标签： Europe

In a landmark political shift that reshapes both Hungary’s domestic trajectory and European Union dynamics, Péter Magyar’s new 16-member cabinet was officially sworn into office on Tuesday in Budapest, completing the full transfer of power away from Viktor Orbán, who led Hungary with a nationalist-populist agenda for 16 years. This historic handover follows a stunning electoral upset last month, where Magyar’s pro-European Tisza Party secured an unprecedented two-thirds parliamentary majority — a result unmatched in Hungary’s post-Communist history.

Magyar, a 45-year-old lawyer who assumed the prime ministership on Saturday, moved through parliamentary confirmation hearings for his cabinet in just two days, a deliberate timeline that signals his urgency to dismantle the political system Orbán built over nearly two decades. Tisza’s landslide victory gave the party 141 of the 199 total seats in parliament, pushing Orbán’s long-ruling Fidesz party from 135 seats to just 52, with the far-right Mi Hazánk movement holding the remaining six seats.

In remarks delivered moments after his cabinet’s swearing-in inside Hungary’s parliament, Magyar drew a clear line between his administration and his predecessor’s leadership. Stating that the new government would “be the government of all Hungarians” and act as “a servant of the nation and not of the prime minister”, he directly challenged the concentrated power that defined Orbán’s tenure. He outlined his core mandate: undoing the “destruction, division, backwardness and loss of trust” accumulated over the past 20 years, and rebuilding Hungary into a “functioning, livable and self-reliant country”.

A top priority for Magyar’s electorate is holding former Fidesz officials and their affiliated business allies accountable for alleged widespread corruption and misconduct during Orbán’s administration. To advance this goal, the new government plans to establish a National Asset Recovery and Protection Office, a dedicated body tasked with investigating and recovering public funds misused under the previous regime. Magyar has also committed to Hungary joining the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, a move that will allow EU investigators to probe cross-border fraud and the mismanagement of EU funding allocated to the country.

Media reform is another immediate policy focus: Magyar has vowed to suspend programming at Hungary’s public broadcaster, long decried as a partisan mouthpiece for Fidesz, until full editorial objectivity can be guaranteed. He has also called on all senior public officials appointed during Orbán’s tenure — including the Hungarian president, attorney general, head of the national media authority, and chief justice of the Constitutional Court — to resign by May 31 to clear the way for independent appointments aligned with democratic norms.

Structurally, the new government expands the cabinet from 12 ministries under Orbán’s final administration to 16, with standalone portfolios for health, environmental protection, and education, all of which were merged into larger departments under the previous government. This restructuring is part of a broader overhaul of state institutions, with Magyar prioritizing the restoration of democratic governance and the rule of law, both of which eroded significantly during Orbán’s time in power.

Beyond domestic reform, Magyar’s administration is set to transform decision-making dynamics within the EU. Orbán frequently used veto power to block bloc-wide initiatives, most recently blocking new support packages for Ukraine, creating repeated deadlock for the union. The new Hungarian government has made unlocking approximately 17 billion euros ($20 billion) in frozen EU funds its top foreign policy priority. The funds, frozen by the EU over rule-of-law and corruption concerns during Orbán’s tenure, are critically needed to revitalize Hungary’s stagnant economy, which has seen little to no growth for four consecutive years.

In a Facebook video posted the day before the cabinet swearing-in, new Hungarian Foreign Minister Anita Orbán, a career diplomat and foreign policy expert, confirmed that her ministry’s core mission will be to “bring EU funds home” and “consolidate Hungary’s place in Europe and in the EU”. Other key cabinet appointees include former Shell executive István Kapitány, who takes on the role of Minister of Economy and Energy, and former Erste Bank economist András Kármán, who serves as Minister of Finance. This report included contributions from AP correspondent Don McNeil reporting out of Brussels and AP writer Béla Szandelszky based in Budapest.

For 85-year-old Marie-Thérèse Ross, the haunting memory of Louisiana’s immigration detention center does not fade. The French widow of a U.S. military veteran, whose arrest in an Trump-era immigration enforcement sweep drew global outrage, now recounts her harrowing 16 days in federal custody from her home in a Nantes suburb, where she is recovering after being released and repatriated to France.

Ross’s journey to detention began with a late-in-life love story that brought her across the Atlantic. Decades after meeting William Ross, a retired American soldier stationed in France in the 1950s when she worked as a NATO secretary, the pair married in Alabama in April 2025. Their quiet new life together was cut short when William died of natural causes just three months later in January 2025, triggering a bitter estate dispute with Ross’s stepson, a U.S. federal employee. Court records have linked the stepson’s intervention directly to Ross’s subsequent immigration detention.

The arrest came abruptly on the morning of April 1. Ross, still dressed in her bathrobe, pajamas and slippers, was grabbed by five plainclothes immigration officers who pounded on her Alabama home’s doors and windows before cuffing her and forcing her into a waiting vehicle. She told the Associated Press she barely understood what was happening as it unfolded. Two days after her arrest, she was transferred to the Louisiana detention facility where she would spend more than two weeks locked in a dormitory-style unit with 58 other women, the vast majority of whom were migrant mothers.

What struck Ross most deeply, beyond the strict facility rules and the constant, aggressive yelling from guards that she described as condescending and dehumanizing, was the nightly sound no one can block out: the wailing of separated children. “At night, when everything else went quiet, the crying started,” she recalled. “Children crying, and even babies. There are infants in this jail.” Many of her cellmates had no idea where their own children had been placed after they were detained, a reality Ross called unforgivable. “I think it’s terrible for a woman not to know where her children are,” she said. Even with the facility’s clean facilities and passable food, the dehumanizing treatment of detainees left a permanent mark, shifting her entire worldview of U.S. politics and the country she once admired.

Even in the trauma of detention, Ross found small moments of solidarity among the detained women. They called her “Grandma” for her advanced age, and looked after her through the nights. “During the night, if my bed cover slipped away, I felt a small hand putting it back,” she said. “I didn’t know who it was, but they pampered me because I was older than them.” She still wears a hand-woven friendship bracelet one anonymous detainee gave her as a gift, a memento she keeps close.

French officials publicly pushed for Ross’s release, with the foreign minister saying that the enforcement tactics used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement fell far short of French human rights standards. She was released within weeks of her arrest and returned home to western France to be with her family. But the experience has left her with lasting trauma: family members report she struggles with memory gaps and ongoing emotional distress, and Ross says she will seek specialized care in France for symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Ross, whose late husband was a vocal supporter of Donald Trump and who used to watch conservative Fox News alongside him daily, says her firsthand experience has completely upended her view of the United States. She once saw the U.S. as a beacon of freedom, “where people are not arrested based on how they look, and where those who are detained are treated fairly and with respect.” Now, she says that belief is shattered. Pointing to the majority South American women she was detained with, she said “Their only fault was to be South American. None of them deserved to be locked up like this.”

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has confirmed Ross had overstayed her 90-day tourist visa at the time of arrest, but has not responded to repeated AP requests for comment on her arrest or conditions at the facility. For her part, Ross has kept the promise she made to the women she left behind in Louisiana: “When I left this jail in Louisiana, I told them that if I ever had the chance to speak about them, I would do it, to help them.” Today, she continues to advocate for the migrant mothers still detained, their names and faces etched into her memory.

On the strategically vital Baltic island of Gotland, a newly inducted NATO member Sweden is running large-scale military wargames designed to prepare for a growing threat along the alliance’s eastern frontier — with an unusual and telling addition: Ukrainian military advisors sharing hard-won battlefield expertise in modern drone warfare. The Associated Press was granted exclusive access to the exercise, which comes at a moment of dual uncertainty for transatlantic security: mounting Russian hybrid aggression across Europe, and growing questions about the reliability of the United States, NATO’s long-standing military powerhouse, under the second Trump administration.

The wargame scenario crafted by Swedish military planners imagines a hypothetical incursion and sustained hybrid campaign against Gotland, where enemy sabotage has triggered widespread power outages and crippling food shortages. Crucially, the exercise is designed to test alliance coordination before NATO’s Article 5 collective defense clause — which triggers an automatic mutual defense response for all members — is ever invoked. “In theory, it could happen tomorrow,” Rear Adm. Jonas Wikström, the exercise director, told the AP.

For months, multiple intelligence assessments and an AP investigation have documented a sharp ramp-up in Russian hybrid operations across Europe, including coordinated cyberattacks targeting critical civilian infrastructure, widespread disinformation campaigns to destabilize allied governments, and covert sabotage operations. The wargames held this week on Gotland are a direct response to this growing risk, with U.S. troops joining Swedish forces to practice coordinated responses.

Uncertainty over U.S. commitment to the alliance hangs heavily over the exercise. Since returning to the White House in January 2025, President Donald Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on NATO’s value, once calling the bloc a “paper tiger.” Most recently, Trump ordered the withdrawal of at least 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany, and has openly threatened to pull thousands more troops out of Europe. The administration has also shifted U.S. air defense systems and missiles from European deployments to the Middle East amid tensions with Iran, leaving noticeable gaps in regional air defense capabilities, and multiple European allies have reported significant delays to their scheduled orders for U.S.-manufactured weapons. Trump has also paused U.S. intelligence sharing with Ukraine, and has repeatedly aligned with Russian positions in negotiations to end the ongoing war.

Sweden’s chief of defense, Gen. Michael Claesson, acknowledged that shifts in U.S. military posture reshape alliance dynamics. “The U.S. is Europe’s most militarily capable ally so any change in the American presence affects the overall dynamics,” he told the AP, noting that public announcements of troop cuts are often misinterpreted as a full American withdrawal from the continent. While Claesson denied that recent initiatives — including a planned hybrid joint navy combining Nordic, Baltic, British, and Dutch forces, and a separate combined frigate fleet from the U.K. and Norway — were a deliberate hedge against a future U.S. withdrawal from alliance commitments, he added that “everything that offers European allies freedom of action is good.”

One of the most valuable contributions to the wargames came from the contingent of Ukrainian drone pilots, who brought firsthand experience from three years of frontline combat against Russian forces. Invited to train Western troops on the evolving tactics of modern drone warfare, the Ukrainian advisors soundly defeated Swedish ground forces in a practical training drill, a 24-year-old Ukrainian drone pilot who goes by the call sign Tarik told the AP. “They stopped the training three times” for Swedish troops to rework their tactics, Tarik said. “If it were real life they would have been dead.”

Another Ukrainian pilot, call sign Karat, explained that Western forces lack the on-the-ground understanding of frontline drone operations that Ukraine has developed through trial by fire. Karat, who flies small first-person-view attack drones against Russian positions, noted that many operations rely on improvisation, with pilots sometimes operating without reconnaissance support. “You need to see this with your own eyes,” he said, adding that Swedish troops have strong foundational skills but need to improve their drone hardware, update their tactical doctrine, and help senior commanders build a deeper understanding of how drone warfare changes modern battlefields.

Alliance military leaders agree that Ukraine’s hard-won expertise is urgently needed across NATO. In recent months, the border between Russia and NATO has seen a sharp rise in unauthorized drone incursions, many of them Ukrainian drones that were jammed and redirected off course by Russian electronic warfare systems. “What they’ve taught us is you have to really focus on your survivability and how you can’t be detected,” said Brig. Gen. Curtis King, the U.S. military lead for the exercise. King added that Western forces also need to invest in long-range detection capabilities to spot incoming drones before they can reach their targets. A key ongoing goal, he said, is integrating radar systems built by different manufacturers across multiple allied countries to create a unified, shared threat tracking picture — a process that has already begun but is not yet complete. “We’re not there yet,” King noted.

Gotland, the site of the exercise, was chosen for its unmatched strategic importance in the Baltic Sea. Located between Russia’s heavily militarized exclave of Kaliningrad and the Swedish mainland, control of Gotland effectively grants dominance over the central Baltic, a key maritime route for Russia’s shadow fleet of oil and gas tankers that generates critical revenue for Moscow’s war machine in Ukraine. After the end of the Cold War, Sweden drew down its military presence on the island, but Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine forced a major re-evaluation, prompting Sweden to rebuild its garrison and move forward with NATO accession alongside Finland in 2024.

Gen. Claesson warned that the strategic value of Gotland makes it a likely target for Russian probing of NATO’s unity. “A very reasonable scenario” is that Russian President Vladimir Putin could seek to seize a small portion of Gotland territory to test whether the alliance is willing to invoke collective defense, Claesson said. That kind of limited probe, he explained, would allow Putin to gauge NATO cohesion without triggering an immediate full-scale conflict.

At a recent EU summit hosted in Copenhagen, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has put forward landmark new plans to protect minors across the bloc from the harms of unregulated social media access, announcing that draft legislation could be introduced within just a few months.

Central to the proposal is the concept of a ‘social media delay’ for children, a framework designed to restrict underage users’ exposure to platforms while broader regulatory structures are finalized. Von der Leyen confirmed that an independent expert panel is on track to deliver a full set of actionable protection recommendations by July, and she declined to rule out the possibility of formal age-based bans for minors, a policy that has already gained traction across multiple countries worldwide.

‘The discussion about a minimum age for social media can no longer be ignored,’ von der Leyen told attendees at the summit, adding that the core question at hand is not whether young people should be able to access social media, but whether unregulated platforms should be allowed unfettered access to young users. ‘Let us give childhood back to children,’ she said.

The push for EU-wide rules comes as a growing number of member states and global nations have already advanced their own national regulations to address rising concerns about childhood social media addiction, exposure to harmful content, and exploitation. Host nation Denmark has been joined by nine other EU member states, including France, in putting forward proposals for formal minimum age requirements for platform access. Australia became the first country in the world to implement a national ban on social media access for users under 16 last December, setting a global precedent that many European nations are now moving to follow.

Across Europe, national policymakers have already advanced a range of targeted rules: The United Kingdom is currently drafting strict regulations for under-16s that include potential access bans, mandatory age verification and targeted content restrictions, with a major public consultation set to close on 26 May 2026. France is advancing a ban on social media access for children under 15, targeting implementation as early as September 2025. Spain has proposed a full ban for under-16s to combat addiction, non-consensual pornography, and damaging content that targets young users. Earlier this year, Portugal passed legislation requiring explicit parental consent for users aged 13 to 16, with sweeping restrictions for children under 13 and mandatory age-verification technology for all platforms. Germany is currently developing rules that would introduce a ban for children under 14, with additional restrictions for teenagers up to 16, including enforcement of strict age checks, development of ‘safe’ youth-specific platform versions, and mandatory removal of addictive recommendation algorithms. Norway has announced plans to roll out a strict under-16 ban by the end of 2026, requiring tech firms to build and implement robust age verification systems. Outside of Europe, New Zealand, Malaysia and India have also proposed their own age-based restrictions for minor social media users.

The new EU plans mark a significant escalation of the bloc’s years-long conflict with large social media platforms over content and user protection rules. Von der Leyen made clear that new age restrictions would not excuse platforms from broader accountability for harms caused to young users. As the EU’s digital regulatory body, the European Commission has already opened multiple high-profile enforcement investigations against major platforms under the bloc’s landmark Digital Services Act (DSA), which grants the institution broad powers to enforce stricter safety rules. Just last month, the Commission concluded that Meta’s Instagram and Facebook had violated the DSA by failing to block under-13s from accessing the platforms, opening the door for potential heavy fines. In February, regulators threatened similar massive penalties against Chinese-owned TikTok unless the company overhauled its platform’s ‘addictive design’ that targets young users.

The EU’s aggressive crackdown on large social media companies has already sparked a major diplomatic dispute with the United States, where the Trump administration has heavily criticized the bloc’s regulatory actions. When the Commission fined Elon Musk-owned platform X last December, Washington accused EU regulators of targeting and censoring U.S. tech firms. In retaliation, several prominent European political figures, including former EU digital commissioner Thierry Breton, were barred from entering the U.S. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has publicly claimed that ‘ideologues in Europe’ have pushed American platforms to censor American political viewpoints that European regulators oppose.

Responding to the criticism at the Copenhagen summit, von der Leyen reaffirmed the bloc’s commitment to upholding its regulatory framework: ‘The EU has set rules. It’s the law, and those who break it will be held accountable.’

LONDON – Just months after Keir Starmer’s Labour Party took national power, the British prime minister’s hold on the nation’s top office is facing unprecedented turmoil, triggered by a devastating string of losses in last week’s local government elections that have amplified long-simmering anger within his own party over a controversial ambassadorial appointment.

The poor local election performance has emerged as a breaking point for Starmer, whose credibility has already been damaged by widespread backlash over his decision to appoint veteran Labour figure Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to the United States. The appointment sparked outrage over Mandelson’s well-documented personal ties to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a scandal that has lingered and eroded trust in Starmer’s judgment among lawmakers and voters alike.

Already, dozens of sitting Labour Members of Parliament have publicly called for Starmer to step down, clearing the way for an open leadership contest to select a new party leader who would immediately assume the role of prime minister. So far, Starmer has repeatedly refused to resign, stating publicly that he intends to remain in post, and no formal challenge to his leadership has yet been formally registered with the party. While no candidate has yet emerged as the clear frontrunner to replace Starmer if a vacancy opens up, several senior Labour figures have been flagged as the most likely contenders for the leadership.

Wes Streeting, 43, currently serves as the UK’s Health Secretary, and is widely viewed as one of the current government’s most effective and charismatic public communicators. He has been handed the responsibility of delivering one of Labour’s core election pledges: fixing the chronically underfunded and overstretched National Health Service. Rumors of Streeting’s leadership ambitions have circulated for years, and they burst into public view last year, when allies of Starmer reportedly briefed British media that the prime minister would aggressively fend off any attempt to oust him – with most media speculation at the time pointing directly to Streeting as the would-be challenger. Since being elected to Parliament in 2015, Streeting has repeatedly denied any secret plot to replace Starmer, dismissing such claims as completely unfounded “nonsense.”

Another top potential candidate is Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister with a well-known working-class origin story. Now 46, Rayner grew up in public social housing, left formal schooling at age 16, and became a teen mother, a background that has shaped her political brand as a voice for working people. Before entering Parliament in 2015, she was a prominent trade union organizer, and she aligns with the left wing of the Labour Party. She rose quickly through the party’s ranks during Labour’s years in opposition, and was elected deputy party leader in 2020. Rayner holds substantial grassroots support across the party, but she was forced to resign from the current cabinet last year after acknowledging she had underpaid tax on a property purchase. She remains waiting for the outcome of an official parliamentary inquiry into the tax controversy, a cloud that hangs over any potential leadership bid. In the wake of new revelations about Mandelson’s ties to Epstein from newly released Epstein documents, Rayner led a rebellion of backbench Labour lawmakers that forced the government to allow Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee to take control of decisions over which related documents will be declassified and released to the public.

Andy Burnham, 56, the popular center-left mayor of Greater Manchester and a former national cabinet minister, has long been marked as a potential challenger to Starmer. But his path to the leadership hit a major setback in February, when the national Labour Party blocked him from standing as the party’s candidate in a recent parliamentary by-election. By longstanding constitutional convention, the UK prime minister must be a sitting member of the House of Commons, so Burnham’s supporters are pushing for any leadership contest to be delayed, which would give him time to win a seat in Parliament through a future by-election. Burnham brings extensive experience from past Labour governments, having previously served as both culture secretary and health secretary in previous national administrations.

Ed Miliband, 56, the current Energy Secretary and a former Labour Party leader, is another experienced potential contender. Miliband led the party for five years during its time in opposition, but his tenure ended after Labour lost the 2015 general election. Miliband has publicly downplayed any interest in returning to the top party leadership role, but he remains one of the most experienced and well-respected senior figures in the current Labour cabinet.

Rounding out the list of likely contenders is Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, 45, who holds one of the most high-stakes roles in the current government, with oversight of immigration policy, law enforcement, and domestic security. Her moves to strengthen border controls and crack down on unauthorized immigration have made her a favorite among centrist and right-leaning members of the Parliamentary Labour Party.