LONDON — To mark the festive season POLITICO’s London Playbook asked a host of key players in Westminster to share the best — and worst — Christmas presents they’ve ever received. Here’s what came back. Lucy Powell, deputy Labour leader: As a kid, probably my Girls World (no-one under age of 45 would understand) was my best.  As an adult, we only do Secret Santas now and we write a list for that.  But recently my (lovely) husband bought me the same present he bought me the year before … John Swinney, Scottish first minister: Best gift? Steve Clarke’s early Christmas gift to the nation with a 4-2 win over Denmark to secure a World Cup spot next year. Ed Davey, Lib Dem leader: When my wife got me my first set of base layers, I at last understood why my lovely mum had always asked for Damart. Mel Stride, Conservative Shadow Chancellor: My best present was a pedal car when I was around 5. I can still remember it being unveiled on the kitchen table. It seemed huge and high up and loaded with the promise of long drives and adventure. I loved that car. Beth Rigby, Sky News political editor: Best? An Arsenal Christmas bauble. Worst? A Tottenham Hotspur mug. An Arsenal Christmas bauble. | Julian Finney/Getty Images Richard Hermer, attorney general: Best present? Mr Muscle drain cleaner for all those governmental blockages. Worst present? Media coverage last year that referred to me as a Londoner, rather than as being from Wales. James Heale, Spectator deputy pol-ed: My best Christmas book was receiving a copy of Alan Clark’s diaries as a schoolboy. Sadly, most Tory backbenchers live much less exciting lives these days. Douglas Alexander, Scotland Secretary: The ‘best’ present was my son — who was born much earlier than expected … and so arrived in December. The ‘worst’ gift was the year there weren’t any presents at all … as the Manse [a house provided for church ministers] was burgled during the Christmas Eve service my dad was taking. Wendy Chamberlain, Lib Dem chief whip: My husband bought me a keyboard and rather than wrap it he put a card with a pound note inside it on the tree and wrapped a packet of Quavers for under the tree. These were my clues. I ended up pretty frustrated and confused, particularly given that I’ve never played a musical instrument … Natalie Bennett, Green Party peer and former leader: Worst? Call it a cautionary tale for older relatives: when I was 10 (1976), my grandmother was trying to be “down with the kids” and gave me the latest Abba cassette. But youth taste in suburban Sydney had already moved on and I was careful not to tell any of my peers because Abba was by then deeply uncool. My best was when my then-partner Jim got an artist to draw a picture of my former Battersea staffie [Staffordshire Bull Terrier] Beanie. The artist captured her energy and enthusiasm beautifully. Luke Tryl, More in Common pollster: I don’t think anything can beat getting Mighty Max Skull mountain age 5 or 6. It’s all been disappointment since then. Katie White, DESNZ Minister: My best gift might actually be a gift this year, after I spotted what looked very much like a confirmation order from a generous gift giver. If my hopes are right, it’s the viral, now TikTok-famous Yorkshire pecorino. The worst, and possibly least romantic, gift I’ve ever received was a poached egg pan from Woolworths. Stephen Flynn, SNP’s (follicly-challenged) Westminster leader: The mother bought me caffeine shampoo last year or the year before.

LONDON — Nigel Farage is gambling that a hardline stance on migration is a surefire vote-winner. But it’s a risky bet. Amid a spate of protests outside hotels housing some of Britain’s asylum seekers, Farage’s insurgent Reform UK party faces a dilemma. Should it condemn the demos and disappoint voters on the right? Or lean in — and risk alienating the more moderate voters who are now powering its rise? Reform UK’s base is increasingly mirroring the average Briton, according to fresh polling from the think tank More in Common. Just 40 percent of its current supporters backed the party in 2024, and just 16 percent of its current backers once voted for Farage’s old outfit, UKIP. Its gender gap has narrowed, its age profile has evened out, and many of its newest recruits are less glued to online culture wars. That makes Reform’s growth, in the pollsters’ words, both “a blessing and a curse.” The broader the party gets, the greater the risk of being defined by its more radical supporters — and losing the very voters Farage has worked to bring in. Members of the far-right have egged on protests outside the Bell Hotel in Epping. What began as a local protest quickly drew in the Homeland party — a breakaway from Britain’s biggest far-right group, Patriotic Alternative — alongside Britain First, and hard-right agitator Tommy Robinson. So far, Reform has backed the right to protest — Farage described people protesting as “genuinely concerned families,” and insisted that violence was caused by “some bad eggs.” “We don’t pick and choose the protest,” his Deputy Leader Richard Tice told POLITICO in an interview. “We don’t choose to support some and not others. We just say lawful, peaceful protest is an important part of a functioning democracy.”  DISTANCE But it’s a careful line for a party that has spent the past year trying to sharpen its operation — tightening vetting rules for candidates and putting distance between itself and overt racism. “They’ve drawn a clear line when it comes to distancing themselves from Tommy Robinson,” said Marley Morris, associate director for migration, trade and communities at the Institute for Public Policy Research. So far, Reform has backed the right to protest — Nigel Farage described people protesting as “genuinely concerned families,” and insisted that violence was caused by “some bad eggs.” | Neil Hall/EPA “That’s actually come at quite significant costs for Nigel Farage, because of its consequences for his relationship with Elon Musk.” The Tesla owner has been a staunch online backer of Robinson, who was jailed in the UK for contempt of court after he repeated false claims about a Syrian schoolboy. Farage — whose party descends on Birmingham for its annual conference this weekend in a jubilant mood — is riding high in the polls, and will be buoyed by polling that consistently puts migration at or near the top of Brits’ list of concerns. But the summer of tense protests risks complicating matters, according to some British commentators. Farage “feels under pressure from the online right,” argued Sunder Katwala, director of the British Future think tank. Over the past month, Reform has doubled down on its anti-immigration pitch — in language critics say edges closer to the far-right. In August, Tice told Times Radio that there should be more groups of men on a “neighborhood watch-style basis within the bounds of the law” to protect women from the “sneering, jeering, and sexual assaults and rapes that are taking place, coincidentally, near a number of these asylum-seeker hotels.”  Pressed by POLITICO, Tice doubled down on this position. “There is already vigilantism going on. No one wants to report it, but that’s the reality of life … It is much better to shine the spotlight on an issue, talk about it … and then government can make better policy.”  Tice likens asylum arrivals in the UK to “an invasion double the size of the British Army.” But the summer of tense protests risks complicating matters, according to some British commentators. | Tolga Aken/EPA “That’s how people talk about it in the pubs and clubs and bus stops and sports fields up and down the country. I know that makes people in Westminster uncomfortable — tough,” Tice told POLITICO. THE CONNOLLY FACTOR The party has also wrapped its arms around Lucy Connolly, a 42-year-old woman who was jailed after pleading guilty to stirring up racial hatred against asylum seekers with a post calling for migrant hotels to be set on fire. Reform has painted Connolly as a political prisoner of Keir Starmer’s government, with Farage even flying to Washington this week to slam Britain’s online safety rules and likening the UK to North Korea on free speech.  Cabinet ministers blasted Farage’s U.S. trip as a “Talk Britain Down” tour. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds called it “as anti-British as you can get. More in Common polling shows that while voters are split on whether Connolly’s sentence was too harsh or too lenient, 51 percent want politicians to distance themselves from her, including more than a quarter of Reform voters. “The transnational neoconservative right is a massive danger to the British right, not an opportunity,” argued IPPR’s Morris. More in Common polling shows that many of Reform’s newer supporters view U.S.-style populist figures, such as Donald Trump, negatively. Social attitudes are also shifting, with six in ten voters supporting same-sex marriages, and 46 percent thinking the legal abortion limit should stay at 24 weeks. POLICY PITFALLS While Reform is confidently ahead in national voting intention polls, there is evidence of some unease about its specific policy pledges. A proposal to work with the Taliban to return Afghan asylum seekers got a mixed reception. Some 45 percent of Britons said that giving money to the regime to take returns would be “completely unacceptable,” according to a YouGov poll. The party has also struggled to clarify its stance on deporting children. Chairman Zia Yusuf suggested unaccompanied minors could eventually be removed under the party’s mass deportation plans — only for Farage to row back, insisting it wouldn’t happen in Reform’s first term. “When it came to deporting children, they realized that what they proposed isn’t really sustainable — it seems, frankly, inhumane,” said Morris. “If [Reform] wants to appeal to the wider public, and not just to its base, it can’t just appeal to this kind of narrow group of people.” Tice has since sought to narrow the focus. “We’ve said that we will start focusing on detaining and deporting males first,” he said. “If a husband is detained and deported, if he’s got a wife and children, they’ve got a choice to make. “The children of parents who are here illegally, those children are not British citizens by law,” he continued. “There are bound to be specific cases and things, but as a principle, we’re not going to go through a whole long list of exemptions. If you do that, you actually create a criminal gang focus on the exemptions, and then people try to game that system. So we’re not playing that game.”

BERLIN — It was a beating hot summer day and Gregor was dressed in the formal uniform of the German army: a sky-blue shirt and navy trousers, which he had received that week, the fabric still stiff. The 39-year-old office manager had never been patriotic, and like many liberal-leaning Germans his feelings toward the military for most of his life had been ambivalent at best. When he was 18 he’d even turned down the option of doing a year of military service, believing it was a waste of time. Now, two decades later, life had taken an unexpected turn. As a steel band played, he marched in time alongside 17 others dressed in the same freshly pressed outfits into an open square at Germany’s Ministry of Defense, a towering grey neoclassical building in western Berlin, following the commands they had learned just a few days earlier. They were all there to do the same thing: take the oath required of all new recruits to the German armed forces. Afterward, they would begin their official training as reserve officers, learning the basic skills needed to defend against a military invasion. Everything had changed for Gregor on Feb. 24, 2022, when news broke that Russia had invaded Ukraine. Suddenly, the peace he had always taken for granted in Europe didn’t seem so guaranteed. “I was watching videos of Ukrainian civilians joining soldiers to fight off Russian tanks as they rolled toward their towns,” he said. “I thought to myself: ‘If something like that happened here, I wouldn’t have any practical skills to help.’” It was a fitting day to take the oath: July 20, 2024, the 80th anniversary of the so-called Operation Valkyrie, when a group of German soldiers plotted, and failed, to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Usually oath ceremonies are low-key affairs, carried out at barracks with a few family members present — the close associations between the military and Germany’s dark history means servicemen are not celebrated with the pomp and pageantry they are in other countries. But in honor of the special date, around 400 other recruits from various divisions from all over Germany were gathered in the same square, ready to take their pledge. The country’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius from the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), gave a short speech, telling the recruits that the prospect of defending Germany’s democracy had “become more real after Putin’s attack on Ukraine.” Then a lieutenant colonel shouted out the words of the oath, as the group repeated them back: “I pledge to loyally serve the Federal Republic of Germany and to courageously defend the right and liberty of the German people.” As he repeated the words of the oath, Gregor felt an unexpected swell of emotion. “I realized this is going to be a big part of my life now,” he said. “I’m going to be dedicating a lot of my time to it, and I’m going to have to explain to people why I’m doing it.” His mother remarked afterward that she also experienced surprising feelings while watching from the benches. “That was the first time I ever heard the national anthem being sung and felt like I actually wanted to join in,” she told him. Across Germany, both politicians and members of the public have been going through a similar transformation. The country’s army, officially named the Bundeswehr — which translates as “federal defense” — was established by the United States during the Cold War. It was designed to support NATO rather than ever lead a conflict, for fear that a German military could be misused as it was during World War II. This supporting role suited Germany’s leaders: Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, the country’s politicians carefully shaped an image of a peaceful nation that prefers influencing global politics through trade and diplomacy. After the end of the Cold War the Bundeswehr began scaling down, with military spending falling from a high of 4.9 percent of GDP in 1963 to just 1.1 percent in 2005. But in the months following the Russian invasion, then-chancellor Olaf Scholz surprised the world by announcing a radical change in German foreign policy, including a €100 billion ($116 billion) plan to beef up its army. Then in early 2025, five days after the February election of new chancellor Friedrich Merz of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), Donald Trump invited Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky into the Oval Office for a browbeating broadcast around the world that signaled his lack of interest in standing up to Russia. A shocked Merz, who had campaigned on a platform of low taxes and low spending, immediately agreed with Scholz to work together to reform the country’s strict borrowing laws — which were embedded in the constitution — and build up its defense capabilities as quickly as possible with a €1 trillion loan, which amounts to about 25 percent of the country’s GDP. According to Lorenzo Scarazzato, a researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), this type of defense spending was previously unheard of during peacetime. “Countries that spend this much are usually those at war, or autocratic states that don’t have democratic oversight,” he said. The following month, Germany’s lawmakers voted to back the plan, setting the country’s military on track to be the best-funded in Europe and the fourth-biggest in the world. In Merz’s view, Europe didn’t just need to arm itself against Russian aggression, but also “achieve independence from the USA.” Later in the year, NATO members would agree to raise their defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, at Trump’s behest. It marks a huge shift not just from how Germany manages its finances but how it perceives both itself and its place in the world. “After World War II, the allies did a tremendous job of re-educating the German population,” said Carsten Breuer, the Bundeswehr’s highest serving general. “This led to a society which I would say is peace-minded, and of course there’s nothing wrong with that. But it is also non-military.” So far, committing resources to the military has been fairly easy for the German government. But now it needs to convince thousands of people to do the same as Gregor and dedicate themselves to military service. After the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the government began scaling down the Bundeswehr from 500,000 soldiers to the current 180,000. The country’s national service, in which young men had to choose between serving in the army or undertaking another type of civil service, was scrapped in 2011. Now, General Breuer estimates the total personnel needs to rise to 460,000, including both full-time staff and reservists. Bundeswehr applications are up 20 percent this year, though not everyone will make it through the physical and security tests. Even then, that still isn’t enough to plug the gaps, and it is likely that conscription of some kind will return. Breuer believes the German public is softening up to the military after decades of standoffishness. The war on Ukraine, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic and the disaster response to devastating floods, have put many people in closer touch with the Bundeswehr, he says. “When I was talking to my soldiers in the early 2000s, they would always ask, ‘Why isn’t it like the U.S. here, where people thank you for your service?’” he said. “Nowadays, we’re starting to see this in Germany.” He recounted a recent moment when he was waiting for a flight in the city of Dusseldorf and an elderly man tapped him on the shoulder to offer his thanks. However, for many people, any glorification of the German military will always have uncomfortable associations with the country’s dark history: Neo-Nazi groups still use German military symbols and history as part of their recruitment propaganda, and the Bundeswehr has been plagued by far-right scandals in recent years. For some, the government’s push to embrace the army is one more sign of a dangerous transformation in the country’s political sentiments: The far-right AfD is currently second in the polls, and the ruling CDU has shed former leader Angela Merkel’s liberal image in favor of a harsh anti-immigration stance. And as welfare, social services and climate protection face possible cuts to support military spending, Germany’s politicians face a challenge in seeing how long they can keep the newfound support going. “When you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail, and you forget the rest of the toolkit, which includes diplomacy and cooperation,” said Scarazzato from SIPRI. “Military gives some level of deterrence, but engaging with the other side is perhaps what prevents escalation.” He warns that a beefed-up army “is not necessarily a panacea for whatever issue you are facing.” The Heuberg training ground in Baden-Württemberg has a long and dark history. Nestled in the southwestern part of Germany near the Swiss border, it was originally built as a base for the German Imperial Army, which existed from 1871 to 1919 and fought in World War I. Some timber-framed buildings and stables from this time still exist, many crumbling and disused. In early 1933 it became one of the country’s first concentration camps, housing 2,000 political opponents, before it was used as a base for the SS, the Nazis’ violent paramilitary group. Now, it is where the next generation of German military reserves come to train. This past June, I watched 18 people struggling through the same type of training Gregor undertook a year earlier. Heuberg serves as the anchor for recruits hailing from Baden-Württemberg, with each region of the country playing host to its own reserves trainings. The one I observed at Heuberg takes 17 days in total, spread out over long weekends throughout the summer. None of the recruits, including Gregor, can share their surnames for security reasons — the Bundeswehr says its soldiers have been targeted by foreign intelligence and been subject to identify theft. The lieutenant colonel leading the training, Stefan, told me that the sessions cover the most basic skills, meaning these recruits will know how to defend a barracks if Germany were attacked by a foreign power. They can then continue regular training as part of local defense units, learning how to secure critical infrastructure. The recruits range in age from their 20s to 60s, with most in their 30s and 40s, and work a variety of jobs. There’s a forester, a teacher, a chemical engineer and even an ex-journalist, although only three of them are women. Everyone mentioned the war on Ukraine as the catalyst that got them interested in the military. A German army spokesperson said a total of 3,000 untrained citizens have expressed interest in joining the reserve over the past five years, with a major peak just after the invasion of Ukraine and another in early 2025 following the U.S. election. The training is not for the faint-hearted. Recruits must learn to fire an 11-pound rifle, hike around the base in the soaring heat while carrying their 33-pound backpacks, and practice running and doing push-ups in their gas masks and protective clothing, which restricts their breathing. They will also learn orienteering and radio communication, with the 17 days eventually culminating in a simulation of a Russian attack, during which recruits will be fed information through their radios and organize themselves to defend the barracks. Stefan, who served in NATO missions in the former Yugoslavia, Mali and Afghanistan, explained that several people had dropped out already. “That’s normal, it’s not for everyone,” he said. As well as the physical strain, recruits often struggle with the emotional aspect of learning to fire guns. “I tell them, at the end of the day, you’re a soldier — it’s part of your job.” Kevin, 29, works as a banker. “In school, my best friend wanted to join the army, and I remember telling him he would be wasting his life,” he said. His father also had to do compulsory military service, “and he told me no one wanted to be there, it was so uncomfortable because you were reminded of history the whole time.” After the invasion of Ukraine, he remembers sitting in his office watching the price of commodities skyrocket. “We all watched Biden’s speech about the start of the war, and it really felt like a turning point in history,” he said. After many hours of running, shooting and hastily learning new commands, the recruits — many slightly red-faced — finish the day by learning to clean their guns, pushing strings down the barrel and out the other end. Some get stuck, prompting some awkward tugging. The commando deputy, Col. Markus Vollmann, looked on admiringly. “They are all quite extraordinary, how motivated they are,” he said. “They’re only a minority though.” So far, 45 percent of Germans say they are in favor of the country’s new 5 percent defense spending target, with 37 percent against and 18 percent undecided. It’s a marked difference from the days of the Afghan war, when two-thirds of the country wanted German troops to be withdrawn. Military sociologist Timo Graf says this fits with how most Germans have consistently viewed the Bundeswehr: The majority say its main role should be defense of the country rather than interventionist missions abroad. At Heuberg, Vollmann is nervous about how long support for military spending will be maintained once people see other services being cut around them. Germany is able to borrow much more than its European neighbors due to its low debt levels, but Merz is sticking to his low-tax-low-spend ideology with planned cuts to welfare spending. “We need to communicate better with the public about what we are doing and why it is necessary, but without scaring them,” he said, adding that debt-averse Germany needs better investment in all industry and infrastructure. “There’s no point having the most expensive tanks if, once you drive them out of the barracks, the roads are all potholed and the bridges are crumbling.” Stefan, the training manager, believes the many years of peace have left Germany ill-prepared to potentially face Russian aggression head-on. “We have too many soldiers who have never seen war,” he said. “If you have never smelt burning flesh or seen spilled blood everywhere, then you cannot understand how to make decisions in that environment. You can’t train adequately.” Just one week after the NATO conference sparked headlines around the world in July, I arrived at Germany’s Ministry of Defense to speak to Breuer, the highest serving general in the Bundeswehr. The building in western Berlin, also known as the Bendlerblock, was the home of the Nazi’s supreme military command and their intelligence agency, as well as the headquarters of the resistance soldiers who carried out the failed July 20 coup attempt. Breuer became a familiar face to Germans during the pandemic, as the head of the military’s Covid-19 task force. When we met, he was warm and jovial in his everyday combat uniform, rather than the formal jacket adorned with medals that he sports in his TV appearances. He is beaming about the budget increases, which he believes are long overdue. Following Germany’s post-Cold War disarmament, spending on everything from clothing to ammunition to helicopters was reduced — some argue by too much, leaving soldiers with out-of-date helmets and 30-year-old radio equipment. Breuer is particularly critical of how German troops were sent to support NATO missions abroad — most notably in Afghanistan — without adequate equipment. “It was clear to me that if you are sending soldiers on operations, risking their life and their health, then you have to give them everything they need,” he said. A total of 59 German soldiers were killed in the conflict. “We are now moving from a war of choice to a war of necessity,” he explained. From security analysis he believes Russia will be capable of attacking NATO territory by 2029, with the caveat that this depends on the outcome in Ukraine and whether the war exhausts the Kremlin. “Russia is producing around 1,500 battle tanks every year,” he said. In comparison, Germany currently produces 300. “And it is also building up its military structures facing West.” He says his main priorities are ramping up air defense, procuring battle tanks and drones, expanding homeland security, and beefing up the personnel that enables combat missions, such as engineers and logisticians. But tanks and drones don’t amount to much if the country can’t enlist and train to its goal of 460,000 personnel. German media is currently full of near-daily headlines about how this personnel target might be reached. Defense Minister Pistorius has proposed a hybrid voluntary draft, inspired by Sweden’s new model, in which all 18-year-old men will be sent a questionnaire. Only the most physically able will then be invited for service. However, if that fails to get the numbers needed, he has warned some kind of compulsory draft will be created. The country is already facing a massive skilled labor shortage and the Bundeswehr struggles to offer competitive salaries in fields such as IT. Business leaders such as Steffen Kampeter of the Confederation of German Employers’ Associations have claimed the German economy cannot cope with young people delaying their careers through serving in the army. One solution would be for service to be combined with vocational training, and Pistorius also wants to increase Bundeswehr salaries to make them more attractive. Breuer says he has no opinion on what system would be preferable for meeting the recruitment goals, explaining this is an issue for politicians to decide. “My military advice is: This is the number we need,” he said. At the same time as equipment and staff need to be beefed up, Breuer says administration and bureaucracy must be scaled down. Germany’s procurement offices have become so bloated over the past 30 years that multiple reports of their comical inefficiency can be found, such as parachutists having to wait over a decade for new, safer helmets that U.S. soldiers have already worn for years. Germany is also entering its third consecutive year of recession, and its heavy industries that are struggling to stay competitive are now hoping the defense spending will give them a boost: Shares in the steel sector have shot up since the announcements. However, the years of restricted budgets mean the country is starting the sudden ramp-up on the back foot. It is unlikely that industry can meet the targets in such a short space of time, meaning a large amount of equipment is likely to be purchased from U.S. companies, perhaps undermining the goal of European independence. “The fact is, once you buy the more complex weapons from the U.S., you become somewhat dependent on their systems,” said Scarazzato, the SIPRI researcher. “It would make more sense to be very deliberate in how the money is spent in order to avoid finding ourselves in the same position in 10 years’ time.” “For me it’s not about companies, it’s about capabilities,” confirmed Breuer. “This means that in a lot of cases we will have to buy off the shelf. We can’t afford the time you need to develop new items, new systems and new platforms.” With the rush across Europe to procure weapons and soldiers, Scarazzato warns that leaders should be careful not to “put all their eggs in one basket, which is the military.” Arms races also lead to issues such as price gouging and oversight processes potentially being circumvented. “You risk a race to the bottom,” he said. I asked Breuer if he had anything to say to people who are still skeptical about the need for rearmament. “I would like to take them with me on one of my visits to Ukraine.” How powerful the Bundeswehr should be, and even whether it should exist at all, has been fiercely debated ever since it was founded. As an institution, it has only existed since 1955 and was preceded by the Nazi-era Wehrmacht (1935 to 1945), the Weimar Republic’s Reichswehr (1919 to 1935) and, before that, the Imperial German Army. When the United States and its allies took control of Germany after the end of World War II, they dissolved the Wehrmacht and banned German military uniforms and symbols. As part of a larger “denazification” process, the country was prohibited from having an army in case it could be misused in the same way as the Wehrmacht. This changed as the Cold War intensified. After the 1950 North Korea invasion of South Korea, the United States urged its NATO partners to rearm Germany and admit it to the alliance. The country’s first Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, believed it could be an opportunity for the young democracy to regain its sovereignty and establish itself as an equal partner amongst allies, and on Nov. 12, 1955, the first 100 volunteers joined the Bundeswehr. “The country had to answer the question of how to create an army that could integrate into a democracy and could follow the constitution,” said Thorsten Loch, a Bundeswehr officer and military historian. The founding officers decided to construct the new army around a concept known as “Innere Führung,” or “inner leadership,” meaning soldiers must think for themselves and not follow orders blindly. They decided soldiers should be “citizens in uniform,” with national conscription designed to keep the forces rooted within society. Parliament wields huge powers over the army, and its stated mission is supporting other NATO forces rather than leading battles itself. Germany’s constitution has strict rules about how and when the military can be deployed — for example, reserves can only be called up if another nation declares war on Germany. When it came to staffing the new army, however, making a complete break from the Wehrmacht was more complicated. As Loch points out, any army that needed to pose a serious threat to the Soviet Union couldn’t be staffed by 12-year-olds. Chancellor Adenauer declared in 1952 that anyone who had fought “honorably” in the Wehrmacht — that is, those who had not committed any war crimes — would be welcome in the new army. “The officers ‘cleaned’ themselves,” explained Loch. “I believe they knew amongst themselves who had committed crimes.” They are likely to have also had input from the British, French and American intelligence services. In comparison, communist East Germany opted to staff its Volksarmee (people’s army) with younger, inexperienced soldiers in order to avoid former Nazis. Whether this “self-cleaning” was effective is a point of contention. Only a tiny number of Wehrmacht officers were ever tried for war crimes, and the concept of “honorable” soldiers has led to what many perceive as a whitewashing of the Nazi-era army, often referred to as “the myth of the clean Wehrmacht.” “The narrative was born that it was the Nazi Party who committed the atrocities, not the Wehrmacht soldiers,” said Loch. “And of course this isn’t true, as things are more complicated in reality.” Some of those early Bundeswehr officers still have questions over their heads as to what they did in World War II. The first director of operations was Lt. Col. Karl-Theodor Molinari, who resigned in 1970 after it became public that he might have been involved in the shooting of 105 French resistance soldiers, although the allegations were never proven. And while care was taken to strip away the most obvious signs, symbols and rituals of the Wehrmacht, some remain, such as military music, which also pre-dates the Nazi era. Barracks were renamed after resistance figures but were not demolished. This is one of the reasons that German rearmament was unpopular with the public at the time, and the purpose — and even existence — of an army remains a divisive topic. There continues to be a push-pull between those who say the Bundeswehr must do more to fully break with its past, and those who argue the Wehrmacht is a part of military history that cannot just be ignored. On Sunday, June 15, around 1,000 people had decided to forgo summer picnics in the park to gather outside Germany’s Reichstag for the country’s first-ever Veterans’ Day celebration. After many years of campaigning by the Association of German Deployment Veterans the government finally decided to make the celebration official in 2025, symbolizing a major shift in how politicians seek to position the Bundeswehr in society. A German language EDM band blared loudly over speakers next to stalls selling beers and bratwursts, while children petted a military donkey. The turn-out was not huge: There was no line to enter, and the dancefloor in front of the stage was largely empty. All attendees I spoke to were from military families, rather than curious civilians. “We would like to build up a veterans’ culture like they have in the USA,” said Ralph Bartsch, who runs a veterans’ motorcycle club. “It’s an absolutely overdue event,” agreed another soldier, who was dressed in civilian clothes and did not want to give his name. “It makes the Bundeswehr stronger in our society.” Not everyone is so eager to see societal norms change. The day before, in the Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg, I watched as Kai Krieger, 40, and his companion demonstrated how they switch out bus stop posters for those of their own design. After unscrewing the case at the bottom, rolling up the existing poster and tucking it behind the frame — essential for ensuring they are not committing any crimes — they then unrolled a doctored Bundeswehr recruitment advertisement in its place. “German mix: Nazis, cartridges, isolated cases” it reads, alongside a banner, “No to veterans’ day.” It’s a reference to a series of scandals from recent years. In 2022, Franco Albrecht, a 33-year-old first lieutenant with far-right views, was found guilty of plotting terror attacks that he hoped would be blamed on refugees. Several members of the elite KSK — Germany’s equivalent of the Navy SEALs — were found to have been stockpiling weapons and Nazi memorabilia, and members were reported to have made Hitler salutes and played extremist music at gatherings. This led a parliamentary panel to determine in 2020 that “networks” of far-right extremists had established themselves in the Bundeswehr. Ex-military personnel were also involved in a bizarre 2022 foiled plot to overthrow the German state and replace it with a far-right monarchy. “I do think it’s possible for armies to not be fascist or far-right influenced, but the German army is so toxic to the country’s history that I don’t see how that can happen here,” Kai said. He would go as far as saying that Germany should not have an army at all, because “the history is just too heavy. … They say all these nice-sounding things about defending democracy, but then the nasty things always seem to come to the surface.” Despite the Bundeswehr’s efforts to emphasize its historical connections to resistance fighters and position itself as a defender of liberal values, Germany’s far-right groups continue to view the country’s military as their own. In 2019, the German office for the protection of the constitution reported that neo-Nazi groups were organizing lectures with former Wehrmacht soldiers around the country, in which speakers would praise the SS and deny or trivialize the Holocaust. Kai’s group posted around 100 of their posters across the city that weekend, but anti-military activism doesn’t currently have much momentum behind it. Outside the Veteran’s Day celebrations, only a mere cluster of protesters were holding signs and singing anti-war songs. It’s a far cry from the 1980s when the German peace movement was a major civic force, with four million people signing a petition that the West German government withdraw its promise to allow medium-range ballistic missiles to be stationed in the country. Kai doesn’t hold back on the reasons for the movement’s unpopularity. “Our organizations talk a lot of bullshit,” he said. According to him, many of his fellow peace activists “don’t agree that Vladimir Putin is conducting an illegal war in Ukraine. … They’ll say it’s NATO’s fault,” he added, rolling his eyes. While pacifism was long associated with the left, this has shifted in recent years as various far-right movements aligned themselves with Russia. The AfD opposed military aid for Ukraine and expanding the Bundeswehr, and peace marches have become associated with cranks and conspiracy theorists. The Bundeswehr’s recent far-right scandals give potential reserve volunteers pause for thought. Burak, 38, opted out of military service back when he was 18, but in February 2025 he withdrew his conscientious-objector status. “It took me two whole years to decide if I really wanted to do that,” he said. As someone of Turkish heritage, he is still worried about whether it will be “a safe environment” for him. Burak has been involved with the country’s Green Party for many years, and during the Covid-19 pandemic he began looking into the possibility of training in disaster relief. Then when the invasion of Ukraine happened, he considered the military for the first time in two decades. “I feel like this is going to be another burden on younger people, along with things like climate change,” he said. “My generation had the privilege to say that we didn’t want to do this.” Michael, who is 50, spent his youth in Berlin’s left-wing punk scene, putting on anti-fascist gigs in abandoned buildings, and still sports the tattoos and gauged ear piercings. The invasion of Ukraine “shocked me to my core,” he said. “I am an anti-fascist, and to me, the biggest fascist project in Europe right now is Russia,” he explained. “The whole symbol of Europe is under attack.” He added that he also wants “to know where I stand” if tanks ever did roll into Germany one day. “I don’t want to be sitting there thinking, ‘Do I flee or not?’” he said. “I don’t think we should allow the Bundeswehr to just be staffed by nationalists,” he continued, when I ask how it fits with his leftist politics. “We need to think: What brought the Third Reich down? What brought liberty to Europe? It wasn’t talking with Hitler for 10 years.” A year after Gregor completed his basic training, his life looks quite different. At home, he has three huge boxes of uniforms, gas masks and helmets that his girlfriend begrudgingly agreed could be stored in their apartment, as long as he kept them tidy. Other hobbies have had to make way for his continued service, which he now dedicates around 50 days a year to. With his defense unit he practices handling weapons and understanding the logistics of how to protect Berlin’s critical infrastructure and clear paths for military transport. “We learn about the motorways and railway network, and how troops can move through them without the risk of sabotage,” he said. As a major urban center, his Berlin unit would probably be one of the first to be called up if an invasion ever happened. His company, a Berlin-based tech startup, has been understanding of his time off: “My bosses said a war would be bad for business, so they’re happy I’m doing this.” Some of his closest friends are now those he went through training with. “You’re paired with everyone in the platoon for exercises at some point,” he said, which enables deep bonds. Whenever people struggled, the others rallied around them, invested in getting the whole team past the finish line. If someone got nervous learning how to handle rifles, the others were there to calm them down. Even when he’s not training, he’ll often spend his evenings mentoring others who want to join the reserves, talking them through the process. He wears his military uniform travelling to and from training, sometimes encountering people who thank him, other times being pestered by kids who want to try on his backpack. He often has conversations with friends who don’t understand why he is doing this, or who are politically opposed to the idea of a German military. “I have realized since I joined that people in the German military do tend to be more on the conservative side,” he said. “I would like to see more left-leaning people, to balance it out and make it more reflective of society.” He thinks some form of conscription would be a good idea, to help people understand what the army involves, and that there’s much more to it than frontline conflict. “But you need to make it meaningful to their lives. There’s no point in people feeling like they’ve been forced, or that they’ve wasted a year.” The idea of serving his country still makes him feel uncomfortable. “I don’t really like the term patriotism as it’s too closely associated with nationalism for me,” he said. “But I think about the things in my country that I like, such as free education and affordable health care, and how I want kids in the future to enjoy those, too. And I think that is worth defending.”

Prime minister’s questions: a shouty, jeery, very occasionally useful advert for British politics. Here’s what you need to know from the latest session in POLITICO’s weekly run-through. What they sparred about: The economy, mostly. Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch picked Keir Starmer’s brains on the U.K.’s grim economic outlook — and got an unwelcome reminder of the Liz Truss era in reply. Here we go again: There was a brief consensus as Badenoch condemned a fire at Starmer’s north London home as an attack on democracy. Then she was on the march: why is unemployment on the up? Rising to the bait: Like a stuck record, Starmer repeated his greatest hits by laying into Badenoch for the “disastrous Liz Truss mini-budget.” Labour will not let that one go. In return, the Tory leader stressed there was “no point blaming everyone else” and sung her party’s praises in power. Shutting up shop: Badenoch’s questions went from the general to the specific, highlighting department store Beales’ last shop bringing down the shutters with a “Rachel Reeves closing down sale.” “What does the prime minister have to say to all the people who have lost their jobs?” Badenoch probed. While the PM, unsurprisingly, regretted any job losses, he turned the tables back on Badenoch’s scepticism about Britain’s new trade agreements. Strong message here: It was in this answer that Starmer’s new attack line, doubtless scripted carefully by No.10 strategists, got through the waffle both leaders can be guilty of. The PM said the Tories were “sliding into brain-dead oblivion,” echoing interviews in which he has said Nigel Farage’s Reform UK will be Labour’s main opponents next time round. On yer train! As a former trade secretary, Badenoch said the government should “not over egg the pudding” of their trade agreements, while dismissing a “tiny tariff deal” with Donald Trump. Starmer sounded apoplectic, urging Badenoch to “get the train” to the Jaguar Land Rover plant in Solihull after tariffs on U.K. cars were slashed. But but but: He didn’t promise unemployment would be lower next year. Grand finale! The personality clashes didn’t let up. The Tory leader said “Labour isn’t working” (geddit?) while the PM called the Tories a “dead party walking.” Someone’s had their Weetabix. Getting personal: Badenoch ducked asking Starmer about the government’s migration reforms, leaving that to Plaid Cymru’s Westminster Leader Liz Saville-Roberts. She said “somebody here has to call … out” the PM’s change of rhetoric towards immigration. Asking Starmer if he has any belief “which survives a week in Downing Street,” he responded: “Yes, the belief that she talks rubbish.” That got laughs from colleagues, at least. Helpful backbench intervention of the week: Labour’s North Warwickshire and Bedworth MP Rachel Taylor commended Starmer’s trade agreement with the U.S., asking, in an especially hard-hitting question, whether the PM would continue standing up for all workers. In a major, possibly era-defining development, Starmer confirmed he would do exactly that. What a revelation! Totally unscientific scores on the doors: Badenoch 6/10. Starmer 7/10. Starmer was able to play off the main advantage of government — showing action, particularly on trade deals the Conservatives didn’t land. Most notable though was not his anger towards the Tories, but his sheer dismissal of their relevance. Expect those arguments to ratchet up towards the next election, as Reform and the Tories battle for the right-wing vote.

On the flat plains of central Poland, where densely packed poultry sheds crowd the landscape, the future of Europe’s meat industry hums to the rhythm of millions of broiler chickens. Inside, birds bred to grow at record speed shuffle under the constant glow of artificial light, each one a copy of the last. They live fast, grow faster and end their lives in industrial kill lines — destined for export to Germany, the U.K. and Saudi Arabia. Chicken isn’t just dinner. Here — and across much of the world — it’s a policy choice. From Brussels to Brasília, policymakers have long championed poultry as a “transition meat” — a pragmatic alternative to climate-intensive beef. Chicken is lower-emission, relatively affordable, scalable across global markets and often promoted as a leaner, lower-fat option compared with pork or beef. In political shorthand: the least-worst option. But as a fresh wave of highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as bird flu, sweeps across continents — killing hundreds of millions of birds, infecting some mammal species and prompting sweeping lockdowns — the virus is edging closer to spilling over into humans. That is putting the poultry playbook under stress. In the U.S., more than 90 million birds have been culled over the past year. In Poland, the hardest-hit EU country, over 11.5 million were culled in the first months of 2025 to stop the disease from spreading. Behind those numbers lie deeper dilemmas: ethical shortcuts, epidemiological risk and a protein system optimized for speed, not resilience. BRUSSELS CLAMPS DOWN ON THE COOP The European Commission moved in early April to expand protection zones and tighten biosecurity rules in Poland, which alone accounted for some 80 of the EU’s 200 confirmed outbreaks of highly pathogenic bird flu this year. The Commission had warned that Poland’s initial response posed a risk to biosecurity in the EU’s borderless internal market and threatened measures that would have effectively shut down all exports from the country. Under pressure from Warsaw, Brussels stepped back from its toughest proposals, but not without conditions: The Commission asked the Polish authorities to present an “action plan” to contain the virus, which it agreed to monitor closely. Commission food safety spokesperson Eva Hrnčířová emphasized that the response was “not something about Poland without Poland,” noting that the agreed measures were drawn up “together with the Polish national and regional authorities” and “based on information from Poland.” The aim, Hrnčířová added, was “to create protection rather than restriction.” What’s notable is where that plan came from. As Polish Agriculture Minister Czesław Siekierski explained in a radio interview, the proposed measures — including containment zones and limits on introducing new flocks, but no halt to production or exports — came from the poultry industry itself and were then adopted by the government. The plan was formally endorsed by Poland’s chief veterinary officer and submitted to Brussels as the country’s official response. “This was a proposal from the producers,” Siekierski said. “And it was passed to Brussels as our official position.” Siekierski has repeatedly defended the sector’s symbolic and economic role, calling it “the flagship of Polish agriculture.” But he also acknowledged: “The problem of avian influenza in Poland cannot be solved without bearing some costs — but what matters is finding systemic solutions.” No EU country has more at stake. Once a modest agricultural player, Poland is now the bloc’s poultry powerhouse — responsible for nearly one in five chickens produced and a third of all exports. The sector supports hundreds of thousands of jobs and sends more than half its output abroad. Its rise was turbocharged by industrial scale and genetic homogeneity. Most Polish broilers come from a few breeds that reach slaughter weight in just five weeks. That efficiency is driven by tight vertical integration: Major poultry companies control nearly every stage of production — from breeding and feed mills to slaughterhouses and export. The result is a high-performing machine, but also a house of cards. Nearly half of Poland’s poultry is produced in just two regions, Wielkopolskie and Mazowieckie, where farms sit tightly packed. Poland’s chief veterinary officer, Krzysztof Jażdżewski, recently admitted that “chicken houses built on top of each other” create ideal conditions for the virus to spread. And when the virus gets in, the consequences escalate quickly. Most of the millions of birds being culled aren’t actually sick. But in a system built for maximum output, the detection of even a single infection can mean killing entire sheds — sometimes hundreds of thousands of birds at once. The logic is brutally simple: slaughter the whole flock to stop the virus from jumping to the next farm. Biosecurity enforcement remains patchy. Jażdżewski has warned of a shortage of trained veterinary inspectors, saying: “We have a problem with boots on the ground.” Basic safeguards like disinfecting equipment and securing feed supplies aren’t always applied consistently. But even perfect biosecurity may not be enough. One state-affiliated epidemiologist, who was not authorized to speak on the record, told POLITICO that the system’s design allows outbreaks to escalate rapidly. “When a virus like this lands in a region with high farm concentration, it’s like throwing a spark into a powder keg,” they said. Once inside, it spreads through trucks, equipment, clothing — even dust and feathers carried by the wind. This epidemiologist noted that while there have been discussions about limiting how closely farms can be sited, “the law doesn’t work backward” — meaning existing clusters would likely remain. INDUSTRY DEFENDS THE MODEL Poland’s poultry industry rejects the idea that the system’s scale or structure is to blame. In a written response to POLITICO, the National Poultry Council argued that outbreaks are primarily driven by wild birds — not farm density. The group also pushed back against suggestions that producers should shoulder more of the costs, insisting that poultry businesses already invest heavily in biosecurity and that “professional, economically strong farms are precisely those best positioned” to uphold standards. The EU-wide industry group AVEC struck a similar tone, telling POLITICO that production at scale “does not necessarily increase” the risk of large-scale outbreaks. It emphasized that keeping birds indoors, as is common in conventional systems, helps minimize contact with wild birds. Some industry representatives go further. “We cannot agree to let irresponsible producers repeatedly expose the whole poultry sector to losses,” said Paweł Podstawka, head of the Polish Federation of Poultry Farmers and Egg Producers, in comments to Polish media. He called for licensing poultry farming as a profession. While welcoming the deal with Brussels, he warned: “If we don’t improve, there won’t be any leniency next time.” Major poultry companies control nearly every stage of production — from breeding and feed mills to slaughterhouses and export. | Rehan Khan/EPA Other European countries have faced similar risks — but not on Poland’s scale. France, once the EU’s epicenter for avian influenza, has recorded just a single farm outbreak this year. In Germany and the Netherlands, most cases have been among wild birds, with only sporadic infections on farms. THE GEOPOLITICS OF CHICKEN Supporters of the poultry-first strategy emphasize the climate calculus. Compared with beef, chicken emits up to 90 percent less CO₂ per kilo of protein. It also uses far less water and land.  The World Bank now touts chicken as a climate asset — one of the least polluting animal proteins and a tool for reducing food system emissions. But those environmental gains come with trade-offs. Male chick culling, still widespread outside Germany and France, sees hundreds of millions of baby birds killed each year for being unprofitable. The dominant broiler breeds have been called “ticking time bombs,” prone to chronic pain and heart failure. Antibiotic resistance, driven in part by prophylactic use, looms as a largely unspoken crisis. In 2023, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization described poultry and eggs as essential to human health, especially in low-income contexts. But just two years later, the same agency is raising the alarm. As H5N1 mutates and spreads to mammals — including dairy cows and wild carnivores — the agency has warned of “serious impacts” on food security and public health. The growing ability of the virus to jump species has reignited fears of a zoonotic leap to humans. “This is more than an agricultural crisis,” FAO Deputy Director General Beth Bechdol said in March. “The uncontrolled spread of avian influenza and other zoonotic diseases pose serious risks to global health, to human health, to economic stability — just as we have seen with Ebola and other human pandemics.” THE SYSTEM HOLDS — FOR NOW Change, if it comes, won’t be painless. Synthetic, or lab-grown, meat remains years from mainstream approval. Plant-based alternatives are stagnating. There’s no clear successor to chicken on the protein horizon, giving the poultry lobby staying power and broiler chickens time to keep growing. The deal between Warsaw and Brussels remains shaky. An EU veterinary mission visited Poland in late April to assess whether the action plan is being enforced — and whether it’s working. A final report is expected in the coming weeks. A negative verdict could trigger new restrictions. Several scientists echoed concerns that it’s not wild birds or lapses in hygiene, but the industrial model itself that makes outbreaks hard to contain — whether in Poland, the Netherlands or the U.S. “If consumers were willing to pay more, the industry could afford to reduce intensity. But as long as price pressure rules, production stays big, dense — and risky,” said Lars Erik Larsen, a leading Danish virologist at the University of Copenhagen. Even top-tier biosecurity can fail, he warned: “Somebody will always make a mistake — and once the virus gets into these dense systems, it spreads fast.” While vaccination is often floated as a solution, it’s no silver bullet. Vaccines reduce symptoms but don’t always block transmission — meaning the virus may still circulate silently in flocks. The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization described poultry and eggs as essential to human health. | Caroline Brehman/EPA Even Siekierski now seems to grasp how fragile the system has become. Over the weekend, he posted candidly on social media: Producers hit by outbreaks get generous compensation; those spared enjoy high prices. “Who pays for this? The state budget,” he wrote, noting that the ministry had burned through its annual biosecurity funds by March. “That’s why I believe it’s time to seriously start an agricultural transformation,” he added. “TOGETHER. But that, of course, is the hardest part …”

BRUSSELS — The price of eggs is under control in Europe — just as President Donald Trump’s administration steps up an international egg hunt to combat shortages amid record prices in the United States. Egg prices in the EU did increase over the past year, but at a slower rate than in years prior, the bloc’s stats agency Eurostat reported Thursday. Egg prices in March were, on average, 6.7 percent higher in the EU than last March — an acceleration from the two preceding months. But even with these increases, the price rises are still much slower than in 2022 and 2023. Still, the average figure masks huge national divergences — with egg prices up by 46 percent in Czechia in March from a year earlier, by 30 percent in Slovakia and by 26 percent in Hungary. Prices fell by 3.6 percent in the Netherlands, by 3.2 percent in Luxembourg and by 2 percent in Greece. The U.S., meanwhile, continues to grapple with a major outbreak of avian influenza, or bird flu, which has forced the culling of millions of laying hens. In March, U.S. egg prices climbed to an all-time high of $6.23 a dozen. Trump fumed on Thursday morning that, actually, egg prices were down (though data shows prices were at $4.90 a dozen in January before President Joe Biden left office), in a social media post complaining that the European Central Bank had found room to cut interest rates. Trump lamented that the U.S. Federal Reserve had not managed to similarly cut U.S. interest rates, even though he railed that “Oil prices are down, groceries (even eggs!) are down, and the USA is getting RICH ON TARIFFS.”

We are living in a dangerous and uncertain time — with the world’s most powerful nations increasingly using their economic, diplomatic and military clout to force others to pick a side. When once it was Europe’s great powers that carved up the globe into their zones of influence, now the continent is caught in the struggle between east and west. In this age of increasing geopolitical uncertainty, the EU and Ukraine stand as natural partners — with close economic links presenting huge opportunities to both sides.  At the start of the 21st century, it would have been difficult to present the rationale for greater integration between the EU and Ukraine. The latter, despite breaking free from the USSR a decade prior, remained deeply embedded in the post-Soviet economic space, which seriously limited its opportunities for strategic rapprochement with the EU. Economic dependence on Russia not only shaped Ukraine’s trade policy but also determined its geopolitical outlook.  Yet developments over the past 15 years have dramatically changed the picture. Following the Revolution of Dignity, Ukraine reconsidered its foreign policy priorities and finally declared its strategic course toward European integration. The key step in this direction was the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU in 2014, which included provisions on the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA).  The results of trade liberalization became noticeable in the first years after the agreement was implemented. The EU’s share of Ukraine’s exports began to grow rapidly. While in 2012 it was only 24.9 percent, in 2016 it was 37.1 percent and in 2020 it was over 40 percent. In 2021, the EU’s share of Ukraine’s total exports reached about 41 percent, making the EU Ukraine’s largest trading partner. European producers also benefitted, with EU imports growing from $16.4 billion in 2016 to $23 billion in 2021. These figures demonstrate how Ukraine has been drifting toward the European economic space, consistently cutting old ties with the post-Soviet region. On the eve of the large-scale invasion, the share of foreign trade from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) had fallen to 15 percent, while the EU accounted for about 40 percent of export-import turnover — a clear shift toward the west.  The war has further bound Ukraine into the contours of the European common economic space. In June 2022, the EU took an unprecedented step by introducing so-called autonomous trade measures, suspending the DCFTA provisions on import duties, quotas and safeguards for Ukrainian products. After several extensions, this regime remains in effect until at least June 5, 2025, serving not only as economic support but also as a powerful political signal of solidarity.  > Ukrainian business has long focused on European standards, transparent rules > and a predictable environment. The results were quick. By the end of 2023, the EU’s share of Ukraine’s trade turnover exceeded 56 percent, while the share of the CIS countries fell to just 2.5 percent. Ukraine has effectively consolidated its place in the European economic space. At the same time, for the EU, Ukraine remains a modest trading partner – its share in imports was only 1.7 percent in 2024, suggesting a soft, gradual integration into the single market.  Ukrainian business has long focused on European standards, transparent rules and a predictable environment. This is a class that thinks critically, takes responsibility and drives economic progress — a natural ally of the European integration course. Its orientation toward the EU is not only economic, but also value-based.  This is why trade with the EU is such a strong pillar of Ukraine’s foreign policy — something the union should aim to support and deepen. European integration is based not only on geopolitics but also on shared economic thinking and institutional alignment.  Delaying this path could create space for alternative scenarios — as seen in Georgia. In June 2014, Georgia signed its Association Agreement with the EU, officially declaring European integration a strategic priority. However, foreign trade patterns between 2014 and 2024 show a different reality.  In 2014, the EU’s share of Georgia’s trade was 32 percent, and Russia’s 9 percent. By 2020, the EU’s share fell to 24 percent while Russia’s rose to 14 percent. In 2024, the EU’s share is about 25 percent while Russia’s is estimated at 16 percent. This shift reflects the political course of the Georgian Dream party — founded by a Russian billionaire of Georgian origin, Bidzina Ivanishvili — which emphasizes improved relations with Russia and a more cautious approach to Euro-Atlantic integration. As a result, Georgia is drifting back toward the post-Soviet space, where Russia remains dominant.  The EU’s autonomous trade measures regime, which enabled simplified access for Ukrainian products, will expire on June 5, 2025. As that date approaches, uncertainty is growing over what the future trade framework will look like, especially amid internal EU debates over sensitive commodities.  > It is essential to protect the strategic framework of cooperation and avoid > actions that could erode mutual trust. The EU, as Ukraine’s principal trade > and political partner, has both a practical and moral interest in maintaining > open, predictable access for Ukrainian goods. Concerns center around products such as sugar, poultry, eggs and bioethanol. Discussions over possible restrictions are fueled by certain industry associations defending national agricultural interests. These dynamic risks politicizing trade and jeopardizing the broader partnership.  In this context, it is essential to protect the strategic framework of cooperation and avoid actions that could erode mutual trust. The EU, as Ukraine’s principal trade and political partner, has both a practical and moral interest in maintaining open, predictable access for Ukrainian goods – this is the basis for economic integration and for jointly strengthening the single market. It is time to shift the narrative promoted by lobbying organizations in the EU that reduce the partnership to debates over agricultural competition. Such a narrow focus distorts the full picture and endangers a relationship that has value well beyond trade in a few commodities.  From a geopolitical and geoeconomics point of view, Ukraine should not only remain part of the European economic space, but be systematically and permanently embedded within it. Deepening integration with Ukraine gives the EU new tools to reinforce its strategic autonomy and compete globally, especially in light of growing challenges from both the United States and China. 

The United Kingdom has detected bird flu in a sheep for the first time, the government announced today. The case, found in a sheep in Yorkshire after repeated milk tests, was identified “following routine surveillance” of livestock on a premises where avian influenza had been confirmed in captive birds, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and the Animal and Plant Health Agency said. No further infection with the virus was detected in the remaining flock and there is no evidence to suggest an increased risk to the nation’s livestock population, they added. But U.K. Chief Veterinary Officer Christine Middlemiss urged livestock keepers to “remain vigilant.” The government said it introduced livestock surveillance of infected premises because of the outbreak of avian influenza in dairy cows in the United States.  America has been grappling with a devastating bird flu outbreak that has wiped out more than 166 million birds since 2022, spread to dairy cattle in 17 states and led to soaring egg prices. Earlier this month, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned the rapidly expanding H5N1 outbreak was “unprecedented” and leading to “serious impacts” on food production, rural jobs, local economies and prices for consumers. U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suggested letting the avian flu virus spread through farms to “find and identify” birds that are immune to it — an idea that has drawn criticism that this would increase the risk of it evolving to be dangerous to humans. European Union health authorities recently warned that bird flu has been detected in domestic cats and wild carnivores in Europe for the first time since spring 2024 — a sign that the virus continues to spill over into mammals. Scientists and researchers have grown increasingly concerned over bird flu’s cross-species transmission and its adaptive nature, which could lead to possible human spillover and pose a pandemic threat.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is raising the alarm over a rapidly escalating bird flu crisis as the highly pathogenic H5N1 virus spreads from poultry to mammals, fueling concerns over food security and a potential human spillover. The virus, first identified in 1996 in China, has forced mass culls worldwide, with Europe losing 47.7 million farmed birds in the 2021-22 epidemic and the U.S. culling at least 166 million since the latest outbreak began. The fallout has sent egg prices soaring in the U.S. FAO Deputy Director-General Godfrey Magwenzi on Monday described the situation as unprecedented, leading to “serious impacts” on food production, rural jobs, local economies and prices for consumers. The virus isn’t stopping at poultry barns. H5N1 has also surfaced in wild and domestic mammals, including zoo animals, pets and dairy cattle. While human infections remain rare, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) have identified genetic markers that could increase the virus’s ability to adapt to mammals — including humans. However, there is no confirmed evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission. FAO officials are urging governments to ramp up surveillance, strengthen biosecurity and bolster outbreak response. “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link,” FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol said, emphasizing the need for coordinated global action to curb the virus’s spread and prevent further disruptions to food systems. While wild birds play a key role in transmission, evidence also points to high-density poultry farming as a factor that can accelerate outbreaks when biosecurity measures fail. Large farms, where thousands of birds are housed close together, create ideal conditions for the virus to spread and mutate. For now, public health officials insist the risk remains low. But scientists warn that the virus’s spread in mammals gives it more chances to evolve, increasing its potential to infect humans.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday called Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a “Palestinian” as he defended the GOP’s government spending bill and his policies on corporate taxes and rising grocery prices. “Schumer is a Palestinian, as far as I’m concerned,” Trump said in response to a question about the U.S. corporate tax rate during an Oval office meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin. “He’s become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore.” Schumer is Jewish and not of Palestinian heritage. The president routinely likened Schumer to “a Palestinian” during the campaign, at one point calling Schumer a “proud member of Hamas.” Trump also routinely criticized Jews that planned to support Democrats in the November election, calling them “fools” who need “their head examined.” The comment came as Republicans are trying to get a government spending bill enacted before funding runs out on Friday evening. Republicans would need at least eight Democratic votes in the Senate, assuming the GOP remains aligned in support. But it is not the only crisis heading in Trump’s direction. Wednesday morning, the European Union announced a two-stage sweeping retaliation of tariffs covering €26 billion in U.S. exports in response to Trump’s 25 percent global steel and aluminum tariffs. When asked if the United States would respond to the EU, Trump said, “Of course I will respond.” Trump also touted progress on bringing egg prices down, after Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins launched her bird flu response strategy in late February. The department is working to import more eggs from countries like Turkey to get prices down in the short term. “In a very short period of time we’ve done very well,” Trump said. Rollins told reporters at the White House Tuesday that egg prices had gone down $1.85, though she warned other parts of Trump’s economic plan could have a “bumpy” rollout for consumers and agricultural producers. Consumer Price Index data released Wednesday showed that egg prices have hit a record high of $5.90 per dozen, surpassing the previous record of $4.95 per dozen in January. USDA predicted that egg prices could increase more than 40 percent in 2025.