What’s driving the day in Brussels.
By EDDY WAX
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WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING: Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has had regular secret contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin about “personal topics, business and geopolitical tensions” since late 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported overnight. The startling scoop, sourced from unnamed U.S., European and Russian officials, will raise security concerns given the importance of Musk’s SpaceX to military and intelligence communications and his involvement in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Jaw-dropper: “At one point, Putin asked the billionaire to avoid activating his Starlink satellite internet service over Taiwan as a favor to Chinese leader Xi Jinping,” the WSJ reported, citing two people briefed on the matter. Musk did not respond to its requests for comment. More here.
BERLAYMONT’S WARM WELCOME: Visitors to the headquarters of the European Commission are now greeted by an exhibition displaying a Frontex border guard’s uniform, including his definitely-not-scary belt and thick black leather gloves. What next? A return hub on the Schuman roundabout?
PARLIAMENT’S “VENEZUELA MAJORITY“: Political journalists now have a term to describe the new right-wing voting bloc in the European Parliament. The Venezuela Majority, spanning the European People’s Party (EPP), European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), Patriots for Europe and Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) is named for the coalition that asked the EU to recognize Edmundo González Urrutia as Venezuela’s president and awarded him the Sakharov Prize this week. The inventor? ANSA’s Pietro Guastamacchia.
BRITS BACK IN 2039? The U.K. will rejoin the EU in 15 years, former European Commission President Romano Prodi predicted last night at a talk at University College London Centre for Finance. Earlier this year, Jean-Claude Juncker quipped to Playbook that it’d take “a century or two.”
IT’S FRIDAY. This is Eddy Wax. My colleague Nicholas Vinocur will be back in your inbox Monday, after a big weekend of elections in Georgia and Lithuania.
DRIVING THE DAY 
FREED FROM AN IRANIAN PRISON, AN EU OFFICIAL GOES BACK TO WORK: Johan Floderus, a 34-year-old Swedish European Commission official, is preparing to return to work after his two-year ordeal in Iran. Floderus was detained at Tehran’s airport in April 2022 on his way home from a vacation and held in the notorious Evin prison. He could’ve faced the death penalty on charges of spying that the EU and Sweden described as baseless, but was freed in a prisoner swap in June.
“Stop living on hope:” In an extensive interview with Playbook, Floderus described how the pendulum swung between hope and despair in the first few months of his detention. “I eventually got to the point where I made a very conscious effort to stop living on hope, and to try to not become so exhilarated at positive news, signs, signals that something good was about to happen,” he said, “to then avoid the total despair that follows when nothing actually materializes from that hope.”
Locked away: For the first 10 months, Floderus had no contact with his family or partner. To keep himself occupied in solitary confinement, he devised an elaborate exercise routine involving six hours of walking in circles around his tiny cell, followed by two hours of muscular exercise based on CrossFit routines. He spent eight months in solitary confinement. When not alone, Floderus shared a cell with killers, dissidents and members of ISIS, playing games with a rudimentary chess set and makeshift cards.
Hostage diplomacy: Floderus was freed in June in a deal in which Sweden agreed to release Hamid Nouri, who had been convicted for his role in mass executions after the Iranian Islamic Revolution in the 1980s. Asked how he felt about the price of his freedom, Floderus said: “I know there are mixed feelings, especially in the Iranian expat community. But I’ve only experienced joy on our behalf, even from the individuals who have been affected, directly or indirectly, by the crimes that this Iranian citizen was put on trial for in Sweden …
“As an international community, we have a responsibility to discourage [and] disincentivize this kind of behavior by some countries … and the use of human beings in such a cynical way for political ends,” he added.
Back to the day job: Floderus will return to his previous role working on programs assisting Afghan refugees at the directorate general for international partnerships in January.
Brussels, what is wrong with you? He recently got a bear hug from European Parliament President Roberta Metsola — but Floderus suggested that others in Brussels have been less friendly. Some have questioned why he needed so much time off (he is on six months of medical leave), perhaps because he seems to be doing fine.
This is also a love story … Read more in my full interview with Johan and his fiancé Johnathan von Fürstenmühl.
PREPPING FOR TRUMP
SCRAMBLE IN BRUSSELS BEFORE THE U.S. ELECTION: The fear of Donald Trump returning to the White House is permeating the highest echelons of power in Europe’s capital.
Top officials in the European Commission are convening meetings with the 27 EU countries’ ambassadors to talk through the scenarios of a Trump or Kamala Harris victory, Camille Gijs and Barbara Moens report. The meetings involve six DGs and cover topics such as trade, energy and digital policy — areas that could experience turbulence if Trump returns to the White House. The EU wants to hit back hard on trade if Trump wins and does what he’s promising to do.
This must be what “preparedness” means: Even if a Harris presidency wouldn’t be as disruptive as a Trump administration, the EU executive wants to show it is on the ball whatever happens, one of the diplomats said. Arianna Podestà, an EU spokesperson, said: “We are indeed preparing for the U.S. elections. All possible outcomes are considered. We are committed to maintaining a close partnership with the U.S.”
Confess your fears, ambassadors: Ursula von der Leyen’s chief of staff Björn Seibert is the main man in these meetings, which are bizarrely known as “confessionals” — perhaps because they involved ambassadors revealing their innermost dreams and desires to the EU executive body. Ten diplomats told Camille, Barbara and Playbook that the U.S. election was the main focus, amid worries about the depths of Trump’s commitment to NATO and Ukraine, threats to slap tariffs on EU products and an expectation that a Trump White House would take a tougher line on Beijing.
FOCUS ON SINGLE MARKET: Just three days after the U.S. election, EU leaders look set to call for a single market strategy when they hold an informal meeting in the Hungarian capital. The informal European Council in Budapest scheduled for Nov. 8 will essentially set the dial for how the EU will engage with Washington in the next four years.
Scoop: POLITICO’s Mathieu Pollet got his hands on a draft of the leaders’ conclusions here, which talks about the “extreme urgency” of decisive action on various topics.
Lots of strategies requested: EU leaders plan to tell the Commission to come up with a single market strategy and a European tech strategy by the middle of 2025 … to adopt a European industrial policy to “ensure the growth of the key technologies of tomorrow” … to modernize EU competition rules … to conduct “red tape impact assessments” for new policies … and to put in place a “farmers-focused vision for agriculture.”
RUSSIA’S WAR
U.N. BOSS UNDER FIRE: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had a thinly veiled dig last night at U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres for attending the BRICS summit in Kazan and meeting with Vladimir Putin for the first time in more than two years. Marking United Nations Day in his nightly address, Zelenskyy praised the organization’s charter and emphasized the importance of adhering to its principles “even though some of its officials may choose the temptations of Kazan.”
He wasn’t the only critic: Yulia Navalnaya, a key Russian opposition figure and widow of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, admonished the U.N. chief for “shaking hands with a murderer.” Earlier this week, the Ukrainian foreign ministry had criticized Guterres for declining an invitation to the Global Peace Summit in Switzerland but then attending the BRICS summit, posting on social media: “This is a wrong choice that does not advance the cause of peace.”
What Guterres said: According to a U.N. readout, Guterres reiterated to Putin in a conversation on the sidelines of the summit in Kazan that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine violated the U.N. charter and international law, and called for a “just peace.” In his address at the summit, the U.N. secretary-general called for peace “across the board” in Gaza, Lebanon and Sudan.
Speaking of the BRICS summit … European Council President Charles Michel told the FT the EU should show more respect to developing countries if it wants to limit Chinese and Russian influence. “At the European level . . . there is a reflex which is close to a form of lecture,” Michel said in an interview out this morning. “We are not always very good in terms of communication, in terms of explanation, in terms of talking with them and showing a certain respect to them.”
NORTH KOREA IN UKRAINE: Kyiv said late Thursday that North Korean troops had moved into the zone of combat in the Kursk region. At the BRICS summit on Thursday, Putin sidestepped questions about the deployment of North Korean troops and again accused the West of escalating the conflict. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell issued a statement Thursday on behalf of the 27 EU member countries “strongly” condemning North Korea’s cooperation with Russia and said it indicated that “Russia is not sincerely interested in a just, comprehensive and lasting peace.”
NOW READ: Russia provided targeting data for Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen when they attacked Western ships in the Red Sea with missiles and drones earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported.
COMMISSIONERS UNDER SCRUTINY
MEPs PRESSURE ŠUICA OVER MEETINGS: Five Green MEPs have penned a letter to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen asking for Commission Vice President Dubravka Šuica to be sanctioned for failing to disclose meetings with lobbyists.
Violation of conduct: Šuica didn’t report at least 19 meetings with lobby groups and companies to the EU Commission between 2020 and 2023, German magazine Spiegel reported last Friday. The MEPs claimed in their letter that “seven meetings were held with stakeholders that are not registered in the Transparency Register.” Šuica’s contacts, they allege, amounted to an “intentional and serious” breach of the code of conduct for commissioners.
Just a mistake: Two of those meetings should have been registered, but “had not been published due to a clerical mistake,” a Commission spokesperson told Playbook. The rest were “spontaneous encounters at the margins of other events” Šuica attended, interviews or speeches — and all have since been “proactively and voluntarily” registered, the spokesperson assured us.
ICYMI — COMMISSIONERS-DESIGNATE SHARE THEIR VISIONS: Ahead of their November grilling by the European Parliament, aspiring EU commissioners submitted more than 400 pages of written answers to lawmakers’ questions, giving a glimpse of their visions for their roles. But the real challenge will be facing questions from lawmakers without the aid of advisers. POLITICO’s newsroom has combed through the documents for indications of how the newcomers want to set the tone or change direction. Barbara Moens and Fiona Lally have the key takeaways.
FOCUS ON IRELAND
COMEBACK CLARE: The road to reelection just got harder for Sinn Féin Leader Mary Lou McDonald — because one of the country’s most prominent far-left politicians, the former MEP Clare Daly, has just announced she’ll run against McDonald in her inner-city Dublin power base, Shawn Pogatchnik writes in to report.
Anti-establishment: Well known for her anti-NATO and anti-Israel stances, Daly narrowly lost her European Parliament seat in June’s election. Now she aims to win one of the four Irish parliamentary seats up for grabs in Dublin Central. Daly will hope to take anti-establishment votes from McDonald, whose Irish republican party is the main opposition but has seen its poll lead evaporate this year amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment and internal scandals.
ELECTION KLAXON: It’s still not official, but the government of Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris is widely expected to call a snap election in the first week of November, once legislation enacting its giveaway budget is passed. The election itself would be held on one of three possible Fridays: Nov. 22, Nov. 29 or Dec. 6.
IN OTHER NEWS
GEORGIA ELECTION: Ahead of a crucial national parliamentary election on Saturday that has been billed as a “a referendum on the future of Europe,” the Georgian government is presiding over a new crackdown on critical voices, my colleague Gabriel Gavin reports from Tbilisi.
MACRON AND BARNIER FACE OFF OVER BUDGET: France’s Prime Minister Michel Barnier and President Emmanuel Macron are on a collision course over the country’s public finances, with a potential credit downgrade looming. Barnier warns of an urgent deficit crisis, advocating for tax hikes and spending cuts. Macron, on the other hand, believes economic growth will resolve budget issues, opposing short-term austerity measures. Giorgio Leali, Pauline de Saint Remy and Elisa Bertholomey have more.
COMMISSION FACES LEGAL TROUBLES: Getlink, owner of the Channel Tunnel, may sue the EU after a last-minute delay to the entry-exit system, meant to streamline border checks post-Brexit, reports Jon Stone. The launch, set for Nov. 10, has been postponed — leaving Getlink with £70 million in wasted costs from technology and staffing investments made in preparation for the rollout.
WILDERS BACKS DOWN: The Dutch government averted collapse over migration policy after far-right leader Geert Wilders backed down over a demand for drastic measures potentially in breach of EU law, the FT’s Andy Bounds reports.
IS THE EU LOSING THE EAST? In this week’s EU Confidential podcast: A referendum that was supposed to be a slam dunk turned into a nail-biter — WTF happened in Moldova? Was it all down to Russia’s (unprecedented) election interference … or is Brussels’ tepid support for Ukraine also to blame? Ahead of a vote with similar stakes in the Republic of Georgia, host Sarah Wheaton is joined by POLITICO reporters who’ve lived in and traveled extensively in the region: Eva Hartog, Gabriel Gavin and Veronika Melkozerova dialing in from Kyiv. Listen here.
**Join us in Brussels on November 26 for POLITICO Live’s event “Post-elections: the transatlantic quest for competitiveness and sustainability”. As the 2024 elections in the EU and U.S. reshape industrial policy and climate goals, this event will explore how the transatlantic cooperation can enhance competitiveness and sustainability. Don’t miss out – apply now to attend in person or online!**
AGENDA
— Parliament President Roberta Metsola is in Vatican City; meets Pope Francis at 9 a.m.; addresses the Commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Alcide De Gasperi’s passing. Watch.
— Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she meets with the Chair of Bosnia’s Council of Ministers Borjana Krišto. Later she meets with Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vučić and Prime Minister Miloš Vučević in Belgrade.
— EU ambassadors meet in Coreper II at 10 a.m. Agenda.
— Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz is in New Delhi, India, where he meets India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi; both will give keynote speeches at the 2024 Asia-Pacific Conference of German Business.
— International Partnerships Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen attends the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group and represents the EU in the Development Committee; Eurogroup President Paschal Donohoe will also attend.
— Commission Vice President Dubravka Šuica delivers a keynote speech via video for an international conference in Zagreb on “Europe’s Mission in the World Order of Peace.”
— Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarčič is in Germany participating in a civil protection full-scale exercise.
— Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides delivers a speech via video at a breast cancer awareness event to present Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan.
— Equality Commissioner Helena Dalli delivers a keynote speech at the PES Women Statutory meeting.
BRUSSELS CORNER
WEATHER IN BRUSSELS: High of 19C, mostly sunny.
FRIDAY FUNNY: This week’s Declassified column, written by yours truly, about why your next meeting doesn’t matter.
ICYMI — ALBANIAN PM WOULD “KILL” FOR VDL: Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama is known for his dark sense of humor and he gave Commission President Ursula von der Leyen a taste of it during her visit to the country, Playbook’s Šejla Ahmatović reports. At the opening ceremony of the College of Europe’s campus in Tirana this week, Rama praised her as a “steadfast, loving and true friend for Albania,” then added: “For friends, we go beyond the impossible, we can even kill.” The X clip posted by the satirical account DG MEME is worth watching for the awkward reactions of von der Leyen and College Rector Federica Mogherini.
SO LONG, AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH QUOTAS: Heike Libbach is leaving the European Commission after a 43-year career at the directorate general for agriculture. Enjoy your retirement!
HAPPY DIWALI: Brussels will this weekend host the largest Indian festival in Western Europe to celebrate Diwali (which is on Oct. 31). Enjoy live music, a fashion show and a fireworks display at the Atomium. Starts Saturday at noon.
BIRTHDAYS: Former MEPs Thomas Geisel, Norbert Erdős and Emilian Pavel; former MEP and POLITICO 28 alum Olga Sehnalová; Stefano Giustiniani of the U.S. embassy in Rome; POLITICO’s Brandy Miller.
CELEBRATING SATURDAY: Former MEPs Eva Kaili, Cristian Preda, Max Andersson and Jordi Solé Ferrando; Deputy Director of the Hugo Observatory Caroline Zickgraf; NYT’s Mark Landler; ADF International’s Robert Clarke; former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Uhuru Kenyatta, former president of Kenya; Carlos Agostinho do Rosário, former PM of Mozambique. Austrian National Day.
CELEBRATING SUNDAY: MEPs Tom Vandendriessche and Salvatore De Meo; former MEPs Theodoros Zagorakis and Janusz Korwin-Mikke; the Economist’s Tom Nuttall; FleishmanHillard’s Donald Ricketts; Johan Barros of Accountancy Europe; Buckingham Palace’s Sara Latham.
THANKS TO: Camille Gijs, Mathieu Pollet, Jacopo Barigazzi, Sarah Wheaton, Barbara Moens, Shawn Pogatchnik, Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing, Playbook editor Alex Spence, Playbook reporter Šejla Ahmatović and producer Catherine Bouris.
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Publish date : 2024-10-24 22:43:00
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