Tag: eu

Europe Advancing ‘Precise’ Plans For Troops In Ukraine, Backstopped By US

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the Financial Times that European nations are developing detailed plans to potentially send troops to Ukraine as part of a future peace agreement, despite it being obvious to all the world that Moscow would never agree to this as a basis of peace or ceasefire.

Hawkish European leaders continue to claim they have support from President Donald Trump for pursuing such a plan, which would see a joint multinational force of troops from various European armies, backed by a US security guarantee. “President Trump made it very clear that the US would be part of the security backstop,” von der Leyen said.

“Security guarantees are paramount and absolutely crucial,” she described of the European consensus. “We have a clear road map and we had an agreement in the White House… and this work is going forward very well.”

She had also said that “President Trump reassured us that there will be [an] American presence as part of the backstop. That was very clear and repeatedly affirmed.”

Indeed Trump had declared immediately after hosting European leaders at the White House last month, “We’re willing to help, especially from the air – because no one has what we have.”

However, there still appears to be some distance between Washington and European expectations, with one senior official recently explaining to Axios, “Europe can’t drag out this war with unreasonable expectations and expect the US. to foot the bill. If Europe chooses to escalate, that’s their decision – but they risk turning a potential win into a loss.”

Von der Leyen admitted there’s a long road ahead in terms of organizing a joint commitment for a multinational ‘peacekeeping’ force for Ukraine.

“Of course, it always needs the political decision of the respective country, because deploying troops is one of the most important sovereign decisions of a nation,” she said, adding that “the sense of urgency is very high . . . it’s moving forward. It’s really taking shape.”

Her words were issued during a tour of European countries which lie close to Russia, which the Kremlin is sure to see as provocative in its own right – given for example she was at a military base in Estonia, and at one point was along the Poland-Belarus border, and in Bulgaria, and toured arms depots and factories in ‘NATO’s eastern flank’.

Keep reading

European delusions are prolonging Ukraine’s suffering

The stench of hypocrisy is thick in the halls of Brussels these days, where European leaders—clutching their champagne flutes and virtue-signaling press releases—continue to demand that Russia surrender unconditionally, even as their own militaries crumble under the weight of their own incompetence. While they preach about “democracy” and “territorial integrity,” they send Ukraine just enough weapons to keep the slaughter going, but never enough to actually win. Meanwhile, American taxpayers foot the bill for a war that Europe’s own generals admit they cannot sustain. Now, the Trump administration has had enough. According to leaked reports from Axios and The Atlantic, White House officials are openly accusing the EU of sabotaging peace talks with “unreasonable” demands, all while expecting the U.S. to bankroll their geopolitical fantasies. One senior official didn’t mince words: “The Europeans don’t get to prolong this war and backdoor unreasonable expectations, while also expecting America to bear the cost.”

The truth is as brutal as it is obvious: Europe wants this war to drag on—not because victory is possible, but because admitting defeat would shatter their illusion of global relevance. And so, they push Ukraine to reject any compromise, even as their own citizens freeze in energy poverty, their economies stagnate, and their armies reveal themselves to be little more than paper tigers. President Trump, ever the pragmatist, has seen through the charade. After high-stakes meetings with both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, he’s made it clear: if Europe wants to play war games, they can pay for them themselves. But if they truly want peace, they’ll have to swallow their pride, accept the new territorial realities, and stop treating Ukrainian lives as bargaining chips in their desperate bid to cling to a fading unipolar order.

Keep reading

France orders hospitals to be ready for war by next year as Germany warns it is on alert should Putin use forthcoming military drills to ATTACK Europe

French hospitals have been ordered to make preparations for an imminent war in Europe as Germany says it is on alert for Russia‘s military drills. 

France‘s ministry of health has told health bodies across the country to prepare for a possible ‘major engagement’ by March 2026, according to documents obtained by Le Canard Enchaîné. 

The French government is predicting a scenario where the nation would become a supporting state that has the capacity to take a massive number of wounded soldiers from France and other European nations. 

The order aims to ‘anticipate, prepare and respond to the health needs of the population while integrating the specific needs of defense in the health field’.

The ministry of health added: ‘Among the risks identified, therefore, is the hypothesis of a major engagement where the health issue would consist of taking care of a potentially high influx of victims from abroad. 

‘It is therefore a question for our health system of anticipating the care of military patients in the civilian health system’.

It comes after Germany’s chief of defence Carsten Breuer said NATO and his nation’s forces will be on alert ahead of Russian military drills. 

Breuer said that though he doesn’t expect Vladimir Putin’s forces to attack NATO territory as Russia conducts military training in Belarus with the Zapad 2025 exercise, his nation would ‘be on… guard’.

Keep reading

Europe on the Path to a War Economy

In Unterlüß, Lower Saxony, Europe’s largest ammunition factory began production last week. What started clandestinely is now being publicly scaled with full firepower: the European Union is building its own war economy.

In the good old days in Germany, recessions were typically masked by state-funded infrastructure programs. The concept worked as long as the state did not overgrow, overregulate, or force the private sector into a destructive ideological agenda, as is the case with the green transformation. In other words, the economy was always able to clear away the debris left behind by the state.

Southern Europe Could Never Recover

In Southern Europe, where the state’s role has traditionally been high, monetary policy generous, and handling of public funds notoriously lax, this policy left nothing but infrastructure ruins and industrial wastelands. Local economies were never able to productively absorb the artificial credit distributed by Brussels. The fatal consequences of this pseudo-boom still shape the landscape today.

For economic historians, present-day Europe has long been a fascinating case study. Crisis followed crisis, with the public sector intervening each time with increasing volume. The attempt to install the Green Deal, a Keynesian pseudo-economy, must be understood in this context. The new Rheinmetall plant fits into this narrative.

The company invested half a billion euros to provide an annual capacity of up to 350,000 rounds by 2027. 500 new jobs are to be created, celebrated by politicians as a turning point and the beginning of a pan-European defense architecture.

Ceremony and Half-Truths

Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger expressed satisfaction: “It was not easy for us to invest half a billion without orders. I am very grateful to you” — the words were directed at Defense Minister Boris Pistorius — “for keeping your handshake agreements. You are a man of word and deed.” A heavy dose of pathos and self-congratulation is evident here — politics and the defense industry are long intertwined.

Of course, this is only half the truth. Beyond the usual behind-the-scenes deals, politics has made it clear that it is ready to mobilize all means to build a German defense industry and provide sector companies with guarantees and subsidies where necessary. Big business, no risk.

After the collapse of the green economy, politics is now betting everything on the next pseudo-economy. The aim is to loosen dependence on America while exploiting the media spin that stylized Vladimir Putin’s Russia over years as a potential European invader. Whether this fear campaign will work in the long term remains to be seen.

Keep reading

EU science grants are funding Israeli military tech, data shows

The EU has given Israeli technology start-ups run by ex-IDF soldiers nearly half a billion euros in research grants since the start of the Gaza genocide. Some of the founders of these tech start-ups have served as reservists in Gaza, and in at least one instance the technology has been deployed to aid the genocide.

This article was originally published by ¡Do Not Panic!

The Horizon Europe program, described by the EU as ‘a scientific research initiative to develop a sustainable and livable society in Europe,’ has awarded around 475 million euros to 348 Israeli start-ups and research projects since October 2023, many of which are run by former IDF soldiers and intelligence officers.

In 2024, the EU awarded grants of €220m to 179 companies and initiatives run by Israelis. The scale of this funding, coming in a year when the world’s pre-eminent genocide experts all declared Israel was committing a genocide, a year in which entire cities were wiped out and tens of thousands of civilians murdered, is staggering.

In the same year Israel was also the third largest recipient, behind France and Germany, of ‘accelerator’ grants, a separate component of the Horizon program intended to support small and medium-sized companies working to improve life in Europe.

In 2025, the year in which Israel announced its full-scale ethnic cleansing plans and scholars estimated that 434,000 Palestinians in Gaza had been murdered by Israel, EU funding for Israeli tech initiatives still topped 110 million euros.

And this summer, with Gaza being driven officially into famine by Israel’s deliberate starvation campaign and as the Knesset was voting through a final solution, the EU was still dolling out tens of millions to companies run by ex-IDF personnel.

Horizon funding is critical to Israeli science and the Israeli economy. Since the inception of the programme in 1996, the EU has given Israeli companies, some of which have been directly spun out from the Israeli military, €3.4 billion euros. Israel is by far the largest non-EU recipient of Horizon, and its researchers are given an extremely generous, even curious amount of money for a program designed to support European researchers and European society. The president of Israel’s Academy of Sciences and Humanities said in May that cutting Israel off from EU research and innovation funds would be “almost a death sentence for Israeli science.”

Israel’s participation in the Horizon program has drawn attention in the past. Campaigners have argued the program is breaking its purely civilian mandate by giving money to Israeli institutions linked to the security state, and have demanded Israel is cut from the program. Under pressure with the genocide of Gaza moving into its final stages, the European Commission recently proposed a limited, partial ban on Israeli access to Horizon. It’s unclear though if the tepid move will garner enough votes from member states to pass. While Israel’s participation in Horizon has been the subject of controversy, the individuals behind these EU-funded initiatives, many of whom have a significant military background, have not previously been named. I’ve also found clear evidence that the program, which is mandated to support exclusively civilian applications, has funded military technology deployed during the genocide of Gaza.

Keep reading

European nations dumped 200,000 barrels of radioactive waste in the ocean, and humans might soon pay the price

A team of scientists has found 3,355 barrels of radioactive waste at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. The discovery was made at a depth of 13,000 feet, and hundreds of miles offshore from France. This is only a tiny part of the actual number of barrels filled with nuclear waste scattered at the bottom of the sea. Between 1946 and 1990, over 200,000 such barrels were dumped by European nations, assuming it was the best way to keep people on land safe. This was done under the supervision of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), a body comprising 34 countries that is tasked with ensuring nuclear safety and waste management. But now there are fears that this waste can reach humans via the food chain. Scientists have warned that this radioactive material could be absorbed by marine life, which can enter sea creatures and then humans who eat the contaminated seafood. This could cause long-term health issues, damage tissues, and increase the risk of cancer.

The barrels are not capable of holding the contents inside them forever. They were designed to release the radioactive material slowly, but surely. They had a life span of 20 to 26 years, and that time is already gone. So what next? The French scientists are on a mission to understand what would happen to these barrels. In the first leg, they used sonar and the autonomous underwater robot UlyX to map the Abyssal Plains. They said that most of the radioactive material in these barrels is weak and does not pose any immediate risk to humans since it is deep inside the ocean. However, this does not mitigate the long-term effects, which include contaminating marine life and entering the food chain. About one-third of the material in these barrels was tritium, which is considered insignificant. The rest are beta and gamma emitters, which lose radioactivity, with about two per cent being alpha radiation.

Keep reading

European Powers Trigger ‘Snapback’ Sanctions on Iran

The UK, France, and Germany have begun the process of reimposing UN Security Council sanctions on Iran under the “snapback” mechanism of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, a step that makes another US-Israeli war on Iran more likely.

The European countries, known as the E3, sent a letter to the UN Security Council notifying it that they were triggering the sanctions, which will take effect in 30 days. Iran has said that the E3 countries don’t have the right to reimpose the sanctions since it was the US that withdrew from and violated the JCPOA in 2018.

The E3 said they were open to reaching a diplomatic deal with Iran that could halt the sanctions, but it’s unclear what sort of agreement could be reached. Their demands include that Iran resume full cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but Tehran’s recent decision to allow IAEA inspectors to return to Iran didn’t stop the E3 from triggering the sanctions.

Iran expelled IAEA inspectors in the wake of the US-Israeli war in response to the watchdog’s role in providing a pretext for the initial Israeli attack and for its failure to condemn the bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities. Tehran also suspects that Israel may have gotten the names of Iranian scientists who were assassinated in the war from the IAEA.

The E3 also wants Iran to resume nuclear negotiations with the US. Iranian officials have been clear that they’re open to diplomacy with Washington but want assurances that they won’t be attacked again since the US and Israel used the previous negotiations as a cover to launch the war.

The US welcomed the E3’s step to trigger the sanctions. “The United States appreciates the leadership of our E3 allies in this effort. Over the coming weeks, we will work with them and other Members of the UN Security Council to successfully complete the snapback of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi strongly condemned the E3’s move as “unjustified, illegal, and lacking any legal basis,” and warned that Tehran would take steps in response. “The Islamic Republic of Iran will respond appropriately to this unlawful and unwarranted measure by the three European countries to protect its national rights and interests,” he said.

Some Iranian officials have warned that if snapback sanctions are re-imposed, Tehran could withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), a step that could be used by Israel and the US as a pretext to launch another war, even though Israel is not a signatory to the NPT. Unlike Iran, Israel actually has a secret nuclear weapons program and a stockpile of nuclear weapons that’s not officially acknowledged by the US and Israel.

Keep reading

EU Trying for Regime Change in Hungary Using Zelensky

Viktor Orbán has been a thorn in the paw of the European dictatorship masquerading as a democracy when the people have no right to vote for any leader, and the Parliament, which they do vote for, has no complete democratic control over other EU institutions, especially the European Commission. It can hold hearings, ask questions, and set up committees of inquiry. Most dramatically, it has the power to pass a motion of censure and force the entire European Commission to resign.  It cannot pass laws alone. It can reject proposed legislation entirely, killing the bill. It has done this on numerous occasions, forcing the Commission to go back to the drawing board. However, it has the power to reject the entire annual EU budget. It has no power to alter laws or the budget. It is always an all-or-nothing role.

The European Union has not stripped Hungary of its voting rights over issues related to migrants or Ukraine, but is dying to do so and is now behind closed doors telling Zelensky to create a confrontation with Orban to force Hungary to exit the EU and enter war with Ukraine. On Ukraine’s Independence Day, Zelensky gave Hungary an ultimatum: “You must make a choice.” 

Keep reading

European Post Halts Mail to U.S. – Undermining Security and Trade Enforcement

Ahead of the August 29 implementation of President Trump’s executive order ending the de minimis exemption, which had allowed packages under $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free, postal services in Britain, France, Germany, India, Belgium, Denmark, and New Zealand announced they will suspend shipments to the United States.

They claim confusion over the rules, though packages worth less than $100 remain exempt, something hardly difficult to understand. The timing suggests this is more political theater, an attempt by Europeans to pressure Washington into reducing tariffs on other products.

Trump signed the order on July 29 to combat China’s abuse of the system, particularly its use of low-value parcels to smuggle fentanyl and circumvent trade sanctions. U.S. Customs and Border Protection processed more than 4 million such packages daily. Closing the loophole prevents sanctioned Chinese goods from bypassing tariffs through postal networks.

Retail giants like Temu and Shein built their entire business model on exploiting de minimis, shipping 1.36 billion parcels in 2024, mostly from China and Hong Kong.

As carriers scramble to adjust their systems, letters and documents remain unaffected, but parcels to the U.S. face delays and backlogs until new procedures are clarified. Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Italy have already halted most package shipments, while France, Austria, the U.K., India, Singapore, Thailand, and Australia cite “lack of clarity” over how duties will be collected and what extra data is required.

In reality, the rules are straightforward. With the exception of personal gifts under $100, all shipments are now subject to country-of-origin tariffs. Transportation carriers are required to collect and remit duties to U.S. Customs and Border Protection using methods long in place. Postal shipments even have a grace period and remain duty-free until CBP establishes a new entry process.

Keep reading

If Ukraine Wants Security Guarantees, It Should Get Them From Europe

President Donald Trump deserves immense credit for prioritizing diplomacy in pursuit of a resolution to the Russia-Ukraine War. After three and a half years of madness and mayhem in Ukraine, and beneath a volley of overwrought accusations of “Appeasement!” from Democrats, the media, and parts of Europe, Trump has met with both sides of the conflict to discern their positions and try to bring them together to end the killing.

The substantive issues are admittedly tough. The Russians are dug in on territorial concessions and the end of NATO expansion, while the Ukrainians are dug in on security guarantees. Not surprisingly, after three years of brutal conflict, Kyiv wants outside powers to commit to going to war for it if the Russians should invade again. Rightly, Trump has declined repeatedly to commit U.S. forces to fight and die for Ukraine.

That leaves things at loggerheads: If Ukraine will not quit fighting without security guarantees, and the United States — under Joe Biden as well as President Trump — doesn’t want to provide them, who will? The natural answer should be Europe. With an economy roughly the same size as the U.S. economy, five times Russia’s population, geographic proximity to Ukraine, and already more combined military spending than Russia, surely Europe should step up.

After all, the Europeans have been quite consistent: Protecting Ukraine from Russia is of vital importance to them. Referring to the war in Ukraine, France’s Emmanuel Macron warned last year that “our Europe could die.” Macron was joined last week by Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Germany’s Friedrich Merz, the U.K.’s Keir Starmer, Finland’s Alexander Stubb, Poland’s Donald Tusk, and other EU leaders in issuing their demand for “ironclad security guarantees” to protect “Ukraine’s and Europe’s vital security interests.”

Keep reading