The European Union regulates all sorts of banks: money banks, blood banks, sperm banks.
Its next target? Breast milk banks.
Brussels bureaucrats want to homogenize the rules overseeing the donation and use of donor breast milk across the bloc.
It’s part of the European Commission’s proposed revamp of the laws covering safety and quality standards for substances of human origin (SoHO) intended for human use. Currently, the laws cover blood, tissues and cells, but the EU wants to extend coverage to all SoHO — including donor breast milk.
While, at first glance, it might seem like the EU is trying to milk its regulatory powers, experts are largely in favor of the plan to set EU-wide standards, saying it will improve its availability and safety.
With lawmakers and EU countries debating the revamp, POLITICO walks you through the issue.
What are breast milk banks?
Women who make more breast milk than their babies need can donate it to a breast milk bank.
These banks screen donors and collect, process and distribute the milk to infants in need — those whose mother’s own milk is not available or sufficient.
While exclusive breastfeeding is recommended for all babies in the first six months of their life, it’s especially important for premature or sick newborns, experts say.
Among many other benefits, breast milk contains antibodies that are important for newborns’ immune systems. Babies born before 30 weeks of pregnancy are especially susceptible to infections, particularly from necrotizing enterocolitis, a type of gut inflammation that can be fatal. Their survival rates improve when they get human milk as compared with formula, said Elien Rouw, a breastfeeding medicine specialist in Germany and president-elect of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine.
There are currently 282 breast milk banks in Europe, including Turkey and Ukraine, according to the European Milk Bank Association.
Aren’t they already regulated?
Donor breast milk is regulated differently in different countries. For example, it’s considered a health product in France, a food in Germany, and is uncategorized and unregulated in Romania. And while the safety standards are set at the national level in France, for instance, they are setat the regional level in Belgium.
The Commission wants to harmonize breast milk safety standardsacross the EU | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP via Getty Images
There is some level of convergence though. For example, most national guidelines in the world recommend donor breast milk should be pasteurized, according to the European Milk Bank Association.
In France, for example, the milk is first tested for bacteria and highly contaminated milk is thrown out, explains Jean-Charles Picaud, professor of pediatrics specialized in neonatology at Hôpital de la Croix-Rousse in Lyon, and president of the French Human Milk Bank Association. The rest is then pasteurized at precisely 62.5 degrees Celsius for exactly 30 minutes and then retested before being made available for babies.
What does the Commission want to do?
The Commission wants to harmonize safety standardsacross the EU, not only to ensure the safety of the babies that consume breast milk, but also to make it easier for donor breast milk — and other SoHO — to cross borders.
Donor milk banks are unevenly spread out across the Continent. There are over 30 in France, for example, but only four in Belgium and one in Romania.And parts of Europe are facing a shortage of donor breast milk, while it remains in limited supply elsewhere.
“There are children dying in Germany because they didn’t have, or didn’t have enough, human milk,”Rouw, the breastfeeding medicine specialist in Germany, said. Centers in Germany caring for extremely premature babies without direct access to a milk bank are buying it in part from Belgium and the United States, she added.
Experts agree that having harmonized safety standards would make the cross-border exchange of breast milk easier, improving babies’ access to it. These include things like donor selection criteria, maternal blood tests for infections, hygiene standards during collection, cold chain conditions during transport, and testing the milk for bacteria, said Picaud, president of the French Human Milk Bank Association.
However, while the Commission is setting out the principle of bloc-wide standards in its regulation, it aims to leave it to expert bodies — the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & HealthCare (EDQM) — to hammer out the precise scientific and technical details so that these can be more easily updated should the need arise.
Should donors get paid?
The debate over paying for substances of human origin is a divisive one. Germany’s Human Milk Bank Initiative, a nongovernmental organization that promotes nonprofit donor milk banks, warned in a position statement to the Commission in 2020that “ethically questionable approaches” have been used globally to acquire human milk from “lactating mothers in resource-limited regions or from socio-economically disadvantaged populations.”
EU countries take varying approaches when it comes to donor compensation for breast milk. Donors in France, for instance, receive no financial compensation. In Sweden, donating mothers receive a nominal 250 Swedish krona (€22.56) per liter of donated milk.
The Commission’s proposed revision includes guidance on compensation for all SoHO donors, to allow any financial losses to be covered — but leaves it to EU countries to determine whether to allow it and if so, the conditions for it, ensuring they remain “financially neutral.”
As well as human milk banks, the new law would also apply to any company looking to commercialize breast milk as an ingredient.
A nurse checks reserves of breast milk in the Sant’Anna hospital in Turin, Italy | Diana Bagnoli/Getty Images
Given the growing body of research showing the clinical benefits of donor breast milk for premature babies, hospital-affiliated milk banks around the world are expanding their activities — and there’s also growing commercial interest, a Commission spokesperson told POLITICO.
At least one company is using breast milk to make fortifiers for sick and premature babies in the neonatal intensive care unit, which are then added to either a mother’s milk or donor milk.
BERLIN — German prosecutors have found “traces”of evidence indicating that Ukrainians may have been involved in the explosions that blew up the Nord Stream gas pipelines in September 2022, according to German media reports Tuesday.
Investigators identified a boat that was potentially used for transporting a crew of six people, diving equipment and explosives into the Baltic Sea in early September. Charges were then placed on the pipelines, according to a joint investigation by German public broadcasters ARD and SWR as well as the newspaper Die Zeit.
The German reports said that the yacht had been rented from a company based in Poland that is “apparently owned by two Ukrainians.”
However, no clear evidence has been established so far on who ordered the attack, the reports said.
In its first reaction, Ukraine’s government dismissed the reports.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied the Ukrainian government had any involvement in the pipeline attacks. “Although I enjoy collecting amusing conspiracy theories about the Ukrainian government, I have to say: Ukraine has nothing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap and has no information about ‘pro-Ukraine sabotage groups,'” Podolyak wrote in a tweet.
Three of the four pipes making up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 undersea gas pipelines from Russia to Germany were destroyed by explosions last September. Germany, Sweden and Denmark launched investigations into an incident that was quickly established to be a case of “sabotage.”
The German media reports — which come on top of a New York Times report Tuesday which said that “intelligence suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group” sabotaged the pipelines — stress that there’s no proof that Ukrainian authorities ordered the attack or were involved in it.
Any potential involvement by Kyiv in the attack would risk straining relations between Ukraine and Germany, which is one of the most important suppliers of civilian and military assistance to the country as it fights against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
According to the investigation by German public prosecutors that is cited by the German outlets, the team which placed the explosive charges on the pipelines was comprised of five men — a captain, two divers and two diving assistants — as well as one woman doctor, all of them of unknown nationality and operating with false passports. They left the German port of Rostock on September 6 on the rented boat, the report said.
It added that the yacht was later returned to the owner “in uncleaned condition” and that “on the table in the cabin, the investigators were able to detect traces of explosives.”
But the reports also said that investigators can’t exclude that the potential link to Ukraine was part of a “false flag” operation aiming to pin the blame on Kyiv for the attacks.
Contacted by POLITICO, a spokesperson for the German government referred to ongoing investigations by the German prosecutor general’s office, which declined to comment.
The government spokesperson also said: “a few days ago, Sweden, Denmark and Germany informed the United Nations Security Council that investigations were ongoing and that there was no result yet.”
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova dismissed the reports of Ukrainian involvement in the Nord Stream bombings, saying in a post on the Telegram social media site that they were aimed at distracting attention from earlier, unsubstantiated, reports that the U.S. destroyed the pipelines.
Veronika Melkozerova in Kyiv contributed reporting.
In the packed meeting rooms and hallways of Munich’s Hotel Bayerischer Hof last weekend, back-slapping allies pushed an agenda with the kind of forward-looking determination NATO had long sought to portray but just as often struggled to achieve. They pledged more aid for Ukraine. They revamped plans for their own collective defense.
Two days later in Moscow, Vladimir Putin stood alone, rigidly ticking through another speech full of resentment and lonely nationalism, pausing only to allow his audience of grim-faced government functionaries to struggle to their feet in a series of mandatory ovations in a cold, cavernous hall.
With the war in Ukraine now one year old, and no clear path to peace at hand, a newly unified NATO is on the verge of making a series of seismic decisions beginning this summer to revolutionize how it defends itself while forcing slower members of the alliance into action.
The decisions in front of NATO will place the alliance — which protects 1 billion people — on a path to one the most sweeping transformations in its 74-year history. Plans set to be solidified at a summit in Lithuania this summer promise to revamp everything from allies’ annual budgets to new troop deployments to integrating defense industries across Europe.
The goal: Build an alliance that Putin wouldn’t dare directly challenge.
Yet the biggest obstacle could be the alliance itself, a lumbering collection of squabbling nations with parochial interests and a bureaucracy that has often promised way more than it has delivered. Now it has to seize the momentum of the past year to cut through red tape and crank up peacetime procurement strategies to meet an unpredictable, and likely increasingly belligerent Russia.
It’s “a massive undertaking,” said Benedetta Berti, head of policy planning at the NATO secretary-general’s office. The group has spent “decades of focusing our attention elsewhere,” she said. Terrorism, immigration — all took priority over Russia.
“It’s really a quite significant historic shift for the alliance,” she said.
For now, individual nations are making the right noises. But the proof will come later this year when they’re asked to open up their wallets, and defense firms are approached with plans to partner with rivals.
To hear alliance leaders and heads of state tell it, they’re ready to do it.
“Ukraine has to win this,” Adm. Rob Bauer, the head of NATO’s military committee, said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “We cannot allow Russia to win, and for a good reason — because the ambitions of Russia are much larger than Ukraine.”
All eyes on Vilnius
The big change will come In July, when NATO allies gather in Vilnius, Lithuania, for their big annual summit.
Gen. Chris Cavoli will reveal how personnel across the alliance will be called to help on short notice | Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images
NATO’s top military leader will lay out a new plan for how the alliance will put more troops and equipment along the eastern front. And Gen. Chris Cavoli, supreme allied commander for Europe, will also reveal how personnel across the alliance will be called to help on short notice.
The changes will amount to a “reengineering” of how Europe is defended, one senior NATO official said.
The plans will be based on geographic regions, with NATO asking countries to take responsibility for different security areas, from space to ground and maritime forces.
“Allies will know even more clearly what their jobs will be in the defense of Europe,” the official said.
NATO leaders have also pledged to reinforce the alliance’s eastern defenses and make 300,000 troops ready to rush to help allies on short notice, should the need arise.Under the current NATO Response Force, the alliance can make available 40,000 troops in less than 15 days. Under the new force model, 100,000 troops could be activated in up to 10 days, with a further 200,000 ready to go in up to 30 days.
But a good plan can only get allies so far.
NATO’s aspirations represent a departure from the alliance’s previous focus on short-term crisis management. Essentially, the alliance is “going in the other direction and focusing more on collective security and deterrence and defense,” said a second NATO official, who like the first, requested anonymity to discuss ongoing planning.
Chief among NATO’s challenges: Getting everyone’s armed forces to cooperate. Countries such as Germany, which has underfunded its military modernization programs for years, will likely struggle to get up to speed. And Sweden and Finland — on the cusp of joining NATO — are working to integrate their forces into the alliance.
Others simply have to expand their ranks for NATO to meet its stated quotas.
“NATO needs the ability to add speed, put large formations in the field — much larger than they used to,” said Bastian Giegerich, director of defense and military analysis and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
East vs. West
An east-west ideological fissure is also simmering within NATO.
Countries on the alliance’s eastern front have long been frustrated, at times publicly, with the slower pace of change many in Western Europe and the United States are advocating — even after Russia’s invasion.
Joe Biden traveled to Warsaw for a major speech last week that helped alleviate some of the tensions and perceived slights | Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
“We started to change and for western partners, it’s been kind of a delay,” Polish Armed Forces Gen. Rajmund Andrzejczak said during a visit to Washington this month.
Those concerns on the eastern front are being heard, tentatively.
Last summer, NATO branded Russia as its most direct threat — a significant shift from post-Cold War efforts to build a partnership with Moscow. U.S. President Joe Biden has also conducted his own charm offensive, traveling to Warsaw for a major speech last week that helped alleviate some of the tensions and perceived slights.
Still, NATO’s eastern front, which is within striking distance of Russia, is imploring its western neighbors to move faster to help fill in the gaps along the alliance’s edges and to buttress reinforcement plans.
It is important to “fix the slots — which countries are going to deliver which units,” said Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu, adding that he hopes the U.S. “will take a significant part.”
Officials and experts agree that these changes are needed for the long haul.
“If Ukraine manages to win, then Ukraine and Europe and NATO are going to have a very disgruntled Russia on its doorstep, rearming, mobilizing, ready to go again,” said Sean Monaghan, a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“If Ukraine loses and Russia wins,” he noted, the West would have “an emboldened Russia on our doorstep — so either way, NATO has a big Russia problem.”
Wakeup call from Russia
The rush across the Continent to rearm as weapons and equipment flows from long-dormant stockpiles into Ukraine has been as sudden as the invasion itself.
After years of flat defense budgets and Soviet-era equipment lingering in the motor pools across the eastern front, calls for more money and more Western equipment threaten to overwhelm defense firms without the capacity to fill those orders in the near term. That could create a readiness crisis in ammunition, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and anti-armor weapons.
A damaged Russian tank near Kyiv on February 14, 2023 | Sergei Dolzhenko/EPA-EFE
NATO actually recognized this problem a decade ago but lacked the ability to do much about it. The first attempt to nudge member states into shaking off the post-Cold War doldrums started slowly in the years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year.
After Moscow took Crimea and parts of the Donbas in 2014, the alliance signed the “Wales pledge” to spend 2 percent of economic output on defense by 2024.
The vast majority of countries politely ignored the vow, giving then-President Donald Trump a major talking point as he demanded Europe step up and stop relying on Washington to provide a security umbrella.
But nothing focuses attention like danger, and the sight of Russian tanks rumbling toward Kyiv as Putin ranted about Western depravity and Russian destiny jolted Europe into action. One year on, the bills from those early promises to do more are coming due.
“We are in this for the long haul” in Ukraine, said Bauer, the head of NATO’s Military Committee, a body comprising allies’ uniformed defense chiefs. But sustaining the pipeline funneling weapons and ammunition to Ukraine will take not only the will of individual governments but also a deep collaboration between the defense industries in Europe and North America. Those commitments are still a work in progress.
Part of that effort, Bauer said, is working to get countries to collaborate on building equipment that partners can use. It’s a job he thinks the European Union countries are well-suited to lead.
That’s a touchy subject for the EU, a self-proclaimed peace project that by definition can’t use its budget to buy weapons. But it can serve as a convener. And it agreed to do just that last week, pledging with NATO and Ukraine to jointly establish a more effective arms procurement system for Kyiv.
Talk, of course, is one thing. Traditionally NATO and the EU have been great at promising change, and forming committees and working groups to make that change, only to watch it get bogged down in domestic politics and big alliance in-fighting. And many countries have long fretted about the EU encroaching on NATO’s military turf.
But this time, there is a sense that things have to move, that western countries can’t let Putin win his big bet — that history would repeat itself, and that Europe and the U.S. would be frozen by an inability to agree.
“People need to be aware that this is a long fight. They also need to be brutally aware that this is a war,” the second NATO official said. “This is not a crisis. This is not some small incident somewhere that can be managed. This is an all-out war. And it’s treated that way now by politicians all across Europe and across the alliance, and that’s absolutely appropriate.”
Paul McLeary and Lili Bayer also contributed reporting from Munich.
Hungary’s reputation as the troublemaker of Europe will be burnished on Wednesday as its parliament begins debating a contentious issue: whether to give Finland and Sweden the green light to join NATO.
Along with Turkey, Hungary has yet to ratify the applications of Finland and Sweden to join the transatlantic defense alliance more than eight months after NATO leaders signed off on their membership bid at a summit in Madrid.
While NATO members are more concerned about the potential of Turkey to stonewall accession for the Nordic countries — President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been blocking Sweden’s application, alleging that Stockholm is harboring Kurdish militants — the government of Viktor Orbán has also been dragging its heels on parliamentary approval for the process.
Hungary’s ratification process will finally begin on Wednesday, with a debate due to kick off in the parliament in Budapest ahead of a vote — expected in the second half of March.
But already, there are signs of trouble ahead.
Máté Kocsis, head of Orbán’s nationalist Fidesz party caucus in parliament, said last week that a “serious debate” had now emerged over the accession of the two countries. Hungary now plans to send a delegation to Sweden and Finland to examine “political disputes” that have arisen.
Orbán himself echoed such views. The Hungarian leader, who has an iron grip on his Fidesz party, said in an interview on Friday that “while we support Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO in principle, we first need to have some serious discussions.”
He pointed to Finland and Sweden’s previous criticism of Hungary’s record on rule-of-law issues, asserting that some in his party are questioning the wisdom of admitting countries that are “spreading blatant lies about Hungary, about the rule of law in Hungary, about democracy, about life here.”
“How, this argument runs, can anyone want to be our ally in a military system while they’re shamelessly spreading lies about Hungary?”
Orbán’s comments have confirmed fears in Brussels that the Hungarian leader could try to use his leverage over NATO enlargement to extract concessions on rule-of-law issues.
Finland and Sweden have been among the most critical voices around the EU table over rule-of-law concerns in Hungary, with Budapest still locked in a dispute with the European Union over the disbursal of funds due to Brussels’ protests over its democratic standards.
European Commission Vice-President Věra Jourová said earlier this month that Hungary must sort out the independence of its judiciary “very soon” if it wants to receive €5.8 billion in grants due from the EU’s COVID-19 recovery fund.
Helsinki and Stockholm have kept largely silent on the looming vote in Budapest, reflecting in part a reluctance to stir up controversy ahead of time.
Sweden, in particular, has been treading a fine line with Turkey, seeking not to alienate Erdoğan even as allies now acknowledge the possibility of the two countries joining at different times — an apparent acceptance that Erdoğan could further hold up Sweden’s bid.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg visited Helsinki Monday, where Finland’s push to join the alliance topped the agenda. He urged both Turkey and Hungary to confirm the membership bids — and soon.
“I hope that they will ratify soon,” Stoltenberg said of the Hungarian parliament’s discussions. Asked if he was in contact with Hungary on the issue, he replied that it was a decision for sovereign national parliaments, adding: “The time has come. Finland meets all the criteria, as does Sweden. So we are working hard, and the aim is to have this in place as soon as possible.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg plans to step down from his post as planned in October, his spokeswoman Oana Lungescu told German news agency Deutschen Presse-Agentur, dismissing reports of another extension to his term.
“He has no intention of seeking a further extension of his mandate,” she said.
Welt am Sonntag reported earlier Sunday that Stoltenberg’s term may be extended again as NATO seeks to maintain stability during the war in Ukraine, the latest in series of speculation that the NATO chief might stay on.
Stoltenberg’s term has been extended three times already, most recently in March last year just after Russia invaded Ukraine. Stoltenberg, an economist by training, had been designated to become Sweden’s central bank chief at the time.
The EU was quick to hit Russia with sanctions after Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine — but it took time and an escalation of measures before Moscow started to feel any real damage.
Since the war started in late February last year, November was the first month when the value of EU imports from Russia was lower than in the same month of 2021. Until then, the bloc had been sending more cash than before the conflict — every month, for nine months. More recent data is not yet available.
The main reason behind this? Energy dependency on Russia and skyrocketing energy prices. But that’s not the whole story: Some EU countries were much quicker than others to reduce trade flows with Moscow — and some were still increasing them at the end of last year.
Here is a full breakdown of how the war has changed EU trade with Russia, in figures and charts:
Finland could reconsider its joint NATO bid with Sweden if Stockholm’s application is delayed further, Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said Tuesday, a day after Turkey said it would not support the Swedish candidacy.
“You have to assess the situation,” Haavisto told Finnish public broadcaster Yle. “Has something happened that the longer term would prevent the Swedish project from going ahead? It [is] too early to take a position on that.”
Finland and Sweden applied to join NATO together last October, as a consequence of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Turkey and Hungary are the last two members of the military alliance who still need to ratify the joint bid.
While Budapest has pledged it would sign off the bid, Ankara is yet to follow suit.
But relations between Sweden and Turkey have taken a turn for the worse in recent days, after a far-right Danish-Swedish politician burned a copy of the Quran during a protest in Stockholm last Saturday.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said the burning was an insult, and that Sweden would not receive “any support from [Turkey] on the NATO issue.”
Haavisto seemed more restrained in an interview to Reuters, also on Tuesday morning. When asked if Finland could join NATO on its own, the Foreign Minister said: “I do not see the need for a discussion about that.”
Haavisto also told Reuters the three-way talks between Finland, Sweden and Turkey on NATO accession would be paused “for a couple of weeks” until “the dust has settled after the current situation.”
“No conclusions should be drawn yet,” Haavisto added.
BERLIN — Germany and its European partners plan to “quickly” send two Leopard 2 tank battalions to Ukraine — suggesting about 80 vehicles — the government in Berlin announced Wednesday, adding that Germany would provide one company of 14 Leopard 2 A6 tanks “as a first step.”
Other countries likely to send Leopards to the war against Russia include Poland, Spain, Norway and Finland.
The decision by Chancellor Olaf Scholz — which emerged on Tuesday evening — marks a decisive moment in Western support for Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, which entered its 12th month this week and could soon heat up further as Moscow is expected to launch a new offensive.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters that the training of Ukrainian crews on the tanks will begin “very soon,” and that the Leopards will be arriving in Ukraine in about two months.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he was “very happy” with the promise of tanks from the U.S., Germany and Britain. “But speaking frankly, the number of tanks and the delivery time to Ukraine is critical,” he said, in an interview with Sky News.
Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelenskyy’s office, welcomed the German announcement as a “first step.”
“Leopards are very much needed,” he said on Telegram.
Zelenskyy himself also welcomed the move on Twitter. “Sincerely grateful to the Chancellor and all our friends in” Germany, he said.
Russia’s Ambassador to Germany Sergei Nechaev said in a statement the decision was “extremely dangerous,” and took the conflict “to a new level of confrontation.”
Kyiv had long urged Germany and other partners to supply its army with the powerful German-built Leopard 2 tank, but Scholz hesitated to take the decision, partly out of concern that it could drag Germany or NATO into the conflict. He remained adamant that such a move had to be closely coordinated and replicated by Western allies, most notably the United States.
During a speech in Germany’s parliament on Wednesday, Scholz sought to defend his long hesitations on tank deliveries, saying that it “was right and it is right that we did not allow ourselves to be rushed” into taking a decision but insisted “on this close cooperation” with allies, notably the United States.
Scholz also stressed that Germany would not actively engage in the war but would continue to seek to “prevent an escalation between Russia and NATO.” He also launched a direct appeal to German citizens who might be skeptical: “Trust me, trust the German government: We will continue to ensure … that this support is provided without the risks for our country rising in the wrong direction.”
The news of an imminent announcement by U.S. President Joe Biden to send “a significant number” of American M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine facilitated the chancellor’s decision. Scholz had come under huge pressure from European partners like Poland, as well as his own coalition partners in government, to no longer block the delivery of the German tank. Since they are German-made, their re-export needed the approval of the German government.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted that he “strongly welcomes” Berlin’s decision | Dirk Waem /Belga Mag/AFP via Getty Images)
“The goal is to quickly form two tank battalions with Leopard 2 tanks for Ukraine,” a German government spokesperson said.
“As a first step, Germany will provide a company of 14 Leopard-2 A6 tanks from Bundeswehr stocks. Other European partners will also hand over Leopard-2 tanks,” the spokesperson added.
The spokesperson also said the training of Ukrainian crews on the tanks “is to begin rapidly in Germany.” Berlin would also provide “logistics, ammunition and maintenance of the systems.”
In addition to the 14 Leopard 2A6 tanks, Germany will also send two tank recovery vehicles, Deputy Defense Minister Siemtje Möller said in a letter to defense policy lawmakers, seen by POLITICO.
Möller wrote that Ukrainian tank crews will undergo a six-week-training on the Leopards, in Germany which is supposed to start in early February. “This procedure should enable the Leopard 2 A6 to be taken over by Ukraine by the end of the first quarter of 2023.”
Germany will provide partner countries like Spain, Poland, Finland and Norway, which “want to quickly deliver Leopard-2 tanks from their stocks,” the necessary re-export permission, the spokesperson said.
The decision by Chancellor Olaf Scholz marks a decisive moment of Western support for Ukraine | David Hecker/Getty Images
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted that he “strongly welcomes” Berlin’s decision. “At a critical moment in Russia’s war, these can help Ukraine to defend itself, win & prevail as an independent nation.”
Spain, which owns one of the largest fleets of Leopards in the EU, with 347 tanks, has previously said it would send tanks to Kyiv as part of a European coalition, according to El País.
The Norwegian government is considering sending eight of its 36 Leopard tanks to Ukraine, but no decision has been made yet, Norwegian daily DN reported late Tuesday after a meeting of the parliamentary committee on foreign affairs and defense, quoting sources close to the deliberation.
Portugal, which has 37 Leopards, could provide four tanks to the assembling European coalition, a source close to the government told Correio da Manhã late on Tuesday.
The Netherlands, which is leasing 18 Leopards from Germany, is also weighing supplying some of their armored vehicles, Dutch newswire ANP reported, quoting a government spokesperson. On Tuesday, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said he was “willing to consider” buying the tanks from Germany and shipping them to Ukraine, but that no decision had been made.
On Wednesday, the Swedish defense minister said that Sweden did not exclude sending some of its own tanks at a later stage, according to Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet.
Wilhelmine Preussen and Zoya Sheftalovich contributed reporting.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said on Saturday that a planned visit by his Swedish counterpart to Ankara has been canceled after Swedish authorities granted permission for protests in Stockholm.
Protests in Stockholm on Saturday against Turkey and Sweden’s bid to join NATO, including the burning of a copy of the Quran, sharply heightened tensions with Turkey at a time when the Nordic country needs Ankara’s backing to gain entry to the military alliance.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the vile attack on our holy book … Permitting this anti-Islam act, which targets Muslims and insults our sacred values, under the guise of freedom of expression is completely unacceptable,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.
Its statement was issued after an anti-immigrant politician from the far-right fringe burned a copy of the Quran near the Turkish Embassy. The Turkish ministry urged Sweden to take necessary actions against the perpetrators and invited all countries to take concrete steps against Islamophobia.
A separate protest took place in the city supporting Kurds and against Sweden’s bid to join NATO. A group of pro-Turkish demonstrators also held a rally outside the embassy. All three events had police permits.
Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said that Islamophobic provocations were appalling.
“Sweden has a far-reaching freedom of expression, but it does not imply that the Swedish Government, or myself, support the opinions expressed,” Billstrom said on Twitter.
The Quran-burning was carried out by Rasmus Paludan, leader of Danish far-right political party Hard Line. Paludan, who also has Swedish citizenship, has held a number of demonstrations in the past where he has burned the Quran.
Paludan could not immediately be reached by email for a comment. In the permit he obtained from police, it says his protest was held against Islam and what it called Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan’s attempt to influence freedom of expression in Sweden.
Several Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait denounced the Koran-burning. “Saudi Arabia calls for spreading the values of dialogue, tolerance, and coexistence, and rejects hatred and extremism,” the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Sweden and Finland applied last year to join NATO following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but all 30 member states must approve their bids. Turkey has said Sweden in particular must first take a clearer stance against what it sees as terrorists, mainly Kurdish militants and a group it blames for a 2016 coup attempt.
At the demonstration to protest Sweden’s NATO bid and to show support for Kurds, speakers stood in front of a large red banner reading “We are all PKK”, referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party that is outlawed in Turkey, Sweden, and the United States among other countries, and addressed several hundred pro-Kurdish and left-wing supporters.
“We will continue our opposition to the Swedish NATO application,” Thomas Pettersson, spokesperson for Alliance Against NATO and one of organizers of the demonstration, told Reuters.
Police said the situation was calm at all three demonstrations.
Earlier on Saturday, Turkey said that due to lack of measures to restrict protests, it had canceled a planned visit to Ankara by the Swedish defence minister.
“At this point, the visit of Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson to Turkey on January 27 has become meaningless. So we canceled the visit,” Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said.
Sweden should not expect Turkey’s support for its NATO membership bid, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Monday following tensions over anti-Islam protests in Stockholm over the weekend.
He said at a press conference that if Sweden does not show respect to Turkey or Muslims, “they won’t see any support from us on the NATO issue.”
The statement follows protests against Turkey and in support of Kurds on Saturday in the Swedish capital, where anti-immigrant politician Rasmus Paludan, leader of the Danish far-right political party Hard Line, burned a copy of the Quran near the Turkish embassy.
Erdoğan said Monday the burning was an insult, especially to Muslims, and criticized Sweden for allowing pro-Kurdish protests where demonstrators waved flags including those of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK. The PKK is considered a terrorist group in Turkey, the European Union and the United States, but Sweden does not ban its symbols.
“So you will let terror organizations run wild on your avenues and streets and then expect our support for getting into NATO. That’s not happening,” Erdoğan said. Sweden should have calculated the consequences of permitting the demonstration, he added.
Over the weekend, Turkey condemned the demonstration as “vile” and canceled a planned visit by Sweden’s defense chief to Ankara, intended to address Turkey’s objections to Sweden joining NATO.
Ankara had already previously dragged its feet on pledging support for the accession bid, seeking conditions for approval such as the extradition of 130 political opponents from Sweden and Finland.
Sweden has played down the dispute with Turkey over NATO accession, with Foreign Minister Tobias Billström saying in a TV interview on Sunday that the issues are nearly resolved and that Turkey is “close” to starting the ratification process, after he called the Quran-burning “appalling” in a tweet on Saturday.
Sweden, together with Finland, decided to apply together for NATO membership in October last year. Hungary and Turkey are the only two countries that still need to ratify the joint NATO bid; Hungary last November pledged to do so.
KIRUNA, Sweden (AP) — The European Union wants to bolster its capacity to launch small satellites into space with a new launchpad in Arctic Sweden.
European officials and Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf inaugurated the EU’s first mainland orbital launch complex on Friday during a visit to Sweden by members of the European Commission, which is the 27-nation bloc’s executive arm.
The new facility at Esrange Space Center near the city of Kiruna should complement the EU’s current launching capabilities in French Guiana.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said small satellites are crucial to tracking natural disasters in real time and, in the light of Russia’s war in Ukraine, to help guarantee global security.
“Today, we know that the brave Ukrainian forces effectively use small satellites to track the movements of Russian troops,” she said.
The first satellite launch is expected next year.
The total number of satellites could reach 100,000 by 2040, compared with the current 5,000 operational satellites, according to the Swedish Space Corp., or SSC.
“This is a giant leap for SSC, for Sweden, for Europe and the rest of the world,” SSC chief executive Stefan Gardefjord said.
“Satellites are decisive for many functions of the daily lives of today’s modern world, and the need for them will only increase in the years to come with space playing an even more important role,” he said.
Swedish mining company LKAB says it has found Europe’s largest deposit of rare earth oxides in the country’s north, a discovery that could reduce the continent’s reliance on China for the critical resource.
Rare earth minerals play a key role in generating clean energy and producing electric vehicles and consumer electronics. But the market is dominated by China, which accounts for 60% of global production, according to the US Geological Service.
LKAB has identified more than one million tonnes of rare earth oxides in the Kiruna area, located in the far north of the country, the company said in a statement on Thursday.
“This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate,” said Jan Moström, president and group CEO of LKAB.
No rare earth elements are currently being mined in Europe, leaving it dependent on imports. The European Union gets 98% of the minerals from China, according to the European Commission.
But demand is expected to surge as a result of electrification, which will lead to a global “undersupply” at a time of increasing geopolitical tensions, LKAB said.
The company added that the region’s dependence on China for rare earth minerals increases the vulnerability of European industry.
“Electrification, the European Union’s self-sufficiency and independence from Russia and China will begin in the mine,” said Ebba Busch, Sweden’s minister for energy, business and industry, in the same statement. “We need to strengthen industrial value chains in Europe and create real opportunities for the electrification of our societies. “
Still, the road to mining the deposits is long, LKAB added. It plans to submit an application for a permit later this year.
“If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years before we can actually begin mining and deliver raw materials to the market,” it said.
Given its importance in the tech industry, rare earths have become one of the main fronts in the US-China competition as well.
The United States, which has long relied on China for the minerals, is seeking to strengthen its domestic supply chainto emerge as a dominant global player. In 2021, the Biden administration targeted rare earths, among other domestic supply chain priorities, to reduce the vulnerability of these industries to geopolitical tension.
Kiruna, Sweden — Iron-ore miner LKAB said Thursday that it has identified “significant deposits” of rare earth elements in Arctic Sweden that are essential for the manufacture of electric vehicles and wind turbines. The Swedish government-owned mining company, which mines iron ore at Kiruna, nearly 600 miles north of Stockholm, said there are more than 1 million tons of rare earth oxides.
“This is the largest known deposit of rare earth elements in our part of the world, and it could become a significant building block for producing the critical raw materials that are absolutely crucial to enable the green transition,” said LKAB CEO Jan Moström. “Without mines, there can be no electric vehicles.”
President and CEO of Swedish mining company LKAB Jan Mostrom (L) and Sweden’s Minister for Energy, Business and Industry Ebba Busch attend a news conference at LKAB in Kiruna, Sweden, January 12, 2023.
JONAS EKSTROMER/TT News Agency/AFP/Getty
Ebba Busch, Sweden’s minister in charge of energy and business, said that “electrification, the EU’s self-sufficiency and independence from Russia and China will begin in the mine.”
“We need to strengthen industrial value chains in Europe and create real opportunities for the electrification of our societies. Politics must give the industry the conditions to switch to green and fossil-free production,” she added.
Rare earths now reach into the lives of almost everyone on the planet, turning up in everything from hard drives and cell phones to elevators and trains. They are especially vital to the fast-growing field of green energy, feeding wind turbines and electric car engines.
Exploration will not start for years even if permits are delivered very fast.
A view of the iron mine of Swedish state-owned mining company LKAB in Sweden’s northernmost Arctic city of Kiruna, January 12, 2023.
JONAS EKSTROMER/TT News Agency/AFP/Getty
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Tatjana Patitz, one of an elite group of famed supermodels who graced magazine covers in the 1980s and ’90s and appeared in George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” music video, has died at age 56.
Patitz’s death in the Santa Barbara, California, area was confirmed by her New York agent, Corinne Nicolas, at the Model CoOp agency. In a statement to CBS News, Nicolas said, “Tatiana passed away in California. The cause of death was breast cancer. She is survived by her son, her sister, and her parents.”
Patitz, who was born in Germany, raised in Sweden and later made her life in California, was known as part of an elite handful of “original” supermodels, appearing in the Michael video along with Christy Turlington, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford.
She was a favorite of fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh, who highlighted her natural beauty in his famous 1988 photo, “White Shirts: Six Supermodels, Malibu,” and for British Vogue’s 1990 cover — leading Michael to cast the group in his lip-syncing video, according to Vogue.
Tatjana Patitz in 1992 in Paris.
Pool ARNAL/GARCIA/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
The magazine quoted its global editorial director, Anna Wintour, as saying Patitz was “always the European symbol of chic, like Romy Schneider-meets-Monica Vitti. She was far less visible than her peers — more mysterious, more grown-up, more unattainable — and that had its own appeal.”
In a 2006 interview, Patitz opined that the golden age of supermodels was over.
“There was a real era, and the reason that happened was because glamour was brought into it,” she was quoted as saying in Prestige Hong Kong magazine. “Now the celebrities and actresses have taken over, and the models are in the backseat completely.”
She also noted that models from her era had healthier physiques.
“Women were healthy, not these scrawny little models that nobody knows their names anymore,” Patitz said.
In 2022, Sweden’s central bank undertook an aggressive interest rate hiking cycle that ricocheted through the property market.
JONATHAN NACKSTRAND / Contributor / Getty Images
Sweden’s property prices are facing a serious drop as the country’s central bank governor warns of lofty household debt levels.
House prices in Sweden have risen fairly reliably over the last decade. This has been buoyed by ultra-low interest rates in a system where around half of people’s mortgages are financed with variable rates and many of the rest are on short-term fixed rates.
But now property prices are tumbling. And this downturn is not surprising given the “dysfunctional” nature of the market, according to Stefan Ingves, the outgoing governor of Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank.
“I’ve persistently time and time again said that the debt level in the household sector is just too high and there will be a day of reckoning and eventually rates will go up, and now rates have gone up,” Ingves told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” in an exclusive interview Tuesday.
“What you see happening now is exactly what you would expect to see happening, which is that households have to pay more and the interest rate sensitivity … is much higher,” Ingves added, which makes interest rate payments higher for a huge number of Swedish households.
The pandemic effect
During the Covid-19 pandemic, house prices across Europe continued to rise, and Sweden was no exception. Demand for property skyrocketed as working from home and a preference for domestic vacations prompted people to upsize their spaces.
On average, house prices were up as much as 30% compared to the pre-pandemic level of January 2020, according to Nordea Bank, as the Riksbank started purchasing mortgage bonds, trying to bring rates down and adding fire to an already hot housing market.
But now prices are falling, dramatically.
“As of November we are seeing prices nationally in Sweden fall 13% from the peak in February. That’s the largest downturn on the housing market since we had a big economic crisis in the nineties,” Gustav Helgesson, an analyst at Nordea, told CNBC.
Home prices fell by 15% between the peak in March and November of last year, according to financial services company Valueguard, as reported by Nordic corporate bank SEB.
Central bank rate hikes
In 2022, Sweden’s central bank undertook an aggressive interest rate hiking cycle that ricocheted through the property market.
In February, the Riksbank signaled its policy rate would remain unchanged at zero, and predicted an eventual increase for the second half of 2024. But in the bank’s next monetary policy statement just three months later, the rate was raised to 0.25%.
“They really just shifted from that meeting to the next one in April and started their hiking cycle,” Helgesson told CNBC.
Rates continued to increase throughout 2022, going from 0.25% to 0.75% in July, to 1.75% in September and 2.5% in November.
“This took many households by surprise … and I think that Swedish households … have been struggling to adjust to this cycle and foresee these very quick and dramatic rate hikes from the Riksbank,” Helgesson said.
Emil Brodin, an economist from the National Institute of Economic Research, said the extent of the rises were “a bit more than people expected” and that it had “gone more quickly than people thought.”
Helgesson characterized the change as a correction, rather than a bursting bubble, “but it is a painful and very fast correction,” he added.
Thomas Veraguth, head of global real estate strategy for UBS Wealth Management, described the correction as “a natural adjustment that is mainly explained by macroeconomic factors.”
20% drop in 2023?
A further policy rate increase is anticipated for February, with the benchmark widely speculated to hit 3%, leading economists to predict a further downturn in property prices.
Nordea Bank estimates a 20% drop in home prices from peak to trough.
“This is as a direct consequence of the Riksbank’s increased interest rate. They’ve increased from 0% to 2.5% and we expect them to continue to increase the policy rates to 3% in February,” Helgesson from Nordea told CNBC.
Handelsbanken also anticipates a dip in prices.
“Our present forecast is that housing prices will continue to fall over the coming months and stabilize only when mortgage rates have peaked during the spring,” Christina Nyman, head of economic research and chief economist and Helena Bornevall, senior economist, at Handelsbanken, said in emailed comments to CNBC.
The National Institute of Economic Research also expects a further drop in the next couple of months that will settle later in the year.
“We expect the prices to continue declining throughout the first half of 2023 and then a stabilization of the prices, which is based on the interest rates not moving further up. So basically once the interest rate is stabilised, we don’t expect prices to continue declining,” Brodin said.
But there is downside risk to the 20% estimate, according to the chief economist of SEB, Jens Magnusson.
“We do expect [house prices] to drop a few more percentage points … So it could go from 20% to 25% perhaps, but if that happens that would mean that it’s pretty much the pandemic uptick that is being reversed,” Magnusson told CNBC.
Sweden isn’t the only European country experiencing a plunging property market post-pandemic, with some economists forecasting a similar downturn of between 20% and 25% in Germany.
A return to pre-pandemic figures
The dip in the market is a correction that puts Swedish property back to its pre-pandemic state, according to some economists.
“We had about 20% increases during those two pandemic years, so obviously that is the first thing that will go now and I expect pretty much all of that to disappear and to decrease,” Magnusson said.
“As of now prices are still about the level at which we entered the pandemic,” Brodin told CNBC. “Basically the increase in house prices during the pandemic is erased,” he added.
But the outgoing Riksbank governor signaled that the bumpiness in Sweden’s housing market stemmed from more fundamental issues than just a pandemic-induced fluctuation.
“We have not been hiding anything on the side of the central bank in the structural difficulties in the housing market,” Ingves told CNBC.
“But at the same time, the political process has been such that there hasn’t been a willingness on the political side to sort out these issues and that’s why we are where we are,” he added.
The Government Offices of Sweden did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in today’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, CNN’s three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.
Baghdad and Abu Dhabi CNN
—
Iraq is holding its first international soccer tournament in more than four decades, hosting its Gulf Arab neighbors for a two-week competition as it emerges from its worst and longest political deadlock in years.
The tournament, analysts say, is a glimmer of hope for a struggling population, but also holds a political message – Iraq is signaling to its neighbors and the world that it is ready to move past decades of turmoil.
After more than 30 years of global isolation due to wars and sanctions, for many Iraqis the Arabian Gulf Cup – the tournament started on Friday and will run until January 19 – is something of a tonic.
“Iraq is a football-mad country that has been lobbying for years for the right to host competitive international games,” said Patrick Osgood, associate director of the Control Risks consultancy firm in Dubai.
This is the first time Iraq has hosted the Gulf Cup since 1979, when it was held in the capital Baghdad. This time, the tournament is being held in the southern port city of Basra, with teams from Saudi Arabia, Oman, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Yemen also competing.
Since it last hosted the Gulf Cup, the nation has faced two devastating wars, a regime change, an occupation and a militant insurgency that impacted the once thriving Basra as it did the rest of the country. Of late, the city’s residents have encountered severe energy and food shortages that have led to unrest.
“The practical effect in a city in dire need of investment is likely to be small,” Osgood told CNN. “But Iraqis deserve nice things, to participate with others, to be able to exercise hospitality.”
There is excitement and fervor in Basra about the tournament. Murals adorn the city’s walls and fans were seen joining long queues for tickets. Flags flutter from every participating nation in streets and there are welcoming posters reading, “Basra welcomes you” and “Basra is your home.”
“We’ve been waiting for this moment for 40 years,” said 29-year-old Mohammed Ali, a taxi driver in Basra, adding that the city feels very secure and its residents are filled with joy for the occasion.
“We have experienced problems, but we always say that sport unites people,” he told CNN. “We are seeing many people from the Gulf, and we can tell that they too have missed Basra.”
The last Gulf Cup was held in Qatar in 2019, with Bahrain emerging as the winner.
Gulf Arabs rarely travel to Iraq for tourism. Of all the Gulf states, only the travel hubs of Doha and Dubai have direct flights to the country, catering largely to connecting passengers and Shiite Muslim pilgrims. Gulf states’ ties with the Iraqi government have warmed over the past few years, but that hasn’t trickled down to the public level. In Saudi Arabia, government permission is required for travel to Iraq, which is only given to men above 40.
Major General Saad Maan, head of public relations at the Iraqi interior ministry, told CNN that he expects “tens of thousands of fans to arrive in Basra” and that all security measures have been taken to assure the safety of both residents and fans.
“Iraq is saying that there is great political stability,” said Ihsan Al-Shammari, a politics professor at Baghdad University and head of the Iraqi Centre for Political Thought. “It also speaks to the security situation, especially if the tournament is successfully completed without any security incidents.”
Iraq also hopes that the event will bolster its image to investors and political partners, said Al-Shammari, as well as bring it closer to its Gulf Arab neighbors with whom it has had frosty relations since Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The opening ceremony on Friday started with a spectacular fireworks display and a theatrical performance chronicling the nation’s 5,000-year history, though the showpiece occasion wasn’t without controversy.
The Iraqi Football Association apologized to Kuwait for a brawl that took place in the Basra International Stadium’s VIP section that prevented the Kuwaiti ruler’s representative from entering. That prompted the rest of the delegation to leave the event. The Kuwait FA said it will continue participation in the tournament after being given security guarantees from Iraq.
Iraq drifted into chaos after a 2003 US-led invasion toppled longtime ruler Saddam Hussein, and around the end of 2021 fell into its longest political stalemate as the country’s various political factions – divided mainly between Shiite blocs and their Iran-backed rivals – failed to form a government.
The deadlock was only broken last October with the election of a new president and premier, but experts remain skeptical about whether the new government can prevent further stability and instill serious reforms.
The country’s economy is still in crisis, much of its infrastructure is in ruins and its ties with neighboring states are strained as Iran continues to support prominent political factions and their armed militias.
“Basra city experiences security issues around crime and protest activity,” said Osgood, “but neither issue is prohibitive, and the government has surged security provision to mitigate threats.”
“On balance, there’s unlikely to be major security disruption during the tournament,” he said, adding that “there are significant socio-economic issues in Basra that drive unrest, but there’s also significant goodwill around the tournament – no one wants to spoil it.”
The tournament is not on the international soccer radar but it is a heated topic in the Gulf region and has often been reflective of the region’s geopolitical scene.
Iraq last hosted the Gulf Cup 44 years ago, when it won the tournament. The nation was banned from it for about a decade after Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and was prevented from hosting it since due to security reasons.
Despite the hiccups, residents of Basra are optimistic about the tournament in their city.
“The whole of Basra is joyous, opening its doors to the Gulf and other provinces (of Iraq),” said 46-year-old Ali Salman of Basra.
“We want to say to visitors from the Gulf and other provinces of Iraq: don’t rent hotels, the doors of our homes are open.”
Iran executes two more men amid crackdown on protests
Iran executed two men – one a karate champion, the other a volunteer children’s coach – in connection with nationwide protests, sparking outrage around the world. The European Union said in a statement Saturday that it was “appalled” by the executions, calling it “yet another sign of the Iranian authorities’ violent repression of civilian demonstrations.”
Background: The pair were alleged to have participated in anti-regime protests and were convicted of killing a member of the country’s Basij paramilitary force, were hanged early Saturday morning, according to state-affiliated media.
Why it matters: The total number of people now known to have been executed in connection with the protests has reached four. As many as 41 more protesters have received death sentences in recent months, according to statements from both Iranian officials and in Iranian media reviewed by CNN and 1500Tasvir, but the number could be much higher.
Sweden says it can’t meet all of Turkey’s NATO demands
Sweden is confident that Turkey will approve its application to join the NATO military alliance, but will not meet all the conditions Ankara has set for its support, Reuters cited Sweden’s prime minister as saying on Sunday. “Turkey both confirms that we have done what we said we would do, but they also say that they want things that we cannot or do not want to give them,” Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told a defence think-tank conference in Sweden.
Background: Finland and Sweden signed a three-way agreement with Turkey in 2022 aimed at overcoming Ankara’s objections to their membership of the alliance. They applied to join NATO in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but Turkey objected and accused the countries of harboring militants. New entrants require the consensus of all existing members.
Why it matters: It is unclear if the steps taken by the two candidates will satisfy Turkey, which has delayed the accession of the two countries to extract concessions from them. The move has been seen as benefiting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ahead of elections this year.
Israel arrests two teens over Jerusalem Christian cemetery vandalism
Israel Police arrested two teenagers suspected of vandalizing at least 28 tombstones and damaging a Protestant cemetery near Jerusalem’s Mount Zion, they announced on Friday. The suspects, aged 18 and 14, from central Israel, will be brought before a judge to decide on an extension of their detention following their arrest late on Thursday. “The investigation continues with the aim of bringing them to justice,” a statement from Israel’s police spokesperson in Jerusalem said.
Background: The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East said in a statement earlier last week that “vandals” had “purposely and relentlessly smashed more than thirty gravestones, many of them historic,” in the cemetery. The church said there was clear indication that “these criminal acts were motivated by religious bigotry and hatred against Christians.” Israel Police said the vandalism took place on Sunday, January 1.
Why it matters: The attack on the cemetery and Israel’s handling of it is likely to be in the spotlight after the country swore in the most right-wing government in its history last month. Police did not name the suspects or comment on a possible motive, but Chief Superintendent Assaf Harel said: “Any damage to religious institutions and sites is serious and damages the unique and delicate fabric of life that exists in the city for members of all religions and denominations.”
London’s first Arabic bookstore bid farewell as it closed its doors in 2023, marking the end of a 44-year-old era for Arabic literature in Europe.
Citing economic difficulties, the advent of electronic reading and logistical challenges brought on by Brexit, the founders of Al Saqi Bookstore found the burden of keeping its doors open too heavy.
Regarded as Europe’s leading Arabic bookstore, Al Saqi, which means water seller in Arabic, was founded in 1978 by lifelong friends André Gaspard and Mai Ghoussoub. They opened the store after fleeing the Lebanese Civil War that started in 1975 and lasted until 1990.
The shop at first only carried books in Arabic, later expanding its collection to English, for Europeans who wanted to learn about Arabic culture. It also runs a publishing house in London and Beirut, which will continue to operate.
“It was home for us misfits” the founder’s daughter and publisher Lynn Gaspard told the BBC in an interview.
London is home to a large Arab diaspora. For decades, the city has been a refuge for Arabs fleeing war, economic turmoil and political persecution. But it is also a major hub for tourists, with many Gulf Arabs keeping summer homes in the city.
For many, Al Saqi was the place to find books banned in the Middle East, with Arab travelers to Europe often making a stop in London to stock up.
But as Al Saqi’s door closes, another one may open as the store’s legacy has inspired one of its own employees to carry the torch.
Mohammad Masoud, a bookseller at the store, is now crowdfunding for a new initiative called “Maqam” that aims to open a similar shop.
“This is what Maqam is about. It exists for people who are in need of Arabic content and are searching for belonging,” he told Al Jazeera.
Three years into the COVID-19 crisis, which upended lives across the globe and led the EU to promise to work better together when the next health crisis emerged, countries have once again been involved in a political tug-of-war.
China’s decision to lift its zero-COVID policy has led to a surge in cases that has alarmed the world. But early attempts at a joint EU response were dashed when Italy announced its own border control measures on arrivals from China.
While the EU is now inching toward a coordinated approach on travel measures for arrivals from China — including pre-departure testing, masks on flights and testing wastewater for possible new variants — and is set to hold a meeting of its crisis response body on Wednesday, it comes after countries one-by-one announced unilateral measures for travelers arriving from China.
“It is disappointing to me that — despite three years of pandemic — there still is not a coordinated EU united response,” said Marion Koopmans, head of the Erasmus MC’s department of viroscience.
So why did European unity fall at the first hurdle? Here’s what you need to know.
What measures are in place for arrivals from China?
Here’s a brief rundown of a fast-moving situation. Most countries have announced some form of testing, with Italy testing travelers arriving from China and isolating those that are positive. Spain is testing and carrying out temperature checks, and from Tuesday, imposing COVID certificates, and France requires negative tests before traveling from China, masks on planes and PCR tests on arrival for all passengers.
Sweden became the latest EU country to announce plans to implement restrictions, saying Tuesday that it was “preparing to introduce travel restrictions requiring a negative COVID-19 test for entry to Sweden from China.”
Across the Channel, the U.K. announced Friday it would require a negative test before travel and would also be taking samples from arrivals.
Belgium, however, has taken a different tack, testing the wastewater from planes twice a week and sequencing the samples to search for new variants.
All this could change on Wednesday, however, with the EU’s crisis response body meeting to discuss (finally) a coordinated response.
A Chinese traveler leaves the arrival hall of Rome Fiumicino airport on December 29, 2022 after being tested for COVID-19 | Filippo Monteforte/AFP via Getty Images
Why the different responses?
There are multiple factors at play — bitter experience, fear of new variants, concerns about China’s secrecy, and good old economics.
Italy, the first to strike out alone, has said its rules will ensure “surveillance and identification of any variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population.” This decision seems to be driven by the psychology that Italy was hit incredibly hard by COVID-19 in 2020, said Elizabeth Kuiper, associate director and head of the social Europe and well-being program at the European Policy Centre think tank.
France has justified its decision by saying the government has taken “health control measures in order to ensure the protection of the French population.” As well as testing, they will also be sequencing positive test results to screen for new variants, according to the prime minister, Elisabeth Borne, potentially belying a mistrust of information coming out of China.
Over in the U.K., the government has no qualms about saying its decision is due to the “lack of comprehensive health information shared by China.” The health ministry said that if there is an improvement in the sharing of information and greater transparency “then temporary measures will be reviewed.”
Others have held back. For Austria, which has so far resisted pressure from countries like Italy to coalesce around bloc-wide travel measures, any restriction on China arrivals would be a massive blow. The Austrian government has said that China’s reopening “heralds the return of the most important Asian source market for the coming tourism seasons.”
This is “a clear example of how countries are trying to balance the economic consequences of COVID and public health concerns,” said Kuiper.
Didn’t EU countries agree to work together?
One of Europe’s key lessons from the pandemic was supposed to have been to respond collectively to health threats. It was so important to countries that the EU Health Union was established. But the disagreements over China show that the “default to knee-jerk national responses hasn’t entirely gone away,” said Paul Belcher, consultant in European public health and adviser to the European Public Health Alliance.
This disorderly response has raised questions over whether EU coordination has taken the right form. A central part of the EU Health Union is the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA), which was established precisely to enable Europe to respond quickly and appropriately during a health crisis. But it sits within the European Commission rather than independently — which has tied its hands somewhat, argued the European Policy Centre’s Kuiper.
“If HERA would have been an independent agency, they could have taken a stronger EU position concerning the need for travel restrictions for passengers coming from China,” Kuiper said. Without this leadership, countries have taken measures based on national motivations, she said.
Can we believe Chinese data?
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that in order to make a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation on the ground the WHO “needs more detailed information” | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images
Concerns about China’s transparency on COVID-19 are nothing new but as the country opens its borders, even the World Health Organization, which usually declines to point the finger at specific countries, has called for more information.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said that in order to make a comprehensive risk assessment of the situation on the ground the WHO “needs more detailed information.”
What China is doing is sharing genetic sequence data on the international database GISAID, “which is laudable,” said David Heymann, professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. “But they are not sharing the epidemiological data that will help understand the transmissibility and virulence that goes along with each sequence information and thus leaving a gap in our understanding,” he said.
Meanwhile, China isn’t pleased with the global response. “Some countries have implemented entry restrictions targeting only Chinese travelers. This has no scientific basis, and some practices are unacceptable,” a spokesperson said.
What does the science say?
“There is no scientific consensus on what to do, whether it makes sense to test everyone at arrival or not,” said Steven Van Gucht, head of the scientific service of viral diseases at the Belgian national institute for public and animal health. “The current discussion is a mixture of the scientific debate, but it’s also political.”
One of the major concerns is that new variants could emerge from China. Some scientists say this is unlikely as China is behind the curve on new variants. “Because China’s variants have been and gone in the rest of the world, the threat of these viruses coming back out of China and causing waves is pretty unlikely,” said virologist Tom Peacock of Imperial College, London. Initial sequencing out of Italy has indicated that there were no new COVID variants among Chinese visitors.
Koopmans said that — based on what has been shared so far — the variants circulating in China are not so different from what’s being seen in other parts of the world, but “there are no reasons to assume they are ‘less fit.’”
However, if a new variant did emerge, it’s unlikely travel restrictions would completelystop the spread. For Koopmans, travel restrictions “in the past have shown they are not very effective at delaying transmission of variants.”
One way of quickly spotting the arrival of new variants without targeting individual passengers is to test wastewater from toilets on airplanes or at airports, something that European Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides has called for — and which is on the table for Wednesday’s meeting.
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday the United States is confident that Finland and Sweden will be approved soon for membership in NATO despite ratification delays in allies Turkey and Hungary.
After meeting his Finnish and Swedish counterparts on Thursday, Blinken said both countries had proved their bona fides to join the alliance, notably in joining NATO in providing support to Ukraine to counter Russia’s invasion.
Nearly all of NATO’s 30 members have already approved Finland and Sweden’s applications to join the alliance, which were made after Russia launched its war in Ukraine. Turkey and Hungary are the only two to not yet have ratified Finland and Sweden’s accession.
“Both countries have taken significant, concrete actions to fulfill their commitments, including those related to the security concerns on the part of our ally, Turkey,” Blinken said. “As their membership process continues, the United States is fully committed to Finland and Sweden’s accession.”
But Blinken said he believed Turkey’s concerns, notably with Sweden over its past support for Kurdish groups that Ankara sees as a threat, would be overcome in the near future. Sweden this week extradited a convicted member of the Kurdish PKK militant group to Turkey. Hungary’s parliament is expected to vote on NATO expansion early next year.
“I’m confident that NATO will formally welcome Finland and Sweden as members soon,” he told reporters at a joint news conference at the State Department with Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom and Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto.
Blinken took the opportunity to say that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to go to war with Ukraine had backfired if he truly intended to push back on NATO expansion.
“As Sweden and Finland prepare to join NATO, we know that he’s failed at weakening our alliance,” he said. “Indeed, he’s only made NATO stronger and bigger.”
Haavisto said discussions with Turkey over the PKK have gone well so far, although there was still not a date for the Turkish parliament to consider the expansion.
“Of course, our hope is that this decision should come from Turkey rather sooner than later,” he said.
Billstrom said he would soon travel to Turkey to continue talks on the matter. “I hope that the outcome of that discussion will also bring us forward,” he said.
BERLIN — On a balmy September evening last year, an Azeri man carrying a Russian passport crossed the border from northern Cyprus into southern Cyprus. He traveled light: a pistol, a handful of bullets and a silencer.
It was going to be the perfect hit job.
Then, just as the man was about to step into a rental car and carry out his mission — which prosecutors say was to gun down five Jewish businessmen, including an Israeli billionaire — the police surrounded him.
The failed attack was just one of at least a dozen in Europe in recent years, some successful, others not, that have involved what security officials call “soft” targets, involving murder, abduction, or both. The operations were broadly similar in conception, typically relying on local hired guns. The most significant connection, intelligence officials say, is that the attacks were commissioned by the same contractor: the Islamic Republic of Iran.
In Cyprus, authorities believe Iran, which blames Israel for a series of assassinations of nuclear specialists working on the Iranian nuclear program, was trying to signal that it could strike back where Israel least expects it.
“This is a regime that bases its rule on intimidation and violence and espouses violence as a legitimate measure,” David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, said in rare public remarks in September, describing what he said was a recent uptick in violent plots. “It is not spontaneous. It is planned, systematic, state terrorism — strategic terrorism.”
He left out one important detail: It’s working.
That success has come in large part because Europe — the staging ground for most Iranian operations in recent years — has been afraid to make Tehran pay. Since 2015, Iran has carried out about a dozen operations in Europe, killing at least three people and abducting several others, security officials say.
“The Europeans have not just been soft on the Islamic Republic, they’ve been cooperating with them, working with them, legitimizing the killers,” Masih Alinejad, the Iranian-American author and women’s rights activist said, highlighting the continuing willingness of European heads of state to meet with Iran’s leaders.
Alinejad, one of the most outspoken critics of the regime, understands better than most just how far Iran’s leadership is willing to go after narrowly escaping both a kidnapping and assassination attempt.
“If the Islamic Republic doesn’t receive any punishment, is there any reason for them to stop taking hostages or kidnapping or killing?” she said, and then answered: “No.”
Method of first resort
Assassination has been the sharpest instrument in the policy toolbox ever since Brutus and his co-conspirators stabbed Julius Caesar repeatedly. Over the millennia, it’s also proved risky, often triggering disastrous unintended consequences (see the Roman Empire after Caesar’s killing or Europe after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo).
And yet, for both rogue states like Iran, Russia and North Korea, and democracies such as the United States and Israel — the attraction of solving a problem by removing it often proves irresistible.
Even so, there’s a fundamental difference between the two spheres: In the West, assassination remains a last resort (think Osama bin Laden); in authoritarian states, it’s the first (who can forget the 2017 assassination by nerve agent of Kim Jong-nam, the playboy half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, upon his arrival in Kuala Lumpur?). For rogue states, even if the murder plots are thwarted, the regimes still win by instilling fear in their enemies’ hearts and minds.
That helps explain the recent frequency. Over the course of a few months last year, Iran undertook a flurry of attacks from Latin America to Africa. In Colombia, police arrested two men in Bogotá on suspicion they were plotting to assassinate a group of Americans and a former Israeli intelligence officer for $100,000; a similar scene played out in Africa, as authorities in Tanzania, Ghana and Senegal arrested five men on suspicion they were planning attacks on Israeli targets, including tourists on safari; in February of this year, Turkish police disrupted an intricate Iranian plot to kill a 75-year-old Turkish-Israeli who owns a local aerospace company; and in November, authorities in Georgia said they foiled a plan hatched by Iran’s Quds Force to murder a 62-year-old Israeli-Georgian businessman in Tbilisi.
Whether such operations succeed or not, the countries behind them can be sure of one thing: They won’t be made to pay for trying. Over the years, the Russian and Iranian regimes have eliminated countless dissidents, traitors and assorted other enemies (real and perceived) on the streets of Paris, Berlin and even Washington, often in broad daylight. Others have been quietly abducted and sent home, where they faced sham trials and were then hanged for treason.
While there’s no shortage of criticism in the West in the wake of these crimes, there are rarely real consequences. That’s especially true in Europe, where leaders have looked the other way in the face of a variety of abuses in the hopes of reviving a deal to rein in Tehran’s nuclear weapons program and renewing business ties.
Unlike the U.S. and Israel, which have taken a hard line on Iran ever since the mullahs came to power in 1979, Europe has been more open to the regime. Many EU officials make no secret of their ennui with America’s hard-line stance vis-à-vis Iran.
“Iran wants to wipe out Israel, nothing new about that,” the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told POLITICO in 2019 when he was still Spanish foreign minister. “You have to live with it.”
History of assassinations
There’s also nothing new about Iran’s love of assassination.
Indeed, many scholars trace the word “assassin” to Hasan-i Sabbah, a 12th-century Persian missionary who founded the “Order of Assassins,” a brutal force known for quietly eliminating adversaries.
Hasan’s spirit lived on in the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the hardline cleric who led Iran’s Islamic revolution and took power in 1979. One of his first victims as supreme leader was Shahriar Shafiq, a former captain in the Iranian navy and the nephew of the country’s exiled shah. He was shot twice in the head in December 1979 by a masked gunman outside his mother’s home on Rue Pergolèse in Paris’ fashionable 16th arrondissement.
In the years that followed, Iranian death squads took out members and supporters of the shah and other opponents across Europe, from France to Sweden, Germany, Switzerland and Austria. In most instances, the culprits were never caught. Not that the authorities really needed to look.
In 1989, for example, Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou, a leader of Iran’s Kurdish minority who supported autonomy for his people, was gunned down along with two associates by Iranian assassins in an apartment in Vienna.
The gunmen took refuge in the Iranian embassy. They were allowed to leave Austria after Iran’s ambassador to Vienna hinted to the government that Austrians in his country might be in danger if the killers were arrested. One of the men alleged to have participated in the Vienna operation would later become one of his country’s most prominent figures: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president from 2005 until 2013.
Not even the bad publicity surrounding that case tempered the regime’s killing spree. In the years that followed, the body count only increased. Some of the murders were intentionally gruesome in order to send a clear message.
Fereydoun Farrokhzad, for example, a dissident Iranian popstar who found exile in Germany, was killed in his home in Bonn in 1992. The killers cut off his genitals, his tongue and beheaded him.
His slaying was just one of dozens in what came to be known as Iran’s “chain murders,” a decade-long killing spree in which the government targeted artists and dissidents at home and abroad. Public outcry over the murder of a trio of prominent writers in 1998, including a husband and wife, forced the regime hard-liners behind the killings to retreat. But only for a time.
Illustration by Joan Wong for POLITICO
Then, as now, the dictatorship’s rationale for such killings has been to protect itself.
“The highest priority of the Iranian regime is internal stability,” a Western intelligence source said. “The regime views its opponents inside and outside Iran as a significant threat to this stability.”
Much of that paranoia is rooted in the Islamic Republic’s own history. Before returning to Iran in 1979, Khomeini spent nearly 15 years in exile, including in Paris, an experience that etched the power of exile into the Islamic Republic’s mythology. In other words, if Khomeini managed to lead a revolution from abroad, the regime’s enemies could too.
Bargaining chips
Given Europe’s proximity to Iran, the presence of many Iranian exiles there and the often-magnanimous view of some EU governments toward Tehran, Europe is a natural staging ground for the Islamic Republic’s terror.
The regime’s intelligence service, known as MOIS, has built operational networks across the Continent trained to abduct and murder through a variety of means, Western intelligence officials say.
As anti-regime protests have erupted in Iran with increasing regularity since 2009, the pace of foreign operations aimed at eliminating those the regime accuses of stoking the unrest has increased.
While several of the smaller-scale assassinations — such as the 2015 hit in the Netherlands on Iranian exile Mohammad-Reza Kolahi — have succeeded, Tehran’s more ambitious operations have gone awry.
The most prominent example involved a 2018 plot to blow up the annual Paris meeting of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an alliance of exile groups seeking to oust the regime. Among those attending the gathering, which attracted tens of thousands, was Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and then-U.S. President Donald Trump’s lawyer.
Following a tip from American intelligence, European authorities foiled the plot, arresting six, including a Vienna-based Iranian diplomat who delivered a detonation device and bombmaking equipment to an Iranian couple tasked with carrying out an attack on the rally. Authorities observed the handover at a Pizza Hut in Luxembourg and subsequently arrested the diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, on the German autobahn as he sped back to Vienna, where he enjoyed diplomatic immunity.
Assadi was convicted on terror charges in Belgium last year and sentenced to 20 years is prison. He may not even serve two.
The diplomat’s conviction marked the first time an Iranian operative had been held accountable for his actions by a European court since the Islamic revolution. But Belgium’s courage didn’t last long.
In February, Iran arrested Belgian aid worker Olivier Vandecasteele on trumped-up espionage charges and placed him into solitary confinement at the infamous Evin prison in Tehran. Vandecasteele headed the Iran office of the Norwegian Refugee Council, an aid group.
Following reports that Vandecasteele’s health was deteriorating and tearful public pleas from his family, the Belgian government — ignoring warnings from Washington and other governments that it was inviting further kidnappings — relented and laid the groundwork for an exchange to trade Assadi for Vandecasteele. The swap could happen any day.
“Right now, French, Swedish, German, U.K., U.S., Belgian citizens, all innocents, are in Iranian prisons,” said Alinejad, the Iranian women’s rights campaigner.
“They are being used like bargaining chips,” she said. “It works.”
Amateur hour
Even so, the messiness surrounding the Assadi case might explain why most of Iran’s recent operations have been carried out by small-time criminals who usually have no idea who they’re working for. The crew in last year’s Cyprus attack, for example, included several Pakistani delivery boys. While that gives Iran plausible deniability if the perpetrators get caught, it also increases the likelihood that the operations will fail.
“It’s very amateur, but an amateur can be difficult to trace,” one intelligence official said. “They’re also dispensable. They get caught, no one cares.”
Iranian intelligence has had more success in luring dissidents away from Europe to friendly third countries where they are arrested and then sent back to Iran. That’s what happened to Ruhollah Zam, a journalist critical of the regime who had been living in Paris. The circumstances surrounding his abduction remain murky, but what is known is that someone convinced him to travel to Iraq in 2019, where he was arrested and extradited to Iran. He was convicted for agitating against the regime and hanged in December of 2020.
One could be forgiven for thinking that negotiations between Iran and world powers over renewing its dormant nuclear accord (which offered Tehran sanctions relief in return for supervision of its nuclear program) would have tamed its covert killing program. In fact, the opposite occurred.
In July of 2021, U.S. authorities exposed a plot by Iranian operatives to kidnap Alinejad from her home in Brooklyn as part of an elaborate plan that involved taking her by speedboat to a tanker in New York Harbor before spiriting her off to Venezuela, an Iranian ally, and then on to the Islamic Republic.
A year later, police disrupted what the FBI believed was an attempt to assassinate Alinejad, arresting a man with an assault rifle and more than 60 rounds of ammunition who had knocked on her door.
American authorities also say Tehran planned to avenge the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, the head of its feared paramilitary Quds Force who was the target of a U.S. drone strike in 2020, by seeking to kill former National Security Adviser John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State, among other officials.
Through it all, neither the U.S. nor Europe gave up hope for a nuclear deal.
“From the point of view of the Iranians, this is proof that it is possible to separate and maintain a civilized discourse on the nuclear agreement with a deceptive Western appearance, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to plan terrorist acts against senior American officials and citizens,” Barnea, the Mossad chief said. “This artificial separation will continue for as long as the world allows it to.”
Kremlin’s killings
Some hope the growing outrage in Western societies over Iran’s crackdown on peaceful protestors could be the spark that convinces Europe to get tough on Iran. But Europe’s handling of its other favorite rogue actor — Russia — suggests otherwise.
Long before Russia’s annexation of Crimea, much less its all-out war against Ukraine, Moscow, similar to Iran, undertook an aggressive campaign against its enemies abroad and made little effort to hide it.
Russian police investigators stand near the body of killed Russian opposition leader and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov | Sasha Mordovets/Getty Images
The most prominent victim was Alexander Litvinenko. A former KGB officer like Vladimir Putin, Litvinenko had defected to the U.K., where he joined other exiles opposed to Putin. In 2006, he was poisoned in London by Russian intelligence with polonium-210, a radioactive isotope that investigators concluded was mixed into his tea. The daring operation signaled Moscow’s return to the Soviet-era practice of artful assassination.
Litvinenko died a painful death within weeks, but not before he blamed Putin for killing him, calling the Russian president “barbaric.”
“You may succeed in silencing me, but that silence comes at a price,” Litvinenko said from his deathbed.
In the end, however, the only one who really paid a price was Litvinenko. Putin continued as before and despite deep tensions in the U.K.’s relationship with Russia over the assassination, it did nothing to halt the transformation of the British capital into what has come to be known as “Londongrad,” a playground and second home for Russia’s Kremlin-backed oligarchs, who critics say use the British financial and legal systems to hide and launder their money.
Litvinenko’s killing was remarkable both for its brutality and audacity. If Putin was willing to take out an enemy on British soil with a radioactive element, what else was he capable of?
It didn’t take long to find out. In the months and years that followed, the bodies started to pile up. Critical journalists, political opponents and irksome oligarchs in the prime of life began dropping like flies.
Europe didn’t blink.
Angela Merkel, then German chancellor, visited Putin in his vacation residence in Sochi just weeks after the murders of Litvinenko and investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya and said … nothing.
Even after there was no denying Putin’s campaign to eradicate anyone who challenged him, European leaders kept coming in the hope of deepening economic ties.
Neither the assassination of prominent Putin critic Boris Nemtsov just steps away from the Kremlin in 2015, nor the poisoning of a KGB defector and his daughter in the U.K. in 2018 and of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020 with nerve agents disabused European leaders of the notion that Putin was someone they could do business with and, more importantly, control.
‘Anything can happen’
Just how comfortable Russia felt about using Europe as a killing field became clear in the summer of 2019. Around noon on a sunny August day, a Russian assassin approached Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen with Georgian nationality, and shot him twice in the head with a 9mm pistol. The murder took place in a park located just a few hundred meters from Germany’s interior ministry and several witnesses saw the killer flee. He was nabbed within minutes as he was changing his clothes and trying to dispose of his weapon and bike in a nearby canal.
It later emerged that Khangoshvili, a Chechen fighter who had sought asylum in Germany, was on a Russian kill list. Russian authorities considered him a terrorist and accused him of participating in a 2010 attack on the Moscow subway that killed nearly 40 people.
In December of 2019, Putin denied involvement in Khangoshvili’s killing. Sort of. Sitting next to French President Emmanuel Macron, Merkel and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following a round of talks aimed at resolving the conflict in Ukraine, the Russian referred to him as a “very barbaric man with blood on his hands.”
“I don’t know what happened to him,” Putin said. “Those are opaque criminal structures where anything can happen.”
Early on October 19 of last year, Berlin police discovered a dead man on the sidewalk outside the Russian embassy. He was identified as Kirill Zhalo, a junior diplomat at the embassy. He was also the son of General Major Alexey Zhalo, the deputy head of a covert division in Russia’s FSB security service in Moscow that ordered Khangoshvili’s killing. Western intelligence officials believe that Kirill Zhalo, who arrived in Berlin just weeks before the hit on the Chechen, was involved in the operation and was held responsible for its exposure.
The Russian embassy called his death “a tragic accident,” suggesting he had committed suicide by jumping out of a window. Russia refused to allow German authorities to perform an autopsy (such permission is required under diplomatic protocols) and sent his body back to Moscow.
Less than two months later, the Russian hitman who killed Khangoshvili, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Russia recently tried to negotiate his release, floating the possibility of exchanging American basketball player Brittney Griner and another U.S. citizen they have in custody. Washington rejected the idea.
The war in Ukraine offers profound lessons about the inherent risks of coddling dictators.
Though Germany, with its thirst for Russian gas, is often criticized in that regard, it was far from alone in Europe. Europe’s insistence on giving Putin the benefit of the doubt over the years in the face of his crimes convinced him that he would face few consequences in the West for his invasion of Ukraine. That’s turned out to be wrong; but who could blame the Russian leader for thinking it?
Iran presents Europe with an opportunity to learn from that history and confront Tehran before it’s too late. But there are few signs it’s prepared to really get tough. EU officials say they are “considering” following Washington’s lead and designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a vast military organization that also controls much of the Iran’s economy, as a terror organization. Last week, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock spearheaded an effort at the United Nations to launch a formal investigation into Iran’s brutal crackdown against the ongoing protests in the country.
Yet even as the regime in Tehran snuffs out enemies and races to fulfil its goal of building both nuclear weapons and missiles that can reach any point on the Continent, some EU leaders appear blind to the wider context as they pursue the elusive renewal of the nuclear accord.
“It is still there,” Borrell said recently of the deal he has taken a leading role in trying to resurrect. “It has nothing to do with other issues, which certainly concern us.”
The Chinese telecoms giant is pushing out its pedigreed Western lobbyists, retrenching its European operations and putting its ambitions for global leadership on ice.
The reasons for doing this have little to do with the company’s commercial potential — Huawei is still able to offer cutting-edge technology at lower costs than its competitors — and everything to do with politics, according to interviews with more than 20 current and former staff and strategic advisers to the company.
Pressed by the United States and increasingly shunned on a Continent it once considered its most strategic overseas market, Huawei is pivoting back toward the Chinese market, focusing its remaining European attention on the few countries — Germany and Spain, but also Hungary — still willing to play host to a company widely viewed in the West as a security risk.
“It’s no longer a company floating on globalization,” said one Huawei official. “It’s a company saving its ass on the domestic market.” Like most of the other Huawei employees interviewed for this article, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe the company’s travails.
Huawei’s predicament was summed up by the company’s founder Ren Zhengfei in a speech to executives at the company’s Shenzhen headquarters in July. He laid out the trifecta of challenges the company has faced over the last three years: hostility from Washington; disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic; and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which upended global supply chains and heightened European concerns about over-dependence on countries like China.
“The environment we faced in 2019 was different from the one we face today,” Ren said in his speech, which wasn’t made public but was seen by POLITICO. “Don’t assume that we will have a brighter future.”
“We previously had an ideal for globalization striving to serve all humanity,” he added. “What is our ideal today? Survival!”
‘The moment globalist Huawei died’
As the company goes into hibernation in the West, it’s sidelining or pushing out the senior Western managers it hired just a few years ago to counter the U.S. assault on its business.
“Westerners were listened to,” one Huawei official working in Europe said. “This is no longer the case … No one is listening.”
Huawei’s Brussels office — once a key hub for the company to lobby against European restrictions on its kit — has been folded fully into European management, now headquartered in Düsseldorf.
The office this summer lost its head of communications, Phil Herd, a former BBC journalist who joined the company in October 2019 at the start of its pushback against political pressure in Europe. The office has also recently lost at least three other key staff members handling lobbying and policy. (Tony) Jin Yong, the chief representative to the Brussels institutions, is now in charge of government affairs across Western Europe and spends most of his time in the Düsseldorf office.
Employees sits in a meeting room inside Huawei Technologies Co. Cyber Security Transparency Centre in Brussels | Yuriko Nakao/Bloomberg via Getty Images
In London, Huawei’s U.K. Director of Communications Paul Harrison left his role in October, with other officials leaving around the same time. Harrison joined Huawei from a senior news editing job at U.K. broadcaster Sky News in 2019.
In Paris, the company’s Marketing and Communications Director Stéphane Curtelin left his role in September, the local magazine Challenges reported. Before then, the Paris office lost its Head of Government and Security Affairs Vincent de Crayencour, a veteran French cybersecurity official with extensive government experience who joined Huawei in 2020. The company’s Chief Representative of the Paris Office Linda Han also left her role before the summer.
In Warsaw, the company’s local PR manager Szymon Solnica departed Huawei in September. “The crises I’ve dealt with on a daily basis in recent years were colossal ones,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing his departure.
Huawei officials speaking in authorized interviews dismissed the departures as regular turnover. “There is a fluctuation always in companies, not only in Huawei … Some people are leaving and some other people are coming,” a spokesperson for Huawei Europe said in an authorized interview last week.
But others in the company privately acknowledged the departures reflect a radical shift that began in September 2021.
“The moment Meng got off the plane was the moment the globalist Huawei died,” one official said.
As the daughter of the founder — and the presumptive heir to the company’s leadership — Meng had played a key role in the legal and public relations fight between Huawei and Washington. Since returning from Canada, she reached Huawei’s top ranks as deputy chairwoman at the company’s headquarters and triggered a corporate reshuffle at the top.
(Catherine) Chen Lifang, who led the firm’s global communications department during the height of American pressure, was moved off the board of directors and into a role on the supervisory board.
The global comms department is now represented on Huawei’s board by Peng Bo, known in Europe as Vincent Peng, the former president of Huawei’s Western Europe region. Peng’s ascendency is part of the company’s efforts to move its European operations closer to Shenzhen.
The agenda to streamline public affairs in Europe is led by Guo Aibing — a former journalist for Bloomberg News in Hong Kong. Guo was parachuted into Europe and is executing cuts and consolidation of the firm’s lobbying and communication across the Continent.
The company is also restructuring its activities in Europe. The company’s plans — previously unannounced — are to consolidate the entire Continent into just one area of operations, headquartered in Düsseldorf.
Hampers and gifts at the new Huawei store in Barcelona | Paco Freire/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Huawei currently divides the Continent into two markets: Western Europe, run from Düsseldorf; and Eastern Europe and the Nordics, with a top executive based in Warsaw.
The restructuring “will help us to bring more synergies within the whole European business operation; will bring more value more directly to our customers here in Europe,” said the Huawei Europe spokesperson.
Broadly, the company’s staffing levels, currently around 12,000 people, will remain “stable,” the spokesperson said.
The company is also retrenching elsewhere, according to Ren. “We will give up markets in some countries,” the firm’s founder said in his speech this summer. “For example, we will give up markets in the Five Eyes countries and India.”
The “Five Eyes” refers to an intelligence-sharing arrangement between the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. All five countries have banned or are in the process of banning Huawei and other Chinese companies from their critical infrastructure because of security concerns.
Instead, Huawei is concentrating on its domestic market, which accounts for a large proportion of global 5G and where Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia are struggling to maintain market share.
Trump effect
Huawei’s strategic retreat is remarkable for a company that until recently poured millions of euros into lobbyists and PR campaigns in an effort to expand and maintain its European foothold.
Throughout most of the 2010s, Huawei was considered by many in Europe to be a friendly face among the tech firms cuddling up to power. Peculiar in its approaches, yes, but cordial and — to many — beneficial to the Continent’s interests because it increased competition and cut the price tag on the next generation of telecoms networks.
The company became known for its generous gift bags, often including a Huawei phone, and lavish parties in glamorous venues featuring fancy buffets and dance performances — like its reception celebrating the Chinese new year at the Concert Noble in Brussels.
Glitzy bashes later became part of a supercharged response to political headwinds from Washington over concerns that the Chinese-built telecoms infrastructure poses a serious security and spying risk.
Those headwinds started blowing under U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration but reached hurricane force following Donald Trump’s election. By 2019, the company was under American sanctions, with Ren’s daughter Meng in Canada awaiting the result of a U.S. extradition request.
Keith Krach, a former under-secretary of state in the Trump administration, recalled how Washington was “hitting the panic button.”
He recalled asking European ministers about their relationship with China. “And they’d say, ‘Well, they’re an important trading partner’ and all that. And then they looked at both sides of the room, there’s nobody in the room, and whispered to me: ‘But we don’t trust them.’”
To navigate the geopolitical storm, the firm offered six-figure salaries to top operators across the Western world. It assembled a high-caliber team of former Western journalists and politicians with direct lines to places of power like the Elysée and Westminster, POLITICO learned from several who received such offers.
Initially, the gambit seemed to work.
Huawei’s message — that the U.S. itself posed spying risks and that Washington’s aggression was driven by economic interests — gained traction, particularly in places like Germany, where Trump proved a useful foil.
“The case that Trump made was almost more counterproductive,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. Huawei also received support from big telco operators, who saw value in the cheap equipment combined with responsive customer service.
By the beginning of 2020, Huawei seemed to have weathered U.S. calls for all-out bans. On January 28, then-U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave the company the green light to build part of the country’s 5G infrastructure. Just a day later, the European Union presented a plan to shift away from over-reliance on Chinese vendors but left the door open for Huawei to lobby national governments to keep market access for its technology.
Keith Krach said the U.S. was hitting the panic button | Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit
Then came the pandemic. With the coronavirus originating from Wuhan killing thousands, Trump ramped up his anti-China broadside in May 2020 with fresh sanctions against Huawei that basically cut off their supply of semiconductors.
By July, the U.K.’s Johnson completely reversed course and announced all Huawei equipment would have to be stripped from British 5G networks, even as the government estimated the move would delay the rollout of the technology and add half a billion pounds in costs.
Throughout 2020 and 2021, European governments including France, Sweden, Romania, the Baltic countries, Belgium and Denmark either banned Huawei equipment in key parts of the country’s 5G network or required its operators to wean themselves off its kit in the medium term.
Huawei’s smartphone business — once on its way to challenging Apple and Samsung in Europe — meanwhile was crushed by U.S. sanctions that cut its devices off from Android, the Google-owned operating system.
Putin changes the calculus
These setbacks were painful, but they weren’t yet considered fatal. Trump’s election loss and the ebbing of the pandemic in Europe seemed to offer an opportunity for a counteroffensive.
At the beginning of 2021, Huawei’s Brussels lobbyists were still optimistic that Europe’s hunger for cheap, speedy 5G installation would win out over security concerns. They even had meetings lined up in the European Parliament to make their case.
Those meetings got canceled on February 24, the day Putin launched his all-out invasion of Ukraine. For many in Europe, the risk-benefit calculation regarding Huawei had changed overnight.
“The biggest change I’ve seen came from the realization that we’re dependent on Russian gas — especially in Germany,” said John Strand, a telecoms analyst who has tracked Huawei’s market impact in Europe for the past years. “It begs the question: What’s worse, being dependent on Russian gas or on Chinese telecoms infrastructure?”
Under President Joe Biden, pressure on Huawei only increased, and Washington’s warnings now come from a more sympathetic messenger. In October, the European Commission issued a fresh warning against using Huawei technology to underpin 5G networks, and the U.K. government reaffirmed its requirement to strip Huawei equipment from British telecoms infrastructure.
The company’s travails have knocked the legs from underneath its lobbying efforts — and eaten into its market share.
Before the pandemic, the company regularly hosted European politicians, journalists and business leaders at its Shenzhen headquarters, a massive campus with buildings in different European architectural styles showcasing its global ambitions.
China’s zero-COVID policy made that impossible.
The company for years was the biggest spender at the annual Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the world’s largest telecoms industry event. This year, the company’s on-the-ground presence was a pale imitation of previous showings, which it used to launch new products with razzle-dazzle and astronomical marketing budgets.
But perhaps no high-flying event illustrates the extent of the turnaround than the World Economic Forum in Davos, which once counted Huawei among its main sponsors. On January 21, 2020, just a week before Johnson sided with Huawei over Trump, Ren was onstage at the alpine resort, discussing the future of AI with “Sapiens” author Yuval Noah Harari.
The next year, the global gathering of political power players and financial titans in Davos was, thanks to the pandemic, canceled. When it reconvened in the summer of 2022, Huawei top chiefs missed the gabfest. Under Beijing’s zero-COVID policy, they couldn’t leave China.
Geopolitics hits the balance sheets
The firm still has a solid share in some big national markets, among them Germany and Spain, industry analysts say.
A 2020 study by Strand Consult — still the most comprehensive public overview of Huawei’s footprint in Europe — showed just how deeply the Chinese firm was ingrained in European markets: In 15 out of 31 countries Strand studied, more than half of all 4G radio access network equipment (RAN) came from Chinese vendors.
But in many of these markets, authorities have imposed measures forcing operators to phase out or at least significantly limit the use of “high-risk vendors” — commonly understood to be state-affiliated Huawei and the Chinese military-linked telecom ZTE — in coming years.
These are beginning to bite.
In the early race to implement 5G, Huawei outpaced its rivals in Europe. However, as of early last year — right as European officials were changing direction on 5G security — Sweden’s Ericsson overtook Huawei in market share of new European sales of radio access networks, according to proprietary figures compiled by boutique telecoms research firm Dell’Oro, shared with POLITICO by an industry official. Radio access networks make up the largest chunk of network investment and include base stations and antennas.
The latest update, from the second quarter of 2022, showed Ericsson at 41 percent, Huawei at 28 percent and Finnish Nokia at 27 percent. This includes new sales of base stations and antennas across 3G, 4G and 5G — some of which is part of running contracts with operators.
For 5G RAN specifically, the shift is even clearer: Huawei lost its initial position as market leader at the start of the rollout; it now provides 22 percent of sales, with Ericsson at 42 percent and Nokia at 32 percent in Europe, Dell’Oro estimated.
Industry analysts say Huawei’s move to consolidate and scrap key public affairs roles could hurt the company in countries where it still has skin in the game: Most importantly, Germany, Italy and Spain. In these large European markets, governments have been slow to impose measures on “high-risk vendors” — and particularly slow and soft in enforcing them.
Europe’s largest operators, like Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone, also have running contracts with Huawei, meaning the Chinese firm is at least still providing maintenance and keeping networks running — and potentially still supporting parts of the 5G rollout.
But in Germany, at least, Olaf Scholz’s new government has taken a more critical stance on Chinese technology. This month, Economy Minister Robert Habeck — who has taken a hawkish approach to China — formally blocked Chinese investors from buying a German chip plant over potential security threats.
Budapest nights
Huawei, of course, hasn’t completely given up on Europe.
Those still giving the company face time in Brussels this summer were presented with a weighty gift bag.
In addition to glossy hardcovers from the company’s PR operation — with titles like “Choose a Smarter Future: A contribution to Europe’s next digital policy” and “Ten Years of Connecting Europe” — the bag contained a memoir by Frédéric Pierucci. A former executive with the French infrastructure manufacturer Alstom, Pierucci was arrested by the FBI on bribery charges in 2013 — just as the American conglomerate General Electric was negotiating to take over Alstom’s nuclear operations.
Titled “The American Trap,” the book argues that its author was a hostage in Washington’s secret economic war on its allies.
“One after the other, some of the world’s largest companies are being actively destabilized to the benefit of the U.S., in acts of economic sabotage that seem to be the beginning of what’s to come…” reads the publisher’s summary.
It’s a narrative with deep appeal inside the company, and one that creates a natural rapport with other governments that see themselves as standing up to liberal superpowers. As Huawei searches for friends on the Continent, Hungary — increasingly in opposition to the rest of the EU on how to engage with China and Russia — remains a vocal ally, and the company is leaning into that relationship.
This year, in September, Huawei’s CEE & Nordic region unit held its annual Innovation Day event in Hungary, home to the company’s largest European logistics center.
On the banks of the Danube, tech entrepreneurs schmoozed in English and Hungarian, with some Chinese and German mixed in, over made-to-order coffee and plentiful canapés at Budapest’s cupola-topped Castle Garden Bazaar.
Inside the conference hall, bilingual hosts teed up mini-documentaries about protecting local salmon breeds in Norway and preventing floods in Hungary. Small business execs highlighted drones that monitor crops in Austria and potential forest fires in Greece, all on Huawei 5G networks.
With simultaneous translation available in Hungarian, Huawei featured research it commissioned from the Economist Intelligence Unit reiterating Europe’s laggard status on 5G use and implementation. It was an implicit reminder that dismantling Huawei’s infrastructure will have real consequences.
But the company also highlighted what it hopes will be a bigger part of its portfolio: products less likely to inspire security concerns, like inverters for solar panels.
Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó said Hungary will stand firm against international pressure | Laszlo Balogh/Getty images
“Huawei is committed to the vision of a green Europe,” said Jeff Wang, the company’s current head of public affairs and comms, in a video address to the Budapest crowd, where he noted the 10 years he spent working on the Continent.
For weeks leading up to the event, Huawei officials were pushing to get Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to speak. While that didn’t pan out, Orbán sent one of his top lieutenants — Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Péter Szijjártó — to deliver a message.
“We are not going to discriminate [against] any investing company because of their country of origin,” Szijjártó said. Budapest will stand firm against “international pressure” he added, to block “the presence of Huawei here in Hungary.”
Radoslaw Kedzia, Huawei’s vice president for the CEE & Nordic region (and the first non-Chinese to achieve CEO status inside the company, in the Czech Republic in 2015), said there was no political calculation behind the double-down in Hungary.
“Let’s not demonize us, OK? We are like any other company,” Kedzia said.
If a business assessment offers the “prospect of the next 10-20 years of stable operation, then you think it is good to concentrate some of your resources in that particular country,” he added.
Likewise, the European spokesperson insisted, Huawei communicates with every country in the “same way, on the same level.” The company focuses on technology and does “not engage,” he said, in “political games.”
One thing is certain: When it comes to the great European game, Huawei has lost — and sent all its political players home.
Peter O’Brien, Elisa Braun, Stuart Lau and Matt Honeycombe-Foster contributed reporting.
