Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has dragged top EU officials into his re-election battle, even as the EU warned against “adversaries … in the system” on election integrity.
“The US alone has already spent more money on this conflict in the last two and a half weeks than the $23bn (€19.9bn) I need to save 87 million lives this year,” said Tom Fletcher, a senior official at the United Nations.
MEPs are going to press ahead with a vote to approve the EU-US trade pact —despite most observers believing that it clear favours the US.
“It would be as if the entire Russian army shot itself in the head,” a Russian soldier, Anton, also said of the Telegram blackout.
The EU has spent the last five years building the most ambitious digital regulatory framework on earth. It has regulated platforms, algorithms, AI models, political advertising, environmental claims, and data brokers. It has legal definitions for “very large online platforms” and “general purpose AI models.” But it doesn’t have one for “influencer” – and that’s an interesting oversight.
Ursula von der Leyen’s flurry of diplomacy after the US-Israel strikes on Iran is very hard to ignore. In the span of one day, she had conversations with eight foreign leaders, as well as with three EU countries — greatly overdoing communications by both the president of the European Council (António Costa) and the high representative (Kaja Kallas). Here’s why this is seen as highly controversial, or even problematic, within the EU institutional system.
Trump pressures allies as tensions rise over the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran restricts oil flows and prices surge. Europe resists Nato involvement, urging caution and clarity while weighing limited action. Will the EU support US calls or chart its own course amid escalating geopolitical stakes and fragile energy security?
![[Interview] One of Epstein’s youngest survivors: ‘I was 14, and I hoped the money I earned from sex would repair my relationship with my mother’](https://static.euobserver.com/2026/03/84b7c596-fd97-480b-b2d2-57b4a6810697.jpg)
Marina Lacerda was born in Brazil. She was eight years old when she moved to the United States with her mother. She was fourteen when she first stepped inside the New York residence of serial sex offender and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
“Mechanised assault using drones is working its way back onto the scene,” said military analyst Michael Kofman, in ever-shifting Ukraine tactics.
“First of all, we want to hear from Israel and the United States of America when they want to achieve their military goals in Iran,” said Germany, while also calling for Israeli restraint in Lebanon.
Mozambique wants the EU to rethink a decision to end €20m monthly payments for a Rwandan-led peacekeeping mission in its northern Cabo Delgado province.
“Although for now, the conflict has not translated into immediate migratory flows towards the EU, what the future holds remains unclear,” says European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen.
Water-resource conflicts already happening in Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands will only worsen now that the EU Commission plans to triple data centre capacity in Europe over the next five to seven years. Little thought has been given to the oligopolistic cloud market and how it will evolve if the EU triples its data centre capacity.
Cypriots have long felt that — far from providing protection from the tribulations of their geographical neighbourhood —the existence of two British sovereign base areas on the island effectively placed a target on the back of Cyprus and therefore of Cypriots.
It is now just a matter of weeks before the famous EU-Mercosur free trade agreement comes into effect, at least provisionally. How will this provisional implementation affect European consumers and farmers? and How did we get here?
As leaders of forest-based industries in Sweden, we have examined the EU Commission’s updated bioeconomy strategy — and would like to suggest a few improvements related to the role of wood.
All 27 EU leaders meet on Thursday in Brussels to discuss Ukraine support, energy prices, security risks from the Iran war and competitiveness. At the start of the week, foreign affairs ministers will address Iran sanctions, maritime security and Lebanon. Also this week, the EU commission will unveil its “EU Inc” proposal, while MEPs are expected to finally vote on the US-EU trade deal from July. Slovenia has national elections on Sunday.
Slovakia had pushed for the EU to delist two Russian oligarchs, but did a U-turn on Saturday.
We spoke with president Volodymyr Zelensky’s adviser about how he sees the dispute over the Druzhba pipeline, what motivated Russia to attack the pumping station in Brody; why Robert Fico and Viktor Orbán are so obsessed with buying Russian energy, why there should be far more attacks on Russian tankers, and the impact of the war against Iran on developments in Ukraine.
Amid concerns about waning US aid and shortages of air‑defence systems for Ukraine linked to the Iran war, there are expected to be renewed calls during Monday’s foreign affairs council meeting for increased bilateral military support for Kyiv alongside the stalled €90bn in EU funding that Hungary is currently blocking.
