Polish parliament liberalises abortion law – but conservative president likely to veto changes
The Polish governing coalition voted in parliament to loosen abortion law on Tuesday – but conservative president is expected to block the change.
Poland
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Can the EU survive with far-right leaders running major member states? The answer is worrying
As the EU enters an unprecedented electoral supercycle, the question is whether it can defend its integrity as the forces challenging it gain influence over its institutions.
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EU is bankrolling border drones while starving the watchdogs meant to stop abusesMillions of euros of EU funds are being pumped into shoring-up border surveillance while legally-required national human-rights monitors struggle with funding. Some EU states still don’t have any monitors – despite a June deadline.
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Inside Poland’s fake student scheme: cheap labour, bogus visas and Russian ties
In Poland, student status has become a sought-after commodity that employment agencies exploit for gains. Many foreign workers were unaware they were enrolled in fake schools associated with pro-Kremlin figures.
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EU’s centre-right EPP seeks asylum opt-outs, as commission silent on new crisis rules
Political pressure for allowing EU asylum opt-outs continues to increase, as commission drafts vague new emergency rules in the wake of this summer’s Ceuta episode.
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Poland’s pushback drive and EU asylum ‘emergency’ plan put rights ‘on a cliff edge’, warns Europe’s top rights chief
Poland is taking credit for a new so-called European emergency response framework, announced last week by the European Commission president. Details are scant but Poland is seeking to loosen UN rules on pushbacks, citing article 33(2) of the 1951 Refugee Convention.
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Germany offers a warning for Europe ahead of 2027 election year: the Putin/Trump security crisis won’t necessarily save the political centre
Mainstream parties might assume that this new age of insecurity will work in their favour. But If Europe’s security environment continues to deteriorate as voters head to the polls in 2027, mainstream leaders should not assume that geopolitics will do the political work of containing the far-right for them.
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Was it coincidence Russia attacked the railway used by Johnson and the former CIA chief? Three takeaways from the strike near Nato’s border
A strike just six kilometres from Poland’s border has jolted Warsaw and Kyiv into openly debating whether Nato should start flexing its own muscles along the frontier to force Vladimir Putin to pull troops away from Ukraine.
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‘Hidden zone of violence’: investigators trace over 100 migrant deaths to Poland–Belarus border regime
An investigation by Border Forensics reveals a pattern of state-sanctioned violence and migrant enmity leading up to the deaths of people who could have been otherwise saved.
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Poland’s six‑minute Russia missile scare shows how fast Nato can spot a threat — and the agonising slowness of deciding if to fire back
The Russian missile was in Polish airspace for six minutes. Everything Poland did well happened after it hit the ground.
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Ukraine escalates Wildberries attacks to hit Russia’s second-biggest bank as missile crashes in Poland (Ukraine Battlefield update, Day 1,618)Internal warnings from Kyiv’s FirePoint drones unit suggest the strikes on Wildberries are less about stopping vest deliveries to the front than about hitting VTB-backed credit lines and exposing how deeply Russia’s war economy depends on one shopping app.
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Is the next EU budget about to torpedo social care in Europe?
Under the current EU budget, social spending through ESF+ amounts to nearly €96bn. According to internal calculations made by European Parliament services, total social spending could fall under the next MFF to between €63bn and €87bn.
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[Interview] Ukrainian MP Ivanna Klympush: ‘I would like to see the countries that joined the EU and had no problems with corruption’
Ukrainian MP describes how Zelensky’s bid to rein in graft-busting agencies backfired under public pressure, exposing a fierce domestic power struggle that Brussels rarely sees behind Ukraine’s heroic war narrative.
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How a Polish-Ukrainian dispute over WW2 spiralled into a tit-for-tat medal spat
Conflict over Ukrainian Insurgent Army actions during World War Two recently escalated into biggest tension between Ukraine and Poland in decades. Now leaders of both nations keep returning each other’s honours and medals.
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Listen: Why Poland is tightening support for Ukrainian refugees
Two years after opening its doors to Ukrainians, Poland is now quietly rewriting the rules, leaving many refugees scrambling to understand why the help they relied on is suddenly disappearing.
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Europeans are no longer angry at Trump’s irrational incompetence. They’re exhausted
The casual cancellation last week of the long-planned nine-month rotation of a brigade combat team to Poland exemplified everything that European allies find baffling and repellent about the Trump administration. ‘Irrational incompetence’ seems best to sum up Trump’s Europe policy, writes Edward Lucas.
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[Interview] ‘Not enough’: Same-sex couples in Poland still denied their EU rights, activist says
As Poland faces mounting pressure to recognise same-sex marriages registered in the EU, one young activist from Warsaw tells EUobserver how conservative forces are trying to resist reform and what it means for LGBTQ+ rights in the country.
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Poland blows hole in budget rearming, but global military spending reaches all-time high
Global military expenditure hit a record high last year, after rising for more than a decade. Poland leads the way in the eastern flank of Nato, despite a steep budget deficit.
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71 years without a military strategy, Germany just wrote one
Responsibility for Europe reads differently from Bratislava than from Brussels. The new German defence strategy is worth reading carefully, particularly from the capitals whose security still depends on German territory. Responsibility for Europe will be defined in the next decade by what Berlin does if Washington no longer underwrites European defence at previous levels. Germany has now stated, in writing, that this is the planning horizon.
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Poland’s refusal to send ‘Patriots’ to Middle East shows Europe’s air-defence anxiety
Gulf countries have fired at least 2,400 interceptor missiles, close to their estimated pre-Iran war stockpiles of 2,800 units, but Poland and Ukraine declined to help due to Russian threat.
