The rooted work instability in Spain’s labour market

Although Spain’s economy is growing, the labor market remains marked by deep-rooted precariousness, driven by high unemployment and widespread temporary contracts – a situation experts agree significantly affects decisions around having children.

In 2024 alone, 10 percent of the population aged 25 to 54 was unemployed in Spain, while 12 percent were working under temporary contracts - meaning that 22 percent of the labor force was in a precarious situation, the highest rate in the EU.

However, these figures hide deeper instability. Spain has long struggled with high levels of temporary employment: Just in 2021, 18.4 percent of the labor force were temporary contracts, but a 2021 labour reform was approved to address this by converting many of these contracts into fixed contracts.

While the reform has statistically reduced the official rate of temporary employment, reports have proven that many workers still face short-term job arrangements. 

Gender inequality and access to care

In addition, women’s growing participation in the labour market has not been matched by an equal share of care responsibilities at home.

The division of care responsibilities within couples can significantly influence childbearing decisions, and experts point to how countries with a better share of caregiving between partners have higher fertility.

Across Europe, large disparities remain in the time men and women spend caring for children or the elderly at home.

According to the European Institute for Gender Equality, in Spain and Greece, the gender gap ranges between seven and eight percentage points,- similar to most western European countries. In the rest of southern and eastern Europe, the gap exceeds nine percentage points.

In northern Europe, the division is generally more balanced, with one exception: in Denmark, men spend six percentage points more time than women on child and elder care.

The responsibility of caring for children varies across countries. In southern Europe experts point at how grandparents play an important role, but increased female labor force participation has reduced the time they can dedicate to caring for grandchildren.

The design of parental leave policies can influence the time available for child care and play a role in either narrowing or widening the gap in caregiving responsibilities between mothers and fathers.

Spain offers 16 weeks of fully paid maternity leave and 16 weeks of fully paid paternity leave - one of the lowest entitlements in Europe in terms of duration. 

However, because not all parental leave across Europe is fully paid, Spain ranks ahead of other southern European countries such as Italy and Cyprus, and even surpasses traditionally family-friendly countries like France and Denmark.

Still, Spain’s 16 fully paid paternity leave is relatively new, having increased from just two weeks in 2016.

Formal childcare plays a crucial role in complementing or replacing parental and other forms of informal care, and public funding can significantly improve access to these services.

Countries such as France and the Nordic nations dedicate total contributions in cash or kind exceeding 1 percent of GDP, with spending on childcare alone ranging from 0.5 percent to 1 percent.

In contrast, Spain allocates just 0.02 percent of GDP to childcare, and when combined with pre-primary education, the figure remains under 0.5 percent - once again placing Spain among the lower-ranked countries in terms of public support for families.

Pro-fertility policies such as Cash transfers or “baby bonus” have been proven to be ineffective to boost fertility. In another recent research from Vignoli it was found that while a combination of childcare and parental leave policies help boost fertility, “the most important is having a decent income”.

Weak government struggles to enforce family-friendly policies

Another important factor to consider is political stability: “France and northern countries are characterised by decades of gender equality in the labour market and the help of men in the parental role”, says Vignoli, while in southern countries, he argues that some policies related to labour stability or family support might be tied to politics and change depending on the governing party. 

The Spanish socialist-led coalition is trying to endorse structural policies aimed at reducing gender inequality and improving families' welfare, but the weak majority it holds is causing much trouble to get its policies approved.

The government brought forward the “Ley de famílias” to widen rights of single parents, migrants, and people with disabilities. The text has been waiting for approval for over a year, but after a period for amends to the final text that has been postponed 43 times, it still lacks agreement to find the arithmetic. 

In February of 2025, the Spanish executive prepared the bill for the reduction of maximum working hours from 40 to 37.5 to achieve an equal split of cures and work-life balance across genders.

While the legislation still requires approval from the Spanish Congress, there are already indications that a key parliamentary group — essential for securing a majority — may block the bill unless amendments are introduced.

Sexual health and reproductive rights in Spain

The delayed transition to adulthood has pushed back the age at which women have their first child. Italy leads the ranking, with women having their first child at an average age of 31.8 years, followed by Ireland at 31.6 years and Spain at 31.5 years.

Postponing the decision to have children does not necessarily mean that women want fewer children. “There are people in Europe that want to have children and they don’t need convincing, they just need support to achieve their goals,” says Anita Fincham, Advocacy Manager at NGO Fertility Europe.

Having children later in life reduces women's chances of becoming pregnant. Men also experience a decline in sperm quality with age, but in addition, overall sperm density has dropped by 50 percent over the past 40 years - a decline recently linked to exposure to chemical pollutants.

“[People] need support, they need medical help, and they should be offered [Medically Assisted Reproduction] regardless of their civil status, their sexual orientation,” adds Klaudija Kordic, chair of the executive committee at NGO Fertility Europe.

Fertility Europe and EPF have developed the European Atlas of Fertility Treatment Policies to assess EU member states’ access to Medically Assisted Reproduction (MAR) in 2024.

Access to MAR remains highly unequal across Europe, according to the Atlas, with single women and female couples banned from accessing these treatments in several member states.

While Spain has had a long tradition of offering open access to these groups, it doesn’t perform so well due to limitations in publicly funded treatment, where waiting lists often exceed 12 months.

“Over a certain age, especially for women, every month of delay could make a difference,” says Fincham.

Spain has been a leader in both the quantity and quality of fertility clinics in Europe. In 2019, it was home to 244 in vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinics and MAR experts also point at how it has also distinguished itself through constant innovation.

“Spain has been really active in this space, they do a lot of research and often adopt the newest technologies and methods,” says Kordic. “But a lot of this happens in private clinics, where some treatments may be marketed and sold without a strong evidence base.”

Only 18.5 percent of fertility clinics in Spain are public, according to the latest Health Ministry report from 2021.

France, Belgium, and Denmark can serve as benchmarks as they score higher in the Atlas, offering six or more publicly funded IVF cycles - compared to just three in Spain - with waiting lists under 12 months.

Old and new challenges to close fertility gap

The decline of fertility and the ageing population is a pressing matter on the EU agenda. Despite that, Davidashvili from EPF adds that the urgency to boost fertility “results in women being instrumentalized and viewed as part of their identity to produce babies.”

Meanwhile, Spain is not only facing the lowest fertility rate in Europe but is also failing to meet its population’s intended family goals.

While the current socialist coalition is attempting to address gender imbalances in caregiving and improve work-life balance through new policies, it could still face backlash from opposition forces. 

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.

Uganda’s main opposition leader Bobi Wine has urged the EU to address multiple human rights violations including the arrest and torture of leading opposition figures by the government. 

Robert Kyaluganyi, aka Bobi Wine, who leads the National Unity Party, held meetings with EU officials in Kampala led by EU ambassador Jan Sadek, on Monday. 

Last week, Wine’s bodyguard Eddie Mutwe was charged with aggravated robbery after being detained and allegedly tortured by security forces. Army chief Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba, who is President Yoweri Museveni's son, had confirmed that he was holding Eddie Mutwe five days after his disappearance. Mutwe’s lawyers say that Mutwe was electrocuted while in detention. 

\"Though the discussion was about our preparation for the general elections, we focused mainly on the issue of human rights violations. We took the opportunity to also raise our concerns about the seeming hobnobbing of the diplomats with a clearly brutal person that is [President] Museveni's son, Gen Muhoozi Kainerugaba,\" Wine told reporters. 

Wine has promised to stand for the presidency in next January’s elections provided “I am still alive and not in jail”. 

Following the talks at the NUP offices, Sadek said that the EU was aware of “interventions by the security forces against team members of the NUP president.\" 

The EU ambassador added that he had also “observed extra-judicial actions by security forces; arbitrary detentions and degrading treatment of political opponents and journalists; and an alarming militarisation of the political sphere.\" 

\"The use of military force against civilians, with apparent impunity, contradicts the principles of the rule of law,\" he added. 

President Museveni is widely expected to seek his eight term as president having been in power since 1986, though his son Gen Muhoozi has been touted as a potential successor despite making a series of wild and incendiary claims on social media, including threatening to execute Wine.  

Fellow opposition leader Kizza Besigye, the former leader of the Forum for Democratic Change, meanwhile, is currently facing trial on sedition and weapons possession charges five months after being kidnapped by Ugandan security forces from a suburb in Kenyan capital Nairobi. 

Uganda received €375 million from the EU between 2021 and 2024. 

The strong-arm tactics used in Uganda have been replicated in other East African states. 

Last week, EU lawmakers in Strasbourg condemned the arrest of Tundu Lissu, the leader of Tanzania’s main opposition party Chadema. Lissu has been charged with treason and could potentially face the death penalty after holding campaign rallies calling for voters to boycott general elections planned for October, after the election commission banned almost all opposition candidates from contesting last year’s municipal elections. The election apparatus is controlled by the ruling party of President Samia Suluhu Hassan. 

MEPs also dismissed the “politically motivated accusations” against Lissu and called on the Tanzanian authorities to guarantee Chadema’s full participation in the October 2025 elections, respect the political parties’ rights and guarantee free and fair elections. 

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.

Polish finance minister Andrzej Domanski said he expects EU countries will strike a deal this month on a €150bn fund to ramp up the bloc’s defence efforts.

“There are no major outstanding issues. I really do believe we can achieve this compromise this month,” he told a news conference in Brussels after a meeting of finance ministers on Tuesday (13 May). 

“Some countries would like more flexibility, some don’t,” he added. 

The so-called SAFE fund would allow countries to borrow money backed by the EU budget, while keeping the debt itself national. The aim is to secure cheaper financing for defence investments.

Domanski said SAFE was a “key priority” but acknowledged that it wouldn’t be enough on its own.

“There is broad understanding that there is a need also for other instruments,” he said.

VAT and capital markets

Finance ministers also agreed on simplifying VAT rules for e-commerce. 

A new EU directive will make the use of the Import One-Stop Shop (IOSS) mandatory for online platforms, meant to streamline tax collection at the border and create a level playing field for all suppliers which will help make doing business in Europe easier.

“We’re talking about massive amounts of parcels,” said EU commissioner Wopke Hoekstra. “A lot of them are low-value — around €4bn worth, that is why today’s decision is so important.” 

There was also a “long exchange” on the bloc’s capital markets, including securitisation rules, where Domanski noted that member states were eager to move quickly.

Securitisation — the repackaging of loans into tradeable assets — are “not a silver bullet,” the Polish minister said. But the hope is that loosening the risk and capital requirements might boost private investment in crucial EU sectors such as defence. 

France and other big economies are also pushing for more EU-level oversight over cross-border trading platforms. But smaller countries like Ireland and Luxembourg, are resisting any move that would weaken their national regulators. 

This is one of the reasons progress on creating an EU-wide capital market has proven so elusive over the past decade. 

Domanski said ministers were clear in wanting progress “as soon as possible,” and said he expected new securitisation rules to be proposed before the end of the Polish presidency on 30 June.

Russian economy not doing so hot

Ministers also discussed Russia’s economic outlook, following a closed-door briefing by Torbjörn Becker, director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics and co-author of a recent report on Russia’s war economy.

The report challenges official Russian data and describes a system under growing strain. Russia remains heavily dependent on oil revenues to sustain its war machine, but those revenues are falling. Inflation is likely closer to 20 percent, not the nine percent reported by Russian financial authorities.

The SITE report also shows that Russia’s National Wealth Fund has been cut in half, now down to less than three percent of GDP.

If oil prices remain low, Russia could exhaust the fund within a year. 

Already, military spending is increasingly funded through higher domestic taxes as fossil fuel income declines. 

On top of that, state banks are pumping large amounts of credit into arms manufacturers, adding another 6.2 percent in off-budget war debt, backed by government guarantee. Russia is doing “less well than Russian propaganda would have it,” said Domanski.

More sanctions? 

The report’s authors recommend stepping up sanctions, especially on oil exports, financial flows, and high-tech imports. But that could be complicated if Hungary decides to veto the extension of existing sanctions — including the €200bn in frozen Russian state assets.

To prepare for that, EU officials told the Financial Times ahead of the ministers’ meeting that they were considering fallback options like tariffs and capital controls.

“Russian assets are being used to underpin G7 loans to Ukraine, which clearly have to be taken into account,” said commission vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis, responding to concerns that the €200bn in frozen assets might otherwise flow back into the Russian war chest.

“But so far we have always reached agreement through unanimity,” he added.

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.

The European Commission is breathing life into an equality bill previously sent to the scrap pile of doomed legislation.

Hadja Lahbib, the EU commissioner for equality, said her services are still working on the equal treatment directive in the hopes of reaching an agreement sometime this year.

\"The best option is the adoption of this directive,\" she told MEPs in the civil liberties committee earlier this week.

The Brussels executive earlier this year proposed to the withdraw the bill, following some 17 years of stalemate at the Council, representing member states.

The remaining hurdles have since been whittled down to the Czech Republic, Germany and Italy amid questions over national competence, gender identity, and costs.

Lahbib said the commission is still waiting for a formal reaction on the fate of the bill from the parliament and the council.

\"So far we received a letter from 69 MEPs — only 69 among more than 700,\" she said, emphasising the commission had only expressed an intention to pull the bill.

She suggested it means the bill is still on the table, described it as a \"wake-up call\" and appealed to MEPs to pressure all three remaining member states in the hopes of finding a solution.

\"You still have until August to reverse trends and to convince maybe the three reluctant member states, at least, to abstain,\" she said.

The equality directive was part of a wider group of some 37 proposals that the European Commission in February sought to the withdraw.

Lahbib said plans are also under way to present strategies this year on LGBTIQ equality and anti-racism.

A gender equality strategy, as well as work on Roma equality and rights of persons with disabilities is also in the pipeline for next year.

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.

The revelations by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) about a cell of Hungarian military intelligence operating in the Ukrainian region of Transcarpathia to the detriment of Ukraine raise serious questions about Hungary’s position within Western political and military alliances.

On 9 May, the SBU disclosed that the cell — consisting of two Ukrainian informants and handled by a Hungarian military intelligence officer — was tasked with collecting data on the military security of the Transcarpathia region, including identifying vulnerabilities in its ground and air defences.

The cell was also instructed to assess potential scenarios of how Transcarpathia residents might behave in the event of Hungarian troops entering the region as either a peacekeeping or a Nato force.

The cell was asked other questions as well — for instance, what military equipment or weapons were available on the black market in Transcarpathia, or what the situation was with the region’s ethnic Hungarian population.

Transcarpathia borders Hungary and is home to around 100,000 ethnic Hungarians, who constitute approximately 10 percent of the region’s population.

The cell became active in September 2024, but its main informant had been recruited by Hungarian military intelligence as early as 2021. The cell’s activities and timeline suggest that Hungary’s anti-Ukrainian actions were directly linked to Russia’s war against Ukraine and that Hungary was preparing to extend its political influence into Transcarpathia.

Dreams of a 'Greater Hungary'

Historically, Transcarpathia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, after the First World War, was transferred to Czechoslovakia. In March 1939, following the Nazi dismemberment of Czechoslovakia, Hungary — then led by Miklós Horthy and aligned with Nazi Germany — annexed Transcarpathia with Hitler’s tacit approval.

After the fall of the Third Reich, the region became part of Soviet Ukraine in 1945.

Hungarian nationalists, including Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán, regard the loss of Transcarpathia and other territories forfeited after the First World War as a historical injustice. Transcarpathia features prominently in maps and rhetoric promoting the idea of 'Greater Hungary'.

Orbán’s perspective on Transcarpathia as a historically Hungarian land fully aligns with that of Russian president Vladimir Putin, who views Ukraine as an artificial state, claiming that its western regions rightfully belong to Poland, Hungary, and Romania.

In 2008, Putin reportedly proposed to Polish prime minister Donald Tusk, during his visit to Moscow, the idea of dividing Ukraine between Poland and Russia.

In 2014, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, prominent Russian MP Vladimir Zhirinovsky sent letters to the foreign ministries of Hungary, Poland, and Romania, suggesting the partition of Ukraine and the distribution of its territories among Russia and the three countries.

The recruitment of a Ukrainian informant by Hungarian military intelligence in 2021 occurred against the backdrop of Russia’s active preparations for its war against Ukraine — a war that many Western leaders urged Russia not to launch.

On 1 February 2022, just three weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion, Orbán visited Moscow and met with Putin. The exact content of their hours-long discussion remains undisclosed, but it reportedly centred on European security and Russia’s growing pressure on Ukraine.

Two days before the Russian invasion, Hungary’s defence ministry announced the deployment of an unspecified number of troops to the Ukrainian border. Officially, the deployment was described as a precautionary step to bolster border security, prevent the entry of armed groups, and manage a potential refugee influx.

Given the SBU’s recent revelations about Hungary’s malign activities, the official justification for this troop movement now appears questionable.

Orbán’s 'peacekeepers'

It may be an overstatement to suggest that the Hungarian military intended to invade Transcarpathia in February 2022 — Hungary’s army is no match for battle-hardened Ukrainian forces.

However, Orbán’s likely objective may have been to fill a potential security void in the region with Hungarian police and 'peacekeepers' had Russia’s “special military operation” succeeded in collapsing the Ukrainian state within days or weeks.

While Orbán would not have risked repeating Horthy’s direct annexation of Transcarpathia in the wake of the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, the underlying idea was likely similar: wait for Ukraine’s collapse, then move into Transcarpathia to secure Hungarian political influence.

It remains unclear why Hungarian military intelligence chose to activate its cell in September 2024, but the move was probably linked to developments in Russia’s war effort.

On the one hand, data on Ukrainian ground and air defences in Transcarpathia would be of little use to the Hungarian army, which lacks the capacity to confront Ukraine militarily. The only actor likely to benefit from such intelligence is Russia.

On the other hand, the Hungarian operation may have been influenced by expectations that the 2024 US presidential election could trigger a domestic crisis in the United States, creating a strategic window for Russia to advance its goals in Ukraine. In such a scenario, Hungarian troops posing as “peacekeepers” could enter Transcarpathia under the pretext of stabilising the region.

By that time, French president Emmanuel Macron had already floated the idea of deploying European peacekeepers to Ukraine should Russia make significant advances into its central regions. Within that context, Orbán’s 'peacekeeping' initiative could appear even legitimate to many naïve observers.

Whatever Hungary’s exact tactic, Ukraine now has concrete evidence that Orbán’s anti-Ukrainian actions extend far beyond merely blocking EU military and financial support or obstructing Ukraine’s path to EU integration.

The scale and nature of Hungary’s intelligence operations make it increasingly plausible that Orbán has been directly colluding with Putin in Russia’s war against Ukraine — and more broadly, against Europe.

A comprehensive investigation, led by the EU or Nato, into this potential collusion is not only justified but urgently necessary.

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.

EU Council chief António Costa met with Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić on Tuesday (13 May), despite Vučić’s recent Moscow visit and ongoing student-led protests against corruption in his Belgrade regime.

Costa told press in the Serbian capital \"a lot of people [had] asked me not to come [here]\", just four days after Vučić had met with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow for a monumental military parade.

\"But I came because if we have a problem with Serbia, with president Vučić, the solution is to talk ... to explain different points of view,\" Costa said.

The top EU official said he \"fully understands\" Vučić's decision to go to the 9 May parade for historical reasons.

But he warned Vučić that in order to move forward with accession, Serbia needed \"full alignment\" with EU foreign policy, including a \"clear condemnation of Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine\".

He also said reforms on \"media freedom\" and \"suppression of corruption\" were needed to open new chapters in Serbia's enlargement talks.

But for his part, Vučić didn't explicitly condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, saying only that every country's \"territorial integrity\" ought to be respected.

He did publicly say he was committed to EU integration.

\"The atmosphere [in the EU] ... is not exactly great, I'm convinced, because of the trip to Moscow, but ... I believe that Europe will have understanding for merit-based progress,\" he said.

But he was also unapologetic about declining to mirror EU sanctions against Russia, adding: \"I'm the president of Serbia and I serve Serbia's interests\".

Vučić gave Costa a formal welcome outside his presidential palace on Monday morning, complete with an honour guard of soldiers.

The two men were seen smiling and patting each other on the back. Costa also referred to him as \"dear Aleksandar\" on several occasions.

The 9 May parade in Moscow used to celebrate the end of WW2.

But Putin has turned it into a propaganda event to glorify his war on Ukraine and it has been boycotted by almost all EU leaders, as well as EU-aspirant countries' leaders, since 2014.

And in stark contrast to the EU's trade sanctions on Russia, Vučić brought his entire government to meet Putin and his ministers and top Russian CEOs.

\"I completely agree with you [Putin] that we need to increase our trade and I believe that there are great opportunities to do so,\" Vučić said in Moscow last week.

Putin spoke of their \"fraternal ties\" and \"strategic partnership\", while also reminding Vučić that: \"Russia remains the guarantor of Serbia's energy security, covering about 85 percent of Serbia's total energy needs\".

Meanwhile, back in Belgrade on Tuesday, Costa's mention of \"corruption\" was his only allusion to the mass-scale, student-led protests which have become a regular feature in Serbia since last November, when a shoddy roof at a metro station in the town of Novi Sad collapsed, killing 15 people.

\"That [roof] canopy collapsing was a direct consequence of the deep-rooted corruption in Serbia — that’s the bottom line,\" Milica Mudrić, a student activist, told EUobserver in March.

Serbian students had even organised a 1,993km relay-ultramarathon from Novi Sad to Brussels to meet with MEPs, which began on 25 April and culminated in the EU capital on Monday.

And if they were disappointed with Costa's softly-softly approach to Vučić, then so were the 32 MEPs who sent a letter to the EU Council chairman on Monday, urging him to boycott the Belgrade visit.

\"The army parading in Moscow is the same army which continues committing war crimes and killing Ukrainians on a daily basis, for over three years now,\" said the letter, organised by Estonian centre-right MEP Riho Terras.

Vučić's trip to Moscow showed he \"endorses a war criminal [Putin]\", while Costa's visit to Belgrade \"would signal the EU's approval of president Vučić's despicable behaviour\", the MEPs said.

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.

The second Ursula von der Leyen EU Commission lists ”protecting our democracy, upholding our values” among its key priorities. These are commendable words but, as always, actions speak louder.

Judging by its actions, the commission’s commitment to democracy seems to stop at the vocabulary, and definitely does not extend to upholding basic principles of participatory democracy in its own institutional practices.

As a researcher, following the von der Leyen presidency demonstrate its attitudes towards participatory democracy has been a journey from disbelief to frustration, and then to worry and anger. These emotions have been shared by members of civil society and journalists working with EU affairs.

The commission’s general policy towards public access requests can be characterised as one of strategic delay. Legal time limits are ignored as a matter of policy, and the simplest request can take months or even years to respond. The European Ombudsman sees these systematic failures amounting to maladministration. 

The commission denies the existence of documents, even when this is obviously a big fat lie, and destroys documents to avoid disclosure obligations. It disregards the court’s established case law. 

The commission’s general policy towards public access requests can be characterised as one of strategic delay

In its responses to access requests, the commission sees democratic debate as ‘external pressure’, which it needs to be insulated from. The way to do that is by further limiting transparency. The whole point of the commission’s policy is to make timely and informed debate impossible. 

Finding effective ways to redress such failures has proven nigh on impossible. The commission pays no heed to the views of the European Ombudsman, an attitude demonstrated by its total non-engagement with her inquiries and recommendations. 

In recent years, the commission has spent a lot of time monitoring authoritarian governments and their playbooks. It seems to have learned a trick or two. 

When disclosure is so unlikely and slow as to frustrate even the most hard-core EU geek, we — the academia, the media, the public — will just stop asking.

This, of course, is the whole point.

The commission will then be free to manoeuvre as it sees fit, while feeding passive citizens with curated information from the commission’s PR department or the president’s cabinet. And every commission initiative will always be a success. 

In this vision, democracy is reduced to the right to visit a ballot box every five years — an act that has limited impact on Europe’s future direction. And the sorry absence of the EU as an integrated political community, with a strong and independent EU-level media and civil society, continues unabated. 

An informed EU public sphere cannot develop without the commission’s active cooperation, and the commission should do its utmost to promote the emergence of one. If it believes in truly integrated Europe, it should embrace the right of the public to call power-holders to account, even when this feels inconvenient and risks short-term embarrassment. 

Instead, von der Leyen’s second commission seems to continue where the first one left off.

Read the small print

In its first meeting on 4 December 2024, the new commission revised its Rules of Procedure. In an annex, the commission unilaterally sets numerous limitations on the application of the EU transparency law, with the obvious aim of excluding as many of its own documents as possible from the scope of public access rules. 

The new rules make it explicit that the commission has no intention of applying the court’s case law relating to proactive disclosure of legislative documents. Documents that should be automatically disclosed to facilitate timely debate of legislative options become accessible only through complex, time-consuming and, ultimately, likely unsuccessful access request.

The new rules also formalise the practice of destroying documents and establish new categories of general presumptions of secrecy with nearly unlimited temporal scope. Instead of a presumption of openness, vast areas of commission action are presumed secret. 

The ‘Guardian of Treaties’ chooses to overlook that transparency is a normative choice made in the Treaty of Lisbon and the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Exceptions to public access are to be laid down in law, not in internal rules of individual institutions at their own discretion.

The commission’s new rules also constitute a breach of the EU’s international obligations under the Aarhus Convention.

This has led to a request for internal review by the environmental NGO ClientEarth under the Aarhus Regulation, which may also lead to proceedings before the Court.

Separately, I have, together with Emilio de Capitani and NGO AccessInfo Europe, challenged the new rules before the General Court. 

The democratic credentials of the European Commission have always been weak. The formal retort to this is that the EU is not a state, nor is the commission a government. It leads with expertise and promotes the European interest. Hence, there would be little point to broad democratic debate or citizen involvement. 

But as part of an ever-deeper Union, the commission keeps gathering powers that reach ever deeper into national policy making.

Being a supranational executive is no excuse. It is a reason to do your utmost to remain transparent, to remain accountable to the people that you claim to serve. 

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.

EU and Indian trade negotiators are focusing on the core elements of a potential agreement this week, including market access in goods. Also on the agenda are talks on rules of origin, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, technical barriers to trade, services and investment, public procurement, and sustainability issues, say Commission officials. 

The week of talks on a trade deal resumed in New Delhi on Monday (12 May) with both sides having set themselves a December deadline for concluding the trade pact. 

Meanwhile, New Delhi’s agreement with the UK, announced last week, gives an insight into the likely contents of an EU trade pact.

EU officials are cagey on the potential similarities between a UK and EU deal, pointing out that the draft UK-India text has not been published and many crucial elements of the deal are still unknown. 

However, India currently has some of the world’s highest tariffs on imports and reducing these is among the low-hanging fruit for the EU. 

Under its agreement with Keir Starmer’s government, it will cut levies on 90 percent of British products sold in the country. Within a decade, 85 percent of British products sold will become tariff-free in India. 

In return, 99 percent of India’s exports to Britain will face no duties under the new agreement, with officials briefing that the removal of tariffs on textile and jewellery imports will be a major economic boost. 

Similarly, the EU wants India to lower tariffs on cars, wine and whiskey as well as some agricultural products. India, on the other hand, wants greater market access and lower tariffs for key exports, including pharmaceuticals, textiles and apparel. 

The December deadline is likely to focus primarily on market access to trade. Issues such as investment are being dealt with in two parts of the negotiations, say EU commission officials.  

Market opening for new investments between the EU and India is part of the draft free trade agreement, while legal protection for existing investments is part of a bilateral investment treaty that is being negotiated with India in parallel to the FTA. 

Like the EU, which has put diversifying its trade relationships at the heart of its response to the threat of tariffs from the United States, India, which was threatened with a 26 percent goods tariff by US president Donald Trump, also has ongoing trade talks with a raft of partners.  

Last week, India and Chile signed a terms of reference document to upgrade their existing Preferential Trade Agreement (PTA) into a full-fledged Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). The new trade deal covers digital services, investment and access to Chile’s vast reserves of lithium and other key minerals, vital to India’s green industrial transition. India is also in talks with New Zealand.

Policies linked to decarbonisation and sustainability are likely to be among the trickiest for the EU and Indian teams. India has secured the promise of compensation for the costs of carbon taxes from its UK trade pact and is almost certain to make similar demands of the EU in relation to the bloc’s carbon border adjustment mechanism.   

Last week, India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman described the EU carbon levy as a “repeat of colonialism”. 

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.

Some 25 shortly-to-be-designated 'shadow fleet' oil tankers are currently sailing through the Baltic Sea or in the North Sea region, posing a threat of oil spills and cable-cutting incidents.

They are among 149 vessels to be added to an EU blacklist of ships helping Russia to bypass a Western oil embargo, according to an EU Commission proposal seen by EUobserver.

The listing means they'll be forbidden from calling at EU ports or receiving maritime EU firms' services, such as insurance, repair, or refuelling, after the decision becomes official on 20 May.

Eleven of the ships were in the Gulf of Finland on Monday (12 May), according to marine tracker websites (click on the links to see where they are now).

They were the Akademik Gubkin, Arlan, Bolognia Falcon, Centurion, Katiuska, Koala, Leopard, Odune, Raven, Vladimir Monomakh, and Vostochny Prospect.

Two others - the Caruzo and Jaguar - were in more westerly parts of the Baltic.

The shadow fleet ships are typically 240-metre-long and 40-metre-wide, ageing rust-buckets registered in countries with lax safety rules, which sail without adequate insurance.

The Baltic Sea is especially vulnerable to toxic spills because of its shallowness and enclosed geography.

Meanwhile, 12 others were sailing beside, toward, or from the British Isles on Monday: the Garasan, Huang He, North Light, North Moon, Manta, Pacific 01, Reus, Stellar Beverly, Sun, Team, Thya, and Torex.

British coastal waters and the Baltic Sea are also at risk of potential Russian sabotage due to the concentration of telecommunication and energy cables and pipelines in the area.

The rest of the 149 vessels were mostly in the Black Sea and Eastern Mediterranean areas or near India and China on Monday.

And even though the EU Commission has accused the ships of plying their trade for Russia, only 15 out of the 149 vessels in the document were flying a Russian flag.

The majority flew flags from Panama (38), Comoros (17), Barbados (14), Djibouti (8), Guyana (9), Sierra Leone (8), Antigua Barbuda (6), Palau (6), Cook Islands (4), Guinea (4), Singapore (4), Gambia (3), and Guinea-Bissau (3).

Barbuda, Cameroon, China, Curacao, India, Gabon, Liberia, San Marino, and Vietnam were also responsible for one or two each of the suspected oil smugglers.

EU ambassadors discussed the shadow fleet measures in Brussels on Monday as part of the 17th round of anti-Russia sanctions.

\"Most of the delegations support the proposal. Some asked for a bit of extra time to conclude further analysis,\" an EU diplomat said.

A second EU diplomat said the talks were \"quick\" and \"consensual\".

The rest of the 17th round is set to impose visa-bans and asset-freezes on 54 Russian entities and 14 individuals said to be aiding Russia's war effort in Ukraine, as well as tightening exports of EU dual-use technology.

The number of new shadow fleet listings is expected to grow from the current 149 to almost 200 by the time the talks wrap up next week, diplomats added.

And that would bring the total number of listed ships to over 350 (including previous rounds of sanctions).

But the true size of the shadow fleet is at least 600 vessels, according to US consultancy firm S&P Global.

The EU has also given itself a legal mandate to impose visa-bans and asset-freezes on shadow fleet captains.

Shadow captains

EUobserver previously published the names of four captains in the smuggling business, based on evidence supplied by Ukrainian security sources.

Kyiv was disappointed not to see any captains listed this time around, despite the deterrent power the move could have on mariners who might have wanted careers with respectable shipping firms in future.

\"Damn it. Really, damn it,\" a Ukrainian diplomat said.

The four previously reported shadow captains came from China, Iran, Myanmar, and Turkey, while the Turkish captain's crew consisted of 16 Filipino sailors, in an indication of the kind of people involved in sanctions evasion.

Another Turkish captain in the shadow trade, according to Ukraine, was Meral Ismail, who sailed the Oasis oil tanker from Russia to India in March and April.

The Oasis was already sanctioned by the EU in 2024.

Four Chinese captains (Liu Hehua, Xu Guobo, Fu Shushing, and Zhang Zhiguo), three Indian mariners (Thomas Benon, Chandan Kumar, and Thind Harneet Singh), a Filipino named Brian Lamanero, and a Pakistani called Ahmad Aftab, had also sailed shadow fleet cargoes in 2024 and 2025, Ukrainian sources told EUobserver.

None of the captains could be reached using social media.

And five of the ships involved (the Chen Lu, Nichole, Serena, Swiftsea Rider, and Syndra) weren't on any EU lists yet.

(The Syndra used to be called Heidi A until March.)

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.

The European Commission continues to defend Tunisia as safe for prospective Tunisians wanting international protection in Europe.

Michael Shotter, a senior European Commission official, told the European Parliament's civil liberties committee on Monday (12 May) that the country was deemed safe due, in part, to the fact that few Tunisians are granted asylum in Europe.

The Union-wide recognition rate for applicants from Tunisia was four percent in 2024. At least ten EU states also consider Tunisia to be a safe country.

\"We didn't take the percentage recognition rate as the be all and end all,\" said Shotter, noting that they drew on information provided to them by the Malta-based European Union Asylum Agency (EUAA).

Shotter said Tunisians still need to have their asylum claims heard, but would be shuffled through a faster procedure lasting no more than three months.

Last month, the European Commission created an EU list of safe countries of origin.

Should the co-legislators adopt the list, it means all 27 member states will have to designate the countries as safe.

Tunisia figured in the list, along with Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco, as well as EU candidate countries like Turkey.

The commission says special attention should be given to LGBTIQ persons, victims of gender-based violence, human rights defenders, religious minorities and journalists.

While journalists, political figures and activists, as well as lawyers and judges, have faced persecution in Tunisia, the commission argues it's not a \"large-scale, systematic repression.\"

This comes despite a court in Tunis last month issuing sentences in a mass trial of 40 lawyers, opposition figures, and critics of president Kais Saied. Some were sentenced to jail terms of up to 66 years.

Some critics view the list, as well as Tunisia's inclusion, as unreliable given what is happening on the ground.

They note that human rights defenders are being arbitrarily detained for helping migrants.

\"The analysis in the commission's assessment absolutely downplays the human rights backsliding that we've seen in the last few years,\" said Olivia Sundberg of Amnesty International.

She also said the concept of a safe country of origin in asylum procedures leads to discrimination among refugees based solely on their nationality.

\"It detracts from a full individualised assessment on their merits,\" she said, noting it also means that the burden of proof is placed on those individuals.

This year, EUobserver turns 25-years old. A quarter century.

Since our little online newspaper was founded in Brussels in 2000, we have covered the EU through its ups and downs.

Through treaty changes, enlargement, the financial crisis, the euro crisis, Covid-19 and Russia’s war in Ukraine, our small but dedicated team of reporters have strived to provide straight reporting.

Not coloured by national, corporate or political biases, and always through the lens of fundamental values which unite the countries of our beleaguered bloc, we’ve focused both on the most important developments and the issues that others ignore.

During these years, we’ve seen other EU affairs publications come and go, and others develop varying ways to serve certain needs or audiences.

In many ways, we’ve remained unchanged.

First, when it comes to our independence. Despite financial hardship at times, we’ve maintained an absolute stance on who has a say about our coverage; nobody, but us and our readers.

EUobserver has never positioned itself as a broker between different stakeholder groups, and thus has never had to compromise on investigating anyone or anything.

Second, our dedication to factual reporting. Even when attacked by numerous lawsuits seeking to expunge damning coverage, we’ve fought back and relied on our \"high deontological standards\", as the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom put it.

Third, our belief in journalism as a tool for protecting democracy. That might sound lofty, but in simple terms it means that we firmly hold to the fact that a well-informed public is the best way to ensure functioning and representative institutions that benefit us all.

And that third point brings us to where we would like to change.

Not in our belief, but in the way we aim to serve and reach a growing audience of diverse citizens.

As anyone does, we see the way people consume information changing around us. In some ways it has never been easier to reach people with journalism, but in others it has never been harder to keep doing so.

Fragmentation of the information environment — we’re now not only competing with other news media, but also with individual creators, streaming services, games and anything else people can choose to spend time on — means that it’s more important than ever to have a direct connection with the people who want to spend time with us.

Additionally, according a report released by Reporters Without Borders on Friday 2 May, the funding situation for independent media has never been more dire. “The global state of press freedom is now classified as a “difficult situation” for the first time in the history of the Index,” it reads.

So to celebrate this — honestly quite amazing — anniversary, and to address these challenges, we’re looking to introduce more ways to interact with and serve you, our members and readers.

And at the same time we’re kicking off a campaign to find 2,500 new supporting members who believe, like us, that EU democracy needs independent watchdogs — not to punish wrongdoing, but to provide citizens with better information to make decisions.

We need your help.

As you know, the number of people reached by our articles is determined for a large part by algorithms. But just like democracy, those algorithms are informed by choices of individuals.

If you care about what we do, and what we can do for you in the future, we’d like to ask you to take your stake in EU democracy and help spread our goal, our mission and our journalism far and wide.

And if you can, sign up for a supporting membership to ensure that EU citizens can get the information they need to make decisions that affect policy that has consequences for all of us.

By reading us, you're already an active participant in EU democracy.

By supporting us, you're taking a stake in it.

Join us.

Russian spies are still active in the EU capital and have \"a higher risk appetite\" than before the Ukraine war — despite Belgium's efforts to push back against their conspiracies.

Meet Dmitry Iordanidi: elite diplomat, École Nationale d'Administration (ENA) alumnus, and (alleged) Russian spy.

The brown-eyed 55-year-old, whose name is of Pontic Greek origin, was briefly a \"counsellor\" in Russia's bilateral embassy to Belgium in 2023.

He had previously served as deputy-head of mission in Bosnia for the Organization for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE), a peace-building institute based in Vienna.

He'd also been photographed with Russian president Vladimir Putin, (late) Serbian president Tomislav Nikolić, and (now) president Aleksandar Vučić in Putin's summer residence in Sochi, on Russia's Black Sea coast, in 2013, in a sign of his high status.

Some of Iordanidi's OSCE speeches voiced leftwing ecological values, amid German intelligence warnings of Russian ties with radical eco-activists in Europe.

But there was no red-flag anti-Western content in his public views.

Iordanidi had also attended the ENA, the top French postgraduate school in Paris, in 1999 to 2001, internal ENA records confirmed.

And his 2002 thesis on diplomacy at the Higher Attestation Commission, an academy in Moscow, quoted Napoleonic-era French ambassador Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, in a touch of Parisian finesse.   

The Russian foreign ministry's dress code says male diplomats are to look \"conservative — a dark blue or grey suit, with combinations of different jackets and trousers\".

\"Pockets are purely decorative and not to be used for hands. Perfume must be used in moderation; hands and nails must be well groomed. No visible tattoos or piercings are allowed\".

Dekonspiratsiya

But behind Iordanidi's clean-cut facade, he was in fact a spy from Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Belgium's domestic intelligence branch, the State Security Service (VSSE), had warned the Belgian foreign ministry in 2023. 

And he was one of 20 Russian 'diplomats' ejected from Brussels two years ago under a cloud of VSSE spy allegations, according to a list of their names seen by EUobserver, as well as De Morgen, Humo, Le Monde, RFE, and Radio Svoboda in a joint investigation. 

The VSSE declined to comment, but its list of Russian spies was authenticated by three Western intelligence services. 

The Russian embassy to Belgium, and the 20 alleged spies, did not reply to our emails. 

European countries have, in total, expelled some 750 Russian diplomats on espionage accusations since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to VSSE director Francisca Bostyn's previous media remarks.

It was the biggest counter-intelligence crackdown since the Cold War.

But even though Belgium has ejected 68 Russian diplomats and three Belarusian ones so far, Russian spies continue to pose a threat in the EU and Nato HQs' host state. 

\"The start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine was the occasion to empty our drawer\", a Western intelligence source said.

\"[But] some of the expelled Russians have been replaced by others, and we notice many attempts to let new SVR or GRU officers take their place,\" they said.

GRU and GU are acronyms for the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, its military intelligence service.

James Appathurai, a senior Nato official dealing with \"hybrid\" warfare, also said: \"We saw ... a diminishment for a little while [after the 750 expulsions] in their [Russia's] ability to conduct malign intelligence operations in our countries, but it has been reconstituted\".

Russians were recruiting agents, including online, to carry out \"sabotage, sometimes on politicians' properties, or arson attacks, [train] derailments\" in Europe, Appathurai said, speaking at the Nato HQ.

Russians also had a \"higher risk appetite\" than pre-2022 and had even plotted to kill the German CEO of arms firm Rheinmetall in 2024 (Armin Papperger), who still needed bodyguards today, the Nato official said.

Euroclear drone

The Belgian CEO of financial firm Euroclear, Valérie Urbain, who holds the key to €183bn of frozen Russian central bank assets, also hired bodyguards from French security firm Amarante in late 2024 due to Russia spy fears, according to three sources who asked to remain anonymous because they weren't authorised to speak to media.

Euroclear hired Amarante to protect all seven other of its executive board members as well.

And staff were further alarmed when an unidentified drone buzzed their HQ in Brussels city centre in mid-December last year, when Ukrainian president Volodomyr Zelensky was in town for an EU summit.

\"We remain very vigilant and take all necessary measures to protect our staff and offices. These measures are continuously evaluated,\" Euroclear said.

A Belgian security agency called the Coordination Unit for Threat Analysis (OCAD) determines the national threat level, while Belgium's National Crisis Centre (NCCN) decides whether to assign people such as Urbain state-level protection.

They declined to comment on Euroclear.

But speaking more generally, OCAD spokesman Steve Charlier said: \"In the case of possible Russian threats, you rarely have evidence. You suspect the Russian regime is behind certain actions, but usually the regime works with intermediaries. And there is always the possibility of denying Russia's involvement\".  

\"We call that ... 'plausible deniability',\" he said. 

Speaking generally of what the NCCN can do, spokeswoman Laura Demullier said that if the VSSE and OCAD deemed a \"threat [to a CEO, for instance] is serious, we can have a person shadowed by a bodyguard 24 hours a day, we can also send patrols or, in the worst case, put a person in a safe house\". 

Looking closer at Belgium's 2023 wave of Russian expulsions, Russia voluntarily \"retracted\" Iordanidi, but Belgium made the 19 others persona non grata (PNG). 

The expulsions are normally done quietly to minimise Russian reprisals against EU diplomats in Moscow, but being PNG-ed still leaves a burn mark on a diplomat's record and makes them harder to repost to another location. 

Iordanidi left Brussels after the VSSE had given Russia an ultimatum: either you retract him or we PNG him, intelligence sources said.  

SVR, GRU, and FSB

The group of 20 contained 11 alleged SVR officers, seven from the GRU, and two from the FSB domestic spy agency.  

The SVR is a civilian service: It recruits people with higher education degrees and focuses on political, economic, and scientific espionage.

It has one small special forces cell called Zaslon, which does diplomatic protection in war zones.

The GRU is much larger than the SVR, recruits former soldiers, targets military secrets, and does signals intelligence, as well as foreign sabotage. 

It is divided into the rank-and-file \"agentura\" (who do espionage) and the \"spetznas\", such as units 92154 and 21955 (who do sabotage). 

And GRU special forces get extensive martial arts, weapons, and explosives training. 

The FSB is Russian president Vladimir Putin's biggest intelligence service.

Its main job is domestic repression, but the FSB's 5th Service also does foreign espionage, including counter-intelligence and surveillance on the Russian diaspora.

In a thumbnail sketch, a British writer on Russian security affairs, Mark Galeotti, said the SVR were \"primarily doing human intelligence gathering\".

\"The GRU's role is much more to break things and kill people\", he added. 

But \"given that the Russian state is pretty much on a wartime footing, they're [the SVR] also involved in this campaign of sabotage and destabilisation operations [in Europe]\", said Galeotti, who is also a fellow at British defence think-tank the Royal United Services Institute. 

Zooming in

Zooming in on Iordanidi, Galeotti said his \"counsellor\" role in Brussels would have given him a pretext to seek meetings with executives of strategic Belgian firms or other VIPs in the Belgian establishment.

\"A counsellor is a senior figure within the embassy, so he would be in a position to present himself as someone looking for opportunities for economic cooperation .... So you have reason to invite people to a reception. Maybe you identify the wife of the CEO [of a strategic EU firm] is patron of a particular theatre, so you try to go along to her concert parties,\" said Galeotti.

\"If need be, you do it in a cold way: If you see that someone tends to drink in a particular bar, you try to get in conversation with them. But that's a last resort,\" he said.

And Iordanidi was also active on dating apps Zoosk and Badoo, according to leaked Russian databases seen by EUobserver, in another avenue of approach to potential targets. 

For his part, Sergey Zhirnov, a former Russian SVR officer posted to Paris in the 1990s, who is now a refugee in France, gave an insight into its tradecraft.

\"The idea was to find people who wanted to work with us due to their [communist-friendly] ideology, to help the Soviet Union. After that, there were people who wanted to do it for money. And this was also interesting,\" Zhirnov said. 

\"It's an old myth that we looked for 'kompromat' ... People who work due to kompromat do the absolute minimum,\" he said.  

He, like Iordanidi, was sent to infiltrate the ENA, where Zhirnov also studied in 1991 to 1992.

The ENA's alumni include four French presidents (Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Jacques Chirac, François Hollande, and Emmanuel Macron), several prime ministers, hundreds of ministers, and thousands of senior officials.

Macron overhauled it in 2021 and renamed it the Institut National du Service Public (INSP). 

French elite

Three of Iordanidi's ENA year-of-1999 classmates were Laurent Wauquiez (who became a senior French politician), Philippe Gustin (who became French ambassador to Romania), and Antoine Godbert (who ended up in charge of France's Erasmus+ student exchange programme), for instance.

And Zhirnov showed why Iordanidi's ENA credentials were still valuable, despite the passage of some 25 years since he was there.

\"The goal of my [ENA] mission was to establish contacts with the students and teachers and to maintain those contacts and afterwards to exploit them,\" Zhirnov said. 

\"People who studied at the ENA are also brought together in L'Association des Anciens Élèves de l'ENA [l'AAEENA] ... it's still quite active, it organises meetings, conferences, sports events. I still receive an annual directory of former students, which shows who eded up in which ministry, which post they occupy today. I receive their private contact details,\" he said.

\"So this association is a formidable asset for espionage,\" said Zhirnov.

The L'AAEENA directory covers 9,000 ENA alumni, according to its website. 

\"We do not comment on students or former students\", said Edith Berger, head of cabinet and spokesperson of the INSP (ex-ENA), when asked if Iordanidi was still eligible to get his yearly copy of the contact book.

And in a final sign of his usefulness, the Russian foreign ministry is now trying to recycle Iordanidi into a high-ranking OSCE post, despite his Belgian defenestration. 

He is a candidate to be head of the OSCE's mission to Serbia, head of an OSCE \"programme office\" in Kazakhstan, or a programme office in Kyrgyzstan, according to leaked OSCE documents. 

The recruitment process for the three posts was \"impartial\" and \"ongoing,\" said OSCE spokeswoman Alexandra Taylor. 

\"We follow a rigorous recruitment process for all of our positions at the OSCE\", she said, when asked about security vetting.

Iordanidi was not the only alleged SVR spy expelled from Belgium to have a cultured CV.

A second PNG-ed Russian diplomat and alleged SVR officer was 46-year-old Igor Goriachev, who had been Russia's \"deputy trade representative\" in Belgium.

He had previously worked for Russian arms firm Rostec in 2021, the leaked Russian databases showed, and as \"second secretary\" at Russia's mission to Unesco in Paris, an UN branch which looks after cultural patrimony, and which declined to comment about him.

Russia's main \"trade representative\" to Belgium, the 57-year-old Andrey Kuznetsov, was also PNG-ed on SVR allegations.

Rising star

The youngest SVR suspect, Maxim Tsarkov (\"third secretary\"), was just 30 years old when he came to Brussels, in what may have been his first foreign posting.

His older SVR colleague, 62-year-old Andrey Egorov (\"attaché\"), used to be embedded in Ruselectronics, a Russian military technology firm, and in the Russian finance ministry before he came to the EU capital.

The remaining eight expelled SVR officers were typically married middle-aged men with respectable CVs.

They were: 40-year-old Aleksandr Chernikov (\"technical staff\"), 42-year-old Nikolay Egorov (\"counsellor\"), 41-year-old Sergey Gudilin (\"technical staff\"), 64-year-old Sergei Tkachenko (\"1st secretary\"), 38-year-old Aleksandr Vyskrebentsev (\"attaché\"), and 39-year-old Anton Zaichko (\"attaché\").

Chernikov used to work at the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, a financial think-tank in Moscow, as well as the Russian economy ministry, before coming to Brussels as a diplomat.

Egorov, who was photographed in Bruges, northern Belgium, in July 2023, appears to have previously worked in Russia's embassy in Laos, according to his old email address ([email protected]). 

Gudilin had studied at the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology.

Meet also Sergey Petrikov: ex-arms dealer, university professor, and an alleged GRU spy sent to the EU capital. 

The 61-year-old had previously worked for Russian arms firm Rosoboronexport, dealing with French, Italian, and Chinese defence clients, where he was paid a small fortune by Russian standards back in 2005. 

And he is now a lecturer in foreign languages at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Russia's equivalent of France's ENA, and a storied recruitment centre for Russian spies. 

Petrikov was listed as \"technical staff\" at Russia's embassy to Belgium, but whatever he did there he was no ordinary janitor. 

Agentura/spetsnaz

Speculating on his profile, Galeotti said: \"If someone's role is 'technical staff', you can still meet someone in a bar [to cultivate human intelligence contacts], but it's more likely you are in effect a support team, or you're actually coordinating things instead of being out in the field\". 

Petrikov might have been organising \"dead drops\" of information to Russian agents in the city, for example, said Galeotti.

One old spy trick to approach targets was a fake mugging, the British writer noted. 

\"If you see a female executive in a particular [target] company, for example, you hire some people who basically try to mug her one evening in a dark car park, and then you happen to come along at the right moment to scare them off,\" Galeotti said.

\"He'd [Petrikov] know how to organise things like muggings,\" the British expert said. 

The other six GRU men expelled by Belgium were: 42-year-old Sergei Cherepanov (\"second secretary\"), 35-year-old Aleksandr Degtiarev (\"attaché\"), 51-year-old Aleksandr Kovalchuk (\"counsellor\"), 37-year-old Aleksei Sapozhnikov (\"technical staff\"), 38-year-old Maksim Sokolov (\"technical staff\"), and 35-year-old Dmitri Zamogilnykh (\"technical staff\").

Zamogilnykh stood out because he once registered a car at Solnechnogorsk 2 in Moscow, which housed GRU spetznas units, including 92154. 

The more notorious unit 29155, which was linked to the Novichok poisoning of ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal in the UK in 2018, is located in the same part of the city. 

But most of the other GRU men expelled by Belgium appeared to come from the service's rank and file.

Cherepanov, for instance, had the background of a signals specialist. 

He previously worked at the Strategic Missile Forces Academy in Moscow and was registered at an address tied to Russian military unit 46179, which specialised in seismic and infrasound surveillance using satellites, under the 12th Main Directorate, responsible for nuclear security.

Kovalchuk's registered home was Narodnogo Opolcheniya 50 in Moscow, the same address as the Russian defence ministry's Military Academy, popularly known as the \"GRU Conservatoire\".

He also flew on a seven-day trip from Moscow to Papua New Guinea in September 2014, leaked flight records said — in what looked more like a work assignment than a holiday, indicating the GRU's global reach.

The other GRU names were mostly invisible online. 

'Trigger-pullers'

Looking in more detail at the differences between the SVR and GRU, Galeotti said: \"The [SVR's] culture is imbued with that of the diplomatic corps. They tend to be risk averse, much more aware of the potential diplomatic blowback\". 

\"The GRU is more likely to take risks. You're much more likely to be promoted if you take a sensible risk, even if it fails,\" he said.

\"GRU officers are often ambitious kids from the [Russian] provinces. They haven't got the polish and family connections that SVR officers have, but they're smart and this is their real shot into making into the [Russian] elite,\" added Galeotti.

GRU spetznas were Putin's \"killers ... trigger-pullers,\" Galeotti said.

Zhirnov called it a \"special service which ... organises assassinations, abductions, sabotage. They are military people. They have explosives. They have weapons\". 

The GRU were \"more brutal\" than the SVR, but they \"weren't stupid,\" Zhirnov also said.

Ukraine's military intelligence service, the GUR, used to receive the same kind of training as Russia's GRU in the 1990s.

And a former GUR officer, who asked not to be named, also gave a hint of the GUR/GRU's dangerous skills and chutzpah in two anecdotes.

\"When I was a cadet, my girlfriend broke up with me, and I was so jealous I stole some explosives from the academy, broke into her flat, and rigged her oven to explode the next time she turned it on,\" he said. 

\"But when I was going downstairs I had a moment of clarity and ran back to defuse it,\" he added.

The ex-GUR officer also recalled going on a boozy night out with a GRU contact in Berlin a few years before Russia's 2022 invasion.

\"It was late at night, we were crossing a bridge in the city centre, when he [the GRU contact] stopped to urinate against a lamp post and to sing a song, which went: 'Wherever the GRU pisses, that's where the GRU is! Wherever the GRU pisses, that's where the GRU is!'. These were the only lyrics,\" the ex-GUR officer said.

Meet the FSB

And all that left the two Russian diplomats kicked out of Belgium in 2023 on grounds of being FSB spies.

One of them, the 45-year-old Dmitry Subochev was a \"1st secretary\" in Brussels and had previously worked for the World Customs Organisation (WCO) in Geneva, Switzerland. 

His WCO cover saw him travel to Azerbaijan, Nigeria, and Uzbekistan, according to online photos (the WCO did not reply to questions).

Subochev also gave a Covid-era Zoom talk on 11 March 2021 about \"the Russian state system for tracking cargo transportation using electronic navigation seals based on GLONASS [a satellite system]\" for \"high-value goods\" for the Belgian-Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce in Russia (CCBLR). 

The Moscow-based CCBLR was created in 1974 to build trade ties with Benelux countries.

Subochev's alleged FSB colleague in Brussels, 50-year-old Igor Echin (\"technical staff\"), used to work for a Russian private-security firm called Legion Groups in 2001 and 2008.

But even though the SVR, GRU, and FSB specialised in different areas, their work was \"opportunistic\" and overlapped, Galeotti said.

The SVR's Gudilin, for instance, used to cycle around Brussels, according to publicly available data on his account with fitness app Strava. 

And on 3 July 2021, Gudilin posted a pic on Strava of the Bertem radar station, which is part of Belgium's air-traffic control network and which provides data to the Belgian military, in an object of typically GRU interest. 

The FSB's Subochev was based at Russia's embassy to Belgium, like the other 19 alleged spies on the VSSE list.

But he also appeared in a photo at Russia's embassy to the EU with Russia's former EU ambassador Vladimir Chizhov on 8 September 2022, showing how Putin's men intermingled in Brussels. 

From Brussels to Bangkok

Meanwhile, if Iordanidi and Petrikov still had bright OSCE or MGIMO careers ahead of them, then other names from the VSSE's list-of-20 also landed well. 

Subochev was last seen working with the internal directorate of Russia's Federal Customs Service in 2024.

The SVR's Kuznetsov went to Russia's embassy in Malaysia after leaving Belgium, while the SVR's Vyskrebentsev went to its embassy in Thailand, despite their PNG-burn marks. 

These would be regarded as \"easy posts\", Galeotti said. 

\"Russia might need Thailand's vote in the UN, and at that point it's going to be useful to know what the Thai foreign minister likes to drink,\" he said.

But Thailand could also be of special interest to a formerly EU-based Russian spy, a Western intelligence source said.

\"Thailand is a centre of Russian foreign espionage because it's such a popular holiday destination for Europeans. Russian handlers could meet EU or Nato contacts there without arousing suspicion via their travel patterns\", the source said.

Russian spies were glamourised in the Cold War-era James Bond films and novels.

And Iordanidi's ENA past conjured memories of the Cambridge Five, a 1950s spy ring rooted in the UK's prestigious Cambridge University.

The SVR's young Tsarkov also posted flashy pics of himself and his girlfriends on the VK social-media site, had been embedded in a high-paying job at Russia's T-Bank in 2021, and owned a sporty BMW 520D, in a Bond-ish persona. 

But the leaked Russian databases debunked that mystique. 

Russian foreign ministry incomes were relatively low by European standards.

Romance debunked

The older spies used to own Soviet-era jalopies, such as Zighulevs, when they were young, before buying second-hand German models — Audi, BMW, or Volkswagen — only in more recent times, the leaked Russian databases showed.

Most of the 20 men were registered in tiny (40-70 square metre) flats in ageing tower blocks in Moscow suburbs, some of them with their mothers-in-law.

Iordanidi was registered in a flat on the fourth floor of a concrete tower on Khabarovskaya street, for instance.

The SVR's Egorov was registered in a 'Brezhnevka' — poor quality tower blocks from the era of Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev in the 1970s, now badly in need of renovation.

Two of the expelled men (Kuznetsov and Cherepanov) had taken out bank loans and defaulted on payments.

Cherepanov had borrowed 500,000 roubles (€5,182) in 2012, in a sum that would cover a car loan (for instance, for his Skoda Octavia) or the renovation of his flat, but he ended up 65 days in arrears.

\"When you go abroad that's when you make your money. You have your accommodation provided and all sorts of other allowances … if you own property back home, you rent it out,\" Galeotti said. 

And in a tiny figment of a grim personality, leaked data showed that one of the Russian spies registered a macabre username on his dating app profile in 2017 - \"adipocera\", which refers to a soapy tissue produced in the putrefaction of corpses.

Back in the EU heartland, Russia used to have 220 diplomats in three embassies (to Belgium, the EU, and Nato) and two consulates in Brussels and in the city of Antwerp prior to the 2022 invasion. 

Belgium is also home to some 30,000 people of Russian origin, who maintain close ties with diplomats via structures such as Russian House Brussels, and some of whom could be pressured to act as agents.

And Brussels hosts about 43,000 EU staff and 4,000 Nato personnel and their families in its international 'bubble', as well as Belgian VIPs, such as the Euroclear CEO, and hundreds of foreign dissidents, some of whom have faced intense surveillance.

When asked if he'd ever felt at risk, Nato's Appathurai, who is Canadian, said: \"I play on a hockey team here, ice hockey. I started it 25 years ago and there were Russian guys on that team and they're still on that team, but these are guys I've known for a long time\".

\"I don't have any hair on my head anyway. If I did, it wouldn't be going up on the back of my neck around these guys,\" he said.

\"But we do get training and know what to look for and we're also watched by our own intelligence services to make sure we're safe,\" he added.

Diplomacy abused

Russia closed its embassy to Nato in protest in October 2021 after Belgium first PNG-ed eight Russian diplomats there on espionage grounds. 

The Belgian foreign ministry declined to say how many Russian diplomats were still accredited in the country today, citing new data privacy laws.

But when asked if the shuttering of Russia's Nato embassy had adversely affected international diplomacy, Appathurai said: \"It has just not, to be really direct about it, and I was deputy political advisor for about 10 years, so I was probably one of the principal interlocutors with the Russians\". 

\"The bottom line is this: Russian diplomats, even legitimate diplomats, over time, became utterly restricted in what they could or could not convey,\" he said.

\"There was no negotiation any more as Russian hostility grew [in 2021], it became not a useful channel of actual negotiation,\" he added.

\"Their [Russia's] diplomatic staff here was, by the time they invaded Ukraine, no longer performing diplomatic duties,\" he said.

\"We are perfectly able to communicate with the Russians and we have military-to-military channels that allow for that. From a Nato point of view, the chairman of the military committee and the supreme allied commander can both talk to the Russians,\" he also said. 

When asked if there should be more PNGs of bogus Russian diplomats, Appathurai said: \"These are really complex questions that go beyond just the issue of sabotage operations. It relates to all kind of diplomatic relations and also the extent to which allies wish to exert pressure on Russia\".

\"These are national decisions, but there's a general toughening up on our side,\" he said.

The US is currently welcoming back large numbers of Russian diplomats to Washington under president Donald Trump's peace plan for Ukraine, but for its part Belgium echoed Appathurai's views.

\"A large contingent of [Russian] diplomats [in Brussels] is not necessary\", said Belgian foreign ministry spokesman Pierre Steverlynck. 

\"In the context of the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine ... diplomatic contacts are kept to an absolute minimum and focus on operational issues,\" he added. 

\"Belgium wishes to maintain normal diplomatic relations with Russia, but cannot allow these relations to be abused for espionage\", Steverlynck said. 

The US and Russia have agreed to start negotiations “immediately\" to end the war in Ukraine, sidelining Europe and Ukraine itself from the equation — and seemingly putting Russian president Vladimir Putin in the driving seat.

But experts repeatedly warn of the moral and strategic consequences of a bad deal — especially for Europe.

So far there is no date for a face-to-face meeting between US president Donald Trump and Putin, and the immediate next steps remain unclear.

But the White Hose statement has already sparked condemnation from officials in both sides of the Atlantic, describing the move as a (predictable) “betrayal,” a sign of “surrender” and “a dark day for Europe”.

A rather weak statement from Poland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas demanded a seat for Europe and Ukraine at the negotiation table — an optimistic hope that ultimately seems unlikely to become reality.

The news about Moscow’s readiness for negotiations came after a secret phone call between Trump and Putin late on Wednesday (12 January), which was followed by another conversation between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

“We believe that America’s strength, together with Ukraine and all our partners, is enough to push Russia to peace,” said Zelensky, whose strategy reflects a need to prevent any accusations against Kyiv of an unwillingness to cooperate.

But critics warn that the US approach not only undermines Ukraine, but also weakens Europe's geopolitical standing — reinforcing the notion that major powers dictate terms while sidelining those directly affected.

“Europe has to be at the table to defend its interests and not allow the US to negotiate with Putin behind its back and present it with a half-baked fait accompli,” Jamie Shea, a former Nato official, told EUobserver.

“Ukraine is much more important for Europe than for the US, and a Russian victory in Ukraine would undermine the security of the EU and of all the frontline Nato states in central and eastern Europe,” he added.

But there is also pessimism, as on the ground battlefield developments shape Russia’s efforts to strengthen its negotiating position, while Ukraine struggles to prevent further deterioration of its frontline.

“The West is frankly in a weaker position when it comes to imposing conditions on Russia, as Russia is not the party that is talking about stopping the war,” Shea pointed out.

Commitments vs Guarantees

Earlier this week, US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth stated that it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to restore its pre-2014 borders or gain Nato membership — words that play right into Moscow’s imperialistic ambitions.

But Nato membership is seen by many in Ukraine as the only real guarantee to preserve a long and lasting peace in the country after the war.

This also explains why Zeslenky has repeatedly emphasised that only with the US can Ukraine secure long-term security and stability — a harsh reality Europe also has to swallow.

“Anything else [other than joining Nato] is a commitment, not a guarantee,” said Mykola Beleskov, an analyst from the Come Back Alive Foundation. “Then it is better to fight.”

Even if the US suddenly decides to cut aid, Beleskov argues that Ukraine has enough military power to keep fighting for another six months. But when asked whether Europe could help, he said that there is a problem of political will and timing. 

“Money does’t translate automatically into military capability,” he said.

By now, Trump has realised that bringing peace to a country entering its fourth year of war and where people have been resisting Russian occupation since 2014 is neither easy nor quick. 

While Zelensky remains open to negotiations, Ukrainians will not accept a weak deal that would make their sacrifices feel meaningless.

\"If Zelensky brings a bad deal, the society will not take it,” warned the director of the Kyiv-based Frontier Institute Yevhen Hlibovytsky. He argues that Washington or Brussels struggle to understand that even under a ceasefire, people in occupied territories would still “live in hell”.

\"Bad peace will poison Ukraine,” he said, comparing the future of his country to what happened in Pakistan after it split from India, but with ongoing border tensions between the two.

Ukraine could face the risk of decades of militarisation, economic struggles, and political instability. And Kyiv may also be forced to reconsider nuclear capabilities, which would be detrimental to international commitments to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and global power dynamics, said the Ukrainian intellectual.

'Europe, together with Ukraine, need be able to shape the deal that it will have to implement,' former Nato official Jamie Shea

Anti-Western sentiment

An underestimated risk arises if Russia does not respect the potential agreement resulting from peace talks — as past events have shown.

Between 2014 and 2022, Ukraine held about 200 rounds of negotiations with Russia, signing 20 ceasefires that were quickly breached by Russia.

Reflecting on the idea that the US will not put boots on the ground to implement any potential deal and more so given Trump’s intention to involve Chinese diplomacy to put pressure on Moscow, Shea said that “Europe, together with Ukraine, need be able to shape the deal that it will have to implement”.

But there are many unanswered questions for Europe, including those about European peacekeeping forces.

In addition, a weak deal could also prompt both an anti-European and anti-American sentiment in the country, which could translate into populism gaining ground in the coming years. This is not good news for Europe. 

\"We may end up here as Hungary on steroids,” said Hlibovytsky.

“Be prepared for this threat of people feeling betrayed,” Beleskov warned.

Many in eastern Europe believe that Trump views potential negotiations through a colonialist lens, but they hope he will eventually hit a wall with Russia.

“Reality will be the biggest accountability measure, also with Trump,” Hlibovytsky said.

Meanwhile, civilians and the military in Ukraine have no trust in any peace deal with Russia, arguing that smoke and mirrors in the media doesn’t translate into what’s happening on the battlefield.

\"The war is not over\" is what the military friends of Maryna Baturynets, founder of the Bazilik school, told her on Thursday morning, following the news from Washington.

She told EUobserver that Ukrainians have been hearing about peace talks for over a decade and that \"Russians only understand weapons and power\".

Likewise, Stanislav Zavertailo, the co-founder of Honey cafe and Zavertailo bakery in the capital of Ukraine, thinks a weak deal will not stop Russia’s imperialistic appetite.

“I don’t believe Mr Trump… when he says he will stop the war this year,” he said.

“If Russia gets some peace agreement, it will happen again,” he added, warning that if Ukraine falls, Europe will be next.

The anti-corruption \"rebellion\" in Serbia will go on despite the regime's spin or violence, one fearless student has said. 

\"It won't be an easy fight, or a short one\", said Milica Mudrić, a 22-year-old PR and marketing student at the Faculty of Philosophy, a university in the Serbian city of Novi Sad. 

Over 200,000 people gathered in the rural town of Niš, in southern Serbia, on Saturday (1 March) to keep pressing for transparency and accountability over the collapse of a railway station roof in Novi Sad on 1 November, which killed 15 people. 

Some groups of students had walked 130km in freezing weather to be in Niš, backed by gifts of food and shelter by local communities along the way.

The protesters stood in a 15-minute silence in memory of victims at 11.52AM (the time of the roof tragedy), bringing central Niš to a halt.

It was just the latest in a series of rolling, student-led protests that began four months ago and which include an ongoing blockade of all of Serbia's university campuses. 

And for Mudrić, one of the students who helped to begin the anti-establishment pushback, Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić’s handling of events so far was missing the point. 

The roof collapse was \"the drop that ran over the glass\" for the whole of Serbian society, said Mudrić.

\"That [roof] canopy collapsing was a direct consequence of the deep-rooted corruption in Serbia — that’s the bottom line and that’s what everyone is aware of,\" she told EUobserver in an interview.

The tragedy was \"something we just couldn’t swallow, but they [the Serbian state] wanted us to do exactly that\", she said. 

\"People were shocked, hurt, and angry and wanted some answers, as I think everyone has a right to know what happened, whose fault it was, and how would it be handled,\" she added. 

\"It’s a big movement that just came from people’s desire for answers, ordinary people, who just want this to be a better country one day and for the institutions to work as they should,\" she said. 

The movement's logo became the image of a red hand, which you can see \"everywhere round here\" on walls in Novi Sad, Mudrić said. 

\"It means 'the blood is on your hands' and since then, the red hand has become the symbol of this rebellion, if that’s what I should call it,\" she said. 

The government reaction so far has been to charge 13 people with the Novi Sad disaster and for Serbia’s prime minister, Miloš Vučević, to step down in an effort to appease discontent. 

But that falls far short of the root-and-branch reform of public institutions that people have been calling for as a result. 

\"Our strength comes from our honesty and our transparency,\" Mudrić said

Five demands

\"We have five requirements [for accountability and reform] and then every university has its own. Some are intertwined, some are similar,\" Mudrić noted. 

Vučić has also accused activists of being managed by Western intelligence services to destabilise his Kremlin-friendly administration. 

\"There will be no colour revolution [in Serbia],\" Vučić said on Saturday, referring to the wave of non-violent protests which toppled corrupt and authoritarian regimes in Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Ukraine, as well as Serbia, some 20 years ago.  

And protesters, as well as independent journalists who try to cover events, have faced dozens of minor acts of violence by police and by pro-Vučić hardliners, as well as more serious attacks.

In one incident in Belgrade on 15 January, a driver hospitalised a 20-year-old student at a rally by ramming her with his car. 

\"He [the driver] hit this girl really hard - she ended up on the roof of his vehicle and then slid down onto the road — and he didn't even stop,\" said Mudrić. 

\"She had severe trauma and was in emergency care in Belgrade hospital, but she's doing OK now, she's not in a life-threatening condition,\" Mudrić added. 

Many other students who speak to media prefer to be identified only by their first names for fear of reprisals, such as interrogations by Serbia’s security services. 

But Mudrić said she was happy for EUobserver to publish her name and photo because of the level of solidarity among her fellow students and in wider Serbian society. 

\"It took a lot of nerves and bravery to start something,\" she said, speaking of the first student rallies four months ago. 

\"Some people got really scared by that [the car-ramming incident], but at the end of the day, we have each other and we know if anything happens to any of us we will be there for each other,\" she added.  

\"Our strength comes from our honesty and our transparency,\" Mudrić said. 

And the level of support among the broader Serbian public indicates that she might just be correct about the pull-factor of their simple values.

\"People are bringing us food, other supplies,\" she said, speaking of her Novi Sad university campus.  

\"They are there for us for mental health check-ups, doctors' appointments. People are here for us from different professions — attorneys, professors, school-teachers, pensioners, everyone is involved in the story that has started and we are hoping for the best,\" she added. 

\"I am grateful to anyone who gives support, because in these hard times people should stick together,\" she added, when asked if she hoped that EU institutions and leaders would voice solidarity with their cause. 

'Colour' revolutions

And Vučić's talk about colour revolutions was missing the point, because the protesters weren't looking for geopolitical regime change, so much as for basic decency in public life, Mudrić said. 

\"We’ve only reached out to institutions to do their job. The way he [Vučić] is portraying this, as if it was a personal attack against him, or something against him, is just spinning the narrative around,\" she said. 

\"It is something very new,\" also said Vesna Pešić, an 84-year-old Serbian ex-politician and academic.

\"It went like the wind all around Serbia, gathering masses of people, even high school children, who want Serbian institutions to answer who is guilty and what kind of corruption stands behind the railway-roof collapse,\" she said. 

Pešić herself took part in the so-called Bulldozer Revolution 25 years ago, which peacefully toppled the late Serbian dictator Slobodan Milošević. 

She has also continued to speak out against Serbia’s anti-democratic backsliding and corruption in the past two and a half decades, alongside the country’s new generation. 

And amid Vučić’s widely-documented and growing authoritarianism, Pešić paid tribute to young activists such as Mudrić and her colleagues for showing wider Serbia a more positive political model. 

\"It's a conflict between the state and all of society ... a society represented by decentralised students who blockaded their faculties, sleep there, live together, and decide everything democratically,\" Pešić also said.

Speaking of how students were organising themselves at Novi Sad university, Mudrić said: \"It’s literal democracy in real time, voting, listening to each other, speaking with each other, saying what we’re going to do next\".

And all that meant the blockaded campuses had now become a \"scared space\" for fundamental European values in Serbia, Pešić said. 

When men go to pee in a public toilet they spend a minute gazing at the wall in front of them, in what many advertisers have seized upon as an opportunity to display posters of their products above the stinking urinals.

But in terms of framing, you'd better ask yourself: Is this really what I want my brand to be associated with?

You might well think twice if you were selling ice cream or toothpaste, so what if your poster was Ursula von der Leyen's face selling EU values?

Because that's the kind of environment in which the European Commission president, other top EU officials, and national EU leaders are posting their images and comments every day when they use X to communicate with press and the EU public.

Even the toilet analogy is too kind.

There was already lots of toxic crap on X before the summer of 2024.

Racist, antisemitic, and homophobic content had \"surged\", according to a study in January by US academics.

X had more Russian propaganda than any other big social media, an EU report warned in 2023.

Porn was 13 percent of X in late 2022, according to internal documents seen by Reuters.

But this summer, with the failed assassination of Donald Trump in the US and the UK race riots, X's CEO Elon Musk turbocharged his platform into an overflowing sewer of bigotry, nihilism, and greed.

As I tried to follow the UK riots from Brussels using X, time and again I saw von der Leyen's carefully coiffed Christian-Democrat torso issuing some polite EU statement, while sandwiched on my laptop screen between video-clips getting off on anti-migrant violence, pro-Russian bots, and OnlyFans links.

Musk's algorithms pushed pro-riot content so hard down users' throats it prompted a UK government rebuke and talk of legal sanctions.

Tommy Robinson, a leading British racist, got over 430 million views for his X posts, for instance.

Andrew Tate, Britain's top misogynist, got 15 million views for one X post inciting rioters.

And the biggest turd in the cesspit - Musk's own avatar - also kept appearing next to von der Leyen and other EU leaders on my screen, as the US tech baron ranted about \"civil war\" in the UK, peddled pro-Trump conspiracy theories, or told EU commissioner Thierry Breton to \"literally fuck your own face\".

Musk's summer coincided with France's arrest of a Russian tech CEO, Pavel Durov, in August on suspicion he condoned the sale of child pornography and drugs on his Telegram platform.

The European Commission also started legal proceedings against X in July over misleading and illegal content, in a process that could see Musk fined hundreds of millions of euros.

But aside from the grand issues of how to regulate social media without stymieing free speech or privacy, EU leaders could do something a lot simpler and closer to home for the sake of public mental health - just switch to any other less sleazy platform instead.

You could do it tomorrow with one email to your tech staff and for all the stupid material on Instagram, for example, at least your face won't keep flashing up next to jubilant pogroms and naked tits on your constituents' screens.

Von der Leyen has 1.5 million X followers, French president Emmanuel Macron has 9.8 million, while Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez and Polish prime minister Donald Tusk have 1.9 million each.

EU leaders could also do something a lot simpler and closer to home for the sake of public mental health - just switch to any other less sleazy platform instead

But please don't worry, not all journalists or the general public are that dumb yet, most of us will find you and follow you anyway because politics is genuinely important.

And we will thank you for giving us one more reason to get off X ourselves, because so long as you use it as your main outlet for news updates you are dragging us along with you.

My analogy about ads in a public toilet was meant to show the importance of semiotics in political PR - it matters where you speak, not just what you say.

It also holds good for those who worry that if normal leaders and media abandoned toxic platforms, then extremism would grow in its own exclusive online world.

It's just good public hygiene to bury our sewage pipes, instead of letting people empty their buckets out of the window onto our heads.

But if you prefer to hold your nose and stay on X, consider also that you are not only damaging your own brand, but causing financial and political harm in real life.

Financial hurt, because if you help make people reliant on X for news, then greater use of Musk's platform makes people like him, Robinson, and Tate ever richer via X's monetisation schemes for viral content.

Political injury, because to the extent that von der Leyen, Macron, or Sánchez possess real importance, they aggrandise Musk, Tate, and Robinson by continuously appearing alongside them in X's hyper-curated online space.

And so if you should worry that urinals below your face might put people off, then the situation is actually worse than that.

Your presence on X is also helping to pay for the muck to flow and the toilet owner is using you to sell it to the world.

Heated debates took place in the German parliament as the Weimar Republic took its last breaths. Being active in politics or trade unions had become a life-threatening engagement. But that did not stop the Social Democratic member of the German parliament, Kurt Schumacher.

In a speech in the Reichstag in 1932, he concluded that Nazi agitation was a constant appeal to the \"inner pig\" (den inneren Schweinehund). Schumacher argued that Nazis had successfully manage to mobilise \"human stupidity\". 

Mobilising our worst side, the dark side of human behaviour, can generate political power and influence. Rightwing populists, the far-right, fascists and Nazis they all appeal to fear, suspicion, envy, anxiety, jealousy — anything that brings out the worst in us.

A feeling of having lost something (perceived to be yours) or a bruised ego. It is an idea of political influence that thrives on fragmentation and conflict.

As this year comes to an end, the super election year of 2024, one can conclude that the mobilisers of our ”inner Schweinehund” have been successful. Rightwing populists continue to gain ground across Europe, and some election results, notably the US presidential elections, have been grim. It seems as if winter is here, with democracy in a dark place.

The EU elections in May moved the European Parliament further to the conservative right, with a growing far-right presence. Progressives, and in particular the greens, lost ground.

Now 14 out of 27 EU governments are based upon direct or indirect support from rightwing populists and/or far-right parties. These significant changes in the political landscape are reflected in the incoming EU Commission, with heavily conservative representation.

When Europe entered a similarly dark valley in 1933, there was light coming from the United States. Franklin D Roosevelt, in his inaugural address, galvanised hope and trust in democracy, declaring that “the only thing we have to fear is … fear itself”.

None of that can be expected from Donald Trump in January. His appointments have so far been a massive 'fuck you' to all progressive and moderate voters. The world is braced for a very rocky ride starting in January.

There is certainly lots to worry about. The war in Ukraine, the instability in the Middle East, with its atrocious bombings, must come to an end. The advances of the far-right must be stopped. But the world has not yet fully entered a dark valley. Democracy has not been defeated. There are glimmers of light and hope.

Signs of hope

The results from the UK parliamentary elections was a solid progressive victory, hopefully ending a destructive era of populism spinning out of control following the Brexit referendum. Social democrats won the elections in Lithuania. In the Nordic countries, progressives and left wing parties were strengthened thanks to a strong trade union mobilisation.

We saw the same in France, where progressive forces gained ground. So there is no natural force dictating that rightwing populism and far-right parties shall continue to grow inexorably.

The New Year can be a time for renewal, when we chase away the darkness of winter and see the shoots of something better begin to emerge. And the evidence shows that the fightback must start in our workplaces.

A recent study in France found atypical working hours and physical hardship are associated with far-right voters

A German survey found workers who were dissatisfied with their pay and conditions, and had little say in the workplaces, were more likely to have negative attitudes towards democracy and to be more vulnerable to rightwing narratives.

It’s no wonder then that the far-right Patriots group fought so hard to prevent recent progress on the European Works Councils directive, which is crucial to giving workers a voice in multinational companies.

A recent study in France also found atypical working hours and physical hardship are associated with far-right voters. Conversely, workers who were given the opportunity to have a say over their work were more likely to support centre or leftwing candidates.

Whereas the far right seeks to centralise and monopolise power, trade unions, through social dialogue and collective bargaining, empower workers at all levels—from the shop floor to the hallways of European institutions.

We also saw this trend in the US election, where Kamala Harris won among trade union members, even outperforming Joe Biden. Strengthening trade unionism and social dialogue is thus highly effective in protecting and strengthening democracy’s immune system. This year’s Nobel prize winners Acemoglu and Johnson confirms this view, democracy needs trade unions.

Strengthening social dialogue as our first line of defence for democracy and our welfare models must be the focus of European Union action for the incoming mandate. The idea that the future is open — not closed — has to be reclaimed.

One does not have to be blithely optimistic but we can choose to be drawn towards the light and progressive politicians must put hope first. The world is not coming to an end: we can jointly shape the future and the world-to-come as we want it to be.

Politics can also be about appealing to our better selves. Cultivating people's faith, hope and desire for a brighter future. A politics of self-restraint, sensitivity and curiosity where our best selves can be expressed. This is the very opposite of the politics of “the inneren Schweinhund”.

The battle against the far-right and rightwing populism can be won with secure jobs, full employment, decent pay, functioning public services, equality and strong workers’ rights based on collective bargaining.

Democracy has to respond better to the demands of working people and ensure these are met, so they cannot be seduced by the populists’ siren songs. Progressives simply must come back with more attractive ideas.

Everywhere where people meet to discuss how to make our workplaces better, debate how to improve our lives and change our societies, and participate in demonstrations - there we find hope. Practising democracy is how we defend it best.

Kurt Schumacher was imprisoned by the Nazis in July 1933. Schumacher was tortured and sent to a concentration camp. He was imprisoned until the end of World War II. He was liberated in April 1945 by British forces from the Neuengamme concentration camp.

Despite his failing health Schumacher was elected party leader of the Social Democrats in a free Germany. He never became the chancellor, but he fully understood the link between quality jobs and democracy. His contribution to the democratisation of Germany was significant.

Without access to water, food, basic hygiene, healthcare, electricity, or schools, children in Gaza are paying “a high price” in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas, UNICEF’s envoy for Palestine Jean Gough, has told EUobserver.

“All wars have implications for children, but in this one, it seems to be worse because of the conditions … they can go nowhere,” Gough said in an interview in Brussels.

About 14,000 children have reportedly been killed in Gaza, according to the Palestinian health ministry. 

\"In Gaza, the most frequent age of the casualties is five years old - this is a war against the children,\" former EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said last month.

There are more than one million children in Gaza, many of whom are living in dire conditions, having lost family members and been displaced at least five times, said Gough from UNICEF, a UN branch which specialised in child protection. 

Reflecting on the implications for the next generations, Gough also said that the severe, long-term consequences for children, including psychological trauma, disrupted development, and a future shaped by the scars of continuous bombardment, are yet to be fully understood.

“Vey few populations in history have been under this level of stress day in, day out,” she said.

Before the war, over 500,000 children in the Gaza Strip were already in need of mental health support. Today, UNICEF estimates that nearly all children in Gaza require such assistance.

The UN body also estimates that about 17,000 minors are unaccompanied or separated from their families.

As of 1 December, UNICEF has reunited 44 children with their parents, including a one-year-old born at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, who rejoined their mother after having been relocated for medical treatment.

Gough, who served as the UNICEF representative for Palestine also from 2009 to 2013, has observed a shift in Israel's military operations, which require a different humanitarian response — because there is no predictability when it comes to supplies entering Gaza, she said.

She also acknowledged that UN staff have been facing growing bureaucratic obstacles to working in Gaza, such as long visa approvals and waiting times at checkpoints.

As in any armed conflict, there are concerns about sexual abuse and exploitation, to which children are particularly vulnerable - but this was a taboo for many families, and it was almost impossible for UNICEF to monitor such issues, said Gough.

Meanwhile, the number of children in orphanages has been growing.

‘Education is protection’

“Children [can] fall into the wrong hands and we need to protect them. Education is a protection,” the UN humanitarian official said.

UNICEF has been working with partners to set up 100 temporary learning spaces across the Gaza Strip, covering about 53,000 children.

“But it’s not easy because we had to start from scratch,” Gough explained, adding that Palestinians valued education because “schools give hope for a better future.”

It is estimated that 85 percent of schools have been destroyed or used as shelters.

“The level of destruction is such that almost all schools need to be rebuilt,” Gough said.

“The day after [a ceasefire] is not coming and children cannot wait,” she added. 

Given the unprecedented restrictions on aid entering Gaza, experts have also raised the alarm over famine in Gaza. Child malnutrition was not a problem in Gaza before the war, but today it is a major concern for UNICEF.

Last month, the World Food Programme (WFP) said that all bakeries in central Gaza have shut down due to severe supply shortages. 

And in January 2024, health screenings showed that one in three children under two years of age were acutely malnourished in the north of Gaza.

The UN organisation has been working to improve local resources and advocate for the opening of commercial routes to bring in fruit and vegetables, Gough said, adding that there were almost no eggs or vegetables entering Gaza and that the agricultural sector had all but disappeared.

Meanwhile, the health sector is grappling with shortages of medicines, supplies, fuel, food, and water - making it difficult for children to get treatment. 

Earlier this year, the Global Nutrition Cluster found that at least 90 percent of children under five had been affected by one or more infectious diseases.

Gaza's children face missiles and disease

While hunger and disease threaten everyone in Gaza, children suffer the most. And healthcare workers have identified the lack of sufficient food and water as a key factor behind the rise in malnutrition, dehydration, and disease.

In a new report, Amnesty International has collected experiences from hundreds of civilians in the Gaza Strip, accusing Israel of genocide. 

“To be a displaced mother in Gaza in this war is to live every day not knowing if your children will be killed by a missile or by a disease,” a 35-year-old displaced woman from Gaza City told the human rights organisation.

In June 2024, a paediatrician at Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia, North Gaza, where children had died from starvation, also told Amnesty International that since late May, he had seen more cases of respiratory infections and hepatitis A. 

“Out of every 10 children we are treating, I see at least three with hepatitis A symptoms, related to severe malnutrition and water that is unfit for drinking,” the doctor said.

For his part, a medical worker at Kamal Adwan hospital in northern Gaza, which recently suffered another attack, allegedly killing four doctors, also talked about the “radical change” he observed since 7 October. 

“Before, [severe] malnutrition cases were so rare in northern Gaza we barely even mentioned them … We are [now] receiving cases of children who can’t move or cry because of the severity of the weakness from malnutrition and dehydration,” the worker told the human rights organisation in April.

In 2023, the EU provided €550m to UNICEF for development programmes and humanitarian emergency response.

In September, the European Commission announced a €5.4m grant to UNICEF to support over 100,000 evacuated patients from Gaza and vulnerable children in North Sinai in Egypt.

The drainpipe in Brussels by which a far-right Hungarian MEP fled an illegal gay orgy during the Covid lockdown still attracts tourists, who take pics to remember what Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán really represents.

The married MEP, József Szájer, had co-founded Orbán's homophobic Fidesz party and had been his right-hand man for 30 years. 

Szájer had even authored an anti-LGBTI constitutional amendment in Hungary in 2010.  

So to see Belgian police catch him trying to escape a gay sex-party on 27 October 2020 (with an ecstasy pill in his pocket), exposed the cynicism of Orbán's identity politics so beautifully that it made international headlines at the time. 

But for David Manzheley, who organised the event, no one should have been surprised. 

“In my experience of organising sex-parties for over 10 years, the more conservative persons [sic] are in public, the more perverted they are behind closed doors,\" he told EUobserver in an interview.

Other Fidesz politicians, as well as guests from the Polish rightwing Law and Justice (PiS) party, also came to Manzheley's orgies, he said.  

\"From PiS, it was like one-third of the party,\" he claimed.

Manzheley spoke at Monroe Bar Primus on 108 Boulevard Anspach in Brussels city-centre on Sunday (22 September), where four passers-by paused to photograph the famous drainpipe in the space of an hour.

It displayed a fresh sticker of Orbán’s face. 

Some 20cm below, a cartoon of a backward-turned cat said: “Have you seen my asshole lately?”. 

But if Hungary’s far-right ruler, who now holds the EU presidency, didn't find that kind of satire funny, then the bad news for him was even worse. 

The legend of Szájer's escapade on Brussels’ hardcore gay scene appeared to be helping Manzheley to attract more guests than ever, even four years later. 

“Now, I see a certain buzz around my parties,” Manzheley said. 

His upcoming Halloween event in Brussels had pulled in over 1,200 hopeful applicants already, from which more than 200 would be invited to a large venue, he added. 

But looking back at former parties, he said of Szájer: \"When you know someone's face from the media, [at first] I was surprised to see him all dressed in leather”. 

Shortly after 9PM on the fateful night of 27 October 2020, Belgian police raided Manzheley’s event at a first-floor apartment on Boulevard Anspach because it had over 25 guests, in violation of a Covid-era lockdown. 

He recalled the confusion that ensued.

“One couple recognised one of the policemen [who had attended pre-Covid parties in an off-duty capacity] and they said to him ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’ and started to undress him,” Manzheley said.

He also gave an insight into what his parties were like. 

Manzheley invited a mix of 'Daddies' and 'Twinks' and looked for a ratio of 25 percent Tops, 25 percent Bottoms, and 50 percent Verses [versatiles], he said. 

Guests were greeted at the door by drag queens, who scanned their QR-coded invitations. 

They got undressed or changed into fetish attire in a cloakroom area, put on wristband IDs, and stored personal items in sealed bags.

The playlist was up-tempo, there were strobe lights and dry ice, and there was no policy on using drugs or condoms, because “they [guests] are all adults, so they take their own responsibility and their own risk,” Manzheley said. 

A handful of off-duty medical personnel, such as nurses, were always invited in case of emergencies. 

And there were privacy rules: “There’s no phones or devices allowed between 10PM and 6AM - that’s the time for sex,” Manzheley said.

Manzheley doesn’t like to confirm his own personal details for security reasons, but said he was a dual Polish-Israeli national and an “entrepreneur”.  

He said he was happy to give media interviews about Szájer because he had nothing to do with breaking the original story and because it highlighted the \"hypocrisy\" of parties such as Fidesz and PiS on LGBTI lifestyles.

“That’s why I left Poland and that’s why I refuse to even speak Polish to this day,” Manzheley told EUobserver. 

Meanwhile, Szájer's closet homosexuality had been an open secret in Fidesz prior to 2020, which Orbán must have known, according to Hungarian media reports from the time.

And the drainpipe fiasco was not an isolated incident in the party's history. 

Hypocrisy

Roman Catholic priest Bese Gergő, who had been a Fidesz-media darling and an anti-LGBTI attack dog, fell from grace on 6 September 2024, when it came out that he had also gone to gay orgies in Hungary and posted content online.  

And Orbán's conservative mores looked fake in 2019, when a prominent Fidesz mayor, Zsolt Borkai, was filmed at an orgy with drugs on a yacht in the Adriatic Sea.

Hungary has avoided LGBTI issues in its six-month EU presidency programme, which runs until 2025. 

But Orbán has continued to attack gay people at home, while also drifting further to the fringe of Western politics in other areas, such as Russia relations and illiberal rule in Hungary.

The European Parliament and 15 EU states are suing Hungary in the EU Court of Justice over a 2023 law banning LGBTI “propaganda”. 

The US ambassador to Hungary, David Pressman, who is gay, complained this summer when Hungarian state media insinuated that he was a paedophile, as it filmed him at a Pride march in Budapest, which included families with children. 

“These attacks — whether legal, rhetorical, or reputational — erode the liberties of the Hungarian people, of the Hungarian soul,” said Pressman in a speech on 23 June. 

Orbán has also ganged up with self-avowed homophobes in his Patriots for Europe political family in the EU Parliament. 

These include the Latvia First party, the Voice of Reason party from Greece, and Spain's Vox. 

His group’s other members — Czech party ANO, Portugal's Chega, the Dansk Folkeparti, Austria's FPÖ, Italy's Lega, Dutch party PVV, France's Rassemblement National, and Belgium's Vlaams Belang — were more anti-migrant than anti-LGBTI, said Anton Shekhovtsov, a writer on European far-right politics.

The FPÖ had its own Szajer moment in 2008 when its late leader, Jörg Haider, was outed by German media. 

But “homophobic sentiments are naturally stronger in [rightwing] parties from central and eastern Europe than those from western Europe”, Shekhovtsov said. 

“The [Dutch] PVV is almost pro-LGBTI,” he said.

Orgy 'misstep'

The EU election in June saw a surge in the number of far-right MEPs in Brussels. 

But if Manzheley thought that might be another reason for the “buzz” around his Halloween party, then Shekhovtsov poured cold water on the generalisation that “the more conservative persons are in public, the more perverted they are behind closed doors\".

\"As for psychology, there's no scientific backing to that claim — it's a stereotype which might originate from observations of some Catholic priests' lives,\" Shekhovtsov said, referring to Roman Catholic church child-abuse scandals in Europe and the US in recent decades. 

Szájer didn’t reply when EUobserver tried to reach him via the Fidesz party on Tuesday. 

But speaking in 2020, he said: “The misstep [gay orgy] is strictly personal, I am the only [one] who owes responsibility for it. I ask everyone not to extend it to my homeland, or to my political community”.

The now 63-year old has stayed out of the public eye and is said to live in the Hungarian countryside.

It remains to be seen if Orbán lets him make a political comeback one day.

Borkai, the disgraced mayor, nearly did so in June when he came third in local elections in the city of Győr despite his past, running as an independent candidate.

Gergő, the defrocked priest, told media he felt betrayed that Fidesz threw him under the bus when his scandal broke.  

But if Orbán didn't stand by his old friends, then the Brussels gay scene would greet its Hungarian star with open arms if he ever made a comeback there instead, Manzheley indicated. 

“I have his [Szájer's] number and I’ve been in touch,” said Manzheley.

“I wrote to József, saying: ‘You’re welcome to come back [to my parties]’,” he said.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is just one in a long line of EU leaders who've embraced Rwandan president Paul Kagame.

She last did so amid EU overtures to access Rwanda's minerals, knowing full well he stood credibly accused of war crimes, assassinations, and torture in Africa. 

But did she know he is also terrorising Rwandan dissidents much closer to home — on the streets of Brussels?

Fear of being poisoned by Kagame's agents is widespread in the Rwandan diaspora in Belgium.   

Even high-profile African activists, such as Paul Rusesabagina and Denis Mukwege, aren't safe when they visit the home of the EU institutions.

Some Rwanda-associated poisons can be administered via a handshake or soaked into an item of clothing.

The last time von der Leyen shook Kagame's hand was on 18 December 2023 on a visit to Kigali. 

\"Unfortunately ... she did not have a chance to enjoy the local cuisine. However, she did have the chance to try Rwanda's excellent coffee,\" her spokesperson said.

No one is seriously suggesting the Rwandan leader would dare to poison a high-level EU politician.

But even though EU leaders themselves are physically safe, they still ought to worry about their moral hygiene — because every time they meet Kagame, they embolden him to commit further crimes by giving him a sense of impunity.

And that means their handshakes are putting Rwandan dissidents who live in Europe, as well as in Africa, in clear and present danger.

Toxic handshake 

Rusesabagina is the real-life hero of the 2004 film Hotel Rwanda about the 1994 genocide, who is hated by Kagame and who now lives in the US. 

And when Rusesabagina came to Brussels for a family wedding in August 2024, he was urged to take special care by his Belgian and US security advisers, who spoke to EUobserver. 

They warned him not to travel or stay anywhere alone, not to use unfamiliar taxi drivers, not to meet strangers or accept gifts from them, not to use his normal mobile phone, and not to hire a car. 

Part of their advice was designed to evade Rwandan electronic surveillance, since Kagame's agents had already once kidnapped Rusesabagina, in Dubai in 2020. 

But another part was because Kagame has a track record of transnational assassinations, including by poison. 

\"The Rwandans are master poisoners. There's one toxin that can be administered via a handshake: The assassin smears it onto the palm of their hand, shakes the victim's hand on some pretext, then walks away and takes an antidote to save themselves,\" said a Belgian security source, who asked not to be named.

Rusesabagina's adopted daughter, Carine Kanimba, told EUobserver: \"My family was really worried about my father coming to Belgium because it's like a playground for them [Kagame's intelligence service]. This is where they have full access. They can hurt you. They've killed people here before\".

Kanimba was orphaned in the genocide while she was an infant and is now a human-rights activist living in the UK. 

The family marriage in Brussels (her cousin's) was followed by Kanimba's own wedding, near Verona in Italy, also in August.  

While planning the two events, the family notified Belgian and Italian intelligence services, hired private security guards, and vetted catering staff and equipment to make sure their food was safe. 

\"My wedding was meant to be full of love, and it was, but everyone in the family was conscious of the risk,\" Kanimba said.

\"It might sound like a movie, but it's not — there have been a lot of people who dropped dead because of poisoning by the regime,\" she said. 

Kanimba herself has faced death threats, issued in person to relatives and on social media. 

\"One of Kagame’s top aides said on X that I deserved a 'golden machete', which shocked me to the core, because my parents were probably killed with a machete [in the genocide],\" she said. 

Kanimba's phone was also hacked with Israeli-made Pegasus spyware in 2021, which is sold to states' intelligence services.

\"I've learned over the years, the more that we talk publicly about such threats, the safer we become,\" she said. 

\"But the the fact I'm having this conversation with you today, so many people have been killed for the kind of conversation we're having [about Kagame],\" Kanimba said.

For his part, Mukwege is a Congolese gynaecologist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for helping rape victims and who has spoken out against use of rape by Rwandan soldiers and Rwanda-linked rebel groups in Africa.

Mukwege also won the European Parliament's Sakharov award in 2014. 

But when he came to Brussels on a trip in May 2015, he was put under close surveillance by Rwanda's embassy. 

Mukwege had received a courtesy car from the EU parliament, but when he arrived at the offices of Belgian newspaper Le Soir for a welcome reception, journalists recognised his driver as being a member of the Rwandan embassy's security staff and advised Mukwege to insist on a different chauffeur. 

Mukwege told Belgian friends at the time how the bogus driver, who had infiltrated the parliament's car-pool, had behaved on the way.  

He had begged Mukwege to hold his mobile phone and speak to his friends because he was so famous, which Mukwege refused to do.

Mukwege, who is based in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), declined to speak with EUobserver. 

But the same bogus driver also offered him a suspicious tie on the same pretext, according to a contact in his Panzi Foundation in DRC.  

And, according to two Belgian security sources who asked not to be named, the tie, which Mukwege also declined to touch, had been laced with poison. 

Recalling how it happened, one of the Belgian sources told EUobserver: \"He [Mukwege] got into a car with a driver who he didn't know, and the guy said to him: 'Dr Mukwege, you're my hero! Please accept this tie as a humble gift. It would make me and my family so proud if you were to put it on'.\"

'Munyuza's droplets'

Less well-known people are all the more vulnerable. 

Rwanda was a Belgian colony until 1962 and Belgium is home to some 20,000 to 30,000 people of Rwandan origin - its largest diaspora community in the world.

Most of them live scattered in small towns in the Flanders region, such as Aalst or Dendermonde. 

Those of them who are genocide refugees still feel traumatised and divided. 

But Rwandans also come together at church and music events, with 2,000 to 3,000 guests expected to visit the Inyange folk-dance festival in Brussels on 23 November, for instance.

One of those taking part in the festival, Rwandan human-rights activist Natacha Abingeneye, who lives in Aalst, believes Kagame's agents murdered her father in Brussels in 2005. 

He was a former government minister in Rwanda, was giving evidence to the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda when he went missing, and his mutilated body was later found in a canal in the EU capital. 

Abingeneye herself became a target when her civil society group, Jambo, tried to organise a debate on Rwanda in the Belgian parliament in 2018. 

Her name was smeared in dozens of articles in Kagame-linked media, claiming, for instance, that she had funded Rwandan death squads in 1993, even though she would have been seven years old at the time.  

\"There was also suspicious behaviour at my home, but not enough to press charges [with Belgian police],\" she told EUobserver. 

\"Sometimes, I'd see a car had been following me all the way from Brussels to the roundabout near where I live, and I'd just continue driving because I was scared to stop, as I was alone,\" she said. 

\"Shady figures would come to my door, ring the bell, and run away,\" she added.

Speaking of the fear caused specifically by regime poisoners, she said: \"It's not mythology. It's reality. It's a method that they have used so much in Rwanda that it even has a name in Rwandese: 'utuzi twa Munyuza', which means 'droplets of Munyuza's waters'.\"

The phrase refers to Dan Munyuza, who is now Kagame's ambassador to Egypt, even though he was exposed in a conversation leaked on YouTube to have plotted poisonings of Rwandan dissidents abroad.

\"Everyone knows that if they want to eliminate you, we share a coffee, you go home, I go home, I'm dead, and no one knows what happened,\" Abingeneye told EUobserver.  

\"The other day, I went to a team-building event in a bar. I left my drink, went away, picked it up again and everybody was like: 'Are you crazy?',\" she said.

\"It [poisoning] is as quick as a wave of someone's hand over your glass,\" she added.

Her father's 2005 death is not the only one which has caused suspicion in the Rwandan community.

Rodolphe Shimwe Twagiramungu, for example, was a 34-year-old Rwandan musician who went to a nightclub on Avenue Louise in Brussels on 17 April 2022 and who was found dead in a nearby street the next morning from unknown causes.

Twagiramungu's father had been a former Rwandan prime minister and another Kagame enemy.

And the Rwandan diaspora aside, if you are a white Western national it doesn't necessarily mean you are untouchable. 

Urban legend

Many Congolese people in Belgium even believe Kagame once poisoned the then-Belgian foreign minister, Louis Michel, in 2002. 

Michel visited Kigali while calling out Kagame for fuelling conflict in DRC, but fell gravely sick when he returned to Europe and collapsed at a Nato summit in Reykjavík.

Michel, who is the father of outgoing EU Council president Charles Michel, didn't reply to EUobserver.

But one Belgian contact who knew him said: \"After this incident, one thing is sure: Louis Michel never criticised Rwanda again\".

The Michel-poison theory is seen as an urban legend by Belgian security services because the potential cost of a major diplomatic incident if it got out far exceeded the benefit of silencing him.

\"Kagame may be dangerous, but he's not stupid, and he would do a cost/benefit analysis on every case. It’s much more likely Michel was infected by a bacteria or virus, which happens easily enough in Africa,\" a Belgian security source said. 

But when Canadian writer Judi Rever, who wrote a Kagame-critical book, visited Belgium in 2014, Belgium gave her two bodyguards after receiving intelligence the Rwandan embassy in Brussels planned to hurt her.

Some Belgian journalists living in Brussels who spoke to EUobserver asked not to be quoted in this article because of personal security fears. 

And Peter Verlinden, a former journalist and now politician living near the Belgian town of Leuven, who wrote a Kagame-critical book in 2015, still requires special protection nine years later.  

\"To this day, my wife and I are under a specific protection system by Belgian security services. I can't reveal how it works, but if we ever needed help, we can just call and a rapid response [police] unit arrives in minutes wherever we might be,\" he told EUobserver. 

Verlinden has received death threats on his phone and on social media and, as with Kanimbe, Belgian intelligence services found Pegasus on his mobile. 

\"I think the aim of the [Rwandan] regime in Europe is to cause fear, not to kill,\" Verlinden said.

\"But if I go to an event with Africans, I only eat from the public buffet and I always serve my own plate [for fear of poison]. I wouldn't use a Rwandan taxi driver whom I didn't know,\" he said. 

Designer drugs

The use of sophisticated poisons in targeted assassinations in Europe is more readily associated with Russia. 

But even if Rwanda's spy services were tiny compared to Russia's, that didn’t mean they couldn't acquire frightening capabilities if they wanted to, said Belgian forensic toxicologist Jan Tytgat. 

\"Novichok is absolutely available on the dark web and we should be concerned about its potential use around the world,\" he said, referring to a Russian-made nerve toxin. 

\"There are pages where you can ask AI: 'Please design me the newest generation of organophosphates to kill people' - it's crazy,\" he added.

Tytgat has worked with Belgian police on more run-of-the-mill cases. 

He is also professor of pharmacology at KU Leuven university in Belgium and has done research into new medicines in the field in Africa. 

A handshake poison could be made from 'designer drugs', such as fentanyl derivatives, he said. 

\"People have designed synthetic molecules that are 10,000 times more potent than morphine. You put a few crystals in the palm of your hand, and if you give a strong handshake, a couple of those crystals will humidify on the sweat and skin of your victim, and this is really sufficient to put them in a comatose state,\" Tytgat said. 

The assassin could protect themselves by taking an antidote, putting ointment on their hand, or wearing gloves.

A necktie poison could be made from African plant extracts, as well as Novichok-type synthetic compounds, the Belgian toxicologist said. 

It requires plants that are rich in atropine, but these are commonplace in central Africa.  

Symptoms of atropine poisoning were \"hallucinations, disturbed breathing, you have incredible thirst, you feel as dry as a bone, then you have neurological problems from which you can die,\" Tytgat said. 

He was not aware of any exotic poisoning cases in Belgium. 

And in red-flagged incidents, Belgian authorities had access to equipment that could decipher a poisoner's hidden signature, he said. 

\"With high-resolution mass spectrometers we can do isotope mapping [of poison molecules], and knowing the isotope load in a molecule you can, with some luck and some help from AI, devise where it was made and when it was made,\" he told EUobserver.

But in day-to-day medical practice, atropine-type poisoning by an obscure Rwandan plant extract could be overlooked, he said.

\"If you go to a full forensic toxicologist, initially we might also get a negative result, but we'd continue,\" Tytgat said.   

\"In a standard hospital, I fear they might overlook uncommon plant- or animal venom-based intoxications, because of the protocols they follow in Belgium or in any other typical EU country,\" he said. 

Another poison more native to central Africa is black mamba venom.

It can kill people in \"five minutes,\" Tytgat said.

But snake-venom proteins were too large to enter through a victim's skin pores and would have to be injected, for instance with an insulin needle, which would be obvious to \"any good pathologist,\" he said.

Intervention Team

Rwanda's embassy to Belgium is located in the green Woluwe Saint Pierre district in Brussels, some 15 minutes down the road from von der Leyen's HQ.

When EUobserver took a photo of the building on 22 October for this article, a Rwandan man in a bright blue shirt jogged over to ask questions and surreptitiously filmed the reporter on his phone.   

The Belgian foreign ministry declined to confirm how many Rwandan diplomats the embassy contained. 

Belgian sources estimated it has some seven to 15 diplomats, as well as locally hired staff.

\"About half of them [Rwandan diplomats] are probably intelligence officers under diplomatic cover, which would be a lot, by any normal standards\", a Belgian contact said. 

The Rwandan embassy told EUobserver in an emailed statement: \"Rwanda has a handful of diplomats accredited to the embassy and ... their identities and roles are known to Belgian authorities\".

One of them is first secretary Gustave Ntwaramuheto, who was also accredited at the EU institutions until 2023, and who is a former military captain.

Ntwaramuheto declined to speak to EUobserver. 

But, according to an investigation by Jambo in 2019, he is in charge of a task-force which carries out surveillance and violence against Kagame's adversaries in Belgium.

\"There are groups of thugs linked to the embassy. They call it the 'Intervention Team' and they are highly organised. It's professional, with a direct, national-level chain of command,\" Jambo's Abingeneye said.

Rwandan intelligence also spies on people's comings and goings at Belgium's Zaventem airport, according to Jambo. 

Rwanda told EUobserver: \"The Rwandan embassy in Belgium operates in accordance with international diplomatic standards and within Belgian law. Allegations made by politically-motivated actors [Jambo] known for their conspiracy theories ... have no basis in fact\".

But the actions of Belgian authorities suggest otherwise.

Belgian intelligence services took the Rusesabagina family-wedding threat in August 2024 \"seriously\", Kanimba said.

Persona non grata

And Belgium took an unprecedented step in April 2024 when it made Kagame's new ambassador to Brussels, Vincent Karega, persona non grata before he even arrived, by declining his accreditation. 

Karega had previously been expelled from DRC for backing rebels and had represented Kagame in South Africa in 2014, when a Rwandan exile was murdered there. 

\"No new [ambassador] candidate has been proposed by the Rwandan authorities,\" the Belgian foreign ministry told EUobserver on 25 October.

Verlinden, the Belgian politician, said: \"What has been lacking in Belgium until now has been political courage, but with the Karega decision, this seems to be a first sign that things are improving\".

But at the same time, Belgium's capabilities are limited.

Its VSSE homeland intelligence service has slashed its Africa section over the past 10 years, recalling Kanimba's fear that Belgium was Kagame's \"playground\". 

The VSSE's Africa department used to have some 25 posts in its heyday, but now had just one full-time and one part-time intelligence officer covering African threats, a Belgian contact said. 

The VSSE declined to comment. 

Normal bilateral relations despite the Karega row also mean that Belgian judicial authorities still cooperate with Kigali. 

Belgian prosecutors raided Rusesabagina's home in the Kraainem district in Brussels in 2020 and gave his private documents to Rwanda in the run-up to his Dubai kidnapping on the basis of a Rwandan extradition request. 

\"The 2020 search request was channelled officially by diplomatic means\" and \"carried out in strict compliance with Belgian law,\" the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's office told EUobserver on 20 October. 

\"We do not disclose figures, but judicial cooperation between Belgium and Rwanda [still] occurs regularly,\" they said. 

They added, however: \"If the extradition request has a political character, [this] is a ground for refusal\". 

\"To date, no extradition has been accepted,\" they said. 

EU whitewashing

Rwanda is rich in tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold and signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the EU on its mining sector in February.

The minerals deal would help \"fight against illegal trafficking of minerals and ... conflict minerals\", the EU commission told EUobserver, while opening up Rwanda to EU mining firms.  

EU leaders at their summit in Brussels on 16 October also called for the creation of overseas return hubs for rejected asylum seekers.

But when asked by EUobserver if this might involve Rwanda, the commission said it \"does not speculate on hypothetical scenarios\".

France relies on Rwandan troops to help protect French energy firms in nearby Mozambique from an Islamist insurgency.

French president Emmanuel Macron also gave Kagame and his wife a welcoming hug at a summit in France on 4 October. 

And to add insult to injury for dissidents, Rwanda will host the UCI Road World Championships cycling race in September next year. 

The international embrace of Kagame comes despite storied warnings that this emboldens him to do further violence.

EU parliament resolutions, reports by British civil society group Global Witness, and investigations by US group Human Rights Watch (HRW) have been ringing the alarm bell for years. 

Reacting to the latest HRW report, the EU commission said: \"We call on Rwanda to conduct prompt, impartial, and effective investigations into all allegations of torture ... Perpetrators of any such acts should be brought to justice\".

Meanwhile, von der Leyen herself has lived in Belgium for over five years, amid regular Belgian media reports on Kagame's harassment of Rwandans who also live there.  

And the Belgian foreign ministry told EUobserver the \"timing of the signing of this agreement [the EU's minerals MoU] was unfortunate\", given Kagame's behaviour.

\"You can't say you didn't know - today there's enough proof and documentation,\" said Abingeneye. 

Speaking of the cycling championship, Kanimba said: \"Rwanda is beautiful, the hills are gorgeous, so I understand the cyclist community viewing my country as a good place for this, but it's covering a lot of darkness and pain, it's hurting our people\".

\"It's sportswashing at its core,\" she added. 

But top EU politicians who meet with Kagame do even more damage, activists say.

\"They're going on like it's business as usual with a known murderer\", Kanimba said.

Abingeneye said: \"If a European president stands in front of their people and shakes the hands of a killer, then they’re whitewashing his actions and they become partly liable for them\".

It made Kagame feel free to keep hurting people \"because you showed him there are no consequences\", Abingeneye added.

\"I am Rwandan and European. I feel deeply European, but I'm so disappointed when I see this,\" she said. 

This story was amended to correct the spelling of Paul Rusesabagina's name and the date of his kidnapping in Dubai

Hidden in plain sight within the European Parliament's own rules of procedure is a little-known provision that could dramatically alter the Union's ability to defend its democratic values from internal threats. 

Legal scholars have dubbed it a \"sleeping beauty\" and “bombshell” — a potent yet practically unused instrument akin to the EU's own Article 7, designed to safeguard the rule of law and the integrity of its institutions.

Meet Rule 241.

A Fragile Democracy Under Threat

The fragility of democracy in Europe is no longer a theoretical concern; it's a palpable reality. While the democratic backsliding of Hungary under Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party and Poland under its previous administration has been well-documented, similar undercurrents are emerging in Slovakia, Italy, Bulgaria, and Greece. 

Judicial independence is under siege, civil society organisations face increasing pressure, and media pluralism is dwindling. These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a broader malaise affecting the very core of European democracy.

For member states veering off the democratic path, the EU has a toolkit that includes withholding funds, imposing financial sanctions, and even suspending voting rights — the so-called Article 7 procedure. 

However, the effectiveness of these measures has been repeatedly called into question. Not only because enforcement has been delayed and weakened, but also because they concern only member states of the EU. 

When anti-democratic forces infiltrate the EU's own institutions, the challenge becomes even more daunting. The Union's mechanisms to counter internal destabilisation are notably limited, and this is where Rule 241 could play a transformative role.

The erosion of the 'cordon sanitaire'

Historically, the European Parliament maintained a 'cordon sanitaire' around eurosceptic and far-right parties, effectively denying them access to influential positions such as vice-presidents and committee chairs. 

This method was decried by Viktor Orbán early on Wednesday morning (9 October), stating in a plenary debate that “you [the European Parliament] want to lecture me about democracy, but yet you keep the Patriots [for Europe] out of committee chairs”. His European political party recently lodged an appeal at the European Court of Justice to contest this exclusion.

This political quarantine was a means to suppress voices that sought to undermine the EU from within. However, the recent parliamentary elections have complicated this landscape.

While the most extreme groups — like the Patriots for Europe (PfE) and Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) — remain marginalised, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) have been granted significant influence. This is despite the fact that two of ECR's largest national party members are Poland's Law and Justice (PiS) and Italy's Brothers of Italy — parties that have been instrumental in democratic backsliding in their respective countries. Their actions on a national level stand in stark contrast to the values upon which the EU was founded.

European political parties wield the superpower of electoral legitimacy, having been democratically elected by their constituents. But electoral success does not place them above accountability. 

The rules governing European political parties include safeguards against egregious misconduct. However, when it comes to more insidious or values-based transgressions — which have become part of the far and radical right’s playbook, the onus falls on other European parties or citizens to intervene.

Enter Rule 241

Rule 241 is a provision that allows the European Parliament, the Commission, or the Council to contest the registration — and by extension, the financing — of a European political party or foundation that is in \"manifest and serious breach\" of the EU's foundational values. 

These values, enshrined in the Treaty on European Union, include respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and human rights, including the rights of minorities, and are repeated in what’s known as Regulation 1141/2014. 

This regulation governs the statute and funding of European political parties and foundations and is enforced by the Authority for European Political Parties and European Political Foundations (APPF). 

European political parties (EuPPs) are conglomerates of national parties that form supranational entities within the European Parliament. They receive substantial funding from the EU budget — €46m allocated for EuPPs in 2025—making the financial stakes high.

EuPPs are dynamic entities; they evolve, merge, and sometimes dissolve. The most recent elections witnessed a flurry of activity as rightwing parties realigned into new formations: the Patriots for Europe, including Hungary's Fidesz and Italy's League, and the Europe of Sovereign Nations, comprising Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD) and France's Reconquête!

Notably, Hungary under Fidesz has been under Article 7 sanctions since 2018 for violating EU values— the same values that Rule 241 invokes. This raises an unsettling question: How can a party implicated in undermining EU values continue to receive EU funding and wield influence within its institutions?

The mechanics of Rule 241

Activating Rule 241 is a multi-step process:

1. Initiation: At least a quarter of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) representing at least three political groups can request a verification of compliance by the APPF. Alternatively, a reasoned request by at least 50 citizens can be submitted to parliament to set the request for verification in motion.

2. Consultation: The APPF consults its \"council of eminent persons,\" a six-member panel appointed equally by the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission.

3. Decision: Based on the council of eminent persons’ opinion, the APPF can decide to deregister the party, effectively cutting off EU funding.

4. Objection Period: The parliament and the council have the opportunity to object to the APPF's decision – for the council the vote to object happens by qualified majority vote, for the parliament by simple majority – and both have to object.

Despite its potential, the process has never moved to stage two. When asked, the APPF stated that it has not received any requests for verification from the Parliament, the Council, or the Commission.

But that does not mean no one has tried.

A Sleeping Beauty 

Legal scholars focusing on rule of law and democratic protection have extensively analysed Rule 241. Professor Dr John Morijn, a Dutch legal scholar and Henrik Enderlein Fellow at the Hertie School in Berlin, penned an article in 2019 highlighting how Rule 241 and Regulation 1141/2014 could be employed to counter populist politics at the EU level.

\"This regulation is a kind of sleeping beauty,\" Morijn told EUobserver. \"It's more or less the equivalent of Article 7 in the Treaty of the European Union.\" 

In his article, Morijn writes that the creation of this rule and the accompanying regulation was not without challenges.

The proposal didn’t make it through on the first try, as FPÖ (PfE) in Austria and Northern League (PfE) in Italy, both in government at the time, felt the issue of adhering to democratic values “was an attack on them. Together with Denmark, they ended up voting against the proposal.” The Danish government at that time relied on the support of Dansk Folkepart (PfE)i, the populist Danish People’s Party.

On the second try, after ping-ponging between the parliament, commission, council and European Court of Justice, it was adopted in 2007. The regulation now applied to EuPPs and their foundations, but remained untouched and unused until 2012, when the commission proposed an expansion of the scope.

The revision included the expansion of the scope of the regulation to both the program and activities of a EuPP – and most crucially, those of its members. It also proposed that natural or legal persons could request the parliament to verify a party’s compliance with values. 

The changes led to an agreement on setting up the APPF, that would register, manage and enforce rules applying to EuPPs and their foundations. However, by the time the regulation 1141/2014 made it to its approval, two crucial changes were included: the first being that deregistration of a EuPP or foundation needed the approval of both parliament and council and second, that it only applied to Europarties as a whole, and not on their individual members.

He points out that while Rule 241 has never practically been used, neither have there ever been such large eurosceptic groups within the parliament.

The challenges of activation

The procedure's complexity and the political will required to activate Rule 241 present significant hurdles. First, the APPF allows for a form of self-certification regarding adherence to EU values when new parties register, relying on the assumption of compliance unless evidence to the contrary is presented.

In 2019, The Good Lobby, an organisation aimed at bolstering civil society's advocacy capacity, attempted to trigger Rule 241. 

Representing 57 EU citizens, they requested that the European Parliament and APPF verify the compliance of the European People's Party (EPP) and the Alliance of Conservatives and Reformists in Europe with EU values, citing their affiliations with Fidesz and PiS.

It argued that “the EPP has deliberately and persistently refused to take any concrete action against one of its member parties, Hungary’s ruling party Fidesz, notwithstanding its systemic and persistent undermining of Article 2 TEU values as recently evidenced inter alia by the Sargentini report.” And “urge you to undertake a verification – as you are required under Article 10 of the Regulation – of the EPP’s continuing compliance with the values on which the EU is founded.”

Their efforts were stymied by procedural technicalities. The parliament rejected the request, citing invalid signatures because they were not physically signed — a requirement that was not clearly communicated. And still is not.

“We did collect signatures, first electronically then on paper, but the EP never declared our request admissible, what stopped the procedure, which never moved to the substance of the matter,” Alberto Allemanno a legal scholar and founder of The Good Lobby said, who then took the matter to the European Ombudsman.

The European Ombudsman upheld the parliament's decision, pointing out the lack of signed forms but tacitly acknowledging the inadequacy of guidance provided to citizens wishing to exercise this \"very important democratic right.\"

Since then, it appears that no one has made any attempt to kick off a new verification procedure.

The paradox of militant democracy

Invoking Rule 241 touches upon the concept of \"militant democracy\" — the idea that a democracy might need to employ undemocratic means to protect itself from forces seeking to dismantle it from within. This paradox presents a moral and practical dilemma.

Tom Theuns, a senior assistant professor of political theory and European politics at Leiden University, articulates the tension: \"A militant democratic action is one that itself undermines fundamental democratic principles.\" He cautions that while such measures exist within the EU's legal framework, their use would set a precedent that anti-democratic actors might exploit if they gain power.

\"One of the core worries of militant democratic measures like party bans is that if you legislate them, it becomes easier for anti-democratic politicians to use these means if they come to power,\" Theuns warns.

Furthermore, taking action against democratically elected parties could feed into populist narratives of an elite suppressing the will of the people — a potent rallying cry for eurosceptic movements.

A call to action — or a Pandora's Box?

MEPs and citizens of the EU thus face a daunting question: Should they awaken Rule 241 to defend its democratic values, risking potential backlash and the erosion of its own principles? Or should it allow the status quo to persist, even as anti-democratic forces gain strength within its institutions?

The answer may lie in the very values the EU seeks to protect. Democracy is not merely a procedural mechanism but a commitment to uphold human dignity, freedom, and the rule of law. When these principles are under threat, inaction may carry greater risks than decisive, albeit controversial, measures.

Invoking Rule 241 would send a clear message that the EU is willing to defend its foundational values, even at the cost of internal strife. It would also serve as a deterrent to parties that might otherwise feel emboldened to continue undermining democratic norms.

The road ahead

The EU stands at a crossroads. The rise of anti-democratic forces within its own institutions challenges the very fabric of the Union. Rule 241 is not a panacea, but it offers a mechanism — overlooked by most— that could bolster the EU's defence of its core values.

As professor Morijn suggests, perhaps it's time for this sleeping beauty to awaken. The activation of Rule 241 would require courage, unity, and a reaffirmation of the EU's commitment to its foundational principles. In a time of democratic fragility, such decisive action might be not only justified but necessary.

Democracy, like a delicate ecosystem, requires constant vigilance to maintain its health. The European Union, conceived as a bastion of democratic values and human rights, must grapple with the internal contradictions posed by anti-democratic elements within its ranks. Rule 241 represents a powerful, albeit contentious, tool that could help preserve the Union's integrity.

The question is not merely whether the EU can set off this bombshell, but whether it has the collective will to do so.

The future of European democracy may well depend on the answer.