Tag: eu

EBA designates Circle’s USDC as the EU’s first ‘significant’ e-money token

The European Banking Authority said Wednesday that it has classified USDC as a “significant” e-money token under the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation, making it the first of the 45 EMTs notified in the bloc to meet that threshold.

According to an official statement, the EBA will now take direct responsibility for supervising USDC’s own funds, reserve assets, liquidity requirements, and recovery and redemption plans from Nov. 12. These areas are currently overseen by France’s Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR), but the regulator will still handle governance, qualifying holdings, fit and proper assessment, and conflicts of interest after the EBA takes over.

The EBA also said it signed a memorandum of understanding with the New York State Department of Financial Services, which oversees Circle’s New York-regulated operations. The MoU will facilitate cross-border oversight and information exchanges between the two authorities.

USDC is the world’s second-largest stablecoin, with a supply of nearly $73 billion, according to The Block’s data dashboard. Tether’s USDT leads the market with $184 billion in circulation, against a total supply of $294 billion for dollar-pegged stablecoins.

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The European Union Wants To Punish People for Their Speech—Without Even a Trial

The European Union claims that “the fundamental right to freedom of expression” only applies to journalists “acting in good faith,” and that authorities do not have to give due process before freezing people’s bank accounts, as these sanctions are “temporary and are not criminal in nature,” according to a legal letter shared by a sanctioned journalist.

Last year, the European Union blacklisted 21 people for allegedly spreading Russian propaganda, banning them from doing business in Europe. One of them, Hüseyin Doğru, was falsely listed as a Turkish citizen living in Istanbul. In fact, Doğru is a German journalist in Berlin, making him the first European citizen on European soil to be sanctioned this way.

It was like being sentenced to “civil death,” Doğru told American journalist Chris Hedges. He was banned from holding a job in Europe or having a European bank account, and authorities have restricted Doğru to a €506 ($567) per month allowance from his own money. “The sanctions are designed for people outside of Europe, so they don’t really know how that should function with me, because I’m a European citizen and I’m living in Europe,” Doğru told Hedges.

Last month, the civil libertarian Wau Holland Foundation hired lawyers to contest the sanctions against Doğru. And earlier this month, the Council of the European Union sent a response letter, which Doğru shared on social media, promising to escalate the case to the E.U. General Court. Although the council conceded to Doğru that he is not a Turkish citizen living in Turkey, it still insisted on the authority to punish him for his speech.

The council quoted a 2022 court case between the Russian news outlet RT and several European countries: “The protection of the right of the media and, more particularly, of journalists to impart information on issues of general interest is subject to the proviso that they are acting in good faith and on an accurate factual basis and provide ‘reliable and precise’ information in accordance with the ethics of journalism.”

Doğru’s lawyers insisted that he should be treated as innocent until proven guilty. But the council responded that sanctions fall short of a criminal punishment, so any complaint about a “violation of the presumption of innocence is therefore unfounded.” In other words, because he is not accused of a crime, Doğru has fewer rights than a criminal suspect.

“People need to understand sanctions are an extrajudicial measure. They’re extrajudicial. There’s no court. There is no hearing, no evidence, there is no sentence by the court, nothing,” Doğru told Hedges. “When you’re sanctioned, you are not informed….The day when I was sanctioned, me and my wife, my wife was pregnant back then, we went to the pharmacy to buy medicine for her, and her cards did not work.”

The original blacklisting decision accuses Doğru of supporting “actions by the Government of the Russian Federation which undermine or threaten stability and security in the Union” by spreading “false information on politically controversial subjects with the intent of creating ethnic, political and religious discord amongst its predominantly German target audience.”

Doğru and his wife, British journalist Lizzie Phelan, previously worked at the Russian-funded publication Redfish. A few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he split off to create a new website called red.media, insisting to The Left Berlin that “we are not Russian. We are not Kremlin. red.media is not funded by Russia or any other state.” In the same interview, Doğru called Russia an “imperialist” regime.

But in September 2024, a Biden administration “fact sheet” on Russian propaganda offhandedly mentioned red.media, citing a hit piece on Doğru by the German newspaper Tagesspiegel. Doğru told Hedges that the U.S. fact sheet created a circular logic in German media: “They said red.media is Russian because [U.S. Secretary of State Antony] Blinken said so. But what they never said is that Blinken is referring to your articles where you never say it like that. You say there is a suspicion, it might be so.”

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Germany Approves EU Digital Identity Wallet Law

Germany is getting its version of the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet, as the country’s parliament (Bundestag) has passed the Digital Identities Act on October 15.

The law serves as the national legal framework for the introduction of the digital ID wallet, that the EU’s official digital ID scheme will be implemented with, and that Germany will launch on January 2, 2027, under the name d-you.

What the bill does is make it easier to exchange biometric data between the authorities in charge of passports and ID cards; it lowers the age at which people can use online ID from 16 to 13; and it gives citizens the option to refuse the biometric photo.

One of the issues was the age at which children can start using the digital ID, with the Left rejecting the lowering of the age to 13, “because it ultimately amounts to preparation for introducing a social media ban for young people, which it also rejects.”

EU rules say that very large online platforms are under obligation to accept the wallet, while the committee report said that the German law “extends the acceptance obligations” to situations with no cross-border element.

Reclaim The Net has previously reported about the plan of the Social Democrats (SPD) to make verification with the EUDI Wallet mandatory for social media users aged 16 and above. SPD Secretary General Tim Klüssendorf has been quoted as saying that “We are currently not meeting the state’s obligation to protect” and that workarounds “such as via a VPN tunnel” should not be possible.

The EU, however, says that the wallet will be voluntary.

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“Replacing Europe”: Undercover Film Follows The Money Behind Europe’s Taxpayer-Funded Mass Migration Pipeline

A new documentary from investigative outlet Muckraker traces the migrant route from West Africa through Spain and France to Britain, examining what the outlet describes as a network sustained by taxpayer-funded aid programs, NGOs, and even Western governments.

The 47-minute film, “Replacing Europe,” draws on months of reporting and undercover footage to investigate the logistics and top NGO players behind the nation-killing mass migration into Europe.

“The entire migration is a game,” says Sheikh M. Kromah, identified by Muckraker as a worker for the UN’s International Organization for Migration. He alleges that Spain has a financial incentive to maintain arrivals because reducing them could jeopardize EU funding.

Muckraker claims that publicly funded institutions help sustain the migration flows that European governments publicly promise to control. Its interviews raise questions about oversight, spending incentives and the boundary between humanitarian assistance and facilitating illegal alien border crossings into Europe.

The broader concern is whether mass migration, malassimilation, and soaring public costs of the European welfare state that cater to migrants could compound fiscal pressure and political instability.

Here is Muckraker’s report:

A UN migration worker admits Spain won’t stop the boats because the EU money is too good. A Catholic NGO pulling in €225 million a year moves arrivals to the mainland and pays them to stay. Activists paint a trail to the French border. And the journalists who filmed it were attacked and nearly arrested.

Investigative outlet Muckraker spent two months following the West African migration route from start to finish: from the smuggling hub of Nouadhibou, Mauritania, to Spain’s Canary Islands, across mainland Spain and France, and finally to the English Channel and the United Kingdom. The result is a new documentary, REPLACING EUROPE.

The film’s central finding is that the movement of tens of thousands of illegal immigrants into Europe is not chaos. It is a managed system, run by smugglers, publicly funded NGOs, activist networks and governments, several of which admit on camera that they profit from it.

Among the documentary’s findings:

  • A worker for the UN’s International Organization for Migration says Spain deliberately lets the boats keep coming so it keeps receiving EU money.
  • ACCEM, a Catholic NGO that took in about €225 million in 2024, mostly from the Spanish state, moves arrivals from the Canary Islands to the mainland, houses them in camps and pays them a monthly allowance.
  • Migrants are flown by the hundreds from Gran Canaria to Madrid.
  • In the Spanish border town of Irun, an activist group has painted a trail of footsteps guiding migrants past police and into France, where a city-run shelter takes in people with no papers.
  • The UN’s own migration agency says the priority should be “facilitating, not restricting” migration.

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Zelensky Warns That 20 Million Ukrainians Would Pour Into EU If Russia Wins

Is that a threat?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told EU leaders on Friday that if his country loses the war to Russia, as many as 20 million Ukrainians could be forced to flee to Europe.

Such numbers would make the 2015 European migrant crisis look like a walk in the park.

“Russia is killing us,” Zelensky said while speaking at a summit of European Union leaders. “They [Russia] don’t want to stop” and Ukrainian are being pushed out of their homeland, he said.

“What will happen if we fall? I don’t know, 20 million Ukrainians will come to Europe,” Zelensky declared.

Earlier this week, Zelensky indicated he felt ‘betrayed’ by President Trump as relations with Washington spiral, particularly over the diesel deal with Putin and White House pressure for Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries.

Trump has also late this week in a Newsmax interview said that Ukraine should hold a new national election, and added provocatively that that even Putin is easier to deal with than Zelensky.

Indicators inside Ukraine show support for Zelensky’s war policy is slipping…

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Europe Is Still Buying Record Russian LNG Under Its Own Contracts

Much of Europe continues to buy Russian liquefied natural gas, and this explains many of the targets and non-targets of the ongoing war in Ukraine. While long-range strikes by the Ukrainians have targeted to destroy Russian oil refining and related products infrastructure, the country’s major LNG export facilities have, for the most part, been left intact.

Refining: Crude runs at Russian refineries have reportedly dropped to multi-decade lows. Export restrictions are in place for diesel, with half of the country’s top diesel producers reported offline or heavily restricted by September 2026.

The deep strikes of September 2026 hit gas-condensate processing plants in the Yamalo-Nenets region, in the towns of Novy Urengoy and Purovsky. The plants that were hit by the strikes are not part of the Russian LNG production, and the Yamal LNG trains were not struck. The largest share of Russia’s total LNG exports is produced by the Yamal LNG terminals, which have a production capacity of about 17.4 million tonnes of LNG per year and sit further north than the plants that were hit.

Ukraine has so far avoided targeting operational LNG plants in the conflict. Analysts have noted that Western sensitivity to the global gas market and Europe’s continued imports are frequently cited as the reason.

European importers continue to receive large volumes of LNG under long-term contracts, including Yamal LNG, and the full statutory ban is only being phased in through 2027. In the first nine months of this year record volumes of LNG were delivered to EU terminals by Yamal cargoes.

This is uncomfortable for the governments in Brussels. While for years the Governments of Europe and of the world have been imploring others to cut off the Russians, they themselves continue to take delivery of record quantities of Russian gas and the plants that produce it have been ‘off target’. The assault on the diesel production of Russia has had a measurable effect, while Europeans continue to buy the same country’s LNG.

And it clearly illustrates just how much the requirements of the European energy supplies determine the course of this war. The power generating gas and the industrial gases that Europe needs are left untouched by the Ukrainian strikes – for the time being, and as long as the contracts are running.

We will have to wait and see whether European importers are still prepared to take Russian LNG when the ban is finally phased in through 2027.

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Israeli settlers attack European delegation convoy in West Bank, beat French mayor

Israeli settlers on Saturday attacked a convoy of European diplomats and beat up a visiting French mayor, in a new escalation of violence during the Palestinian olive harvest, witnesses and diplomats said.

The 78-year-old mayor said masked settlers yelled defamatory comments about France, kicked him and hit him with iron bars as he joined Palestinian olive farmers in the West Bank alongside the top French and Belgian representatives in Jerusalem and Polish diplomats.

“I think that if settlers are behaving like this, there is a tolerance on the part of the Israeli government,” Bernard Baudoux, mayor of the northern French town of Aulnoye-Aymeries, told AFP after he was attacked.

“The whole world needs to know what’s happening,” he said. “For me, I’ll go back to my country and everything will be fine. Those who continue to suffer the most are those who are here.”

Baudoux, who was wearing a sash with the French tricolour, was seen collapsed on the side of the car after the attack but did not need hospital care.

The attack came just one day after settlers beat an American photographer for The Washington Post, who was in moderate condition with broken vertebrae on Saturday.

In a post on X, France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot, describing the attack as “appalling”.

“The Israeli authorities must arrest those responsable for these appalling acts and take them to justice. They must urgently halt this criminal violence and guarantee the safety of civilian populations, as they are compelled to do under international law.”

Israel’s foreign ministry also condemned the incident and Israeli police promised to open an investigation.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, days away from an election in which he is seeking to shore up support from the far-right, instead alleged a “smear” campaign against settlers.

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EBA designates Circle’s USDC as the EU’s first ‘significant’ e-money token

The European Banking Authority said Wednesday that it has classified USDC as a “significant” e-money token under the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation, making it the first of the 45 EMTs notified in the bloc to meet that threshold.

According to an official statement, the EBA will now take direct responsibility for supervising USDC’s own funds, reserve assets, liquidity requirements, and recovery and redemption plans from Nov. 12. These areas are currently overseen by France’s Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR), but the regulator will still handle governance, qualifying holdings, fit and proper assessment, and conflicts of interest after the EBA takes over.

The EBA also said it signed a memorandum of understanding with the New York State Department of Financial Services, which oversees Circle’s New York-regulated operations. The MoU will facilitate cross-border oversight and information exchanges between the two authorities.

USDC is the world’s second-largest stablecoin, with a supply of nearly $73 billion, according to The Block’s data dashboard. Tether’s USDT leads the market with $184 billion in circulation, against a total supply of $294 billion for dollar-pegged stablecoins.

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Europe Is Regulating Its Auto Industry Into Retreat

Brussels apparently believes it can dictate what an industry produces without accepting responsibility when the economics cease to work. Renault is now warning that European production could fall by approximately 300,000 vehicles unless there is greater flexibility around the 2030 emissions requirements. Volkswagen describes the mass market business as under “enormous pressure.” BMW’s global deliveries fell 6.4% in the third quarter, with China down by a quarter. Competition is fierce, customers have choices, and these companies cannot finance a transformation indefinitely by producing vehicles at inadequate margins.

Look at how the target changed. The agreement reached in 2018 called for a 37.5% reduction in new-car CO₂ emissions by 2030 relative to the 2021 target. The subsequently adopted requirement became 55%, an increase of 17.5 percentage points. These are fleet average standards for new cars, but meeting them still depends on what customers actually purchase. A regulation can compel a manufacturer to change its product mix. It cannot compel a family to have the money, charging access, or confidence needed to buy the car.

Volkswagen, Stellantis, and Renault account for more than 60% of European car production. Their mass market operations rely on high volumes and thin margins. That means even a relatively small deterioration in costs or sales can produce a substantial financial problem. The consequences then move through suppliers, machinery makers, transport firms, and communities built around manufacturing. Nobody should imagine that removing 300,000 vehicles from production would affect only Renault’s accounts.

Europe’s own Council describes the wider automotive industry as supporting 12.7 million jobs and contributing more than 7% of EU GDP. Yet its explanation of the emissions rules promises stronger competitiveness and more jobs in new technologies. Fine. Show the workers where those jobs are, what they pay, and when they become available.

Now the Commission proposes easing the 2030 van target from 50% to 40% and the 2035 tailpipe-reduction requirement from 100% to 90%, subject to compensating measures. The passenger car target for 2030 remains 55%. These are proposals, but they expose the problem with planning an industrial transformation around political deadlines. Companies commit capital, develop products, and reorganize factories while officials argue over which requirements should survive. Who pays when the assumptions change? The business, its employees, and eventually the taxpayer asked to support another rescue.

This obsession with the 2030 target is sheer stupidity when Europe is already struggling with expensive energy, mounting debt, war, and competition from manufacturers who can produce cars for less. Where do they imagine the money for this transformation will come from? They are demanding enormous investment while making it harder for the companies expected to provide it to earn a profit. Keep squeezing those margins and production moves, suppliers close, and the industrial skills accumulated over generations disappear with the jobs. Brussels can congratulate itself for reducing emissions within Europe while Europeans buy vehicles manufactured elsewhere. What has that accomplished for the worker whose factory is gone? A deadline means nothing if reaching it helps destroy the industry that supports your economy. Yet they cling to 2030 as though preserving a political promise matters more than preserving the livelihoods of the people paying for it.

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Calls For Europe To Get Involved In The War Are Growing, Czech PM Babiš Says: Fight For 20 Years Or 10, Or Finally Do Something?

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš says the calls for Europe to get involved in the war in Ukraine are growing, and he wants European leaders to say out loud what they are going to do. The Czech premier spoke to the press in Brussels on Thursday, as he was arriving at the European Union summit, Czech news site Ekonomický deník reported.

“Are we going to fight for another 20 years or 10 years, or are we finally going to do something?” Babiš told reporters as he arrived for the European Union summit in Brussels. There are growing calls for Europe to become involved in some way, he said.

The Czech Prime Minister saw Washington symbolizing Europe’s isolation. “Trump talks to Putin regularly,” he said, adding that Europe is completely out of the conversation. He characterized the deal about Russian diesel that Trump agreed with Putin as “not good news”. Above all, he said, Trump puts the United States first with elections coming.

Babiš then pointed at European leaders. “European leaders need to clearly say what they want, and we should agree on how we’re going to proceed,” he said. He made clear who is footing the bill: “We are paying for all of this.”

The frozen Russian assets were also expected to come up at the Summit. The Europeans were already very clear on this issue in Miami, a week ago, and told the Americans that no one would take control of these assets, the Financial Times reported.

Europe already has a military plan within the Coalition of the Willing, led by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. After a ceasefire is agreed a multinational reassurance force could be deployed inside Ukraine. The plan has already been discussed by Macron and Starmer and the UK and France signed a declaration of intent on the plan in January.

This is the background to Babiš’s question. A sitting EU prime minister goes to Brussels to say that more and more voices want Europe to be involved in the war. Europe is paying for it all, and the EU leaders should now say what they want. The only concrete military initiative put on the table so far is European troops on Ukrainian soil. And a question that few people ask: will the European voters also get a say?

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