In the desolate Arctic desert of Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, Europeans are building defenses against a new, up-and-coming security threat: space hacks. A Lithuanian company called Astrolight is constructing a ground station, with support from the European Space Agency, that will use laser beams to download voluminous data from satellites in a fast and secure manner, it announced last month.  It’s just one example of how Europe is moving to harden the security of its satellites, as rising geopolitical tensions and an expanding spectrum of hybrid threats are pushing space communications to the heart of the bloc’s security plans. For years, satellite infrastructure was treated by policymakers as a technical utility rather than a strategic asset. That changed in 2022, when a cyberattack on the Viasat satellite network coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.   Satellites have since become popular targets for interference, espionage and disruption. The European Commission in June warned that space was becoming “more contested,” flagging increasing cyberattacks and attempts at electronic interference targeting satellites and ground stations. Germany and the United Kingdom warned earlier this year of the growing threat posed by Russian and Chinese space satellites, which are regularly spotted spying on their satellites.  EU governments are now racing to boost their resilience and reduce reliance on foreign technology, both through regulations like the new Space Act and investments in critical infrastructure. The threat is crystal clear in Greenland, Laurynas Mačiulis, the chief executive officer of Astrolight, said. “The problem today is that around 80 percent of all the [space data] traffic is downlinked to a single location in Svalbard, which is an island shared between different countries, including Russia,” he said in an interview. Europe’s main Arctic ground station sits in Svalbard and supports both the navigation systems of Galileo and Copernicus. While the location is strategic, it is also extremely sensitive due to nearby Russian and Chinese activities. Crucially, the station relies on a single undersea cable to connect to the internet, which has been damaged several times. “In case of intentional or unintentional damage of this cable, you lose access to most of the geo-intelligence satellites, which is, of course, very critical. So our aim is to deploy a complementary satellite ground station up in Greenland,” Mačiulis said. THE MUSK OF IT ALL A centerpiece of Europe’s ambitions to have secure, European satellite communication is IRIS², a multibillion-euro secure connectivity constellation pitched in 2022 and designed to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink system. “Today, communications — for instance in Ukraine — are far too dependent on Starlink,” said Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the founding chairman of political consultancy Rasmussen Global, speaking at an event in Brussels in November. “That dependence rests on the shifting ideas of an American billionaire. That’s too risky. We have to build a secure communications system that is independent of the United States.” The European system, which will consist of 18 satellites operating in low and medium Earth orbit, aims to provide Europe with fast and encrypted communication. “Even if someone intercepts the signal [of IRIS² ], they will not be able to decrypt it,” Piero Angeletti, head of the Secure Connectivity Space Segment Office at the European Space Agency, told POLITICO. “This will allow us to have a secure system that is also certified and accredited by the national security entities.” The challenge is that IRIS² is still at least four years away from becoming operational. WHO’S IN CHARGE? While Europe beefs up its secure satellite systems, governments are still streamlining how they can coordinate cyber defenses and space security. In many cases, that falls to both space or cyber commands, which, unlike traditional military units, are relatively new and often still being built out. Clémence Poirier, a cyberdefense researcher at the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, said that EU countries must now focus on maturing them. “European states need to keep developing those commands,” she told POLITICO. “Making sure that they coordinate their action, that there are clear mandates and responsibilities when it comes to cyber security, cyber defensive operations, cyber offensive operations, and also when it comes to monitoring the threat.” Industry, too, is struggling to fill the gaps. Most cybersecurity firms do not treat space as a sector in its own right, leaving satellite operators in a blind spot. Instead, space systems are folded into other categories: Earth-observation satellites often fall under environmental services, satellite TV under media, and broadband constellations like Starlink under internet services. That fragmentation makes it harder for space companies to assess risk, update threat models or understand who they need to defend against. It also complicates incident response: while advanced tools exist for defending against cyberattacks on terrestrial networks, those tools often do not translate well to space systems. “Cybersecurity in space is a bit different,” Poirier added. “You cannot just implement whatever solution you have for your computers on Earth and just deploy that to your satellite.”

A fair, fast and competitive transition begins with what already works and then rapidly scales it up.  Across the EU commercial road transport sector, the diversity of operations is met with a diversity of solutions. Urban taxis are switching to electric en masse. Many regional coaches run on advanced biofuels, with electrification emerging in smaller applications such as school services, as European e-coach technologies are still maturing and only now beginning to enter the market. Trucks electrify rapidly where operationally and financially possible, while others, including long-haul and other hard-to-electrify segments, operate at scale on HVO (hydrotreated vegetable oil) or biomethane, cutting emissions immediately and reliably. These are real choices made every day by operators facing different missions, distances, terrains and energy realities, showing that decarbonization is not a single pathway but a spectrum of viable ones.  Building on this diversity, many operators are already modernizing their fleets and cutting emissions through electrification. When they can control charging, routing and energy supply, electric vehicles often deliver a positive total cost of ownership (TCO), strong reliability and operational benefits. These early adopters prove that electrification works where the enabling conditions are in place, and that its potential can expand dramatically with the right support. > Decarbonization is not a single pathway but a spectrum of viable ones chosen > daily by operators facing real-world conditions. But scaling electrification faces structural bottlenecks. Grid capacity is constrained across the EU, and upgrades routinely take years. As most heavy-duty vehicle charging will occur at depots, operators cannot simply move around to look for grid opportunities. They are bound to the location of their facilities.  The recently published grid package tries, albeit timidly, to address some of these challenges, but it neither resolves the core capacity deficiencies nor fixes the fundamental conditions that determine a positive TCO: the predictability of electricity prices, the stability of delivered power, and the resulting charging time. A truck expected to recharge in one hour at a high-power station may wait far longer if available grid power drops. Without reliable timelines, predictable costs and sufficient depot capacity, most transport operators cannot make long-term investment decisions. And the grid is only part of the enabling conditions needed: depot charging infrastructure itself requires significant additional investment, on top of vehicles that already cost several hundreds of thousands of euros more than their diesel equivalents.  This is why the EU needs two things at once: strong enablers for electrification and hydrogen; and predictability on what the EU actually recognizes as clean. Operators using renewable fuels, from biomethane to advanced biofuels and HVO, delivering up to 90 percent CO2 reduction, are cutting emissions today. Yet current CO2 frameworks, for both light-duty vehicles and heavy-duty trucks, fail to recognize fleets running on these fuels as part of the EU’s decarbonization solution for road transport, even when they deliver immediate, measurable climate benefits. This lack of clarity limits investment and slows additional emission reductions that could happen today. > Policies that punish before enabling will not accelerate the transition; a > successful shift must empower operators, not constrain them. The revision of both CO2 standards, for cars and vans, and for heavy-duty vehicles, will therefore be pivotal. They must support electrification and hydrogen where they fit the mission, while also recognizing the contribution of renewable and low-carbon fuels across the fleet. Regulations that exclude proven clean options will not accelerate the transition. They will restrict it.  With this in mind, the question is: why would the EU consider imposing purchasing mandates on operators or excessively high emission-reduction targets on member states that would, in practice, force quotas on buyers? Such measures would punish before enabling, removing choice from those who know their operations best. A successful transition must empower operators, not constrain them.  The EU’s transport sector is committed and already delivering. With the right enablers, a technology-neutral framework, and clarity on what counts as clean, the EU can turn today’s early successes into a scalable, fair and competitive decarbonization pathway.  We now look with great interest to the upcoming Automotive Package, hoping to see pragmatic solutions to these pressing questions, solutions that EU transport operators, as the buyers and daily users of all these technologies, are keenly expecting. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT * The sponsor is IRU – International Road Transport Union  * The ultimate controlling entity is IRU – International Road Transport Union  More information here.

The Radio Spectrum Policy Group’s (RSPG) Nov. 12 opinion on the upper 6-GHz band is framed as a long-term strategic vision for Europe’s digital future. But its practical effect is far less ambitious: it grants mobile operators a cost-free reservation of one of Europe’s most valuable spectrum resources, without deployment obligations, market evidence or a realistic plan for implementation. > At a moment when Europe is struggling to accelerate the deployment of digital > infrastructure and close the gap with global competitors, this decision > amounts to a strategic pause dressed up as policy foresight. The opinion even invites the mobile industry to develop products for the upper 6-GHz band, when policy should be guided by actual market demand and product deployment, not the other way around. At a moment when Europe is struggling to accelerate the deployment of digital infrastructure and close the gap with global competitors, this decision amounts to a strategic pause dressed up as policy foresight. The cost of inaction is real. Around the world, advanced 6-GHz Wi-Fi is already delivering high-capacity, low-latency connectivity. The United States, Canada, South Korea and others have opened the 6-GHz band for telemedicine, automated manufacturing, immersive education, robotics and a multitude of other high-performance Wi-Fi connectivity use cases. These are not experimental concepts; they are operational deployments generating tangible socioeconomic value. Holding the upper 6- GHz band in reserve delays these benefits at a time when Europe is seeking to strengthen competitiveness, digital inclusion, and digital sovereignty. The opinion introduces another challenge by calling for “flexibility” for member states. In practice, this means regulatory fragmentation across 27 markets, reopening the door to divergent national spectrum policies — precisely the outcome Europe has spent two decades trying to avert with the Digital Single Market. > Without a credible roadmap, reserving the band for hypothetical cellular > networks only exacerbates policy uncertainty without delivering progress. Equally significant is what the opinion does not address. The upper 6-GHz band is already home to ‘incumbents’: fixed links and satellite services that support public safety, government operations and industrial connectivity. Any meaningful mobile deployment would require refarming these incumbents — a technically complex, politically sensitive and financially burdensome process. To date, no member state has proposed a viable plan for how such relocation would proceed, how much it would cost or who would pay. Without a credible roadmap, reserving the band for hypothetical cellular networks only exacerbates policy uncertainty without delivering progress. There is, however, a pragmatic alternative. The European Commission and the member states committed to advancing Europe’s connectivity can allow controlled Wi-Fi access to the upper 6-GHz band now — bringing immediate benefits for citizens and enterprises — while establishing clear, evidence-based criteria for any future cellular deployments. Those criteria should include demonstrated commercial viability, validated coexistence with incumbents, and fully funded relocation plans where necessary. This approach preserves long-term policy flexibility for member states and mobile operators, while ensuring that spectrum delivers measurable value today rather than being held indefinitely in reserve. > Spectrum is not an abstract asset. RSPG itself calls it a scarce resource that > must be used efficiently, but this opinion falls short of that principle. Spectrum is not an abstract asset. RSPG itself calls it a scarce resource that must be used efficiently, but this opinion falls short of that principle. Spectrum underpins Europe’s competitiveness, connectivity, and digital innovation. But its value is unlocked through use, not by shelving it in anticipation that hypothetical future markets might someday justify withholding action now. To remain competitive in the next decade, Europe needs a 6-GHz policy grounded in evidence, aligned with the single market, and focused on real-world impact. The upper 6-GHz band should be a driver of European innovation, not the latest casualty of strategic hesitation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT * The sponsor is Wi-Fi Alliance * The ultimate controlling entity is Wi-Fi Alliance More information here.

BRUSSELS — After years of being treated as an outlier for its hardline stance on migration, Denmark says it has finally brought the rest of the EU on board with its tough approach. Europe’s justice and home affairs ministers on Monday approved new measures allowing EU countries to remove failed asylum seekers, set up processing centers overseas and create removal hubs outside their borders — measures Copenhagen has long advocated. The deal was “many years in the making,” said Rasmus Stoklund, Denmark’s center-left minister for integration who has driven migration negotiations during his country’s six-month presidency of the Council of the EU. Stoklund told POLITICO that when he first started working on the migration brief a decade ago in the Danish parliament, his fellow left-wingers around the bloc viewed his government’s position as so egregious that “other social democrats wouldn’t meet with me.” Over the last few years, “there’s been a huge change in perception,” Stoklund said. When the deal was done Monday, the “sigh of relief” from ministers and their aides was palpable, with people embracing one another and heaping praise on both the Danish brokers and Ursula von der Leyen’s European Commission that put forward the initial proposal, according to a diplomat who was in the room. Sweden’s Migration Minister Johan Forssell, a member of the conservative Moderate party, told POLITICO Monday’s deal was vital “to preserve, like, any public trust at all in the migration system today … we need to show that the system is working.” Stockholm, which has in the past prided itself on taking a liberal approach to migration, has recently undergone a Damascene conversion to the Danish model, implementing tough measures to limit family reunification, tightening rules around obtaining Swedish citizenship, and limiting social benefits for new arrivals. Forssell said the deal was important because “many people” around Europe criticize the EU over inaction on migration “because they cannot do themselves what [should be done] on the national basis.” The issue, he said, is a prime example of “why there must be a strong European Union.” SEALING THE DEAL Monday’s deal — whose impact will “hopefully be quite dramatic,” Stoklund said — comes two years after the EU signed off on a new law governing asylum and migration, which must be implemented by June. Voters have “made clear to governments all over the European Union, that they couldn’t accept that they weren’t able to control the access to their countries,” Stoklund said. “Governments have realized that if they didn’t take this question seriously, then [voters] would back more populist movements that would take it seriously — and use more drastic measures in order to find new solutions.” Stockholm has recently undergone a Damascene conversion to the Danish model, implementing tough measures to limit family reunification, tightening rules around obtaining Swedish citizenship, and limiting social benefits for new arrivals. | Henrick Montgomery/EPA Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner, the Danish Council presidency and ministers were at pains to point out that Monday’s agreement showed the EU could get deals done. After the last EU election in 2024, the new Commission’s “first task” was to “bring our European house in order,” Brunner said. “Today we’re showing that Europe can actually deliver and we delivered quite a lot.” WHAT’S NEW The ministers backed new rules to detain and deport migrants, including measures that would allow the bloc and individual countries to cut deals to set up migration processing hubs in other nations, regardless of whether the people being moved there have a connection with those countries. Ministers supported changes that will allow capitals to reject applications if asylum seekers, prior to first entering the EU, could have received international protection in a non-EU country the bloc deems safe, and signed off on a common list of countries of origin considered safe. Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia are on that latter list, as are countries that are candidates to join the EU. But the deal also leaves room for exceptions — such as Ukraine, which is at war. Asylum seekers won’t automatically have the right to remain in the EU while they appeal a ruling that their refuge application was inadmissible. The next step for the measures will be negotiations with the European Parliament, once it has decided its position on the proposals. Max Griera contributed reporting.

Europe’s security does not depend solely on our physical borders and their defense. It rests on something far less visible, and far more sensitive: the digital networks that keep our societies, economies and democracies functioning every second of the day. > Without resilient networks, the daily workings of Europe would grind to a > halt, and so too would any attempt to build meaningful defense readiness. A recent study by Copenhagen Economics confirms that telecom operators have become the first line of defense in Europe’s security architecture. Their networks power essential services ranging from emergency communications and cross-border healthcare to energy systems, financial markets, transport and, increasingly, Europe’s defense capabilities. Without resilient networks, the daily workings of Europe would grind to a halt, and so too would any attempt to build meaningful defense readiness. This reality forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: Europe cannot build credible defense capabilities on top of an economically strained, structurally fragmented telecom sector. Yet this is precisely the risk today. A threat landscape outpacing Europe’s defenses The challenges facing Europe are evolving faster than our political and regulatory systems can respond. In 2023 alone, ENISA recorded 188 major incidents, causing 1.7 billion lost user-hours, the equivalent of taking entire cities offline. While operators have strengthened their systems and outage times fell by more than half in 2024 compared with the previous year, despite a growing number of incidents, the direction of travel remains clear: cyberattacks are more sophisticated, supply chains more vulnerable and climate-related physical disruptions more frequent. Hybrid threats increasingly target civilian digital infrastructure as a way to weaken states. Telecom networks, once considered as technical utilities, have become a strategic asset essential to Europe’s stability. > Europe cannot deploy cross-border defense capabilities without resilient, > pan-European digital infrastructure. Nor can it guarantee NATO > interoperability with 27 national markets, divergent rules and dozens of > sub-scale operators unable to invest at continental scale. Our allies recognize this. NATO recently encouraged members to spend up to 1.5 percent of their GDP on protecting critical infrastructure. Secretary General Mark Rutte also urged investment in cyber defense, AI, and cloud technologies, highlighting the military benefits of cloud scalability and edge computing – all of which rely on high-quality, resilient networks. This is a clear political signal that telecom security is not merely an operational matter but a geopolitical priority. The link between telecoms and defense is deeper than many realize. As also explained in the recent Arel report, Much More than a Network, modern defense capabilities rely largely on civilian telecom networks. Strong fiber backbones, advanced 5G and future 6G systems, resilient cloud and edge computing, satellite connectivity, and data centers form the nervous system of military logistics, intelligence and surveillance. Europe cannot deploy cross-border defense capabilities without resilient, pan-European digital infrastructure. Nor can it guarantee NATO interoperability with 27 national markets, divergent rules and dozens of sub-scale operators unable to invest at continental scale. Fragmentation has become one of Europe’s greatest strategic vulnerabilities. The reform Europe needs: An investment boost for digital networks At the same time, Europe expects networks to become more resilient, more redundant, less dependent on foreign technology and more capable of supporting defense-grade applications. Security and resilience are not side tasks for telecom operators, they are baked into everything they do. From procurement and infrastructure design to daily operations, operators treat these efforts as core principles shaping how networks are built, run and protected. Therefore, as the Copenhagen Economics study shows, the level of protection Europe now requires will demand substantial additional capital. > It is unrealistic to expect world-class, defense-ready infrastructure to > emerge from a model that has become structurally unsustainable. This is the right ambition, but the economic model underpinning the sector does not match these expectations. Due to fragmentation and over-regulation, Europe’s telecom market invests less per capita than global peers, generates roughly half the return on capital of operators in the United States and faces rising costs linked to expanding security obligations. It is unrealistic to expect world-class, defense-ready infrastructure to emerge from a model that has become structurally unsustainable. A shift in policy priorities is therefore essential. Europe must place investment in security and resilience at the center of its political agenda. Policy must allow this reality to be reflected in merger assessments, reduce overlapping security rules and provide public support where the public interest exceeds commercial considerations. This is not state aid; it is strategic social responsibility. Completing the single market for telecommunications is central to this agenda. A fragmented market cannot produce the secure, interoperable, large-scale solutions required for modern defense. The Digital Networks Act must simplify and harmonize rules across the EU, supported by a streamlined governance that distinguishes between domestic matters and cross-border strategic issues. Spectrum policy must also move beyond national silos, allowing Europe to avoid conflicts with NATO over key bands and enabling coherent next-generation deployments. Telecom policy nowadays is also defense policy. When we measure investment gaps in digital network deployment, we still tend to measure simple access to 5G and fiber. However, we should start considering that — if security, resilience and defense-readiness are to be taken into account — the investment gap is much higher that the €200 billion already estimated by the European Commission. Europe’s strategic choice The momentum for stronger European defense is real — but momentum fades if it is not seized. If Europe fails to modernize and secure its telecom infrastructure now, it risks entering the next decade with a weakened industrial base, chronic underinvestment, dependence on non-EU technologies and networks unable to support advanced defense applications. In that scenario, Europe’s democratic resilience would erode in parallel with its economic competitiveness, leaving the continent more exposed to geopolitical pressure and technological dependency. > If Europe fails to modernize and secure its telecom infrastructure now, it > risks entering the next decade with a weakened industrial base, chronic > underinvestment, dependence on non-EU technologies and networks unable to > support advanced defense applications. Europe still has time to change course and put telecoms at the center of its agenda — not as a technical afterthought, but as a core pillar of its defense strategy. The time for incremental steps has passed. Europe must choose to build the network foundations of its security now or accept that its strategic ambitions will remain permanently out of reach. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Disclaimer POLITICAL ADVERTISEMENT * The sponsor is Connect Europe AISBL * The ultimate controlling entity is Connect Europe AISBL * The political advertisement is linked to advocacy on EU digital, telecom and industrial policy, including initiatives such as the Digital Networks Act, Digital Omnibus, and connectivity, cybersecurity, and defence frameworks aimed at strengthening Europe’s digital competitiveness. More information here.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered pointed remarks Wednesday to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić about his country’s progress toward EU membership. “Now is the moment for Serbia to get concrete about joining our union,” said the Commission chief, during a press conference in Belgrade on her tour of the Western Balkans. “Therefore, we need to see progress, on the rule of law, the electoral framework and media freedom,” von der Leyen added. “I know these reforms are not easy,” she said. “They take patience and endurance. They must include all parts of society and the political spectrum. But they are worth the effort. Because they move you closer to your goal.” Von der Leyen also urged the Serbian president to join the EU in imposing sanctions against Russia. Belgrade has consistently refused to align with the bloc in sanctioning Russian energy and goods, especially since it is almost entirely dependent on Russian gas. “I commend you for reaching 61 percent of alignment with our foreign policy. But more is needed. We want to count on Serbia as a reliable partner,” said von der Leyen. Serbia applied for EU membership in 2009 and was subsequently granted candidate status in 2012, later opening accession negotiations with the EU in 2013. Since then, 22 of the 35 chapters of accession criteria have been opened — but only two have been provisionally closed. Leadership in the Western Balkan country has come under heavy criticism in recent years. Protests triggered by the collapse of the Novi Sad train station canopy in November last year turned into a wider revolt over corruption, accountability, and democratic backsliding, which was met with a violent response from police. The European Green Party criticized the Commission chief’s visit to Serbia, calling it “deeply regrettable that von der Leyen honors Vučić with an official visit without visible reservations, while his regime unlawfully detains students and opposition members and violently represses protesters,” its co-chair Vula Tsetsi said in a statement. The U.S. decided last week to sanction Serbia’s leading oil supplier, the Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS), because it is majority-owned by Russia’s Gazprom Neft. Vučić met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Beijing during a regional security summit in September, reaffirming Serbia’s commitment to purchasing Russian gas and potentially increasing it. “Since the beginning of the Ukrainian crisis, Serbia has been in a very difficult situation and under great pressure, but … we will preserve our neutrality,” said Vučić, utilizing Kremlin terminology for its war on Kyiv.

On Wednesday evening, Emily Cleary, a 47-year-old journalist and public relations consultant from Buckinghamshire in the U.K., was sitting watching TV with her 12-year-old son when she got a BBC alert that Charlie Kirk had been shot. She’d never heard of him, but she soon gathered from the coverage that he was associated with President Donald Trump. “You might have seen him, Mummy,” her son insisted. “He’s the man on TikTok with the round face who shouts all the time.” He began filling her in on a long, detailed list of Kirk’s views. “He thinks that if a 10-year-old gets pregnant she should be forced to keep it,” he explained. In the U.S., Kirk was a well-known figure on both sides of the political spectrum thanks to his proximity to the Trump family and profiles in outlets such as POLITICO Magazine and The New York Times Magazine. On the other side of the Atlantic, a schism appeared this week between those perplexed at why Prime Minister Keir Starmer was making statements about a seemingly obscure American podcaster, and those who already viewed him as a celebrity. Debates about the activist’s legacy sprung up in online spaces not usually known for politics, such as Facebook groups intended for sharing Love Island memes or soccer fan communities on X, with some people saying they will “miss his straight talking.” Parents of teens were surprised to find themselves being educated by their children on an issue of apparent international political importance. To some, this was all the more bewildering given the U.K. offshoot of Kirk’s Turning Point was widely mocked as a huge failure when it tried launching at British universities. But Emily’s son learned about Kirk somewhere else: TikTok’s “for you” page. “He hadn’t just seen a few videos, he was very knowledgeable about everything he believed,” she said, adding that her son “didn’t agree with Kirk but thought he seemed like a nice guy.” “It really unnerved me that he knew more about this person’s ideas than I did.” Kirk first rose to prominence in the U.S. when he cofounded Turning Point USA in 2012. It aimed to challenge what it saw as the dominance of liberal culture on American campuses, establishing a network of conservative activists at schools across the country. Kirk built Turning Point into a massive grassroots operation that has chapters on more than 800 campuses, and some journalists have attributed Trump’s 2024 reelection in part to the group’s voter outreach in Arizona and Wisconsin. But across the pond, Turning Point UK stumbled. Formed in 2019, it initially drew praise from figures on the right of the U.K.’s then-ruling Conservative party, such as former member of parliament Jacob Rees-Mogg and current shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel. However, the official launch on Feb. 1 of that year quickly descended into farce: Its X account was unverified, leading student activists from around the country to set up hundreds of satirical accounts. Media post-mortems concluded the organization failed to capture the mood of U.K. politics. The British hard right tends to fall into two categories: the aristocratic eccentricity of Rees-Mogg, or rough-and-ready street-based movements led by figures such as former soccer hooligan (and Elon Musk favorite) Tommy Robinson. Turning Point USA — known for its highly-produced events full of strobe lights, pyrotechnics and thundering music — was too earnest, too flashy, too American. And although U.K. universities tend to be left-leaning, Kirk’s claim that colleges are “islands of totalitarianism” that curtail free speech didn’t seem to resonate with U.K. students like it did with some in the U.S. “For those interested in opposing group think or campus censorship, organisations and publications already exist [such as] the magazine Spiked Online,” journalist Benedict Spence wrote at the time, adding that “if conservatives are to win round young voters of the future, they will have to do so by policy.” Turning Point UK distanced itself from its previous leadership and mostly moved away from campuses, attempting to reinvent itself as a street-based group. However, five years later in early 2024, Kirk launched his TikTok account and quickly achieved a new level of viral fame on both sides of the Atlantic. Clips of his “Debate Me” events, in which he took on primarily liberal students’ arguments on college campuses, exploded on the platform. This also coincided with a shift in the landscape of the British right toward Kirk’s provocative and extremely online style of politics. Discontent had been swelling around the country as the economic damage of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic began to bite, and far-right movements distrustful of politicians and legacy media gained traction online. While some of Kirk’s favorite topics — such as his staunch opposition to abortion and support of gun rights — have never resonated with Brits, others have converged. Transgender rights moved from a fringe issue to a mainstream talking point, while debates over immigration became so tense they erupted in a series of far-right race riots in August 2024, largely organized and driven by social media. In this political and digital environment, inflammatory culture-war rhetoric found new purchase — and Kirk was a bona fide culture warrior. He called for “a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor,” posted on X last week that “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America” and regularly promoted the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which asserts that elites are engaged in a plot to diminish the voting and cultural power of white Americans via immigration policy. “The American Democrat Party hates this country. They want to see it collapse. They love it when America becomes less white,” he said on his podcast in 2024. Harry Phillips, a 26-year-old truck driver from Kent, just south of London, began turning to influencers for his news during the pandemic, saying he didn’t trust mainstream outlets to truthfully report information such as the Covid-19 death toll. He first came across Kirk’s TikTok videos in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. “I really liked that he was willing to have his beliefs challenged, and that he didn’t do it in an aggressive manner,” he said. “I don’t agree with everything, such as his views on abortion. But I do agree with his stance that there are only two genders, and that gender ideology is being pushed on kids at school.” Through Kirk, Phillips said he discovered other U.S. figures such as far-right influencer Candace Owens and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, whom he now follows on X, as well as more liberal debaters such as TikToker Dean Withers. “America’s such a powerful country, I think we should all keep an eye on what happens there because it can have a knock-on effect here,” he said. University students in the U.K. may not have been concerned about free speech in 2019, but Phillips definitely is. “I believe we’re being very censored by our government in the U.K.,” he said, citing concerns over the numbers of people reportedly arrested for social media posts. He also said Kirk was not just popular with other people his age, but older members of his family too — all of whom are distraught over his death. In May 2025, six years after the original Turning Point U.K. failed to take off, Kirk found his way back to U.K. campuses via the debate societies of elite universities like Oxford and Cambridge. He wasn’t the first far-right provocateur to visit these clubs, which have existed since the 19th century — conservative media mogul Ben Shapiro took part in a Cambridge debate in November 2023. Oxford Union’s most recent president, Anita Okunde, told British GQ these events were an attempt to make the societies, which were widely considered stuffy and stuck-up, “culturally relevant to young people.” Kirk’s hour-long video, “Charlie Kirk vs 400 Cambridge Students and a Professor,” has 2.1 million views on YouTube and has spawned multiple shorter clips, disseminated by his media machine across multiple platforms. Clips from the same debates also exist within a parallel left-wing ecosystem, re-branded with titles such as “Feminist Cambridge Student OBLITERATES Charlie Kirk.” Although Kirk has been lauded in some sections of the media for being open to debate, these videos don’t appear designed to change anyone’s opinion. Both sides have their views reinforced, taking whatever message they prefer to hear. Karen, a British mother in her late 50s who lives on a farm outside the city of Nottingham, said clips of Kirk getting “owned” by progressives are extremely popular with her 17-year-old daughter and her friends. “I had no idea who he was until she reminded me she had shown me some videos before,” said Karen, whose surname POLITICO Magazine is withholding to protect her daughter’s identity from online harassment. “I think he’s a bit too American for them,” she said. “He’s too in-your-face, and they think some of his opinions are just rage-baiting.” The U.K. political landscape is currently in turmoil, with Farage’s Reform U.K. leading the polls at 31 percent while Starmer’s center-left Labour lags behind at 21 percent. Given the unrest at home, it may seem unusual that so many people are heavily engaged with events thousands of miles away in Washington. Social media algorithms play a role pushing content, as do Farage and Robinson’s close relationships with figures such as Trump, Musk and Vice President JD Vance. In any case, young people in the U.K. are as clued into American politics as ever. Cleary’s 12-year-old son’s description of Kirk wasn’t the first time he surprised her with his knowledge of U.S. politics, either: He recently filled her in on Florida’s decision to end vaccine mandates for schoolchildren. “I’m happy that he is inquisitive and he definitely questions things,” she said. However, she wonders if this consumption of politics via social media will shape the way he and his peers view the world for the rest of their lives. “He even says to me, ‘No one my age will ever vote Labour because they’re no good at TikTok,’” she said. “And he says he doesn’t like Reform, but that they made really good social media videos.”

The killing of American conservative influencer Charlie Kirk sparked a wave of condemnation from European leaders across the political spectrum overnight. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, from the center-right European People’s Party, said she was “shocked at the horrific assassination.” “Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife and young children — who were the bedrock of his life.  May they find strength and may he rest in peace,” Metsola wrote in a post on X. The 31-year-old Kirk — a close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump — was shot dead Wednesday while speaking at a college campus in Utah in an apparent act of political violence. He rose to fame as one of  the most influential conservative activists since Trump’s initial ascension to office, playing a key role in mobilizing young people to vote for him. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, from the center-left Labour Party, rebuked political violence and said his thoughts are with Kirk’s loved ones. “It is heartbreaking that a young family has been robbed of a father and a husband. We must all be free to debate openly and freely without fear — there can be no justification for political violence,” Starmer said. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who leads the right-wing Brothers of Italy, expressed her condolences to Kirk’s family, calling the murder “a deep wound for democracy.” “I am shocked by the news of the killing of Charlie Kirk, a young and followed Republican activist. An atrocious murder, a deep wound for democracy and for those who believe in freedom. My condolences to his family, to his loved ones, and to the American conservative community,” she said.

Mario Draghi has a message to the EU’s leaders: I did my bit, now you do yours. Member countries had praised his proposals for fixing the bloc’s sagging economy when he delivered them. One year on, they’re still dragging their feet on actually following the advice — and Draghi is taking on the role of agitator. Europe has introduced few of the recommendations from his European Commission-backed plan to boost competitiveness, which includes continental-scale investments in infrastructure, a revamped energy grid providing affordable power to industry, coordinated military procurement to wean the bloc off of U.S. arms, and a unified financial sector that can pour capital into EU tech startups. Only last month, Draghi warned that governments must make “the massive investments needed in the future,” and “must do it not when circumstances have become unsustainable, but now, when we still have the power to shape our future.” DRAGGING IT OUT   It’s not the first time that the ex-European Central Bank chief has issued dire warnings on Europe’s dimming prospects. When he first presented his report in Brussels, Draghi spoke of the “slow agony” of decline. At the time, EU leaders across the political spectrum heaped praise on the MIT-trained economist’s reforming vision.  French President Emmanuel Macron said that Europe needed to “rush” to deliver the Draghi agenda. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez threw his weight behind the reforms to avoid what he called the risk of falling behind in the most “cutting-edge technological sectors.” Even Germany’s Friedrich Merz, who disagrees with Draghi on the key issue of joint EU debt, parroted the economist when he said that Germany would “do whatever it takes” to shore up its defense sector — a reference to Draghi’s now-famous dictum on the eurozone crisis. But while leaders say they agree on the need for a more cohesive EU, behind the scenes the reform agenda is stalling. “The Draghi report has become the economic doctrine of the EU, and everything we’ve proposed since has been aligned with it,” Stéphane Séjourné, the Commission executive vice president charged with industrial strategy, told POLITICO. Still, he admitted that the “’Draghi effect’ too often fades when legislative texts are discussed by member states.”    A report by the European Policy Innovation Council think tank found that only 11 percent of the Draghi report had been acted on. In the field of energy, no actions have been completed at all. “It’s national interests, it’s national policies, sometimes it’s party political,” said MEP Anna Stürgkh, who recently authored a European Parliament study on the electricity grid. Speaking at an event about the Draghi report one year on, the Austrian Renew Europe lawmaker explained that it often came down to individual countries not wanting to share cheap energy with their neighbors.  In the field of energy, no actions have been completed at all. | Hannibal Hanschke/EPA “If they interconnect with countries that have higher energy prices, their prices will go up,” she said. “That is a fact.”  “It’s not the Commission which is not doing the banking union,” Spanish economist and former MEP Luis Garicano said at the same event, referencing the push to break down the thicket of national rules and vested interests that keeps the banking sector fragmented and country-specific. “It’s the governments that don’t actually want to allow the capital to flow from one country to the next.”  That same parochialism comes up again and again, from common debt — vetoed by so-called frugal countries like Germany and the Netherlands — to defense or to financial sector integration. It doesn’t help that countries are tightening their belts after the Covid-era spending splurge, leaving little money to pursue strategic aims. THE BULLY PULPIT    Draghi is a man used to wielding power directly, having injected hundreds of billions of euros into the eurozone economy during his tenure as ECB president. Earlier this decade he served over a year and a half as the prime minister of Italy.  In his latest incarnation as Europe’s Jiminy Cricket — the unheeded moral advisor — Draghi only has persuasion at his disposal. If on the one hand the frantic pace of events has drawn attention and bureaucratic resources away from the reform program, it’s also served as a powerful validation of his thesis. Draghi has long been a proponent of pooled sovereignty — which is to say that the EU’s member countries are more powerful when they act as a bloc, even if they lose some freedom at the national level. The problem is that it’s up to governments to decide to act. By February, Draghi was already chiding governments for putting the brakes on meaningful change during an appearance in front of the European Parliament. “You say no to public debt, you say no to the single market, you say no to create the capital market union. You can’t say no to everybody [and] everything,” he said. Now, as an intransigent U.S. embarrasses Europe on the world stage, Draghi has warned the window for change may be closing. The way that President Donald Trump got the better of EU negotiators, who were under pressure from capitals to come to a deal, was a case in point.  This was a “very brutal wake-up call,” Draghi warned at a meeting in the Italian seaside town of Rimini last month.  “We had to resign ourselves to tariffs imposed by our largest trading partner and long-standing ally, the United States,” he said. “We have been pushed by the same ally to increase military spending, a decision we might have had to make anyway — but in ways that probably do not reflect Europe’s interests.” The Secretariat-General, which reports to President Ursula von der Leyen, has set up a special unit to work on it. | Jessica Lee/EPA EYES ON BRUSSELS If Draghi is the brain that dreamed up the EU’s economic reform program, then the Commission’s bureaucrats are the hands charged with implementing it. The Secretariat-General, which reports to President Ursula von der Leyen, has set up a special unit to work on it. It’s headed by Heinz Jansen, a German official previously in the Economic Affairs Directorate, and eight staff in total. Critics argue this is a paltry number of staff to be attached to the task force, and that the EU executive could have set up a dedicated directorate. “The president attaches great importance to the implementation of the Competitiveness Compass,” a Commission spokesperson told POLITICO, referring to the EU executive’s plans to implement Draghi’s recommendations. According to officials who spoke with POLITICO, the task force mainly works on delivering wins on the ground, pooling funds and channeling them into a handful of core projects that might give Europe a shot at competing with the U.S. and China technologically. The Commission merged several programs into a new €410 billion fund to finance common industrial aims in its budget proposal, and is issuing a recommendation to governments to coordinate their investments this fall. But here, too, that will inevitably trigger tensions. “Can you really imagine a big EU country funding an industrial plant in Slovenia with its own taxpayers’ money?” asked one EU official. “There is a lack of ambition … the EU executive is taken hostage by some big countries.” “For years, the European Union believed that its economic size, with 450 million consumers, brought with it geopolitical power and influence in international trade relations,” Draghi said. “This year will be remembered as the year in which this illusion evaporated.” Jacopo Barigazzi and Nicholas Vinocur contributed reporting to the article.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission is dialing reform, but not everyone is picking up. Following years of talks, Brussels is almost ready to drop a long-awaited telecommunication blueprint designed to upgrade networks and support the industry. The Digital Networks Act, expected to land Dec. 16, will overhaul the current rulebook to make it easier for operators to roll out 5G and fiber, and boost investment in Europe’s digital infrastructure. But it’s likely to upset players from national governments to tech firms in the process. The continent’s biggest telecom companies have long argued that stifling rules and a fragmented single market make it hard for them to scale and earn sustainable profits — and take European networks to the next level. “Never has connectivity been so important to the life of people” but “at the same time, our industry has trouble in many regions to achieve a decent return on capital,” said Vivek Badrinath, the boss of global mobile association GSMA. But not everyone is buying the crisis pitch — here are the battle lines ahead of the proposal. BIG TELCOS VS. BIG TECH Years of lobbying by Europe’s top telcos to have data-hungry platforms such as TikTok, Netflix and Google’s YouTube help foot the bill for network expansion seem to have paid off. The Commission is now weighing how to tackle “challenges in the cooperation” between tech and telecom players in its reforms. One of the options on the table is turning into a political minefield: Empowering regulators to settle potential disputes between the two groups over how they handle traffic. Opponents of regulatory intervention fear that it will give operators a way to pressure content providers for payments, akin to the unpopular proposal known as “fair share” that was floated under the last Commission. At worst, they say, it could even upend the internet as we know it by undermining net neutrality — the principle that service providers need to treat all traffic equally, without throttling or censoring. “This would have immediate and far-reaching consequences, harming European consumers, businesses, digital rights and the sustainability of the creative and cultural sectors, ultimately risking a fragmented Internet and single market,” a broad coalition, ranging from civil society and media organizations to audiovisual players, wrote earlier this month. The continent’s biggest telecom companies have long argued that stifling rules and a fragmented single market make it hard for them to scale and earn sustainable profits. | Andy Rain/EPA Regulators themselves say they don’t see any market failure, or need for a legislative fix. “It’s increasingly hard for me to think that the Commission is approaching this in good faith because they cannot ignore the chaotic impact that something like this would have,” said Benoît Felten, an expert at Plum Consulting who authored a study on the topic commissioned by Big Tech lobby CCIA. Tech companies will fight tooth and nail against any move to hold them to the same obligations that telecom operators have to follow. “The same service, same rules principle should be a no-brainer,” said Alessandro Gropelli, the boss of telecom trade association Connect Europe. “You cannot have competitiveness if one party is playing the game with their hand tied behind their back and the other party is playing the same game with both hands.” INCUMBENTS VS. CHALLENGERS Brussels’ deregulatory mood is further deepening rifts between Europe’s top telecom providers and their challengers, who have long praised the existing rulebook that they say enables them to take on legacy players. “The Commission wants to deregulate dogmatically” in order “to boost the largest operators in Europe,” said Luc Hindryckx, the director general of the European Competitive Telecommunications Association, a trade body. “One way to do it is to weaken the competition to allow a few incumbents to make it through and pave the way for consolidation, because if the competitors are on the verge of bankruptcy, they will ask to be merged.” Telecom challengers are up in arms against the direction of travel, which could see the Commission dial down the regulatory pressure on Europe’s legacy telcos to open their ducts and fiber lines to competitors. The EU executive wants to move away from heavy, upfront rules and closer scrutiny of dominant players to prevent abuse, instead relying on standard law enforcement. It argues the current system worked to boost competition but has outlived its purpose. It is “alarming that the European Commission is now proposing to relax regulation on former fixed monopolies,” a coalition of nine network operators wrote in a letter this month. Signatories — including France’s Iliad and the U.K.’s Vodafone — called out the proposed “backwards step” and warned against the risk of “re-monopolisation.” This shift, the opponents say, could unravel years of progress by undermining market predictability, deterring investment and pushing up wholesale prices — costs that would inevitably be passed on to consumers. “5G has been a disaster because the real 5G is hardly here,” the Commission’s top digital civil servant Roberto Viola said. | Robert Ghement/EPA “In Germany, it seems that people never run a red light. One could say that people no longer run red lights and then change the law that says running a red light is a major offense. What do you think is going to happen?” Hindryckx quipped. The legacy players don’t agree. “The current ex-ante system leads to low investments and harms roll-out of innovative networks,” said Gropelli from Connect Europe. “Reform is a must, or we’ll remain global laggards in roll-out of critical networks.” CAPITALS VS. BRUSSELS National governments also aren’t cheering the reforms, with EU capitals bristling at the idea of Brussels muscling in on territory they consider their own. That’s the case for the allocation of spectrum — the finite and very much in-demand resource powering wireless communications, which is auctioned at a national level for billions of euros. “5G has been a disaster because the real 5G is hardly here,” the Commission’s top digital civil servant Roberto Viola said in September. “We have been sleeping and lost fifteen years in discussing … who should assign the frequencies,” he said. Still, the topic is largely off the table for national governments. “Spectrum harmonization is not the favorite topic of member countries,” Katalin Molnár, the ambassador for Hungary, said last year as the country chaired talks among EU governments on the issue. The current cooperation between countries “works well,” the 27 EU nations said in a joint position, emphasizing that spectrum management is a “key public policy tool” that falls under a “sustained significance of member states’ national competencies in that regard.” This will be a major red line for the Council of the EU, where capitals will eventually hammer out their position on the reforms. The industry, however, says reforms are essential for the economic benefits that the EU is craving. “The wind has never been as strong in the sails of the ship that goes towards a more efficient telecom market today,” GSMA’s Badrinath said. “Is that enough to get the right outcome? Well, that’s what we want to believe.”