标签： Europe

On Friday morning, Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin touched down in Vatican City to begin a scheduled private audience with Pope Leo XIV, marking a significant high-level diplomatic and faith-based engagement between Ireland and the Holy See. Martin and his spouse Mary were formally welcomed in Vatican’s iconic San Damaso Courtyard by Petar Rajic, Prefect of the Papal Household, alongside members of the papal gentlemen’s delegation.

Ahead of the closed-door meeting, which is scheduled to run for a maximum of 35 minutes, Martin outlined the key priorities he intends to raise during the discussion. Top of the agenda are the ongoing armed conflicts tearing through the Middle East, Ukraine, and Sudan, with the Taoiseach emphasizing a shared commitment between Ireland and the Holy See to advancing peace through dialogue. Martin also noted that Pope Leo XIV has centered his papacy on peace as a defining mission, aligning closely with Ireland’s long-held diplomatic priorities.

“We share many core values: a deep commitment to a rules-based international order, and a belief that dialogue and diplomacy are the only path to lasting peace,” Martin told reporters ahead of the audience. “I look forward to exchanging views with him on how we can collaborate to advance effective multilateralism as the most effective tool to tackle our shared global challenges and bring an end to ongoing conflicts.”

Domestically, Martin plans to update the Pope on the continuing reconciliation process across the island of Ireland, including the sensitive, critical work of addressing the violent legacy of decades of conflict known as the Troubles. The Taoiseach highlighted that faith leaders and clergy from all Christian denominations have played an indispensable role in advancing peace and reconciliation across Ireland, and that this input will be a core focus of the conversation.

The meeting will also create space for a frank reflection on the historical relationship between the Irish government and the Catholic Church, including the ongoing harms and unmet needs of survivors of clerical abuse. Martin confirmed this difficult but necessary topic will not be avoided during the discussion.

Beyond his audience with the Pope, Martin has a full schedule of diplomatic and institutional engagements during his trip. He will hold a separate bilateral meeting with Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin, the top diplomat of the Holy See, before traveling to the Pontifical Irish College in Rome. During his stop at the college, Martin will meet with members of its community, tour the institution’s historic archives, and announce new Irish government funding to support the cataloguing, digitization, and long-term preservation of the archive collection. This investment is part of a broader project to improve conservation, expand public access, and boost outreach for the college’s historical holdings.

The Vatican visit comes at a key juncture for Irish foreign policy: ahead of Ireland’s assumption of the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union, which begins on 1 July. Martin confirmed he will outline Ireland’s policy priorities and planned agenda for the six-month presidency during his discussions at the Vatican.

Following the conclusion of his engagements in Vatican City, Martin will travel to Rome for a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni later on Friday. This stop follows a bilateral meeting Martin held with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Élysée Palace in Paris on Thursday, as part of a broader European diplomatic tour ahead of Ireland’s EU presidency.

The meeting marks the latest high-level engagement between Irish leaders and the Vatican. In 2018, then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar met with Pope Francis during the Pope’s historic visit to Ireland, the first papal visit to the country in 39 years. Speaking in 2025, Varadkar noted that the 2018 meeting took place at a time when relations between the Irish state and the Catholic Church were already strained, amid ongoing reckoning with the clerical abuse crisis.

Helsingborg, Sweden – Just weeks after announcing a drawdown of 5,000 U.S. troops from Europe, U.S. President Donald Trump has reversed course with a new order to deploy an additional 5,000 American service members to Poland – a sudden policy shift that has left NATO allies and senior U.S. defense officials confused and scrambling to adjust.

Speaking to reporters Friday on the sidelines of a NATO foreign ministers meeting she hosted in southern Sweden, Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard acknowledged the widespread uncertainty, noting that the abrupt reversal had created a complex, unclear landscape for alliance coordination. The gathering included U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, along with top diplomatic representatives from across the 32-nation bloc.

The confusion extends across the Atlantic, even within U.S. defense circles. Two senior U.S. defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal military planning, confirmed that uniformed and civilian defense leaders have been left just as puzzled as alliance partners. “We just spent the better part of two weeks reacting to the first announcement. We don’t know what this means either,” one official said.

Trump broke the news of his new policy in a post on his Truth Social platform, framing the deployment as a gesture of goodwill rooted in his close personal relationship with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, whom Trump publicly endorsed during Poland’s 2024 presidential election. “I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland,” Trump wrote.

This latest announcement marks a stark about-face after weeks of inconsistent messaging from Trump and his administration, all of which previously centered on plans to shrink – not expand – the U.S. military footprint across the European continent. Earlier this month, the White House confirmed it would cut U.S. troop levels in Europe by roughly 5,000 personnel, with U.S. officials confirming that around 4,000 scheduled rotational deployments to Poland would be canceled.

That initial drawdown announcement came after Trump publicly took umbrage at comments from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who criticized the U.S. approach to the ongoing conflict with Iran, saying Washington had been “humiliated” by Iranian leadership and lacked a coherent strategy for the war. In response, Trump told reporters the U.S. would cut troop levels “a lot further than 5,000” and unveiled new punitive tariffs on European passenger vehicles – a move that directly targeted Germany, the European Union’s largest and most economically influential automaker.

NATO leadership was caught off guard by the sudden policy reversal, despite prior public pledges from U.S. officials that all changes to European force posture would be fully coordinated with alliance partners. As recently as Wednesday, NATO’s top military officer, U.S. Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, publicly reaffirmed that the U.S. would “stay well-synchronized with our allies moving forward.”

Current U.S. military posture in Europe places roughly 80,000 American troops across the continent, under existing Pentagon rules that require a minimum of 76,000 troops and key military equipment to be permanently stationed in Europe – unless NATO allies are consulted first, and a full review confirms a drawdown serves core U.S. national security interests. The initial planned withdrawal of 5,000 troops would have pushed total force levels below this legal mandated threshold.

For Poland, Trump’s reversal has been met with cautious approval. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski welcomed the new deployment, noting that it will keep overall U.S. troop presence in Poland “more or less at previous levels,” preserving the security reassurance that has anchored Polish defense policy for decades.

This report was compiled from contributions by Cook in Brussels and Emma Burrows in London.

BELGRADE, Serbia — As a new year of political opposition unfolds in the Balkan nation, Serbia’s dissident university student movement is preparing to stage its first major mass gathering this weekend, reigniting a grassroots campaign for sweeping systemic change under the long-ruling authoritarian administration of President Aleksandar Vucic.

Organizers expect thousands of participants to travel from across the country to converge on Belgrade’s iconic Slavija Square on Saturday, a location already etched into the nation’s recent protest history. This site hosted a massive anti-government demonstration last March, a gathering that ended abruptly amid contested claims that state forces deployed a sonic weapon against peaceful attendees — an allegation Vucic’s government has repeatedly denied.

This student-led movement first emerged as a formidable political force in late 2024, galvanized by public outrage over the Novi Sad train station collapse that killed 16 people. The tragedy struck a deep chord across Serbian society, with widespread public belief that the disaster stemmed from endemic corruption and systemic negligence in state-funded infrastructure projects. What began as a call for accountability quickly ballooned into a months-long nationwide movement: students blocked university faculties across the country throughout 2025, successfully forcing the resignation of former Prime Minister Milos Vucevic and his entire cabinet. Protesters argued this step was insufficient, however, and have continued to demand early national elections — a call Vucic has so far refused to answer.

Last year, the movement anchored a sweeping wave of anti-corruption street protests that posed one of the most significant threats to Vucic’s power in years. Today, student leaders say their efforts are now focused on upcoming national elections, expected to take place either later this year or in 2027, which they aim to use to remove Vucic’s right-wing populist government from power.

“We hope a great many people will join us, spend the day with our movement, and continue standing with students as we prepare for these elections,” youth movement representative Isidora Jovanovic told the Associated Press. “Serbia is long overdue for change, and students are the ones who will deliver that change.”

Tensions have already been building in the capital in the lead-up to Saturday’s rally. On Tuesday, police were forced to intervene to separate pro-Vucic loyalists from students printing “Students win” protest materials. Just days before that confrontation, an elderly man was injured when a driver rammed through a student-organized traffic blockade in central Belgrade. These incidents are not isolated: political violence has marred opposition gatherings for months, including clashes that disrupted local elections last March.

Jovanovic emphasized that event organizers have taken extensive steps to prevent unrest at Saturday’s gathering, noting that many attendees will be traveling from out of town. “We do not want any of our fellow citizens to leave with a bad experience or injuries,” she said.

Political analysts note that the once-reactive student movement has matured into a cohesive political force capable of challenging Vucic’s long-dominant Serbian Progressive Party. Dusan Vucicevic, a professor at Belgrade’s Faculty of Political Sciences, told the AP that the movement commands broad cross-public support and is positioned to deliver strong results in any future election.

“We finally have a legitimate political group that can effectively challenge the Serbian Progressive Party and Aleksandar Vucic himself,” Vucicevic said.

Vucic has not remained passive in the face of this growing opposition. Pro-government media outlets have repeatedly labeled student protesters and other critics as foreign-backed terrorists and agents seeking to destabilize Serbia, a rhetoric that has deepened the country’s already stark political divisions. For Saturday’s rally, Vucic’s loyalists are expected to occupy a pro-government park camp outside the presidency building that Vucic established last March, widely seen as a deliberate buffer against opposition demonstrations. Multiple attacks on protesters and journalists have been reported near the camp since its establishment.

Allegations of excessive force by police and arbitrary detentions of opposition activists have drawn sharp international scrutiny of Vucic’s government. The European Union has warned that Serbia’s ongoing democratic backsliding could result in the loss of roughly 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in accession funding allocated to the country as a candidate for EU membership.

Despite rising tensions and the threat of confrontation, a new generation of young Serbs is stepping up to join the movement, expressing unshakable optimism that political change is within reach. Branislav Vasic and Filip Novakovic, both 19-year-old freshmen at the Faculty of Political Sciences, confirmed they will be among the attendees at Saturday’s rally, saying standing with older opposition leaders is a matter of principle.

“Everyone has an obligation to join this rally, given the state of our country,” Vasic said. “I’m convinced that as long as people want change, we have the strength to deliver it.”

Novakovic echoed that sentiment, framing the moment as a historic opportunity for his generation to finish the work past generations could not complete. “We are all in this together, and we are one step away from a better future,” he said. “This is a long struggle, and I will keep fighting for it as long as I live.”

As U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio departs for a critical NATO foreign ministers’ gathering in Helsingborg, Sweden, his core mission is clear: calm rising unease among Washington’s European allies over the Trump administration’s inconsistent approach to the transatlantic alliance and unclear plans for American troop levels across the continent.

Friday’s gathering will coincide with separate briefings at NATO’s Brussels headquarters, where senior Pentagon leaders are set to outline the U.S. military’s long-term defense commitment to the 32-nation bloc. The meeting comes as a precursor to July’s NATO leaders’ summit in Istanbul, unfolding against a backdrop of sweeping global security uncertainty: the unresolved trajectory of the ongoing war in Iran, and stalled U.S. efforts to restart peace negotiations to end the two-year Russia-Ukraine conflict. Lingering friction also remains from President Donald Trump’s repeated public criticism of underfunding by European allies, and his controversial public interest in acquiring the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, a NATO member asset.

Rubio has emerged as the Trump administration’s go-to diplomat for de-escalating tensions at high-stakes allied gatherings, tasked with projecting a more measured, less confrontational tone than the president often delivers. This already marks his third such outreach mission in 2025, following February’s Munich Security Conference and a recent trip to Rome, where he met with Italian government leaders and Pope Leo XIV. That meeting came after Trump publicly attacked the American-born pontiff over his positions on street crime and U.S. policy in the Iran war.

A major source of confusion for allies right now centers on contradictory signals about U.S. troop deployments in Europe. Ahead of his departure for Sweden, Rubio declined to answer questions about potential adjustments to the number of U.S. troops assigned to the NATO Force Model, the alliance’s core contingency defense plan for major European security crises. Just days before the meeting, the Trump administration first announced it would cancel planned deployments of thousands of troops to Poland and Germany. Then on Thursday, Trump posted a surprise reversal on social media, declaring the U.S. would deploy an additional 5,000 troops to Poland. To date, no clarification has emerged: it remains unclear whether the previously canceled deployment is being reinstated, whether the 5,000 troops represent an additive increase to rotational presence, or whether an overall drawdown of U.S. forces in Europe will still proceed from other theater locations. The Pentagon redirected all press queries to the White House, which has not issued an immediate response to requests for clarity.

While Rubio reaffirmed his position as a self-described “strong supporter” of the transatlantic alliance, he did not soften the Trump administration’s core criticism of NATO’s response to the Iran war. He told reporters ahead of his flight from Miami that the entire administration, including the president, is “very disappointed” in the alliance’s inaction, a sentiment Rubio said should come as no surprise to any participating ally.

In pointed remarks, Rubio called out NATO member Spain specifically for refusing to grant the U.S. access to its Spanish-based military bases for operations related to the Iran conflict. He also noted that many other allies have rejected calls to join a U.S.-led coalition to re-open and secure the Strait of Hormuz, the critical global oil shipping chokepoint that Iran has effectively closed to commercial traffic in recent months. “I know why NATO is good for Europe, but why is NATO good for America?” Rubio asked rhetorically during his pre-departure press briefing, answering his own question by pointing to the value of European bases for global U.S. power projection. “So, when that is the key rationale for why you’re in NATO, and then you have countries like Spain denying us the use of these bases, well, then, why are you in NATO?”

Rubio added that while nearly all NATO allies formally back the U.S. position that Iran must not be permitted to develop a nuclear weapon, almost none have stepped up to back Trump’s preventive military action. “He’s not asking them to commit troops. He’s not asking them to send their fighter jets in. But they refuse to do anything, and so I think the president looks at that and says, ‘Hold on a second,’” Rubio said. “I think we were very upset about that. The president has made that very clear.”

Top NATO officials have attempted to downplay the chaos around shifting U.S. troop plans, framing adjustments as part of long-planned reorientation that allies were notified of well in advance. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told reporters Wednesday that European allies have been aware for a full year that the Trump administration planned to withdraw some U.S. troops from the continent. Rutte said it is reasonable to expect European and Canadian members to take on greater responsibility for conventional defense of the alliance, particularly in Europe. While Rutte affirmed the U.S. will remain engaged in transatlantic security, he acknowledged that over time Washington may reallocate military resources to other global hotspots.

U.S. General Alexus Grynkewich, the commander of both U.S. and NATO forces in Europe, echoed that message this week, saying current security commitments will not leave Europe with a defense gap, but warned allies to prepare for additional incremental U.S. troop drawdowns over the coming years. The Trump administration has repeatedly made clear to European allies that in the long term, the continent will need to take full ownership of its own security, including defense support for Ukraine against Russian aggression.

In a sudden reversal of a recent Pentagon decision, U.S. President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the United States will deploy an extra 5,000 troops to Poland. The announcement comes just seven days after the Department of Defense scrapped a planned deployment of 4,000 troops to the Eastern European nation, leaving defense analysts and European allies scrambling to interpret the shift in U.S. military posture on the continent.

Breaking the news via his social platform Truth Social, Trump framed the new deployment as a gesture rooted in his close personal and political alignment with Polish President Karol Nawrocki. Trump endorsed Nawrocki during Poland’s 2025 presidential election, and the Polish leader has repeatedly positioned himself as one of Trump’s most vocal European supporters. The U.S. president offered no additional clarity on whether the 5,000 additional troops represent an expansion of the original canceled deployment, a revised iteration of that plan, or an entirely separate military operation.

The revised troop plan arrives amid a broader restructuring of U.S. military presence across Europe, driven by the Trump administration’s signature “America First” policy agenda that has prioritized reducing overall U.S. defense commitments overseas. Earlier this month, Trump followed through on a threat to withdraw 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany amid a heated public dispute with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz over Washington’s approach to the ongoing conflict with Iran. Trump lashed out at Merz after the German leader suggested that U.S. negotiators had been “humiliated” during talks with Iranian officials, and the withdrawal moved forward quickly despite bipartisan pushback in Washington.

To date, it remains unconfirmed whether the troops bound for Poland are the same forces being drawn down from Germany, or an entirely new contingent. Beyond tensions with Germany, Trump has openly criticized fellow NATO allies for refusing to back the U.S. in escalating pressure on Iran over shipping access through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global energy chokepoint.

The announcement comes ahead of a high-stakes NATO foreign ministers summit kicking off Friday in Stockholm, where U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead the American delegation. Top of the agenda for Rubio is expected to be renewed demands for NATO member states to increase their own defense spending and share more of the alliance’s collective defense burden, a longstanding priority for the Trump administration.

Ahead of the summit, BBC reporters pressed Rubio on unconfirmed intelligence reports suggesting the U.S. plans to reduce its total available troop commitments for collective defense in the event of an attack on any NATO member. Rubio would not confirm the reports, but confirmed that “some of those issues” would be on the summit’s negotiating table, adding that Trump remains “very upset and disappointed” with the alliance over its failure to meet U.S. demands for greater burden sharing.

The U.S. Defense Department’s initial cancellation of the 4,000-troop deployment to Poland last week sparked widespread confusion across European capitals about U.S. security commitments. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth later sought to calm those fears, framing the cancellation as nothing more than “a temporary delay” and reaffirming that the U.S. remains committed to maintaining a robust and credible military posture across Eastern Europe.

Nawrocki, who secured Poland’s presidency with Trump’s public backing, has long positioned himself as a staunch ally of both Trump and U.S. security goals in Europe. In a January interview with BBC Radio 4’s *Today* programme, Nawrocki argued that Trump is the only global leader with the ability to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin and negotiate an end to the ongoing war in Ukraine. Despite Trump’s repeated public criticism of the NATO alliance and his fractious relationships with other European leaders, Nawrocki has consistently maintained that the United States remains the primary guarantor of collective security across Europe.

Even within Trump’s own party, the administration’s shift on European troop deployments has drawn criticism. Multiple congressional Republicans have already spoken out against the planned withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany, warning that the drawdown risks sending a dangerous signal of weakened U.S. resolve to the Kremlin, which continues to maintain aggressive military posturing along NATO’s eastern border.

Currently, the United States maintains its largest European military footprint in Germany, hosting more than 36,000 active-duty troops across the country. By comparison, the U.S. has roughly 12,000 troops deployed in Italy and an additional 10,000 across the United Kingdom.