussels,” said Hannah Neumann, a German European Parliament lawmaker of the Greens group. Neumann herself was the victim of a cyber-espionage operation by an Iranian hacking group.

“Europe cannot claim to defend democracy while leaving its own democratic institutions vulnerable to spyware,” Neumann said.

BRUSSELS — Privacy regulators want people wearing smart glasses in public to look and sound like a truck backing down a road.

Europe’s powerful data regulators have made stringent new recommendations on how smart glasses should alert people that the wearable devices are filming, including a combination of flashing lights, audio alerts and notifications sent to the phones of people nearby.

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB), made up of national privacy regulators across Europe, issued a statement about smart glasses on Tuesday, following a meeting in Brussels.

Privacy regulators are putting forward a united front on smart glasses, as privacy concerns about the wearable technology have multiplied since videos made with them have begun spreading online without the knowledge or consent of those being filmed.

The statement is not legally binding but will guide how privacy regulators in Europe assess whether smart glasses users and manufacturers are complying with EU privacy rules like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The regulators said smart glasses manufacturers should implement a combination of transparency measures to make other people aware that they are being recorded.

The measures may include lights or sounds when users are recording, requiring smart glasses users to activate them with an audible voice command, sending notifications to the smartphones of people nearby and other design “clues” to help people spot smart glasses.

The group of privacy regulators said that not only should users of smart glasses respect other people’s privacy but that the devices’ manufacturers and people providing connected apps or services may also be responsible for making sure they comply with privacy rules.

The GDPR applies to companies and organizations, and doesn’t apply when people process personal data in a household context. The regulators said this household exemption should be “narrowly interpreted” when it comes to smart glasses, and would not apply when someone shares photos or videos of others “to an indefinite number of persons on a public social media account.”

Tech firms like Meta have pitched their smart glasses to consumers on the basis that they are sleek and discreet. Meta has included an LED light in its smart glasses, which activates while recording, which it has said is a key privacy safeguard.

Samsung and Google have also recently announced that they’re collaborating on a new line of “intelligent eyewear” set to launch later this year, and Apple is reportedly aiming to hit the market with its own smart glasses by the end of 2027. 

The regulators’ statement could now force smart glasses manufacturers to reassess whether and how they sell smart glasses to European consumers. The EDPB called for industry-wide standards to be developed to make sure people are able to spot smart glasses and understand how they process data.

The European group of privacy regulators also commissioned a study into the social acceptability of smart glasses, published today.

BRUSSELS — The EU is facing a winter gas shortage that could leave it scrambling to replace lost energy supplies equivalent to the power used by 12 million homes, according to new reports shared with POLITICO.

The shortfall raises the prospect of a winter of soaring power bills and forced energy saving measures if the bloc fails to find adequate supplies elsewhere.

As the war in Iran continues to disrupt global energy supplies, the EU faces an overall shortfall this winter of up to 14 billion cubic meters of natural gas — around 7% of the bloc’s demand and enough to power between 10 and 12 million European households, according to a report by the Institution for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a U.S.-based energy think tank.

Those conclusions are echoed in a key report by a top European body of gas network operators that was presented to national energy officials on Thursday.

Natural gas is used widely to heat Europe’s buildings, power its industry and generate its electricity. But the EU’s gas reserves have fallen to their lowest level for the time of year since records began in 2011, at just above 70%, after high prices made it more attractive for traders to sell gas in the summer rather than store it for later use in the winter.

With gas prices at near-four-year highs and supply constrained due to the U.S.-Israeli war in the Middle East, Europe has limited supply options if the coming winter proves as cold as the last, IEEFA found.

While that doesn’t necessarily mean the bloc will run out of gas, it does mean there could be 7 billion fewer cubic meters of stored gas to draw upon. That could force countries to buy gas at high prices on increasingly volatile global markets, or even require consumers to cut demand if fresh supplies are unavailable.

The EU’s record-low reserves leave the bloc “with less of a buffer” against global supply disruptions, leaving it “vulnerable to price spikes,” Ana Jaller-Makarewicz, IEEFA’s lead European energy analyst, said in a statement. If countries are forced to exhaust stocks this year, that would also leave them with more to refill next year, continuing the feedback loop of low reserves and higher prices, she added.

The same risks were outlined in a 2026-2027 winter supply outlook published Thursday by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas (ENTSO-G), an association of gas operators. The report warns that if imports of liquefied natural gas are limited or even “optimal” in the context of a cold winter, storage levels could fall as low as 11%, a baseline needed for strategic reserves that can’t be easily tapped into.

If countries hope to restore their reserves to 30% by the end of winter — or else face increased exposure to future cold spells — volumes equivalent to 7% of the demand will either have to be curtailed or simply withheld from consumers, ENTSO-G warns.

Part of that pressure comes from a looming EU-wide ban on long-term supply contracts for Russian LNG, due to take effect in January, which will reduce European gas imports by an additional 7 billion cubic meters, according to the IEEFA report. Russian gas has been historically used to offset “swings in demand” over the winter, it said. “Now Europe depends on storage to get through winter.”

To make matters worse, the IEEFA report argues, gas demand over winter has crept up in the past two years, while imports to the bloc have flatlined. That’s left the EU leaning harder on its reserves over the winter period, with net drawdowns rising to 22.6 billion cubic meters in January this year, up from 18.8 billion cubic meters in January 2025 and 17.8 billion cubic meters in January 2024.

The alternative would be to import fresh LNG, a seaborne fuel that the EU increasingly sources from the U.S. But at current prices, importing the lost volumes would cost Europeans an additional €3 billion, a 12% rise over what the same volume would have cost last year, on top of already sky-high prices, according to the report. U.S. LNG production is also near full capacity, meaning those additional imports would further squeeze supply, Jaller-Makarewicz told POLITICO.

To some, a rise in prices is more likely. While ENTSO-G’s tight market scenario assumes a “global deficit” that sees available LNG imports into Europe reduced by 20%, Laurent Ruseckas, a senior gas market analyst at S&P Global Energy, argues that reserves can only ever fall so low, “since a rapid drawdown early in winter will drive up prices,” drawing cargoes to Europe from Asia.

“There is not much demand to destroy in Europe,” he added, pointing out that the war in Ukraine already destroyed 20% of the bloc’s industrial demand. “And it didn’t come back.”