BRUSSELS — Europe’s phoney war with China is at an end. After years of building up an improved arsenal for a trade war, Europe is now showing it is willing to get tough on Beijing. On Tuesday, EU investigators swooped on the Dutch and Polish offices of Nuctech, a maker of security scanners, in a case that hinges on one of Europe’s longest running grievances with China — lavish state subsidies that help Chinese firms undercut European rivals. Nuctech was once run by Hu Haifeng, son of President Xi Jinping’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, and China’s reaction was predictably seething. The raid “highlig ..read more

Abdallah Nabhan and members of his family died overnight after an Israeli airstrike in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, the Belgian development agency Enabel said in a statement Thursday. Belgian Foreign Minister Hadja Lahbib summoned Israel’s ambassador following Nabhan’s death. “Bombing civilian areas and populations is against international law. I summon the Israeli ambassador to condemn this unacceptable act and demand explanations,” she said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Enabel said that Nabhan, whose father, brother, niece and son were also killed in the attack, was on th ..read more

BRUSSELS — The United States is worried enough about TikTok’s security risks to force the app’s sale under the threat of a ban. Europe is less convinced.  A U.S. bill that would require TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company ByteDance to sell the popular video-sharing app within a year — or face a national ban — became law Wednesday, buoyed by unprecedented support. Fueled by fears of Beijing’s potential data access and interference, U.S. lawmakers adopted the controversial bill in recent days as part of a larger aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan; President Joe Biden signed it Wed ..read more

BRUSSELS — Enrico Letta, former prime minister of Italy, is facing a tall order: Make everyone fall in love with the single market. It’s a task former Commission President Jacques Delors famously said was “impossible.” More concretely, Letta was charged back in June 2023 with authoring a report on how to make the single market fit for purpose. In his report, which came in at 147 pages, the former prime minister said he had wanted to start exactly where Delors stopped: bringing into the single market three sectors — energy, telecoms and finance — that Delors was forced to leave to the sovereign ..read more

Ignore the prime minister, Belgium is committed to getting the EU’s new nature rules approved. That’s according to Brussels Environment and Climate Minister Alain Maron, who is responsible for steering talks among EU ministers on the highly controversial law and says he remains committed to passing the legislation despite pushback from capitals and skeptical comments from his PM. It would be “insane” and “dangerous” to reject the legislation this late in the process, Maron told POLITICO. “What’s happening is really very problematic, both in substance and institutionally.” EU institutions struc ..read more

BRUSSELS — As if Belgium’s tax authorities don’t get enough flak already, the country has now irked leading international governments which accuse it of creaming €1.7 billion from the proceeds generated by frozen Russian assets.  Western allies are critical because they say the amount ― which Belgium is claiming because the body that holds nearly all of the assets happens to be based in Brussels ― isn’t going directly to help Ukraine. The EU, with the support of the U.S., is in the process of approving a plan to use profits from invested assets to send aid to the war-torn country. Belgium ..read more

BRUSSELS — Europe’s nationalists came to Brussels to pick a fight with the EU superstate only to end up fighting a local mayor.  In all likelihood, a meeting of Europe’s hard-right featuring Nigel Farage and Viktor Orbán as its keynote speakers wouldn’t have garnered much global attention. But attempts by three local politicians to shut down the National Conservatism Conference triggered international outcry, handing the European Union arch-critics more ammunition than they could have dreamed of two months before the European election. Local mayor Emir Kir’s attempt to stop the conference ..read more

Claudia Chiappa is a breaking news reporter and Italian culinary connoisseur at POLITICO. Call it Nigel Farage’s Kitchen Nightmares. My callous bosses at POLITICO sent me to sample the buffet at this week’s Brussels gathering of the European right-wing elite — and things got a bit weird. Spoiler: The National Conservatism Conference didn’t actually have juicy liberal tears on the menu, but rather bizarre little platters of mushrooms mixed with popcorn. Yes, you read that right. With deep regret — and driven by morbid journalistic curiosity — I ate it. “It was interesting,” said one conference ..read more

Frank Füredi is the executive director of MCC Brussels and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent. MCC has been the recipient of Hungarian government funds. The mayors of Brussels and Saint-Josse-Ten-Noode were asked for op-eds, but didn’t respond to POLITICO’s invitations. Over the years, I’ve learned that when someone says, “I believe in freedom of speech, but …,” what really matters is what they say next. So, when I was negotiating with the director of the Concert Noble venue in Brussels about whether the National Conservatism (NatCon) conference could go ahead there, I k ..read more

A Belgian court has sided with the organizers of the National Conservatism Conference against authorities’ attempts to shut down the gathering, ruling that the event can meet for its second day without interference. The two-day conference, a gathering of influential right-wingers including Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán and Brexit architect Nigel Farage, kicked off Tuesday morning at the Claridge venue, near the European Quarter. But law enforcement, at the behest of the local mayor, arrived two hours into the event to inform organizers that the jamboree would be terminated due to con ..read more