The EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas said Tuesday that Brussels would use the next months “to open dialogue” on how to counter U.S. sanctions against the International Criminal Court — resisting calls from lawmakers to take quicker action.
Nearly 60 MEPs from across the political spectrum urged the Commission to intervene swiftly after the White House announced sweeping sanctions against the Hague-based court earlier this month. They want the Commission to activate a legislative shield known as the blocking statute, which would prevent EU firms from complying with U.S. sanctions.
“We should keep all options on the table. If we use the blocking statute, we have one shot and we should do it well. So, it should be well prepared,” Kallas said, calling on firms not to overcomply with sanctions.
Multiple lawmakers continued to push for a faster response in a plenary session in Strasbourg. But while Kallas acknowledged their calls, she said the EU executive would take time “to analyze the full legal implications, to open dialogue and look for solutions.” The sanctions are expected to be implemented after a 180-day delay starting from Oct. 9.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration had already targeted nine judges and the chief prosecutor of the Court, cutting them off from all U.S. service providers, including banking services.
Irish European Affairs Minister Thomas Byrne, who represents Dublin’s presidency of the Council of the EU, told lawmakers that the sanctions delay provides “an opportunity for dialogue, which we should take advantage of while remaining ready to take all necessary measures,” as laid out by EU leaders in a statement issued after their gathering last week.
Washington is openly campaigning to dismantle the ICC “brick by brick,” and urging countries to quit the court’s founding charter. Kallas said that “decisions by Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and Venezuela to reject or even withdraw from the ICC risk eroding the foundations of global justice.”
“The ICC is under attack at precisely the moment when we need it the most,” Kallas said, citing the Court’s investigations of Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The EU will continue to engage with partners to strengthen the court, she said, warning countries under pressure from the U.S. to leave the body: “This also has clear consequences for their relationship with the European Union.”
“The European Union has practical means to do more,” Kallas said, adding that she would be in the Hague this week.
BRUSSELS — High jet fuel prices could trigger “the biggest increase in airfares, I would say, in history in Europe” next year, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary told reporters Tuesday.
If fuel prices remain twice as high as before the U.S. war against Iran, O’Leary warned ticket prices could rise by up to 20%.
Hedging contracts have locked in fuel prices for much of airlines’ consumption so far. This has helped European carriers avoid sharp ticket price increases, despite jet fuel prices more than doubling following disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz since the war in the Middle East began.
But O’Leary said most European airlines lack significant hedging next year. “As we go out into next year, we’re only 15% hedged at $85 a barrel. Basically, we’re unhedged into the summer of 2027,” O’Leary told POLITICO in an interview ahead of a press conference in Brussels.
Ryanair’s hedging contracts expire in April 2027. “We will still be profitable, although less profitable than currently, if oil prices remain high,” he said.
O’Leary warned that fewer available seats and higher fares could become the new normal as more airlines face financial struggles. “You’re going to see dramatically less capacity this winter and into the summer of 2027.”
Ryanair itself is cutting 20 routes from Belgium this winter as a response to an increase in national aviation taxes, from €2 in 2025 to €7 from January.
The fuel price hike is also intensifying the airline sector’s opposition to EU climate policies, which many carriers argue are adding to their already rising operating costs.
Ryanair had long advocated extending the EU’s Emissions Trading System to all flights to and from the EU, a call O’Leary reiterated on Tuesday.
“It’s indefensible that … Europe’s citizens are paying all these environmental taxes, while the Yanks, the Asians and the Chinese land and take off in Europe completely exempt from their fair share of environmental taxes.” He added that Ryanair would pay €1.5 billion in ETS compliance costs in 2026.
He argued that the ETS should also cover long-haul services operated by European rivals such as Lufthansa and Air France-KLM.
“And why not? Those are the most expensive flights in the world. They’re also the most profitable flights they have, because they’re exempt from Europe’s bullshit environmental taxation,” O’Leary said.
The EU currently applies the ETS to aviation emissions from flights within the European Economic Area, as well as flights to Switzerland and the U.K. The European Commission proposed last summer to extend carbon pricing, starting in 2029, to flights departing the EU for destinations within 5,000 kilometers of Frankfurt Airport, including to North Africa and the Middle East.
The proposal would affect Ryanair’s flights to destinations such as Morocco, while continuing to exempt most long-haul services operated by other airlines to more distant destinations like the U.S. and China.
TikTok was repeatedly warned by its own staffers about risks its platform posed to child safety, according to court records obtained by NPR. The publication reports that employees were frustrated over TikTok executives failing to appropriately act on concerns they raised, including minors bypassing age-restricted content, and appearing in "transactional sexual content" the company could financially benefit from.
The U.S. has ordered federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek products and third-party services built using its technology, citing national security concerns.
America’s descent into chaos and depravity was foretold 10 years ago at a press conference. Donald Trump, who had just been nominated for president at the 2016 Republican National Convention, issued an invitation for one of America’s foes to hack the emails of Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and Democratic nominee for president. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
The call came only days after emails from the Democratic National Committee were released following the hacking of the organization’s computer servers, which was widely assumed to have been perpetrated by Russian agents. As would become the habit over the following decade, many dismissed Trump’s remarks as mere trolling that weren’t intended to be taken seriously.
This was not the first time he had invoked Russia. Throughout the primary season, Trump had gushed in multiple interviews about Russian President Vladimir Putin and signaled his intentions to draw closer to Putin once in office. Trump even defended the dictator’s extra-judicial killings, blithely explaining, “Our country does plenty of killing.” But the press conference did mark the first time he enlisted Russia as his ally.
The overtures continued throughout Trump’s first term, most infamously when he sided with Putin during a bilateral meeting over America’s own intelligence agencies, which had found that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election. The president suggested an “election integrity” sharing operation between the two countries, a proposal that made it clear Putin had Trump wrapped around his little finger.
Then came Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. Throughout the 2024 election, Trump pledged to end the war in Ukraine within 24 hours of taking office — or of being elected. (His rhetoric often shifted.) He apparently believed that he could get on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and order him to immediately surrender or face his mighty wrath. Needless to say, this did not happen, and since then Trump has grown increasingly frustrated that he’s been shown to be nothing more than a paper tiger, a frustration that has now reached fever pitch due to his abject failure in the Iran war. Desperate for a “win” — by which he means a Russian win — the president is now in the process of completely selling out Ukraine to his good friend Vlad.
Trump has grown increasingly frustrated that he’s been shown to be nothing more than a paper tiger, a frustration that has now reached fever pitch due to his abject failure in the Iran war. Desperate for a “win” — by which he means a Russian win — the president is now in the process of completely selling out Ukraine to his good friend Vlad.
In recent days, Trump has signed an executive order temporarily lifting the sanctions on Russian oil. While supposedly done to secure diesel fuel for the United States, which has seen prices skyrocket due to the president’s war of choice with Iran, the act is in practice a sign of goodwill toward Putin, America’s enemy, and will help him fund his war against Ukraine, our erstwhile ally. A few days later, Trump waived several additional sanctions that a bipartisan congressional majority had passed just a few weeks ago at the behest of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who foolishly believed himself to have the president under his control.
Worse yet, in what will go down as one of the most appalling betrayals by a U.S. president in history, Trump and his good friend Elon Musk apparently sabotaged Ukrainian intelligence by slowing the Starlink and Starshield communications systems the country relies on for its defensive and offensive weapons systems. Russia took swift advantage of the favor and unleashed one of the most massive bombardments of the war, killing civilians and hitting Ukraine’s energy sector. Trump also called for Zelenskyy’s ouster, and in an interview with Bloomberg published Sunday, the Ukrainian president accused Trump of pushing the country to surrender to Russia.
Trump has a number of apparent rationales for these moves. He wants to be seen before the midterms to be doing something about the price of gas and diesel. But that is a crisis of his own making due to his misbegotten war in Iran, for which he has no way out that will solve the problem. His ongoing war has altered the global energy markets in ways that are not easily fixed, which was the reason no president before him was stupid enough to attack Iran. So now Trump is blaming Ukraine because it is bombing Russian oil refineries and demanding they stop so that Russia can sell its diesel — and finance its war, which led to the sanctions in the first place. Not to be overlooked is that Russia is a staunch ally of Iran and is helping them fight us, which Trump has waved off as having “nothing.” Some might argue that could constitute providing “aid and comfort” to America’s enemy.
Meanwhile, fingers are being pointed in multiple directions. Musk said the government is to blame for the Starlink/Starshield gambit. According to sources in the Pentagon, the order came from the White House. Trump claimed he doesn’t know anything about it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio shrugged that “it just sort of happened.” Now, lest the Europeans get it in their heads that they should try to step up their own defenses by restricting Starlink in favor of a European-based system, the U.S. government is reportedly threatening them with “devastating” or “destructive” economic retaliation.
As a cherry on top of the administration’s full-on embrace of Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported that Putin has floated a summit with Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to decide Ukraine’s fate. (On Monday, Trump told reporters he was open to a meeting but denied it would focus on Ukraine, saying he wanted to discuss denuclearization.) If Trump knew any history, he would know that such a meeting would prove to be his Yalta, the trilateral conference between President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin that carved up Europe in the wake of World War II. The summit became widely seen by the right as “the sell-out at Yalta” because the Soviets ended up with Eastern Europe, but things have changed within the GOP.
The summit is clearly intended to elevate Russia back to superpower status, which it is not in any economic or military sense, and to demonstrate a new order in which Trump, Putin and Xi run the world. In reality, Putin and Xi now have the United States dancing to their tune, handing them power and influence to dominate their respective spheres.
The president’s flagrant betrayal of Ukraine is an outrage that has seemingly awakened some of the slumbering Republicans who know they are facing a drubbing at the polls in the quickly approaching midterm elections. Whether it will arouse the consciences of enough to truly step up and stop this breach of trust is unknown. But the mere fact that Trump has gone this far to salve his ego, defy his critics by embracing Putin even more fervently and drum up a lame excuse for what may be the worst national security decision in American history leaves this country weaker, poorer and more distrusted around the world. It hardly seems possible, but we have reached yet another new low.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani said Monday night that New Yorkers must resist the narrative that an AI takeover is inevitable and demand regulations that protect the public and put power back in their hands.
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