Europe politics

Europe politics

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Arrivals and departures were halted for several hours on Tuesday evening at Belgium's busiest airport, Brussels, leading to the cancellation of dozens of flights. The skies were also closed over Liege airport, an important hub for freight transport, leading to further cancellations, delays and diversions. Meanwhile, the mayor of the Flemish town of Diest reported that police and army officers had spotted four drones at the nearby Schaffen military airbase on Tuesday.

Minister of State with responsibility for Road Safety, Seán Canney, today signed regulations that mean learner drivers who have held a category A, A1, A2, AM, B or W permit for four years will have to sit a full driving test before being allowed to renew their permit. A loophole in the law that was repeatedly highlighted by road safety activists means that currently, learners can renew their permits repeatedly if they can show they have booked or scheduled a driving test - but not necessarily sat it.

House prices in the Netherlands have doubled in the past decade, and a new-build home costs 16 times the average salary. Across the EU, affordability is not just a life-limiting problem in notoriously expensive property markets such as Lisbon, Madrid or Dublin. Speculative investment and a chronic supply shortage have also led to soaring prices in emerging areas where bigger, faster returns are attainable.

Carlos Mazon, the embattled president of the eastern Spanish region of Valencia, has bowed to public fury and political pressure by resigning over his botched handling of the deadly floods that killed 229 people in the area just over a year ago. Mazon, a member of the conservative People's party (PP), had hung on despite calls for him to stand down after it emerged that he spent more than three hours having lunch with a journalist as the floods hit and people were drowning in their homes, garages and cars.

The focus is on the bilateral conversation with Mr. Erdogan. That was all Deputy Government Spokesperson Steffen Meyer offered at this week's press conference in Berlin when asked about the chancellor's upcoming two-day visit to Turkey, which begins on Wednesday. Meyer described it as an "inaugural visit" to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, noting that "a small program would surround it." Since taking office, Merz has had brief encounters with Erdogan on the international stage, including one in Tirana, Albania, in May.

The Latvian Pavilion at the 19th International Architecture Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, commissioned by Jānis Dripe and curated by Liene Jākobsone and Ilka Ruby, explores the impact of military defense on the country's border landscape. The exhibition was designed by SAMPLING and Nomad Architects to highlight how geopolitical tensions shape both territory and daily life. In times of escalating international warfare, the curatorial team poses the question of what it means to live on NATO's external border in times of geopolitical conflict.

European leaders are meeting on Thursday with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Brussels to reaffirm support for Kyiv. The president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, welcomed Zelenskyy, addressing him as future member of the European Union. The meeting comes as the 27 member bloc formally adopted a 19th package of sanctions against Russia for its war against Ukraine that includes a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas imports.

Catherine Connolly has still failed to answer the question of who organised her 2018 trip to Syria. She rehashed the same lines about it being a "fact-finding" mission. But she has still not said who put her in touch with Fares Shehabi - someone who was named on EU sanctions as funding the Assad regime, who she did not simply bump into but sat in meeting rooms and was shown around Aleppo by.

Catherine was working for UK banks... and they were repossessing houses. I was working in the credit union, and I was actually helping people to stay in their houses, through what was an extremely, extremely difficult financial situation. Catherine needs to come out and say exactly who she was working for and how many homes were repossessed.

"Voting 'no' in relation to a treaty is not a negative thing," Ms Connolly said. "'It's indicating the concerns that I and lots of people had. And, in fact, in voting 'no' we had to vote a second time on Nice and on Lisbon and we were given absolute, solemn promises in relation to our neutrality that seem to mean nothing at the moment.'"},{

Hungary's EU commissioner has denied any knowledge of alleged attempted spying by the Hungarian government during his time as the country's top diplomat in Brussels, a commission spokesperson said. Oliver Varhelyi sat down with European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on Sunday to discuss the allegations reported by a consortium of investigative journalists last week. On Monday, the commission's chief spokesperson, Paula Pinho, said:

Where Donald Trump leads, Europe's nationalists and far right follow. After a Truth Social post last month, when Trump announced the US would designate antifa, the decentralised anti-fascist movement, a major terrorist organisation, his international allies swung into action. That same day, the Dutch parliament, where the largest party is Geert Wilders' far-right PVV, passed a resolution, noting the US decision and calling on the government to declare antifa a terrorist organisation in the Netherlands.

Many travellers to Europe will see changes in border security from Sunday with the launch of the EU's new digital entry and exit system (EES) after many delays. The system means most non-EU citizens will have to register their biometric information at the border. Travellers' faces will have to be photographed and fingerprints scanned before they are allowed into Europe's Schengen area.

The EU shocked the UK steel industry on Tuesday with an announcement of 50% import tariffs with no apparent carve-out for metal crossing the Channel. The EU is the UK's biggest customer: 78% of all UK steel exports, or 1.9m tonnes, went to the bloc in 2024. The prospect of punitive tariffs on a large chunk of that would make many British products uncompetitive overnight.

dozens of flights were cancelled and thousands of passengers left stranded on the eve of a German national holiday and the famous Oktoberfest. A week earlier, Copenhagen and Aalborg airports were closed following sightings of unmanned aerial systems in Danish airspace. In the month since a swarm of Russian drones violated Polish airspace — three were shot down — a rash of similar incidents has been reported across Germany, the Baltic and Nordic countries, often over power plants and military bases.

The closer Russia's hybrid war comes to European capitals, the less EU leaders seem able to agree on how to respond. That, at least, was the worrying impression left by a dissonant EU summit in Copenhagen. Summoned last week to build consensus on the top priorities for European rearmament, the meeting was an embarrassing display of the turf wars, political squabbles and hidden agendas that are plaguing attempts to build a coherent European defence.

According to recent polls, almost 40% of Spanish men aged between 18 and 34 say that they plan to vote for Vox, the far-right party. Vox won its first seat in the Spanish parliament in 2019 and now it is surging again. Its recent success is no longer a story of just male voters, either: 20% of young women say they would vote for Vox, with the biggest increase among the youngest voters in that group.

The EU is introducing a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) on 1 January targeting imports produced using carbon-intensive methods, such as steel, glass and fertiliser. Businesses have been concerned about the impact of the EU tax on UK consumer bills and the prospect of cheap goods originally destined for Europe, such as Chinese steel, flooding the British market. The UK is introducing its own version of the tax but not until 2027.