"I lived through a civil war!": Fatma recounts being attacked while defending her business

Two days after the violence that erupted on the sidelines of the October 17th protests against the high cost of living, political reactions continue. For its part, the government is trying to regain control. Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez submitted his resignation to Emmanuel Macron, who refused it.

 

00:00 Maintaining order in France: why is it failing us? Éric Delbecque, an expert in internal security and author of The Betrayal of the Elites (Robert Laffont), is the guest on the GG show.

 

01:24 Éric Delbecque: Laurent Nuñez is the only one showing a modicum of responsibility. He acknowledges that there was a problem and has submitted his resignation. This is not the case for Emmanuel Macron and Gérald Darmanin. »

05:19 Éric Delbecque: "Those who loot operate primarily with a raiding strategy. And also with a human shield strategy. Maintaining order is extremely delicate."

 

Éric Delbecque: "LFI's responsibility is clear. Words carry weight. And when you're responsible, you're morally and politically guilty."

 

22:11 Yannick, a shopkeeper in Marseille: "I watched for an hour and a half as my shop was being looted. There were about 200 people breaking down the security shutter, looting, and gradually emptying my entire store. The riot police were completely powerless."

 

23:43 Fatma, shopkeeper: "I decided to defend my business. I was attacked by a man. I have 15 days of sick leave. They had knives. 80% of them were from my Muslim community. There were thousands of them. We're doomed! I lived through a civil war!"

LE FORUM BFMTV - Pillages, émeutes: la France débordée

France Riots 'Spinning Out Of Control' So The Public Want Authorities To 'Get Tough' | David Chazan

 

Ferocious criticism from all sides underlines Macron’s isolation

 

Analysis

Ferocious criticism from all sides underlines Macron’s isolation

Jon Henleyin Paris

French president has compounded impression of arrogance with strategic errors – and consequences could be profound

Mon 19 Oct 2026 18.33 CEST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/19/emmanuel-macron-criticism-isolation-france

 

The near-universal chorus of condemnation that greeted Emmanuel Macron’s address to the nation on Sunday, after one of the most violent days of rioting and looting in France’s recent history, was a stark reflection of just how weakened he now is.

Speaking from his office at the Élysée Palace, the president delivered an eight-minute speech expressing “anger and shame” after a weekend in which a town hall was set ablaze, 2,000-plus shops were looted, 2,300 people were arrested and 1,000 police injured.

A month-long protest by high school pupils over crumbling and crowded classrooms converged with broader frustrations over soaring living costs, rapidly widening inequality and falling public spending, bringing together students, teachers, trade unionists and a resurrected gilets jaunes movement.

 

Those largely peaceful protests were swiftly hijacked by masked groups who torched vehicles, ransacked businesses and severely damaged public infrastructure, including setting fire to Limoges’ city hall and invading that of Marseille.

Macron acknowledged the “deep anxiety” of young people but offered no concrete policy initiatives, no cabinet reshuffle and no new public spending, merely telling his prime minister to organise consultations and asking opposition politicians to take a stand.

The response, across the political spectrum, was damning. The Greens’ leader, Marine Tondelier, said that rather than “even beginning to make any kind of mea culpa”, Macron was “summoning us to the PM’s office like pupils to the blackboard”.

On the far right, the National Rally’s Jordan Bardella called the speech “lamentable” and said Macron had “nothing left to say” to the French. The party’s figurehead, Marine Le Pen, said the country was “caught in a vice between violence and impotence”.

The centre-right’s Bruno Retailleau said Macron was “totally overwhelmed”, while on the radical left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon accused the president of relying on “inaction and police brutality” in doomed hopes that the protests would simply fizzle out.

Perhaps most damagingly, even Macron’s former prime minister Édouard Philippe said he would have preferred “decisions and initiatives that might lead to a return to order and the restoration of state authority … Our country needs to be governed.”

Criticism is to be expected from rivals positioning themselves six months before a presidential election to choose Macron’s successor. But its sheer ferocity underlines his isolation, the disdain in which he is held, and the anger he inspires.

It is a structural trap that he has largely set for himself. Macron came to power in 2017 as a “Jupiterian” president – a deliberate strategy aimed at elevating the head of state above daily politics, projecting distant authority and technocratic brilliance.

But over nine years in the Élysée, that high-handed style – partly born, his critics say, of Macron’s complete lack of basic political experience as an elected official in a town hall or as a constituency MP – has morphed into perceived arrogance and detachment.

It has been compounded by catastrophic strategic errors, and France’s spiralling economic problems. Macron lost a functional parliamentary majority by refusing to meaningfully campaign between the presidential and legislative elections of 2022.

Two years later he dissolved the national assembly. That gamble backfired spectacularly, with voters returning an even more deadlocked parliament split between a divided left, a much-diminished centrist bloc and Le Pen’s far right.

Without a working majority, the government repeatedly resorted to controversial constitutional manoeuvres to force through laws without a parliamentary vote, laying it – and Macron – open to further accusations of democratic illegitimacy.

Compounding that institutional deadlock is a looming fiscal crisis. In decades gone by, French presidents facing mass protests on the streets could in effect buy a degree of social tranquility with targeted spending packages or public sector concessions.

But France’s national debt, at 119% of GDP, is at its highest level since 1946. Its budget deficit, at 5.1%, is also among the highest in the EU. There is just no money in the bank to ease the cost of living squeeze that brought 550,000 people on to the streets on Saturday.

The markets are worried: France’s borrowing costs are higher than Greece’s. And with few fiscal options, the government’s clearest response – in time-honoured French tradition – has been teargas and baton charges, sometimes against schoolchildren, further aggravating tensions.

The consequences for the presidential election could be profound. The centrist coalition built around Macron’s brand has all but collapsed. If the protests and violence persist, the main beneficiary will be the law-and-order champions of the far right.

Jean-Baptiste Moreau, an influential former MP from Macron’s party with whom the largely lame-duck president still occasionally speaks, reportedly went so far this weekend as to suggest he should resign and call early presidential elections.

“Macron still thinks he can change things,” he told Le Monde. “But at the moment, Marine Le Pen is on a direct path to the Élysée Palace.”

The Failures of Emmanuel Macron

 

The World

The Failures of Emmanuel Macron

 

The student protests that snowballed into violent riots made it clear that almost 10 years of his presidency have not fixed France’s problems.

By Katrin Bennhold

I’m the host of The World.

Published Oct. 19, 2026Updated Oct. 20, 2026, 2:50 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/19/world/macron-france-riots-le-pen-gold.html

 

Watching France burn this weekend made me think of that moment in 2017 when Emmanuel Macron became president on a platform of change and hope and, well, “Révolution.” That was the title of the book he published before the election as a kind of manifesto for how to beat the far right.

Less than a year after Brexit and Donald Trump’s first election, Macron did beat Marine Le Pen. I was living in London at the time, where there were French families who spontaneously left to return to France to be part of his “mouvement.”

Almost a decade later, Le Pen looks more likely than ever to become France’s next president. Today I write about how Macron may get his revolution — but not the one he was hoping for.

Image

Emmanuel Macron in Brussels last week.Credit...Yves Herman/Reuters

 

The man who didn’t save France

There were already signs that Macron wasn’t totally checked in.

When thousands of high school students took to the streets earlier this month protesting funding cuts in education, the French president chose to spend the day on a warship off the coast of Brittany. As my colleague Mark Landler reported, Macron watched a new ballistic missile being fired from a French nuclear-powered submarine, leaving it to his prime minister to try to reassure the French people that the government was on top of the crisis.

Then things got worse.

By the time Macron finally spoke publicly on Sunday, the student protests had snowballed into broader violent riots across the country with many more people. Crowds smashed windows, burned cars, looted stores and vandalized public buildings, including the near-destruction of the historic town hall in the city of Limoges.

Both the government’s failure to foresee the riots and its response to them have been criticized across the political spectrum. Even before the violence, Macron’s approval rating stood at an abysmal 15 percent. He doesn’t have much lower to fall.

It’s all a far cry from 2017, when he took office at 39 years old, fresh-faced and confident, promising sweeping economic reforms to save France from stagnating growth, an ascendant far right and perhaps above all, a prevailing sense that France was no longer a functional society.

It hasn’t worked.

Paris on Saturday.Credit...Carl Court/Getty Images

 

Not trickling down

Macron, a former investment banker who had served as an economics minister in a center-left government, beat Le Pen in 2017 by pitching himself as neither left nor right. He promised to unite a fiercely divided country and to make sure French voters would “never have a reason to vote for extremism again.”

He also ran on an unabashedly free-market platform: Make it easier and cheaper for companies to invest in France. They’ll create jobs and economic growth. That’s how you win back voters from the far right, the argument went.

Over the past nine years, Macron cut corporate taxes and payroll taxes, and abolished a wealth tax. But none of that has meaningfully boosted economic growth, nor has it reduced France’s ballooning debt.

The tax cuts cost the French treasury tens of billions of euros a year. The debt level — never low — is now widely seen as unsustainable. French taxpayers could spend more on the interest on their public debt next year than on defense and education. There’s now a widespread sense of systemic crisis and social injustice.

Many of these problems predated Macron and were made worse by events that were out of his control, like the pandemic. But it’s against this backdrop that this weekend’s protests descended into the worst riots in years.

Street protests are part of the political culture in France. When I lived there, I covered many. But Saturday’s rioting, which came after half a million people marched against the rising cost of living and deteriorating conditions in schools, was unlike anything I ever saw.

The large-scale protests from students and union members made clear that almost 10 years of Emmanuel Macron have not fixed France’s problems. And the violence and looting that followed, in which rioters damaged an estimated 3,000 businesses, along with multiple symbols of the French state, could make some voters more willing to vote for the Le Pen presidency Macron had pledged to prevent.

Image

Marine Le Pen last week.Credit...Nicolas Tucat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

Le Pen’s campaign mode

Before this weekend, Le Pen was already the favorite to win the presidency in next year’s elections. But in the aftermath of the violence, her National Rally party wasted no time.

While Macron’s government and the far left were busy pointing fingers at each other for the rioting, team Le Pen went straight into campaign mode.

“People need to wake up now,” said Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally party. “They need to make the right political choices, and in any case, we stand ready to restore order in the country.”

On Sunday evening, Le Pen released a video address in which she painted a picture of a divided France. She was filmed sitting behind a wooden desk, with the French flag behind her, hands clasped — the image of a president in waiting, as one of my colleagues put it.

Macron’s relative youth and rousing rhetoric once invited comparisons to Barack Obama, whose message of hope he sought to emulate. But, like Obama, Macron’s elite credentials and intellectual manner also made him seem out-of-touch to many voters.

Now, Macron’s legacy looks likely to be very different from what he’d envisioned — and, like Obama’s, it will be shaped by who takes office once he’s gone.

 

French riots lay bare risks and opportunities for 2027 election candidates

 

French riots lay bare risks and opportunities for 2027 election candidates

 

POLITICO looks at the strategic calculus for Le Pen, Mélenchon, Philippe and Glucksmann.

 

Police officers stand near a fire during an unauthorized demonstration marked by riots and clashes with law enforcement at Place de la Republique in Paris on October 18, 2026. | Gauthier Bedrignans/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

 

October 20, 2026 4:00 am CET

By Clea Caulcutt, Marion Solletty and Sofiane Zaizoune

https://www.politico.eu/article/french-riots-lay-bare-risks-and-opportunities-for-2027-election-candidates/

 

PARIS — Looting and rioting across France over the weekend are threatening to reshape the contours of the French presidential race.

Far-right frontrunner Marine Le Pen is seizing on the crisis to cast herself as the candidate of law and order, but there are risks for her too. Many voters see her as a highly divisive leader whose 2027 victory would only deepen the societal fault lines exposed by the riots.

Far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, widely tipped to challenge Le Pen in the second round next year, is also treading carefully as rivals accuse him of encouraging the rage on the streets that has morphed into pillaging and arson.

For the flailing centrists, there is now an opportunity to finally make an impression in the contest — but only if they can distance themselves from President Emmanuel Macron, who is seen as fluffing his response to the nationwide wave of vandalism.

Overall, it’s pushing the election into uncharted waters.

“If there’s a real crisis, you don’t know where it could lead,” said one conservative who holds regular talks with officials from the far-right National Rally and was granted anonymity to discuss the subject.

Where does that leave the candidates? POLITICO takes a look at the strategic calculus for the leading runners across the political spectrum.

 

Marine Le Pen, on the up

Le Pen is receiving an immediate boost. Even her rivals admit it.

This Saturday’s unrest “benefits the far right,” said center-right European Member of Parliament Nathalie Loiseau. “They are circling around the violence like vultures,” she said in an interview.

Le Pen has already cast herself as the alternative president, delivering a sober address to the nation Sunday and pitching herself as the candidate of a “pacified France.”

Jordan Bardella, president of her National Rally party, upped the ante on the protests and pitched his party as the only one able to restore order, dialing up fears about the pillaging. The rioters “will soon be breaking into people’s homes,” he said at a press conference in Paris. “The authorities are collapsing.”

But excessive, prolonged chaos could backfire on a party long seen as instigating civil unrest. And the topic is already becoming a talking point inside the National Rally.

Far-right party Rassemblement National candidate in France’s 2027 presidential election Marine Le Pen holds a press conference on the sidelines of a meeting of Patriots parliamentary group on the eve of an EU Summit in Brussels on October 14, 2026. | Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images

“Some say that this shows that there will be riots if the National Rally comes to power,” said Charles-Henri Gallois, one of Bardella’s advisors. “But I don’t believe it.”

According to the conservative quoted above, periods of instability can lead the French to turn their backs on anti-establishment figures and prefer traditional veterans.

“You could end up with [Charles] De Gaulle on the Champs-Élysées,” the official said, referring to how the first president of the Fifth Republic emerged with extra powers after the 1958 crisis that roiled the nation.

 

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on the defensive

Far-left leader Mélenchon is in a bind as he walks a tightrope between supporting protesters and distancing himself from violence.

The France Unbowed party supported the school protests in the run-up to last weekend’s riots, and far-left elected officials have played a prominent role in the blockades, either in decrying alleged police violence or in support of the protesters.

In the battle for leadership between Mélenchon and center-left MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, the former grabbed the limelight.

Jean-Luc Melenchon, during the October 17 demonstration in Paris on October 17, 2026. | Augustin Pasquini/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

But the violence this weekend could end up marginalizing the far left, especially with the government and political rivals accusing them of fueling the unrest. “They tried to aggravate the situation,” Loiseau said.

According to a poll from Cluster 17 for POLITICO, the 75-year-old far-left firebrand is already one of the most commonly “rejected” politicians in France.

On Monday, Mélenchon tried to turn the tables, firing back at the government, saying the prime minister was fomenting “disorder” with his accusations that ultra-left groups were trying to disrupt the election.

 

Edouard Philippe, looking for a reset

For the center-right presidential hopeful Philippe, the riots aren’t good news either. He has to work hard to distance himself from his old boss, President Emmanuel Macron, who is seen as failing to respond sufficiently to the crisis. (Philippe was Macron’s first prime minister.)

But the protests could also be his opportunity to show some character, and rebut critics who think his campaign lacks energy and panache. Philippe, the best-placed centrist candidate to beat the far-right, has seen his poll ratings stall in recent months and has struggled to cut through the campaign noise.

Edouard Philippe gives a speech during a meeting between the Alliance for General News Press and several presidential candidates in Paris on October 14, 2026. | Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images

A break with Macron might just be what he needs.

Philippe came out hard against the president after he failed to announce any measures during his primetime television address Sunday. “I would have preferred… decisions and initiatives to restore order,” he wrote online. “This country needs someone in command.”

But the former PM will need to stick his neck out more if he’s going to make an impact.

“He’s very presidential, and it’s a posture that suits him,” said one of Macron’s ministers, who, like others cited here, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.

“But he’s not saying anything. What’s his measure? Why doesn’t he say we need to call a state of emergency? “

 

Raphaël Glucksmann, on the offensive

For the MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, the protests are a trial by fire after he won the Socialist Party primary contest earlier this month and became the center-left’s presidential candidate.

On Monday, Glucksmann tried to strike a very different note from Mélenchon, telling reporters that “it’s unbearable … that hordes of looters should attack symbols of the state.”

Raphaël Glucksmann, Member of the European Parliament, co-chair of Place publique, and winner of the left-wing primary for the 2027 presidential election, speaking after his victory during the first-round results night at the Solaris in Paris on October 11, 2026. | Benjamin Vodant/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

Sensing a chink in the far-left leader’s armor, he accused the leader of France Unbowed of being “a springboard” for Le Pen, who would be “the beneficiary of the chaos.”

Glucksmann has seen his poll ratings go up since he won the Socialist Party primary outright, reaching 15% to 16.5% according to a recent Elabe poll — in a similar territory to Mélenchon and Philippe.

But the minister quoted above expected Glucksmann to peak soon.

“He can only take voters away from Mélenchon,” the minister said. “A left-wing voter may vote for the right, but a right-wing voter won’t vote for the left anytime soon,” the person said.

 

Emmanuel Macron, on the skids

Macron is being roasted for going on television to address the nation and announce … absolutely nothing.

On Sunday, Macron promised that rioters who “destroyed” things would have to pay the price and called for “clear answers” on why the protests turned violent.

“Fucking hell, it’s rubbish,” said one former senior government official.

Macron has cultivated an image of being above the fray and went on a trip to the Middle East on Monday. But his failure to respond to the violence risks damaging his final months in power. “It’s out of touch,” a regional official said.

According to the minister quoted above, Macron should have let his prime minister do the talking but instead was encouraged to make “a speech to calm” the situation.

On Monday, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu tried to get a grip on the situation, announcing localized curfews, movement restrictions, and bans on public demonstrations.

But another day of demonstrations has already been announced for next Saturday, sparking fears the protests will snowball into sustained protests similar to the Yellow Vests movement in 2018 and 2019.

If so, this chaos will be a defining element of the 2027 campaign.

 

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‘It looks like a war zone’: France reels as looting continues for second night

 

1h ago17.16 CEST

‘It looks like a war zone’: France reels as looting continues for second night

Angelique Chrisafis

in Paris

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/oct/19/europe-france-protests-riots-macron-ukraine-russia-zelenskyy-sweden-latest-news-updates?page=with%3Ablock-6ad62ab98f08899eef353caf#block-6ad62ab98f08899eef353caf

 

Just before 1am on Monday morning, two motorbikes carrying one passenger each stopped at a traffic light on a backstreet near rue de Rivoli, one of central Paris’s busiest shopping streets.

“You’ve got to go where there are a lot of people, where they’ve done the shop windows,” said one motorbike rider to another. Minutes later 10 other men, their faces covered with ski balaclavas, came down the street on foot pursued by a police van.

View image in fullscreen

People enter a ransacked Franprix store as clashes erupted at Place de la Republique following an unauthorised demonstration, central Paris. Photograph: Matthieu Rondel/AFP/Getty Images

Soon after Emmanuel Macron’s televised speech on Sunday night telling the nation it was “unbearable to see our streets ransacked”, groups of men looted shops in central Paris for hours for a second night running. Dozens of people attempted to smash windows near Les Halles shopping centre and grab goods. Others broke into an electrical shop in Belleville in the north of the city.

“Men were battering shop windows, trying to break in, then they were chased by police,” said a 73-year-old woman near Les Halles.

“There were different groups running everywhere with police chasing on foot or by car, and at the same time, some people were setting bins and bikes alight. The groups breaking into shops aren’t hostile to passersby so you’d see local residents walking down the street on their way home late at night, and masked teenagers running past in the other direction carrying looted goods. It’s so strange – it’s like two different universes in parallel worlds.”

She said:

“It says a lot about society – it shows we have neglected our education system and that we’re living in a consumer society where all we say to our young people is: ‘buy, buy, buy’. In this type of extreme capitalism, some people don’t have enough money to buy all of this and so they attack.”

 

Interior minister concedes police ‘lost control’ over looting

 

2h ago

16.43 CEST

Interior minister concedes police ‘lost control’ over looting

Jon Henley

Europe correspondent

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/oct/19/europe-france-protests-riots-macron-ukraine-russia-zelenskyy-sweden-latest-news-updates?page=with%3Ablock-6ad62ab98f08899eef353caf#block-6ad62ab98f08899eef353caf

 

Over the weekend, several public buildings including a town hall were attacked and set ablaze and an estimated 2,000 shops were ransacked and looted, authorities have said. Nearly 2,400 people – 70% of them adults – were arrested and almost 1,000 police and gendarmes injured.

 

Interior minister Laurent Nuñez said 60,000 police and other security forces had been deployed around the country, but acknowledged it had not been enough to control determined, organised groups of violent rioters in major cities including Paris, Marseille and Lyon.

 

“You couldn’t look shopkeepers in the eye after hundreds of shops had been looted and say we hadn’t lost control,” the minister told French radio, but added that the responsibility of “rioters, looters and ultra-left militants” should not be glossed over.

 

The justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, also said intelligence failings had left the state vulnerable. “There’s no good policing without good intelligence, he said, adding that many of those arrested had police records and “about 80%” were being prosecuted.

 

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The EU heads into a perfect political storm

 

The EU heads into a perfect political storm

 

Last week’s summit gave Brussels a taste of how hard it’s going to be to get a deal on the budget — or anything else.

 

By SEBASTIAN STARCEVIC
in Brussels

^{Illustration by Natália Delgado/POLITICO}

 

October 19, 2026 4:00 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/the-eu-heads-into-a-perfect-political-storm/

 

The EU is already struggling with how to get its largest-ever budget agreed, plug a massive financial hole for Ukraine and navigate geopolitical pressure from the U.S. and China. Now, it also faces being paralyzed by domestic political strife in the countries that collectively make up around 60% of its GDP and population.

“Everybody used to understand that we need to finish … a political agreement by the end of the year,” Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides told POLITICO in an interview on the sidelines of last week’s European Council, referring to the bloc’s fraught budget negotiations.

But the Spanish election means that will no longer be possible, he said. And next year, “it’s going to be France, Italy” and others going to the polls, Christodoulides added, predicting even more complications for the bloc.

The EU is facing an unprecedented dilemma: Its four biggest economies are all heading into elections or political upheaval, potentially hamstringing the bloc’s ability to get anything done.

Spain will go to the polls next month, with the center right and far right on track to take power. France is changing presidents in April, with polls favoring far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen. The Alternative for Germany is ascendant, putting Friedrich Merz’s chancellorship in doubt. And Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s unusually long-serving government is also heading to an election in 2027.

The consequences are already becoming clear.

António Costa, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ursula von der Leyen arrive to attend an EU summit in Brussels on Oct. 16, 2026. | Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images

The bloc’s latest summit offered an early taste of what lies ahead: After two days of talks, leaders failed to make headway on the €2 trillion budget and instead became embroiled in an unexpectedly bitter row on energy policy. The summit’s conclusions notably omitted any mention of finding consensus on the budget before the end of the year, with member countries resisting a push by European Council President Antonio Costa for an end-2026 deadline, although there are summits scheduled for November and December.

If those meetings fail to produce a deal, then the already fractious talks will spill over into 2027, when electoral battles are likely to loom even larger over negotiations — and governments may be increasingly reluctant to make the compromises needed to reach agreement.

Triple assault

The paralysis Brussels fears as Europe’s election cycle gathers pace is already beginning to take hold, with last week’s summit exposing how difficult it is becoming to forge the compromises the bloc needs.

 

Rather than strike any big deals (a Franco-German accord on cars was the one exception), the leaders used the gathering to dig in on entrenched positions and seek tactical advantages over rival camps.

The pessimism was palpable, according to six diplomats and officials POLITICO spoke to, with several warning the EU faces sharp headwinds in the coming months. All were granted anonymity to speak freely.

“Next year, it will be worse,” said one senior EU diplomat.

“It’s true, because of this calendar for the elections … in the next year it’ll be much more difficult in the member states and inside the [European] Parliament,” said Carla Tavares, a senior MEP with the Socialists and Democrats and co-lead on budget negotiations.

The bloc’s internal malaise could hardly come at a worse time.

From U.S. President Donald Trump’s undermining of the transatlantic alliance to an ever-widening trade imbalance with China, the EU is facing mounting geopolitical and economic pressures on multiple fronts.

Costa, Bart De Wever, Emmanuel Macron and Rob Jetten speak during a European Council summit in Brussels on Oct. 15, 2026. | Nicolas Maeterlinck/AFP via Getty Images

“They seek our division. They want our division,” Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever told reporters at a late-night briefing during the summit, not mentioning names but referring to countries to the east and west of Brussels. “And they have, of course, points where they can hurt us.”

Former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, now a visiting fellow at Stanford University, was less circumspect. “Now we are under assault from three sides: from the U.S., Russia and China,” he said.

Washington is questioning the old alliances that have underpinned European security for generations. Moscow is waging a shadow war across Europe, from cyberattacks and sabotage to an attempted drone attack at Leipzig airport that Berlin blamed on the Kremlin. Beijing is tightening its grip on critical supply chains and flooding European markets with cheap exports.

Then there’s the Ukraine problem. The country is facing a budget shortfall of $30 billion to $35 billion next year, according to the IMF, with Russia battering its energy infrastructure ahead of a brutal winter. That’s despite the €90 billion the EU already agreed to stump up last year.

Landsbergis said the coming months are looking “extremely dire” for Kyiv. “Everything falls on European shoulders,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sounded a grim note at last week’s summit, telling reporters that if Ukraine falls, 20 million Ukrainians will flood into the EU. “Russia is killing us,” he said. “They don’t want to stop.”

One solution to Ukraine’s funding woes could be the €200 billion in Russian assets that have been immobilized indefinitely in Brussels-based financial depository Euroclear. But there is no sign of the EU finding common ground on that front either, with Belgium, which vetoed previous efforts to use the assets to help Ukraine, still refusing to budge.

“Nothing has changed,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said as he exited last week’s summit early.

Other potential solutions, such as issuing more joint debt, will require messy compromises — just as Brussels finds itself with even less room to maneuver.

Who you gonna call?

The EU’s problems go beyond its budget or individual policy files. With the political futures of several of Europe’s most powerful leaders in question, Brussels risks losing the stable alliances and long-serving national heavyweights needed to broker compromises.

“We now have Europe with no obvious leader,” another EU diplomat argued. Commission President Ursula “von der Leyen is powerful. But we do not have a Merkel or Mitterrand.”

French President Emmanuel Macron cannot constitutionally serve a third consecutive term and will have to find new digs in Paris after leaving the Élysée Palace in April. During a closed-door discussion at last week’s summit, Macron admitted he wouldn’t have a political mandate to sign a deal on the budget in his final months in power, four European diplomats said.

 

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is on track for defeat after eight years in power, according to polls. Spaniards will vote on Nov. 29, meaning Sanchez will be in full election mode during EU leaders’ meetings on Nov. 13 and Nov. 26.

Costa, who has stressed the need to reach an agreement on the EU’s budget by the end of 2026 to make sure it’s ready to go by 2028, waved off fears that the bloc’s next spate of elections could get in the way.

“We are living in 27 democracies,” he said on Friday. “More or less every month we have one election. If it’s about elections, we never could approve a new budget.” 

Regardless of the result, Madrid is not expected to form a government until January, which could derail the budget talks, according to two EU diplomats.

Photo-Illustration by POLITICO/source via Getty Images

It’s anyone’s guess how long German Chancellor Merz has left in office. While the next federal election is not scheduled until 2029, the AfD’s growing strength and his own nosediving popularity complicate how much Merz might be willing to compromise.

Italy, too, is set for elections in October 2027. Another EU diplomat said they did not expect Meloni to wait that long, arguing she could call a vote much earlier.

There could be a sweet spot in January to get the budget over the line, a senior EU official suggested. It may be the last chance to strike a deal before Europe’s political upheaval makes compromise even harder to come by.

So far, the EU’s leaders have simply been “too slow,” said Siegfried Mureșan, the European People’s Party’s co-lead on the budget. “Time is running out.”

Nicholas Vinocur contributed reporting.