The parade of far-right leaders through Hungary in recent weeks has been worthy of a superpower. In 16 years, Viktor Orbán has turned a country that represents less than 1% of the European GDP into a bulwark of global ultraconservatism. The latest visit, that of the Vice President of the United States, J.D. Vance, demonstrates the nervousness of leaders who know that in Budapest they are not only playing for a government, but a key battle for discourse.

It seems hard to believe, but these past few weeks in Brussels, there's almost more talk about civil service exams than the chaos caused by the war in Iran. This is the first general call for graduates who want to work in European institutions since 2019. As expected, more than 170,000 people have applied. It's literally impossible to live in Brussels, be under 40, and not know someone who has applied.

The list of recent grievances in the European Union is long and burdensome: inaction in the face of genocide, multiple Trumpian blackmails and a historical dehumanization of migrants. To all this is added one final symptom: the "castle policy".

In the French government, meetings via Microsoft Teams or Zoom are over. This week, the Minister for the Civil Service and State Reform announced that, starting in 2027, his government departments will no longer work with "non-European solutions." Instead, they will use Visio, a platform developed by the French digital authority. Also this week, the European Commissioner for Defence and Space, Andrius Kubilius, announced that the European Union is launching its own satellite communications system to reduce its dependence on the Starlink service, owned by billionaire Elon Musk. As Kubilius explained on Wednesday, the program, named IRIS2, will consist of more than 280 satellites. The goal is to provide secure space communications for governments, police, military, and emergency services across the EU by 2029.

How many times have you read or heard that Europe is at a crossroads? The expression has been overused, especially in recent years, to explain the continuous existential decisions the European Union has had to make. But Europe is no longer at any crossroads; this entry in 2026 It has forced us out, and never has that been more true.

The first piece of Europe's protective shield fell this week, quietly, hidden amid the usual noise generated by Trump's headlines. Under the banner of "debureaucratization," the European Union has reached an agreement to "simplify" corporate sustainability laws. It might seem futile, but as European law experts have been warning for months...like Professor Alberto AlemannoThis is the first symptom of a dangerous dismantling of the structures that protect our fundamental rights and values as European citizens.

Economic growth is on the decline and prices are on the rise. The European Commission has presented its economic forecasts for the European economy as a whole, which was hit hard by the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine. The main obstacle for the European Union is runaway inflation, driven by the escalation of energy prices, which Spain has also suffered more than the EU average. Therefore, the Commission admits Spaniards will inevitably lose purchasing power, because their salaries will not grow as much as prices will

The Majorcan rapper Valtònyc was happy and also emotional as he left Ghent's Court of Appeal of Ghent this Tuesday after a very short hearing. The Belgian court again rejected his extradition to Spain, as the Spanish High Court has demanded for the last four years. The court had to examine his case for the second time, after the Brussels Court of Cassation upheld in part the appeal by the Spanish Prosecutor's Office. And that is why Valtònyc had to stand trial again in Ghent, this time by a different set of judges. The court only heard the case for insults against the Crown. Being a reconfirmation of a previous sentence, everything indicates it should be final. Nevertheless, the Belgian Prosecutor's Office can still appeal again in cassation, and that is why the musician has struggled to hold back tears during his statements to the press.

The reduction in the electricity bill will have to wait. The third vice-president and minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, admitted this Monday that the government still cannot approve the regulation that should allow a limit on the price of gas because it has not yet obtained the definitive green light from Brussels. Last Tuesday Ribera and her Portuguese counterpart, José Duarte Cordeiro, met the Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, and announced they had been given the green light by the Commission to set a limit on gas prices of around €50/MWh, pending only a few technical details. But the final agreement has not yet been reached and, therefore, Pedro Sánchez's government will not be able to approve the measure at this Tuesday's cabinet meeting as Ribera had announced.

Spain and Portugal have reached an agreement with Brussels which will allow them to limit the price of gas to around €50/MWh, a measure that will last twelve months in order to lower the price of electricity. Just a month ago the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, returned from a tough leaders' summit in Brussels with a promise to push forward the measure, but it has taken intense negotiations between the European Commission and Madrid and Lisbon, who had made more ambitious proposal to limit gas to €30. But Brussels viewed it with concern because it feared it would damage the European single market for energy.

The Catalan pro-independence movement has announced a new international legal offensive of in the wake of the cybersurveillance of several politicians, activists and journalists revealed this week. From the headquarters of the European Parliament in Brussels, former president Carles Puigdemont and former vice president Oriol Junqueras, have announced that they will file complaints in five European countries, specifically in Belgium, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Germany and France; the countries where Pegasus spyware was used against pro-independence supporters and their allies, according to Citizen Lab's investigation.

Since the first scandal related to the cybersurveillance by some European governments and authorities on their own citizens was uncovered, the European Commission has been alarmed and concerned, but in practice has done very little. From Brussels, the EU executive considers it "unacceptable", but assures that it has no competence to do anything more than to call on governments to investigate the various cases that have come to light. This comes after The New Yorker, following an investigation by Citizen Lab, revealed several European governments including Spain's and Greece's appeared to be involved with mass cyber surveillance. Mass spying on Catalan politicians, activists and journalists has taken centre stage.

Traditional and handmade products such as Catalan espadrilles, Murano glass, Limoges porcelain and Llorca ceramics should be protected at European level for their intellectual value and authenticity. This is the view of the European Commission, which this Wednesday proposed a regulatory framework that recognises their special and specific value throughout the European Union, through a system similar to that of designations of origin that protect agri-food products such as wine, oil and cheese.

It was a a dense session today at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) as it heard the questions raised by Spanish Supreme Court judge Pablo Llarena after the Belgian courts refused the extradition of the former conseller Lluís Puig. Throughout the morning, all parties have been able to present their arguments and the European Commission, as guardian of the treaties and rules of the European Union, has defended the Spanish position. According to the Commission, Belgium should not have assessed whether or not Puig would have a fair trial in Spain when receiving the European arrest warrant, because "there is no systemic problem of rule of law" in Spain.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has announced this Tuesday that it has begun to study the pharmaceutical company Hipra's vaccine against the coronavirus. According to the EMA statement, the clinical studies submitted by the pharmaceutical company so far suggest that the drug may be effective against coronavirus and also against the omicron variant

The European Commission wants to show Poland that it can no longer ignore the legal foundations of the European Union. On Tuesday, the EU executive activated for the first time the mechanism that allows it to withhold EU funds from a member state for failure to pay a penalty. Specifically, Brussels will withhold for now €14.5m of funds earmarked for Poland after the country refused to close the Turów lignite mine as demanded by the European authorities.

The last instance of the Belgian judicial system will decide on Tuesday, January 18 on the extradition of the Majorcan rapper Josep Miquel Arenas, alias Valtònyc, to Spain. The Court of Cassation in Brussels has therefore delayed the decision on the rapper, who is wanted by Spain for glorification of terrorism, insults to the Crown and threats, for another week. The Ghent Court of Appeal had already overturned the European arrest warrant at the end of December, but the Belgian prosecutor's office, on behalf of the Spanish one, decided to appeal to the last judicial instance, which is the one that will decide next Tuesday.

Under his mandate, Oriol Junqueras, Carles Puigdemont, Toni Comín and Clara Ponsatí were appointed MEPs. And also under his mandate, the ERC leader had to resign. "I have received criticism for my management from both pro-independence and anti-independence players," said David Maria Sassoli (Florence, 1956) in an interview with this newspaper on Europe Day. The president of the European Parliament who has possibly experienced the Catalan conflict most closely died early this morning, according to his spokesman Roberto Cuillo, after weeks in hospital due to a complication in his immune system. He had already had health problems at the end of 2021 that kept him away from parliamentary activity. He is the first top EU official to die in office.

Omicron is spreading rapidly across Europe and will strain the continent's healthcare systems if social containment measures are not taken immediately. This is the stark warning issued on Wednesday by the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), which has set the level of risk to public health associated with this new variant at "very high". The main reason is its rapid spread, which will mean it will become the main variant on the continent in the next two months, according to ECDC forecasts.

European Union finance ministers today agreed on a reform of value-added tax (VAT) rules that will give governments more flexibility to apply reduced tax, exclude environmentally harmful products and allow other products considered essential to be added. The reform has needed three years of "marathon" negotiations, in EU Commissioner for the Economy Paolo Gentiloni's words, who recalled that proposal was initially made in 2018 and negotiations have dragged on until today.