BERLIN — On the ground in Ukraine, Robert Habeck is thinking of the future after the war. Along with a delegation of defense and energy industry bosses, Germany’s Vice Chancellor arrived in Kyiv on Thursday looking to plug his country’s industrial heavyweights into Ukraine’s economy, on everything from armament production to power grid resilience. But while major German arms contractors are delivering weapons systems for Ukraine’s war against the Russian invasion, they’re also gearing up to make the most of what may be a major business opportunity for the future. There will be money to be made ..read more

Listen on Spotify Apple Music Google Play Acast In this episode we unpack the EU’s new buzzword and the main point of discussion at this week’s European Council summit: competitiveness. We also bring you another new buzzword from Brussels this week: Bolshewokism. Host Sarah Wheaton is joined by POLITICO’s chief Brussels correspondent, Barbara Moens, to recap the leaders’ summit and their attempt to make the bloc’s economy more competitive with regards China and the United States. We also discuss former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta’s newly released report on how to overhaul the EU’s ..read more

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column. Hang on, a bunch of far-right leaders were locked into a Brussels conference space with armed police outside, with nothing to sustain them apart from some canapés, and with thousands of Eurocrats in one direction and one of the Belgian capital’s most multicultural neighborhoods in another direction? I feel an idea for a reality TV show coming on! How about we call it “I’m a right-winger, get me out of here!”? The National Conservatism Conference — a gathering of Europe’s hard-right elite — sounded about as much fun as an emergency colon ..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

LONDON — The chairman of the Commons and Lords Pipe and Cigar Club has an alarming confession. “I’ve never smoked,” says Michael Morris, an 87-year old Conservative peer, whose official title is Lord Naseby. “Actually, that’s not quite true,” he goes on. “I did smoke the odd cigar at university, but I’ve never smoked cigarettes.” These days the Pipe and Cigar Club, which gained brief notoriety for holding smoking events around the time of the England’s 2007 ban on puffing on cigarettes indoors in public places, is not what it used to be. Many of its most well-known members, such as the biscuit ..read more

A man has been arrested on suspicion of being involved in a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Polish prosecutors have said. The man, a Polish citizen identified only as Paweł K., was arrested in Poland. Ukraine supplied information leading to his arrest. “The detained person was charged with reporting readiness to act for foreign intelligence against Republic of Poland, said a statement by Poland’s National Prosecutors’ Office. “The act is punishable by up to 8 years’ imprisonment.” The office said its investigation had revealed that Paweł K. was willing to act for R ..read more

CIA Director William Burns offered a stark warning to lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Thursday: If you don’t approve aid to Ukraine now, Kyiv could lose the war by the end of the year. Speaking at an event at the George W. Bush Presidential Center, Burns urged lawmakers to pass the supplemental that would dedicate billions to Ukraine’s war efforts. “With the boost that would come from military assistance, both practically and psychologically, Ukrainians are entirely capable of holding their own through 2024 and puncturing Putin’s arrogant view that time is on his side,” he said. But if that doesn ..read more

A controversial plan to tighten restrictions on civil society in Georgia has echoes of Russian authoritarianism and undermines the country’s relations with the West, the U.S. State Department warned Thursday in the toughest criticism of the proposals to date. In a statement published Thursday, spokesman Matthew Miller said American officials are “gravely disappointed” by the reintroduction of the “Kremlin-inspired” foreign agent bill, a year after nationwide protests and international condemnation forced the Georgian government to shelve a previous version of the proposals. “We join our Europe ..read more

It should have been a terrible week for the governor of the Bank of England. But Liz Truss saved him — and it’s not the first time. It wasn’t Truss’ intention. The ex-prime minister this week called for Andrew Bailey’s head and demanded a “proper investigation” into the central bank’s response to her mini-budget in 2022 — which roiled the markets and led to her departure from No. 10. That kind of criticism from a former head of government would normally pile pressure on any central bank governor — particularly one facing a tough week of sticky economic figures and a report slamming the central ..read more

A top Iranian commander has delivered a strong hint Iran could develop nuclear weapons if Israel were to launch an attack on its atomic facilities. Ahmad Haqtalab, a Revolutionary Guards’ officer who heads the nuclear protection and security corps, said Tehran could review its long-standing “doctrine and nuclear policies,” in which Iran has insisted it is running an atomic program only for civilian — and not military — ends. “If the fake Zionist regime intends to resort to the threat of attacking our nuclear facilities as a means to put pressure on Iran, reviewing the current doctrine and nucl ..read more