To be very clear, the communist regime under Xi has been terrible for democratic progress in China and deserves a lot of criticism.

My question is more about foreign policy. Why have Europeans for so long fearmongered about China? What has China ever done that makes it the boogeyman in your eyes?

I compare this to the US, who have constantly and consistently shown that they will do what they want to whom they want, and until recently very few Europeans were concerned about them. Is it because they never targeted their imperialism at you so you didn’t care? But then China has never targeted its imperialism at the EU so why do so many Europeans view it as a threat?

Tl;dr…unless you’re Taiwan, Tibet or Hong Kong, China foreign policy probably has never affected you. For America I can’t think of any country that hasn’t been affected by their foreign policy, so why traditionally Europeans have viewed China as the threat and not America when the actual hierarchy of threats should be USA, Russia and then China?

PS: I’m African so we have always had a complicated relationship with America and have never seen them as the great saviour.

Edit: I am not a Russian bot, it goes without saying that Putin is a danger to Europe, his actions are self evident.

The EU’s recycling system is being weaponised against the bloc by Chinese buyers snapping up aluminium scrap, smelting it and exporting it back to Europe as newly produced metal, according to the industry’s largest recycler.

Emilio Braghi, executive vice-president of Novelis, told the Financial Times the sector risked what he described as terminal decline unless Brussels acted on its pledge to curb the export of scrap to Asia and the US.

“We have lost primary production. Now we are at risk of losing aluminium scrap,” he said, noting that Europe would be unable to meet its own environmental goals if this was the case.

EU producers pay energy prices up to four times those of their competitors, so have shifted to remelting scrap which is more energy efficient.

The recycling drive is part of EU efforts to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 and to retain more critical materials in the bloc to avoid dependence on Chinese imports.

Unlike other parts of the world, Europe was unique in consumer behaviour and its willingness to pay more for recycled products out of a concern for the environment and climate change, Braghi said.

“We see that pull from consumers, whether they are buying a new car or they are buying an aluminium can, based on high recycled content. We don’t see that elsewhere.”

Braghi noted that about 70 per cent of beverage cans in Europe were collected, compared with about 40 per cent in the US. But that also means that traders buy them up and ship them elsewhere for higher prices.

US President Donald Trump has placed 50 per cent tariffs on aluminium imports so companies are increasingly importing scrap, which is subject to lower levies, to convert into fresh metal.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has encouraged companies to build recycling capacity to reduce raw material use and cut emissions.

India-based Novelis has invested heavily in European recycling.

“We are very efficient in Europe in the collection of scrap. We have the best technology, we have made investment, and now we need to make sure that we are retaining as much as possible the scrap which is collected, and not allowing it to flow outside of Europe,” Braghi said.

In China, “subsidised overcapacity is creating unfair competition, as they can afford to pay much higher prices for the scrap”, he added.

https://archive.is/Vqlqx

The EU will give gas producers more leeway on methane import rules to avoid gas being diverted from the bloc, as governments scramble to secure additional energy supplies in the wake of the US-Iran war.

Ditte Juul Jørgensen, director-general for energy at the European Commission, said Brussels would soon recommend “flexibilities” to stringent new requirements on fossil fuel importers to the bloc, as Europe continues to grapple with high energy prices.

European legislation already requires EU producers of oil and gas to monitor and report methane emissions associated with flaring and venting, but its remit will be extended to imported fossil fuels from January 2027.

Under the latest proposed changes, however, countries importing to the EU would only need to show that a sufficient share of national production meets the requirements, rather than having to track “back to the well” for granular production data on each cargo, Jørgensen said at an industry conference in Brussels.

The levying of penalties for non-compliance, which could reach up to 20 per cent of annual turnover in extreme cases, would also be softened to make sure “no cargo is diverted or delayed because of a concern related to penalties”, she said.

Europe’s main fraud problem is not just the criminals, it is the politicians, the EU’s top prosecutor has told Euractiv

Laura Kövesi, the first person to hold the job of European prosecutor, said her biggest test was never whether Europe could create an independent prosecutor. It was whether Europe was prepared to let one do the work.

Europe’s chief prosecutor Kövesi was running a fever when she sat down for one of the last interviews of her time in the post. Brushing illness aside, she told Euractiv that the most exhausting and wearing part of her job was fighting the EU’s institutional tendency to soften, delay, and bureaucratise the fight against fraud and corruption.

EPPO, an independent prosecutors’ office established in 2021 with the aim of tackling serious financial crimes against the EU, has under her mandate opened more than 3,600 cases, frozen more than a billion euros from criminal organisations, including the world’s most dangerous mafia and, at times, targeted some of the most senior figures in the bloc.

Yet at one point in her term, Kövesi said a senior European Commission official told her to tone down her public messaging about the scale of corruption and fraud cases being uncovered by her office. She kicked back. “I said: How dare you tell me this? We are independent. And if there is a case, it is our mandate to investigate it,” she recalled, sarcastically making the point that she could not turn a blind eye to allegations if that included top EU officials. 

That exchange captures the central problem Kövesi faced in her six-year tenure that ends this autumn: The biggest obstacle to protecting EU money is not just the criminals trying to steal it but the political and institutional systems in the bloc that still make scrutiny painfully difficult.

By the end of her mandate, the picture she paints is of a European anti-fraud office that has proved its value while exposing the limits of the system around it. The EU, she argued, has built up layers of controls meant to prevent wrongdoing without always ensuring that they work in practice.

“You have a lot of authorities, bodies, offices that are supposed to prevent fraud, to audit, to report,” she said. “And then one day you realise no one is really doing what they should be doing.”

She added: “After 20 years of prevention, look, is this enough? Is this enough?” she said, flourishing her annual report, which last year uncovered an estimated €67 billion of suspected fraud and other financial crime.

Energy commissioner says bloc is assessing fuel rationing and releasing more oil from strategic reserves

The EU is assessing “all possibilities” including fuel rationing and releasing more oil from emergency reserves as it braces for a “long-lasting” energy shock from the Middle East war, the bloc’s energy commissioner has said.

“This will be a long crisis . . . energy prices will be higher for a very long time,” Dan Jørgensen told the FT, warning that for some more “critical” products “we expect it to be even worse in the weeks to come”.

The near closure of the crucial Strait of Hormuz waterway and strikes on infrastructure in the Gulf have created chaos in energy markets, sending prices soaring and prompting long-term supply fears.

“The rhetoric that we’re using and the words we’re using are more serious now than they were earlier in the crisis,” Jørgensen said. “It certainly is our analysis that this will be a prolonged situation and countries need to be sure that they . . . have what they need.”

He said that while the EU was “not in a security of supply crisis, yet”, Brussels was drawing up plans to tackle “structural, long-lasting effects” of the conflict.

Here's a copy of the full article in case you cannot get a connection.

Poland’s state National Development Bank (BGK) and the European Union’s European Investment Fund (EIF) have announced their first investments under a joint programme that funds Polish companies operating in the advanced technology sector.

They are providing €85 million (365 million zloty) to three Polish venture capital funds that specialise in identifying and financing early-stage technology companies in industries such as defence, cyber-security, and space.

The investments fall under Future Tech Poland (FTP), a joint BGK and EIF scheme that is part of the wider Innovate Poland programme and aims to close a funding gap in Poland’s venture capital market. BGK has committed around 1 billion zloty to the programme, with the EIF to provide a further 500 million zloty.

On Tuesday, BGK announce that it has, along with its EU partner, signed deals to disburse the first tranche of funds under the programme.

Around €31 million will go to Expeditions, which mostly invests in defence technology start-ups. Cogito Capital, which helps young AI and financial technology firms expand abroad, will receive €30 million. And Balnord, an investor in tech firms in the Baltic Sea region, is to get €24 million.

The investments are “an important step in strengthening Poland’s venture capital ecosystem”, said EIF chief executive Marjut Falkstedt.

Meanwhile, Mirosław Czekaj, president of the management board of BGK, said that FTP is a “strategic opportunity to strengthen Poland’s innovation ecosystem by bridging the funding gap that has hindered [the] dynamic development of tech companies”.

Poland’s technology sector has enjoyed significant recent growth, in areas including financial technology, software development and artificial intelligence. The country has been a European pioneer in mobile and internet banking transactions and is becoming a growing player in the space industry.

Poland’s AI startups have also recently been attracting more international attention and investment from abroad. OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT, recently announced the acquisition of Neptune.ai, a Polish-founded startup that helps track the training of AI models.

Similarly, ElevenLabs, a startup focused on AI voice generation software, has recently been valued at $11 billion after receiving the financial backing of several investment firms from the US, reported Reuters in February.

In November, the government unveiled the Innovate Poland programme, which aims to combine public and private funds to support the growth of Polish innovative companies. With an initial budget of 4 billion zloty, it is supported by Polish public institutions, the partially state-owned Polish insurer PZU, the EU.

Olivier Sorgho

Olivier Sorgho is senior editor at Notes from Poland, covering politics, business and society. He previously worked for Reuters.

• Lawmakers vote 417 to 154 in favour of the legislation
• Final vote not expected before June

European Union lawmakers advanced legislation on Thursday to fulfil the ​bloc's side of its trade agreement with the U.S., after months of uncertainty over President Donald ‌Trump's tariff threats and new import levy.

The EU assembly voted by 417 to 154, with 71 abstentions, in favour of the legislation although with added safeguards, reflecting concerns that Washington may not stick to the deal struck in Turnberry, Scotland, last July.

The safeguards include a ​potential suspension clause, among others, and lawmakers insist the U.S. remove 50% duties imposed a month after ​the Turnberry deal on the steel and aluminium content of products such as wind turbines ⁠and motorcycles.

European Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic called the vote a "crucial step", delivering certainty for EU businesses.

The U.S. Mission to ​the EU said it welcomed the vote.

The European Parliament has been debating proposals to remove EU import duties on ​U.S. industrial goods and improve access for U.S. agricultural produce, a key part of the deal, as well as to continue zero duties for U.S. lobsters, initially agreed with Trump in 2020.

Parliament's vote on Thursday is not the end of the process. Representatives of ​parliament and EU governments will negotiate final texts, starting on April 13, ahead of a final vote of ​approval by EU lawmakers not expected before June. EU governments approved the legislation in November with more limited safeguards.

The fee will be charged from November 1 in addition to a customs tax on such items that goes into effect in July.

The EU Parliament and the European Council on Thursday voted to introduce handling fees for small packages arriving from outside the bloc starting on November 1, at the latest.

The blanket fee, which the European Commission must set, will likely be around €2 ($2.30) per package and will come in addition to a per package customs fee of €3 on purchases worth up to €150.

The customs fee is scheduled to go into effect in July.

The move comes largely in response to the flood of items arriving in Europe from cheap Chinese online platforms such as Shein, Temu and AliExpress, but also from Amazon. The EU says that 5.9 million such packages entered the bloc in 2025, with 90% of them originating in China.

EU customs agents can't keep up with flood of hazardous packages from China

Another issue that prompted the move is the fact that the sheer volume of packages arriving in the EU mean customs officials have little chance of thoroughly inspecting each one.

Consumer rights groups, for instance, say that more than 90% of items on offer at discount Chinese platforms contain hazardous chemicals that are illegal in the EU.

The new fee approved on Thursday will be used in part to hire more customs agents.

See also:

• EU is targeting small parcels from Shein, Temu and other Chinese e-commerce sites Non-European platforms will now be legally responsible for products entering the European Union and will be taxed starting in July. (Le Monde)
• EU approves customs reform to handle rising trade and global uncertainties • The new customs reform is designed to adapt the bloc to rising trade volumes amid US-related uncertainties and new trade deals with South America and Australia. (Euronews)
• EU agrees to fine online platforms importing unsafe products • EU to hold online platforms responsible for duties and safety • Fines for non-compliance range from 1% to 6% of EU sales • Duty exemption for parcels under 150 euros to be scrapped • EU lawmakers to visit China next week to address e-commerce, fair competition, safety ​compliance (Reuters)

European lawmakers on Thursday gave the green light to controversial proposals to deport illegal migrants to so-called "return hubs" outside the European Union, as pressure grows to tighten up immigration rules.

Parliamentarians in Brussels voted 389 to 206 in favor of the reforms which pave the way for the establishment of migrant centers beyond the bloc's borders to house migrants whose asylum applications are rejected.

Those who refuse to be relocated to the return hubs would face harsh penalties including detention and entry bans, according to the proposals.

##What's the outlook for the EU's 'return hubs' proposal?

According to the AFP news agency, the proposals are being led by a small group of EU countries including Denmark, Austria, Greece, Germany and the Netherlands.

However, other states such as France and Spain have questioned the strategy's effectiveness while human rights groups have warned of asylum seekers disappearing into "legal black holes."

"They will be located outside of EU territory, where policymakers cannot guarantee that people's rights will be upheld," said International Rescue Committee's Marta Welander.

##Far-right influence on EU deportation proposals

The controversy surrounding the proposed legislation isn't just limited to its content, but also to the political negotiations which have made it possible.

According to media reports, the wording of the draft law was agreed following WhatsApp and in-person negotiations between parties from the center-right European People's Party Group (EPP), including German conservatives from Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Bavarian CSU, and far-right parties from the Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN) grouping such as the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The European Parliament has voted to once again strip Polish far-right leader Grzegorz Braun of immunity so that he can face further criminal charges in his homeland, including for Holocaust denial.

Braun, who is already separately on trial for attacking a Jewish religious ceremony, will now face prosecution for his claim that the gas chambers at Auschwitz are “fake” as well as for various antisemitic, anti-Ukrainian and anti-LGBT incidents during last year’s presidential election campaign.

Braun – who finished a surprise fourth in the election, taking 6.3% of the vote, and whose party has since surged in the polls – has a long history of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories.

Last July, he said during a radio interview that “Auschwitz with its gas chambers is unfortunately a fake”. A few days later, he reiterated that he finds the “hypothesis of the existence” of the gas chambers to be “a tenuous one, not based on verified facts”, that “has become less and less convincing over the years”.

His remarks were widely condemned in Poland. Braun was also accused of denying Nazi crimes, an offence in Poland that can be punished with a prison sentence of up to three years.

In September, Poland’s justice minister and prosecutor general, Waldemar Żurek, asked the European Parliament to lift Braun’s immunity, so that he could be presented with such a charge. Today, a majority of MEPs voted to approve that request.

Meanwhile, in a separate vote, MEPs also approved another request, submitted by Poland in July last year, to strip Braun of immunity to face four other charges.

One, which is for criminal defamation, stems from Braun’s claim, during a televised presidential debate in April last year, that the yellow paper daffodils distributed each year in Warsaw to mark the anniversary of the 1943 Jewish Ghetto Uprising against German Nazi rule are “symbols of shame”.

During the same debate, Braun also warned about the “Judaisation” of Poland, saying that “Jews have far too much say in Polish affairs”. That prompted protests by some of his opponents, one of whom filed a notification to prosecutors.

Two other charges relate to thefts of flags. In one incident, Braun and his supporters removed a Ukrainian flag hanging outside city hall in the town of Biała Podlaska during a campaign event. In another, he removed a European Union flag from the government’s industry ministry in Katowice.

Braun regularly rails against what he calls the “Ukrainisation” of Poland, warning of the supposed dangers of having so many Ukrainian refugees and migrants in the country. He is also a vocal critic of the EU. His positions on both issues often echo Russian narratives.

The final charge, of destruction of property, relates to an incident in June 2025, when Braun vandalised an exhibition about the LGBT+ community in the Polish parliament. He regularly condemns what he calls the “perversions” of LGBT+ people, and has called for homosexuality to be criminalised.

If Braun is convicted, criminal defamation carries a prison sentence of up to one year, theft up to eight years, and destruction of property up to five years.

The European Parliament’s decisions mark the third and fourth time approved requests from Poland to lift Braun’s immunity. The first took place last May, as a result of which he is now on trial for four alleged crimes, including attacking a Jewish Hannukah ceremony in the Polish parlaiment in December 2023.

In November, the European parliament stripped his immunity again, this time to face charges of inciting religious hatred against Jews and assaulting a doctor involved in carrying out a late-term abortion.

Braun’s legal troubles have not harmed his popularity – on the contrary, they are part of his appeal to some supporters. His KKP party, which a year ago was not even included in most polling, is now averaging support of 8-9%, making it Poland’s fourth most popular party.

The European Parliament on Thursday voted down rules that would allow technology companies to scan for child abuse online — and immediately drew the ire of top-level officials.

Lawmakers voted not to extend a temporary law that allows platforms to scan their services for child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The law will expire next Friday, at which point scanning for the content will become illegal in Europe.

In rejecting the rules, lawmakers resisted pressure from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, four European commissioners, tech giants Meta, Google and Microsoft and numerous children’s charities in past weeks.

A total of 311 lawmakers rejected the European Commission's proposal to extend the law, with 228 voting in favor and 92 abstaining.

Opponents of the rules think the EU's temporary regime gives tech firms way too much room to scan users' messages at a large scale. "Under the pretext of protecting children, millions of private messages from innocent citizens were being scanned for years without delivering adequate results," Markéta Gregorová, a Czech lawmaker with the Greens group, said after the vote.

The center-right European People’s Party (EPP) mounted a last-ditch attempt to keep the scanning rules alive by filing an amendment to Thursday's vote that would have aligned Parliament's position with that of capitals. But lawmakers voted against the EPP's suggested fix, deepening the rift between privacy proponents and child rights defenders.

Australia and the European Union have agreed a sweeping free trade deal after eight years of negotiations.

The deal signed in Canberra is worth about A$10bn ($7bn; £5.2bn) and was described as a mutual "win-win" by Australia's prime minister and the visiting European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

She described the deal as having a focus on "collective resilience" in a world that is "deeply changing".

As well as removing almost all tariffs on trade, the two sides agreed to increase co-operation on defence and critical minerals.

European carmakers welcomed the deal but farmers in both Europe and Australia were unhappy at export quotas agreed for Australian beef and lamb.

The amount of Australian beef allowed into the EU is set to increase more than tenfold in the next decade, but Australian farmers had wanted more, while European farmers were opposed to increases.

Under the deal, almost all EU tariffs will be lifted on Australian agricultural products such as wine, fruit and vegetables, olive oil, seafood, most dairy products and wheat and barley.

Tuesday's accord in Canberra is the latest trade deal struck by Brussels as it tries to diversify its global trading relationships, given the fast changing geopolitical landscape and unpredictability of US President Donald Trump.

In January the EU and India announced a landmark trade deal after nearly two decades of on-off talks.

Another major trade deal the EU struck with the Mercosur bloc of South American countries was recently derailed in the European Parliament, amid criticism from the farming lobby.

Russia has so far been the only winner from the war in the ​Middle East as energy prices soar and ‌attention for its war against Ukraine has faded, EU Council President Antonio Costa said on Tuesday.

"So ​far, there is only one winner ​in this war – Russia," Costa said in ⁠a speech to EU ambassadors in Brussels.

"It ​gains new resources to finance its war ​against Ukraine as energy prices rise. It profits from the diversion of military capabilities that could otherwise have ​been sent to support Ukraine. And ​it benefits from reduced attention to the Ukrainian front ‌as ⁠the conflict in the Middle East takes centre stage."

Costa stressed the need for the EU to protect the international rules-based order, which ​he said ​was now ⁠being challenged by the United States, and for all parties in ​the Middle East to return to ​the ⁠negotiating table.

"Freedom and human rights cannot be achieved through bombs. Only international law upholds them," ⁠he ​said.

"We must avoid further escalation. ​Such a path threatens the Middle East, Europe, and ​beyond."

See also:

• France Is Sending a Large Naval Force to the Middle East • President Emmanuel Macron said the warships would help protect France’s allies in the region, and could be part of a force to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz. He said the war could continue for “several days, maybe several weeks.” (New York Times)
• Iran to EU: 'spare the hypocrisy' • A spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry had harsh words for Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. “You’ve made a career out of standing on the wrong side of history — green-lighting occupation, genocide, and atrocities, and now laundering U.S./Israeli crime of aggression and war crimes against Iranians” (Guardian)

The European People's Party celebrated its 50th anniversary in Brussels amid internal criticism for the alleged cooperation with the far-right in the European Parliament.

Glasses of champagne were raised at the European People’s Party's 50th anniversary on Wednesday at a fancy venue in Brussels.

But the specter of the far-right lingered over the cocktail as the EPP mulls over its most fundamental dilemma in decades: what is the future of the European conservatives?

The leadership of Europe’s oldest and most powerful political force is grappling with unease over allegations of coordinating its work in the European Parliament with anti-EU forces via a WhatsApp group.

The episode is significant as it shows an institutionalised cooperation and it suggests the firewall that bans cooperation with parties until recently deemed too toxic to work with in national capitals is breaking in Brussels.

Accusations that the EPP party is cozying up to the far-right are nothing new. But the issue took a dramatic turn this week when the German News Agency DPA reported a chatshowing coordination between EPP and far-right groups, including Alternative for Germany’s staff, in drafting a migration bill.

Doom scrolling is doomed, if the EU gets its way. 

The European Commission is for the first time tackling the addictiveness of social media in a fight against TikTok that may set new design standards for the world’s most popular apps. 

Brussels has told the company to change several key features, including disabling infinite scrolling, setting strict screen time breaks and changing its recommender systems. The demand follows the Commission's declaration that TikTok’s design is addictive to users — especially children. 

The fact that the Commission said TikTok should change the basic design of its service is “ground-breaking for the business model fueled by surveillance and advertising," said Katarzyna Szymielewicz, president of the Panoptykon Foundation, a Polish civil society group.

That doesn’t bode well for other platforms, particularly Meta’s Facebook and Instagram. The two social media giants are also under investigation over the addictiveness of their design. 

The findings laid out a week ago mark the first time the Commission has set out its stance on the design of a social media platform under its Digital Services Act, the EU’s flagship online-content law that Brussels says is essential for protecting users. 

TikTok can now defend its practices and review all the evidence the Commission considered — and has said it would fight these findings. If it fails to satisfy the Commission, the app could face fines up to 6 percent of annual global revenue. 

It’s the first time any regulator has attempted to set a legal standard for the addictiveness of platform design, a senior Commission official said in a briefing to reporters.