This was supposed to be an EU summit about the EU’s long-term budget. But things are never easy for EU leaders, and world events have a nasty habit of making their way onto the itinerary. That meant this European Council had a lot more on the agenda than the last handful of summits, at least: Energy, migration, enlargement, Ukraine, and more besides were covered — and very little, if anything, was decided. Have FOMO because you weren’t there? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Here’s POLITICO’s rapid roundup of what we learned at the European Council. 1) ENERGY STOLE THE SHOW RIGHT OUT OF THE GATE The summit’s first major clash came Thursday morning, with EU leaders split over whether to delay ETS2, the bloc’s second phase of carbon pricing, to address high energy prices, triggering a three-hour-long standoff. Italy and Greece joined the Visegrád Four — Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia — in calling for a delay, a push rejected by the majority of countries. The debate dragged on, delaying lunch (spare a thought for our hungry leaders!) and leading to the cancellation of a press conference on Thursday night. 2) BUDGET NEGOTIATIONS ARE A MARATHON… Negotiations on the bloc’s next long-term budget were expected to be one of the summit’s most contentious topics. But they were a nothingburger, with most leaders repeating positions they have held for months. The summit brought them no closer to a breakthrough. Many countries, of course, want a smaller budget, with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson telling reporters that his country is “not an ATM for the EU.” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, meanwhile, said he had no choice but to be frugal at the European level, arguing he is used to tightening his belt at home because his wife is Dutch. Think of Bart next time your Dutch friends ask you to pay them back for that coffee. 3) … AND A SPRINT European Council President António Costa is still aiming to get a budget deal before the end of the year, according to two EU officials. He announced that leaders will hold a special summit at the end of November to try and make progress (and there’s a December summit too). But that timing leaves them up against the clock to reach a deal by year’s end. See you all back here on Nov. 26! 4) EU LEADERS MAY NEED TO BRING EXTRA LUGGAGE NEXT TIME If leaders do hope to agree on the EU’s long-term budget this year, they should prepare for long negotiations in November and December. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested the pre-Christmas summit could last longer than the scheduled two days. “For the December summit, we should pack a few more shirts than usual,” he said. Gulp! 5) YOUR NEXT HOLIDAY TO CYPRUS MIGHT BE A LITTLE EASIER Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides told reporters he hopes EU leaders will discuss his country’s bid to join the Schengen travel zone at the December summit. “All technical preparations have already been completed, and we hope that the matter will be discussed by the relevant council in December so that the final political decisions can be made,” he said. 6) ROSE-COLORED GLASSES HAVE COME OFF WHEN IT COMES TO COSTA European Council President António Costa drew the ire of some leaders over his handling of negotiations to curb high energy prices, which had become a “mess,” three EU diplomats told POLITICO, with another two diplomats saying that leaders were fuming at Costa for allowing talks to go off the rails. 7) DRINK (A LITTLE) LESS BEER TO HELP UKRAINE Ahead of the summit, Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs told reporters that supporting Ukraine costs each European the equivalent of one beer a year. “That one beer is just a cost [for EU citizens]. There, it’s a cost of life. We drink less, their lives are saved,” he said. “Simple as that.” He didn’t say whether he meant a beer bought in Stockholm or Prague. As anyone in Belgium knows, not all beers are created equal — or cost the same. 8) THE EU PARLIAMENT WANTS YOU TO KNOW IT MATTERS TOO The European Parliament’s two lead negotiators on the EU budget made the rounds of the press room to make sure journalists heard their views. Siegfried Mureșan (of the European People’s Party) and Carla Tavares (Socialists and Democrats) both stressed that the Parliament’s position is important. Meanwhile, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola joined leaders for the first part of the summit. Metsola said she had made it clear to them that “the Parliament is not a rubber-stamp and never will be.” 9) TALKING CHINA (WITHOUT MENTIONING CHINA) Leaders discussed trade imbalances (read: China) over lunch on Thursday and welcomed the deal the European Commission struck with China last week to curb imports of Chinese hybrid vehicles. Czech PM Andrej Babiš even went so far as to call the deal “fantastic.” POLITICO scooped that the European Commission is expected to work on trade measures tackling imports of chemicals and industrial machinery in an effort to protect European industry from unfair Chinese competition. 10) NEW BROMANCE BREWING Hungarian PM Peter Magyar posted a late-night selfie with Dutch PM Rob Jetten on social media after day one of the summit. The two were all smiles and “tired, but not sad”, as Magyar put it in his tweet. In reaction to the tweet, Jetten told reporters, “We are more or less of the same generation and a tad more direct and pragmatic than some colleagues in the European Council, so there’s a click.” > We started at 7:30 this morning in Brussels. The second shift begins after 10 > PM, with Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten @MinPres. > Tired, but not sad. pic.twitter.com/dmtSMbqG4m > > — Magyar Péter (Ne féljetek) (@magyarpeterMP) October 15, 2026 11) BACK TO THE CASTLE António Costa announced that another competitiveness summit at Alden Biesen castle in the Belgian countryside will take place in February 2027, three EU diplomats told POLITICO. Leaders already visited the castle earlier this year, and they clearly loved the Belgian countryside so much they want to return (or Costa is forcing them to go). 12) STILL REELING FROM CEUTA Ahead of Friday’s talks, 16 EU leaders met to discuss migration over breakfast (before discussing migration over lunch with everyone else). According to one EU diplomat, leaders broadly agreed that the EU should be able to suspend asylum applications when faced with a sudden influx of migrants that may have been engineered on purpose. But would that mean the EU will implement pushbacks (which are banned under EU law)? 13) DENMARK, ITALY AND POLAND WANT TO BE TOUGHER ON MIGRATION The three leaders joined forces to argue that migration is a concern for many EU citizens and is contributing to rising crime rates. That caused a delay to an already shockingly long summit. 14) THERE WERE SOME AGREEMENTS Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Spain’s Pedro Sánchez found some time on the sidelines of the summit to chat about Rome’s restrictions on Spanish nationals sparked by the Ceuta crisis. Plus, France and Germany said they had struck a deal to favor European-made cars under the Industrial Accelerator Act in exchange for weakening a 2035 vehicle emissions target, ending months of wrangling between the bloc’s two biggest economies. 15) EU LEADERS GET THE GOOD STUFF TO EAT Thursday’s lunch menu featured a “full-flavored vegetable jus.” Not a little flavor, not a medium amount of flavor, but the full flavor. Then on Friday there was a “rich jus”. There was also a Champagne sauce. Only the best for our leaders! 16) THE SAME CAN’T BE SAID FOR REPORTERS Some POLITICO journalists lamented the lack of vegetarian options at the Council canteen. Pray for us. 17) NO HARSH WORDS FROM EU TO ZELENSKYY At a press conference on Friday afternoon, Volodymyr Zelenskyy was asked whether EU leaders had expressed annoyance at his recent tone toward U.S. President Donald Trump. The question followed reports that some capitals were frustrated with him and worried he was further riling the White House. But it was all love from Zelenskyy, who said there had been no harsh words during his time in the summit room. “I heard from my European colleagues support and only support, and I’m grateful for this,” he said. 18) NO HUGS FOR FICO As Zelenskyy entered the European Council building, he was seen hugging and kissing fellow leaders — with one exception: Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico received no hug. That may well have been because Slovakia is preparing to revive a dormant cooperation forum with Moscow. 19) 20M UKRAINIANS COULD FLEE TO EUROPE IF RUSSIA WINS WAR Zelenskyy issued a stark warning to Europe: if Russia wins the war, as many as 20 million Ukrainians could be forced to flee to Europe. Over 4 million Ukrainians already live in EU countries under temporary protection status, according to Eurostat.  20) EU LEADERS HAVE FORGOTTEN ABOUT BRITAIN … OR HAVE THEY? There was plenty of talk across the Channel this week about the U.K. potentially rejoining the bloc, but the subject did not come up at the summit, even with an EU-U.K. summit due next month. EU leaders have more pressing issues on their minds. Still, some had things to say about the U.K.’s relationship with the EU. Foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said “all our friends are welcome to join,” naming Britain alongside Canada, Norway and Iceland as partners seeking closer ties. Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs suggested the U.K. “should come back to the family,” although he also said that Russia “had its hands on Brexit.” 21) AT POLITICO, WE SAVE THE BEST FOR LAST Covering European Councils often involves a lot of waiting around, but during this summit conditions were a little tougher because of a phantom farter among reporters waiting for Zelenskyy’s press conference. POLITICO went viral in Brussels’ diplomatic and journalistic circles for reporting the hard facts on our live blog. While this summit’s agenda was packed, in the end not many concrete decisions were taken. Some might say the summit was a load of hot air.

Most Europeans want their governments to have more control over their borders to tackle migration, polling across 23 EU countries shows. Seventy-one percent of respondents agreed that “the European Union needs to allow member states much greater control of their own borders, so that countries can better manage immigration,” according to a survey of 11,714 people across Europe that was carried out by strategic communications firm FGS Global and shared exclusively with POLITICO. The findings highlight countries’ skepticism of the EU’s migration coordination, an area long defined by bickering and finger-pointing, at a time when Brussels is working on major reforms to bolster protection of the bloc’s external borders and increase support for countries that receive the bulk of arrivals.  Yet a move away from EU-level coordination and toward national border control could undermine Europe’s flagship passport-free travel zone, the Schengen area. Countries in the Schengen area — 25 of which are in the EU, while four aren’t — have committed to remove checks on internal borders. While it is possible to temporarily reintroduce controls as a last-resort response to a serious threat, that’s supposed to be limited to six-month periods, which can only be extended to up to two years. Since 2025, 12 EU governments have notified the European Commission they are imposing temporary border controls, eight of which listed migration as a motive for doing so. Some countries have in practice had border checks in place for years. EU ministers met in Cyprus last week to hash out how to halt migration across the EU’s internal borders to protect Schengen. The continued existence of the check-free travel zone “relies on trust and shared responsibility,” Cypriot Justice Minister Costas Fytiris said. That question of shared responsibility has long haunted EU migration debates, which weigh the pressure on countries that receive the bulk of arriving migrants, such as Italy and Greece, against the impact on countries elsewhere in the bloc as a result of secondary movements, i.e. onward travel from the EU country where migrants first arrive. “It’s all about responsibility on the one hand, from those countries that are at the external border. But also solidarity on the other side; from the member states which are affected by secondary movements,” Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner told POLITICO. Yet the challenge of finding an EU-level answer to immigration management remains. Throughout preparations for the first so-called solidarity pool, a framework that seeks to better share the migration burden among EU countries, governments have disagreed about who owes whom what. Support for “frontline” states such as Italy and Greece can come in the form of financial contributions or relocations — with several countries, including Belgium and Sweden, already ruling out relocations. Belgium’s Migration Minister Anneleen Van Bossuyt told POLITICO that Belgium’s initial solidarity contribution had already been lowered to €12.9 million and that the country is in talks with Italy and Greece to figure out “how we can account for historical [secondary] movements and see whether we can further lower that amount,” she said. With many countries now focused on the migratory implications of the EU’s signature borderless travel area, Luxembourg has become something of a lone Schengen crusader. The country “regrets” that the debates about Europe’s free-travel area and migration have become so intertwined, Home Affairs Minister Léon Gloden told POLITICO. “Schengen is much more than just migration.” Secondary movements aren’t a Schengen problem, he argued — they only mean that the bloc needs to cooperate better and strengthen controls on its external borders. “The illegal migration does not take place between Luxembourg and Germany,” Gloden said. The small country has lodged a complaint against migration-linked checks on Germany’s borders, which have landed the thousands of commuters that enter Luxembourg on a daily basis in major traffic jams. When the Schengen zone was built, it was “not linked to migration … [It] should facilitate the free movement of people, not hinder [it],” he said. FGS interviewed 11,714 adults from 23 European Union countries between Nov. 10 and Nov. 23, 2025. A minimum of 500 interviews were conducted in each of the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. Interviews were conducted online and the data was weighted to be nationally representative of each country by gender, age, income, region and socio-economic group. Data from a nationally representative poll of 500 adults is accurate to a margin of error of +/- 4.4 percent at 95 percent confidence.

SEPARATED BY WAR — AND BY SCHENGEN Designed to keep Europe safe, a security system is trapping Ukrainian ex-prisoners — including victims of Russian occupation — leaving families torn apart with no clear path out of legal limbo. By EKATERINA BODYAGINA Yuliia Hetman, 35, holds a photograph of her son Bogdan in the room where she is temporarily living in Kyiv. | Johanna Maria Fritz/Agentur Ostkreuz for POLITICO Vitaly and Bogdan Osipov found refuge from Russia’s full-scale invasion in central Germany, but for nearly two years the father and son have been waiting for Yuliia Hetman — Vitaly’s partner and Bogdan’s mother — to join them. What keeps the family apart is no longer the war itself, but a European Union database.  The family is among a growing number of Ukrainians caught in a trap created by the bloc’s security architecture. Ukrainian nationals serving sentences in Ukrainian prisons seized by Russian forces — or who were forcibly transferred to Russia by occupying forces during the war — are being flagged in the EU’s Schengen Information System as potential threats to public order and internal security. Advertisement Hetman, who was serving a sentence for violent crime in a Mariupol prison when the war began, completed her sentence under Russian occupation. She has since managed to leave the occupied city, but she cannot reunite with her family in Germany, stalled at the Polish border by a German-issued alert that bars her from entering much of Europe. “These people survived war, abduction and abuse in Russian detention,” said Hanna Skrypka, a lawyer at the Kyiv-based NGO Protection of Prisoners of Ukraine. “They are victims of war crimes — not security threats.” Our investigation found that Ukrainian authorities shared with law-enforcement agency Europol the names of at least 3,738 former prisoners who had been held in penal institutions in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories, according to documents reviewed by POLITICO. Vitaly Osipov, 48, and his son Bogdan, 13, found refuge in the central German town of Rotenburg an der Fulda. | Alex Kraus for POLITICO While Ukrainian authorities say they made no requests to flag individuals in the EU’s Schengen Information System, former detainees, rights groups and lawyers say the information-sharing coincided with a surge in entry bans — separating families and leaving former prisoners trapped by opaque security decisions they cannot meaningfully challenge. “We should be very careful not to treat Ukrainians from temporarily occupied territories as a security threat by default,” said Thijs Reuten, a Dutch center-left MEP and the European Parliament’s shadow rapporteur on Ukraine. “Ukrainians are our allies — they are fighting for their freedom and for democracy.” “Once someone is on a list,” continued Reuten, “who is accountable for getting them off?”  FROM A BESIEGED PRISON TO A CLOSED BORDER Hetman was three years into a five-year sentence, for causing bodily harm to a man she says assaulted her, when women’s penal colony No. 107 in Mariupol was sealed off from the outside world in February 2022. Prison authorities suspended access to telephones and television as Russia launched its full-scale invasion. “We suspected something was happening, but didn’t know what exactly,” she recalled. Soon, shelling began. Prison staff fled. Water and electricity disappeared. Toilets were destroyed. The women dug pits, cooked over open fires and slept in basements. About a month into Russia’s assault on Mariupol, Russian forces took control of the city’s women’s prison — subjecting the Ukrainian prisoners held there to a harsher regime marked by forced labor and arbitrary rules. Yuliia stands in front of the bombed-out house next to her temporary accommodation in Kyiv. | Johanna Maria Fritz/Agentur Ostkreuz for POLITICO “Life changed completely,” Hetman says. “For the smallest violation, everyone was punished.” Forty kilometers away, Osipov and his son were hiding in the basement of their neighbors’ house, near the home where the family had lived together before Yuliia’s imprisonment — surviving on canned food they cooked over open fires. Neither partner knew the other was alive.  After nearly six months underground, volunteers offered Osipov a route into the European Union via Russia and Belarus. Before leaving Ukraine, he and his 13-year-old son Bogdan braved Russian shelling to visit the penal colony in Mariupol. Osipov explained to a Russian soldier at the gate that Hetman had been imprisoned inside. The soldier let him enter. “We saw each other and burst into tears,” recalled Osipov. Advertisement Hetman completed her sentence a year later. After her release in September 2023, she made plans to travel to Germany, where Osipov and Bogdan had settled in Rotenburg an der Fulda, a quiet riverside town where relatives already lived. Vitaly and Bogdan cleaned their apartment, bought groceries — and waited. Then, early one morning, Hetman called from the Ukrainian-Polish border, crying. “They won’t let me in,” she said, according to Osipov’s recollection.  Polish authorities at the Dorohusk checkpoint told her she was barred from entering the European Union. They had found her name attached to an alert in the Schengen Information System.  INSIDE THE DATABASE THAT SEPARATED A UKRAINIAN FAMILY Europe’s guaranteed freedom of movement relies on a database. The Schengen Information System joins the bloc’s border-control and law-enforcement authorities to share real-time alerts during police checks and along its external perimeter. The system consists of a central database technically operated by the EU agency eu-LISA, under the oversight of the European Commission, national systems in each participating country, and a secure network linking them. How and why individuals are entered into the Schengen Information System can be difficult to trace — including for those affected by the listings themselves. Each Schengen country is responsible for creating, maintaining and enforcing its own alerts, which are immediately visible and enforceable across all other participating states. While national authorities formally refuse entry at the external border checkpoints they manage, the underlying decision to place an SIS alert may have been taken earlier by another member state, without the involvement of the country carrying out the check. Advertisement Information relevant to SIS alerts may be shared via Europol, the EU’s criminal intelligence and law-enforcement coordination agency, which has no arrest powers of its own but facilitates the exchange of information among national authorities via coordination offices known as SIRENE bureaus. Europol itself does not issue SIS alerts, but information shared through the agency may be passed on to member states, which then decide independently whether to enter or maintain an alert. Hetman’s name appears to have found its way into the database as part of the list of former prisoners in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories shared with Europol in early 2023. While Ukrainian authorities say their government shared the list for informational purposes only, Hetman’s name later appeared in the Schengen Information System “for the purpose of refusing entry,” according to a Polish border refusal decision reviewed by POLITICO. The alert appears to have originated in Germany. The country’s Federal Criminal Police Office confirmed, in a response to a data-access request reviewed by POLITICO, that the refusal-of-entry alert was issued by Germany and remains in force unless withdrawn by the issuing authority. (A certificate from Poland’s Office for Foreigners shows that Poland did not play a role.) Germany’s federal police office said there was no blanket treatment of former detainees as a security risk and that it had no knowledge of such a practice. The agency did not respond to follow-up questions after we identified documents showing that German authorities had issued refusal-of-entry alerts in multiple such cases. Yuliia in the room where she is currently living in Kyiv. | Johanna Maria Fritz/Agentur Ostkreuz for POLITICO Polish border guards told POLITICO that they see only the identifying data and the instruction to refuse entry — not the reasons for the listing — and conduct no individualized assessment at the border. Issuing authorities may lawfully withhold that information on security grounds, leaving affected individuals aware of the ban but often unable to determine why it was imposed or how to challenge it. The structure leaves responsibility fragmented: Information flows across borders, but decision-making and accountability remain national — and often opaque. In five separate instances reviewed by POLITICO involving former Ukrainian prisoners who served sentences in Russian-occupied territories or who were forcibly transferred by Russian forces from Ukrainian prisons, border authorities across multiple EU countries enforced entry bans based solely on active SIS alerts, without citing any issues with passports, visas, overstays or travel documents. According to Skrypka, a small number of former prisoners who still had valid passports were able to cross directly from Russia into the Schengen area in early 2023. She said she was aware of five such cases, all of which occurred before Ukrainian authorities shared a list of former prisoners with Europol. After that information-sharing, she said, at least 10 former prisoners who attempted the same route were refused entry at Schengen borders. The organization now advises former prisoners not to attempt to cross those borders. Advertisement Europol confirmed to POLITICO that it processes “operational data” from Ukraine under a long-standing cooperation agreement, but did not address whether information about former Ukrainian prisoners was later shared with member states in a way that contributed to SIS refusal-of-entry bans. In a written reply to POLITICO, Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office said it is overseeing criminal investigations into the deportation and forcible transfer of Ukrainians from occupied territories to Russia or Crimea — acts classified under Ukrainian law as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The office added that it had no information indicating that former detainees recognized as victims in such proceedings were treated as security threats or subjected to restrictions abroad, including difficulties crossing borders or reuniting with family members. “Why Ukrainian authorities passed the list to Europol, we don’t know,” said Skrypka, whose Kyiv-based NGO supports Ukrainian prisoners and documents abuses linked to Russian aggression. “What does Europol have to do with it?” HOW A SCHENGEN ALERT FOLLOWS UKRAINIANS ACROSS BORDERS Vasyl Soldatov, 48, a Ukrainian former prisoner forcibly transferred to Russia during the war, was released in May 2025 into Russian-occupied Crimea. By then, his wife was living in the Czech Republic as a war refugee, and he hoped to continue his arduous journey directly to her. Soldatov explored his potential routes from Crimea to the Czech Republic. While still in Crimea, Soldatov was informed by Czech authorities he was subject to a refusal-of-entry alert in the Schengen system, entered not by the Czech Republic but — as in Hetman’s case — by German authorities. Advertisement In a written response reviewed by POLITICO, Czech police said Soldatov is not listed in the country’s national register of “undesirable persons” and stressed that there is no general practice or internal instruction to automatically treat people who have been held in, or transferred through, occupied territories of Ukraine as security risks.  Both EU and national laws require Schengen refusal-of-entry alerts to be based on objective, case-specific grounds. Prisoners-rights advocates argue that some European countries were violating that standard by instead using automatic or collective groupings, like the generalized suspicion attached to the label “former prisoner.” Hugues de Suremain, legal director of the European Prison Litigation Network, added that while Ukrainian authorities have cited risks of coercion or recruitment by Russian security services in general terms, he has not seen evidence of documented, individualized assessments that would justify blanket measures applied without individual review. Without that, said de Suremain, war-affected detainees risk being treated as suspects by default. Vitaly and Bogdan have not seen their partner and mother, Yuliia, since the summer of 2022. | Alex Kraus for POLITICO Germany’s Interior Ministry told POLITICO that refusal-of-entry alerts are issued following individualized assessments and that authorities may take into account information received via Europol when evaluating security risks. The ministry said it does not keep statistics on how often such alerts are applied to specific categories and declined to comment on concerns raised by human rights organizations that former detainees could be treated as security risks due to fears of recruitment by Russian intelligence services. However, neither Germany’s Interior Ministry nor Federal Criminal Police Office explained how such individualized assessments were conducted in cases involving former Ukrainian prisoners, or whether information shared via Europol contributed to those decisions. “Once a name starts circulating through law-enforcement channels, it can be very hard to undo,” said de Suremain, who represents several former Ukrainian prisoners before the European Court of Human Rights. Advertisement Like many former prisoners who find their movements blocked, Soldatov still does not know exactly how his name entered the database. While individuals have the right to seek access to, correction or deletion of SIS data, requests must be directed to the country that entered the alert, and authorities may lawfully withhold the underlying grounds in security-related cases. In the case of Poland, the country’s Ombudsman office said in a statement that when database entries rely on classified security-service information, individuals may be unable to see or meaningfully challenge the evidence against them, leaving judicial review as the primary safeguard. Soldatov, meanwhile, managed to return to Ukraine with help from Protection of Prisoners of Ukraine, traveling from Crimea into Russia and then via Belarus. He is counting the days until May, when Czech authorities have told him the Schengen Information System refusal-of-entry order will expire. WHEN SECURITY SYSTEMS LEAVE NO SAFE ROUTE Even former Russian prisoners who do not intend to live in the European Union, but simply seek to pass through it on their way back to Ukraine, can be blocked by Schengen refusal-of-entry alerts. For Ukrainians released from Russian prisons, legal exit routes are limited. Reaching Ukraine typically requires traversing Russia’s western borders, including into Schengen states such as Norway, Finland, Estonia or Latvia — where former prisoners flagged in the Schengen system are turned away even when seeking only onward travel back to Ukraine.  Passage through Belarus, meanwhile, remains an option only for those with valid Ukrainian passports — documents many former prisoners no longer have. Eastern Ukraine remains an active war zone. Advertisement That typically forces those hoping to leave Russia for Ukraine to route themselves through Georgia, where former prisoners can approach the Ukrainian embassy to obtain documents and then attempt onward travel through third countries. But when problems arise at the Russian–Georgian border — including transit refusals or prolonged administrative detention — the journey can collapse altogether. Last summer, 80 former detainees were held for weeks in a windowless basement near one border crossing, dependent on charities for food and medical care, their attorneys argued to the European Court for Human Rights. “People cannot reunite with their families — and they cannot even get home safely,” said Skrypka. “SIS entry bans affect both.” THE LONG WAIT For Osipov, every weekday now begins the same way. At 5 a.m., after preparing breakfast for his son Bogdan, he boards a commuter train for a 30-minute ride to a fish-processing facility in nearby Neukirchen, where he spends the day washing and sorting caviar. He returns home around nine in the evening, cooks dinner for his son — and prepares lunch for the next day. “At work, phones are forbidden except during breaks. I call Bogdan immediately,” Osipov says. “My heart bleeds knowing he’s alone all day.” Vitaly and Bogdan in their apartment in Rotenburg an der Fulda, Germany. | Alex Kraus for POLITICO They haven’t seen Hetman since the summer of 2022. “My son asks every day when his mother will come,” Osipov says. “I have no answer.” Those who work on Ukraine issues in Brussels say they know of no coordinated effort to reassess how Schengen security systems are applied to Ukrainians who spent time in Russian-run prisons.“This is a special situation that needs to be dealt with in a special way,” said Reuten, the European Parliament’s shadow rapporteur on Ukraine. “Otherwise, we risk separating people from their families for years during wartime — and that is unacceptable.”

Political posturing over migration has delivered yet another blow to Europe’s beleaguered free-travel zone. Faced with right-wing demands at home to control the flow of people arriving from outside the EU’s borders, the leaders of Poland and Germany are seeking easy wins which might placate populists — but put the once-sacred Schengen area on life support. Warsaw’s patience with Germany sending migrants back to Poland “is becoming exhausted,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said, as he announced the imposition of checks on his country’s borders with Germany and Lithuania from July 7. Almost four decades after the introduction of the borderless travel area that encompasses 450 million people from 29 countries — four of which aren’t in the EU — supposedly temporary border controls in the name of exceptional security concerns are increasingly the norm, creating the impression Schengen exists more in name than in substance. But with the rise of far-right parties and several years of migration from Ukraine — and before that, the Middle East — carveouts to the border-free zone rules have become an easy solution for politicians looking to show they mean action. “We consider the introduction of controls necessary,” Tusk said, pointing the finger at Germany’s “unilateral” action. In May, the conservative-led government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz ramped up checks on Germany’s borders, including with Poland, following pressure from Berlin’s own opposition party, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Warsaw’s patience with Germany sending migrants back to Poland “is becoming exhausted,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said. | Rafal Guz/EPA German police will turn away more undocumented immigrants, including asylum seekers, Merz said. The move further bolstered border controls the previous government had already put in place October 2023. The crackdown riled Germany’s neighbors, including Poland, despite Merz’s promises to step up Berlin’s relationship with Warsaw — an alliance he considers key for driving a united European defense policy. While politicians have warned Germany’s controls could chip away at the free movement of people and goods within the Schengen area, critics have also called the border measures largely symbolic. Poland’s Fakt newspaper said that German authorities returned 1,087 people to Poland between May 1 and June 15 this year, pointing out that those numbers aren’t significantly different from last year’s. According to German police union figures, the new checks led to 160 asylum applicants being rejected in the first four weeks. It’s a small fraction of total refusals — on average, up to 1,300 people per week are rejected for lacking the necessary documentation. Germany’s move, however, has created a political problem for Tusk’s ruling centrist Civic Coalition. Having narrowly lost the presidential election to the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, it’s feeling the hot breath of rightwing opposition parties that want a tougher stance on migration. Civic Coalition and PiS are currently neck-and-neck in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls and the hard-right Confederation has surged since the last general election in 2023. All 3 Years 2 Years 1 Year 6 Months Smooth Kalman Polish civilian vigilante groups tied to right-wing parties are staging patrols along the frontier with Germany. “Poland’s western border is ceasing to exist,” Mariusz Błaszczak, a senior PiS politician, warned last week. He blamed Tusk’s “servility toward Berlin.” Sławomir Mentzen, a Confederation leader, accused the Polish Border Guard of cooperating with Germany in accepting illegal migrants. The government has denounced those attacks. “Don’t play politics with Poland’s security. This is not the time or place for such actions,” Tomasz Siemoniak, Poland’s interior minister, said on X.  Poland’s retaliatory controls have also put Merz’s border policy in the firing line, with Germany’s left-wing opposition painting Warsaw’s decision as a clear setback. “This is a devastating signal for a German government and a ‘foreign chancellor’ Merz, who promised to regain trust in Europe,” Chantal Kopf, a lawmaker for the Greens, told POLITICO. Knut Abraham, a member of Merz’s conservatives and the government’s coordinator for the German-Polish relationship, in an interview with Welt also warned against lasting checks. While they are “necessary as a political signal that migration policy in Germany has changed … the solution cannot be to push migrants back and forth between Poland and Germany or to cement border controls on both sides,” he said. Merz on Tuesday defended Germany’s border checks. “We naturally want to preserve this Schengen area, but freedom of movement in the Schengen area will only work in the long term if it is not abused by those who promote irregular migration, in particular by smuggling migrants,” he said.

BRUSSELS ― The threat of a prolonged war in Ukraine without military backing from the United States is leading European Union politicians to contemplate the emergence of a fresh wave of huge numbers of refugees. “If Putin escalates this war even further and the American support should disappear, and if this should lead to a larger refugee movement … we need a binding distribution of the Ukraine refugees throughout the EU, according to a fair mechanism,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told reporters Wednesday. In December last year, more than 4.3 million people were under temporary protection in European countries after fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Eurostat data. So far, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic have received the most Ukrainian refugees, and in the event of a new, larger refugee wave, “that will have to change,” Faeser said. Faeser added that she doesn’t currently expect another large refugee surge and that it’s “just a scenario” ministers have to discuss. Germany will stand by Ukraine “as long as Putin’s terrible attack against Ukraine continues,” she said. Europe’s political leaders rushed to X, formerly Twitter, to throw their support behind Ukraine after U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance held a shouting match with the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the Oval Office. But the topic of Ukrainian refugees taps into European reservations on taking in migrants, with deportations high on the agenda of an EU meeting in Brussels on Wednesday. Austria’s Interior Minister Gerhard Karner, who said he’d use his Brussels visit to formally inform the European Commission of the brand new Austrian government‘s intention to halt family reunification, treated the prospect of more Ukrainian refugees in much the same vein. Per capita, Austria has “clearly taken in more [refugees] than many other countries,” Karner told reporters. The country “has made its contribution” and now wants to focus on the integration of the people who are already there, he said, “That’s also the reason why we’re now stopping family reunification.”  In absolute terms, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic were hosting the highest number of refugees, with about 1 million people under temporary protection in both Germany and Poland. But when compared with local populations, the Baltics, Slovakia and Ireland were also key destinations. The temporary protection status, an EU provision that was first triggered for Ukraine’s refugees, means they have the right to work, live and study in their host country, although NGOs have warned that the temporary nature of the status has nonetheless undermined refugees’ integration. The local language, proximity to Ukraine, a local support network and the available information about local benefit measures all influence refugees’ choice to move to a specific country.

Romania and Bulgaria will as of Jan. 1 become full members of the Schengen free-travel zone, EU interior ministers agreed Thursday. The green light follows Austria’s decision on Monday to drop its veto against both countries’ accession. The countries were supposed to join the Schengen zone in 2023 along with Croatia, but that deal unraveled when Austria objected that Bulgaria and Romania were failing to handle a steep rise in migrants arriving through the Western Balkan route. “After ‘Schengen Air’, ‘Schengen Land’ is now open to Romania and Bulgaria,” said Austrian Interior Minister Gerhard Karner on Monday, adding that Austria’s demands led to a drop in migrant’s arrival numbers. Romania and Bulgaria partially joined the Schengen zone in March, with air and maritime restrictions being lifted. The internal affairs ministers of Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria and Romania agreed in November to “initiate the necessary steps” to set a date to lift checks on land borders with Romania and Bulgaria, on the condition that joint efforts to stem irregular migration were continued.

BRUSSELS — Romania’s ultranationalist wannabe President George Simion has two role models he hopes offer a winning formula: Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. “We are sort of a Trumpist party,” the 38-year-old leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party said, but “it is not by chance that I am happy for my party being in the same political family as Meloni.” Italy’s hard-right prime minister restored “hope for Italians … in the European project,” Simion told POLITICO in an interview. “What we have seen is … a Melonization” of Europe, he said. And now, he added, “believe me, there will be a Simionization as well.” Romanians head to the polls Sunday for the first round of the country’s presidential elections pitting 13 candidates against each other. It comes at a critical time for the southeastern EU nation as it faces a yawning deficit and Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine raging at its border. At stake is Romania’s positioning in the EU, with a win for Simion tilting the balance of power in the bloc further to the right and cementing a broader trend of democracies pivoting sharply toward hard-right politics. Despite its checkered history of corruption, Bucharest has long been viewed as a reliable NATO partner and EU bastion in the region. Simion, who cut his political teeth agitating for unification between Romania and Moldova and is currently polling second behind the country’s center-left Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, has vowed to remain loyal to NATO and work to reform the EU from the inside if elected. That’s a similar tactic adopted by Meloni after her election victory last year. But other candidates, including Elena Lasconi, a reformist candidate polling neck-and-neck with Simion, have branded him an “extremist.” AUR rose to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic on an anti-vaccine platform, while the party also drew criticism in 2022 after calling mandatory Holocaust education in Romanian schools a “minor topic.” Party leadership is undeterred, however, as global political winds gust to the right. “Even if we are conservative, which is not to the liking of the establishment in Brussels, even if we believe in many of the values President Trump believes in,” Simion said, “we also believe that we need a strong, united Europe.” The politician insisted he would “work together” with the EU’s mainstream parties if elected, with Romania’s full accession to the visa-free Schengen zone, pushing for a directly elected EU executive and boosting industrial production in the bloc at the top of his list of priorities. But unlike Meloni, Simion has openly vowed he would push back against Brussels even if that means breaking EU rules in a move more reminiscent of the populist leaders of Hungary and Slovakia, Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico. “I would be a liar to say we would respect EU law,” he said. “If tomorrow [there is] a new law that we didn’t vote for … or laws that are not good for Romania,” he said, “I will try to use all my powers to stop what is doing harm for my people.” At stake is Romania’s positioning in the EU, with a win for George Simion tilting the balance of power in the bloc further to the right. | Robert Ghement/EPA-EFE Meanwhile, Simion has pledged to suspend military aid to Ukraine, whose government has banned the hard-right leader from visiting the country over his promotion of “unionist ideology,” like neighboring Moldova.  He has also faced accusations of meeting with Russian spies, charges he has repeatedly denied. Speaking to foreign journalists on Wednesday, he branded Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.” Still, the AUR party chief said he wants a cease-fire in Ukraine “as soon as possible” and called for a peace agreement brokered by Trump — even if that means Kyiv giving up land currently controlled by Russia. “I cannot say … to Ukrainians give up your national territory,” he said, “but it’s hard to believe that they won’t be obliged to.”

Poland’s government aims to temporarily suspend the right of arrivals to claim asylum even though that clashes with both international law and European Union rules — but Prime Minister Donald Tusk insists he will not backtrack. “It is our right and our duty to protect the Polish and European border. Its security will not be negotiated. With anyone,” Tusk said on social media on Monday afternoon. Tusk, a former president of the European Council and a key leader in the center-right European People’s Party that also includes European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is reflecting a harsher tone on migration sweeping the Continent. A tough border policy is also part of Tusk’s effort to ensure that his Civic Coalition party is in pole position to win next year’s presidential election. Polish voters are increasingly skeptical about receiving migrants — especially from non-European countries. Over the last three years, Poland has seen thousands of people trying to cross its heavily forested border with Belarus. They have been encouraged to fly to Minsk by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, and are then directed by Belarusian authorities toward the border with Poland as well as Lithuania. Polish authorities call Lukashenko’s tactic “weaponizing” migration as a way of harming the EU and helping his Russian ally, while von der Leyen has denounced what she called a “cruel form of hybrid threat.” Tusk said at least 26,000 people, largely from the Middle East and Africa, crossed over from Belarus this year alone. That’s also prompted Germany to impose border restrictions of its own, complaining about migrants moving west after crossing into the EU. The Polish government announced Saturday it would move to suspend the rights of new arrivals to claim asylum. Brussels warned that is almost certainly incompatible with bloc-wide rules. The Commission told POLITICO that member countries must deal with “hybrid attacks” from Belarus and Russia “without compromising on our values.” Tusk, however, insists he’s only following the lead of other countries.  “The temporary suspension of asylum applications was introduced in Finland in May. It is a response to the hybrid war declared against the entire European Union (primarily Poland) by the regimes in Moscow and Minsk, which involves organizing mass transfers of people across our borders,” Tusk wrote online. In November, Finland temporarily closed its border with Russia and refused to process new applications after groups of would-be asylum-seekers tried to enter. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia subsequently told POLITICO they were leaving open the option of following suit if they too faced the same tactics. Warsaw is aware it is treading a fine line with the new restrictions. “We need to find a balance between what is being proposed in the context of border protection and what arises from international obligations,” Justice Minister Adam Bodnar told radio TOK FM Monday. BREAK WITH BRUSSELS Migration is an increasingly potent political issue and one of the reasons for a surge in support for far-right or populist parties across the Continent. They charge that the bloc’s traditional approach has left the doors wide open to people abusing the system. In response, the Commission in June presented a new package of measures on migration, designed to increase the powers of member countries to return those ineligible to stay in the bloc and introduce a “permanent, legally-binding, but flexible solidarity mechanism to ensure that no EU country is left alone when under pressure.” But countries bordering Russia and Belarus worry that those measures are still too timid to deter Lukashenko and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “The current migration rules do not solve the security challenge that we can see, for example, on the eastern border of the EU,” said a diplomat from one of the countries affected, granted anonymity to speak frankly. “It is not the enemies of the EU that should decide who enters our territory.” According to the diplomat, a meeting of EU leaders at a European Council this week should be used for “an honest discussion to clearly identify and understand the new types of risks. And then we should talk about EU-wide solutions.” DOMESTIC POLITICS Tusk’s move is causing dismay among human rights groups and creating tensions within his governing coalition. “We would like to remind Prime Minister Donald Tusk that the right to asylum is a human right. Groundless suspension of this right, even temporarily, is unacceptable and is in conflict with, among others, the Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Amnesty International’s Polish office said on X on Saturday. Szymon Hołownia, the speaker of parliament and leader of the Poland 2050 party that is part of the coalition, issued a careful statement calling asylum a “sacred right” but also noting it could be suspended “during a state of emergency or martial law and under the ongoing supervision of the parliament.” When he was in opposition, Tusk and his allies frequently criticized the former nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party government for building a barrier along the border with Belarus and for pushing back migrants rather than hearing their asylum claims. Human rights groups said that was illegal and left people to die in remote forests and bogs because Belarus often refused to allow them back into its own territory. But once in power, Tusk has taken a much harder line on the border issue. “Tusk appears to be driven by a desire to avoid getting defeated by PiS on the migration front,” said Jakub Jaraczewski of Democracy Reporting, a Berlin-based NGO. While initial reports of refugees seeking asylum in Poland aroused sympathy, especially among human rights groups and those on the political left, attitudes have hardened in recent years as Lukashenko shows no sign of stopping his migration policy. According to a June poll carried out by Opinia24, Poles remain fairly open to culturally similar Belarusians or Ukrainians but only 14 percent would be happy with an influx of other nationals. “Tusk has to show the voters that he is tough,” said Grzegorz Kuczyński, an expert on Eastern Europe with the Warsaw Institute think tank. “The previous Polish government built a barrier and sent police and military there. The current government is continuing this policy, despite having criticized it while in opposition.” “Poles mostly support a tough immigration policy,” he added. “That is why [Tusk] has taken this position. In this way, he is taking away one of the main arguments of the opposition.” Gabriel Gavin reported from Brussels. Wojciech Kość reported from Warsaw.

Seventeen European countries, including the three largest EU economies, are calling on the European Commission to speed up migrant returns. Fourteen EU countries, as well as Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, signed an appeal calling on the EU executive to propose new rules making returns policies stricter, Reuters reported. The letter to the Commission says migrants with no right to stay in the EU “must be held accountable,” according to the report. The push comes amid a rightward and anti-immigration shift in multiple EU countries. Austria’s anti-migrant, Russia-friendly Freedom Party (FPÖ) topped the polls in a national election for the first time last weekend. Far-right parties have made major gains or won elections in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and France. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has threatened to give asylum seekers one-way tickets to Brussels in protest EU fines levelled at the country for breaching EU asylum rules. The 17 European countries in their letter to the Commission are asking for new rules to allow governments to detain illegal migrants if they pose a risk to national security, as well as to force migrants to cooperate with authorities and ensure all EU countries use the same software to manage cases. While not in the EU, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are members of the passport-free Schengen area. Austria’s nominee for the new European Commission, Magnus Brunner, is likely to take over the EU’s migration top job in the coming months, signaling a rightward shift in the EU’s approach to migration. It remains to be seen if the future coalition government in Austria will pressure the EU to move even further rightward on migration policy. The FPÖ’s leader, Herbert Kickl, has accused other Austrian parties of a “sinister” plot to keep the far-right FPÖ out of a future coalition government in the country. EU justice ministers will discuss migration at a meeting in Luxembourg next week.