LONDON — For Keir Starmer, the crises and climbdowns just keep getting faster. The British prime minister, facing questions about his judgment in appointing Peter Mandelson as U.K. ambassador to Washington despite his Jeffrey Epstein links, pledged on Wednesday to publish a cache of emails and texts between the ex-Labour peer and his top team — on his own terms. But hours later he was forced to toughen up independent scrutiny of this document release in the face of a revolt by his own MPs, who are horrified by the scandal and fear opposition accusations of a cover-up will stick. Taken alone, this technical U-turn will not enter any history books. But the last-minute drama around it puts the already weak Labour leader in further peril. Nervous MPs in his governing party, now awaiting the document dump with deep unease, are rounding with renewed ferocity on the PM and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney. POLITICO spoke to 20 Labour MPs and current and former officials for this piece. “We need a head,” said one moderate Labour MP who entered parliament in 2024 and was, like others quoted, granted anonymity to speak frankly. “Someone has to pay the price for this failure,” a second, usually loyal, MP from the 2024 intake said, adding they “wouldn’t care” who exactly it was. In the minds of many of Labour’s own MPs and officials, the Mandelson affair has further weakened Starmer and McSweeney, who pushed for the appointment of his close ally and friend as ambassador in late 2024. After rows over a succession of tax and policy U-turns, some believe the Mandelson crisis exemplifies their criticisms of Starmer’s leadership — paying too little attention to a potential problem until it blows up into a full-blown scandal. “I love Morgan, but Keir has to sack him and he should have sacked him a long time ago,” said one Labour official who has long been loyal to the leadership. “The problem is, who does Keir replace him with?” TAINTED BY MANDELSON Starmer defended McSweeney to the hilt on Wednesday. “Morgan McSweeney is an essential part of my team,” he told MPs. “He helped me change the Labour Party and win an election. Of course I have confidence in him,” the PM said. Some MPs also rallied around Starmer, blaming an overexcited media narrative and MPs on edge for the next scandal. “This feels like a Westminster story at the moment rather than something terminal for the PM in the eyes of the public,” said a third Labour MP elected in 2024. But the mood in large parts of the party on Wednesday night was bleak. The latest round of bloodletting began in earnest on Monday, when emails released as part of the Epstein files appeared to show Mandelson leaking government financial discussions in the wake of the 2008 banking crash. Police are now investigating allegations of misconduct in public office. Mandelson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the police investigation Tuesday evening. He has previously said he was wrong to have continued his association with Epstein and apologized “unequivocally” to Epstein’s victims. Starmer, like the rest of the British state and public, insists he did not know about the bombshell emails, and would never have appointed Mandelson if he did. Having already sacked Mandelson in September he is now obliterating his reputation, saying on Wednesday that Mandelson “lied repeatedly” during his appointment as ambassador.  Yet it was well known that Mandelson came with baggage. Starmer knew the former Labour Cabinet minister had been repeatedly sacked in scandal — and confirmed at the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions session on Wednesday that he had known Mandelson was friends with Epstein. “That was the moment,” said a fourth, moderate Labour MP. “The mood was awful. I had opposition MPs saying to me that they had not seen one that bad in decades.” Several Labour MPs and officials who spoke to POLITICO voiced fears that revealing details of the vetting process will paint Starmer and his chief of staff as too incurious about the wider situation. Mandelson had worked closely with McSweeney since the late 2010s and gave Labour informal advice in the run-up to its 2024 election landslide. One former No. 10 official said Mandelson was not on the list of potential ambassadors until McSweeney took over as chief of staff in October 2024, claiming: “Morgan didn’t do anything without speaking to Peter.” “Once the timeline — and the degree to which searching questions were asked — become clear, I think Morgan might be in trouble,” one U.K. government official added. Mandelson went through at least three layers of checks, a second U.K. government official said. Before his role was announced, the Cabinet Office carried out due diligence. Afterward, he was subjected to full deep security vetting. The third layer — and potentially the most problematic for Starmer and McSweeney — was a letter to Mandelson before his appointment from the chief of staff on the PM’s behalf. It asked three questions: why he continued contact with Epstein after his conviction, why he was reported to have stayed in one of Epstein’s home when the financier was in prison, and whether he was associated with a charity founded by Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell. A No. 10 official said reports that linked Mandelson to Epstein, including after he was first convicted, had been looked into as part of the appointment process. “Peter Mandelson lied to the Prime Minister, hid information that has since come to light and presented Epstein as someone he barely knew,” the No. 10 official added. HURRY UP AND WAIT Some Labour MPs — spooked by consistent polls putting Labour behind Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK — are so angry that they want to see regime change immediately. For many on Labour’s left or “soft left” flank this was simply a chance to push their campaign against No. 10. One former minister, already hostile to the leadership, said it felt like the worst part of Starmer’s premiership and McSweeney should go now. Left-wing former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, long cast out of the party over comments on antisemitism, went on Sky News to say Starmer may even be challenged before local elections, which will be held across the U.K. in May. Others were new converts to immediate action. A fifth Labour MP, a moderate who entered parliament in 2024, also said McSweeney should go now. They lamented the “blind spot for many in the leadership” who allowed Mandelson to become ambassador. It has left some MPs angry and dejected. One, Sarah Owen, made an impassioned intervention in Wednesday’s debate: “Don’t we need to put the victims at the heart of this, not just ourselves?” But they will have to wait if they want the facts behind the case to become clear. MPs agreed on Wednesday night to release a series of documents concerning the diligence and vetting around Mandelson’s appointment, as well as communications he had with McSweeney, ministers, civil servants and special advisers in the six months before his appointment. Starmer had intended to block the release of any documents that would prejudice U.K. national security or international relations. But No. 10 staged a late climbdown after Angela Rayner — a key figure among MPs on Labour’s “soft left” who resigned as deputy prime minister amid a housing scandal in September — called for parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) to have a role. Officials scrambled to compile a new amendment that would give the ISC the final say on what is blocked. It will likely take days or weeks for the government to work through what needs to be released, and far longer for the ISC to work through the most contentious documents after that. The Met Police also released a statement on Wednesday night warning the release of specific documents “could undermine” its current investigation into Mandelson’s alleged misconduct in public office. The releases — which could include Mandelson’s private messages to friends in the Cabinet, such as Health Secretary Wes Streeting — will provide easy fodder to a British media gripped by the stories of Epstein’s friendships with Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, formerly known as Prince Andrew. But most MPs and officials who spoke to POLITICO agreed that No. 10 and McSweeney stand to lose the most. A second former No. 10 official said: “Lots of people are nice to creepy people in politics. But when it comes down to the brass tacks of who knew what or did what when they made the appointment — that’s the chopping block stuff.” A sixth Labour MP, on the left of the party, said even frontbenchers were “questioning why they should jeopardise their own positions to protect one individual [McSweeney].” But the question of “when” remains a key one.  One Labour figure loyal to Starmer’s No. 10 admitted there will be pressure for McSweeney to go now, but insisted anyone with an ounce of political sense would delay any move against him until after local elections in May — so that he could absorb the blame for any losses and protect the PM. Even a staunch ally of McSweeney — who has been at Starmer’s side since he first ran to be Labour leader — said they had no idea if he will survive. But a seventh Labour MP, elected in 2024, thinks questions over McSweeney’s future are a red herring. “It’s ultimately about the PM’s judgement,” they said. The fourth Labour MP quoted above added: “If one of them goes, the other one has to go too.” Esther Webber contributed reporting.

LONDON — Keir Starmer will strive for “maximum transparency” when releasing files on Peter Mandelson’s appointment as British ambassador to the U.S., a senior U.K. minister said Wednesday. Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the prime minister wants to release as much information into the public domain about how Mandelson was appointed, his correspondence with ministers and his subsequent sacking last September over the former Labour peer’s friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “The prime minister’s going for maximum transparency here,” Streeting, a former friend of Mandelson, told Sky, though added the PM is “obviously drawing a line” by “not releasing information where it might compromise our national security and our security services, or where there may be information in there that might undermine international relations with other countries.” The opposition Conservatives have put forward a humble address — a parliamentary message to King Charles that was favored by Starmer during his time as leader of the opposition — calling for “all papers” relating to Mandelson’s appointment last year to be published. These include “due diligence which was passed to Number 10,” conflict of interest forms over his work in Russia and China, and correspondence (including electronic communications) between Mandelson, ministers and the PM’s Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney — who encouraged Starmer to send the then Labour peer to Washington. The government has published an amendment to the address accepting the Tories’ request, with the caveat that it will exclude “papers prejudicial to U.K. national security or international relations.” U.K. lawmakers will debate the substance of what should be released this afternoon. “What we’ve seen in recent days also is a prime minister acting rapidly to make sure that Peter Mandelson is stripped of all of the titles and privileges that were conferred on him through public service,” Streeting told the BBC, calling his behavior “so jaw-droppingly stupid and outrageous.” The Metropolitan Police confirmed Tuesday evening that Mandelson is under investigation for alleged misconduct in public office after it appeared he leaked sensitive government discussions at the height of the financial crisis to the late financier. Mandelson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation on Tuesday evening. He has previously said he was wrong to have continued his association with Epstein and apologized “unequivocally” to Epstein’s victims. And in a Times Newspaper interview that was conducted before the most recent batch of Epstein files were released, Mandelson attempted to explain his historic association with the disgraced financier. “I don’t know what his motives were — probably mixed — but he provided guidance to help me navigate out of the world of politics and into the world of commerce and finance,” Mandelson told the newspaper. Mandelson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the investigation on Tuesday evening. Mandelson also resigned from the House of Lords and left Labour following the latest tranche of correspondence in the Epstein Files.

BRUSSELS — More than 80 percent of Europe’s companies will be freed from environmental-reporting obligations after EU institutions reached a deal on a proposal to cut green rules on Monday.   The deal is a major legislative victory for European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her push cut red tape for business, one of the defining missions of her second term in office. However, that victory came at a political cost: The file pushed the coalition that got her re-elected to the brink of collapse and led her own political family, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP), to team up with the far right to get the deal over the line. The new law, the first of many so-called omnibus simplification bills, will massively reduce the scope of corporate sustainability disclosure rules introduced in the last political term. The aim of the red tape cuts is to boost the competitiveness of European businesses and drive economic growth. The deal concludes a year of intense negotiations between EU decision-makers, investors, businesses and civil society, who argued over how much to reduce reporting obligations for companies on the environmental impacts of their business and supply chains — all while the effects of climate change in Europe were getting worse. “This is an important step towards our common goal to create a more favourable business environment to help our companies grow and innovate,” said Marie Bjerre, Danish minister for European affairs. Denmark, which holds the presidency of the Council of the EU until the end of the year, led the negotiations on behalf of EU governments. Marie Bjerre, Den|mark’s Minister for European affairs, who said the agreement was an important step for a more favourable business environment. | Philipp von Ditfurth/picture alliance via Getty Images Proposed by the Commission last February, the omnibus is designed to address businesses’ concerns that the paperwork needed to comply with EU laws is costly and unfair. Many companies have been blaming Europe’s overzealous green lawmaking and the restrictions it places on doing business in the region for low economic growth and job losses, preventing them from competing with U.S. and Chinese rivals.   But Green and civil society groups — and some businesses too — argued this backtracking would put environmental and human health at risk. That disagreement reverberated through Brussels, disturbing the balance of power in Parliament as the EPP broke the so-called cordon sanitaire — an unwritten rule that forbids mainstream parties from collaborating with the far right — to pass major cuts to green rules. It set a precedent for future lawmaking in Europe as the bloc grapples with the at-times conflicting priorities of boosting economic growth and advancing on its green transition. The word “omnibus” has since become a mainstay of the Brussels bubble vernacular with the Commission putting forward at least 10 more simplification bills on topics like data protection, finance, chemical use, agriculture and defense. LESS PAPERWORK   The deal struck by negotiators from the European Parliament, EU Council and the Commission includes changes to two key pieces of legislation in the EU’s arsenal of green rules: The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).  The rules originally required businesses large and small to collect and publish data on their greenhouse gas emissions, how much water they use, the impact of rising temperatures on working conditions, chemical leakages and whether their suppliers — which are often spread across the globe — respect human rights and labor laws.    Now the reporting rules will only apply to companies with more than 1,000 employees and €450 million in net turnover, while only the largest companies — with 5,000 employees and at least €1.5 billion in net turnover — are covered by supply chain due diligence obligations. They also don’t have to adopt transition plans, with details on how they intend to adapt their business model to reach targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.   Importantly the decision-makers got rid of an EU-level legal framework that allowed civilians to hold businesses accountable for the impact of their supply chains on human rights or local ecosystems. MEPs have another say on whether the deal goes through or not, with a final vote on the file slated for Dec. 16. It means that lawmakers have a chance to reject what the co-legislators have agreed to if they consider it to be too far from their original position.

The EU is adding Russia to its blacklist of countries at high risk of money laundering and financing terrorism, according to two EU officials and a document seen by POLITICO. The global watchdog Financial Action Task Force (FATF) suspended Russia as a member after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but failed to blacklist it, despite evidence presented by the Ukrainian government, because of opposition from countries in the BRICS group of emerging economies, which includes Brazil, India, China, and South Africa. EU lawmakers called on the Commission many times to do what FATF was not able to. The Commission committed to complete a review by the end of 2025 to get their support to remove the United Arab Emirates and Gibraltar from the list earlier this year. POLITICO saw a draft of the Russia decision, which will be an annex to the list. In other internal documents, the Commission had said that the assessment was complicated by the lack of information-sharing with Moscow. The EU already has a wide range of sanctions heavily limiting access to EU financial services for Russian firms. The blacklisting is landing as the EU executive is trying to end Belgium’s resistance to using the revenues from Moscow’s frozen assets to fund Ukraine. The move will oblige financial institutions to strengthen due diligence on all transactions and force banks that have not already acted to further de-risk. The EU has usually aligned itself with FATF decisions, but from this year, it has its own Anti-Money Laundering Authority. AMLA will contribute to drafting the blacklist from July 2027. Dutch top official Hennie Verbeek-Kusters, a former chair of the financial intelligence cooperation body Egmont Group, is set to join the AMLA authority executive board after a positive hearing with lawmakers held behind closed doors, one of the EU officials said. A vote on the appointment is due on Dec. 15, said a third official.

Heidi Kingstone is a journalist and author covering human rights issues, conflict and politics. Her most recent book is “Genocide: Personal Stories, Big Questions.” Slavery is alive and thriving, and it’s wrapped inside shiny chocolate bars that promise to be “fair trade,” “child-labor free” and “sustainable.” In West Africa, which produces more than 60 percent of the world’s cocoa, over 1.5 million children still work under hazardous conditions. Kids, some as young as five, use machetes to crack pods open in their hands, carry loads that weigh more than they do and spray toxic pesticides without protection. Meanwhile, of the roughly 2 million metric tons of cocoa the Ivory Coast produces each year, between 20 percent and 30 percent is grown illegally in protected forests. And satellite data from Global Forest Watch shows an increase in deforestation across key cocoa-growing regions as farmers, desperate for income, push deeper into forest reserves. The bitter truth is that despite decades of pledges, certification schemes and packaging glowing with virtue — of forests saved, farmers empowered and consciences soothed — most chocolate companies have failed to eradicate exploitation from their supply chains. Today, many cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast and Ghana still earn less than a dollar a day, well below the poverty line. According to a 2024 report by the International Cocoa Initiative, the average farmer earns only 40 percent of a living wage. Put starkly, as the global chocolate market swells close to a $150 billion a year in 2025, the average farmer now receives less than 6 percent of the value of a single chocolate bar, whereas in the 1970s they received more than 50 percent. Then there’s the use of child labor, which is essentially woven into the fabric of this economy, where we have been sold the illusion of progress. From the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol — a voluntary agreement to end child labor by the world’s chocolate giants — to today’s glossy environmental, social and governance (ESG) reports, every initiative has promised progress and delivered delay. In 2007, the industry quietly redefined “public certification,” shifting it from a commitment to consumer labeling to a vague pledge to compile statistics on labor conditions. It missed the original 2010 deadline to eliminate child labor, as well as a new target to reduce it by 70 percent by 2020. And that year, a study by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center found that hazardous child labor in cocoa production increased from 2008 to 2019. “We covered a story about a ship carrying trafficked children,” recalled journalist Humphrey Hawksley, who first exposed the issue in the BBC documentary called Slavery: A Global Investigation. “The chocolate companies refused to comment and spoke as one industry. That was their rule. Even now, none of them is slave-free,” he added. As it stands, many of the more than 1.5 million West African children working in cocoa production are trafficked from neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali. Traffickers lure them with false promises or outright abduction, offering children as young as 10 either bicycles or small sums to travel to the Ivory Coast. There, they are sold to farmers for as little as $34 each. And once on these farms, they are trapped. They work up to 14 hours a day, sleep in windowless sheds with no clean water or toilets, and most never see the inside of a classroom. Last but not least, we come to deforestation: Since its independence, more than 90 percent of the Ivory Coast’s forests have disappeared due to cocoa farming. In 2024, deforestation accelerated despite corporate commitments to halt it by 2025, as declining soil fertility and stagnant prices pushed farmers farther into the forest to plant new cocoa trees. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” | Lena Klimkeit/Picture Alliance via Getty Images Certification labels like “Rainforest Alliance” and “Fairtrade” are supposed to prevent this. But as Reuters Correspondent for West and Central Africa Ange Aboa described them, such labels are “the biggest scam of the century!” Complicit in all of this are the financiers and investors who profit. For example, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund is the world’s largest investor, and Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) is a shareholder in 9,000 corporations, including Nestlé, Mondelez, Hershey, Barry Callebaut and Lindt — all part of the direct chocolate cluster. NBIM also has shares in McDonald’s, Starbucks, Unilever, the Dunkin’ parent company and Tim Hortons — the indirect high-volume buyer cluster. “The richest families in cocoa — the Marses, the Ferreros, the Cargills, the Jacobs — are billionaires thanks to the exploitation of the poorest children on earth,” said journalist and human rights campaigner Fernando Morales-de la Cruz, the founder of Cacao for Change. “And countries like Norway, which claim to be ethical, profit from slavery and child labor.” The problem is, few are asking who picks the cocoa. And though the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which was adopted last year, requires large companies to address human rights and environmental abuses in their supply chains, critics say the directive’s weaknesses, loopholes, and delayed enforcement will blunt its impact. However, all of this could still be fixed. Currently, a metric ton of cocoa sells for about $5,000 on world markets, but Morales-de la Cruz estimates that a fair farm-gate price would be around $7,500 per metric ton. To that end, he advocates for binding international trade standards that enforce living incomes and transparent pricing, modeled on the World Trade Organization’s compliance mechanisms. “Human rights should be as binding in trade as tariffs,” he insisted. The solution isn’t to buy more “ethical” bars but to demand accountability and support legislation that makes exploitation unprofitable. “We can’t shop our way to justice,” he said. So, as the trees in the Ivory Coast’s forests fall, the profits in Europe and North America continue to soar. And two decades after the industry vowed to end child labor, the cocoa supply chain remains one of the world’s most exploitative and least accountable. Moreover, the European Parliament’s vote on the Omnibus simplification package last month laid bare the corporate control and moral blindness still present in EU policymaking, all behind talk of “cutting red tape.” “Yet Europe’s media and EU-funded NGOs stay silent, talking of competitiveness and green transitions, while ignoring the children who harvest its cocoa, coffee and cotton,” said Morales-de la Cruz. “Europe cannot claim to defend human rights while profiting from exploitation.” However, until the industry pays a fair price and governments enforce real accountability, every bar of chocolate remains an unpaid moral debt.

LONDON — Senior British government officials on Monday defended the ill-fated hiring of Peter Mandelson as Britain’s ambassador to Washington despite his relationship with the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Mandelson was ousted from his role as Britain’s man in Washington earlier this year after emails were published which showed him telling the financier he “thinks the world” of him and was “furious” at his 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor. In a grilling by the MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee Monday afternoon, Foreign Office Permanent Under-Secretary Oliver Robbins and Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald — Britain’s top civil servant — insisted that the government had not been aware of this specific information at the time of the appointment. Wormald, who is the head of the civil service, confirmed that there was “no panel interview” when Mandelson was being considered for the role because the post was filled through a direct ministerial appointment by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. A panel interview would normally be used to ask a candidate if there was anything in their history that would bring the government into disrepute, Wormald explained, but Mandelson did not go through this process, and therefore the question was not directly posed. Mandelson’s relationship with Epstein did come up during due diligence checks, Robbins said. But Wormald said the information that ultimately saw Mandelson ousted from his role was “not available to us at the time that the due diligence was done.” Quizzing the pair, Labour MP and committee member Uma Kumaran argued that it ought to have been foreseen that a “well-publicized friendship with the world’s most notorious pedophile might be a problem to the government,” while Conservative MP Aphra Brandreth read out a list of publicly available information on Mandelson, saying he “kept a notoriously close relationship” with the pedophile and stayed in his Manhattan townhouse after Epstein had pleaded guilty. Brandreth asked: “At what point were questions raised about whether that was appropriate, and why does it seem that suddenly a small additional bit of information would tip the balance on that being, at one point deemed appropriate to then not appropriate?” Speaking in the House of Commons in September after the sacking, Starmer said the Mandelson-Epstein relationship was “far different to what I’d understood to be the position at the point of appointment,” and “had I known then what I know now, I’d have never appointed him.” Under questioning by the committee, Robinson confirmed that Mandelson — who has said he feels “utterly awful about my association with Epstein twenty years ago and the plight of his victims” — is no longer on the government payroll, but refused to say if the former ambassador received any settlement following his exit. The pair said there had been a “number” of changes to the direct ministerial appointment system since Mandelson was appointed. Wormald said these reforms would “effectively replicate what would normally happen in a panel interview,” introducing a higher degree of scrutiny.

The Trump administration is ramping up the pressure on the European Union to repeal or overhaul a regulation on corporations’ greenhouse gas pollution — in the latest example of the United States’ willingness to wield its economic might against an international climate initiative. It comes less than a week after the U.S. scored a surprising victory over a proposed United Nations climate fee on shipping, in what one Trump Cabinet member described Wednesday as an “all hands on deck” lobbying blitz. In its newest effort, the Energy Department joined the government of Qatar in warning the EU that it’s risking higher prices for “critical energy supplies” unless it alters or deletes its Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. “It is our genuine belief, as allies and friends of the EU, that the CSDDD will cause considerable harm to the EU and its citizens, as it will lead to higher energy and other commodity prices, and have a chilling effect on investment and trade,” the department and the Qataris said in an open letter Wednesday to European heads of state and EU members. During a press conference later in the day, European Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert declined to discuss the European Parliament’s negotiations over the climate directive. The new pressure on the EU comes after months of attempts by President Donald Trump and his appointees to blunt climate regulations at home and abroad that threaten to impinge on U.S. “dominance” in fossil fuels. And lately he’s succeeded in drawing some countries to the United States’ side. ‘WIN FOR THE WORLD’ On Friday, U.S. pressure succeeded in thwarting a proposal by U.N.’s International Maritime Organization to impose the first worldwide tax on climate pollution from shipping. The maritime body had been widely expected to adopt the shipping fee at a meeting in London, but instead it postponed the initiative for at least a year. Fellow petro-giants Russia and Saudi Arabia lobbied for the pause, and EU members Greece and Cyprus helped that effort by abstaining from the final vote. The aftermath of that vote continued to affect European climate diplomacy this week, temporarily upending internal EU discussions about the bloc’s negotiating position for next month’s COP30 summit in Brazil. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins were exultant Wednesday in outlining the pressure they had brought to bear to block the maritime fee. Wright said he phoned 20 countries while Rollins handled nations such as Antigua and Jamaica in what she characterized as an “all hands on deck” effort. The effort also included Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Wright said. Wright added that he had personally written a Truth Social message that Trump posted the night before the vote, in which the president warned that the “United States will NOT stand for this Global Green New Scam Tax on Shipping.” (Trump changed “three or four words on it,” the secretary said.) “We’re going to come back to realistic views on energy,” Wright said at an event hosted by America First Policy Institute. “That’s a win not just for America, that’s a win for the world.” EUROPEAN CLIMATE PRESSURE The EU has already said it will not scrap its corporate climate directive, though it may dismantle a civil liability provision in a bid to simplify the law. But revising the directive has been a challenge for Europe because lawmakers are divided on how far to roll back sustainability reporting obligations for companies. The rule, which the EU put into force last year but still needs to be adopted by member states, would require companies to identify and address adverse human rights and environmental impacts of their actions inside and outside Europe. Europe’s move to wean itself off Russian energy supplies since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has forced the continent to increase its reliance on U.S. liquefied natural gas imports. But U.S. gas producers have warned that the climate directive will increase the cost of doing business with customers in the EU. In the letter, DOE and Qatar said the climate directive “poses a significant risk to the affordability and reliability of critical energy supplies for households and businesses across Europe and an existential threat to the future growth, competitiveness, and resilience of the EU’s industrial economy.” The governments also advise the EU to repeal the directive or, barring that, rewrite key provisions dealing with the penalties and civil liabilities for companies that don’t comply with the regulation. The U.S. and Qatar also want the Europeans to change language requiring companies to provide transition plans for climate change mitigation. Marianne Gros contributed to this report from Brussels.

PARIS — France’s Emmanuel Macron will arrive in Brussels for a key European Council meeting Thursday with his reputation as the continent’s idea man long gone and replaced by a new one: chief party pooper. As European Union leaders gather to game-plan in the face of existential crises ranging from combatting the rise of the far right to preventing a bad Trump-Putin deal on Ukraine, they can no longer rely on Macron’s grandiose ideas. Conversations with 10 diplomats and officials from across the European Union, all of whom were granted anonymity to candidly discuss the French president’s political fortunes, suggest the 47-year-old centrist’s domestic troubles and focus on his legacy have made him an obstacle to progress rather than a motor of it. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposed “drone wall” to protect European skies from Russia’s increasingly invasive unmanned aerial vehicles? Unrealistic, per Macron. European Council President António Costa’s idea to streamline the EU accession process by eliminating the need for unanimity? Nah. France isn’t giving up its veto power. Making our planet great again? Maybe one day. But now is not the time for the due diligence directive requiring companies to monitor their global suppliers for human rights and environmental abuses. Or for 2040 climate targets, for that matter. Macron in recent months has become more cautious, balking at proposals that risk generating a backlash in France, and more prickly with regard to proposals he doesn’t control. France has instead poured its energy into slashing red tape. In recent weeks the French leader has been pushing for more controls on migration and for red tape to be slashed, while lobbying for new rules to keep children off social media and bidding to create carveouts for automakers on green targets. Hardly the stuff of European dreams. “This Macron has been consumed by domestic troubles,” said an EU diplomat. “He is no longer the European champion we once knew.” Macron in recent months has become more cautious, balking at proposals that risk generating a backlash in France. | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images NOT THE SAME MAN(U) When it comes to the changes the European Union has seen in the last decade, it’s hard to understate Macron’s influence and foresight. Speaking at the Sorbonne University in 2017, he argued forcefully for a more muscular Europe that wasn’t so dependent on partners overseas, either for manufactured goods or for its own defense. His call fell on deaf ears at the time. Today, however, the European Commission and leaders across the bloc preach Macron’s gospel of “strategic autonomy” as they try to diversify away from China and beef up the continent’s military capacities in the face of Russian aggression and American military retrenchment. Macron earned the nickname of the EU’s “think-tanker in chief,” and his blizzard of initiatives and ideas for reforming Europe defined his early tenure as a leader on the world stage. Fast-forward to October 2025, though, and it’s become clear that politics and legacy loom large in Macron’s calculus. Just look at enlargement. Macron was long seen as a supporter of bringing new members into the European Union to increase the bloc’s economic and geopolitical heft. He spearheaded the European Political Community as a sort of waiting room for wannabe EU members in 2022, and a year later pledged to bring aspiring candidate countries into the bloc as “fast as possible.” Little wonder, then, that Macron’s allies had trouble understanding France’s decision to oppose Costa’s proposal to lift the veto power of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán on parts of the accession process. A heavyweight from Macron’s Renew group in the European Parliament said the move was “in total contradiction” with Macron’s previous commitments. “It’s a fundamental error,” the individual said. According to a top Macron ally, the French president simply doesn’t have the political capital to back some of his own ambitions, especially those that provide fodder to Euroskeptics and Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. “It’s not the right moment, we have the far right breathing down our necks,” the ally said.  “Any talk about Albania, Montenegro entering the Union is a gift for … Le Pen,” he said, noting that French farmers would be the first to take to the streets to protest the entry of agricultural giant Ukraine.  WANING INFLUENCE Influence in Brussels has been a casualty of France’s chaos at home. Macron has cycled through five prime ministers in less than two years and was nearly forced to hunt for a sixth after his current pick, Sébastien Lecornu, resigned after his first government lasted just 14 hours. The French president eventually reappointed Lecornu and the crisis abated, at least temporarily. Macron was long seen as a supporter of bringing new members into the European Union to increase the bloc’s economic and geopolitical heft. | Jure Makovec/AFP via Getty Images While successive French governments have shared similar views on EU affairs, their successive collapse has left France increasingly less influential in Brussels. “If you have a non-functioning government for one-and-a-half years, that gives you a little bit less influence on decisions,” an EU diplomat from outside France said.   The churn makes it harder in the room when ministers meet, the diplomat added. It also makes it difficult for the French government to craft and circulate the ever-important policy papers ahead of ministerial meetings that drive the agenda and represent national priorities. As Macron approaches the twilight of his presidency, he might yet sketch out some grand designs for Europe, but his ability to turn dreams into reality has been largely eclipsed.  Even if the French president somehow pulls off yet another great escape and manages to find a way through the political mire with a government that lasts and a budget that passes, the crushing truth for those working in the institutions and embassies of Brussels is that Macron’s influence is seriously weakened. And that his own grand pro-European project is finished.  Diplomats from outside France are already speaking of Macron in the past tense and talking about his “legacy,” even though he’s not due to leave office until 2027.  “He was something special,” one told POLITICO. Victor Goury-Laffont contributed reporting.

LUXEMBOURG — The European Commission has dropped a plan to delay its flagship anti-deforestation law, just a month after announcing it wanted to pause it for another year. However, the EU executive has proposed a number of changes to the law to reduce paperwork, Environment Commissioner Roswall announced on Tuesday during the Environment Council meeting in Luxembourg. Only the company that first places a product onto the market will have to submit a due diligence statement for example, she said, with the aim of reducing paperwork and reducing the load on the IT system. The announcement follows a string of unexpected developments regarding the EU Deforestation-free Regulation(EUDR), which was enacted in 2023 and is designed to ensure products such as coffee, beef, cocoa and palm oil imported to the EU do not come from deforested land. It was already delayed by 12 months last year. Under the new proposal, micro- and small businesses will still be given an extra year to comply. The EUDR will come into force on December 30 this year as planned, however companies that can’t comply immediately have a six-month grace period until June 30. The European Parliament and Council of the EU must approve the Commission’s proposal.

PARIS — Some signatories of a joint appeal by French and German business bosses to loosen merger rules and scrap environmental laws to promote European industrial “champions” have distanced themselves from the letter, saying they were encouraged to write it by their national governments.  The letter to French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, first reported by POLITICO a week ago, quickly drew rebukes from green NGOs and competition regulators, with France’s Benoît Cœuré challenging the notion that the bloc’s merger rules had prevented the creation of leading European businesses. Co-authored by TotalEnergies CEOs Patrick Pouyanné and Roland Busch of Siemens, the letter was written “in the name of” 46 chief executives who met with the two heads of state during a high-level, closed-door meeting between industry and the governments in Evian, France, in early September.   But since the letter came to light, some of the French companies it claims to speak on behalf of are backtracking.   The letter is a good summary of the discussion held at Evian, said BPIFrance, the French public investment bank. But its CEO, Nicolas Dufourcq, doesn’t consider himself bound by it, he told POLITICO in a written statement.  Dufourcq said the letter was “not a big effort.” Although he was in Evian, he did not see it before it was published, and therefore doesn’t consider that he signed it. The letter complained that the current European competition rules “often hinder the formation of European champions” and urged that, by the end of this year, the mandate of the European Commission’s Competition Directorate be widened to consider strategic mergers in the context of the global market. It also demands that EU leaders get rid of EU rules on supply chain transparency. ‘A LITTLE STRONG’ A representative from a second French company among the signatories said that the origin of the letter was “a little nebulous” and that they were not informed of the wording ahead of time. Granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter, they said that they did not disagree with the letter, but “the wording is a little strong.” Even TotalEnergies, one of the two top signatories, has sought to clarify how the letter came about. Shortly after POLITICO reported on it, the company reached out directly to provide “more context.”  “The CEO of Siemens and TotalEnergies were the co-chairmen of the Evian Franco-German meeting gathering 46 CEOs,” a spokesperson said. “They welcomed Chancellor Merz and President Macron during a special session, and they were encouraged by both leaders to express their priorities as CEOs to develop Europe’s competitiveness.”   The letter, he added, “summarizes the 5 top priorities and call for actions in the short term which resulted from the debates between the CEOs.”   Siemens declined to comment in response to TotalEnergies’ assertions.  NO GERMAN COMPLAINTS No criticism has emerged from German companies, which appeared to be aligned with the message. “The letter emerged from the group discussion, so [Deutsche Börse Group CEO] Stephan Leithner, who was among the participants, was involved, and we support the contents of the letter,” a spokesperson for Deutsche Börse told POLITICO. A spokesperson for Bosch — whose CEO is also listed among the participants — called the initiative one “spearheaded by companies from Europe’s two largest economies.” They added that a central pillar of the demands is “aimed at securing and strengthening the competitiveness of European industry.”  Neither the Elysée nor the German representation in Brussels responded to requests for comment.  Francesca Micheletti and Marianne Gros reported from Brussels, Alexandre Léchenet reported from Paris. Jordyn Dahl contributed reporting from Brussels, and Tom Schmidtgen from Berlin.