标签： Europe

KYIV, Ukraine – After two months of halted oil transit following a Russian drone strike, Ukraine has wrapped up full repairs on the damaged section of the key Druzhba oil pipeline, with operations set to resume imminently, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Tuesday. The completion of repair work has cleared the last major hurdle to unlocking a massive €90 billion ($106 billion) EU financial support package for Kyiv, which has been stuck in political deadlock for months over disputes linked to the pipeline outage.

In a social media post on X, Zelenskyy confirmed that Ukrainian technical teams have established all core conditions needed to restart the pipeline system and associated equipment, though he cautioned that there is no absolute security guarantee against repeated Russian targeting of critical energy infrastructure. “Russia has repeatedly targeted our energy networks to inflict harm on both Ukraine and our European neighbors, and we cannot rule out further attacks,” Zelenskyy noted.

The Druzhba pipeline, which carries Russian crude oil to landlocked Central European clients including Hungary and Slovakia, has been out of operation since Russian drone strikes damaged a segment crossing Ukrainian territory in late 2024. The outage quickly sparked a political row: Budapest and Bratislava accused Kyiv of intentionally blocking oil deliveries to pressure their governments, while the two countries held up approval of the EU’s multi-year aid package for Ukraine in retaliation.

The €90 billion loan package is designed to cover Ukraine’s urgent military, humanitarian and economic needs through 2026, backing the country’s ongoing defense against Russia’s full-scale invasion that launched in February 2022. Months of negotiations failed to break the deadlock until recent political shifts in Hungary, where long-serving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – who had positioned himself as Moscow’s closest ally within the bloc and repeatedly blocked EU aid initiatives – was unseated by centrist challenger Péter Magyar in a landslide election earlier this month. Orbán had previously agreed to a compromise that allowed the aid package to move forward without requiring Hungary to participate in any financial obligations, but he reversed that position amid campaigning, tying his opposition to the pipeline dispute.

Top EU officials say they are now cautiously optimistic that the full package will receive final approval when EU envoys convene for a scheduled meeting on Wednesday. Speaking to reporters in Luxembourg following a meeting of EU foreign ministers, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas acknowledged the approval process has been fraught with unforeseen delays, but signaled that a breakthrough is imminent. “We expect an agreement within the next 24 hours, so I don’t want to jinx it,” Kallas said.

European Council President Antonio Costa, who is set to chair a summit of EU 27 leaders starting Thursday, publicly thanked Zelenskyy for fulfilling the agreed upon terms to get the pipeline back online. “This is an important step forward for both European energy security and Ukraine’s ability to defend its sovereignty,” Costa’s social media statement read.

The EU’s aid package was originally structured to use billions in frozen Russian sovereign assets held across European jurisdictions as collateral for the loan, but that plan hit a wall when Belgium – where the vast majority of those immobilized assets are stored – rejected the proposal. After months of negotiations, EU leaders reached a revised compromise in December 2024: the bloc would borrow the full €90 billion on international capital markets, with Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic opting out of any potential financial liability for the loan. Orbán’s last-minute reversal on that compromise over the pipeline dispute extended the deadlock for another six weeks, until the completion of Hungary’s national election and Ukraine’s pipeline repairs removed the final barriers.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has entered its third year, leaving tens of thousands dead, displacing millions of people, and reducing dozens of Ukrainian cities and towns to rubble. The €90 billion package represents one of the largest single commitments of Western support for Kyiv to date, with the funds earmarked for both frontline military capabilities and core government functions including infrastructure repair and public services.

LONDON – A weeks-long political crisis engulfing British Prime Minister Keir Starmer reached a new boiling point this week, after a recently fired top civil servant laid bare explosive behind-the-scenes details of how scandal-plagued politician Peter Mandelson — a known associate of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein — secured the post of UK Ambassador to the United States despite failing official national security vetting.

Last week, Starmer terminated the employment of Olly Robbins, the former permanent secretary of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, over Robbins’ central role in approving Mandelson’s nomination even after being notified of formal security concerns. Appearing before Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Robbins mounted his public defense, claiming his department had followed all official procedural protocols. But his testimony did little to resolve months of lingering questions about Starmer’s judgment, and instead triggered a fresh wave of cross-party opposition demands for the prime minister to step down.

This latest controversy comes after Starmer already forced Mandelson to resign from the ambassador post last year, when newly unsealed documents confirmed Mandelson’s ties to Epstein were far closer and more sustained than he had previously disclosed to Downing Street. Even so, the political fallout has continued to build, and Robbins’ opening remarks before the committee delivered new, damaging revelations that cut to the core of Downing Street’s role in rushing the appointment through.

Robbins told the committee that Starmer’s Downing Street office applied intense, sustained political pressure to cut short the vetting process and install Mandelson in the Washington post as quickly as possible. “There was a very, very strong expectation from Downing Street that Mandelson needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible,” he told lawmakers. According to Robbins’ account, Mandelson’s appointment was publicly announced in December 2024, and he had already assumed his role, received U.S. government approval for the nomination, and gained access to classified diplomatic briefings more than two full weeks before Robbins took over his role at the Foreign Office — and while the full security vetting process was still incomplete. Most critically, Robbins said Downing Street adopted a deliberately dismissive stance on the vetting process, only caring about how quickly the appointment could be finalized, not whether it was safe to proceed. “There was never any interest, as far as I can recall, in whether, but only an interest in when,” he said.

The testimony directly contradicts Starmer’s public account of the scandal. The prime minister has claimed he was “furious” to learn last week that the UK’s official national vetting unit had advised against granting Mandelson security clearance, and has argued he fired Robbins for deliberately withholding this critical information from his office.

But Robbins pushed back against that narrative on Tuesday, telling lawmakers that strict Foreign Office confidentiality rules barred him from sharing the vetting panel’s negative recommendation with the prime minister. He added that the extreme secrecy surrounding the vetting process meant he was never even allowed to view the full panel’s report on Mandelson. UK government protocol requires vetting officials to mark their recommendations on a color-coded form — green for approval, yellow for conditional approval, red for denial — but it remains unclear exactly what risks the panel flagged, or what exact rating the panel assigned to Mandelson. Robbins confirmed he was only briefed verbally that Mandelson was considered a “borderline case” and that the panel was “leaning towards recommending that clearance be denied.” Despite that warning, senior Foreign Office officials ultimately ruled that any identified risks could be sufficiently mitigated to allow the appointment to move forward.

In one notable clarification that defies widespread public assumptions, Robbins confirmed explicitly that the security concerns flagged during the official vetting process were unrelated to Mandelson’s long-documented ties to Epstein, the convicted sex offender who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. The public furor over the appointment first erupted earlier this year, when newly released files from Washington showed Mandelson shared market-sensitive information with Epstein in 2008, when he was serving as UK Business Secretary under the last Labour government.

While the official vetting concerns did not center on the Epstein ties, a separate civil service due diligence report, released to Parliament last month, did flag broad reputational risks of appointing Mandelson to the sensitive Washington post. That report outlined multiple red flags beyond the Epstein relationship, including questionable business ties to both Russia and China, and the fact that Mandelson was forced to resign from two previous Labour governments over separate ethics and financial scandals. After those details emerged, Starmer apologized publicly, and blamed Mandelson for lying about the true extent of his connections to Epstein.

Robbins’ testimony has thrown fresh fuel on the fire of the scandal, piling unprecedented new pressure on a already beleaguered Starmer, as opposition leaders reiterate their demands for his resignation. Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, called Robbins’ evidence “devastating to Keir Starmer.” She argued it is “inconceivable” that no senior member of Starmer’s Downing Street staff knew Mandelson had failed the vetting process, and accused the prime minister of deliberately misleading Parliament. “It is clear that No. 10 not only made the appointment before vetting was completed, but that Mandelson was already acting as the ambassador before the vetting, even seeing highly-classified documents. … It is now absolutely clear that ‘full due process’ was not followed,” Badenoch said.

Public opinion polling has recorded a steady drop in support for Starmer and the Labour Party in recent months, and polling analysts say the latest revelations are likely to cement negative public views of the prime minister’s leadership. Keiran Pedley, politics director at leading polling firm Ipsos, noted that recent attention on Starmer’s response to the Iran-Israel conflict had temporarily quieted discussions about his leadership future, but that the new disclosures from Robbins have revived those questions. The upcoming local elections across England, Scotland and Wales are widely expected to serve as a public referendum on Starmer’s leadership, with pollsters forecasting poor results for Labour that could amplify internal and external pressure for the prime minister to step down.

MADRID (AP) — Facing growing public anger over skyrocketing housing costs that have become one of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s biggest political liabilities ahead of next year’s national elections, Spain’s central government greenlit a far-reaching €7 billion ($8.23 billion) strategy on Tuesday to address the country’s deepening housing insecurity.

Even as Spain has posted strong macroeconomic growth in recent years, swelling rental and purchase prices have pushed access to stable, affordable housing out of reach for millions of ordinary Spaniards, whose wages have failed to keep pace with the rate of housing inflation. Industry analysts point to two key structural factors worsening the supply crunch: the persistent demand for short-term vacation rentals driven by Spain’s massive tourism sector, and rapid urban population growth fueled by immigration that has stretched available housing stock in major cities far too thin.

The newly approved plan marks a major increase in public investment, tripling the government’s total spending on public housing development over the next four years. A core guardrail included in the policy blocks the common past practice of reclassifying subsidized public housing units for private ownership after just a few years, locking these affordable units into the public stock permanently. The plan also allocates targeted financial support for young renters and first-time home buyers struggling to enter the market.

Raluca Budian, associate director of the Observatory for Decent Housing at Madrid-based Esade business school, called the plan an important milestone for the country. “It is a significant step forward. For the first time in decades, there is a serious budgetary commitment,” Budian noted.

According to government breakdowns of the budget, 40% of the total €7 billion will go toward expanding the country’s extremely limited public housing supply, which currently lags far behind the European average. Thirty percent of the funds are earmarked for residential property renovations: this includes grants to upgrade existing homes to improve energy efficiency, and incentives for new housing construction in the parts of Spain that have faced decades of rural depopulation. The remaining 30% of the budget is dedicated to direct rental and down-payment subsidies, with a specific focus on supporting young people, who are disproportionately impacted by the housing crisis.

Housing consistently ranks as the top concern for Spanish voters in public opinion polling from state survey firm CIS, and Housing Minister Isabel Rodríguez framed the reform as a direct response to public demand. “The public is demanding an agreement to address the main problem currently affecting them,” Rodríguez said Tuesday.

Official data from the European Union’s statistics agency Eurostat shows housing costs in Spain rose nearly 13% year-on-year at the end of 2024, outpacing most other EU member states. When it comes to public rental housing, Spain ranks among the lowest of all Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, with public rental housing making up less than 2% of the country’s total housing supply. The OECD average across all member states sits at 7%, with far higher shares in peer Western European nations: 14% in France, 16% in the United Kingdom, and 34% in the Netherlands.

The legacy of past policy failures has contributed heavily to Spain’s current shortage. For decades, public funds were used to build housing that was later sold off to private owners, permanently removing those units from the national affordable housing stock. The new policy’s rule blocking future reclassification directly addresses this longstanding loophole.

Associated Press journalist Joseph Wilson contributed reporting from Barcelona.