Welcome to Rapporteur. This is Nicoletta Ionta with Eddy Wax in Brussels.
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Need-to-knows:
- Denmark: Social Democrats risk losing Copenhagen as Mette Frederiksen’s migration stance erodes urban support
- EU: Ministers open talks on €865bn budget proposal, with capitals split over farm and regional spending
- Belgium: Ursula von der Leyen fails to win Bart De Wever’s backing for €140 billion Ukraine loan
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From the capital
Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen could be served a cold birthday surprise this week: losing control of her own capital. For the first time since 1938, the Social Democrats risk being ousted from Copenhagen’s City Hall in local elections on Tuesday – a symbolic blow for one of the only four centre-left leaders in the EU.
Around 2015, Frederiksen steered her party into new territory with a migration-critical stance that helped deliver national victories in 2019 and 2022, showing the left could survive by borrowing from the right. But that same strategy now appears to be alienating the progressive urban base that anchors the Social Democrats’ identity.
Copenhageners appear weary of the Social Democrats’ centrism and their hard edge on migration, as my colleague Magnus Lund Nielsen reports. With the urban electorate drifting left, the Green Left and the Red-Green Alliance could take over the city. A loss in the capital would end nearly ninety years of socialist rule, and bruise one of Europe’s few remaining Social Democratic leaders, just when across Europe they are struggling to hold power.
Frederiksen has also become an unlikely ally of Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, together forming the public face of Europe’s migration rethink. And, as Denmark prepares to wrap up its rotating EU Council presidency next month, she’s pushing to finalise the burning files at the centre of the bloc’s migration overhaul by December – such as the newly proposed returns regulation – delays or not.
Her hard line has fed a broader shift among centre-left parties. The UK’s Labour government this week unveiled a big migration policy overhaul, proposing temporary refugee status and a 20-year wait for settlement.
A defeat for the Social Democrats in Copenhagen would be historic and could weigh on next year’s national election. Yet it is one Frederiksen may be able to absorb: her party remains Denmark’s largest, polling at around 21 percent. Still, the capital-heartland dilemma looms again, and how she reads it could shape the next chapter of her rule.
De Wever still says no
Ursula von der Leyen failed to persuade Bart De Wever to back the proposed €140 billion “reparation loan” for Ukraine during a meeting with the Belgian prime minister on Friday. The European Commission chief remained notably silent on social media after the one-hour discussion and declined our request to comment on the meeting’s outcome.
De Wever’s oft-repeated concerns about the scheme’s legal and financial risks were echoed over the weekend by Euroclear CEO Valérie Urbain, whose Brussels-based institution holds the Russian sovereign assets at the core of the proposal.
Urbain also backed De Wever’s calls for other Western countries, including those outside the EU, to commit to using Russian funds held in their own jurisdictions to support Kyiv’s war effort. Japan, the US, and the UK all hold billions of dollars’ worth of immobilised Russian assets that were frozen shortly after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“These countries remain silent,” Urbain told French newspaper Le Monde. “We need to stop targeting Euroclear and Belgium.”
Ministers plough into EU budget fault lines
European affairs ministers will meet today to confront – for the first time – the Commission’s €865 billion proposal for the next EU budget, after Parliament last week called off its short-lived rebellion over plans to merge farm and regional subsidies.
Net payers like Germany and the Netherlands are expected to defend the most contentious elements, while beneficiaries including Poland and Slovakia are likely to push for stronger protection of regional and agricultural spending.
The key question is whether farm funding should be removed from the new national plans that would merging it with regional policy. Denmark has tentatively excluded the option from its draft negotiation package. If it remains out, von der Leyen will have succeeded in reshaping the EU budget architecture, shifting more strategic decision making to Brussels and EU capitals.
Scoop: Brussels eyes tax on unhealthy foods
The Commission wants EU-wide levies on ultra-processed foods and alcopops by 2026, according to a first draft of the Cardiovascular Health Plan obtained by my colleagues Emma Pirnay and Magdalena Kensy.
In December, the Commission is set to unveil the EU’s first dedicated strategy to address its biggest health burden: cardiovascular disease. According to the draft, EU Health chief Olivér Várhelyi proposes taxes on highly processed, high-fat, high-sugar, and high-salt products – as well as alcopops – starting in 2026.
Malaise lingers
The Commission will publish fresh economic forecasts today, and is expected to slightly raise its projected growth for the euro area, mirroring the International Monetary Fund’s upgrade last month, according to my colleague Thomas Møller-Nielsen.
The improvement reflects Germany’s fiscal stimulus and the delayed boost from European Central Bank rate cuts on investment and consumption. These tailwinds have helped offset the past year’s pressures, including high energy prices, weakening Chinese demand, and sweeping US tariffs.
But even with the expected upward revision, Europe’s economy remains profoundly anaemic. The eurozone’s expected growth rate of around 1% this year is roughly half the pace of the US – a gap the IMF predicts will persist through the decade.
Did Brussels ask ChatGPT?
An Irish civil society organisation has filed a complaint with the European Ombudsman, accusing the Commission of using ChatGPT to answer a document request, my colleague Maximilian Henning reports.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties had sought the sources behind von der Leyen’s claim in a speech that AI would reach parity with humans next year. The organisation now says that metadata in the document it received indicates that the Commission used generative AI to draft parts of it – despite the EU executive’s own guidance forbidding AI-generated output from appearing in public documents.
The Ombudsman told Euractiv it is still assessing whether to open a formal inquiry. A Commission spokesperson, meanwhile, said its guidelines are internal and declined to comment on whether AI was used.
The capitals
PARIS 🇫🇷
Despite mounting delays in the National Assembly, Public Accounts Minister Amélie de Montchalin said over the weekend that the Finance Bill could still be adopted before 31 December – ruling out the use of ordinances to push it through. She now expects the deficit to hover around 5% of GDP, above PM Sébastien Lecornu’s target. MPs resume scrutiny of the budget’s revenue section on Monday, which must be sent to the Senate by 23 November under constitutional rules.
ROME 🇮🇹
Italy enters a pivotal election week with its governing coalition at odds over military aid to Ukraine. League leader Matteo Salvini has questioned further weapons deliveries, citing corruption cases in Kyiv and saying he “doesn’t want Italians’ money to fuel corruption.” Defence Minister Guido Crosetto countered that Italy “doesn’t judge a country by two corrupt officials,” while Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said the next aid package is ready – signalling Rome’s underlying commitment despite internal tensions.
MADRID 🇪🇸
Spain’s ruling Socialist Party marked two years in office on Monday, with Pedro Sánchez praising a government “that defends what matters to the people” and vowing to “continue doing so.” Despite corruption scandals involving members of his inner circle and a breakdown with Catalan ally Junts, Sánchez said he intends to remain in office until the 2027 elections. The opposition Popular Party accused him of “delaying the inevitable by any means necessary.”
ATHENS 🇬🇷
Greece and Ukraine on Sunday signed an agreement for Kyiv to receive US LNG between December 2025 and March 2026. US Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle welcomed the deal, saying Greece is well placed to become a regional energy hub – notably through the Vertical Gas Corridor linking Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, with extensions to Moldova and Ukraine. The move follows Athens’ first long-term LNG contract with Washington last week – a 20-year agreement to import 700 million cubic metres a year from 2030.
WARSAW 🇵🇱
Poland will reopen its road border crossings with Belarus in Kuźnica and Bobrowniki on Monday, ending years of closure. PM Donald Tusk signalled the shift in late October, citing improved security along the frontier. The Interior Ministry said the reopening follows reinforced controls amid continued attempts at illegal crossings. Kuźnica was closed in 2021 after migrant unrest encouraged by Belarusian forces, while Bobrowniki shut in 2023 following Minsk’s jailing of Polish activist and 2024 Sakharov Prize laureate Andrzej Poczobut.
BRATISLAVA 🇸🇰
Slovakia’s so-called “Chalk Revolution” has gathered pace after police questioned a student who chalked anti-government messages outside a Poprad school ahead of a visit by Robert Fico. When Fico returned for the postponed appearance, he snapped at students dressed in black and told them to “go fight in Ukraine,” prompting a walkout by roughly 30 pupils. The episode caps a difficult week for the prime minister, already under scrutiny over scandals involving close advisers and ministers.
Schuman roundabout
Gone? Olivier Costa’s name has disappeared from the online list of participants in a European Parliament-funded training programme for “young journalists” run by Sciences Po Paris. Rapporteur reported last month on Costa’s involvement. His contract at the College of Europe was terminated last year after the university conducted an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment made by a female student. Costa has denied the accusations.
Also on Euractiv
France’s organic sector rebounds after years of crisis
After four years of crisis unparalleled elsewhere in Europe, France’s organic sector is showing signs…
4 minutes
After a bruising four-year downturn in which France suffered Europe’s sharpest collapse in organic consumption, the sector is staging a tentative revival.
Sales rose 4.1% in early 2025, according to Agence Bio, and retailers such as Biocoop are expanding again as producers record firmer prices and even pockets of shortage.
But structural weaknesses persist: farmer conversions are stalling, reversions to conventional agriculture are rising, and industry groups warn the rebound will only endure with longer-term contracts and clearer state backing
Agenda
— Costa speaks at the seminar “30 Years in the EU: Looking Back to the Future”
— European affairs ministers meet in Brussels
— Agriculture and Fisheries Council (Agrifish)
— Von der Leyen hosts Finnish President Alexander Stubb in Brussels
— Commissioners Hoekstra and Jørgensen attend COP30 in Belém, Brazil
— Hearing with Commission Vice-President Ribera in the Parliament’s special committee on housing
Contributors: Magnus Lund Nielsen, Thomas Møller-Nielsen, Jacob Wulf Wold, Maximilian Henning, Emma Pirnay, Magdalena Kensy, Laurent Geslin, Alessia Peretti, Inés Fernández-Pontes, Aleksandra Krzysztoszek, Natalia Silenska, Aneta Zachová, Charles Szumski, Sarantis Michalopoulos
Editors: Christina Zhao, Sofia Mandilara
