Disrupting Europe’s Defence and Energy Networks

At the same time, Europe’s defence sector is under constant pressure. Fires and explosions at ammunition and military-component factories, from Italy to Bulgaria, not least the sinking of two cargo ships in Sofia’s exclusive economic zone, are aimed at slowing the supply chains supporting Ukraine while placing additional pressure on Europe’s response capacity and critical infrastructure. Satellite sovereignty is also becoming a target, as illustrated by the fire at a Starlink ground station in Poland, suggesting that the objective is to disrupt the civilian and military networks that are increasingly essential to the coordination of allied forces. Energy security remains another permanent target, as demonstrated by attacks near extraction facilities in the Black Sea and the growing need to fortify critical energy infrastructure, including along Poland’s Suwałki corridor.

Information Warfare as a Tool of Intimidation

Hybrid warfare also seeks to fragment and undermine cohesion within European states through disinformation, the exploitation of organised crime and interference in democratic life. One of the most recent examples came from Lithuania, where the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti published, and then rapidly deleted, an article by Alexander Nosovich speculating about a potential lightning invasion of Lithuania, entitled “Russia Faces Another Special Military Operation. It Will Be Very Short.” The episode fits into a broader pattern of probing operations designed to test an adversary’s reactions, exploit existing fears and assess the political and psychological effects of threatening narratives.

Disinformation and the Erosion of European Unity

The seriousness of the situation within Europe’s information environment is further illustrated by the EU’s decision to sanction Xenia Fedorova, a prominent figure in the Russian media ecosystem and former head of Russia Today France, for her role in Russia’s hybrid activities, particularly foreign information manipulation and interference. The systematic activity of organisations such as Russia Today, alongside coordinated networks of social-media accounts and influencers, seeks to disseminate and amplify propaganda and disinformation reportedly developed by specialised FSB units. The objective is not necessarily to convince European publics of a single alternative narrative, but to confuse, polarise and contaminate the public debate. The strategic effect Moscow seeks to generate is to push electorates towards anti-European positions, fragmenting political cohesion from within and weakening the EU’s ability to act collectively.

Pressure on Europe’s Eastern Borders

These narratives and operations form part of a broader and increasingly intensified strategy by Moscow and Minsk, whose pressure along Europe’s borders has become more frequent and aggressive. Recent incidents on the Baltic borders provide an important indication of the level of ambition and operational initiative Russia and Belarus are prepared to deploy against the Baltic states. On 6 October in Latvia, armed individuals on the Belarusian side reportedly escorted a group of around 20 migrants towards Latvian territory and threatened Latvian border guards, according to Interior Minister Janis Dombrava. Hours later, a group of masked individuals illegally crossed the border, damaging a distribution cabinet and stealing cameras before border guards arrived. Dombrava warned Minsk that similar incidents could have “serious consequences”, recalling the EU’s sanctions against Belarus in 2021 over the instrumentalisation of migrants.

Testing NATO’s Deterrence on the Eastern Flank

This came on top of the much more serious incident of 15 September, when NATO aircraft had to shoot down a drone originating from Belarus after it violated Lithuanian airspace, flying over Lentvaris near Vilnius before being intercepted and destroyed near Kaunas, according to Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre. Such actions are useful to Moscow regardless of its immediate intentions or the timing of any potential military operation. Beyond helping to create a narrative that could later be used to legitimise aggression, they contribute to a perception of imminent war. From the Russian perspective, this can itself become a strategic asset if sustained pressure begins to undermine public confidence in NATO among European and Baltic populations, creating doubts about whether the Alliance is capable of providing adequate protection through its current strategy of containment and deterrence along the eastern flank.

Russia’s Drone Arsenal Evolves

Yet the hybrid campaign against Europe cannot be separated from what is happening on the battlefield in Ukraine. Russia is simultaneously attempting to develop new ways of increasing the lethality, reach and resilience of its strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure and civilian targets. The evolution of the Geran family provides a particularly clear illustration of this adaptation. Since the introduction of the Geran-2 in 2022, Moscow has progressively modified the platform, introducing simplified composite materials, more resistant navigation systems, mesh-network capabilities and, eventually, jet propulsion. The new Geran-4 and Geran-5, however, appear to mark a more significant shift. Russia may now have concluded that the operational advantages of greater speed outweigh the industrial benefits of maintaining complete continuity with the original airframe.

Outpacing Ukraine’s Air Defences

The central objective appears to be to outrun Ukraine’s increasingly layered counter-UAV architecture. Ukrainian forces have expanded their use of interceptor drones alongside fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft and conventional air-defence systems, creating an increasingly demanding environment for slower Russian one-way attack drones. The reported top speeds of up to 500–600 km/h for the new Geran variants would allow them to outrun many existing counter-UAV platforms and complicate interception by anti-aircraft systems. Russia is therefore not simply increasing the number of drones it launches. It is attempting to change the technological and economic equation of interception, forcing Ukraine to deploy increasingly sophisticated, and therefore more expensive, means against comparatively low-cost Russian strike platforms. Their potential ability to operate at higher altitudes reinforces this logic by creating an additional requirement for more capable interceptors.

From Strike Weapons to a Wider Air-War Architecture

At the same time, Moscow appears to be expanding the role of the drone beyond the traditional one-way strike mission. The reported possibility of launching Geran-4 and Geran-5 variants from Su-25 aircraft would give Russia additional flexibility in how and where these systems are employed, while potentially assigning a secondary role to an aircraft whose effectiveness in close-air-support missions has been constrained by Ukraine’s contested airspace. Even more significant is the reported integration of air-to-air missiles and mesh-network datalinks. This points towards an attempt to turn some Gerans into systems capable of engaging Ukrainian aircraft involved in counter-UAV operations. Russia is therefore beginning to treat the drone not merely as ammunition to be expended against ground targets, but as a flexible node within a broader air-war architecture.

The Economics of Russia’s Drone Warfare

The evolution of the Geran also reflects a wider Russian attempt to adapt its strike arsenal to a new technological and economic environment. Rather than relying exclusively on increasingly sophisticated and expensive cruise missiles, Moscow appears to be moving towards low-cost, cruise-missile-like systems derived from simpler platforms. These weapons sacrifice some of the performance and survivability of advanced cruise missiles in exchange for lower unit costs, rapid production and shorter development cycles. The Geran-5 is therefore more than simply another drone variant. It points towards a strategy that combines mass production with incremental technological adaptation, allowing Russia to retain the advantages of scale while progressively making its strike systems faster, harder to intercept and more versatile.

One Strategy, Multiple Fronts

Taken together, these developments suggest that Russia’s strategy is becoming increasingly centred on the systematic exploitation of vulnerabilities rather than on a single form of military pressure. Hybrid operations test the resilience of European societies, infrastructure and institutions; pressure along the eastern borders tests NATO’s political cohesion and deterrence posture; and technological adaptation on the Ukrainian battlefield seeks to overcome the growing effectiveness of Ukrainian defences. The common denominator is the search for asymmetry: Moscow is attempting to force its adversaries to spend more, react faster and devote increasingly sophisticated resources to counter comparatively inexpensive and flexible Russian capabilities.

Military Escalation Over Negotiated Compromise

This combination of hybrid pressure and battlefield adaptation also provides an important indication of Moscow’s political calculations. The simultaneous intensification of hybrid operations across Europe and of Russia’s attempts to strike Ukraine in ways that are increasingly difficult and costly to defend against points once again to the considerable distance between the Kremlin and any genuine willingness to sit at the negotiating table with Volodymyr Zelensky. Russia, or more precisely its political-military elite, still appears convinced that its best chance of preserving the regime’s strategic position lies in the continued and more forceful application of military power. Rather than preparing for compromise, Moscow appears to be adapting its methods in order to make the use of force more sustainable, more difficult to counter and more politically disruptive for its opponents. The result is a strategy in which the battlefield in Ukraine and the wider European security environment are no longer separate theatres, but increasingly interconnected components of the same confrontation.

L'articolo Russia’s Evolving Strategy: From Hybrid Pressure to Battlefield Adaptation proviene da The Watcher Post.

The United Arab Emirates — along with the US bases located on its territory — was the country most heavily targeted by Iran, yet it was far from the most devastated. On the contrary. The closer one looks at the ratio between the volume of fire absorbed and the actual damage inflicted, the clearer the strength of the UAE’s defensive architecture becomes.

Hundreds of missiles and drones were launched against Emirates territory. The overall pressure was greater than that directed at other Gulf states. Yet airports, ports, energy infrastructure, urban centres and logistical hubs continued to operate. There were impacts, and there were casualties, but Iran’s ability to turn its quantitative firepower into strategic destruction remained far more limited than Tehran had hoped.

That is the real political and military takeaway. Because in this war, it is not enough to ask how many missiles Iran launched. The more important question is how many actually reached their targets. And here, the Emirates demonstrated an outstanding defensive capability.

The comparison with other Gulf countries is revealing. Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar were subjected to heavy waves of attacks, partly because they too host US military bases and installations. In Qatar’s case, Al Udeid was one of the main targets of the Iranian offensive. In Kuwait and Bahrain, the American military presence effectively turned national territory into another front in the war.

The Emirates, however, faced particularly intense pressure that extended beyond US military installations alone.
And yet, they held.

The explanation lies not in a single weapons system, but in a strategic choice developed over many years: building a layered air and missile defence architecture integrating radars, detection systems, interceptors and different technologies designed to counter different threats.

Iron Dome and other missile-defence systems associated with Israeli and American defensive networks represented an important component of the broader regional protection ecosystem. But it would be misleading to imagine the Emirates being protected by a single “dome”. The strength of the Emirates model lies precisely in the overlap between its defensive layers.

Ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones require different responses. The objective is not to stop everything with a single technology, but to ensure that every threat encounters multiple opportunities to be detected and neutralised before reaching its target.

The war has demonstrated why this strategy has become indispensable. Iran’s offensive capability is enormous above all because of its sheer volume. It can launch large salvos of missiles and drones simultaneously, attempting to saturate an adversary’s defences. It is also a relatively inexpensive strategy when compared with the cost of the interceptors required to destroy those threats.

But this is precisely where the limits of Iran’s strategy become apparent. Saturating a defence does not necessarily mean breaking through it.And Abu Dhabi has demonstrated that it is far more difficult to overwhelm than Tehran may have hoped.

The most striking figure, therefore, is the relationship between attacks received and damage sustained. The Emirates faced a far greater number of attacks than the other major Gulf states, yet they did not suffer a proportionate level of destruction.
That difference is fundamental.

A missile intercepted just a few kilometres from its target is a military success. A missile that reaches an airport, a refinery, a power plant or a populated area, by contrast, is a success for the attacker — even when the material damage is limited.

The ability to systematically prevent the latter scenario has become a form of deterrence. And that is probably the message Abu Dhabi wants to send to the entire region: you can attack us, but you cannot easily paralyse us. For a country whose economy depends on stability, international trade, aviation, logistics, energy and finance, that capability is worth almost as much as a major offensive force.

Iran understands this well. The Emirates are a particularly important target not only because of their geographical proximity, but because they represent one of the Gulf’s leading economic and strategic hubs and a key US partner in the region.

Striking Abu Dhabi therefore means attempting to demonstrate that no American ally in the Gulf is truly safe. But if the objective was to expose the Emirates’ vulnerability, the outcome of the war tells a more complicated story.

The Emirates remained operational. And in modern warfare, that distinction may matter more than the absolute number of missiles launched. Bahrain paid a heavy price relative to its size. Kuwait suffered major attacks and damage to infrastructure. Qatar was drawn directly into the conflict largely because of the presence of Al Udeid. Saudi Arabia had to confront both direct attacks and threats from Iran-backed armed groups.

The Emirates, by contrast, turned their defensive preparation into a security multiplier.

That does not mean their shield is impenetrable. No missile-defence system is. But it does mean that Tehran encountered a problem that cannot easily be solved simply by increasing the number of missiles.

More missiles mean more pressure. But they also mean more interceptors are required, higher costs, greater complexity and increasing difficulty in sustaining an effective offensive campaign over time.

This is where the war takes on a broader strategic dimension. Iran demonstrated that it can strike the Gulf. The Emirates demonstrated that they can endure.

And in the contest between offensive and defensive capability, the outcome is not measured simply by counting how many weapons are launched. It is measured above all by looking at what remains standing once the attacks are over.
In the case of the Emirates, far more remained standing than the sheer volume of attacks might have suggested.

That is why the UAE paradox is likely to become one of the most important military lessons of the conflict: the Gulf country most heavily targeted by Iran was also the one that, thanks to its defensive architecture and cooperation with its allies, proved most capable of turning a rain of missiles and drones into limited damage.

It is not invulnerability. It is resilience. And in the Gulf’s new military balance, that may prove to be the most tangible form of deterrence.

L'articolo United Arab Emirates: the country Iran attacked most is the one that defended itself best proviene da The Watcher Post.

Europe is hot.

A stubborn, almost political heat. The kind that slows cities down, shortens tempers and makes September feel much farther away than the calendar suggests.

Temperatures have climbed above forty degrees in several parts of the continent, while fires have once again hit France and Spain. Yet perhaps the most interesting fact is not meteorological:

extreme heat is increasingly an economic problem too, with France, Italy, Germany and Spain among the European economies most exposed to its consequences.

Curiously, these are the same four countries where the political temperature also appears to have risen this August.

Perhaps it is only a coincidence. But in politics, coincidences can sometimes help us see things more clearly.

As Brussels slows down, offices empty and institutional Europe enters its traditional summer pause, something far less reassuring is happening beneath the surface.

Several of the political pillars on which the Union has built its balance are beginning to crack at the same time.

The most surprising case comes from the country where, until recently, such a sentence would have sounded almost like an oxymoron: Germany.

In Berlin, one word now says more than many analyses: Kanzlertausch. A change of chancellor.

Friedrich Merz has been in office for little more than a year, yet within the CDU there is already discussion – at least behind the scenes – about the possibility of replacing him. The reason is not merely his collapsing popularity. It is what is happening to his right.

The AfD approaches September’s crucial regional elections with a real chance of prevailing in some Länder. Figures of this kind would be worrying anywhere. In Germany, they mean something more.

For decades Berlin represented the opposite of European instability. Italian governments changed, French governments fell, Madrid went through its convulsions, London consumed prime ministers.

Germany remained there: predictable, slow, sometimes exasperating, but stable.

Today it is discussing replacing a chancellor after barely a year. That is a small cultural earthquake before it is even a political one.

Above all, it shows that the problem posed by the AfD no longer concerns only the AfD. When an anti-system force grows large enough, it does not necessarily need to govern in order to change the system. It only needs to force everyone else to change their behaviour.

The CDU must decide how far it can maintain the Brandmauer, the political firewall against any cooperation with the far right, while a growing part of the conservative electorate seems to find that firewall increasingly difficult to understand.

Suddenly the question is no longer whether the AfD will enter the perimeter of German politics. The question is how far that perimeter will have to move in order to contain it.

Then there is Italy. Which, in one of history’s ironies, now looks in some respects more stable than Germany.

Giorgia Meloni has governed for almost four years. Measured against Italian political tradition, that is beginning to look anomalous. But it would be superficial to confuse government stability with system stability.

Meloni has built much of her political strength by occupying two spaces at once: the space of the identity-driven right at home and that of the pragmatic interlocutor abroad. Rome and Brussels.

Washington and Europe. The language of sovereignty and the practice of compromise.

It has probably been her most important political success. But that balancing act is becoming harder because Europe itself is moving.

The extraordinary clash now unfolding between Italy and Spain makes the point. Rome temporarily suspends Schengen following the migration crisis in Ceuta. Madrid responds with controls on connections arriving from Italy. Palazzo Chigi calls the response disproportionate and rejects what it sees as blackmail. Behind the diplomatic confrontation is also an Italian conviction that Pedro Sánchez is using the European dispute to answer domestic political difficulties.

And here lies the point. Two major countries in the Union’s political balance are using one of the most powerful symbols of European integration as an instrument of pressure against each other.

Schengen. In August. Between Italy and Spain.

It is worth stopping for a moment to appreciate how politically absurd the image is. Italians checked at Spanish airports. Spaniards and travellers arriving from Spain subjected to Italian controls. Two governments steadily raising the tone while millions of Europeans cross the Mediterranean for their holidays.

It is almost a caricature of Europe. Yet dismissing it as a summer quarrel between Meloni and Sánchez would be a mistake.

Domestic politics is devouring European politics. Meloni must show that she will not retreat on borders. Sánchez must show that Madrid will not take lessons from Rome. Formally, each government is speaking to the other. Politically, both are speaking above all to their own voters.

For years, we imagined that the Union existed precisely to neutralise this dynamic – or at least to contain it. Increasingly, the opposite is happening: Europe is becoming the stage on which national conflicts are performed.

Berlin fights the AfD by hardening its domestic debate. Rome and Madrid turn Schengen into a political duel. And while all this happens, Paris is already looking towards 2027.

Ten years ago Emmanuel Macron won the Élysée promising to sweep away France’s old political world. In 2027, that old world may return en masse to claim his inheritance.

Édouard Philippe, Gabriel Attal, Bernard Cazeneuve, Dominique de Villepin. François Hollande watching the game. Xavier Bertrand. Bruno Le Maire. Ségolène Royal. Even the possibility of Thierry Breton.

The word suddenly back in fashion is expérience. Experience.

Ten years after the election of the youngest president of the Fifth Republic, many would-be occupants of the Élysée are now presenting themselves through precisely what Macron turned into a disadvantage in 2017: having already been there.

When a society is uneasy, it first searches for something new. When the new no longer reassures it, it looks for someone who at least knows where the switches are.

France is not simply choosing Macron’s successor. It is trying to understand what comes after Macronism, while the Rassemblement National remains potentially capable of winning the Élysée and the political centre, deprived of the man who invented it, must prove that it can exist without him.

This is where Berlin, Rome, Madrid and Paris stop being four separate stories. They become the same story.

For a long time we described Europe’s crisis through an easily readable political and geographical divide: centre versus periphery, pro-Europeans versus Eurosceptics, moderates versus populists, responsibility versus protest.

It was a convenient picture. It is probably no longer the right one.

Because today fragility does not come only from the forces challenging the system. It has entered the system itself.

Germany must question the resilience of its own leadership while the AfD grows. France approaches the succession to Macron with a fragmented political system. Italy and Spain, rather than jointly embodying the Union’s Mediterranean centre of gravity, have managed to turn a migration crisis at Europe’s gates into a test of strength against one another.

Meanwhile Brussels continues to ask European governments to think strategically: common defence, competitiveness, energy autonomy, investment, Ukraine, relations with Washington and Beijing, enlargement.

All of these require strong political leadership, political capital and, above all, the ability to think beyond the next opinion poll. Those are precisely the three resources becoming scarcer.

Never has Europe needed politics as much as it does today. And rarely has European politics seemed so captive to national fragilities.

Once, it was mainly politically unstable countries that sought protection in European stability. Now the major countries that are supposed to produce that stability are bringing their own anxieties into Europe.

Germany is no longer immune to instability. France does not yet know what comes after Macron.

Italy is stable but increasingly assertive. Spain is under political pressure.

And the Franco-German engine – an expression we may continue to use more out of nostalgia than as a description of reality – can hardly function when one driver is looking at regional elections and the other at a presidential race.

Outside Europe, meanwhile, the world is not waiting. Trump is not waiting. Putin is not waiting.

Beijing is not waiting. Markets are not waiting. Nor, certainly, is the climate, which this summer is offering Europe an almost too-perfect metaphor for its condition.

When the temperature rises too far, the problem is not only the heat. It is the materials.

They expand. Infrastructure gives way. Systems designed to function under normal conditions begin to behave differently.

That is true of railways. It is true of power grids. And perhaps it is true of politics too.

Over the past seventy years Europe has built an extraordinarily sophisticated system for managing differences among its states. But that system rested on one condition: at decisive moments, Europe’s principal capitals had enough internal stability to produce external compromises.

That is the condition we can no longer take for granted.

So perhaps the question of the European summer is not who will win in Germany, who will succeed Macron, or who is right between Meloni and Sánchez.

It is much simpler.

How much more heat can Europe withstand before it is no longer merely its policies that begin to warp, but its balance itself?

L'articolo Europe Under the Sun proviene da The Watcher Post.

Projects once viewed as contingency plans are now strategic priorities. Gulf states, energy companies and logistics operators are accelerating investments in pipelines, ports and overland corridors designed to reduce reliance on the world’s most important energy chokepoint.

According to the International Energy Agency, only Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates currently have operational infrastructure capable of bypassing Hormuz, and even that falls well short of the volumes that normally transit the Strait.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE move first

Saudi Arabia remains best positioned thanks to its East-West pipeline, which links eastern oil fields to the Red Sea port of Yanbu and can transport around 7 million barrels per day. Riyadh is increasingly shifting exports and refining capacity westwards, reducing its dependence on Gulf shipping routes.

The UAE is pursuing a similar strategy. Abu Dhabi is expanding the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline, with plans to double capacity by 2027 while bypassing Hormuz entirely. DP World is also expanding Fujairah’s port, while nearby Khor Fakkan is being developed into a larger logistics hub serving the Indian Ocean.

Not every Gulf state has alternatives

Elsewhere, the picture is more challenging.

Iraq is advancing its Development Road corridor linking Basra to Turkey, while the long-discussed Basra-Aqaba pipeline to Jordan has regained political momentum. Both, however, remain years away from completion.

Kuwait and Qatar remain among the most exposed, with few viable alternatives to Hormuz for energy exports.

Oman, meanwhile, is strengthening its position through the Port of Duqm, whose location on the Arabian Sea places it outside the Strait altogether and makes it increasingly attractive for energy, industry and logistics investment.

New corridors reshape trade

The shift extends beyond pipelines.

The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) continues to gather political backing from the EU, India, the Gulf states and the United States, while the Gulf Railway and other regional transport links are gradually reshaping how goods and energy move across the region.

Although these projects will take years to complete, the direction of travel is becoming clearer.

A permanent strategic shift

Oil and gas production will remain concentrated in the Gulf. What is changing is where those resources are stored, refined and exported.

More activity is moving towards the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman and emerging overland corridors, reducing the concentration of risk around a single maritime chokepoint.

The immediate crisis may have accelerated this transition, but the infrastructure now being built suggests something far more enduring: the future of Middle Eastern energy will be defined by diversification rather than dependence on Hormuz alone.

L'articolo Beyond Hormuz: How the Gulf is rewriting the global energy map proviene da The Watcher Post.

Enlargement has always exposed one of the EU’s central political difficulties. 

Externally, the Union must prove it can act credibly toward its partners. Internally, it must show that opening up to new members can generate reform, prosperity and stability rather than institutional paralysis.

Yet political momentum never followed. The Western Balkans, in particular, were left in a waiting room, trapped in what has often been described as the logic of the “Restern Balkans” – a selective and controlled enlargement process that prioritised countries seen as more economically prepared or strategically convenient. 

Slovenia moved first, followed by Romania and Bulgaria, whose full integration into Schengen came only recently, and then Croatia in 2013.

War has changed the enlargement debate

Today, the context has changed radically. The turning point came on 24 February 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and brought war back to the heart of Europe. 

For the first time in the EU’s history, enlargement is no longer only a question of reform, markets or institutional alignment. It has become part of Europe’s security strategy and its defence of democracy.

As of 2026, Ukraine, Moldova, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and North Macedonia are all seeking to join the European Union, while Kosovo has applied but has not yet obtained candidate status. These countries carry complex and often painful histories. From the states born out of the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia and scarred by the wars of the 1990s, to Ukraine, now fighting for national survival while pursuing difficult internal reforms. 

Moldova, meanwhile, continues to face Russian interference and the unresolved question of Transnistria.

But it would be a mistake to see the renewed enlargement debate only through the lens of Ukraine and Moldova. The credibility of the entire process will depend on whether the EU can offer concrete prospects to the Western Balkans as well. 

A successful enlargement policy must allow for different speeds of progress without creating new political fractures or new dividing lines across the region.

Enlargement is not only about borders

The value of enlargement cannot be measured only in terms of border security. It must also be understood through the economic, institutional and social opportunities it can create in candidate countries, where many citizens — especially younger generations — still see Europe as a promise of stability, development and democratic belonging.

Recent summits, including the meeting in Tivat, Montenegro, and the gathering in Sarajevo where the European People’s Party reaffirmed its support for enlargement, show that the political mood has shifted. Enlargement is now back among the priorities of the European Commission and several influential Member States.

France and Germany are also moving more visibly into the debate. A recent Franco-German non-paper, promoted by Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, starts from the premise that the EU faces a historic opportunity to complete the European project. 

It proposes making accession faster and more effective by focusing on substantive reforms in candidate countries rather than allowing the process to be blocked by procedural obstacles.

The case for gradual integration

The most innovative element of this approach is the idea of gradual integration. Candidate countries would be rewarded for concrete progress in accession negotiations by gaining phased access to EU programmes such as Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe, parts of the Single Market, and certain EU decision-making mechanisms.

Full membership would remain the final objective. But the path toward it would become more credible, more visible and more tangible for citizens. This would help prevent enlargement from becoming an abstract promise endlessly deferred, while strengthening the EU’s ability to project stability and influence in its neighbourhood.

For this to work, however, the burden cannot fall only on candidate countries. The EU must also confront its own readiness to enlarge. That means taking seriously the so-called fourth Copenhagen criterion – the Union’s capacity to integrate new members.

A larger EU will need to reflect pragmatically on institutional functioning, the distribution of competences, and how to ensure that smaller states retain an effective role in decision-making.

The cost of absence

The risk of losing momentum is clear. As Christian Schmidt, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2021, has warned, less Europe in the Western Balkans inevitably creates more space for other actors. 

Russia’s influence in Serbia and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as China’s growing role in energy, infrastructure and transport, show how quickly strategic vacuums can be filled.

In this context, infrastructure, connectivity, energy security and transport links are not merely economic questions. They are strategic ones. Across parts of the Western Balkans, political and institutional obstacles continue to slow essential investments, weakening the region’s integration into the European economic space and increasing its vulnerability to external influence.

Bosnia and Herzegovina remains particularly central. Any challenge to its territorial integrity would not only destabilise the country itself, but risk undermining the wider security architecture of the Balkans.

A larger Union will change Europe

Enlargement will also force the EU to think seriously about how its institutions will function in a larger Union. Ukraine is the clearest example. With a population of around 36 million, it would send a delegation to the European Parliament comparable in size to Poland’s. This would bring into the EU institutions political perspectives shaped by war, eastern border security and the long-term consequences of Russian aggression.

The accession of the Western Balkans would also carry major social and political significance. It would deepen Europe’s engagement with societies where Muslim communities form important parts of the population, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo. 

This could open new spaces for interreligious dialogue, political integration and coexistence within the European project.

Europe must be present on the ground

The success of enlargement will not depend only on negotiations between governments. European institutions will need to be more present in candidate countries and more directly engaged with their citizens, especially younger generations.

In a period marked by political distrust, disinformation and geopolitical competition, the European project cannot remain confined to technical chapters and diplomatic communiqués. It must become visible in the communities that aspire to join it.

Enlargement is therefore not only a question of borders, security or geopolitics. It is a choice about Europe’s identity and its ability to complete the project of a free, stable and democratic continent.

That is why enlargement is not just another item on the EU agenda. It is Europe’s appointment with history — and one it cannot afford to miss.

L'articolo Europe’s enlargement moment: a historic test the EU cannot afford to fail proviene da The Watcher Post.

Is the European External Action Service about to be dismantled?

Not tomorrow. But the fact that Paris and Berlin are even asking the question says a lot about the state of EU diplomacy. For France, Germany and other Member States, the EU’s diplomatic corps is in need of a major overhaul.

The EEAS is seen as too slow, too inefficient, and too often stuck somewhere between the Commission, the Council and national capitals. One proposal under discussion would transfer some powers currently held by the High Representative and the EU’s diplomatic service either to the Commission or back to Member States.

The Kallas problem, or the problem with Kallas’ job?

Kaja Kallas is taking part of the blame. That was probably inevitable.

Several EU capitals have reportedly grown frustrated with her style, especially on sensitive files where they believe she moves too freely, or too far, without a clear mandate. Her recent reported comments in Mexico comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s apartheid era has only reinforced this perception in some capitals.

That tension is not new. It is built into the job and reflects competing visions of what the HRVP should do. For some, the position exists to represent an agreed EU line, not test how far the line can stretch. For others, it should be a political figure willing to say something sharper than the usual Brussels consensus, especially when that consensus has become a synonym for paralysis.

As a result, the High Representative is one of the strangest creatures in the EU institutional fabric.

Kallas is Vice-President of the European Commission, serving under Ursula von der Leyen. Yet she also chairs the Foreign Affairs Council, where she answers politically to Member States and must navigate their often-competing red lines.

She is tasked with coordinating the EU’s external action, but she does not control all the instruments that shape it. She is the face of EU foreign policy, but European Council President António Costa also represents the Union internationally at the level of heads of state and government. And when the EU has a major international summit, the Commission President is usually there too.

The result is a role caught in a permanent balancing act.

When the High Representative is too visible, capitals fear Kallas is freelancing. But if she is not visible enough, she risks becoming irrelevant. Josep Borrell often appeared trapped in that latter category.

He spoke a lot, sometimes bluntly, yet when the EU faced major foreign policy moments, the political stage was usually occupied by Charles Michel, Ursula von der Leyen, or the Member States themselves. The infamous Sofagate incident in Ankara illustrated the problem perfectly: long before Kallas, the EU’s external representation was already a crowded stage.

Is the EEAS still relevant?

The EEAS was created by the Lisbon Treaty and formally launched in 2011. If the EU was to become a more coherent global actor, it needed something closer to a diplomatic service. Not a national foreign ministry, but at least a structure capable of connecting EU delegations, Commission expertise, Council diplomacy and national diplomats.

Fifteen years later, the result remains ambiguous.

The EEAS is not the Commission nor the Council. It’s not a national diplomatic service either. It is a functionally autonomous body under the authority of the High Representative, composed of officials from EU institutions and national diplomatic services.

That hybrid nature was supposed to be its strength. Increasingly, it has also become its weakness.

EU foreign policy is not only made in the EEAS. Trade, enlargement, neighbourhood, development and economic security policies are all Commission-driven. Migration deals are often shaped directly by the Commission and the European Council.

This means the EEAS is expected to deliver coherence in a system that constantly produces fragmentation. The new DG MENA is a good example.

The Commission presents it as the entry point for relations with the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf, bringing together different strands of Commission work and supporting partnerships with the region. On paper, that may improve delivery.

Politically, it also creates an obvious overlap with the EEAS and EU delegations, especially in one of the most sensitive regions for EU foreign policy.

This is where Ursula von der Leyen has been particularly effective. She has understood that in today’s EU, power lies where instruments are: money, regulation, trade, industrial policy, sanctions implementation, procurement, conditionality and crisis tools.

The Commission doesn’t need to formally own foreign policy to shape it. It simply needs to control the policies through which foreign policy is now exercised.

That leaves the EEAS in a difficult position. It may speak the diplomatic language, but it doesn’t always hold the operational levers.

Why the Franco-German move is so politically strange

This is why the Franco-German push is fascinating. On the surface, it appears Member States are trying to take power back from the EEAS. However, some of the options reportedly being discussed could end up strengthening the Commission instead.

That would be a strange outcome for capitals that have spent years complaining about Ursula von der Leyen’s concentration of power.

If foreign policy shifts further into the Commission, Member States may gain efficiency, but they could also lose influence. The Commission President doesn’t report to foreign ministers in the same way the High Representative does. She doesn’t chair the Foreign Affairs Council, nor is she institutionally dependent on monthly consensus-building among foreign ministers.

The Commission President has her own political mandate, her own College of Commissioners, her own administrative machinery and, increasingly, her own geopolitical agenda.

This is the paradox. Capitals are frustrated with the EEAS because it is slow and messy. But it is slow and messy partly because it is tied to them. The Commission may be able to act more quickly, yet it is also further removed from direct national control.

Member States therefore need to face an uncomfortable truth. If they want a more effective EU foreign policy, they may have to accept a greater concentration of authority at the EU level.

The real problem isn’t the organigramme, it’s the unanimity

Brussels loves organigrammes.

When something doesn’t work, the instinct is to redraw boxes, rename services, move competences, create coordination platforms, appoint special envoys, merge units (and split them) or write a new strategy explaining why this time it will be more coherent.

But the crisis of EU foreign policy is fundamentally a power problem.

On foreign policy, Member States still hold the key. They disagree on Israel and Palestine. They disagree on China. They disagree on how far to go on economic security and defence integration. They disagree on how much autonomy Europe should seek from the United States. And in the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, unanimity remains the rule.

No diplomatic service can turn 27 conflicting national positions into a single strategic line by administrative magic. This is why blaming Kallas is easy, but insufficient.

Before her, Borrell struggled. Before Borrell, Mogherini struggled. Before Mogherini, Ashton struggled. Four High Representatives, different styles, different political profiles, and one underlying constraint: the EU wants the symbolism of a foreign minister without giving that foreign minister the authority of one.

And as the EU is moving towards further enlargement, everyone knows this will make decision-making harder. If EU foreign policy is already difficult at 27, it will not become easier at 30 or more. That is why this debate cannot be separated from the wider institutional conversation around treaty change.

The EU has tried to build an efficient diplomatic system. It wanted a common voice without a common political authority. It wanted a foreign policy without fully deciding who has the final say.

Kaja Kallas may be part of the story, but she isn’t the root cause.

She is simply the latest person asked to perform an almost impossible role: be visible, but not too visible; political, but not too independent; European, but never ahead of the Member States; strategic, but always consensual.

That is why the position so often disappoints expectations. The job is an institutional trap.

And that is ultimately the question confronting Europe. The EU does not only need to decide what to do with its diplomatic service. It needs to decide whether it is willing to create the political conditions for a genuine common diplomacy in the first place.

L'articolo How many mics does EU diplomacy need? proviene da The Watcher Post.

A legal opinion commissioned by Connect Europe and signed by Roberto Mastroianni, Professor of European Union Law at the University of Naples Federico II and former Judge and President of a Chamber of the General Court of the European Union from 2019 to 2025, explains in technical terms what many had already sensed politically: the measure is legally untenable and could open the door to litigation capable of paralysing the entire proposal.

The opinion identifies six grounds of incompatibility with primary EU law: an incorrect legal basis; violation of the principle of neutrality regarding Member States’ property ownership regimes; breaches of subsidiarity and proportionality; unjustified limitations on the fundamental rights to conduct a business and to property; and discrimination between operators.

The Commission’s own warnings

One preliminary fact deserves attention. The Commission’s own Regulatory Scrutiny Board issued a negative opinion on the accompanying impact assessment in October 2025, identifying serious deficiencies, including the absence of adequate economic analysis, failure to demonstrate that the mandatory switch-off was necessary and proportionate, and a lack of transparency regarding the methodology used to estimate impacts. 

A second opinion, issued in December 2025, was positive with reservations but confirmed significant shortcomings, including unreliable projections, insufficient treatment of key uncertainties and a failure to quantify costs across all options.

A measure whose necessity the Commission struggled to demonstrate convincingly to its own internal review body may face an even more difficult test under judicial scrutiny.

A shaky legal foundation

The most significant issue concerns the legal basis. The proposal relies on the Treaty provision authorising legislative harmonisation for the internal market. Yet the Court of Justice has long established that mere divergence between national laws is insufficient. 

There must be a concrete obstacle to the exercise of fundamental freedoms.

The landmark judgment remains Germany v Parliament and Council (C-376/98), in which the Court annulled the Tobacco Advertising Directive because the legislature had invoked the harmonisation provision without identifying a genuine obstacle to the internal market. The coexistence of copper and optical fibre networks reflects different stages of infrastructure development rather than barriers to freedom of establishment or the free provision of services.

The underlying objective, accelerating the deployment of next-generation networks, belongs instead to the realm of industrial policy, where the Treaties confer only supporting competences on the Union and explicitly exclude harmonisation. Using an internal market legal basis to pursue objectives linked to a supporting competence risks circumventing the principle of conferral.

The proposal’s preamble compounds the difficulty. The recitals dealing with the copper switch-off contain no explanation of why the measure constitutes a necessary harmonisation intervention. This may amount to a separate breach of the duty to state reasons and could itself provide grounds for annulment.

The missing evidence behind the switch-off

On proportionality, the opinion raises equally serious concerns. The mandatory switch-off fails the three-part test of suitability, necessity and proportionality in the strict sense.

On suitability, the stated objective is to accelerate migration to fibre-to-the-home (FTTH). Yet the measure targets areas already served by optical fibre and forces migration on users who could already choose FTTH voluntarily. The Commission has not demonstrated that switching off copper would drive users towards FTTH rather than cable, fixed wireless or mobile networks. 

This missing causal link was one of the issues explicitly highlighted by the Regulatory Scrutiny Board.

On necessity, the Commission limited its assessment to variations of the switch-off scenario without adequately examining less intrusive alternatives such as incentives for voluntary migration, awareness campaigns or measures aimed at expanding fibre coverage in underserved areas.

On proportionality in the strict sense, accelerating migration by a few years compared with the likely natural pace of transition does not appear commensurate with the extent of the interference in operators’ rights.

Subsidiarity and consumer choice

The subsidiarity dimension adds a further layer of difficulty. The existing regulatory framework already gives national regulatory authorities the tools required to manage the transition from copper to optical fibre. In several Member States, that process is already underway or nearing completion through voluntary plans agreed with operators.

The Commission’s explanatory memorandum offers only a general assertion that divergent national approaches could fragment the single market. It does not demonstrate that existing national instruments are insufficient. The Treaties require a qualitative, and where possible quantitative, explanation of why the objective can be achieved more effectively at Union level. That justification is absent.

The consequences for end users are too rarely considered. Mandatory decommissioning could reduce consumer choice, disrupt converged offers combining fixed telephony, broadband and IPTV, and, where fibre deployment remains incomplete, push users towards fixed wireless or satellite solutions that may be qualitatively inferior to the FTTC infrastructure being removed. Such outcomes sit uneasily alongside the Charter’s requirement to ensure a high level of consumer protection.

Property rights, discrimination and litigation risk

The property dimension raises further concerns. The proposal mandates the decommissioning of operational private infrastructure that has been lawfully acquired, remains fully functional and continues to generate income, yet provides no compensation. The resulting effects are comparable to those of indirect expropriation.

Under EU law, the sacrifice imposed on property owners must remain proportionate to the collective benefit. Where a measure assumes an expropriatory character, fair compensation is generally expected.

The frequently cited comparison with the analogue-to-digital television transition is not entirely persuasive. That transition concerned the radio spectrum, a scarce public resource whose reallocation freed capacity for new services. Copper is not a scarce resource. Its elimination would simply remove a functioning private asset, creating economic loss for the owner without an equivalent public gain.

The proposal also raises questions of equal treatment. Decommissioning obligations apply exclusively to copper networks, while cable and fixed wireless networks, which also provide broadband services and compete directly with both copper and optical fibre, face no equivalent requirement.

Copper operators would be required to dismantle their infrastructure, while operators of alternative networks could continue operating and may indirectly benefit from the resulting migration of users. If the objective is to accelerate migration to FTTH, it is not immediately clear why the burden falls solely on copper operators while other technologies providing comparable services remain outside the scope of the obligation.

A proposal heading for the courts

The legal consequences could be significant. If adopted without substantial modification, the proposal may invite challenges before the Court of Justice, whether through a direct action for annulment or a preliminary reference on validity from a national court. 

According to the opinion, each of the grounds identified could independently support such a challenge.

The opinion arrives at a sensitive stage in the legislative process. The DNA is currently under examination by the European Parliament and the Council, and questions surrounding the legal basis are likely to become increasingly prominent during interinstitutional negotiations.

The broader political question remains open. Accelerating the transition from copper to FTTH is a legitimate policy objective that operators do not dispute in principle. The issue is not whether the transition should occur, but whether the chosen instrument is legally sound and whether the proposed mechanisms, including a mandatory deadline, compulsory switch-off, absence of compensation and limited consideration of less intrusive alternatives, remain within the constraints imposed by primary EU law.

A legislative text vulnerable to annulment before the Court of Justice does not accelerate the transition to optical fibre. It risks delaying it.

Yet the problem extends beyond legal form. A mandatory switch-off that fails to demonstrate it will expand fibre coverage, that may push users towards inferior alternatives, that removes functioning infrastructure without compensation and that lacks a verifiable causal link to its stated objective is not merely a poorly designed instrument. It may be the wrong instrument altogether.

The switch-off provisions should not simply be rewritten. They should be removed from the DNA and replaced with a proportionate framework that encourages investment while preserving technological neutrality and avoiding unnecessary market distortions.

L'articolo The Digital Networks Act and the original sin of the copper switch-off proviene da The Watcher Post.

GlobalFoundries takes $375 million in exchange for a federal stake of about 1%. D-Wave, Rigetti and Infleqtion each get around $100 million; Diraq up to $38 million. Shares in the listed firms rose between 6% and 31% on the day.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick framed the deal as a step “to build on our domestic industry, creating thousands of high-paying American jobs while advancing American quantum capabilities”. The language is industrial-policy boilerplate. What sits behind it isn’t.

A new industrial policy in plain sight

Quantum computing isn’t yet a commercial market. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang said only last year that “very useful quantum computers” were probably two decades away. Error rates remain high and use cases remain speculative.

Yet Washington has chosen exactly this moment, precisely because the science isn’t settled, to plant a flag. The federal government is no longer subsidising R&D from a distance. It is taking equity, picking winners and assembling a domestic supply chain before China locks in scale.

It’s the same logic that produced the 10% federal stake in Intel last year and the strategic position in MP Materials, the rare-earth miner. Three sectors — advanced chips, critical minerals and quantum — have been folded into a single industrial doctrine. The government buys in, sits at the table and protects what it considers strategic. Whatever one thinks of the politics, the direction of travel is unmistakable.

Europe’s quantum effort, by the numbers

Now put that $2 billion, committed in a single day, against Europe’s quantum effort. The EU’s flagship programme, launched in 2018, runs on a €1 billion budget over ten years. France’s Plan Quantique commits roughly €1.8 billion across the decade, Germany’s national strategy around €3 billion, and the Netherlands €615 million through Quantum Delta NL.

Italy participates through PNRR-funded research consortia and work coordinated by the CNR and INFN. The Commission itself now puts total public funding mobilised over five years at around €11 billion across EU institutions and Member States.

Not a small number. But add it carefully. Each programme has its own governance, funding cycle, preferred national champions and procurement rules.

There is no European Anderon. No European stake in a European quantum chip manufacturer. No European vehicle capable of taking equity in a strategic technology company at the scale Washington just did.

None, at least, that is not constrained by state-aid rules, national prerogatives and the sheer slowness of satisfying twenty-seven shareholders at once. One figure captures the result, and it comes from the Commission itself: European quantum companies attract only around 5% of global private investment.

Why €11 billion buys less than $2 billion

The gap is not really about money. Europe does not lack funds in aggregate; the Commission counts some €11 billion mobilised over five years. The problem is what that money has to travel through before it reaches a company.

In Europe, funding moves along separate channels, each with its own logic. Horizon Europe funds research consortia, national plans back domestic champions, the European Investment Bank lends to mid-caps, and EuroHPC pays for shared computing infrastructure. Every channel works on its own terms. None of them, alone or combined, amounts to a single balance sheet capable of deciding to own part of a strategic company.

That is what the headline numbers obscure. When Washington decides quantum chips are strategic, one actor signs a $1 billion cheque and takes equity for the taxpayer in the same week.

When Brussels reaches the same conclusion, no single actor can move. It adopts a strategy — the Quantum Europe Strategy of 2 July 2025 — announces a Quantum Act for 2026 and waits for twenty-seven Member States to align, assuming they ever do. The firepower exists. What is missing is a trigger.

The Quantum Europe Strategy itself acknowledges that the EU is “lagging behind in translating its innovation capabilities and future potential into real market opportunities, while also struggling with fragmentation of strategies and roadmaps across Member States”.

The diagnosis is correct. The instruments proposed — pilot chip lines, a quantum design facility, a skills academy and a Quantum Talent Mobility Programme — are useful but insufficient if the real problem is that no European actor can sign a cheque comparable to the one Washington just signed.

What focus would actually mean

Changing approach is not a slogan. It means three concrete things.

First, accepting that some technologies are strategic enough for European public capital to take equity stakes, rather than merely handing out grants and tax credits. The instruments already exist: the EIB, the European Investment Fund, a reformed STEP platform and the Scaleup Europe Fund launched in May 2025. What is missing is the political will to use them.

Second, choosing. Europe cannot fund every Member State quantum champion, every national photonics lab and every parallel cryogenic-chip programme. Concentration is the price of relevance.

Third, building the manufacturing layer, not only the research one. The American move matters precisely because it targets the chip-fabrication bottleneck. Europe still possesses world-class assets — IMEC in Leuven, CEA-Leti in Grenoble and the Fraunhofer institutes — but lacks a joint plan to scale them.

None of this is incompatible with European values, single-market rules or competition law. What it is incompatible with is the comforting assumption that excellence in research will automatically become industrial leadership. It did not happen with cloud computing. It did not happen with AI accelerators. There is no reason to assume quantum will be different.

A choice, not a fate

The $2 billion announced in Washington this week is not, by Silicon Valley standards, a vast sum. It will look modest next to the private capital likely to follow it. What matters is the signal. The world’s most powerful economy has decided to use its balance sheet as an instrument of technological sovereignty and is now competing for the next general-purpose technology not as a regulator, but as a shareholder.

Europe still has the talent, the public-research base and the industrial heritage to do the same. What it lacks today is the institutional muscle to act with the speed and concentration the moment demands.

The quantum gap is not yet a verdict. It is a choice.

As Infleqtion’s Matthew Kinsella told Reuters, quantum is “coming much faster than anybody thinks”. If he is right, the window in which Europe can still make a different choice may be narrower than Brussels appears willing to admit.

L'articolo Washington bets on equity, Brussels writes strategies: the quantum gap is now a choice proviene da The Watcher Post.

It offered a clear-eyed view that a long historical phase of the EU has come to an end, and with it a roadmap for what must come next.

For more than seventy years, Europe has been able to build peace, a single market, a common currency and freedom of movement because it operated within a stable international order, underpinned by US security guarantees and sustained by globalisation. 

In that environment, the EU prioritised rules, compromise and governance, reducing the role of power politics that had devastated the continent in the twentieth century. That world no longer exists.

The pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the energy crisis, geopolitical tensions, technological competition and the artificial intelligence revolution have exposed Europe’s vulnerabilities: energy dependence, technological delays, industrial fragmentation, insufficient capital integration and an inability to invest at the necessary scale.

The core message of Draghi is simple but decisive. 

Europe can no longer function as a large regulated market alone. It must become a genuine political, industrial, technological and strategic power.

The challenge posed by AI, energy infrastructure, semiconductors, common defence and technological sovereignty requires massive investment, European coordination and the ability to make decisions quickly. 

In a world dominated by large continental powers, no European country can manage this alone.

For this reason, Draghi speaks of “pragmatic federalism” – groups of Member States willing to move forward together on defence, energy, innovation and common security. 

Not against the United States, but to finally build a mature Europe capable of being a strong ally rather than a dependent one.

The war in Ukraine has already changed Europe more deeply than is often acknowledged. It has forced Europeans to recognise that freedom, democracy and prosperity cannot survive without strategic capacity, industrial autonomy and common defence.

Aachen, therefore, was far more than a ceremonial lecture. It was a call for Europe’s historical maturity.

And at such a difficult and decisive moment, a figure like Draghi would likely remain one of the most authoritative guarantees for guiding the Union towards a transformation that can no longer be postponed.

L'articolo Why the EU still needs Draghi proviene da The Watcher Post.

The assessment examines the effectiveness of national measures aimed at preventing money laundering, terrorist financing and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. While the report evaluates the Italian framework as a whole, particular attention is given to the role of Italian notaries, identified as a central pillar of the country’s preventive enforcement model.

FATF highlights the strength of the so-called “Italian system”, pointing to the maturity of its legal and institutional architecture, the level of coordination between competent authorities and the ability of both public institutions and obligated entities to identify risks and adapt prevention mechanisms accordingly.

The report also underlines Italy’s capacity to align its enforcement model with international standards while preserving the specific features of its domestic legal order.

Notaries recognised as key gatekeepers

Within the non-financial sector, Italian notaries receive specific recognition as part of the DNFBPs, or Designated Non-Financial Businesses and Professions, where they are identified as key gatekeepers in transactions most exposed to criminal infiltration risks.

FATF describes notaries as one of the most effective safeguards within the non-financial sector, particularly because of their ex-ante legality checks in corporate transactions and real estate deeds. The report presents this preventive approach as one of the defining strengths of the Italian model.

The National Council of Notaries (“Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato”) was also singled out for its work in strengthening compliance standards across the profession. FATF praises the Council’s continuous training activities, the dissemination of technical and legal guidance, its contribution to the national risk assessment process and broader efforts to raise awareness of criminal risks linked to professional services.

The report further notes that awareness of money laundering risks within the notarial sector is both strong and constantly evolving. This is reflected, according to FATF, in the improved quality and increasing number of suspicious transaction reports submitted by notaries, which the organisation views as evidence of an actively engaged professional category contributing to the effectiveness of the national prevention framework.

The publication of the report was welcomed by the President of the National Council of Notaries, Vito Pace, who said the findings confirm the value of the Italian prevention model and the role played by the notarial profession in safeguarding legality.

“We welcome with great satisfaction the conclusions of the Financial Action Task Force, which recognize the value of the Italian prevention model and, in particular, the role played by the notarial profession as a safeguard of legality,” Pace stated.

“This result confirms the daily commitment of notaries to ensuring transparency, legal certainty, and reliability in economic transactions. We will continue to invest in training, innovation, and cooperation with institutions in order to further strengthen the anti-money laundering system for the protection of citizens and the market.”

Growing relevance in the EU debate on the “28th regime”

While FATF identifies certain systemic challenges, including the temporary suspension of Italy’s beneficial ownership register, the report ultimately reinforces the central role of preventive controls entrusted to the notarial profession.

This recognition comes at a politically significant moment, as the role of notaries is becoming increasingly relevant in the broader European debate surrounding the so-called “28th regime”, the European Commission’s initiative aimed at creating an optional EU-wide legal framework for innovative companies and cross-border businesses.

Presented by the Commission on 18 March 2026, the proposal seeks to simplify company law procedures and reduce fragmentation across Member States through a digital-by-default and harmonised framework operating alongside national systems.

Yet the initiative has also raised questions about how ex-ante safeguards, including anti-money laundering and legality checks traditionally carried out by notaries in several Member States, would function under a more streamlined European regime.

Against that backdrop, FATF’s recognition of the Italian model is likely to resonate beyond the national debate. The report reinforces the argument that preventive legal controls can play a central role in protecting market integrity, ensuring transparency and limiting opportunities for criminal infiltration within cross-border economic activity.

Legislative work on the “28th regime” is expected to intensify in the coming months, particularly following the appointment of German MEP René Repasi (S&D) as rapporteur in the European Parliament’s JURI Committee. Attention will now turn to negotiations between Parliament and the Council as co-legislators seek to define a common position on the file.

L'articolo Italy’s anti-money laundering framework earns FATF recognition as notaries emerge as key safeguard proviene da The Watcher Post.

Today, the European Union faces a convergence of pressures that are testing not only its policies, but the way it takes decisions.

A narrow window for action

After months of acute tension in the Middle East, there are tentative signs of de-escalation. Not a settlement, but a pause and a degree of political space. For the EU, such moments are rare and often short-lived.

Internally, another shift is just as significant. Hungary’s repeated use of veto power has, at least temporarily, receded from the centre of EU foreign policy blockages. In recent years, Budapest has delayed or diluted sanctions packages, statements on Ukraine, and broader geopolitical positioning. 

Even a partial easing of that dynamic creates an opening for more coherent European action. The question is whether the EU can use that window effectively.

Hormuz as a geopolitical test case

One immediate test lies far from Brussels: the Strait of Hormuz. Roughly a fifth of global oil consumption passes through this narrow corridor, making it one of the world’s most critical chokepoints.

Any disruption has near-instant consequences for energy prices, inflation and industrial output in Europe.

The EU has experience in this domain. Its maritime surveillance mission in the Strait of Hormuz (EMASoH), launched in 2020 and led by several member states, was designed to ensure safe navigation without escalating military tensions. But the current situation may require a more ambitious approach.

A European-led initiative focused on demining, maritime security and freedom of navigation would serve multiple purposes. It would protect core economic interests, reduce dependency on external security guarantees, and demonstrate that the EU can act as a security provider.

Such a mission would not replace NATO or compete with the United States. But it would signal a shift toward greater strategic autonomy in practice.

Rethinking reliance on Washington

The transatlantic relationship remains central to European security. NATO continues to underpin collective defence, particularly in the context of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Yet the political context in Washington is shifting.

Donald Trump’s return to the presidency has revived longstanding concerns about the reliability of US commitments. During his previous term, he repeatedly questioned NATO’s value, threatened to condition defence guarantees, and took unilateral decisions on trade and foreign policy that caught European allies off guard.

Even if institutional ties endure, the assumption of automatic alignment is no longer tenable.

For Europe, this does not mean decoupling. It means recalibrating. Maintaining close cooperation while investing more in its own capabilities is increasingly seen as a necessity rather than a choice.

Economic pressure is building

Geopolitical instability is already feeding into economic risk. Energy markets remain sensitive to developments in the Gulf. Supply chain disruptions continue to affect key sectors.

Institutions including the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank have warned that prolonged geopolitical fragmentation could weigh on growth, dampen investment and exacerbate inequality.

For European households, this translates into a tangible squeeze on living standards. For governments, it limits fiscal space at a time when demands for defence, industrial policy and social protection are all rising.

The case for another collective leap

The EU has responded to systemic crises before. During the Covid-19 pandemic, it broke long-standing taboos by jointly issuing debt to finance the €750 billion Next Generation EU recovery fund. 

That move marked a significant step toward fiscal integration, even if framed as temporary.

A growing number of policymakers and economists argue that a similar approach may now be required. Proposals include new joint borrowing to finance defence and energy infrastructure, a more flexible application of fiscal rules, and an expanded role for the European Investment Bank in de-risking strategic investments.

At the same time, support for Ukraine remains a central pillar of EU policy, adding to the urgency of ensuring adequate funding mechanisms.

The structural constraint: unanimity

All of these ambitions run into the same institutional barrier: unanimity.

In key areas such as foreign policy and taxation, every member state retains a veto. This was intended as a safeguard of sovereignty. In practice, it has increasingly become a source of paralysis.

Over the past decade, unanimity has delayed sanctions, weakened diplomatic positions and, at times, allowed individual governments to extract concessions unrelated to the issue at hand. As the EU expands and its agenda becomes more complex, the costs of this system are rising.

There are existing mechanisms to move beyond it. The treaties allow for “qualified majority voting” in certain areas, and so-called passerelle clauses could extend this further without full treaty change. 

But using them requires political will — and, paradoxically, often unanimity to activate.

Europe now faces a clear choice. It can preserve its current decision-making model and accept the limits that come with it. Or it can adapt to become a political actor capable of acting when it matters.

L'articolo Europe at a crossroads: Why decision-making reform can no longer wait proviene da The Watcher Post.

In practice, this means that firms looking to grow across the EU often encounter additional costs, legal complexity and administrative burdens that make expansion far more difficult than it should be. Over time, this fragmentation has become more than a technical inconvenience. It has turned into a structural weakness for Europe’s competitiveness.

This concern has become increasingly visible in the broader debate on Europe’s economic future. Both the Letta and Draghi Reports identified legal fragmentation as a first-order structural threat and converged on a common prescription: a 28th regime, an optional, EU-wide legal framework for companies that operate across borders. The basic logic is straightforward. Instead of requiring companies to navigate a different legal framework in every Member State, the EU could offer an optional European regime alongside national ones. This would give firms the possibility to operate across borders under a single set of common rules.

In March 2026, the European Commission moved in this direction with its proposal for an EU Inc. and the initiative deserves close attention. The first noteworthy element is the choice of a regulation rather than a directive. This choice signals an effort to establish a truly common framework across the Union, instead of leaving implementation to twenty-seven different national approaches and the risk of further fragmentation. At its core, the proposal’s objective is to give companies a simpler and more predictable legal framework.

Its principal features include fully digital incorporation procedures, streamlined registration, common rules governing the entire corporate life cycle, more flexible capital and governance operations, no mandatory minimum share capital, and improved mechanisms for employee and investor participation. The proposal’s political significance lies in its approach: it seeks to deepen the Single Market by removing barriers, reducing administrative costs, and giving European firms access to genuinely EU-scale legal infrastructure.

One notable feature of the proposal is that it is not limited to a narrow category of firms. It is designed to be open more broadly, rather than reserved only for innovative companies or for businesses in specific sectors. That choice makes sense. The challenges created by fragmentation are not confined to a single type of company. They affect any business trying to grow across borders, especially at the moment when expansion becomes more ambitious.

At the same time, the proposal is not without difficulties. One sensitive issue concerns worker participation and the role of employees in company governance. This has been one of the most politically delicate questions in earlier debates on European company forms, and it is likely to remain so again. Without a credible compromise, there is a risk that negotiations become stalled or that the final instrument loses much of its original ambition.

There is also a broader legal question about how solid the framework will be once it is applied in practice. Even if the new regime is meant to create greater uniformity, its success will depend on whether it can avoid being interpreted differently across Member States. If too many gaps are left open, there is a danger that some of the fragmentation the proposal is meant to solve could reappear in another form.

These concerns are real, but they are arguments for improving the proposal rather than abandoning it. What makes this moment different from previous attempts is that the political conditions appear more favorable. The momentum generated by both the Commission and the Member States through the One Europe, One Market competitiveness agenda creates a significant window of opportunity.

In that sense, EU Inc. should be seen not as an isolated technical reform, but as one component of a broader strategy to adapt the Single Market to a more competitive and geopolitically contested world. This is precisely why the One Europe, One Market agenda matters. Its importance lies in treating competitiveness as a comprehensive project, one that brings together simplification, scale, and the removal of internal barriers across several fronts. The 28th regime addresses one crucial dimension of that agenda by making the legal environment for firms simpler, more coherent, and more European. But restoring Europe’s competitiveness requires a wider approach, one that also tackles other essential drivers such as access to finance, the cost of energy, access to talent, innovation capacity, and the broader conditions needed for firms to start, grow, invest, and remain in Europe.

Viewed in this wider perspective, EU Inc. is important precisely because it helps give institutional form to a larger ambition. If Europe wants companies not only to be founded here, but also to scale here and stay here, it must offer a framework that matches the scale of its own ambitions.

L'articolo EU Inc. and Europe’s competitiveness challenge proviene da The Watcher Post.