BRUSSELS — In Europe’s fight against wildfires, eyes are turning toward the sky: not just looking for rain or water-dropping Canadair planes, but also for ways to exploit new satellite capabilities to help contain or even prevent new blazes.

Satellites and the images and data they gather from space are increasingly seen as a means of providing European governments and firefighters on the ground with more accurate information: to map damage and detect fires at an early stage. 

Such help is more than welcome during another scorching European summer with wildfires in France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Approximately 600,000 hectares have burned across EU countries since the start of the year. Just last weekend, Belgium was hit by one of the largest wildfires in its history, in the High Fens nature reserve.

Still, this latest use of satellites is another reminder that Europe needs to step up its game in yet another strategic arena. After Elon Musk’s Starlink showed how satellite-based services could revolutionize everything from mobile communication to waging war, space technology for disaster management offers a potential avenue for Europe to compete.

Greece, a country that seems to be battling bigger wildfires every summer, was the first to act. 

In early May, a rocket of Musk’s SpaceX carried four small satellites into space with the specific task of helping the country detect and track wildfires in near real time.  It was a crucial step in the build-out of the “Hellenic Fire System,” which the Greek government boasted was the first national satellite system of its kind. 

The system was set up through European-wide collaboration, with the help of the European Space Agency, its Greek counterpart, German wildfire intelligence platform Ororatech and Finnish radar-based satellite provider ICEYE.

“By integrating space-based capabilities into our emergency response systems, we are equipping our fire services with the tools they need to respond faster,” Dimitrios Papastergiou, Greece’s minister of digital governance and artificial intelligence, said at the launch in May. 

The satellites that were launched before the summer were equipped with two infrared imagers. Those pick up the heat energy radiated by fires, allowing satellites to detect hotspots and gauge their intensity. 

The system is designed to “support early detection of emerging hotspots and continuous monitoring of fire behavior,” the European Space Agency said. 

Satellites’ role in gathering vast, real-time data and images can also help with other extreme weather events. The Finnish company ICEYE offers monitoring services for governments and businesses to manage both natural catastrophes, such as floods and wildfires, and man-made ones, such as illegal deforestation.

ICEYE raised €1 billion in new financing this year, and became the first company to get backing from the Scaleup Europe Fund, a new fund backed by the European Commission to help companies expand rapidly.

“If we want to be effective in managing the environment around us, both in terms of growth and development, as well as preventing or managing natural catastrophes, these sorts of space-based systems are extremely effective,” ICEYE CEO Rafal Modrzewski told POLITICO.

He said the company has been mostly focused on “managing” wildfires, but is now “trying to push towards predicting wildfires or at least detecting them in an earlier stage.” Modrzewski says a similar offering is available for floods, and for wind damage stemming from hurricanes and typhoons.

The impact can be maximized if Brussels becomes a coordinating “buyer” of those services. “Using space-based capabilities is much more effectively done on an EU scale through [the European] Commission than on a national scale in 27 separate nations,” Modrzewski said. 

The Commission is already prominent in helping governments and emergency services map and detect wildfires. The European Forest Fire Information System, which sits within the Commission’s research desk, maps both active fires and burned areas based on data from NASA’s MODIS and the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-3, an Earth observation satellite. 

Currently, data and images arrive every 10 minutes, but the launch of a new satellite from the Meteosat third generation next Thursday should speed that up — with images arriving every 2.5 minutes, improving detection and even forecasting of possible wildfires.

BRUSSELS — EU countries will be able to fund small local media without asking Brussels for permission, according to a draft of the bloc’s revised state aid rulebook obtained by POLITICO.

Government subsidies to businesses are strictly disciplined by Brussels under state aid rules, but there are exceptions. These are spelled out in frameworks, with the master one, the General Block Exemption Regulation (GBER), up for revision at the end of the year. 

The European Commission put out an initial draft for public consultation in February with a view to finalizing it by year’s end. The updated, 200-page draft gives a leg-up to local and independent journalism by allowing governments to fund small- and medium-sized outlets without formal vetting by Brussels.

“SMEs active in the press sector play an essential role in safeguarding media pluralism, cultural and linguistic diversity, democratic participation and citizens’ access to reliable information, particularly at local and regional level,” the Commission writes, highlighting structural challenges arising from the digital transformation of media markets.

To qualify for assistance, beneficiaries would need to fulfil at least one item in a Commission checklist that includes preserving media pluralism and diversity of opinion, transitioning to digital content while also preserving print editions. 

“The exemption covers aid pursuing cultural objectives — including linguistic diversity, the digitalization of press publications or the promotion of printed publications,” said Carole Maczkovics, of Counsel at Covington & Burling, of the press measures. 

Many European media outlets are struggling to stay viable, with print readership declining and publishers complaining that online platforms, such as search giant Google, are reducing referral traffic to their websites.

Broad scope

The GBER covers most sectors of the economy, from agriculture to transport, and is the target of intense lobbying from EU capitals, traditionally torn between big government spenders led by Germany and smaller member states, including the pro-free-trade Nordics, which complain that national subsidies distort the EU single market.

Countering the stereotype, Denmark was a leading advocate to extend GBER exemptions to the media. In a consultation response last year, the Danes said the state aid framework should be broadened to include private and public media providers “to promote harmonisation and simplify the general management of state aid in the media sector.”

The latest GBER draft focuses strongly on SMEs and innovation, as well as on the social dimension of state aid — as it expands on conditions for money that governments can put in training programs and the inclusion of disadvantaged workers. 

But it may not necessarily make things easier.

“Although the revision aims to simplify the State aid framework, it may ultimately make it more detailed and prescriptive,” warned Maczkovics. She added that the Commission’s gradual shift from broad aid categories to narrowly defined exemptions may sway EU countries to design measures that don’t quite fit the real needs of companies — for the sake of avoiding a notification.

Industry, for its part, is keeping a close eye on state aid exemptions, with airport lobby ACI Europe quick to react to the latest leak. 

“The revised GBER remains too restrictive for Europe’s smaller regional airports,” said Philippe Sacré, the association’s secretary general. He was referring to aid exemptions that would be restricted to airports handling over 500,000 passengers a year, according to the Commission’s draft. 

The Commission’s latest State aid Scoreboard shows that EU countries spent €168.2 billion in state aid in 2024, with Germany, France and Italy the top spenders. Capitals are increasingly taking advantage of block exemptions, with GBER representing close to 70 percent of all active exemption measures.

Tommaso Lecca contributed reporting.

President Donald Trump paused a 50 percent tariff on Canadian goods hours before it was scheduled to kick in, saying the two countries had reached a preliminary deal.

In a post on social media late Tuesday, Trump announced that he would delay the duties, set to go into effect at midnight on Wednesday, for three days “based on the fact that Canada and the U.S.A., subject to the finalization of documents, have a DEAL!”

The president teased that the agreement could include resurrecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, a long-stalled pipeline extension intended to pump crude oil from Alberta, Canada to the Midwest of the United States.

BRUSSELS — Europe’s seas are overheating and climate change is to blame, researchers said Wednesday, warning that marine heat waves are threatening ecosystems and coastal communities. 

The Atlantic and the Mediterranean are far hotter than normal, with some parts of the oceans around Europe reaching 6 degrees Celsius above average this week.

The culprit is climate change, scientists from the World Weather Attribution consortium said in a study released Wednesday. They found global warming is the driver behind this year’s high ocean temperatures.

The report lands during a summer marked by record-breaking heat waves on land, droughts and fires — all worsened by climate change, according to the same scientists. In the sea, the soaring temperatures harm marine species, boost jellyfish populations and increase the risk of destructive storms later in the year.

“This summer, we’ve seen some really exceptional ocean temperatures around Europe,” said Catherine Gregory, a climate scientist at the University of Bern who contributed to the study.

“By July, the average temperature of the entire Mediterranean Sea was just over 27C, which was the highest July value on record,” she added. “We’ve had a buoy reading to the west of Mallorca measuring more than 33C in open water … and we’ve seen similarly extreme conditions in the North Atlantic.” 

The scientists used peer-reviewed methods to analyze four regions: The Eastern and Western Mediterranean; the Atlantic around the Bay of Biscay and Iberian Peninsula; and the seas around Ireland and western Britain. 

“We find it’s the most extreme July marine heat wave conditions in the record for the Western Mediterranean, the Celtic region, and for the Bay of Biscay-Iberian Peninsula region,” said Gregory. 

The scientists concluded climate change made both Mediterranean regions 2C warmer while heating the Iberian waters by 1.4C and the Irish seas by 1.3C. 

Global warming has also vastly expanded marine heat waves, the researchers found when comparing this year’s conditions to a simulated world without climate change. This year, 90 percent of the Bay of Biscay experienced hot temperatures and 80 percent of the Western Mediterranean; without global warming, only 40 percent of each region would have been affected.

The difference is even more dramatic in the Eastern Mediterranean, where 70 percent of the seas experienced marine heat waves this year, a figure plunging to 9 percent in a world without climate change. Around Ireland, the extent drops from 80 percent to 30 percent. 

Oceans absorb the vast majority of the excess heat produced by burning fossil fuels. The warming waters push some species to relocate in search of cooler seas, while those that cannot move — such as corals or seagrasses — are at risk of mass die-offs. 

“We have what we call winners and losers. So a lot of species wane in abundance or completely disappear while others bloom and proliferate,” said John Bruno, an ecologist from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and one of the study’s co-authors. 

In the United Kingdom, for example, fishermen have found octopuses spreading north in the warming waters, decimating the shellfish catch with their voracious appetite for crabs. In France, jellyfish — which thrive in warmer waters — are clogging up nuclear power stations. 

Beyond the impact on ecosystems and the fishing industry, marine heat waves increase the extreme weather threat to coastal communities. The scientists noted that warm oceans supercharge the dangerous combination of heat and humidity along the shores, while also building up moisture that can fuel storms, such as the deadly 2024 floods in Valencia. 

“We find that when we have very warm sea surface temperatures, they provide added energy to storms,” said Gregory. “And then we also have the added impact of additional stress during land heat waves as well.”

President Donald Trump is waiting for Iran to cave to his economic pressure. Tehran may be willing to wait even longer.

Even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promises a level of economic isolation “never seen before,” former Trump administration officials, U.S. ambassadors and other Middle East experts are skeptical that tightening the economic vise will force Iran to relinquish its desire to toll ships passing through the State of Hormuz and make the other concessions Trump is demanding to bring an end to the war.

“It’s an attrition campaign, and I am sure Treasury tweaks this or that to fill gaps or expand coverage of sanctions,” said James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term. “But, it’s hard to believe [there will be] something decisive after 20 years of U.S. sanctions and Iranian experience of going around them.”

It’s an acknowledgement that underscores the asymmetry of the situation. The Trump administration is staring down a consequential midterm election amid an unpopular war that has sent oil prices back up to roughly $90 a barrel and helped push long-term borrowing costs to their highest level in nearly two decades as hope dims that a peace deal is near.

Iran’s leaders, meanwhile, see the conflict as existential, giving Tehran reason to absorb the extraordinary economic pain rather than accept terms it believes could imperil the regime — especially as U.S. inflation remains elevated and treasuries sell off.

The yield on 30-year U.S. government bonds, a figure Trump has in the past been attuned to, jumped on Tuesday to its highest level since just before the global financial crisis.

The increase in the yield to its highest level in nearly two decades isn’t solely because of the six-month war; global fuel shortages and broader instability have kept energy prices higher for longer, increasing the threat of persistent inflation. And that’s heaped even more risk on global bond markets that have repeatedly blanched at Trump-related shocks.

“We are in a situation where we’re spending more and more to finance more and more,” said Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives. And the war has created “a riskier world full of more frictions, full of more supply shocks.”

Iran’s outsized incentive to muscle through the pain is partly why some former administration officials doubt that the naval blockade, while unprecedented in its scale in the modern era or whatever new strategies Bessent may unveil, will change Iran’s calculus.

“I think the economic pressure would need to hit them in new ways we haven’t seen so far to change the mindset of the regime,” said one former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to candidly assess the impact of the U.S.’s economic pressure campaign.

The administration has yet to indicate what further action it plans to take, but options include going after major Chinese banks that facilitate Iran’s oil trade, expand secondary sanctions on countries doing business with Iran and confiscating Iranian assets under U.S. jurisdiction instead of just freezing them.

Iranian leaders publicly mocked U.S. efforts to sanction them into submission.

“Americans think squeezing Iran harder will win concessions that were never part of the agreement,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, posted on X Tuesday.

“Bessent and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth are way out of their league,” he wrote. “Stop waiting for the clown crew to pull a rabbit out of their hat and clean up the mess you made.”

White House aides, however, continue to contend that the leverage is on its side.

“The crushing sanctions and one of the most successful blockades that have crippled Iran’s economy and has left Iran completely broke,” said one administration official, granted anonymity to share the U.S.’s thinking. “There are many levers the president can crank harder in the weeks and months ahead.”

In the half-year since the Iran war began, the president has deployed an array of pressure tactics to choke Iran economically, including physically preventing the country from selling its most important export — oil — as part of an ongoing naval blockade of Iranian ports. The administration has also sanctioned foreign buyers of Iranian oil, targeted the country’s shadow fleet of ships that ferries it and sought to cut the country off from the financial networks it uses to move money.

That economic pressure has sent Iran’s economy, which was already troubled before the war, into a deeper tailspin. Now, Iran is grappling with year-over-year inflation of 88 percent, long lines and rationing at gas pumps and food prices that have more than doubled.

But those who have worked on previous Iran negotiations say that’s far from enough to get the regime to cave, especially after six months of U.S. bombing that has killed, by Tehran’s own measure, more than 3,000 Iranians.

“It’s undeniable that there is economic pressure. The question is whether there is a breaking point, and I would say for a regime that is fighting for its life and has never hesitated to transfer economic pain to its population, there is no breaking point,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, who helped work to bridge differences between Iran and world powers during negotiations over the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Yet Trump continued to project patience on Tuesday, signaling that he was prepared to let the pressure campaign play out.

“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

A senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the situation in Iran, insisted that Iran will cave long before the pain in the U.S. or world markets become intolerable.

“Ultimately we want a deal, but in the interim, the Iranian economy is tanking … people are lining up for gas, just for a half gallon of gas. And there’s a lot of civil unrest going on in Iran, that’s not being played on the news for whatever reason,” the official said late last week. “We’re fine if that’s the route they want to take.”

Still, there are signs inside the White House that the economic impacts are a growing concern. Vice President JD Vance last week said on Fox News that the administration’s first goal in the Iran war was to “keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over the country.” The president, meanwhile, has repeatedly insisted voters will bear the pain of higher gas prices for an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The voters have a more dyspeptic view. A Reuters/Ipsos survey released this week showed Trump’s approval rating at 33 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. Roughly 80 percent of Americans — 87 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans — think U.S. involvement in Iran “will go on for an extended period of time,” the poll found.

But some former Trump administration officials, however, are holding out hope that patience will be rewarded and that the administration’s economic pressure campaign will work, in part because they see the other options on the table, including putting U.S. boots on the ground in Iran, as politically untenable.

Fred Fleitz, Trump’s former National Security Council chief of staff and vice chair of the American First Policy Institute’s American Security, predicted that the U.S. could be “dealing with a different Iran” in 30 to 60 days.

“I think patience is the best approach,” Fleitz said. “I don’t believe that a large-scale military attack right now is going to make a difference in changing the regime’s position, and I strongly oppose the idea of seizing Kharg Island or sending in American troops. The American people don’t want that. That would really bog us down in a quagmire.”

Several independent U.S. oil producers are expected to sign production contracts with Venezuela’s state-run oil company in the coming days, according to three industry representatives familiar with the plans — a step forward for the Trump administration’s efforts to boost production in the beleaguered South American nation.

A signing ceremony involving several smaller U.S. producers and the Petróleos de Venezuela had been set for Tuesday evening in Houston, according to the people, who were granted anonymity because details of the event have not been made public. Venezuela’s oil minister is scheduled to attend, as is the head of exploration for PDVSA, one of the people said. The ceremony could be pushed back until Wednesday morning, another of the people added.

The White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is not expected to be formally involved with Tuesday’s ceremony, but it comes after top administration officials traveled to Caracas in late April to secure memorandums of understanding that laid the groundwork for formal production deals in the country that holds some of the world’s largest oil reserves.

It marks a sign of progress after the Trump administration’s effort to push new oil development in Venezuela, which began after the U.S. raid that captured former leader Nicolás Maduro in January, had slowed in recent months. Despite a boost from higher crude prices, negotiations have bogged down around key details like dispute resolution, while authorities in Caracas dealt with a devastating pair of June earthquakes that killed thousands.

Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez last month unveiled new regulations offering more favorable fiscal terms to international oil companies.

The signings come after the Trump administration renewed pressure on Rodríguez to have PDVSA sign contracts with American companies, an industry source familiar with the negotiations. Those efforts included outreach from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss how increased oil revenue could help the country after a devastating earthquake earlier this summer, this person said.

“There’s a renewed acknowledgement from Delcy that increased oil production is the pathway to rebuilding after the earthquakes and accomplishing what her government wants to do for the people who are suffering because of the earthquakes,” this person said.

David Goldwyn, head of the international energy consulting firm Goldwyn Global Strategies, said investment from independent oil producers and expanded production from existing fields are likely to be Venezuela’s “primary source of new oil growth for the next couple of years.”

“While the supermajors bide their time until they see how the politics sort out, and whether they can cherry pick the best assets, independents can derisk their projects in a short period of time,” Goldwyn said.

But those investments are only likely to add up to 300,000 barrels a day to the country’s oil production over the next year, far from the increase of millions of barrels the authorities in Caracas and Washington would like to see, Goldwyn said.

“Incremental production is all we will see until the framework improves, electricity is restored, and the political picture becomes clearer,” he said.

Ukraine called on the European Union to sanction the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom on Monday, hours after a POLITICO investigation revealed allegations of safety and engineering failures at one of the company’s flagship projects.

“Rosatom is not just another energy company — it is the instrument of Russia’s ambition to secure a global monopoly in nuclear energy,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.

He said the findings were further evidence that Rosatom was “not a reliable partner” and urged capitals to restart talks on EU sanctions. “No state should be doing nuclear business with a company complicit in war crimes,” he added, sharing a link to POLITICO’s article.

POLITICO’s investigation revealed warnings from Egyptian authorities and internal assessments by Rosatom regarding the construction of the El Dabaa nuclear plant. The documents obtained by POLITICO raised concerns ranging from the quality of concrete work to delays and management problems, while an Egyptian agency alleged “deliberate negligence” and violations of “nuclear safety culture.” Nuclear material has yet to be introduced at the site.

Rosatom previously defended its safety record at El Dabaa and pointed to regular scrutiny of the project by Egyptian, Russian and International Atomic Energy Agency officials. None of the allegations contained presented to Rosatom by POLITICO, have been “confirmed within the contractual, technical and oversight procedures envisaged by the project,” the company said in a statement.

It did not respond to a request for comment on Sybiha’s remarks on Monday.

Sybiha’s call puts renewed pressure on EU governments that continue to cooperate with Rosatom despite Russia’s war in Ukraine. In Hungary, the company is building two new reactors at the Paks II nuclear plant using the same VVER-1200 technology planned for El Dabaa.

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar last week challenged Rosatom’s claim that construction for the reactors remained on schedule, saying his government was carrying out a full review of the project.

BRUSSELS — A Russian state-controlled corporation building a nuclear power plant in Hungary is facing allegations of safety, security and engineering failures at another project in Egypt that uses the same technology, according to internal documents obtained by POLITICO. 

In a confidential letter dated June 4 and addressed to a Rosatom executive, Egypt’s Nuclear Power Plants Authority describes “defects” affecting multiple reactor units and violations of “nuclear safety culture” as it builds the El Dabaa nuclear plant. The letter also cites “deliberate negligence” on the part of an official at the project. 

The tranche of documents was shared through an intelligence official who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, and it has never previously been made public. It includes confidential company documents that describe construction delays and engineering concerns coming from Rosatom’s own reviews of the project. 

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 prompted Europe to impose sweeping sanctions on the country, Rosatom has tried to convince European governments that it remains a reliable and competent supplier in the nuclear power market. But the accusations of safety breaches could add to existing concerns over the Kremlin-controlled company’s operations in the EU.

In an emailed statement to POLITICO, Rosatom said it upholds the highest levels of nuclear safety and had done so throughout the construction of El Dabaa. The company declined to comment on whether it had received the letter or the complaints from Egypt’s Nuclear Power Plants Authority, which did not respond to multiple requests for comment about its communications with Rosatom.

“The high standard of work organisation, the quality management system and the safety culture are affirmed by the sustained attention paid to the project by the political leadership of the Russian Federation and the Arab Republic of Egypt, as well as by the leadership of the International Atomic Energy Agency, whose representatives regularly attend key project milestones,” said the company by email, adding that a recent ceremony for one of El Dabaa’s reactor units was attended by Russian, Egyptian and IAEA officials.

None of the allegations contained in the letter, presented to Rosatom by POLITICO, have been “confirmed within the contractual, technical and oversight procedures envisaged by the project,” read the company’s statement.

Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said in July he expected the construction of all four El Dabaa reactors to finish by 2030, with the first reactor unit set to begin producing power by 2028. No nuclear fuel has yet been introduced to the site. Rosatom’s Egyptian plant will use the same technology at the heart of Hungary’s Paks II project, the Kremlin-backed nuclear expansion that has repeatedly raised tensions between Budapest and the European Commission.

The Commission told POLITICO it was not aware of the confidential documents and allegations they contain. “For the EU, nuclear safety is a key priority,” said a Commission spokesperson. 

They added that while the Commission was following the project’s developments, “issues of nuclear safety are [the] responsibility of the EU Member State concerned.”

Initially green-lit by Hungary’s former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in 2014, the Paks II project became emblematic of Budapest’s alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin and provided a foothold for Russian energy technology inside the EU. Work began on the project in February this year.

The Kremlin-controlled corporation also has plant projects in Turkey and China, while Germany is under fire for green-lighting a deal in July that will allow one of Rosatom’s subsidiaries to help produce nuclear fuel rods for a plant in Lower Saxony. The German government said the deal would be under strict national security controls.

The Egyptian government and its embassies in Belgium and the United States did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The allegations

Once fully operational, the El Dabaa complex will contain four Russian-designed nuclear reactor units under the supervision of the Nuclear Power Plants Authority. In the letter sent by the Egyptian authority to Rosatom, an official at the agency wrote that uncompleted reactor units have already encountered defects.

Originally sent to Rosatom in English, the letter appears to have been translated into Russian for internal circulation. POLITICO is citing a version of the letter translated back into English.

“There has been a re-emergence of serious concrete defects, including voids behind the metal cladding at Unit 4, defects in the foundation slabs of Units 1, 2 and 3, which took a year to repair, and defects in the cellular structure in the cylindrical wall of the reactor building at Unit 4,” details the letter. 

The Egyptian agency then accuses Rosatom of “misleading methods” and “fictitious work” attempting to prove the plant’s construction is over halfway complete, “while a visual inspection at the site clearly shows that the main buildings of the nuclear island are still in the underground construction phase.”

Rosatom, the Egyptian authority alleges, also presides over an unprofessional workplace culture in which workers were caught in possession of  “prohibited alcoholic beverages” on the work site, used “forged passes and impersonated others to gain unauthorized access,” and took several “photos and videos taken at the construction site” that ended up on social media, “which negatively affected the reputation of the project.”

The letter makes reference to a serious accident on the construction site, which resulted in a worker suffering “a severe open fracture” and then being smuggled to a private vehicle, not to an “equipped ambulance,” which the Egyptian authority claims was done “intentionally” to cover up the incident.

“Such behavior represents a serious disregard for both human well-being and professional responsibility, and constitutes a gross violation of workplace safety regulations, nuclear safety culture and reporting obligations,” said the letter.

Four additional internal Rosatom business documents reviewed by POLITICO reinforce aspects of the Egyptian authority’s concerns, detailing delays, construction-quality problems and project-management failures. One Rosatom draft audit prepared internally in 2025 warned of a “significant risk of failure to fulfill” the company’s contractual obligations and forecast that the preliminary schedule of El Dabaa’s first reactor unit could slip by 18 months, from September 2028 to March 2030.

Future in doubt

The allegations contained in the documents cast a shadow over the Paks II project in Hungary and are likely to reinforce concerns in Brussels about entrusting critical European infrastructure to a company under the Kremlin’s control.

In a lengthy commentary by the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based defense and security think tank, researchers warned Western countries against doing business with Rosatom, citing its deep connections to Russian intelligence and its problematic role in forcibly running the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine through military force.

For the government of Hungary’s newly elected Prime Minister Péter Magyar, the Rosatom revelations also present a new headache: Paks II remains indispensable to Hungary’s plans to decarbonize its electricity system and replace aging nuclear capacity. In an effort to reexamine Orbán-era policymaking, Magyar’s government recently opened a review into Paks II, questioning its hefty price tag and connections to Putin. 

Former Hungarian Green lawmaker Benedek Jávor, who focused on Paks II and was critical of the Orbán government, cautioned other governments about working with Rosatom. He told POLITICO he now believed the allegations coming out of El Dabaa could have far-reaching consequences for Rosatom and the fate of Paks II.

“They’ve already decided to reconsider the contract, and this was already communicated during the election campaign,” he said of Magyar’s government. “[This] information from Egypt will definitely be part of the evaluation.”

ROME — In the barns where the milk for Italy’s most famous cheese is produced, the fans have barely stopped whirring for two months. As temperatures across northern Italy push close to 40 degrees Celsius, cows stand almost motionless, tongues lolling, while automated sprinklers soak their backs.

Italy is now enduring its fourth major heat wave of an exceptionally brutal summer. The prolonged heat is piling costs on the €4 billion industry behind Parmigiano Reggiano, forcing farmers to spend heavily on cooling their animals while drought and dwindling water supplies make it harder and more expensive to grow the forage needed to feed them.

Farmers have received support from regional authorities, the EU and a producers’ consortium to help them adapt to the heat, but they say the funding falls short of the investment increasingly required.

For producers of the protected cheese, there is no possibility of escaping somewhere cooler. Under the strict rules governing Parmigiano Reggiano’s EU Protected Designation of Origin — that secures its added value on the market — the cows, their milk and the cheese must remain tied to a defined area of northern Italy. At least 75 percent of their forage must also be grown locally.

Dairy cows can begin suffering from heat stress at around 25C, depending on humidity, according to Giovanni Buonaiuto, a vet with the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, which defends producers’ interests. Their digestive system generates considerable heat as they break down food, while cows have relatively few sweat glands with which to disperse it. “It’s as if the cow has a radiator inside her,” Buonaiuto told POLITICO.

As temperatures rise, cows eat less and stand for longer to expose themselves to moving air. They rest and ruminate less, milk production falls and prolonged heat can also affect fertility.

Buonaiuto said milk production has fallen by about 10 percent on average during the summer, although the impact varies sharply between farms depending on their cooling systems.

Overheating herds

Federica Dall’Aglio, who raises 400 cattle on the plains near the city of Parma, said each cow was producing five to six kilograms less milk a day, a fall of roughly 20 percent, despite fans and water sprays installed to protect her herd.

The cows now spend much of their time beneath the fans and water sprays, she added, as they’re reluctant to move away from the cooling systems.

Outside the barns, farmers are reorganizing their working days around the heat too. Some now cut and collect hay at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., Buonaiuto said, before the morning heat causes the hay to crumble. By 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., it can already be too hot.

Keeping the cows cool comes at a high cost.

Luca Cotti, a sixth-generation dairy farmer and president of farmers’ association Coldiretti in the northern Emilia-Romagna region, said electricity consumption in barns can double or even triple during extreme heat as cooling systems run almost continuously.

He recalled worrying about winter 20 years ago, with the weather freezing drinking water and other systems in the barn. Now investment is directed toward surviving summer.

The new normal

Extreme summer heat was once exceptional and might last a week before temperatures eased, Cotti said. Now, he said, “it’s normal.” This year, “since June, it has never let up.”

For some smaller producers with older facilities, the question is whether the investment is still worthwhile.

Dall’Aglio’s family has been investing in cooling systems for around 15 years, recently adding solar panels to help offset their growing electricity needs.

Across the Parmigiano Reggiano supply chain, such technology is becoming commonplace. Around half of its dairy farms, responsible for 70 percent of its milk, have invested in advanced cooling systems, including fans, motion-sensitive water sprays and automated temperature monitoring, according to the consortium president, Nicola Bertinelli.

The remaining 30 percent of milk comes largely from farms in the cooler hills and mountains, he said.

With persistently high temperatures, insufficient rainfall and water levels in major Alpine lakes approaching historic lows, authorities in the Po River basin, which supports agriculture across northern Italy through a network of tributaries and canals, have declared a high level of drought severity.

Alfalfa, an important source of forage for the cows, is relatively resistant to drought because of its deep roots. But Dall’Aglio said her family had already been irrigating heavily to ensure a good hay crop this year.

When rivers run too low for irrigation, some farmers have to pump groundwater instead, which can make irrigation around five times more expensive because of the energy required to extract it, according to Lorenzo Catellani of farmers’ association CIA Agricoltori Emilia-Romagna.

Coldiretti is calling on politicians to treat water storage as infrastructure rather than emergency relief.

Cotti said regional and national authorities need to invest in reservoirs and other water-storage infrastructure, arguing that individual farms cannot solve the growing problem of water scarcity alone.

Paradoxically, Parmesan producers normally worry about producing too much, not too little — and had sought to curb output this year. “We always have the brake on,” Cotti said, adding that high prices mean farmers have little difficulty increasing production when needed.

Despite the strain, producers insist there is no danger of Italy running short of Parmesan.

The cheese’s strong global market gives farmers greater scope to invest than producers in more fragile agricultural sectors.

For now, those investments are keeping Parmigiano production stable, although smaller farmers with aging barns may eventually choose to close rather than spend the money needed to adapt. For now, there is little to do but wait for the temperatures to fall. “We keep going like this,” Cotti said. “We hope it ends as soon as possible.”

Hungary is sinking two barges to ensure a key nuclear power plant stays online, Prime Minister Péter Magyar said Saturday.

Europe’s summer of extreme heat has caused the Danube’s water level to hit record lows, affecting power production at the Paks nuclear plant. Nuclear power stations are typically built by rivers and along coastlines so they can use water to cool down reactors.

Hungarian authorities are sinking the two barges to raise water levels so Paks, which provides the country with more than a third of its electricity, can continue to operate normally. The sinking began Saturday morning and Hungarian media are quoting the prime minister saying the water level at the plant has risen by 1 centimeter.

Magyar said on X that the current water level near Hungary’s only nuclear energy facility is 122 cm lower than normal and it is projected to drop below 132 cm on Monday, which would force one of the plant’s two turbines to shut down.

On Wednesday, Magyar announced that they would be building a riverbed sill with 150,000 cubic meters of stone and was considering sinking the two 80-meter barges. A sill is an underwater dam meant to slow down the current and raise water levels. Hungary’s Defense Ministry has assigned 100 troops to work around the clock on the project, the prime minister said on X.

Nuclear energy facilities across Europe have been affected by this summer’s droughts and soaring temperatures. Romania shut down a nuclear power plant earlier this week due to the Danube’s water levels.

France — one of Europe’s biggest producers of nuclear power — has seen its fleet of nuclear power plants affected throughout the summer. Le Monde reported authorities had to shut down six of the country’s 57 nuclear reactors as yet another heat wave broiled much of the country. Earlier in the week, a climate change-fueled jellyfish invasion forced workers to bring parts of a different plant offline.

Magyar has also cast doubt on completing an expansion of the Paks plant by a Russian state-owned firm in a deal signed by Magyar’s predecessor, the Kremlin-friendly Viktor Orbàn, citing the water issue.

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 — 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.

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.

California is launching a probe into the Trump administration’s most recent move to scuttle the state’s nascent offshore wind industry.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration on Tuesday released an investigative subpoena against German energy company RWE, according to David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission.

“These are unlawful actions … they’re using funds that are not dedicated to those purposes, and we’re going to vigorously contest those,” Hochschild said of the Trump administration’s settlement agreements to kill offshore wind projects. “We’re going to court.”

He made the announcement on stage during POLITICO’s The California Agenda: Sacramento Summit.

Hochschild’s statements show that California, facing a relentless assault on its offshore wind ambitions, is turning to the courts as its primary venue for fighting back.

RWE announced a $1.2 billion agreement on Thursday to surrender its offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York, California and Louisiana. That signaled the continued success of a recent Trump administration strategy to kill wind projects it opposes: offer the developers funds to instead invest in fossil fuel facilities. That tactic has so far ended three of the five planned wind projects off the California coast.

In May, California issued a similar investigative subpoena to Golden State Wind after it cut a Trump administration deal to cancel an offshore wind project. The state later said it intended to sue over that deal. California followed that same playbook with Invenergy’s offshore wind cancellation. It has not filed any lawsuits in response to the deals to date.

Aug. 11 is quickly becoming jellyfish invasion day at the Gravelines nuclear power plant in northern France.

Despite spending hundreds of thousands of euros to protect the plant from a jellyfish swarm like the one that saw reactors shuttered on Aug. 11, 2025, French utility provider EDF on Tuesday was again forced to bring the parts of the facility offline due to the presence of “several dozen tons” of jellyfish blocking pumping systems.

“On-site teams are fully mobilized to ensure the safety of the facilities and to reconnect the reactors to the national power grid,” EDF said in a statement.

Three fishing vessels are now “constantly patrolling off the coast of the plant” to conduct “preventive fishing operations […] 24/7,” the company added.

Tuesday’s jellyfish invasion comes a the latest in a series of climate change-driven incidents that have affected French nuclear energy during a particularly infernal summer.

Nuclear power plants are typically built by rivers or on coastlines so they can use nearby water sources to cool their reactors. But a record number in France this summer have been forced to temporarily shut down due to heatwaves and droughts affecting their water supply.

Rising sea temperatures have made jellyfish swarms more common along the French coast in recent years, and those swarms can affect a plant’s ability to bring in seawater — which is what happened at Gravelines. Following last year’s incident at the plant along the North Sea, EDF installed cameras and deployed fishing boats to monitor the situation.

While the vessels “prevented a massive influx of jellyfish” on Saturday and Sunday, they were eventually overwhelmed as the swarm grew from “about 100 kilograms” to “several dozen tons,” the French state-owned utility giant said.

Opponents of nuclear energy were quick to jump on the incident.

“This only highlights that nuclear power plants are ill-equipped to deal with the consequences of climate change,” the French branch of Greenpeace said in statement.

ATHENS — Sparks from Greece’s aging electricity grid are responsible for a disproportionate share of the country’s most destructive wildfires, according to preliminary data from Greece’s Arson Crimes Investigation Directorate and evidence from recent fire investigations. 

While power infrastructure accounts for only a small share of wildfire incidents, fires sparked by the grid often break out under the most dangerous conditions — during high winds, in periods of heavy electricity demand and often in remote, fire-prone areas — making them more likely to spread rapidly and become catastrophic. 

According to the Arson Crimes unit, fires linked to the electricity grid account for about 75 percent of the land burned in Greece this year.

Two deadly wildfires in late July — one in western Attica and one on the island of Crete —were also linked to the electricity grid in preliminary findings from the Greek fire brigade. The fires destroyed more than 36,000 acres and killed four people. 

“Six out of 10 major fires and 55 percent of the area burnt in 2025 were caused by the power grid,” said Elias Tziritis, wildfires actions coordinator at World Wildlife Fund Greece. “Statistically speaking, the majority of fires may not start from the power grid, but these are the ones that cause the most major, devastating fires.”

Loose or sagging power lines, vegetation coming in contact with cables, dust buildup on transmission equipment and other such faults can all generate sparks. The risk rises during strong winds and periods of heavy electricity demand, when aging infrastructure is under greater strain. 

Much of Greece’s electricity grid was installed decades ago and runs above ground through fire-prone forests and increasingly depopulated rural areas. In the 1960s, the country opted for an overhead network as a cheaper way to extend electricity across the country, while the prolonged financial crisis that began in 2009 further constrained investment in the system.

Critics say Greece has moved too slowly to bury distribution lines and adapt the network to increasingly severe fire conditions.

“We raised the issue years ago, calling for something to be done with the power grid urgently,” said Christos Kalogeropoulos, a retired lieutenant-general with the Fire Service and former director of the Arson Crimes unit. “We have been calling for urgent underground cabling.”

Greece’s power distribution operator HEDNO disputes suggestions that the network is a major cause of wildfires, saying only about 1 percent of wildfire incidents recorded in 2025 were attributed to the electricity grid, compared with roughly 3 percent in the U.S. The company also said its crews have been deployed to major fire fronts to support emergency services and restore electricity to affected communities. 

“The easy targeting of HEDNO whenever a fire breaks out serves neither the truth nor the protection of the public but creates false impressions, and, in many cases, appears to serve short-term expediencies and self-serving agendas by covering up local responsibilities,” said the company in a statement.

Following the fire in Crete, authorities arrested two HEDNO network operations and maintenance managers, who were later released. In Viotia, where a late-July fire spread into western Attica, investigators suspect sparks came from equipment on a private wind farm. A local mayor, a contractor and a company owner were taken into custody last week.

Energy Minister Stavros Papastavrou said the government plans to tighten rules governing private power projects. But experts warn that focusing on private operators risks obscuring the broader problem of an aging public grid. 

Moving cables underground is expensive and time-consuming, said Paleologos Paleologou, associate professor of forest protection at the Agricultural University of Athens. 

Paleologou said researchers need access to detailed data on the location of power lines and pylons to model where the network is most vulnerable. “If we had that information, we could tell them where their network is vulnerable and where a fire could break out,” he said. “Since the budget is limited, we should prioritize the most difficult areas.”

The government is currently using money from the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility to fund underground cabling. It says the share of the distribution network that is underground has risen to about 14 percent, up from 9 percent in 2021. 

Alexandra Sdoukou, a spokesperson for the ruling New Democracy party, said burying the entire 120,000-kilometer medium-voltage network would cost about €35 billion, requiring the government to first focus on areas under the greatest risk. 

Greece’s Energy Ministry did not reply to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, opposition parties and advocacy groups accuse the government of moving too slowly, failing to maintain the grid properly and dropping some fire-prevention projects from EU recovery funding.

“There is still no public acknowledgement of the problem,” said Tziritis. “The issue should be recognized and efforts to find solutions should be taken at the government level.”

Such an acknowledgement could also carry legal and financial consequences. California utility Pacific Gas & Electric filed for bankruptcy after its equipment sparked catastrophic wildfires and exposed the company to billions of dollars in liabilities.

In Greece, the number of court cases involving fires linked to the electricity grid rose from 369 to 681 in 2024, said Kalogeropoulos.

One of the few cases to result in a final ruling against HEDNO is a class action lawsuit following a 2015 wildfire in Neapoli, Laconia, which destroyed homes and large areas of woodland and farmland. Around 90 victims are now pursuing compensation. 

“It is a real struggle for a citizen to go after an electricity grid company,” said Evgenia Lazaraki, a lawyer representing the victims. Utilities, she said, have both the technical expertise and access to evidence needed to defend themselves, putting plaintiffs at a significant disadvantage. 

The brutally hot summer is set to cost the EU economy €180 billion this year — that’s equivalent to roughly 1 percent of GDP, which is all the growth the bloc was expected to generate in 2026, according to new analysis.

France could lose 1.4 percentage points of growth, which is enough to push its economy into a 0.6 percent contraction, while an 0.8-point hit could almost wipe out the Netherlands’ expected expansion.

“The result is not simply ‘the hottest countries lose the most,'” notes the analysis by Triodos Bank. “Spain and Italy have the highest physical exposure and the most hot days in absolute terms, but decades of acclimatisation imply that the marginal effect of any single hot day is comparatively small.”

The biggest drag is expected to come from people struggling to work in extreme heat. Triodos estimates lost labor productivity alone could shave around 0.6 percent off EU GDP, while agricultural output could fall by between 3 and 7 percent.

“At first sight this might seem modest, but it is exactly the expected economic growth for the EU this year,” said the bank of the overall €180 billion blow.

And the summer is not over. France and Britain are bracing for their fifth heat wave of the season this week, with temperatures nearing 40 degrees Celsius in southeastern France and 36 degrees forecast in the U.K.

The bill is already mounting beyond GDP. POLITICO estimated at least 14,000 excess deaths across the six hardest-hit European countries during the record-breaking heat wave from mid-June to early July.

Drought has also hammered Europe’s energy system: Low water levels in the Danube in recent weeks have forced sharp cuts at Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant and pushed Romania to blast apart a rock to divert water toward its last operating reactor. Vessels on the Rhine and Danube have had to sail only partially loaded.

In Austria, meanwhile, drought has caused an estimated €1 billion in agricultural losses, according to Austrian Hail Insurance, after some regions received more than 75 percent less rain than normal since mid-June.

Triodos warned against treating this summer as a freak event, saying extreme heat “might become structural” as the planet warms. But governments can soften the damage through irrigation, insulation, cooling and shifting working hours, said the bank.

“Every year adaptation without mitigation is a year borrowed against a hotter baseline.”

The Senate voted 86 to 11 to pass the sweeping Russia sanctions bill championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham on Friday, advancing legislation that would give the White House more leverage against Moscow as it seeks to end the war in Ukraine — and a brand new tariff tool.

Now that the bill has cleared the upper chamber, it’s up to lawmakers in the House to determine its fate when they return in September. President Donald Trump has already signaled he would sign the bill if it lands on his desk.

The bill, which Graham and cosponsors including Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have worked to advance for more than a year, would issue mandatory sanctions not only on Russia’s leadership and energy sector, but also on abetters of Russia’s defense industry and so-called shadow fleet in an effort to curb the flow of cash to Moscow’s war chest.

Ukraine’s supporters on the Hill and officials in Kyiv have been urging its passage, arguing that it would deal a timely blow to Russia’s war efforts as Kyiv seeks to capitalize on a series of recent favorable turns in the war to end it altogether.

In comments on the Senate floor ahead of the vote, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and vocal backer of the bill Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) stressed the “urgency” of the moment.

“The momentum is on Ukraine’s side,” Shaheen said. “Now is the time to put more pressure on Putin.” She added that the situation on the ground could turn back in Moscow’s favor within months — especially with assistance from foreign foes like China.

It has already been a long road for the sanctions measure, which Graham and Blumenthal first introduced in April 2025. The lawmakers negotiated for months with the White House, which wanted more control over what entities it could sanction, and by how much. In July, Graham announced — from Kyiv — that the White House had agreed to a revised version of the bill.

The new iteration of the bill includes broad authority for the president to waive any sanctions that are applied, as long as the White House provides a written certification that the waiver is “in the national interests of the United States” and a report outlining the basis for the certification.

Following a last-minute demand from Trump, lawmakers also added language to the bill to extend certain sanctions on Iran.

Graham’s sudden death just days after winning Trump’s green light spurred his fellow senators to support the legislation, which cleared a procedural hurdle at the end of the month by a wide margin.

But a provision in the bill that would grant the White House authority to issue 100 percent tariffs on top buyers of Russian oil, and countries facilitating sanctions evasion, nearly derailed the measure’s passage in the upper chamber before lawmakers left town for August recess.

An amendment pushed by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that would have stripped the tariff language from the bill entirely failed in a 64 to 32 floor vote Friday.

Still, nearly one-third of the upper chamber voted in favor of striking the tariff language, highlighting Democrats’ worries about handing more tariff powers to a White House already eager to use that tool against Washington’s global allies and enemies. That Democratic discontent is likely a foreshadowing of a similar sticking point for lawmakers on the House side when they return from recess in September.

As Senate leadership tried to reach an agreement to fast-track consideration of the bill before the chamber adjourned for the summer, lawmakers opposed to the tariff provisions threatened to derail that effort over squabbles about what amendments should get a floor vote.

One of those amendments was an effort from Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), to add language curbing the tariff powers afforded to Trump in the bill. Warnock — who voted to advance the bill in July — had threatened to thwart Senate leadership’s effort to fast-track consideration of the legislation this week if his amendment didn’t get a floor vote.

But Warnock pulled the amendment at the eleventh hour Thursday evening after securing the Trump administration’s commitment to enact a clear off-ramp for countries hit with tariffs, according to a person familiar with the senator’s plans granted anonymity to speak about internal conversations.

That move may not go far enough to quell the concerns of Democrats in the House — some of whom have already expressed frustration over the provision.

House Foreign Affairs ranking member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) issued a joint statement following the Senate vote slamming the current bill text as “unacceptable” and citing the broad waiver authority and tariff powers granted to the White House.

But the lawmakers vowed to “continue to seek a path forward that remedies this bill’s flaws.”

BERLIN — Europe’s reserves of natural gas are running dangerously low, risking fresh energy woes if the Iran war rages on and cold spells drive up heating demand over winter.

But the continent’s top energy user doesn’t seem too bothered.

Germany is the EU’s biggest vulnerability because its sheer size means gas shortfalls there could be felt in neighboring countries, driving up prices across the bloc if it fails to restore its reserves.

That’s prompted growing calls for Berlin to do the unthinkable: intervene outright to direct its state-controlled energy giants to buy gas at any price, abandoning years of free-market doctrine on energy policy.

So far, the government has refused to budge, even as it falls short of EU targets and faces the risk of physical supply shortages as early as November. It’s a gamble that the markets will figure everything out, even as war and hot weather distort traditional incentives and upend global supply chains.

“Storage levels are not only exceptionally low for this time of year, but historically low,” said Sebastian Heinermann, the managing director of Germany’s top gas storage association, INES.

But Germany, he warned, is still relying on an outdated, market-oriented approach to refill its reserves, even when there are “hardly any market-economic incentives left.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, EU countries have been required to hit gas storage targets of 90 percent of national capacity by winter to prevent serious supply shortfalls. The EU lowered that target to 80 percent following the outbreak of the Iran war to prevent panic buying.

Typically, refilling is the responsibility of traders and utilities, which buy gas cheap in the summer to store and then sell in the winter for a profit. But buyers say higher summer prices as a result of the Iran war and climate change have upended that dynamic, leaving gas reserves across the bloc at around 58 percent of national capacity, 16 percentage points below the five-year historical average and the lowest level since 2011. 

The low reserves have already added to the increased pressure on gas prices linked to renewed tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, with the European natural gas benchmark now consistently higher than it was for the first four months of the Iran war.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has said the bloc faces no winter supply risks. But a report by energy analytics firm Rapidan projects that reserves will rise to only 65 percent of total storage capacity by November, arguing that hitting the EU’s target by winter won’t be possible without “materially higher prices.” 

That risk has been exacerbated, analysts say, by the bloc’s move in recent years to replace its long-term supply deals with Russia with short-term purchases of globally traded liquefied natural gas. These seaborne cargoes are highly mobile and go to the highest bidder — leaving buyers more exposed to volatility on international markets, especially in the wake of the loss of key supplies from Qatar and rising demand in Asia.

Germany, the bloc’s largest gas consumer, has seen its reserves fill up even more slowly than others, in part thanks to its more hands-off, market-led approach to restocking than many of its neighbors. As a result, reserves stood at only 47 percent of national capacity in August, according to the latest data — the lowest fill level since records began. That’s especially worrying as the country’s reserves are important for the bloc as a whole, representing over 20 percent of the EU’s storage capacity. 

Nevertheless, Berlin is staying the course. While its energy ministry has acknowledged the country’s historically low reserves, it has refused to intervene to direct its main state-controlled gas buyers, SEFE and Uniper, to buy gas at current prices to ensure its targets are met, instead of waiting for market conditions to improve.

“It is the responsibility of companies and traders to fill the storage facilities for the winter,” a spokesperson for the German energy ministry told POLITICO. “Government-led filling of the storage facilities would further constrain the gas market and drive prices even higher. The supply situation over the coming months would actually deteriorate.”

Whether this is the right approach will become clearer by winter, said Laurent Ruseckas, a senior gas analyst at S&P Global. If temperatures are unseasonably low, traders may be forced to buy additional supplies at late notice, driving up prices, especially if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. On the other hand, intervening could raise prices prematurely if winter turns out to be mild.

“If you start buying now to get storage to some politically predetermined level you’re making prices higher now to get insurance that you won’t get higher prices in the winter when it’s cold,” said Ruseckas.

Germany’s reluctance to move quickly also highlights the difficulty the EU’s fragmented energy sector has in competing with more centralized Asian economies that have acted more quickly to secure supplies, consistently outbidding European countries even as their reserves run low.

Others warn that physical supply strains are also possible. Heinermann, of INES, warned that even filling the country’s reserves to 76 percent of capacity — which SEFE says is achievable — would not necessarily meet its supply needs if winter is “exceptionally cold.” That could ripple out to neighboring countries to which Germany is treaty-bound to provide emergency gas assistance, including Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Denmark.

Heinermann called on the German government to encourage faster restocking by lowering network charges at storage facilities or abolishing the conversion levy, fees imposed for the conversion of gas on national grids. Berlin has already unveiled plans for a new emergency gas stockpile, but that will only cover 10 percent of the country’s gas capacity and kick off officially next summer.

It’s no surprise that other major gas consumers have already waded into the private sector. The Netherlands, another free-market champion suffering from low gas reserves, earlier this summer allocated €1.2 billion for its state energy company, EBN, to more swiftly top up its reserves. 

But Berlin’s energy giants are sticking to their guns — for now.

A spokesperson for SEFE told POLITICO that even though “international conflicts” could weigh on European storage levels, the 70 percent target “remains achievable” without intervention. He pointed out that 78 percent of German storage capacity has already been booked, though acknowledged that doesn’t necessarily translate to actual volumes of gas stored. 

Regulatory measures could be useful if “necessary” but could distort markets and increase costs, he added, without specifying what.

A Uniper spokesperson was less confident, warning it would be “increasingly challenging to reach the target storage levels before the winter season starts” at the current rate of filling. But she too stopped short of calling for intervention, arguing instead for better incentives for refilling — mirroring growing calls from gas lobbyists in Brussels to scrap the rules outright.