5 TIMES THE WINTER OLYMPICS GOT SUPER POLITICAL Invasions, nuclear crises and Nazi propaganda: The Games have seen it all. By SEBASTIAN STARCEVIC Illustration by Natália Delgado /POLITICO The Winter Olympics return to Europe this week, with Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo set to host the world’s greatest athletes against the snowy backdrop of the Italian Alps. But beyond the ice rinks and ski runs, the Games have long doubled as a stage for global alliances, heated political rivalries and diplomatic crises.  “An event like the Olympics is inherently political because it is effectively a competition between nations,” said Madrid’s IE Assistant Professor Andrew Bertoli, who studies the intersection of sport and politics. “So the Games can effectively become an arena where nations compete for prestige, respect and soft power.” If history is any guide, this time won’t be any different. From invasions to the Nazis to nuclear crises, here are five times politics and the Winter Olympics collided. 1980: AMERICA’S “MIRACLE ON ICE” One of the most iconic moments in Olympic history came about amid a resurgence in Cold War tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The USSR had invaded Afghanistan only months earlier, and Washington’s rhetoric toward Moscow had hardened, with Ronald Reagan storming to the presidency a month prior on an aggressive anti-Soviet platform. At the 1980 Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York, that superpower rivalry was on full display on the ice. The U.S. men’s ice hockey team — made up largely of college players and amateurs — faced off against the Soviet squad, a battle-hardened, gold medal-winning machine. The Americans weren’t supposed to stand a chance. Then the impossible happened. In a stunning upset, the U.S. team skated to a 4-3 victory, a win that helped them clinch the gold medal. As the final seconds ticked away, ABC broadcaster Al Michaels famously cried, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” The impact echoed far beyond the rink. For many Americans, the victory was a morale boost in a period marked by geopolitical anxiety and division. Reagan later said it was proof “nice guys in a tough world can finish first.” The miracle’s legacy has endured well into the 21st century, with U.S. President Donald Trump awarding members of the hockey team the Congressional Gold Medal in December last year. 2014: RUSSIA INVADES CRIMEA AFTER SOCHI Four days. That’s how long Moscow waited after hosting the Winter Olympics in the Russian resort city of Sochi before sending troops into Crimea, occupying and annexing the Ukrainian peninsula. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych had fled to Moscow days earlier, ousted by protesters demanding democracy and closer integration with the EU. As demonstrators filled Kyiv’s Independence Square, their clashes with government forces played on television screens around the world alongside highlights from the Games, in which Russia dominated the medal tally. Vladimir Putin poses with Russian athletes while visiting the Coastal Cluster Olympic Village ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics. | Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images No sooner was the Olympic flame extinguished in Sochi on Feb. 23 than on Feb. 27 trucks and tanks rolled into Crimea. Soldiers in unmarked uniforms set up roadblocks, stormed Crimean government buildings and raised the Russian flag high above them. Later that year, Moscow would face allegations of a state-sponsored doping program and many of its athletes were ultimately stripped of their gold medals. 2022: RUSSIA INVADES UKRAINE … AGAIN There’s a theme here. Russian President Vladimir Putin made an appearance at the opening ceremony of Beijing’s Winter Games in 2022, meeting on the sidelines with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping and declaring a “no limits” partnership. Four days after the end of the Games, on Feb. 24, Putin announced a “special military operation,” declaring war on Ukraine. Within minutes, Russian troops flooded into Ukraine, and missiles rained down on Kyiv, Kharkiv and other cities across the country. According to U.S. intelligence, The New York Times reported, Chinese officials asked the Kremlin to delay launching its attack until after the Games had wrapped up. Beijing denied it had advance knowledge of the invasion. 2018: KOREAN UNITY ON DISPLAY As South Korea prepared to host the Winter Games in its mountainous Pyeongchang region, just a few hundred kilometers over the border, the North Koreans were conducting nuclear missile tests, sparking global alarm and leading U.S. President Donald Trump to threaten to strike the country. The IOC said it was “closely monitoring” the situation amid concerns about whether the Games could be held safely on the peninsula. South Korean Vice Unification Minister Chun Hae-Sung, shakes hands with the head of North Korean delegation Jon Jong-Su after their meeting on January 17, 2018 in Panmunjom, South Korea. | South Korean Unification Ministry via Getty Images But then in his New Year’s address, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un signaled openness to participating in the Winter Olympics. In the end, North Korean athletes not only participated in the Games, but at the opening ceremony they marched with their South Korean counterparts under a single flag, that of a unified Korea. Pyongyang and Seoul also joined forces in women’s ice hockey, sending a single team to compete — another rare show of unity that helped restart diplomatic talks between the capitals, though tensions ultimately resumed after the Games and continue to this day. 1936: HITLER INVADES THE RHINELAND Much has been said about the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, in which the Nazi regime barred Jewish athletes from participating and used the Games to spread propaganda. But a few months earlier Germany also hosted the Winter Olympics in the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, allowing the Nazis to project an image of a peaceful, prosperous Germany and restore its global standing nearly two decades after World War I. A famous photograph from the event even shows Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels signing autographs for the Canadian figure skating team. Weeks after the Games ended, Hitler sent troops into the Rhineland, a major violation of the Treaty of Versailles that was met with little pushback from France and Britain, and which some historians argue emboldened the Nazis to eventually invade Poland, triggering World War II.

LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is braced for a meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping — and there’ll be more than a few elephants in the room. Though Britain has improved its relationship with China following the more combative approach of previous Conservative administrations, a litany of concerns over national security and human rights continues to dog Labour’s attempted refresh. Starmer, who will meet the Chinese president in Beijing Thursday morning, told reporters engaging with China means he can discuss “issues where we disagree.”   “You know that in the past, on all the trips I’ve done, I’ve always raised issues that need to be raised,” he said during a huddle with journalists on the British Airways flight to China on Tuesday evening. In a sign of how hard it can be to engage on more tricky subjects, Chinese officials bundled the British press out of the room when Starmer tried to bring up undesirable topics the last time the pair met. From hacking and spying to China’s foreign policy aims, POLITICO has a handy guide to all the ways Starmer could rile up the Chinese president. 1) STATE-SPONSORED HACKING China is one of the biggest offenders in cyberspace and is regarded by the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) — part of Britain’s GCHQ intelligence agency — as a “highly sophisticated threat actor.” The Electoral Commission said it has taken three years to recover from a Chinese hack of its systems. The Chinese state, and private companies linked directly or obliquely to its cyber and espionage agencies, have been directly accused by the British government, its intelligence agencies and allies. As recently as last month, the U.K. government sanctioned two Chinese companies — both named by the U.S. as linked to Chinese intelligence — for hacking Britain and its allies. 2) ACTIONS AGAINST BRITISH PARLIAMENTARIANS Politicians in Britain who have spoken out against Chinese human rights abuses and hostile activity have been censured by Beijing in recent years. This includes the sanctioning of 5 British MPs in 2021, including the former security minister Tom Tugendhat, who has been banned from entering the country. Last year, Liberal Democrat MP Wera Hobhouse was refused entry to Hong Kong while attempting to visit her grandson, and was turned back by officials. The government said that the case was raised with Chinese authorities during a visit to China by Douglas Alexander, who was trade minister at the time. 3) JIMMY LAI In 2020, the British-Hong Kong businessman and democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai was arrested under national security laws imposed by Beijing and accused of colluding with a foreign state. Lai — who is in his late 70s — has remained in prison ever since. Last month, a Hong Kong court convicted Lai of three offenses following what his supporters decried as a 156-day show trial. He is currently awaiting the final decisions relating to sentencing — with bodies including the EU parliament warning that a life imprisonment could have severe consequences for Europe’s relationship with China if he is not released. Lai’s son last year called for the U.K. government to make his father’s release a precondition of closer relations with Beijing.  4) REPRESSION OF DISSIDENTS China, like Iran, is involved in the active monitoring and intimidation of those it considers dissidents on foreign soil — known as trans-national repression. China and Hong Kong law enforcement agencies have repeatedly issued arrest warrants for nationals living in Britain and other Western countries.  British police in 2022 were forced to investigate an assault on a protester outside the Chinese consulate in Manchester. The man was beaten by several men after being dragged inside the grounds of the diplomatic building during a demonstration against Xi Jinping. China removed six officials from Britain before they could be questioned. 5) CHINESE SPY SCANDALS Westminster was last year rocked by a major Chinese spying scandal involving two British men accused of monitoring British parliamentarians and passing information back to Beijing. Though the case against the two men collapsed, the MI5 intelligence agency still issued an alert to MPs, peers and their staff, warning Chinese intelligence officers were “attempting to recruit people with access to sensitive information about the British state.” It is not the only China spy allegation to embroil the upper echelons of British society. Yang Tengbo, who in 2024 outed himself as an alleged spy banned from entering the U.K., was a business associate of Andrew Windsor , the` disgraced brother of King Charles. Christine Lee, a lawyer who donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to a Labour MP, was the subject of a security alert from British intelligence. In October, Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, said that his officers had “intervened operationally” against China that month. 6) EMBASSY DING DONG This month — after a protracted political and planning battle — the government approved the construction of a Chinese “super-embassy” in London. This came after a litany of security concerns were raised by MPs and in the media, including the building’s proximity to sensitive cables, which it is alleged could be used to aid Chinese spying. Britain has its own embassy headache in China. Attempts to upgrade the U.K. mission in Beijing were reportedly blocked while China’s own London embassy plan was in limbo. 7) SANCTIONS EVASION China has long been accused of helping facilitate sanctions evasion for countries such as Russia and Iran. Opaque customs and trade arrangements have allegedly allowed prohibited shipments of oil and dual-use technology to flow into countries that are sanctioned by Britain and its allies. Britain has already sanctioned some Chinese companies accused of aiding Russia’s war in Ukraine. China has called for Britain to stop making “groundless accusations” about its involvement in Russia’s war efforts. 8) HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES AND GREEN ENERGY U.K. ministers are under pressure from MPs and human rights organizations to get tougher on China over reported human rights abuses in the country’s Xinjiang region — where many of the world’s solar components are sourced. In a meeting with China’s Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang last March, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband raised the issue of forced labor in supply chains, according to a government readout of the meeting. But he also stressed the need for deeper collaboration with China as the U.K.’s lofty clean power goal looms. British academic Laura Murphy — who was researching the risk of forced labor in supply chains — had her work halted by Sheffield Hallam University amid claims of pressure from China. “I know that there are other researchers who don’t feel safe speaking out in public, who are experiencing similar things, although often more subtly,” Murphy said last year. 9) THE FUTURE OF TAIWAN China continues to assert that “Taiwan is a province of China” amid reports it is stepping up preparations for military intervention in the region. In October, the Telegraph newspaper published an op-ed from the Chinese ambassador to Britain, which said: “Taiwan has never been a country. There is but one China, and both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one and the same China.” In a sign of just how sensitive the matter is, Beijing officials reportedly threatened to cancel high-level trade talks between China and the U.K. after Alexander, then a trade minister, travelled to Taipei last June. 10) CHINA POOTLING AROUND THE ARCTIC Britain is pushing for greater European and NATO involvement in the Arctic amid concern that both China and Russia are becoming more active in the strategically important area. There is even more pressure to act, with U.S. President Donald Trump making clear his Greenland aspirations. In October, a Chinese container ship completed a pioneering journey through the Arctic to a U.K. port — halving the usual time it takes to transport electric cars and solar panels destined for Europe.

DOHA, Qatar — Inside the U.S., President Donald Trump is dogged by rising consumer prices, the Epstein files debacle, and Republicans’ newfound willingness to defy him. But go 100 miles, 1,000 miles, or, as I recently did, 7,000 miles past U.S. borders, and Trump’s domestic challenges — and the sinking poll numbers that accompany them — matter little. The U.S. president remains a behemoth in the eyes of the rest of the world. A person who could wreck another country. Or perhaps the only one who can fix another country’s problems. That’s the sense I got this weekend from talking to foreign officials and global elites at this year’s Doha Forum, a major international gathering focused on diplomacy and geopolitics. Over sweets, caffeine and the buzz of nearby conversations, some members of the jet set wondered if Trump’s domestic struggles will lead him to take more risks abroad — and some hope he does. This comes as Trump faces criticism from key MAGA players who say he’s already too focused on foreign policy. “He doesn’t need Capitol Hill to get work done from a foreign policy standpoint,” an Arab official said of Trump, who, let’s face it, has made it abundantly clear he cares little about Congress. Vuk Jeremic, a former Serbian foreign minister, told me that whether people like Trump or not, “I don’t think that there is any doubt that he is a very, very consequential global actor.” He wasn’t the only one who used the term “consequential.” The word doesn’t carry a moral judgment. A person can be consequential whether they save the world or destroy it. What the word does indicate in this context is the power of the U.S. presidency. The weakest U.S. president is still stronger than the strongest leader of most other countries. America’s wealth, weapons and global reach ensure that. U.S. presidents have long had more latitude and ability to take direct action on foreign policy than domestic policy. They also often turn to the global stage when their national influence fades in their final years in office, when they don’t have to worry about reelection. There’s a reason Barack Obama waited until his final two years in office to restore diplomatic ties with Cuba. In the first year of his second term, Trump has stunned the world repeatedly, on everything from gutting U.S. foreign aid to bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. He remains as capricious as ever, shifting sides on everything from Russia’s war on Ukraine to whether he wants to expel Palestinians from Gaza. He seeks a Nobel Peace Prize but is threatening a potential war with Venezuela. Trump managed to jolt the gathering at the glitzy Sheraton resort in Doha by unveiling his National Security Strategy — which astonished foreign onlookers on many levels — in the run-up to the event. The part that left jaws on the floor was its attack on America’s allies in Europe, which it claimed faces “civilizational erasure.” The strategy’s release led one panel moderator to ask the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, whether Trump sees Europe as “the enemy.” Yet, some foreign officials praised Trump’s disruptive moves and said they hope he will keep shaking up a calcified international order that has left many countries behind. Several African leaders in particular said they wanted Trump to get more involved in ending conflicts on their continent, especially Sudan. They don’t care about the many nasty things Trump has said about Africa, waving that off as irrelevant political rhetoric. Trump claims to have already ended seven or eight wars. It’s a wild assertion, not least because some of the conflicts he’s referring to weren’t wars and some of the truces he’s brokered are shaky. When I pointed this out, foreign officials told me to lower my bar. Peace is a process, they stressed. If Trump can get that process going or rolling faster, it’s a win. Maybe there are still clashes between Rwanda and Congo. But at least Trump is forcing the two sides to talk and agree to framework deals, they suggested. “You should be proud of your president,” one African official said. (I granted him and several others anonymity to candidly discuss sensitive diplomatic issues involving the U.S.) Likewise, there’s an appreciation in many diplomatic corners about the economic lens Trump imposes on the world. Wealthy Arab states, such as Qatar, already are benefiting from such commercial diplomacy. Others want in, too. “He’s been very clear that his Africa policy should focus on doing business with Africa, and to me, that’s very progressive,” said Mthuli Ncube, Zimbabwe’s finance minister. He added that one question in the global diplomatic community is whether the next U.S. president — Democrat or Republican — will adopt Trump’s “creativity.” The diplomats and others gathered in Doha were well-aware that Trump appreciates praise but also sometimes respects those who stand up to him. So one has to tread carefully. Kallas, for instance, downplayed the Trump team’s broadsides against Europe in the National Security Strategy. Intentionally or not, her choice reflected the power differential between the U.S. and the EU. “The U.S. is still our biggest ally,” Kallas insisted. Privately, another European official I spoke to was fuming. The strategy’s accusations were “very disturbing,” they said. The official agreed, nonetheless, that Trump is too powerful for European countries to do much beyond stage some symbolic diplomatic protests. Few Trump administration officials attended the Doha Forum. The top names were Matt Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, and Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey. Donald Trump Jr. — not a U.S. official, but certainly influential — also made an appearance. Several foreign diplomats expressed optimism that Trump’s quest for a Nobel Peace Prize will guide him to take actions on the global stage that will ultimately bring more stability in the world — even if it is a rocky ride. A British diplomat said they were struck by Trump’s musings about gaining entry to heaven. Maybe a nervousness about the afterlife could induce Trump to, say, avoid a conflagration with Venezuela? “He’s thinking about his legacy,” the diplomat said. Even Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of State whom Trump defeated in the 2016 presidential race, was measured in her critiques. Clinton said “there’s something to be said for the dramatic and bold action” Trump takes. But she warned that the Trump team doesn’t do enough to ensure his efforts, including peace deals, have lasting effect. “There has to be so much follow-up,” she said during one forum event. “And there is an aversion within the administration to the kind of work that is done by Foreign Service officers, diplomats, others who are on the front lines trying to fulfill these national security objectives.” Up until the final minute of his presidency, Trump will have extraordinary power that reaches far past America’s shores. That’s likely to be the case even if the entire Republican Party has turned on him. At the moment, he has more than three years to go. Perhaps he will end immigration to the U.S., abandon Ukraine to Russia’s aggression or strike a nuclear deal with Iran. After all, Trump is, as Zimbabwe’s Ncube put it, not lacking in “creativity.”

PARIS — After nearly two weeks as a political dead man walking, French Prime Minister François Bayrou’s moment of reckoning has arrived. Bayrou and his minority government on Monday will face a confidence vote over a proposed €43.8 billion budget squeeze that, barring a miraculous change of heart from a major bloc of opposition lawmakers, they are almost certain to lose. Toppling the government would likely force President Emmanuel Macron to hunt for a fifth head of government in less than two years as Paris scrambles to assuage financial markets that it can sufficiently rein in runaway public spending. We’ll bring you the latest from newsmakers hitting the airwaves on French radio and television. We’ll be following developments and watching financial markets in the lead-up to the proceedings in the National Assembly, which are slated to begin at 3 p.m. For more on what to expect, check out our guide on how to watch the government collapse like a pro (INSERT LINK SUNDAY).

Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay was in critical condition in hospital on Sunday after being shot while campaigning in the country’s capital of Bogotá. Uribe Turbay, a 39-year-old senator from the conservative Centro Democrático party, was attacked during a speech at a public event on Saturday. Police have arrested a 15-year-old suspect. The senator “was admitted in critical condition and is receiving priority care,” according to a medical report from the Fundación Santa Fe clinic in Bogotá, cited by the Associated Press. “Miguel is currently fighting for his life,” said Uribe Turbay’s wife, Maria Claudia Tarazona, on social media network X Sunday morning. “Let us ask God to guide the hands of the doctors who are treating him.” The Colombian government condemned the shooting as an attack “not only against the personal integrity of the senator, but also against democracy, freedom of thought and the legitimate exercise of politics in Colombia,” according to a statement issued Saturday. “Any act that seeks to silence through intimidation or violence those who participate in public life is unacceptable and deserves the deepest repudiation by the state and the citizenry,” the government said.

Polish presidential frontrunners Rafał Trzaskowski and Karol Nawrocki faced off in an at times heated debate Friday night. Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw, improved on underwhelming performances in previous debates. Right-winger Nawrocki, supported by the populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, grew more tense as the one-on-one continued. But neither candidate managed to deliver a knockout punch. At stake is not just who gets to be president, but whether Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Trzaskowski’s party boss, can get his agenda off the ground after nearly two years of obstructionism by President Andrzej Duda, a PiS ally. For PiS, the outcome will determine whether the defeat the party suffered in the 2023 parliamentary election was just a temporary setback. Trzaskowski and Nawrocki are virtually level in the polls ahead of the June 1 runoff, suggesting that even small shifts in voter attitudes or turnout could decide the outcome. In the first round of the presidential vote on May 18, Trzaskowski edged ahead with just under 31.4 percent of the vote, while Nawrocki followed closely with 29.5 percent. The far right’s surprisingly strong showing among the other contenders could prove critical to the final result. Sławomir Mentzen of the Konfederacja party came in third with 14.8 percent, and the anti-Semitic and anti-EU agitator Grzegorz Braun unexpectedly secured 6.3 percent to place fourth. The far right thus leapfrogged past the centrist and left contenders, who only garnered around 14 percent collectively among three candidates. TIGHT SPOT That has placed Trzaskowski in a tight spot, needing to appeal both to far-right and left-wing voters, while also mobilizing his core supporters to show up in greater numbers at polling stations on June 1. “Your mobilization is essential because it will really be a razor-thin margin,” Trzaskowski said during the debate. “Choose a president who simply likes people. Choose a president who respects others. Choose a president for whom values like honesty and ordinary human decency are principles that guide his life,” Trzaskowski said. Nawrocki’s strategy relies on attracting as many far-right voters as possible, a more natural constituency for him, while counting that liberal voters — disillusioned with Tusk — will stay home. However, Nawrocki’s interview with the libertarian Mentzen on the latter’s YouTube channel on Thursday turned awkward at times. The PiS-backed frontrunner struggled with questions about taxation and the EU Green Deal. Nawrocki even went as far as to lambast PiS for the party’s record while in power between 2015 and 2023. Trzaskowski will meet Mentzen on his YouTube channel Saturday evening. In the debate Friday night, Trzaskowski’s approach was to try to expose Nawrocki’s lack of experience and highlight unresolved controversies from his past, such as taking over an apartment from an elderly man and alleged involvement in a bare-fist brawl between football hooligans in 2009. Though questions the rival asked each other were grouped to cover topics such as economy, health care and defense and security, exchanges often devolved into personal attacks. The debate format, with 30 seconds to ask and 90 seconds to respond, did not lend itself to deeper discussion. In his closing statement, Nawrocki appealed for support to prevent “one man controlling everything in Poland,” referring to Tusk. PiS was in exactly such control during their two terms in power with the outgoing Duda.

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.

BUCHAREST — Nicușor Dan takes his time when he speaks, weighing every word as if the future of civilization might depend on it. But then he may just be the West’s best hope of holding onto Romania.  The 55-year-old corruption-fighting mayor of Bucharest is standing to be president of the European Union’s sixth most populous country, a contest that has already triggered a constitutional crisis — and howls of outrage from leading figures in the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.  Last December’s presidential election in Romania was canceled amid claims that Russian interference, dubious financing and a highly suspect TikTok campaign had unfairly catapulted a little-known, Moscow-sympathizing, far-right outsider — Călin Georgescu — into first place.  Yet despite the claims of interference, Georgescu remained popular, according to pollsters, and was on track to success in the May rerun until the election authorities went one step further and banned him outright.  U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s outrider Elon Musk seized on Romania as a case study in the evils of European politics, denouncing the suppression of Georgescu as a travesty of democracy.  In an interview with POLITICO, Dan chooses not to punch back hard against the U.S. interventions, which he blames on ignorance. Vance and Musk, he says, simply don’t have enough information about what happened to be able to judge fairly — and that’s not all their fault.  They were swayed by Georgescu’s noisy media campaign protesting the decision to annul the election and ban him — in part because Romanian authorities have not set out enough evidence in public to explain what went wrong, Dan says. “It doesn’t look good for the Romanian image and I think we have to clarify everything,” Dan says, when asked if the American criticism is damaging. “They are free to give their opinions. I think Romanian people are much more interested in what the candidates are saying on the future of Romania.” Early polling suggests another far-right politician — George Simion — is poised to pick up most of Georgescu’s voters, and looks set to win the first round of the election rerun on May 4. Dan, according to one major poll this month, has a good chance of winning the presidency if he makes it to the second round on May 18, though the contest remains wide open.  At stake is the future direction of a country of 19 million people bordering Ukraine on the EU’s eastern edge, which is home to a critical NATO base, at a delicate moment for the Western alliance.  The impact on EU politics if Simion wins would be huge: a new Viktor Orbán-style disruptor in charge of a country twice the size of Hungary, swelling the influence of nationalism in European politics.  Simion describes his Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) as “sort of a Trumpist party” and has pledged to end military support for Ukraine. He has also campaigned for the unification of Moldova and Romania, and was banned from entering Moldova on several occasions. The impact on EU politics if Simion wins would be huge: a new Viktor Orbán-style disruptor in charge of a country twice the size of Hungary. | Andrei Pungovschi/Getty Images It’s not a unique story, with the far right on the rise in France, Germany, Austria and Italy, among other places. So why does Romania find itself next in line? Dan pauses again before offering his analysis.  “I think there is dissatisfaction in Romanian society, which for long has been dormant,” he says, speaking to POLITICO from his office in Bucharest, a city he has run since 2020. “We have a big mass of people that are realising and expressing that things can’t go the same way … there are people who are saying that any alternative is better than the current system.”  THE PROFESSOR Dan is a gifted mathematician by training, twice achieving perfect scores in the prestigious International Mathematics Olympiad competition. A keen student of philosophy, with a thick mop of dark curly hair, he retains the slightly otherworldly air of his academic past.  It’s a sharp contrast with Georgescu, who appeared in TikTok videos on horseback wearing traditional dress, and boasted he didn’t need a party because his party was Romania.  Dan commits himself to supporting Ukraine against Russia and preserving Romania’s alliances in the West, including playing a full part in NATO and EU affairs. He sees America and Europe as naturally on the same side. “The United States and Europe are part of the same model of civilization which is in contradiction with other models of civilization,” he says. “So we must be together in this conflict of civilizations.” But he worries that Trump is giving Russian President Vladimir Putin an easy ride in pursuit of peace in Ukraine, and calls on the U.S. president to rebalance his approach to the talks.  “To try to have peace in Ukraine is very legitimate. Everybody wants it,” Dan says. “Looking at the United States administration’s response, we have seen big pressure on the Ukrainian side but we didn’t see similar pressure on the Russian side. If you are the United States administration, if you want to press the Russian side you can talk on financial penalties, you can talk on the price of oil and all these things, and I didn’t see that.”  “The way in which the war finishes in Ukraine is very important to Romanian and European future security … the pressure on the two sides was not balanced and I think Putin is in a better international situation than one month ago.”  ‘A BIG FAIL’ Investigations are ongoing into what exactly happened during the first round of voting in Romania last year, which Dan describes as “a big fail” by the state institutions responsible for safeguarding democracy. He is frustrated that the authorities have still not given a full account of what happened, leaving room for conspiracies.  During the Cold War, under Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu’s regime, the country kept its distance from Moscow’s rule, remaining skeptical of the Soviet empire and at the same time maintaining links with the West. That history won’t be lost on Putin, and isn’t on Dan either.  During the Cold War, under Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu’s regime, the country kept its distance from Moscow’s rule. | Steve Burton/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images “In Romania we have strong memories of what Russia means,” Dan says. “I think the Russian regime and Mr Putin tried to destabilize the democratic system in Romania, also in the rest of this part of Europe. This is part of his hybrid war he is doing against Europe.”  Putin’s agents are alleged to have mounted a huge operation in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to sway last year’s presidential election in neighboring Moldova. If Russian election interference is confirmed in Romania, it will be a “good opportunity” to educate Romanians about the dangers of disinformation, and how malign actors can hijack social media to destabilize societies, Dan believes.  He characterizes Simion, the 38-year-old far-right AUR party leader, as favorable to Russia and a challenge to Romania’s pro-Western outlook. Dan’s other main rival, he says, is Crin Antonescu, a former president who he says represents the unpopular political establishment.  Dan made his name fighting corruption and restoring credibility to the administration of Romania’s capital city.  “To a certain extent I’m an anti-system politician,” he says. “I think people see in me a critic of the current political system and on the other hand an honesty that people don’t see in other politicians. In my opinion, the persona is more important than the program.” He may be correct. But the appeal of the far right is still strong and voter cynicism is widespread.  Dan never really wanted to be a politician but ended up founding a party — the Save Romania Union — due to what he saw as a need for a new direction. But he doesn’t seem sentimental about politics, and left the party to become an independent candidate. As well as having a capital city to run, he has other options if Romanian voters choose a different path in May.  “If I were to not do politics I would be a mathematician,” he says. “Many people do not understand that doing mathematics is very close to some kind of art, some kind of literature. It is discovering in yourself and constructing in yourself some kind of object. It is of course very rational but also discovering things is working a lot with your subconscious.” “What will define me is a very big curiosity to know about myself, about the world, about my country.”

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music * Sky News Sky News’ deputy political editor Sam Coates and Politico’s Anne McElvoy have their guide to the day ahead in British politics. The domestic agenda is key today with some hints starting to emerge about what Chancellor Rachel Reeves is planning in her Spring Statement in three weeks’ time. Sam reveals details of a four-point plan to get big government announcements out there before the statement itself. Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, may or may not help the chancellor’s preparations when he appears before the Treasury select committee today. You can send us a WhatsApp on 07511 867 633 or email us: jackandsam@sky.uk

Michael Hirsh is the former foreign editor and chief diplomatic correspondent for Newsweek, and the former national editor for POLITICO Magazine. With transatlantic tensions rising as Donald Trump is sworn in as president, Mathias Döpfner says he’s got a better idea. Döpfner, the CEO of German publishing giant Axel Springer (which owns POLITICO), argues that now is the moment for the U.S. and European Union — along with friendly democracies like Japan, Canada and Australia — to form a grand trading alliance against China, Russia and other autocracies that engage in unfair trade practices. In his new paperback book, Dealings with Dictators: A CEO’s Guide to Defending Democracy, Döpfner writes that the U.S. and Western nations made a critical mistake by giving China full trade access to their markets after the Cold War but that it’s not too late to change course. In his mixture of memoir and manifesto, an updated version of a hardcover published in 2023, Döpfner writes about the fallacy of the idea he first learned as a young journalist from then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. This was the concept of Wandel durch Handel, or “change through trade,” which was expected to reform autocratic countries like China. Of course, nothing of the sort happened. Instead, he writes, “the maxim of ‘change through trade’ has led to a macabre outcome that’s quite the opposite of the one intended: Instead of becoming more liberal, tolerant, and cosmopolitan through intensified business links with Western democracies, the world’s autocracies, like Russia and China, have become even more radical and undemocratic. So there has been ‘change through trade,’ but this change ended up weakening democracy rather than strengthening it and effectively led the West into a trade trap.” Therefore, Döpfner argues, the only way forward is the opposite idea, which is “change through no trade,” or creating what he calls the Freedom Trade Alliance. This would involve lifting all trade barriers among participating democracies while imposing stiff tariffs on non-democracies. In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, Döpfner argued that his proposal actually aligns well with Trump’s approach to global affairs, despite the incoming president’s frequent skepticism toward Europe and seeming indifference to democratic norms. “I would strongly suggest that ‘America First’ will only work if it’s not America alone,” he said. “And there are some issues where America will need partners in order to have the ultimate leverage.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What kind of reaction have you gotten to the idea of a Freedom Trade Alliance, particularly from the incoming Trump administration? In Germany and in Europe, from the business community, some people are still stuck in the old way of thinking. They see this idea as disturbing their interests [in China]. From an American perspective, I get a lot of positive feedback, including from some in the incoming Trump administration. I think the moment now is actually very good, because there are so many things at stake and a lot of very significant plans coming from the next administration with regard to China and trade and tariffs of up to 60 percent, as well as tariffs for European goods. I think it is now a very critical and pivotal moment to shape a strategy here. And the big question for me — and also what makes the book timely — is to what degree this can become a transatlantic project, or whether it has to remain a U.S. project, because Europe is not leaning in now. Let’s dive into the particulars. Donald Trump may like imposing tariffs, but Trump doesn’t have a lot of use for democracy based on what he’s said and done in recent years. And as I’m sure you’re aware, there is an emerging view in both U.S. political parties that Washington no longer wants to engage in pro-democracy crusades around the world. Moreover, some of Trump’s key advisers like Elon Musk and incoming Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have huge investments in China. So is there any real constituency for your idea? My main point is that, instead of trying to decouple unilaterally from China, let’s do it in an organized manner together. Let’s sit together at the negotiation table, because if 300 million Americans impose tariffs, that’s one thing. But if 300 million Americans plus 500 million Europeans and some of the largest economies in the world and other democracies from Japan to Australia are warm-heartedly invited to join, then I think we will have a much better outcome that is very much to the benefit of every non-authoritarian economy, but most importantly, for the U.S. I would strongly suggest that “America First” will only work if it’s not America alone. And there are some issues where America will need partners in order to have the ultimate leverage, and I think that leverage would be increased by joining forces. Now, having said that, I want to be very clear that this is not something I mainly expect from the U.S. administration. I think the most important step has to come from Europe, from the EU, from Germany as the biggest economy in the EU and the third-largest economy in the world. And so my book is, in a way, a European calling for more common interests and more engagement with America. I truly believe if we go separate ways here, Europe will suffer most, but I also think America will not achieve the optimal outcome, because we’re not maximizing our leverage, and that’s what we should do. Yet this does not seem to be a propitious moment for a new transatlantic alliance. Trump is already starting up the tensions with European countries, obviously Denmark in particular, by saying he wants to take control of Greenland, and he’s threatening more tariffs against friendly nations as well as adversaries. Could you address that? Yes, it looks like Trump is now imposing tariffs mainly on Europe, and Trump sees Germany particularly as a dysfunctional economy. By the way, I think he is right. People are saying, “Well, that is most likely going to be the end of the transatlantic relationship — pretty much the opposite of what you, Mathias, are suggesting here.” And yeah, we can see it like that. But I would also not underestimate what it means when Trump says NATO has to be funded adequately, otherwise America cannot continue to do so. People interpret that as meaning he wants to kill NATO, but in fact he has strengthened NATO. I truly see an opportunity that perhaps this tariff battle too will be the call for negotiation. Let’s sit together. And if we can define a common policy toward China and other economies that are acting against our interests, then perhaps we can have a transatlantic alliance and perhaps no tariffs or lower tariffs. The larger issue here is there are good reasons to be alarmed about the future of the free and open society model. There are threats from many directions. There is Russia invading Ukraine, and there is Hamas attacking Israel, and Iran and its allies trying to destroy that country and its people. And these two wars have one common denominator, and that is to weaken democracy — in particular to weaken the biggest democracy in the world, the United States. If that goes well and the United States is not successful in helping to resolve these conflicts and defend Israel and also limit Putin’s aggression, then there is a very clear lesson for China, the most important aggressor of them all. And that lesson is, “We are successful in weakening the U.S. and now let’s go for Taiwan.” And if China learns that we, the United States and Europe, are not together here in order to resolve these conflicts and strengthen the democracies, then China will go for Taiwan, which it wants to do sooner or later anyway. And then we have three wars at the same time, three fronts, and the one in Taiwan will prove to be one too much, where we probably can’t successfully deal with it. Then we will have a different world order. And that is, in the bigger context, my biggest worry. I was a little bit puzzled when you wrote that the U.S. and Europe have to take the lead in this, and that countries like Canada, Australia and Japan should follow. Why wouldn’t those countries be part of the founding group? That’s a good point. I’m not saying it has to be in that order. The best way would be that you have a kind of founding member basis that is as broad as possible. And particularly Japan is a great candidate. The very simple fact is, if we look to the numbers, if we look back to 2001 when China became a full member of the WTO [World Trade Organization], they had 3.8 percent of world GDP contribution. Today, it is north of 18 percent. At the same time, the U.S. and Europe’s share went down significantly. So it is very obvious who benefited from this asymmetric trade policy. It’s a joke that China, the second-biggest economy in the world, is still treated as a developing country. This makes absolutely no sense. Now some people are saying you cannot change that because it is too late. And I think no, it is not too late, because still 70 percent of the world GDP is in the hands of non-totalitarian open societies. If we stick together, if we join forces, then our negotiation leverage toward China and other less important, non-democratic economies will be bigger. By the way, I’m not saying we need to decouple completely — have no trade at all with China and others. What I’m insisting on is that it should be more symmetrical. It should be based on the principle of reciprocity. Talk a little bit about how much this freedom trade agenda is motivated by your identity as a German. One of the most compelling things about this book is how much you weave in your personal story. You start out by writing that you love democracy because it’s the “opposite of Auschwitz.” You talk about how your father taught you the dangers of appeasement, dating back to Munich and Neville Chamberlain. And you’re also very critical of recent governments in Germany, especially Angela Merkel’s, for appeasing Russia and making Germany the “world champion” in gratismat, as you say, or “the empty courage that incurs no risks.” I would mention three factors here. One is truly the German history of the Holocaust, which for me started when I was young, a kid basically, and saw the first movies about that, which was a U.S. [television] series called “Holocaust.” I was exposed for the first time to the horrific deeds of the Nazis in the Holocaust, and there was this deep motivation to make sure that something like that can never happen again. And if we see the rise of antisemitism, all around the world, absurdly, after the attack of Hamas on Israel on Oct. 7, then it is something that is for me deeply disturbing. I think we have to do everything in order to turn that around and to stand by Israel and defend their right of existence and fight against all forms of antisemitism. That leads you automatically to this question of, how can we strengthen the non-authoritarian societies and their values, and how can we weaken the authoritarian societies in dictatorships. So that’s clearly one motivator. The second one is very concrete experiences that we have collected over the last two and a half decades at Axel Springer as an international publisher and company that invested in various countries — including Turkey, Russia and other markets where we basically experienced terrible things. In Russia, Paul Klebnikov, editor in chief of our Russian Forbes edition, was shot [to death] in front of the newsroom in 2016. We have seen legal reform that retroactively disapproved foreign media investments, so we were basically kicked out of the country and lost a lot of money. In Iran, some of our reporters spent months in prison and in life-threatening circumstances. In Turkey, one of our correspondents spent one year in prison just because of independent reporting, nothing else. In the Balkan countries, people got shot because of investigative reporting. And also some business experiences in China, in Turkey and elsewhere, led me early to the very concrete conviction that if you compromise with totalitarian systems, you will pay a high price. The third personal motivator is the simple fact that since my childhood I have loved America, and that is my country. I’m sometimes even more emotionally moved if I’m listening to the U.S. national anthem than listening to the German one. I just discovered that country early on, its values, its spirit of freedom, its spirit of individual responsibility, its risk culture. That risk is something that you want to embrace, and somebody who took a risk gets another chance — not like in Germany, where, if you fail once, you are dead forever and so on, and that leads to a lot of risk averseness. So for many reasons, the spirit of the American people and the American society was very compelling for me. That’s why I was always super interested in working in America, on boards of American companies [and] to develop Axel Springer’s business in the U.S., which we did with Business Insider, POLITICO and other assets. That has created a very transatlantic mindset. Just to clarify, do you consider yourself more American than German now? Mentally, yes. Unfortunately, I don’t have U.S. citizenship. But mentally, absolutely, for decades, yeah. In the introduction to your book, you write about how your agent, Andrew Wylie, called you up after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and said you have to write this book now, because your views about the dangers of autocracy and of Russia in particular were vindicated. But in the year after the Russian invasion, President Biden did try to turn this into a fight of democracy versus autocracy. He tried to rally world support against Russia on that basis, and it really did not work well. There are a lot of important countries in the middle of the spectrum between democracy and autocracy that either don’t identify with democracies, or don’t particularly admire the U.S. and its own troubled democracy. Or like India, they have too many interests in working both with Russia and China. My definition of democracy, involving an open society and the rule of law, is a very basic one. I’m not speaking about perfect democracies. In India, of course, there is a lot of corruption, and there are a lot of things that are not going in the perfect direction of what we would call an optimal democracy. But India is a democracy, and Brazil is a democracy, and other imperfect democracies should be part of this alliance in order to again defend our interests and increase our leverage at the negotiation table. I think it is probably more reasonable to not argue out of a moral perspective, mainly, but more out of the perspective of interests. It is just in the interest of our economies, of our growth prospects, of the well-being of our people. Because otherwise we will face dependency [on autocracies]. One concrete example here is the German experience with Russia and its energy supply under Helmut Kohl and basically all other German chancellors. Because there was once a kind of limit to what Germany would buy. We would not consume more than roughly 30 percent of our gas from Russia, because otherwise we would become dependent. But under Angela Merkel, that figure grew from 33 percent to 65 percent. And on top of that, she was advocating for the Nord Stream Two pipeline, which would have increased that dependency even further. That is just an unwise policy that has, first of all, financed and strengthened Putin, and secondly has led to a terrible energy crisis and very bad consequences for the German economy. It is a very concrete negative lesson of what happens if good trade relationships lead to dependency, and what that means if it is dependency from a non-democratic player who could simply change the rules without any basis. Let’s address the economic arguments against your proposal. In one review of your book, Bob Davis, a longtime former Wall Street Journal trade reporter, called it “a grand plan for a much poorer world.” You know the criticism: Your idea would basically divide up the world, impoverish tens of millions of people in poorer countries and raise up dictators who will argue that the U.S. and Europe are trying to destroy their economies. It would also ostracize China at a time when, as you yourself point out in the book, we need China to help on the climate crisis. And of course, China is leading the world, in many ways, in developing clean technologies we need. I honestly expected much, much more of that. I was surprised that it was only here and there. But it is unconvincing to me, because it is like the criticism of every tax reform. It’s always the same: Whenever you talk about real, fundamental tax reform, people always say, “Well, this is unaffordable. This is going to damage us.” But in every very bold tax reform, people see they’re pretty surprised that the positive effects more than compensate for the negative effects. I calculated that in my book pretty carefully, and based on analysis that other experts have made in their simulations of the consequences. Of course, short term, these kinds of tougher policies toward China and other markets will have negative consequences, but in the short to medium term, the positive effects will by far compensate for that. Imagine how many jobs would be reallocated to the United States and to Europe. Millions of people are working in China, and jobs could definitely be brought back to our countries. The strengthening of an aligned trade policy of successful democratic economies would accelerate their growth and would take value creation out of the markets [like China], which are now based on asymmetrical criteria, basically sucking blood out of our systems. The incoming Trump administration really is the elephant in the room here. President Trump seems to have no interest in promoting or even dealing with democracies. In some cases, he’s proved to be cozier with autocrats like Viktor Orbán of Hungary. Is there any reasonable possibility at all that Trump could be interested in pursuing this agenda, or would you have to wait for some future U.S. president? No, I think there is an incredible opportunity. That may be a bit counter-intuitive, but the way I see and read Donald Trump is that he is a very transactional politician. He is a very kind of interest-based politician — I mean the interests of the people of the United States. And he optimizes that through a negotiation psychology that may look very weird to certain European politicians, but sometimes it is very efficient. I do get your point, however. And this is the general view I’m hearing: The likelihood that we are moving in that direction looks small. But since I’m a contrarian and sometimes take contrarian bets, I would also bet that what looks very disturbing — on the transatlantic relationship and a mutual trade policy — may end up with a surprising, happy ending. Practically speaking, though, if the Freedom Trade Alliance did go forward, who would decide which democracies qualify and which don’t? When Biden held his Summit of Democracies, critics were horrified that he excluded Singapore and Hungary but included other dubious countries. Wouldn’t there be constant second-guessing about who’s in the club? I think what’s very important is that the criteria should be very basic. If the criteria are too ambitious, then it’s never going to work. Then the critical mass of [democratic] GDP is not going to be achieved. First of all, I think the WTO should cease operations. The WTO is a dysfunctional, bureaucratic colossus. It is de facto dysfunctional, because it is in a very kind of asymmetrical way benefiting China. And that’s why the U.S. has basically stopped its proactive involvement in the WTO. The best way is not to try to reform it, but to simply replace it, and then something should be created that looks much more like the old GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade] agreement, which was way more minimalistic, less bureaucratic, less ambitious, but much more functional. I think in that spirit of less is more and lean and fast, we could form that alliance. Finally, I wonder whether partly what is motivating you — again, as a German — is that we are now living in a moment when the living memory of World War II is literally dying out. The last survivors of the Holocaust are almost gone, along with the perpetrators. With them is fading the raison d’etre of the postwar system. And there’s a sense that the rise of antisemitism might be one more piece of evidence that people are forgetting the lessons of World War II and the global order that was created in its aftermath. I subscribe to every word that you have said, and particularly this experience of [pre-World War II] appeasement. England and other countries underestimated the German aggression in the early years. The Holocaust and the terrible consequences and millions of casualties could have been avoided. The world underestimated the aggressor. The world put it basically on an equal level with imperfect democracies. And said, “No, he’s not going that far.” But he [Hitler] did it. He did it all, and he did it just as he announced it. It’s better to take a dictator seriously. Take China seriously in their announcements with regard to Taiwan, take Putin seriously with regard to his announcements of not only Ukraine, but even going further. And for sure, if we let him get away with this, he will go for Poland, he will go for the Baltics. I truly think this is the historic lesson. Let’s not underestimate the non-democratic aggressors. In every form, appeasement is wrong and is existentially dangerous. And there is military appeasement and political appeasement, but there is also business appeasement. We can avoid a dangerous escalation, but only if we act fast and if we use all the tools that we have.