Ask a 22-year-old and a 70-year-old in the UK today whether they use digital tools to manage their money, and the answer is increasingly the same: yes. Ask them whether they feel confident doing so, and you get two very different answers.

Financial empowerment is the term we use to refer to the knowledge, skills, tools and opportunities that allow an individual to take control of their financial life and improve their financial wellbeing over time.

Britain increasingly banks, budgets and borrows online — a shift made possible at scale by advances in digital technology and the data and analytics behind it. But how confident people feel doing it is the real story of financial empowerment in Britain right now, and it offers valuable insight for policymakers and industry alike.

Different lives, shared financial ambitions

For a decade, Lloyds Banking Group’s Consumer Digital Index has tracked how people across the UK engage with digital technology and the confidence they have in doing so. Its analysis shows that more than 75 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds have used artificial intelligence (AI) for personal finance in the past year — the highest adoption of any generation. Yet they’re also the least confident using the tools they’ve adopted: just 64 percent of 18- to 24-year-old digital tool users feel confident using them, rising steadily to 85 percent among 65- to 74-year-olds.

Britain increasingly banks, budgets and borrows online — a shift made possible at scale by advances in digital technology and the data and analytics behind it.

Look across the UK and the picture shifts again. According to the index, London is the UK’s AI finance capital — 49 percent of digitally engaged respondents use it weekly, reporting the nation’s highest average savings of £562 after following AI-powered recommendations.^* Yet Londoners who use digital tools feel less confident doing so than anyone else in the country. Wales leads the UK on financial engagement and knowledge — how actively people manage their finances and how well they understand them — with the highest proportion nationally of those surveyed saying digital tools have helped them grow their pensions and investments. Yorkshire and the Humber leads on digital budgeting, and Northern Ireland shows some of the lowest adoption alongside some of the strongest outcomes among those who do engage.^** How people use digital tools to manage their money across the UK is as varied as the lives, places and ambitions behind it.

These insights insist that financial empowerment should be a national priority. While people across different generations and in different places are engaging with digital money tools differently, the ambition is the same — to have confidence, capability and control over their financial future.

It can’t be enabled in the same ways to everyone. A 20-year-old in Croydon, a 45-year-old in Leeds juggling debt and family costs, and a 70-year-old in Cardiff drawing down a pension will need different things to feel confident in managing their money online.

While people across different generations and in different places are engaging with digital money tools differently, the ambition is the same — to have confidence, capability and control over their financial future.

But strip away the age and the postcode, and what people want is remarkably consistent: the confidence to decide, the capability to act, and the control to plan ahead without being derailed by the next bill.

That’s the common connection between a Gen Z Londoner testing an AI budgeting tool and a Boomer in Edinburgh checking her pension pot on an app before bed.

Financial access is only the starting point

The UK has made big steps toward building digital access — nearly nine in ten digital tool users across the UK (88 percent) now manage their money online weekly. That’s a real achievement, but access was never the finish line and cannot be taken for granted.

A second goal is to turn that access into outcomes, in ways that reflect how differently people actually experience money. That means building financial education into schools and workplaces earlier and closing the trust gap around AI-generated advice for the younger users adopting it fastest. Places with the least developed financial habits should be given support designed for their circumstances, not advice scaled down from somewhere else.

As the UK’s largest digital bank, with around 22 million customers now managing their money through our apps, we have as much reason as anyone to get this right — and a role to play in doing it. Our ambition is to make finance simpler, smarter and more connected for every moment that matters, which is why we’re using AI, data and digital tools in practical, purposeful ways to help customers make better financial decisions and protect themselves from harm. By using our reach, technology and connectivity, we can help more people and businesses build stronger financial futures and realise their ambitions.

Financial empowerment is a national economic opportunity

The size of the prize is substantial. Independent research commissioned by Lloyds Banking Group and led by the University of Nottingham puts the value of turning digital access into financial confidence at up to £100 billion for the UK economy over the next decade — roughly £3,500 per household.

Our ambition is to make finance simpler, smarter and more connected for every moment that matters, which is why we’re using AI, data and digital tools in practical, purposeful ways.

Confidence changes what people do with their money. Instead of just getting through the week, they start to plan, adapt and invest in what comes next. Multiply that across millions of households, and the effect stops being personal and starts being national.

Digital access got the UK this far. Confidence, capability and control are what will get it the rest of the way — and building them should be a national priority.

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Notes:

^*Savings figures are self-reported estimates and are not verified against transactional data. They should be interpreted as perceived impacts rather than guaranteed outcomes.

^**The Northern Ireland outcome findings are based on a small sample, n<100, and should be interpreted as indicative rather than statistically representative of the wider population.

MONTREAL, Canada — The European Union and Canada have agreed to build the closest possible relationship. Over the next six months, they will have to define what that means — and whether Canada can become the EU’s first, and perhaps only, associate member.

A summit in Montreal last week highlighted the urgency behind the budding relationship. Both sides say their partnership is positive and not directed against any country. But it is also driven by mutual need: to shore up supply chains, pool expertise and reduce reliance on the United States and China.

Mark Carney told POLITICO in an interview straight after the summit that the two sides should not be tailoring their partnership to cope with the potential reactions of other powers. “We’re not adjusting [based on] what the U.S. might think, what China might think, what … Russia might think,” he said. The goal, the Canadian prime minister explained, is to help both sides “withstand shocks” and prevent rivals from exploiting critical dependencies.

The test of that plan comes in six months, when the European Commission will meet with the Canadian government to see what progress has been made. One diplomat involved in the talks, granted anonymity to speak freely, said the meeting, which will be held in March before next year’s EU-Canada summit in Brussels, should make clear how far the relationship can develop and whether Ottawa is really on track for associate membership.

In the months ahead, there will be plenty of issues that could distract EU leaders. Governments must negotiate the bloc’s next seven-year budget, amid deep divisions over its size and spending priorities. Plus, a series of elections in some of the EU’s biggest countries, including Spain, France, Italy and Poland, will make concentrating on Canada a tall order.

Deal first, definition later

The joint declaration signed in Montreal commits both sides to defining the concept of “associate membership” by their 2027 summit. In the meantime, they have a slate of agreements and work plans to put into practice.

That includes a digital trade agreement and a competition deal signed in Montreal, plus Canada’s participation in the EU’s high-performance computing partnership. They also agreed on a new framework for cooperation between EU border force Frontex and the Canada Border Services Agency. Ottawa said it intends to join the EU’s Ukraine Support Loan facility.

The declaration sets out further work on critical raw materials and energy, including a feasibility study into long-term liquefied natural gas exports to Europe and exploring ways to jointly stockpile strategic resources. It also calls for cooperation on subsea cables, artificial intelligence and research, closer financial links, Arctic security, and disaster response. Canada and the EU will begin talks on deeper Canadian participation in Erasmus+, the EU’s education and youth program.

The summit also saw the launch of the Alliance for the Future, a broader partnership plan that could eventually include Japan, South Korea and Australia. It aims to build resilient supply chains and coordinate on economic security, so partner nations do not inadvertently harm one another with trade measures as they respond to Chinese overcapacity and U.S. tariffs.

But that could be easier said than done, with both Europe and Canada keen to avoid breaching World Trade Organization rules with their arrangements.

That concern is already visible in the debate over “Buy Canadian” and the EU’s proposed “Made in Europe” rules, both of which seek to favor homegrown suppliers. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Montreal that Brussels intends to ensure Canada is not disadvantaged by the EU’s Industrial Accelerator Act — proposed legislation encouraging European businesses to go greener through subsidies and payment schemes. The ball is now in Carney’s court to offer similar assurances to European businesses under Buy Canadian.

Semantics breakdown

The summit’s biggest political snag came down to two words.

Von der Leyen opened the door to Canada becoming the EU’s first “associate member” in her State of the Union speech in September. But Germany blocked the term from being included in the joint declaration, saying the concept is vague and undefined. Other EU capitals said they also wanted to know what the arrangement would entail before fully committing to it.

The wrangle over the label overshadowed the substance of the summit and visibly frustrated both Carney and the European contingent. Asked about Germany’s objections, Carney told POLITICO it was “a very internal European issue.”

The dispute highlights Ottawa’s challenge: even if the Canadian government and the Commission agree on a plan, any formal arrangement must navigate 27 EU governments with their own concerns, pet industries and foibles.

The real reason for Berlin’s opposition remains unclear, with one EU diplomat describing the kerfuffle as an “embarrassment.”

One theory among senior EU officials and diplomats is that Germany was smarting because it wanted the term to be used for Ukraine earlier this year — only for other EU countries and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself to reject the idea.

The Le Pen test

The EU-Canada partnership is meant to rest on shared, centrist values. But what happens if political shifts in the EU’s two largest countries change what underpins the friendship?

The French presidential election in April could bring Marine Le Pen to power, while the Alternative for Germany has made gains in successive regional elections.

Carney told POLITICO he would work with whichever leaders voters choose, while drawing a line between cooperation and agreement. “My responsibility is to work with, whether it’s provincial premiers or leaders of other countries, in the best interest of Canada,” he said. But he added that “working with and having agreement on are two different things.”

Carney said democratic outcomes could change Europe’s priorities, but argued that cooperation could still deepen.

The six-month stocktake will show whether that confidence holds.

YEREVAN, Armenia — Scorching wildfires, disastrous floods and the looming mass extinction of species weren’t enough to convince wealthy nations to unlock crucial funds needed to halt biodiversity loss at a global nature summit this week.  

As countries around the world race against the clock to protect what’s left of the Earth’s collapsing ecosystems, global talks aimed at speeding up nature protection efforts yielded underwhelming results.  

The United Nations COP17 on biodiversity ended on Saturday with a renewed promise from countries to speed up global efforts to protect nature and restore depleted ecosystems by 2030.   

But behind that grand gesture, governments are still struggling to unlock the hundreds of billions needed to meet global biodiversity protection targets. The reason? A profound and unresolved disagreement over where that money should come from. 

“If we’re mutually unhappy that’s probably the closest we can get to on these very delicate compromises,” said a member of the Swiss delegation just before the text was adopted.

After two weeks of negotiations over how to speed up efforts to protect ecosystems, nearly 200 countries secured a hard-fought agreement to “accelerate the implementation” of the global biodiversity framework  “including by increased ambition in addressing the gaps, challenges and barriers related to implementation,” according to a draft of the text, the final version of which was not immediately available.

Armenian Environment Minister Hambardzum Matevosyan, who presided over the summit, said negotiators had “achieved more than we could have expected.”

But in the end, governments could not agree on how to increase the number of countries currently contributing to biodiversity finance, instead only stating the obvious: that more funds would be better.

The summit exposed a growing chasm between nations over who should be held financially responsible for funding conservation measures worldwide: historically wealthy countries whose economies have caused immense damage to the environment, or newly rich states whose economies have grown exponentially in the last three decades. 

“This COP was always going to be difficult,” said Steven Guilbeault, former environment minister for Canada, adding that “COP17’s real legacy will be decided far beyond these walls, when words need to translate to action.”

Negotiators are leaving Yerevan with many issues left to resolve between now and the next COP in 2028 in Ecuador, including on how to attract more companies that benefit from nature to fund conservation projects via the Cali Fund, a landmark vehicle aimed at mobilizing private finance into nature established in 2024.

Governments know they are running out of time. At COP17, scientific experts reiterated that a million species are at risk of extinction, and the U.N. has identified an annual biodiversity financing gap of $700 billion.  

“We’re not on track to stop and reverse the biodiversity loss by 2030,” said Monique Barbut, France’s environment minister, during a COP17 plenary session on Wednesday. The world needs to “mobilize all international funding sources” to make it happen, she insisted.

The talks also ran long due to disagreements over language related to the involvement of Indigenous peoples in a key decision-making body of the Convention.

The dispute 

The U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity relies on the consensus that rich countries should pay more to protect nature because of the pressure their societies and economies exert on global ecosystems. 

Since its ratification in the 1990s, a group of wealthy countries including Canada, Australia, Japan, the U.K., Switzerland, Norway and some EU members have been funding efforts to implement the Convention.

Now, those countries want other high-income nations to chip in more. “We all know that we need more resources to ensure the effective implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework,” said Jessika Roswall, the EU’s environment commissioner.

But during the negotiations, non-donor countries — which include China, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Argentina — pushed back against any kind of income-related criteria to determine who should or shouldn’t be paying. 

The deadlock angered some nations set to benefit from a larger donor base. “Are you telling me that rich petro-states who are in many cases wealthier than some of the original list of donors and responsible for a ton of emissions and harmful practices that directly affect biodiversity shouldn’t contribute to the fund?” said Juan Carlos Navarro, Environment Minister for Panama on Wednesday, as negotiations were ongoing. 

The countries “don’t want to have the same obligations as developed countries on this issue [and] bring up the argument of ecological responsibilities,” said Juliette Landry, a senior research fellow at the think tank IDDRI. 

In the end, countries agreed simply to state that “contributions from more Parties
would improve the mobilization of biodiversity finance” and invited others to contribute voluntarily, the draft text shows.

Some successes 

Despite the divisions, many hailed the final agreement as a win for green multilateralism as governments remain committed to the overarching goal of protecting 30% of Earth’s land and sea areas and increase financing for biodiversity to $200 billion annually by 2030. 

“In Yerevan, we saw environmental multilateralism prevail once again. Countries came together, found the spirit of compromise and allowed us to agree important decisions that will support real progress for people and for planet,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UN Environment Programme.

After two weeks of endless meetings, panels and plenary sessions, negotiators agreed to strengthen the role of cities and local governments in implementing biodiversity goals, and improve how biodiversity funding reaches them. They also adopted decisions to support capacity-building and scientific cooperation, and agreed that more needs to be done to protect marine ecosystems.

Countries also recognized the need to reduce subsidies funding economic activities that harm nature and create incentives for activities that protect it. “Incentive reform has moved from the margins to the mainstream of the biodiversity agenda,” said Eva zabey, CEO of the Business for Nature coalition.

Some governments including Germany, Iceland, Uzbekistan and Spain made fresh financial commitments totalling $1.8 billion to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund and the Global Environment Facility, the funding structures set up to implement the Convention. Under the GBF, countries have pledged to mobilize $200 billion annually by 2030.  

The U.N. Environment Programme also published a report showing that nature restoration is underway at an “unprecedented scale” with over 250 million hectares of land under restoration worldwide.

Still, countries remain off track on meeting their 2030 targets.

In Yerevan, green groups welcomed the agreement but criticized its lack of ambition key issues.

“Political promises made in Yerevan set good intentions, but won’t remove major roadblocks to implementation such as insufficient finance, fiscal and debt constraints, the nearly empty coffers of the Cali Fund and urgent reform of harmful subsidies,” said An Lambrechts, a biodiversity politics expert with Greenpeace International.

Governments have struggled to stay the course since inking the Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022. Though many countries have adopted national biodiversity strategies, financial flows to conservation projects are nowhere near where they ought to be. Geopolitical shifts and economic crises have also made it harder for governments — including the 27 EU member countries — to prioritize environmental protection. 

Countries agreed to renew talks to implement the objectives of the convention in Ecuador.

BRUSSELS — The European Union should ready its Anti-Coercion Instrument, otherwise known as its “trade bazooka,” for use against Washington over its push to raise EU drug prices, Belgium’s deputy prime minister has said.

Frank Vandenbroucke, who also serves as the country’s health minister, issued the call in a position paper published Thursday by the Egmont Institute think tank, co-authored with his deputy head of cabinet Gloria Ghéquière.

He also said the EU should be ready to suspend the tariff concessions it granted to Washington under the Turnberry trade deal from August 2025 if the U.S. imposes additional duties on European goods.

The Trump administration has been pressuring European governments to pay more for medicines under its “most-favored-nation” policy as it seeks to bring American drug prices into line with those in other wealthy countries.

Washington argues that Americans are unfairly shouldering the costs of pharmaceutical research and development, while Europeans reap the benefits.

The MFN policy ties American drug prices to the lowest prices charged in a basket of wealthy countries, including France, Germany and Italy. The U.S. has already concluded MFN pricing agreements with 26 pharma companies, which have agreed to benchmark the prices of drugs supplied to the U.S. Medicaid program.

The intended effect is for drugs manufacturers to either increase prices in third countries, to lower their U.S. prices, or both.

Washington is also ramping up pressure on individual member countries to pay more for their drugs. In June, the U.S. launched a so-called Section 301 investigation into Germany’s alleged “persistent underpayment” for innovative drugs. The investigation could lead to additional tariffs, exceeding the 15% ceiling agreed under Turnberry.

Capitals are banding together to counter the U.S. pressure. At an informal meeting in Dublin last week, ministers from Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium discussed creating an EU-wide pharmaceutical task force to coordinate their response.

“If we don’t work together and act as a team, countries are inevitably tempted to go it alone,” French Trade Minister Nicolas Forissier told POLITICO.

In the paper, Vandenbroucke and his colleague argue that Brussels should open an ACI investigation in response to Washington’s drug pricing policy. The instrument allows the EU to impose tariffs and restrictions on services in response to foreign threats to trade if backed by a qualified majority of member countries.

“The procedure is quite heavy, but already opening an examination would have an effect of its own,” the paper argues.

The authors also highlight a clause in Pfizer’s MFN agreement requiring it to share additional revenue from higher prices outside the U.S. with the American government. “Higher foreign payments thus become a source of revenue for the American government itself,” they write.

The deputy PM questioned the underlying basis of the policy. Because the U.S. market is so lucrative compared to all the rest, drugmakers would accept withdrawing from third countries as long as it meant keeping U.S. prices high.

Vandenbroucke, an economist by training, said the net effect would likely be an extreme increase in European drug prices — or the withdrawal of drugs from the market — while producing comparatively modest price cuts in the U.S.

According to one forecast cited in the paper, prices could triple in countries used as benchmarks, while U.S. prices would fall by just 7.5% to 15%.

“The consequences would reach well beyond the medicines budget, putting pressure on the solidarity that universal insurance is designed to secure,” the authors write.

We live in an era where wars are fought not just on battlefields, but also on our screens, in our minds and through the narratives we are led to believe. Narratives are influencing perception while missiles destroy infrastructure. What happens when the war for truth becomes more dangerous than the actual battle itself? Who’s controlling the narrative?

When wars end, the fighting over what they meant begins: who won, who was to blame and who can be trusted to keep the peace. These questions are settled less on the battlefield than on screens, in feeds and in group chats. For a Middle East emerging from the war that began on February 28, that contest may decide whether any new security order holds.

The region is now asking what comes after deterrence. That question brought policymakers, military leaders and researchers from the United States, Europe, Asia and the Gulf to the TRENDS 6^th Annual Conference, held in Abu Dhabi and organized by TRENDS Global, in collaboration with its global offices. The answer cannot be measured only in missiles and alliances. Information resilience should be treated as security infrastructure, planned and funded like air defense, not managed as public relations.

What happens when the war for truth becomes more dangerous than the actual battle itself?

The struggle over perception can now matter as much as events on the ground. That is no longer hyperbole. In any crisis today, governments, media outlets, political movements and non-state groups compete in real time to define what is happening. Disinformation, coordinated propaganda and now content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) mean a false account can reach millions before an official one is drafted.

As former BBC correspondent Karen Allen put it at the conference, “Now in an instant, I’m able to influence millions of people,” and algorithm manipulation is what we are increasingly seeing.

This year’s war showed how real that is. Within days of the first U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran, an AI-generated video of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa on fire, with crowds fleeing, was viewed tens of millions of times, according to BBC Verify. Fabricated images of damaged U.S. facilities in the Gulf spread just as fast, some posted by Iranian state-linked outlets. UAE Minister of State Noura Al Kaabi later described the attacks on the country as coming “from the sky and behind our screens.” Her government’s answer was to treat “fake news and misinformation as a security threat.”

A more damaging false story was not a single video. It was the idea that the Gulf was a party to the war. The UAE did not want this war and said so. On March 3, Minister of State Reem Al Hashimy said the UAE did not “seek to expand the circle of confrontation,” that it had “repeatedly confirmed” its territory could not be used for any military operation against Iran, and that “returning to the negotiating table is the only rational way forward.” The attacks continued anyway. Reuters reported, citing UAE defense figures, that 186 ballistic missiles and 812 drones were fired at the country in the first days of the conflict.

Information resilience should be treated as security infrastructure, planned and funded like air defense, not managed as public relations.

Tehran sought to blur that record, framing strikes on Gulf cities as retaliation against American aggression. Its foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told NBC News that Iran had “not attacked our neighbors,” only “American bases,” and called the hotels hit in Dubai “collateral damage.” Countering that narrative does not require propaganda of our own. It requires putting the record in front of the world quickly and repeatedly: the UAE’s public calls for restraint before the war, its refusal to let its territory be used against Iran, and the hundreds of missiles and drones fired at it, most of which it shot down. Facts published fast, through verified channels, in Arabic, English and Farsi, are harder to bury than corrections issued too late.

Even after a war ends, the threats do not disappear; they simply take different forms. Ceasefires and reconstruction depend on public trust. If populations come to believe that the peace is a betrayal, or that a neighbor cannot be trusted, no deterrence framework or security pact will survive contact with domestic politics. Spoilers understand this. Their cheapest weapon is a story.

Seen from the Gulf, the lesson of recent years is that speed and credibility beat silence. Crisis communication is not a side function of security. When official channels inform the public quickly, consistently and honestly, rumors have less room to grow. When they hesitate, someone else fills the gap.

None of this is simple. Governments everywhere are still working out where countering disinformation ends and controlling speech begins, and that debate should stay open. But the common ground is wider than it looks: a society cannot be secure if it cannot tell what is true.

The harder test comes now. After a war, influence campaigns shift from shock to slow erosion: relitigating who was to blame, questioning whether Gulf governments can protect their people, and setting neighbors and communities against each other. Young connected audiences are the main target. They are also the best defense.

Protecting our societies from that influence does not mean closing them. It means official channels fast and credible enough that people turn to them first. It means platforms held to clear rules on labeling AI-generated conflict content, as X began to do in March. And it means a generation of young Emiratis and Gulf citizens equipped to verify what they see and able to tell the region’s story themselves rather than leaving it to others.

The harder test comes now. After a war, influence campaigns shift from shock to slow erosion.

This is not only a Gulf problem. The campaigns aimed at audiences in the Gulf also shape how Washington and Brussels understand the region. The UAE and its partners already work closely on defense and intelligence. Detecting and exposing cross-border influence operations belongs on that shared agenda as a joint effort between governments, platforms and researchers.

Diplomacy, investment, and deterrence will rebuild the region’s security. Whether that security holds will depend on something harder to measure: what people across the region believe about each other, and about who protects them. For the UAE, winning that argument with facts is not public relations. It is part of keeping the country safe.

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Najla Al Midfa is an Emirati researcher at TRENDS Research & Advisory, a company under TRENDS Group. Her research focuses on geopolitics, international relations, economic diplomacy and regional security, with a particular interest in the UAE’s foreign policy and strategic partnerships. She holds a master’s degree in Global Affairs and Diplomatic Leadership from the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, where her thesis examined the UAE’s economic diplomacy through its Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement strategy.

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Sources

• Sixth Annual TRENDS Conference 2026 kicks off on October 12 — WAM (Emirates News Agency), September 2026
• TRENDS 6th Annual Conference 2026 — Sustainable Security: programme and speakers — TRENDS Research & Advisory
• AI-generated Iran war videos surge as creators use new tech to cash in — BBC Verify, March 7, 2026
• Factbox: Iranian missiles and drones fired at Gulf countries — Reuters (republished by Al-Monitor), March 3, 2026
• X suspends revenue sharing for undisclosed AI war videos — AFP, March 3, 2026
• UAE urges the US, Israel and Iran to return to the negotiating table — Euronews, March 4, 2026
• Fake news treated as security threat during Iran war, says UAE minister — The National, September 15, 2026
• NBC News, “Iran’s foreign minister denies seeking war with neighbors,” March 2026. https://www.nbcnews.com/world/iran/irans-foreign-minister-denies-seeking-war-neighbors-rcna261954

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rapid reaction

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

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

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

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

Publishers say that changes little, however. 

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

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

Others have gone further. 

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

Joseph Bambridge in London contributed reporting.

LONDON — Labour swept to power with a big, expensive promise: to create a government-owned energy company, hand it billions to invest in British renewables, and watch it grow, eventually, to rival other state-owned energy giants. 

Two years on from the foundation of Great British Energy, that isn’t what has happened. 

Analysis from POLITICO shows billions of pounds from its budget have been redirected to schemes not included in GBE’s initial remit, stripping away some of the cash earmarked for costly, large-scale renewable energy projects like wind and solar. Those funds are being used instead for very different purposes, like planning new nuclear schemes and reviving Britain’s creaking electricity grid. 

Set up by then Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, the government backed GBE with £8.3 billion of fresh funding. Its purpose at the time seemed clear. “Great British Energy will own, manage and operate clean power projects,” Miliband pledged, “and generate energy in its own right.” 

Labour officials familiar with GBE plans told POLITICO in 2024 local projects would get around £3 billion of its total budget, while the rest would go on helping the company establish itself in the market, including by taking stakes in wind and solar projects. 

Yet now experts can’t agree on what, exactly, GBE is for. 

How to spend it

Miliband’s GBE pitch to the public was ambitious.  

The company would allow Britain to become a bigger player in its own clean energy market in Labour’s dash to hit green goals, he said. Referencing huge state-owned companies in Denmark and France, he told Channel 4 News weeks after the election that GBE was “not going to become Ørsted or the generation arm of EDF overnight. But that is the long-term vision.” 

Soon after GBE passed into law, though, former Chancellor Rachel Reeves reassigned £2.5 billion of its budget to help developers design small-scale nuclear power plants and prep sites where those mini-nukes will eventually go.

The government also scaled back its funding for those local, smaller-scale projects, which include getting solar panels onto school and hospital roofs. The mooted £3 billion for GBE’s Local Power Plan became just £1 billion when more details were announced this February. 

GBE has set aside another £1 billion to build up clean energy supply chains.  

And that’s all before Prime Minister Andy Burnham used Labour’s annual conference to pledge another whack of GBE’s budget to a totally new venture: Great British Grid. 

Enter GB Grid  

In a bid to put his own stamp on Miliband’s pet project, Burnham announced that the new unit would sit within GBE, using some of its budget to speed the build out of Britain’s creaking grid network.  

GB Grid will invest alongside existing grid operators in a bid to cut costs, Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh said last week, at a time when the grid regularly struggles to handle the levels of power being generated by developers. 

Energy experts are torn over whether GB Grid, in particular, is a smart pivot for the government — but acknowledge it is not the same thing Miliband promised to deliver.  

“I think the focus has shifted, but I don’t think that should be seen as a problem,” said Joshua Emden, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank. 

GB Grid would have access to £4 billion of GBE funding, according to media reports published at the time of Burnham’s announcement, although officials from the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero insist they “don’t recognize” that figure. 

It is still enough for Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives to pile the pressure on ministers to explain why their plans have changed. 

“Taking half the GB Energy budget and putting it into a venture that was only announced a few weeks ago leads to the obvious question of: What actually is GB Energy for? And does the GB Energy of today bear any resemblance to what the government envisaged in July 2024?” asked Shadow Energy Minister Harriet Cross. 

Doubters and defenders  

Some energy industry officials are doubtful that setting money aside for grid investment is the best use of public cash.  

“If it does that last mile [of grid] to a data center, if it helps where there isn’t actually any program or plan, [then] fine. We’re not going to say: ‘No, don’t spend it on making the grid better,’” Dhara Vyas, chief executive of the industry group Energy UK, told a panel at Conservative Party Conference earlier this month. 

But transmission operators — who run the network — are already spending tens of billions on the grid, she said. “The energy transition will be paid for by the private sector.”  

GBE “made a slow start and has focused on low-impact activities, important though they are,” said Bill Esterson, a Labour MP and chair of parliament’s Energy Security and Net Zero Committee. Creating GB Grid, he argued, “suggests a shift in emphasis to build what the country needs where the network companies are not delivering.” 

The pivot “makes sense as an efficient use of government money,” argued IPPR’s Emden, if there’s a choice between investing in power generation — where there’s competition between providers — and in the grid where private networks have a “total monopoly.” 

GB Energy has “the foundations now to create something genuinely useful,” argued one government figure. “Politicians of all stripes should give it the space to get on with the job.”  

A spokesperson for DESNZ said “securing new homegrown energy and building a grid fit for the 21st century work hand in hand. Great British Grid will bring public and private investment together, helping to build the infrastructure Britain needs.” 

Additional reporting by Nicholas Earl.