The U.S. on Friday threatened action against the EU unless Brussels reins in its environmental and human rights rules, which Washington says unfairly burden American companies.

Acknowledging Brussels had made “some positive reforms,” Washington said the EU had “failed to fully address U.S. concerns,” and that it “will take any actions necessary to address unreasonable burdens on U.S. commerce.”

U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder piled on the pressure Friday, writing on X that “now it’s time for the EU to deliver.” He pointed to commitments made under last year’s Turnberry trade deal to ensure U.S. businesses do not face “undue restrictions” on transatlantic trade due to Brussels’ green regulations.

The dispute centers on two pillars of the EU’s corporate sustainability rulebook: the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which requires large companies to address human rights and environmental harms linked to their operations and supply chains, and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, which requires companies to disclose sustainability-related information.

Brussels has scaled back both laws in its drive to cut red tape, but has stopped short of Washington’s demand to shield U.S. companies from their reach.

Last week, Puzder similarly attacked the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as a tariff on U.S. exporters. On Thursday, the White House also accused the EU and more than 40 countries of enabling Chinese goods to skirt U.S. tariffs by rerouting them through their markets.

A European Commission spokesperson told POLITICO that Brussels had made “considerable efforts” to explain its rules and highlight “its willingness to cooperate with the US to increase trade where possible,” but drew a line at changing its regulatory regime in response to U.S. pressure.

“We have been very clear and consistent on the fact that neither our rules framework nor our regulatory autonomy are up for negotiation,” said the spokesperson.

This story has been updated.

Koen Verhelst contributed reporting.

PARIS — Le Conseil constitutionnel a rendu ce vendredi sa décision sur la loi interdisant les réseaux sociaux aux mineurs et a annoncé censurer son article 1er, qui acte ladite interdiction pour les moins de 15 ans.

De fait, la décision rend caduque le principal objet de cette loi portée depuis plusieurs années par le président de la République.

Dans sa décision, les Sages estiment en effet que cet article, en instituant une interdiction “de portée générale” des réseaux sociaux aux moins de 15 ans, porte “une atteinte disproportionnée à la liberté d’expression et de communication” qui n’est pas “adaptée, nécessaire et proportionnée à l’objectif poursuivi” : celui de protéger les mineurs en ligne.

“L’interdiction instituée par la loi est susceptible de s’appliquer à des services de communication en ligne dont les risques pour la santé et la sécurité des mineurs ne sont pas établis”, estime encore le Conseil constitutionnel, insistant sur l’imprécision autour du champ d’application de l’article.

Le risque avait été soulevé au moment de l’examen du texte au Sénat, certains élus de la Chambre haute ayant tenté d’imposer l’établissement d’une “liste noire” qui définirait plus précisément les plateformes concernées par cette limitation d’accès aux mois de 15 ans – et éviterait ainsi le risque de censure par le Conseil constitutionnel.

Un élément du texte retiré au moment de son examen en Commission mixte paritaire pour assurer sa conformité avec le droit européen.

Le Conseil constitutionnel estime par ailleurs que le texte ne définit pas les garanties légales propres à assurer le droit au respect de la vie privée des utilisateurs qui seront contraints de faire vérifier leur âge par les plateformes pour prouver leur majorité.

“Le gouvernement n’a pas assez écouté le Sénat et le risque d’inconstitutionnalité que nous pointions depuis des mois. Désormais, le risque, c’est que le texte soit vidé de sa substance”, a réagi, sur ce point, la rapporteure du texte au Sénat, Catherine Morin-Desailly, auprès de POLITICO.

Un constat partagé par le député socialiste Arthur Delaporte, à l’origine de l’une des saisines du Conseil constitutionnel. L’autre émanait du groupe de la France Insoumise (LFI).

“Dans notre recours, nous dénoncions un dispositif disproportionné passant à côté de son objectif”, a-t-il commenté sur X. “L’obstination présidentielle a été mauvaise conseillère”.

Le président du groupe EPR, Gabriel Attal, a déclaré sur X prendre acte de la décision de la juridiction concernant ce texte porté par son groupe : “Avec Laure Miller et les députés Ensemble nous poursuivons le travail pour atteindre notre seul objectif : protéger nos enfants et notre jeunesse”, a-t-il promis.

“Le Président de la République a chargé le Premier ministre de travailler, dans les meilleurs délais, à une rédaction juridiquement robuste tenant compte de la décision du Conseil constitutionnel ainsi que du cadre européen”, a assuré de son côté l’Elysée dans un communiqué publié peu après. Et de poursuivre : “la détermination du Président de la République à faire aboutir cette réforme d’ici au printemps 2027 demeure totale”.

Cet article a été mis à jour pour ajouter les réactions à la décision du Conseil constitutionnel.

A court in France on Friday shot down a bill seeking to ban access to social media for under-15s from September — a major blow to President Emmanuel Macron that raises fundamental questions about efforts to protect kids on the internet.

The Constitutional Council, which reviews the constitutionality of French legislation, said the restrictions in the bill disproportionately infringe on minors’ right to freedom of expression and communication.

Europe’s would-be first social media ban, which sought to prohibit access to anyone in France under the age of 15 from next month, had been a flagship policy of Macron’s second and final term.

The French president has also pushed restrictions to the top of the EU agenda, with an expected announcement of bloc-wide measures by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in September.

In a statement late Friday, the French presidential office said the government would not be giving up on the bill. It has set a new target date for spring 2027, which coincides with when Macron will leave office.

The statement said Macron “has instructed the Prime Minister to work, as quickly as possible, on a legally sound draft that takes into account” the court’s decision. The ruling hinted at what would make the age restriction align with fundamental rights: giving parents more flexibility.

Peter Craddock, a senior Brussels-based attorney advising social media firms, said the French court decision could have far-reaching implications.

“What they’re basically saying here is: ‘Listen, government, if you want to get this to succeed, you can’t just work on the basis of a general ban. There have to be limitations,” said Craddock, a partner at Keller & Heckman. “There have to be ways for people to say, ‘well, actually, in my case, my son, my daughter is of a certain degree of maturity and is able to use this properly.'”

The government bill had passed through the French legislative procedure after a lengthy back-and-forth earlier this summer. It was set to bring forward Europe’s first social media age restrictions, with Greece and Denmark planning to follow suit.

But Article 1 of the French bill essentially rendered it a blanket ban, without sufficiently distinguishing between the risks of each social media platform or the varying levels of vulnerability among minors themselves, said the court. The ban would also apply to online platforms that have not been proven to have risks to the health and safety of minors.

Craddock warned the court’s judgment may not bode well for other national bans or restrictions coming from the European Commission, since the decision is framed around fundamental rights, which are harmonized across the bloc.

“The reasoning is actually equally relevant internationally,  throughout the EU, because this fundamental freedom is not specific to France,” he said.

This article has been updated.

Jets from NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission shot down a drone that entered Latvian airspace overnight, the country’s armed forces reported on X.

The drone was downed near the village of Rugāji in northeastern Latvia, close to the Russian border, after Italian Eurofighters based in Lithuania and Turkish F-16s based in Estonia were scrambled.

The uncrewed aerial vehicle appeared in Latvian airspace “as a result of Russian electromagnetic warfare,” said the Latvian National Armed Forces in a press release. Earlier Friday, more than 50 Ukrainian drones attacked targets in Russia’s western regions, including Leningrad and Tver, where they struck Ust-Luga — the second-largest port in Russia — and a warehouse belonging to e-commerce giant Wildberries.

Latvia’s military warned that similar incidents may happen again in the future. “While the Russian aggression in Ukraine is ongoing, the recurrence of such cases when a foreign unmanned aircraft enters or approaches Latvian airspace is possible,” it said.

An air raid alert was declared in four eastern Latvian municipalities at around 4 a.m. local time. The military urged people to stay indoors and away from exterior walls.

After the drone was downed, Sandra Kapteine, head of the Rugāji village administration, told the Latvian Information Agency that the incident “caused no casualties,” as the drone wreckage fell in a “wooded area.”

There has been an uptick in similar incidents over recent months in countries close to the war-zone. A week ago, Bulgarian Defense Minister Dimitar Stoyanov said a Ukrainian-made drone crossed Bulgarian airspace from Romania and exploded near the village of Kardam.

Thousands of Spanish and Moroccan security officers reinforced Ceuta’s borders on Friday as online messages spread calling for a new mass incursion into the exclave in North Africa.

Following last month’s unprecedented arrival of 72,000 migrants into the Spanish city, viral social media posts proposed a similar surge be staged on Saturday, Aug. 15 — a national holiday in Spain. Authorities in Madrid and Rabat have been tracking the online chatter and coordinating a common response.

Moroccan Interior Ministry Spokesperson Rachid El Khalfi on Wednesday confirmed the country was “taking all necessary measures to counter any attempt at illegal crossing,” and local journalists reported a significant buildup of troops around the border town of Fnideq on Friday.

Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska traveled to Ceuta on Thursday to inspect border infrastructure and a new sea barrier designed to keep people from swimming into the city. The exclave’s security personnel has also been reinforced with an additional 300 police officers and 2,000 soldiers.

“We do this to dissuade anyone who aspires to enter Ceuta and Melilla irregularly,” said Grande-Marlaska. “None of them will remain in Ceuta, none of them will make it to the Iberian Peninsula, none of them will be given legal status.”

The rumored mass crossing has been cited by critics of Spain’s migration policies.

Austria’s conservative Europe, Integration and Family Minister Claudia Bauer, last week mentioned the rumored Aug. 15 surge in a written statement, demanding Madrid “immediately and significantly reinforce border protection in its African enclaves and ensure that this time it will hold.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government also cited the possibility of a mid-August mass arrival last week while justifying its decision to maintain border checks on travelers from Spain.

LONDON — Nigel Farage’s victory in the Clacton by-election is emphatic — but it won’t let him off the hook.

Winning back his seaside House of Commons seat by an increased margin allows the Reform UK leader to claim victory in the “people vs the establishment” contest he triggered in response to intense scrutiny of his finances.

Farage won the backing of 22,239 constituents, or 63 percent of the vote. That’s 1,014 more votes in this by-election than at the U.K. general election two years ago, and a 17-point swing in his favor.

But second-placed this time was Count Binface, a comedian with a trash can on his head who secured — by many thousands — his highest ever vote count in a palpable protest against Farage. None of Britain’s mainstream parties took part in the contest, branding it a circus.

The Reform UK leader’s refusal to turn up at the count to hear the result Friday — a move that would have seen him pictured alongside a cast of comedy characters — underlined the struggle for him to get back on the front foot he is used to contesting politics from. 

More significantly, Farage’s triumph means that parliamentary investigations into his financial affairs will now resume. That could lead to another by-election — one in which serious rivals are far less likely to stand aside to allow Farage to face-off against a long list of no-hopers.

Labour MPs switched out their own leader in part because of Farage’s storming success at local elections in May, but the focus on this contest has also made it harder for Farage to land blows on Britain’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

This week, Labour overtook Reform in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls after months on the back-foot for the governing party.

Snubbing the count

Clacton is Farage’s fiefdom. It was one of the most Brexit-voting constituencies in the country and was the place that first sent him to the Commons on his eighth time of trying.

But Binface, a proud proponent of the British tradition of satirical candidates contesting elections, had never won more than 308 votes in a parliamentary election before. Against Farage, he secured 9,455 votes. That means 28 percent plumped for the comedy candidate with a bin on his head.

Farage on Friday snubbed the leisure center count and the mild embarrassment of accepting victory alongside Binface that three prime ministers — Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak and Andy Burnham — have endured before him. 

He told his own “Farage Fest” jamboree organized in secret away from the results venue that he’d been advised by Essex Police of an “organized campaign to disrupt and degrade the result.”

“I’m not scared of these people, far from it,” he told fans. “But I’m damned if I’m going to stand on a stage, having won a resounding victory, a ringing endorsement of all that I’ve tried to fight for, and you’ve tried to fight for, and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies, and I will not sadly be attending the count.”

That meant, according to reports, Farage became the first winning candidate not to turn up for a result since jailed Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands won Fermanagh and South Tyrone in 1981.

Instead, Farage railed against the media and the “establishment” in his own event fit with branded pint cups, a ferris wheel and yurts for overnight stays. It was yet another demonstration of his attempt to bend the norms that accompany mainstream politics to his will.

Essex Police assured a “proportionate and robust policing operation” was in place at the count — while it was made clear that Farage was not advised to avoid the event. He cancelled a scheduled speech in Clacton, too.

Farage had gambled that a strong victory would inhibit the chances of parliamentary watchdogs imposing a severe enough sentence to set up a recall, should he be found to have breached the rules. “The bigger the vote, the bigger the message. Let’s tell the establishment where to go,” Farage said as polls opened on Thursday.

In the event, the turnout — at 44 percent — was not astonishing. That it’s less than the general election may not be surprising, but it was lower than another high-profile by-election held in this seat a decade earlier.

In 2014 Douglas Carswell resigned as the Conservative MP for the area to run for Ukip, Farage’s Eurosceptic party that helped drive Brexit. 

Clacton returned Carswell in his new guise, making him the first MP elected under the Ukip banner. He won 60 percent of the vote, on a 51 percent turnout.

That day was described as a “mini-earthquake in British politics” — but Friday’s result is producing less stable ground for Reform. “Farage’s distraction by-election doesn’t clear his name – it just shows he likely has so much more to hide,” argued Labour Party Chair Bridget Phillipson Friday morning.

Probes continue

So now the uphill battle. The parliamentary standards commissioner will resume two investigations into Farage — one centering on a £5 million donation from a crypto-entrepreneur, the other into support provided by a convicted fraudster.

The MP denies wrongdoing in both instances, arguing he didn’t need to declare the donations because they were given in a personal capacity before he was elected. 

But if there’s a finding of a serious rule breach then the Commons could vote to suspend Farage and trigger a recall petition.

The signatures of just 10 percent of registered voters in Clacton would then be needed to expel Farage from parliament — and trigger another by-election in which he could stand. Farage has expressed hopes that there isn’t such an appetite in his constituency — but the support for Binface throws that into doubt.

Clacton’s electorate is 79,785 — the 9,455 votes that Binface secured represents around 12 percent of those eligible voters, a comfortable margin for recall to be successful. 

Tactical errors?

That is all potential peril for the future. Right now, the August by-election has even some supporters questioning whether this was a rare miscalculation from a veteran campaigner.

Farage has in recent years dominated the summer break when many MPs vacate the political playing field.

But broadcasting rules on election periods stymied this year’s effort. Media invites to the press conferences Farage did throw had to assure broadcasters he would not be mentioning Clacton. And every mention of Clacton meant presenters were obliged to read the full 34-candidate list — namedropping Nick the Incredible Flying Brick and Baron Von Thunderclap in the process. 

Reform has also been struggling to grapple with a squeeze on its right from Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain splinter party. Farage’s one-time Reform comrade touted the possibility of a pact to unite the right — but deeply held grievances on both sides mean the distraction has dragged on.

A row over one of Reform’s most senior officials, Zia Yusuf, calling a Conservative former defense secretary a “traitor to Britain” has also been generating unwanted headlines and exposing rifts inside Reform.

If that second by-election does emerge in the coming months then the Conservatives have already vowed to fight it. Farage, should he choose to stand again, would face a far tougher contest against the backdrop of parliament having ruled against him, and many voters in Clacton had been unimpressed by the “laughing stock” caused by the first election.

The Reform hardcore may be buoyed by Farage’s railing against the “establishment” — but what this saga does to his reputation with the wider electorate he needs to propel him into Downing Street remains the biggest unanswered question.

LONDON — Nigel Farage was declared the winner of the Clacton by-election Friday morning — and immediately stepped into a resumed parliamentary investigation into his finances.

The Reform UK leader won the special contest with 22,239 votes, returning him as the member of parliament for the seaside constituency. His nearest rival, a comedian styling himself as Count Binface, came second with 9,455 votes.

Farage got 1,014 more votes this time around than in 2024 — a 17-point swing in his favor — albeit against no real competition after all the main political parties boycotted the contest. Turnout was 44.37 percent.

The by-election was called by Farage himself amid mounting scrutiny of his finances.

The right-wing populist has faced repeated questions over a £5 million donation from crypto-entrepreneur Christopher Harborne, received before he became Clacton’s member of parliament in 2024, as well as support from convicted fraudster George Cottrell.

Farage has given varying explanations for the support, and billed this election — called at a dramatic press conference railing against the mainstream parties — as a “people versus the establishment” chance for Clacton’s voters to be his judge.

On Friday, the website of Parliament’s standards commissioner was updated to make clear that a paused probe into the Harborne donation has now been resumed.

That tees up the prospect of a further electoral test for Farage in Clacton if he is found to have broken the rules. The Conservatives, likely to be the most competitive challengers, have made clear that they would stand in such a contest.

Farage on Friday broke with tradition by declining to attend the result declaration at Clacton Leisure Centre.

He told supporters in an earlier speech in the town he would not be attending due to what he called an “organized campaign to disrupt and degrade” the result, claiming police had warned Reform UK of such a threat. A later Clacton victory rally has also been cancelled.

An Essex Police spokesperson said only that: “The decision of candidates to attend or not attend the election count is a decision for individuals and their security teams, our role is to make sure our policing operation is sufficiently robust to ensure the safety of all and we are grateful to all of our officers, staff and the staff at Tendring District Council who worked through the night to ensure the safety of all.”

Farage told his supporters: “I’m damned if I’m going to stand on a stage having won a resounding victory, a ringing endorsement of all that I’ve tried to fight for and you’ve tried to fight for and be demeaned and humiliated by nobodies.”

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This week and next, the Brussels Playbook Week Ender podcast is away for the summer holiday. 

So, we thought we’d re-up this popular installment on Europe’s quest to become independent from U.S. tech. 

In this episode first released in June, Sarah Wheaton is joined by “The Tech Coup” author and former Member of the European Parliament Marietje Schaake and POLITICO’s Laurens Cerulus, as they look at what happens when the systems running Europe’s schools, ministries, banks, businesses and security are controlled elsewhere. They also discuss whether Brussels can build real alternatives or simply learn to manage its dependence better. 

The Brussels Playbook Podcast will be back to its regular schedule on Aug. 24. 

Questions? Comments? Send us a message to our WhatsApp here or at +32 491 05 06 29. 

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a problem: Nobody wants the hardest job in Washington.

The Ukrainian president is struggling to find someone of sufficient influence to represent Kyiv to the Trump administration, with prospective candidates proving reluctant to take on the grueling assignment at a critical moment in the war, according to two former senior Ukrainian officials and four lawmakers.

The need to replace the previous envoy, Olga Stefanishyna, helped trigger Zelenskyy’s still-incomplete government reshuffle. Stefanishyna was formally dismissed on Aug. 3 over impending embezzlement charges. 

Zelenskyy moved his reshuffle plans forward so he could offer the ambassadorship to Yulia Svyrydenko, the outgoing prime minister, according to a former senior Ukrainian official and a Republican foreign expert familiar with the background to the shake-up. But she declined, disrupting his plans. 

“It is no secret that I counted on and offered Yulia Svyrydenko the post of ambassador to the United States,” Zelenskyy said at a press conference in late July. He added that he was looking for a candidate with the highest possible qualifications: “a person at the level of a deputy prime minister, minister, or prime minister.”

Since then, however, other prospective candidates have proved equally reluctant, spurning what would in any case be the difficult job of handling Donald Trump’s unpredictable White House.

Ukrainians with sufficient heft and skill for the ambassadorship are looking at it askance, “worrying that they would not enjoy the conditions they would need to do the job properly,” said Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a prominent Ukrainian opposition lawmaker and former deputy prime minister who is a regular critic of Zelenskyy.

“Certainly that would be the case without having the ear of the president or his trust,” she added. That narrows Zelenskyy’s options sharply. The person would likely have to come from his tight inner circle of trusted aides, Klympush-Tsintsadze said, but there is no one there who seriously fits the bill. 

“Framing it as if nobody wants the job would be a kind of oversimplification,” said a former Ukrainian diplomat who was granted anonymity in order to speak freely. “Of course, there are people who want the job, but there’s no one who really measures up to it. Zelenskyy is having a hard time filling the position.”

Wrong direction

The trouble filling the Washington post is part of a broader problem for Zelenskyy, whose office did not respond to a request for comment. The president’s approval ratings have deteriorated since he embarked a month ago on a government shake-up that remains incomplete and has proved turbulent. According to a Socis Center for Social Research survey, more than 55 percent of Ukrainians believe their nation is moving in the wrong direction.

Zelenskyy’s dismissal in July of popular defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov sparked street protests and a political backlash, while several key posts remain unresolved. The reshuffle has also raised questions about how Zelenskyy chooses his senior team — and how far beyond his tight circle of trusted aides he is prepared to look. 

“No one has explained to Ukrainians why exactly the government had to be changed,” Mykola Knyazhitskiy, an opposition lawmaker from Lviv and founder of Ukraine’s Espreso TV channel, said.

“There had been no clearly articulated public complaints about Svyrydenko. In her farewell address to parliament, Svyrydenko received applause. MPs gave her a standing ovation. So why was she dismissed if her performance was considered so successful and was so highly regarded?” 

Difficult timing

The ambassadorial vacancy comes at an especially fraught moment for Kyiv. Washington remains central to Ukraine’s ability to sustain the war, and whoever takes the job will have to navigate a Trump administration that has repeatedly shifted course on military support and on how — and when — the war should end.

In an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns earlier this year, Stefanishyna acknowledged she had experienced “diplomatic whiplash” in the role. 

Kyiv is trying to persuade Trump to give Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot air defense systems, something he promised in June, only to reverse himself in July. The issue is becoming more urgent as Ukraine heads toward another winter of Russian attacks on its energy and civilian infrastructure and is already struggling to intercept intensified ballistic missile strikes. Zelenskyy has said this year’s deliveries of air defense missiles from Ukraine’s allies have fallen by two-thirds compared with 2025.

At the same time, there are signs the White House may soon seek to revive stalled peace negotiations. That would put a premium on having an ambassador in Washington with the political weight to get through the door, the authority to speak for Zelenskyy and the skill to navigate an administration where policy can change quickly. And also to lobby Congress. 

Leaving the post vacant, therefore, carries risks well beyond diplomatic protocol. Ukraine could find itself without a heavyweight operator in Washington just as decisions are being made over weapons, air defense, logistics and intelligence sharing, as well as the terms of any renewed peace push.

“It is quite likely that Zelenskyy won’t appoint anyone this side of the midterm elections in the United States,” said Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, an opposition lawmaker. “It will be hard to judge who would fit the political landscape best until those elections have been held.”

BRUSSELS — Geopolitical crises and natural disasters have an annoying habit of rocking Europe in the middle of summer, when the bloc’s political leaders are off soaking up the sun or unplugging in some bucolic retreat.

While the continent’s governments have proved remarkably adept at functioning with their leaders on holiday, in a crisis, being seen to be present can matter almost as much as actually being there. 

“Emotions play an important role in crisis communication,” said Olga Eisele, a crisis-communications researcher at the University of Amsterdam. “People are likely insecure, anxious, maybe furious or depressed about having lost things or even people, and want these emotions to be heard by those in charge.”

“Physical presence can signal much more effectively that these emotions are taken seriously and are heard,” she added.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was just hours away from kicking off his weeks-long summer break when 72,000 migrants surged into the Spanish exclave of Ceuta on July 30. The Socialist leader duly postponed his plans and traveled to the North African coastal city, where he delivered a televised address pushing back against criticism from other EU leaders. 

But as soon as the emergency was deemed to be under control, Sánchez resumed his scheduled vacation at a state-owned villa on the island of Lanzarote.

His decision to take time off, even as the political aftershocks continued to roil the bloc, drew criticism from opposition politicians like Elías Bendodo, deputy secretary of the center-right People’s Party, who this week accused the prime minister of “unprecedented selfishness” for taking time off while the situation in Ceuta is “far from normal.”

“Sánchez insults the Spanish people by remaining on his beach vacation,” he added.

The Spanish government rejected the criticism, noting the prime minister is not only reachable but actively participating in remote meetings, and insisted the state remains fully operational even when its top leaders are away.

The perils of taking time off

Sánchez isn’t the only EU leader reluctant to let the Ceuta crisis spoil their August break.

At a moment when passport-free travel has been suspended between Spain and Italy, and its prime ministers are openly criticizing each others’ policies, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen appears to have embraced the quieter side of summer in an undisclosed rural location.

With the migration row still ongoing this week, von der Leyen posted a video on Instagram — soliciting names for two chicks hatched by her hen, Chickeletta.

Despite the light-hearted post, a Commission spokesperson told POLITICO that von der Leyen continues to track developments across the bloc and “remains in constant contact with her team in Brussels and her College.”

“While family time is important, she always follows all critical matters closely, remains fully engaged, and intervenes directly whenever needed,” the spokesperson added, insisting the Commission president had closely followed the developments in Ceuta and was in “daily contact” with the three commissioners involved in directly addressing the crisis.

The spokesperson also stressed that the Commission remains “fully operational” throughout the summer, with “duty commissioners” appointed to ensure a member of the College is available during the periods when Brussels becomes a ghost town.

Similarly, some national governments like Finland’s publicly announce when ministers are on summer holidays and which of their deputies are handling their portfolios.

“What matters from a crisis-management perspective is that the responsible authorities can take decisions quickly, mobilise the necessary resources and coordinate the response,” said a separate Commission spokesperson.

But even when mechanisms are in place to ensure governments have the ability to manage dramatic situations, officials on holiday risk looking callous or indifferent if they continue to holiday during a crisis.

In 2022, North Rhine-Westphalia Environment Minister Ursula Heinen-Esser was forced to step down after it was revealed that she had resumed a holiday break to Mallorca days after devastating floods killed over 180 people in western Germany the year before. Germany’s federal Family Minister Anne Spiegel also resigned in the face of backlash for similarly taking a four-week holiday in France in the aftermath of the catastrophe.

Evangelina Petridou, a crisis management expert and political science professor at Mid Sweden University, said a number of factors shape the intensity of backlash to a leader’s absence during a crisis. “Whether the opposition weaponizes the event, whether it is a majority or minority government and whether there is an institution in place to handle the crisis that can take the heat away from the individual minister or public official,” can all have an effect.

Another factor is the time of year, said Eisele, the crisis-communications researcher at the University of Amsterdam.

“If leaders are on holiday, then it is usually also a time when not much else is happening — in Germany we call that the Sommerloch,” Eisele said, explaining that the absence of hard news can turn an otherwise routine absence into a political drama. 

She added that while a public official’s physical presence is preferable, “reassurance can also come remotely” if the public is ultimately convinced the situation is being handled competently.

Should I stay or should I go?

Senior British military officials accused then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of “dereliction of duty” for his decision to head off on a holiday in Somerset as Taliban forces moved to take Kabul in August 2021. His foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, faced even greater criticism for remaining on vacation in Crete until after the Afghan capital fell, at a moment when British forces were frantically trying to evacuate civilians.

Although he was also on holiday when the Taliban took Kabul, French President Emmanuel Macron did not face similar censure. From the Fort de Brégançon, the coastal retreat traditionally used by France’s head of state, he delivered a televised address to the nation that reinforced the perception that his government was taking care of the situation and doing everything it could to bring citizens home.

Fear of backlash leads many leaders to cancel holidays amid crisis situations. Keir Starmer called off a family vacation in August 2024 as far-right riots spread across England, and Portugal’s Prime Minister Luís Montenegro similarly declined to take time off as wildfires tore across the country last year.

But data suggests Europeans don’t necessarily expect their leaders to sacrifice their time off at the first sign of trouble.

A July 2025 Ipsos poll found that 46 percent of Britons thought it was important that the prime minister take a holiday, while 44 percent believed the head of government should take about as much time off as the average worker. More than three-quarters — 78 percent — said it was important that the prime minister be easily contactable while away.

Politicians on the continent may also face less pressure to sacrifice their holidays, given a working culture in which time off is widely regarded as a right. International Labor Organization data shows Europeans are entitled to more paid annual leave than workers in any other part of the world, and polling like Eurofound’s annual European Working Conditions Survey shows the bloc’s citizens strongly value work-life balance.

For that reason, the University of Amsterdam’s Eisele said backlash over holiday absences is usually related to larger image issues.

“If the leader has strong support, then not showing up immediately might be forgiven,” she said. But if the official in question is already having popularity problems, “crises are usually a prime situation to question the competence of a political leader.”

A bipartisan House delegation met with top Vatican officials on Wednesday to discuss artificial intelligence during a visit that briefly included Pope Leo XIV, according to two people with knowledge of the trip granted anonymity to disclose details of the private meetings.

The delegation’s visit, which has not been previously reported, included nine lawmakers and was coordinated by the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, the person said. Committee member Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) and California Rep. Ro Khanna, the panel’s top Democrat, led the trip.

A spokesperson for the committee declined to comment.

In an interview confirming the visit, Khanna said the topics of discussion included religious freedom, AI’s economic and geopolitical risks, as well as broader ethical and existential implications. It centered on two key principles: human dignity and equality.

“Human dignity means that human beings need to be responsible for any key decisions involving health, involving finances, involving individual freedom, involving public services,” he said.

The Silicon Valley Democrat said that in this context, equality means preventing automation from causing mass unemployment, and ensuring AI cannot be used to exclude people from social services. Khanna said it also means guarding against a concentration of power in which “a few billionaires can make decisions about data and algorithms.”

The Vatican did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting. But Pope Leo has taken a special interest in the technology and used a May encyclical to call on countries to “safeguard humanity” as AI develops, warning that the technology could deepen inequality, fray the social fabric and erode moral responsibility if it doesn’t have ethical guardrails. Congress, meanwhile, has introduced dozens of AI bills and held several hearings, but has failed to agree on a comprehensive federal framework for governing the technology.

The pope previously cast the global race to develop cutting-edge AI technology in stark terms. As the U.S., China and other powers compete for an edge, he warned against a “dehumanizing ambition to develop ever more powerful technologies or to secure control over them,” describing a contest between “opposing imperialisms” seeking either to preserve or seize technological supremacy.

Khanna told POLITICO he plans to introduce legislation that would tax the use of autonomous AI agents to incentivize companies to hire human workers.

The group also discussed AI’s implications for human mortality and the limits of human knowledge — boundaries some developers have long imagined technology might overcome by uploading human consciousness and accumulated wisdom to the cloud.

Following the meetings, Khanna sent letters to top executives at OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, and Amazon, asking how they intend to align their technology with the tenets of human dignity and equality.

An OpenAI spokesperson pointed POLITICO to prior policy documents outlining the AI company’s commitment to safety and to ensuring benefits from the technology are distributed equitably. The other companies did not respond to requests for comment.

The lawmakers traveled to Berlin to discuss China’s rising global influence, before picking up on the topic during their Vatican visit and in meetings with Italian government officials a few days later.

Alongside Khanna and Newhouse, Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), John Rutherford (R-Fla.), Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa), Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), Jill Tokuda (D-Hawaii) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) took part in the discussions, according to one of the people familiar with the trip.

Spokespeople for the members did not respond to requests for comment.

NATO plans to fortify its eastern edge using drones, sensors and artificial intelligence in a massive network designed to spot and help repel a potential Russian attack.

Western officials say the alliance is exploring AI-assisted drone operations as part of the broad effort to bolster its defenses. The aim, however, isn’t full autonomy; instead, machines could help to pilot the drones while human operators make the call on what they strike.

The approach echoes what Ukraine is already doing. The embattled country is increasingly incorporating AI into its drone operations, but both soldiers and defense tech firms have repeatedly emphasized that humans must remain at the center of the fight, even as the war becomes more robotic.

For NATO, AI-assisted drones would be part of the Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative — a digital battlespace network the alliance is building to track threats along its borders with Russia and Belarus, which stretch from northern Finland to the Black Sea.

The new concept includes thousands of drones, sensors and satellites linked with AI to detect potential breaches of allied territory and repel attacks as the first line of defense. Conventional military forces, such as tanks, fighter jets and artillery, will remain the backbone.

U.S. Army Maj. Ben Schiff, a software operations officer, told Bild — which, like Business Insider and POLITICO, is part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network — that both Ukraine and Russia still rely on humans to control drones.

While some systems have AI or machine-learning capabilities that allow brief moments of autonomy in flight, piloting is primarily performed by operators on the ground. Schiff said that “the most boring parts of flying”— drones loitering above the battlefield looking for targets — should be automated. But when it comes to deciding what the drone should strike, that’s where a human comes into play.

“So the humans are deciding what the drone does, but they don’t necessarily need to take the action of flying it because we don’t have a million pilots. We can’t fly a million drones at the same time,” said Schiff at the U.S. Army Europe and Africa headquarters in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Schiff is a product manager for the EFDI Data Backbone, a developing framework designed to help NATO forces detect, classify, share and act on information at speed and scale. The backbone bridges incompatible computer and command systems across multiple allied nations, allowing real-time data to flow from forward-deployed sensors all the way back to headquarters.

The goal is to help NATO move beyond today’s linear system — called a “kill chain” — where information moves from the front line back to a decision-maker and then back again to the battlefront to a “kill web,” where data from sensors can be rapidly passed to weapons systems and operators.

“The value of a drone, sensor or other capability is not determined solely by its individual performance,” said Maj. Matt Blubaugh, a spokesperson for U.S. Army Europe and Africa. “Its effectiveness depends on how well it integrates into the broader operational ecosystem.”

Learning from Ukraine

Ukraine is already pioneering the integration of AI into military operations.

On the battlefield, Ukraine has made significant progress in using AI to support functions like decision-making, drone navigation, terminal guidance and precision, said Andrii Hrytseniuk, the CEO of the Ukrainian state-backed innovation platform Brave1.

This spring, Hrytseniuk told Business Insider in Kyiv that more than 200 local companies were developing AI-based components for drones, missiles, radars and other systems. However, they insist machines won’t control drones from start to finish.

Wild Hornets, the manufacturer of the popular Sting interceptor drone, also told Business Insider in May that AI will be gradually integrated at almost every stage of flight operations — target detection, identification and, later, terminal guidance.

A spokesperson for the company said humans will still make the final decision on what to strike. Since Russia is constantly changing its tactics, interceptor operators must keep tabs on these changes and make necessary adjustments, they said.

As autonomous systems become more common on the battlefield in Ukraine, commanders also told Business Insider that humans need to remain in the loop.

Grek, the call sign of a company commander overseeing robots with Ukraine’s 21st Unmanned Systems “Kraken” Regiment, said the goal is to “allow people to focus on the tasks where human judgment has the greatest value.”

U.S. Army officers stressed that NATO is using the operational environment in Ukraine to inform military planning for a potential future confrontation.

“We’re not copying Ukraine,” said Capt. Ronan Sefton. “We’re learning from Ukraine.”

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

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar on Thursday cast doubt on a deal struck by his predecessor that would see Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom expand Hungary’s nuclear power capacity.

Weeks of extreme heat and drought have pushed the Danube River to record lows, slashing output at Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant — which normally supplies around a third of the country’s electricity — to little more than 10 percent.

“These plans were accepted despite the fact that nuclear power plants that do not operate with a closed-circuit cooling system and are so exposed to the environment are no longer being built in the world,” said Magyar, per local media.

Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev wrote that the Russian state nuclear company was still on schedule with two new reactors at Paks despite Hungary’s change of government in April, which saw Magyar oust Russia-friendly incumbent Viktor Orbán.

Concrete preparation for Unit 5 is more than 80 percent complete, he said, while work on Unit 6 is advancing and reactor components are already being manufactured.

“We are ready for dialogue,” Likhachev said, adding that Rosatom had received no questions from Hungary’s new government.

Magyar challenged that account hours later. Under the original contract, Paks II should have been operating by 2024, he told reporters in a press conference Thursday. Instead, Hungary has spent roughly 1,000 billion forints (€2.8 billion) on a site he described as little more than depots and “two large concrete pits.”

“I don’t really see that they have adhered to the contract,” Magyar said. His government is now carrying out a full review of the project, including its financing and cooling arrangements.

The review cuts at one of Orbán’s signature deals with Russia. Orbán struck the Paks II agreement in Moscow in 2014, handing Rosatom the two-reactor expansion backed by up to €10 billion in Russian state financing. Two years later, he called it the “deal of the century.”

Those ties survived Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As recently as March this year, Orbán’s foreign minister Péter Szijjártó admitted to discussing EU sanctions with senior Russian officials after leaked calls showed him boasting that a bank linked to Paks had been kept off a sanctions list.

Downstream, Romania shut the second and last operating reactor at Cernavodă on Thursday after the Danube fell too low to supply its cooling pumps.

President Donald Trump is paving a legal pathway for U.S. companies to launch cyberattacks on foreign cybercriminal gangs — a significant and potentially controversial measure that would put approved tech and cybersecurity firms on the front lines of digital combat.

The presidential memorandum, released late Wednesday, comes as the Trump administration has repeatedly pushed for more aggressive action to counter foreign scams and cyberattacks, which the White House said cost Americans nearly $21 billion last year.

The memo represents one of the biggest shifts in U.S. cyber policy undertaken in recent years. It would empower tech and security companies — whose data and control over internet infrastructure often offer unique insight into foreign hacking operations — to mount state-sanctioned digital strikes.

While many such companies already work closely with U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, a web of legal and political constraints has long prevented them from taking direct action inside foreign networks.

Companies that want to participate would be required to sign contracts with both the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security and to undergo what the memo describes as “rigorous vetting” while working with the government. The overall effort would be overseen by a National Coordination Center, established in an earlier Trump administration executive order, with co-executive directors from DOJ and DHS.

However, the memo states that no operations by the companies would be approved until the executive directors at DOJ and DHS establish “consensus procedures” with the White House Homeland Security Council guaranteeing “complete oversight and control of Participating Companies’ performance.”

Those procedures, it notes, should be drafted within 60 days. They are likely to be extensive.

They will outline steps for participating companies to obtain approval for proposed offensive hacking operations, so the government can confirm that the targets are criminal gangs and ensure that operations are consistent with U.S. law and don’t undermine ongoing U.S. intelligence efforts. Companies could propose surveillance operations to help identify criminals or “effects” operations to degrade the systems they use to stage their attacks.

Participating companies would have to pass minimum standards for technical expertise and personnel vetting, and would be required to notify the federal government if they believe approved operations may result in the loss of life or rise to the level of use of force under international law.

Some see the memo as a critical step to help the U.S. government counter foreign cybercriminal gangs that operate outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement.

“For years we’ve called the American technology industry a strategic asset but left it on the cyber sidelines,” Joe Lin, the CEO and co-founder of Twenty, a start-up that builds offensive cyber tools for the U.S. government, said in a statement. “This administration is changing the paradigm.”

The memo notes that companies will only be authorized to target criminals that are “not an institutional part of a foreign government or wholly operated under a foreign government’s direction.”

Even with the help of the U.S. intelligence community, making that distinction could be difficult.

Adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran have persistently targeted U.S. critical infrastructure, including water systems, ports, and telecommunications infrastructure, while multinational crime syndicates have defrauded billions of dollars annually from Americans via complex online schemes.

But many cyber gangs in Eastern Europe are thought to operate with the tacit consent of the Russian government, while state hackers in Iran and China sometimes moonlight as cybercriminals to earn extra money or deflect blame for their governments’ attacks.

More broadly, it is not always easy for digital investigators to determine who is responsible for a given cyberattack, or who different computer networks belong to — another risk the memo contemplates.

Companies that accidentally carry out operations targeting a U.S. citizen or network will be required to immediately pause the operation and notify the U.S. government, the memo states. It does not appear to preclude activities that are deliberately “directed” at a U.S. person, so long as they receive “any necessary authorization, judicial or otherwise, prior to approval of the operation.” Under U.S. law, a “U.S. person” can refer to an American business or organization.

Many lawmakers and security experts have broadly supported calls for the private sector to play a larger role in responding to cybercrime, though not all approve of granting them the ability to launch active hacking efforts.

In recent years, some House members have debated the idea of issuing “letters of marque” to private companies to carry out cyberattacks on behalf of the U.S. government, similar to the U.S. Navy authorizing private ships to disrupt British shipping during the War of 1812.

As part of a more assertive cyber posture, Trump has turned to U.S. Cyber Command to mount digital attacks in tandem with U.S. military operations, including in Iranand Venezuela. He signed an executive order this March to clamp down on countries that fail to take action against scam centers operating within their borders.

That same month, the White House called on the private sector to broadly help it “disrupt” foreign adversaries in its new national cyber strategy, though it stopped short of telling private companies to take riskier and more consequential steps, such as directly launching attacks against foreign criminals.

Some of the most prolific online fraud operations are believed to emanate from scam compounds in Southeast Asia. But hackers from North Korea — who for years have stolen hundreds of millions in cryptocurrency from victims around the world — would likely be exempt from targeting by U.S. companies since they work at the direction of the North Korean government.

PARIS — French firefighting unions are calling for a nationwide protest next month after accusing the government of failing to adequately support them during a summer of unprecedented heat.

“We are asking for the necessary resources to protect French citizens,” said Xavier Boy, a spokesperson representing several firefighters’ unions.

The strike will take place Sept. 29. Firefighters are allowed to walk out on the job but must maintain minimum staffing levels to respond to emergencies.

Boy said the unions’ most pressing demands include legislation to “modernize” France’s civil security framework, “massive” recruitment of professional firefighters and increased funding to protect firefighters’ health and safety.

He also called for “investments to match the risks France faces today and will face tomorrow” given Europe is the planet’s fastest-warming continent.

Boy and other firefighting representatives on Thursday — when they held a smaller-scale strike — met with French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez to discuss their concerns. They said they left unsatisfied and disappointed, accusing the minister of equivocating and spewing “political blah blah.”

Nuñez told reporters later Thursday that a bill to improve civil security would be presented to the unions on Sept. 8. The minister said the resources granted to firefighters would “evolve” in next year’s budget, but he refused to commit to a specific increase.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has also tasked seven parliamentarians with producing a report on how to improve firefighting in France and asked them to submit policy proposals by Sept. 21.

France’s current firefighting system relies heavily on volunteers. As of 2024, just under 80 percent of the country’s firefighters were volunteers, while fewer than 20 percent, mostly in urban areas, were professionals.

Most full-time firefighters work in major urban areas like Paris, but this summer they have faced ferocious conflagrations fueled by climate change-driven heat and drought, which are expected to cost taxpayers billions of euros.

Boy said firefighters battling the wildfire near Bordeaux, one of the worst in recent French history, were insufficiently equipped.

“Everything lacked — personnel, equipment and forest firefighting resources … especially anticipation,” he said.

A German district court on Thursday issued an arrest warrant for far-right Alternative for Germany lawmaker Maximilian Krah over unpaid legal fees stemming from a dispute with comedian Jan Böhmermann, according to various German media outlets.

In 2024, Böhmermann read out a listener’s letter on his podcast alleging that Krah, a former member of the European Parliament, had ordered 200 bottles of Champagne for an entire tent at Munich’s Oktoberfest. Krah denied the claims and called the story “complete nonsense.” Böhmermann later said that his research indicated the number of bottles was likely only 50.

Krah, who had already been dubbed “Schampus-Max” (Champagne Max) in some German media outlets, filed an injunction against Böhmermann over the claims for violation of his “personality rights,” according to Germany’s Der Spiegel, but the case was dismissed in December 2024. Krah was then ordered to cover litigation costs — which he is alleged to have failed to pay in full.

The outstanding amount is less than €300, reported Der Spiegel. A court bailiff applied for an arrest warrant in mid-July when the lawmaker did not appear for an asset disclosure appointment, according to the outlet.

Krah has since said he was neither aware of the appointment nor the outstanding costs.

The Bundestag would have to lift Krah’s parliamentary immunity in order for him to be detained.

Böhmermann had previously made headlines for triggering a diplomatic crisis after he insulted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a poem in 2016.

Böhmermann’s lawyer and Krah’s office did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.

A spokesperson for the court did not confirm the arrest warrant, citing privacy concerns.

Romania took Cernavodă’s second and last operating nuclear reactor offline on Thursday after the drought-hit Danube River fell too low to supply its cooling pumps.

“At 10:53 a.m., Unit 2 of Cernavodă NPP was shut down in a controlled manner,” Romania’s Energy Ministry said in a press release.

The government insisted the national grid remained stable and said it would bridge the shortfall with imports, hydropower, wind, coal and reserve generation. Romania had already notified the European Commission of an electricity crisis after the shutdown of Unit 1 on July 28, with Unit 2 accounting for roughly another 700 megawatts — about 10 percent of national production.

Cernavodă could stay offline for a while. “The forecast for the next 10 days shows a continuous decrease in the flow and level of the Danube,” plant director Romeo Urjan told Romanian news outlet Digi24 on Tuesday evening, saying officials did not expect to restart Unit 2 during that period.

Emergency dredging, rock blasting and sunk barges had bought the reactor roughly another week of operation.

The shutdown is the latest fallout from a drought emptying Europe’s rivers. Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite images released last week showed the Danube shrinking dramatically compared with last summer, exposing sandbanks and parched countryside north of Budapest in Hungary.

The river has hit a record low in Hungary, while record-low levels have also been reported in Romania, disrupting shipping and straining energy and water supplies.

Hungary is scrambling to keep its Paks nuclear plant operating. With output down to little more than 10 percent, Prime Minister Péter Magyar ordered the construction of a riverbed barrier Wednesday and put two barges on standby to be sunk if the Danube falls further.

Cernavodă’s two reactors normally supply around a fifth of Romania’s electricity. Before this summer, drought last forced a reactor there offline in 2003.

PARIS — France’s historically hot summer will end up costing the country €10 billion to €15 billion — the equivalent of as much as 0.5 percent of French gross domestic product — according to an estimate shared by Minister for Ecological Transition Monique Barbut.

Barbut said the preliminary estimate, which she advised treating “with great caution,” was based on an extrapolation of heat-related costs compiled by France’s official statistics agency, Insee, in past years. She added that the figure could rise as temperatures remain well above seasonal averages in many French regions. Eighty-five percent of the country was also under drought warnings as of mid-July.

Barbut said recent wildfires and drops in agricultural output were the biggest estimated costs and warned they would continue to grow in the future if governments fail to implement policies to limit the impacts of climate change.

France’s August 2003 heatwave, which, until this summer, was the warmest ever recorded in the country, led to a 22 percent drop in cereal production and a 9 percent drop in wine production, according to the French statistics agency.

A 2025 report from the European Central Bank found that regions hit by heat waves and droughts both had noticeable impacts on European economic output.

Nicolas Camut contributed to this report.

A plan to ramp up the data processing powers of the EU’s policing agency Europol poses “serious risks” to people’s privacy, Europe’s data protection supervisor warned Thursday.

The European Commission in June unveiled a plan to make Europol the central system for police forces to trade and analyse data using the latest technologies — part of a wider strategy to give EU justice agencies more firepower to tackle cross-border crime and terrorism.

The reforms include a fundamental shift in how Europol sifts through the data it collects, relaxing current rules that require data to be sorted into different categories before determining if Europol can legally use it. That’s been a “key operational bottleneck,” the Commission has said, since Europol deals with high volumes of unstructured data.

In an opinion published Thursday, the European Data Protection Supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski said that the proposal “creates serious risks, particularly regarding the processing of the personal data of individuals with no established criminal links.”

The proposal would allow Europol to retain data on a “vast” number of people with no links to criminal activity “for an extensive and unspecified period of time,” the supervisor warned.

The EDPS is the data protection authority that supervises EU institutions including Europol and advises the Commission on the privacy implications of legislative reforms.

The privacy watchdog acknowledged that Europe’s security architecture needs to be developed to protect against increasingly complex criminal threats, but underlined that the proposed Europol reform “must provide robust safeguards and real oversight.”