Europe’s populist worries will intensify when right-wing billionaire Andrej Babiš becomes Czech prime minister today. Czech President Petr Pavel is set to appoint Babiš to the position after resolving longstanding conflict-of-interest issues related to the PM-elect’s conglomerate, Agrofert. Babiš and his future government have sparked fears in Brussels, where his opponents worry that alliances he could form at the European level may tilt Central Europe in an anti-establishment direction. Combined with Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, Babiš has the potential to jam up the legislative machinery in Brussels as it works on key files. Babiš regularly speaks of reviving the so-called Visegrád Four group, something both Orbán and Fico hope for, after it became largely dormant following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. A new Visegrád grouping would likely count three rather than the four members it had after being founded as a cultural and political alliance in the 1990s. Poland’s current center-right prime minister, Donald Tusk, is staunchly pro-Ukraine and is thus unlikely to enter any entente with Orbán. Polish President Karol Nawrocki of the right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, though, has been talking up the prospects for Visegrád. Babiš’ government — his Patriots for Europe-aligned ANO party is in a coalition with the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy and right-wing Motorists for Themselves parties — is also likely to fight against EU-level pro-environment initiatives. That could cause issues for climate files like ETS2, the Emissions Trading System for road and buildings, and Brussels’ bid to ban combustion engines. Czech President Petr Pavel is set to appoint Andrej Babiš to the position after resolving longstanding conflict-of-interest issues related to the PM-elect’s conglomerate, Agrofert. | Martin Divisek/EPA Following his decisive victory in the Czech election Oct. 3-4, however, Babiš has toned down his previous remarks about canceling the Czech ammunition initiative in support of Ukraine, raising questions about whether the campaign rhetoric will translate into actual policy reversals. The extent to which Czechia becomes another EU disrupter might become clearer later this week as Babiš travels to Brussels to take part in the European Council — assuming the rest of his cabinet is appointed by then.

Czech right-wing billionaire Andrej Babiš will be the new prime minister in Prague after announcing Thursday evening that he would dispose of a potential conflict of interest. Babiš’ ANO party won the Czech parliamentary election in October and formed a coalition with the far-right Freedom and Direct Democracy and right-wing Motorists for Themselves parties. But the proposed prime minister and coalition ministers must be green-lit by Czech President Petr Pavel before taking office. Babiš has been entangled in legal woes, both at home and abroad, concerning his agriculture business empire Agrofert, which is a major recipient of EU subsidies. “Of course, I could have left politics after winning the election and had a comfortable life, or ANO could have appointed someone else as prime minister,” Babiš said Thursday night in a video address to voters. “But I am convinced that you would perceive it as a betrayal,” he added. “That is why I have decided to irrevocably give up the Agrofert company, with which I will no longer have anything to do, I will never own it, I will not have any economic relations with it, and I will not be in any contact with it.” Babiš’ ascension to the Czech premiership further tilts Central Europe in an anti-establishment direction, as the populist tycoon joins Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico as potential thorns in Brussels’ side on key EU files. In stepping back from Agrofert, however, Babiš made clear the importance of retaking the prime ministerial role. The holding’s shares will now be managed through a trust structure by an independent administrator. “This step, which goes far beyond the requirements of the law, was not easy for me. I have been building my company for almost half my life and I am very sorry that I will also have to step down as chairman of the Agrofert Foundation,” Babiš said. “My children will only get Agrofert after my death,” he added. In response, Pavel announced that he would appoint Babiš as prime minister on Dec. 9. Andrej Babiš has been entangled in legal woes, both at home and abroad, concerning his agriculture business empire Agrofert, which is a major recipient of EU subsidies. | Gabriel Kuchta/Getty Images “I appreciate the clear and understandable manner in which Andrej Babiš has fulfilled our agreement and publicly announced how he will resolve his conflict of interest,” Pavel said. Pavel previously noted that strong pro-NATO and pro-EU stances, along with safeguarding the country’s democratic institutions, will be key factors in his decision-making regarding the proposed Cabinet. Czech conflict of interest law bars officials (or their close relatives) from owning or controlling a business that would create a conflict with their governing function. This doesn’t mean ministers can’t own businesses, just that they must prioritize the public interest over their own. Similar rules exist at the EU level. When he was prime minister the first time round, from 2017 to 2021, Babiš placed Agrofert — which consists of more than 250 companies — in trust funds, but the Czech courts as well as the European Commission in 2021 concluded that he still retained influence over them and was therefore in violation of EU conflict-of-interest rules.

A message from Brussels to Google: Would you break yourself up, please? The search giant faces an early November deadline to say how it intends to comply with a European Commission decision in September, which found that it had illegally maintained its grip on the infrastructure that powers online advertising. With a €2.95 billion fine in the rearview mirror, the Commission and Google find themselves in an unprecedented standoff as Brussels contemplates the once unthinkable: a structural sell-off of part of a U.S. company, preferably voluntary, but potentially forced if necessary. The situation is “very unusual,” said Anne Witt, a professor in competition law at EDHEC Business School in Lille, France. “Structural remedies are almost unprecedented at the EU level,” Witt added. “It’s really the sledgehammer.” In its September decision, the Commission took the “unusual and unprecedented step,” per Witt, to ask Google to design its own remedy — while signaling, if cautiously, that anything short of a sale of parts of its advertising technology business would fall foul of the EU antitrust enforcer. “It appears that the only way for Google to end its conflict of interest effectively is with a structural remedy, such as selling some part of its Adtech business,” Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera, the Commission’s competition chief, said at the time. As the clock counts down to the deadline for Google to tell the Commission what it intends to do, the possibility of a Brussels-ordered breakup of an American tech champion is unlikely to go unnoticed in Washington, even as the Donald Trump administration pursues its own case against the search giant. (Google accounts for 90 percent of the revenues of Alphabet, the $3.3 trillion technology holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California.) Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera, the Commission’s competition chief. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images Google has said that it will appeal the Commission’s decision, which in its view requires changes that would hurt thousands of European businesses. “There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, its vice president and global head of regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post in September. PARALLEL PROBES The proposal for a voluntary break up of Google marks the culmination of a decade of EU antitrust enforcement in digital markets in which “behavioral” fixes achieved little, and a unique alignment in both timing and substance between the U.S. and the EU of their parallel probes into the firm’s ad tech empire. “It would have been unthinkable 10 years ago that there would be a case in the U.S.  and a sister case in Europe that had a breakup as a potential outcome,” said Cori Crider, executive director of the Future of Tech Institute, which is advocating for a break-up. The Commission formally launched the investigation into Google’s ad tech stack in 2021, following a drumbeat of complaints from news organizations that had seen Google take control of the high-frequency exchanges where publishers and advertisers agree on the price and placement of online ads.  Google’s control of the exchanges, as well as infrastructure used by both sides of the market, was like allowing Goldman Sachs or Citibank to own the New York Stock Exchange, declared the U.S. Department of Justice in its lawsuit in 2023. It also created a situation in which cash-strapped news organizations on both sides of the Atlantic saw Google eating an increasing share of revenues from online advertising — and ultimately posing a threat to journalism itself. “This is not just any competition law case — this is about the future of journalism,” said Alexandra Geese, a German Green member of the European Parliament. “Publishers don’t have the revenue because they don’t get traffic on their websites, and then Google’s algorithm decides what information we see,” she said. The plight of publishers proved hefty on the other side of the Atlantic too. In April, the federal judge overseeing the U.S. government’s case against Google ruled that the search giant had illegally maintained its monopoly over parts of the ad tech market.   A spokesperson for the company said that the firm disagrees with the Commission’s charges. | Nurphoto via Getty Images The Virginia district court held a two-week trial on remedies in September. The Trump administration has advocated a sale of the exchanges and an unwinding of Google’s 2008 merger with DoubleClick, through which it came to dominate the online ad market. Judge Leonie Brinkema will hear the government’s closing arguments on Nov. 17 and is expected to issue her verdict in the coming months. STARS ALIGN Viewed by Google’s critics, it’s the ideal set of circumstances for the Commission to push for a muscular structural remedy. “If you cannot go for structural remedies now, when the U.S. is on the same page, then you’re unlikely to ever do it,” said Crider. The route to a breakup may, however, be both legally and politically more challenging. Despite the technical alignment, and a disenchantment with the impact that past fines and behavioral remedies have had, the Commission still faces a “big hurdle” when it comes to the legal test, should it not be satisfied with Google’s remedy offer, said Witt. The U.S. legal system is more conducive to ordering breakups, both as a matter of law — judges have a wide scope to remedy a harm to the market — and in tradition, said Witt, noting that the U.S. government’s lawsuits to break up Google and Meta are rooted in precedents that don’t exist in Europe. Caught in the middle is Google, which should file its proposed remedies within 60 days of being served notice of the Commission decision that was announced on Sept. 5. A spokesperson for the company said that the firm disagrees with the Commission’s charges, and therefore with the notion that structural remedies are necessary. The firm is expected to lodge its appeal in the coming days. While Google has floated asset sales to the Commission over the course of the antitrust investigation, only to be rebuffed by Brussels, the firm does not intend to divest the entirety of its ad tech stack, according to a person familiar with the matter who was granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case. Ultimately, what happens in Brussels may depend on what happens in the U.S. case. While a court-ordered divestiture of a chunk of Google’s ad tech business is conceivable, U.S. judges have shown themselves to be skeptical of structural remedies in recent months, said Lazar Radic, an assistant law professor at IE University in Madrid, who is affiliated with the big tech-friendly International Center for Law and Economics. “Behavioral alternatives are still on the table,” said Radic, of the U.S. case. The Commission will likely want to align itself with the U.S. should the Virginia court side with the Department of Justice, said Damien Geradin, legal counsel to the European Publishers Council — of which POLITICO parent Axel Springer is a member — that brought forward the case. Conversely, if the court opts for a weaker remedy than is being proposed, the Commission will be obliged to go further, he said. “This is the case where some structural remedies will be needed. I don’t think the [European Commission] can settle for less,” said Geradin.

PARIS — After interviewing top politicians four nights a week on primetime TV, Léa Salamé will go home to one — in a major test case of France’s tolerance for relationships between journalists and the politicians they cover. From Monday, 45-year-old Salamé will host one of France’s most prestigious news shows, grilling the country’s leaders in the 8 p.m. slot on the public broadcaster. This new role has brought renewed scrutiny of her relationship with Socialist and Democrat MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, a likely presidential candidate in 2027. The two have been together for a decade. In June, Salamé was tapped to replace Anne-Sophie Lapix to turn around the fortunes of 20 Heures, which regularly trails its main competitor, private broadcaster TF1’s newscast at the same time. With the couple at the peak of their respective careers, their partnership will be squarely in the public eye over any potential conflicts of interest. Plenty of French politicians have married members of the media, but a French president and a star anchor living under the roof of the Elysée Palace would be a first. “Running a news program means offering an interpretation of events and society with a hierarchy of information and political interviews. I wonder how this mix will work in the interest of public service,” Aymeric Caron, a former Salamé colleague-turned-politician, said in an interview with the gossip magazine Gala. A PLAN … FOR NOW Before her appointment, Salamé and Glucksmann had built a seemingly stable firewall between their personal and professional lives. He led the center-left Socialist Party’s list in the past two European elections while she co-hosted public radio France Inter’s morning news show, which under her stewardship gained more than a million new listeners despite an overall drop in radio audiences. When it came time for Glucksmann to campaign, Salamé recused herself from coverage of the contest. She has said she would do the same if Glucksmann ran for president, and her new boss, France Télévisions chief executive Delphine Ernotte, has publicly backed that plan. “When he was campaigning for the European elections, she took a back seat. The great Léa Salamé cannot be summed up solely by her partner,” Ernotte told the popular TV program “Quotidien.” Glucksmann’s presidential ambitions are an open secret. The Europhile leader — generally perceived as one of the most centrist figures on the French left — has repeatedly refused in interviews to rule out a 2027 run. Polling shows Glucksmann is a long-shot — while Salamé is already established at the top in her field — but the contest is still more than a year away. With President Emmanuel Macron constitutionally barred from running and his far-right rival Marine Le Pen facing legal troubles that could prevent her from mounting a fourth bid for the presidency, the field is open. French journalists and TV hosts Lea Salame (L) and Gilles Bouleau pose prior to moderating a live televised debate on April 20, 2022 ahead of the second round of France’s presidential election. | POOL photo by Ludovic Marin/EPA At a press conference in June, Glucksmann brushed off accusations that Salamé faced a conflict of interest in her new post and leaned into his partner’s work as an active supporter of female empowerment. “We’re in 2025 — I wouldn’t have imagined telling her she should give up something that is important to her career. Things are transparent, very clear,” he said. “If there’s a candidacy in a national election, the question will be raised and dealt with transparently to avoid any conflict of interest.” Salamé struck a similar tone in an interview with La Tribune du Dimanche that same month. “My relationship is no secret, but we keep our activities very separate. From Emmanuel Macron to Marine Le Pen, Bruno Retailleau, Édouard Philippe and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, I never felt in their eyes that they saw me as ‘the wife,'” she said. The French political class has largely stayed silent when it comes to the pair. This is, after all, a country where adultery scandals rarely cause lasting political damage. A journalist–politician partnership can seem tame by comparison. It’s also far from the first case of its kind. Salamé’s former cohost Thomas Sotto temporarily stepped away from reporting on politics during the 2022 presidential campaign following reports he was in a relationship with Mayada Boulos, the communications chief for the prime minister at the time, Jean Castex. In the 1990s, former Prime Minister Alain Juppé and former Economy Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn were both married to journalists. Isabelle Juppé had covered her husband’s own political party for La Croix but left journalism during her husband’s premiership. Strauss-Kahn’s wife, the prominent journalist Anne Sinclair, paused her television show on TF1 while retaining a leadership role with the channel. She then returned to reporting but avoided French political coverage until after her separation from Strauss-Kahn. More recently, Le Monde’s Ivanne Trippenbach changed her beat from politics when her partner Rayan Nezzar became an adviser to then-Prime Minister Gabriel Attal. Such a move by Salamé does not appear imminent. By not formally declaring his intention to run for president, Glucksmann has effectively allowed the couple to present any conflict of interest as hypothetical, at least for now. That, of course, is only part of the story. He will be an active force in center-left politics, whatever happens in the presidential contest. When French lawmakers return to work next month to debate Prime Minister François Bayrou’s austere budget and prepare for key municipal elections next year, Glucksmann will be working to raise the impact of his his center-left Place Publique party, just as Salamé presents the biggest stories of the day.

BRUSSELS ― The European Parliament is to take steps to shield lawmakers from being named by Belgian police publicly during criminal investigations following criticism their reputations are being dragged through the mud for no reason. After several high-profile probes that MEPs say have damaged the standing of the bloc’s institutions, Parliament President Roberta Metsola has sparked a revamp of the rules so that Belgium and other national authorities must pass a higher bar when requesting immunity waivers. They will have to provide more information ― notably the allegations they are facing ― before the Parliament can take up an immunity-waiver request for consideration.   “We will act where there is conjecture,” Metsola told reporters in Brussels on Thursday. “We will stand up for MEPs and the dignity of the institution. I will not accept the targeting and tarnishing of MEPs without a solid basis.” One of the most egregious recent examples saw MEP Giusi Princi named in Parliament because Belgian authorities wanted immunity to be lifted so that she could be investigated over allegations of corruption connected to Chinese tech firm Huawei. The request was withdrawn shortly afterwards. “The Parliament, at several levels, is keen to convey the message to Belgian authorities that they need to act up and be more professional,” said a high-ranking Parliament official, granted anonymity to speak about sensitive matters. “Their mistakes and carelessness can extremely damage the reputation of members and EU institutions.” Under the plans, which Metsola conveyed to political group leaders, she could ask the requesting authorities to provide a minimum of information before a public announcement is made on the immunity-waiver requests received. Currently, any request must be announced in the full plenary session of Parliament no matter its content. Lawmakers in the Parliament also point to Belgium’s inability to convict anyone connected to the Qatargate cash-for-influence scandal which broke out in 2022.  The judge leading the case, Michel Claise, resigned in June 2023 over accusations of conflict of interest, and the defendants have challenged the legality of the proceedings, which the courts are currently examining, according to a spokesperson for the Belgian prosecutor.  “If proceedings begin soon and convictions follow, then the process has worked,” said Green MEP Daniel Freund. “But if no one is convicted, if key evidence is ruled inadmissible, or if procedural errors derail the case, then we do have a serious problem.”

Lithuanian Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas is being investigated over a potential conflict of interest after a company he co-owns was accused of receiving a subsidized government loan.  Last week, journalists reported that Garnis — a battery company partially owned by the prime minister — received a €200,000 subsidized loan from the state development bank ILTE while Paluckas was in office. The prime minister denies any conflict of interest, saying he is not involved in company operations and did not influence ILTE’s decision on the loan. He requested that the Chief Official Ethics Commission, which answers to the parliament, assesses the situation.  “The proposed investigation will focus on the prime minister’s actions, his behavior during the government meeting” where ILTE was discussed, Gediminas Sakalauskas, who chairs the commission, said Wednesday. “We will try to answer the question of whether or not there was any violation of the law.”  Though some opposition lawmakers called on Paluckas to step down following the allegations, the prime minister said he will not, adding that the journalists’ “claims are pulled out of thin air.” The probe could take up to three months, according to Sakalauskas.

LONDON — A Conservative member of the House of Lords is working as a paid adviser to an artificial intelligence firm while serving as the official opposition party’s spokesperson on the emerging tech. Jonathan Berry, who is known as Viscount Camrose in the Lords, took up the role with Conquer Technology Ltd — which offers AI consulting and software engineering services — in February, months after Conservative Leader Kemi Badenoch appointed him as AI lead for the Tories in opposition. There is no suggestion that Berry — who was Britain’s first AI minister in Rishi Sunak’s government — or Conquer Technology have broken any parliamentary rules with the appointment, which was cleared by the Westminster revolving door watchdog. However, the role comes amid growing scrutiny of peers’ outside interests and mounting questions about where parliament should draw the line on second jobs. James Bolton-Jones of campaign group Spotlight on Corruption, which presses for more transparent and accountable institutions in the U.K., warned that Berry’s paid gig with the firm could undermine his ability to weigh in on government AI policy. “For a shadow minister covering a crucial sector like AI to be dispensing paid-for advice to a firm operating in that sector is an obvious and unacceptable conflict of interest that risks undermining robust and clear-eyed opposition scrutiny of government AI policy at a critical time,” he argued. Berry was handed the opposition role by Badenoch in September last year. He had previously served as an AI minister in the last Conservative government, meaning his job with Conquer Technology required clearance from Westminster’s revolving door watchdog, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA). ACOBA gave the job the green light while imposing additional conditions on Berry’s role to mitigate the risk his “network and influence within government may offer, or be seen to, unfairly advantage” the firm, or that contacts made whilst in office could be used to “gain business.” Alongside a blanket two-year ban on directly lobbying the U.K. government on behalf of the firm, the watchdog barred Berry for two years from advising the firm or its clients on any policy or regulatory decision he had a material role in developing while in office. Berry told POLITICO he takes “very great care to avoid any kind of conflict of interest with my parliamentary role, both by precisely following the conditions set by ACOBA, and by being clear with colleagues on the limits of where I can advise.” The Conservative peer said that while he did not have any outside interests during his time serving as a government minister, “now outside of government, like other members of the House of Lords, including from the front benches of all opposition parties, I can take outside jobs — in the case of former ministers, this is subject to lengthy scrutiny and approval by ACOBA”. He added: “I don’t recognise any conflict of interest between my work in parliament and my work with Conquer.” A Conservative Party spokesperson defended Berry taking up the advisory job while serving as an opposition frontbencher, saying: “Unlike the House of Commons, peers are not full-time legislators, and opposition peers do not receive a salary.” “Peers will have a wide range of outside and paid interests. Firm rules are in place to ensure the declaration of financial interests, and which ban Parliamentary lobbying by peers.” They added: “Viscount Camrose’s appointment has been approved by ACOBA, and he will update his register of interests and declare his interests in the usual manner in the House.” ‘UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE’ In a LinkedIn post celebrating Berry’s appointment, Conquer’s CEO Jonny Ward said Berry’s “experience as shadow AI minister gives him a unique perspective on the challenges and opportunities AI presents across business and society. His insight will be invaluable as we continue to grow and support organisations navigating this space.” Another post from the firm’s LinkedIn page said of the hire: “In his role as shadow AI minister, [Berry] is helping shape the conversation around AI’s impact on society, business, and government.” A further three Conservative peers have also taken advisory roles with the company, including former Health Minister James Bethell, ex-1922 committee chairman Graham Brady and journalist Daniel Finkelstein. According to data from the Electoral Commission — the U.K.’s election finance watchdog — the firm has donated over £30,000 to the Conservative Party since 2024. Green Party peer Jenny Jones warned about the potential for crossover between Berry’s parliamentary role and his outside job with Conquer, which did not respond to a request for comment. “Where there is money to be made, we see a revolving door between the houses of parliament and the private sector,” she said. “It is particularly egregious for a front-bench politician to take on a second job for a firm directly related to their portfolio.”

BRUSSELS — The European Commission launched an internal disciplinary probe into one of its senior officials, Henrik Hololei, over concerns he allegedly violated rules on conflicts of interest, transparency, gift acceptance and document disclosure, according to documents seen by POLITICO. The internal probe comes five months after the European Public Prosecutor’s Office opened a criminal investigation into corruption allegations involving the Estonian politician Hololei. That criminal case was prompted by a report from French newspaper Libération, which revealed that Hololei — then a senior EU transport official — exchanged confidential details about a major aviation deal with Qatar in return for gifts for himself and his inner circle, including stays in a five-star hotel in Doha. The claims were based on confidential findings from a 2023 inquiry by the European Anti-Fraud Office, which was triggered by POLITICO revelations and ended last year in the Commission recommending disciplinary proceedings. Since then, Hololei took up a new role with a reduction in pay as Hors Classe Adviser at the Directorate-General for International Partnerships. He was notified on March 21 of this year that he faced an internal disciplinary procedure from the Commission, according to the documents seen by POLITICO. “This internal disciplinary procedure is ongoing and is carried out within a reasonable period of time, account being taken of both the interests of the institution and of the person concerned,” a Commission spokesperson said when asked. The Commission’s probe, overseen by Budget Commissioner Piotr Serafin, examines “potential breaches” of four articles of the Commission’s staff regulation. These pertain to “unauthorized acceptance of gifts,” “conflict of interest,” “unauthorized disclosure of documents” and “breach of the rules on transparency and the Commission Guide to Missions,” per the document.  The Commission was previously criticized for not taking measures when handling the Hololei case, especially after EU prosecutors found grounds to open a criminal probe on the case. | Rodrigo Antunes/EFE via EPA If a staffer is found to be in breach of the Commission’s internal regulations, penalties can range from a written reprimand to removal from their job and reduction in their pension payouts. (The Commission’s Investigation and Disciplinary Office oversees internal disciplinary proceedings involving the institution’s own staff.) In a written response to questions from French Socialist member of the European Parliament Chloé Ridel late last year, Serafin wrote that there was no “evidence of criminal conduct” in the report on Hololei by the fraud office, which is also known as OLAF. Ridel then told POLITICO she was disappointed that the Commission hadn’t considered suspending an air travel agreement between the EU and Qatar that Hololei helped to negotiate. “The Commission’s refusal to consider suspending the agreement … is particularly bold, especially at a time when European citizens’ trust in their institutions has already been severely shaken,” she said in a written statement on April 10. Hololei did not reply to a written request for comment.  The Commission was previously criticized for not taking measures when handling the Hololei case, especially after EU prosecutors found grounds to open a criminal probe on the case. Asked whether the decision to open their own investigation on Hololei was triggered by the prosecutor’s probe, the Commission’s spokesperson said the prosecutors “did not alert the Commission that an investigation was open on Hololei.” The top EU prosecutor, which by nature doesn’t have to provide information on whom it investigates, did, however, confirm its probe publicly. “We have no comment, since this is an ongoing EPPO investigation,” said a spokesperson from the public prosecutor’s office, which is also known as EPPO.

ROME — Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has scaled back a proposal that would give substantial salary increases to ministers without parliamentary seats following three days of public outcry.  The law, suggested amid ongoing budget talks, proposed raising the salaries of technocratically appointed ministers by some €7,000 a month to equalize their pay with ministers who receive separate salaries as MPs.  The pay rise would have applied to around eight ministers, including Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi and Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli.  The mooted increase — though small in the grand scheme of things — drew swift condemnation from opposition lawmakers who contrasted it with the meager provisions afforded for health care and pensions in a budget that has been kept tight in service of major tax cuts and an European Union push for deficit consolidation.  Lawmakers in left-populist party 5Star Movement blasted the proposal as a “shameful law.” Elly Schlein, leader of the center-left Democratic Party, said: “While with one hand they increase the salaries of ministers, with the other they block the minimum wage.  Let it not be said that this government does not know how to choose priorities.” It wasn’t clear, even in government circles, who authored the bill. Hounded at a party political festival over the weekend, Giuli treated reporters to an awkward two minutes of silence.  Following the backlash, Defense Minister Guido Crosetto, who also would have benefited from the increase, asked officials engaged in frantic late-night discussions ahead of a parliamentary debate on the budget to withdraw the proposal, saying it was necessary to “avoid unnecessary controversy.”  A watered-down amendment was subsequently proposed that would allow only travel reimbursements for ministers from a €500,000 dedicated pot for 2025. Elected ministers receive a monthly net income of around €5,000 as well as €3,500 in accommodation expenses and €3,690 to pay for staff. The law would have entitled unelected ministers to those expenses as well as an additional €1,200 a year for phone bills. By contrast, a mooted increase to pensions in Italy is expected to amount to around €1.80 a month. 

In the summer of 2013, the then-owner of POLITICO, Robert Allbritton, asked me a question in a casual, just-shooting-the-breeze tone of voice: Do you think the Graham family would ever sell The Washington Post? My answer was swift and emphatic: Never. Before becoming a founder of POLITICO, I had spent the first two decades of my career at the Post and followed its fortunes with more than a passing interest. Although the paper was facing challenges, the institution and what it stood for were too intimately intertwined with the Graham family’s identity and values to ever let go. A few days later, I realized I had been the brunt of an Allbritton joke. He already knew the Grahams were selling. He had been invited to be considered as a buyer and declined. But someone many times richer than Allbritton had accepted. Even more startling than the news that the Post would be sold was the purchaser: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s wealthiest men. He’s now at the center of an angry storm — fanned by both Post employees and readers — over his startling last-minute intervention to spike an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris over Donald Trump. The uproar puts the larger arc of his ownership in a sharp light. Eleven years ago, most of my old colleagues at the Post were sad to see the Graham family go but thrilled to see Bezos arrive. He confessed he didn’t know much about journalism but spoke of his pride to own a storied institution and pledged to give the paper “runway” to figure out a new publishing strategy. Runway was gratefully interpreted at the paper as a willingness to invest, and tolerance for near-term losses. Over the past decade, Bezos has made good on both counts, though it is hardly clear whether the paper has found a durable publishing model. In recent years, according to press accounts, the company has sustained annual losses approaching a hundred million dollars. There are two primary factors that keep the Post from becoming just another metropolitan daily newspaper — one of a couple dozen or so — with a distinguished past, troubled present, and dark future. The first factor is the mystique of the Post. This aura owes to its location in the nation’s capital, and to its history as the paper of the Watergate scandal, of famed editor Ben Bradlee and of the influential Graham family, in particular Katharine Graham and her son Donald Graham. Mystique may sound like a vague concept, but its value is real. Great institutions — from newspapers to colleges and even sports teams — have a narrative built around them and certain values that flow from that narrative. For what it’s worth, crafting an institutional story and cultivating shared values are also what we try to do at POLITICO. These values are why anyone, from staff to readers, would care about the fate of a news organization. The second factor is far from vague: Bezos’ status as a fantastically rich titan of technology, as well as a globe-trotting, yacht-owning celebrity with personal and financial interests that span from retail to entertainment to commercial exploitation of space. Surely someone like that has the wallet and wisdom to write a new chapter for the Post. What’s become steadily clear over the past decade — and glaringly obvious over the past couple of days — is that those two factors are in tension with one another. Long-term, they are probably irreconcilable. The job of a news organization, and especially Washington-based ones, is to cover power. Bezos is too powerful — and has too many diverse interests across too many spheres — for any news organization he owns not to be plausibly compromised in the minds of its employees and its audience. The big technology companies — including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and the owners of Google, Facebook and Elon Musk’s X — in the modern global economy have a reach that more nearly approximates some nation-states than traditional companies. Moreover, they penetrate the daily lives of customers — what they buy, where they go, what they read and watch — in ways that are far more intimate than the reach of any non-totalitarian government. How to balance these companies’ innovative power and astonishing ability to anticipate and satisfy consumer demand on one hand, with their ability to spy on and manipulate users and bully competitors on the other, is one of the great policy questions of the age. The Post has a breathtaking conflict at the center of what should be its news agenda. I’m willing to extend Bezos the benefit of the doubt that his motivations were not craven fear that Trump might win and punish Amazon, Blue Origin, the Post or any of Bezos’ other financial interests. He has shown toughness on multiple occasions in his career, including a few years ago when he accused the National Enquirer of “extortion and blackmail” for threatening to expose his extramarital affair with his now-fiancé Lauren Sanchez. (As it happens, former Post editor Martin Baron was not willing to extend that benefit, saying the intervention reflected “cowardice” and “disturbing spinelessness.”) I am not willing to give Bezos the benefit of the doubt on the larger question: Is he clueless about the larger responsibilities of stewardship over a serious news organization? These responsibilities include protecting both the perception and reality of independence and intellectual integrity. A confession here: I find many debates over journalistic ethics to be tedious and overly precious. Let’s face it: No one was breathlessly waiting for the Post editorial page to make an oracular pronouncement about who it backed for president. No one who has read its other editorials over the past decade could be in doubt over where the page stands on the question of Trump, his policies, or his fitness for office. No doubt the spiked editorial was earnest and stylishly turned. But Bezos surely did more at the margins to help Harris by spiking the editorial — by outraging her supporters — than if it had been published on Sunday. There are principled reasons for news organizations not to play the endorsement game. There are also principled reasons for them to have no editorial page at all. POLITICO from its early days chose not to, regarding editorials as a distraction from its news mission. But the time to assert those principles is not days before the election, and after the Post has already made lots of other endorsements this year. Without knowing for sure, I could accept that Bezos believes he has no trouble keeping his Amazon ownership separate from the Post. He probably has not intervened to squash negative coverage, or to encourage positive stories about any of the people and companies he happens to support. In my own case, over nearly four decades working for three owners — the Grahams, Allbritton, and since 2021, POLITICO’s new owner, German-based Axel Springer SE — I have never, not once, felt such crude pressure applied to me, nor even very often felt the indirect pressure of hovering or nervous throat-clearing. Journalists tend not to be very circumspect, and if this is happening in any meaningful way at the Post I expect we would know. So what’s the problem? The problem is that media ownership is a serious obligation. It involves steady support of the work that journalists do and willingness to stand up to the pressures from government and corporate interests who don’t like that work. Even more, in the present era of disruption, it requires steady engagement with the task of harnessing a viable editorial model with a viable business model. There’s scant evidence the Post has achieved this. There’s also scant evidence that Bezos is preoccupied with the question, nor, given the turmoil in recent year at the top ranks of the Post, that he has found the right people to be preoccupied on his behalf. Anyone following Bezos in recent years knows what his preoccupations have been. In addition to Amazon, where he is no longer CEO, it has been with space trips, the breakup of his first marriage and the gossip-pages romance that is now leading to his second, with the fitness routine that has left him surprisingly buff at age 60, with his Mediterranean cruises, and so on. It’s hardly my concern, but among those who have the right to wonder about the founder’s priorities would be Amazon shareholders. Whatever one thinks of Bezos’ motivations, it does not seem farfetched to believe that Trump might wish to punish his companies if he was mad at the Post. Bradlee, the Watergate editor who died ten years ago, once said, “The older I get the more finely tuned my sense of conflict of interest seems to become.” He believed journalists should have no outside affiliations with companies, civic institutions, or clubs, and added: “I truly believe that people on the business side of newspapers shouldn’t either.” He said he lobbied Katharine Graham to shed nearly all her board directorships, including on companies her own father had founded. Bezos is an awesomely accomplished business leader — one of the largest figures on the global stage over the past generation — but he is impossibly far from that standard. He would be better off, and so would the Post, if he sold the property or somehow put it in the hands of a truly independent nonprofit entity. Uproars of the sort we saw this week are only going to keep coming.