The dangers of ‘urgency mindset’

Good Monday morning, and welcome back to Rapporteur, Euractiv’s front page. This is Eddy Wax, with Nicoletta Ionta in Brussels and our editor Christina Zhao in New Zealand.

The big one to watch this week is Wednesday’s Dutch election. More on that below.

But first, a personal note: Six weeks into this new newsletter, Nicoletta and I want to take a moment to thank the many thousands of readers who’ve subscribed since launch.

We’re thrilled so many of you are enjoying our blend of analysis, EU news, and coverage from across Europe. Since we launched last month, we’ve broken stories about Martin Selmayr, a new visa strategy, EPP pay, steel tariffs, Afghanistan returns, Roberta Metsola’s ambitions, a €1 billion renovation, and housing plans.

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Need-to-knows:

• Budget: Top MEP says Commission poised to amend its €2 trillion proposal
• Netherlands: Geert Wilders tipped to win the election – but unlikely to become prime minister
• Parliament: EU funds professor previously fired over sexual harassment claims

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From the capital

“We need to speed up across the board,” Ursula von der Leyen declared this weekend in Berlin. “An urgency mindset, that must drive all of our work,” she said, unveiling REsourceEU, a new plan to reduce Europe’s dependence on China for rare earths.

The “urgency mindset” has become von der Leyen’s mantra of the year – unsurprising, perhaps, amid rising populists and under a new German chancellor eager to slash EU bureaucracy.

In any case, who would disagree with a more efficient EU?

The European summit last week, however, showed the dangers of prioritising speed over substance.

“If it is so urgent, maybe we should have started working on it and negotiating earlier,” said Belgian PM Bart De Wever, who kyboshed attempts to unify around a plan to construct a loan for Ukraine out of the Russian assets held in the EU. His comments raised questions about António Costa’s decision to put it on the agenda for the summit this early.

Friedrich Merz’s Financial Times op-ed last month proposing the assets idea put things off kilter from the start, diplomats told my colleague Magnus Lund Nielsen. “It would have been better to keep it inside the negotiation room,” one said.

There are other risks of going fast and furious. One is widening the democratic deficit. Merz recently described a vote against deregulation in the European Parliament, the EU’s only directly elected institution, as “unacceptable.”

Parliament President Roberta Metsola – whose institution has already been circumvented by governments so much that it’s suing – gently pushed back, but also suggested she’d welcome Merz and other leaders’ help in steering their own MEPs. That drew criticism from members.

On Friday, Mario Draghi proposed that through “pragmatic federalism” EU countries could move forward in coalitions to bypass the bloc’s slow decision-making processes. The idea isn’t new. Nor are the problems it raises: Would that lead to a fast federal Europe or undermine the need for a union in the first place?

Von der Leyen spent five years calling for the rapid-fire implementation of her Green Deal. “We do not have a moment to waste on fighting climate change,” she said in 2019.

The calls for rapid reindustrialisation, rearmament, and red tape reduction are coming from many of the same leaders who called for the measures that got us into this position – with just as much urgency.

The more the EU shouts about speed, the more it should spur a pause for thought.

What to know about the Dutch election

The Netherlands votes on Wednesday after an election campaign marked by deepening polarisation, Rob Savelberg writes. Frans Timmermans, the main left-wing candidate, was verbally assaulted by a man who did a Nazi salute.

And populist Geert Wilders briefly suspended his campaigning after Belgian authorities foiled a jihadist-inspired plot targeting him and other political figures, but he has since returned to the trail.

Wilders, who stayed outside the government that fell in June, has successfully made migration the dominant issue. His party is again likely to come out on top, but he’s highly unlikely to become prime minister. Centrist parties are scrambling to form a last-ditch grand coalition.

Parliament confident of budget win

MEP Siegfried Mureșan said he’s close to securing a major victory over the European Commission on the €2 trillion next EU budget. In an interview with our budget reporter Jacob Wulff Wold, he said the EU executive “is ready at the technical level” to change its controversial proposal – and warned that if it doesn’t, Parliament will force its hand.

2040 scoop: States offered leeway on climate goal

Brussels is edging toward a compromise on its 2040 climate target, with member states resisting the 90% cut in emissions offered extra breathing room in carbon offsets.

A draft proposal, circulated on Saturday by the Danish Council presidency and seen by Euractiv, introduces biennial reviews for governments worried about industrial competitiveness and keeps the 3% limit on foreign carbon credits under debate.

EU environment ministers are expected to hash out how much can be outsourced when they meet next Tuesday.

Von der Leyen waves bazooka ahead of China talks

The Commission chief hinted the EU could deploy its Anti-Coercion instrument against China after Beijing tightened exports of rare earths, crucial for tech, Maria Simon Arboleas reported. It’s unclear, however, how much appetite EU countries have for such a move. China’s Trade Minister Wang Wentao will be in Brussels this week for talks with trade chief Maroš Šefčovič.

Kallas walks back Mercosur claim

The EU’s top diplomat has walked back her claim that EU leaders made a political decision to sign the Mercosur agreement at Thursday’s European summit.

Speaking at an ALDE congress on Friday, she said leaders had given a political mandate to sign the deal, but a spokesperson later clarified to Rapporteur on Saturday that “no mandate was given as such, but … President Costa asked member states to empower their ambassador to take the process forward.”

A similar claim by Merz was quashed by Costa – a sign of how sensitive the issue remains. If leaders do reach agreement, the expectation is that Mercosur will be signed in December.

The capitals

BERLIN 🇩🇪

Germany’s top diplomat, Johann Wadephul, heads to Brussels this week for a round of high-level meetings with NATO and EU leaders, days after abruptly postponing a visit to China in a sign of growing friction with Beijing. He will meet Indian Trade Minister Piyush Goyal, von der Leyen, Šefčovič, and Kallas for talks focused on Ukraine, defence, and supply-chain resilience for critical materials such as rare earths and semiconductors.

BRATISLAVA 🇸🇰

Robert Fico, Slovakia’s populist prime minister, is rallying the Visegrad Four against the EU’s new carbon-pricing system for transport and heating. Branding ETS2 “nonsensical,” he argued it would drive up household and fuel costs – and wants Hungary, Poland, and Czechia to join his resistance. Slovakia, meanwhile, is under EU infringement proceedings for dragging its feet on the law, even as Brussels itself weighs changes to appease critics.

BELGRADE 🇷🇸

Europe’s would-be lithium hub is turning into a political minefield. Serbia’s year-long student protests, a recent shooting at parliament, and mounting anger over a Rio Tinto project have left President Aleksandar Vučić under pressure – and the EU facing charges of hypocrisy. Brussels needs Serbian lithium for its green plans, but risks losing Serbia altogether.

WARSAW 🇵🇱

Donald Tusk announced that his centrist party, Civic Platform, will merge with two allies under a new name – the Civic Coalition – in a move meant to consolidate his governing base and signal renewal. The shift ends more than two decades of Civic Platform’s identity, a party Tusk co-founded and led to power twice before his years as European Council president.

MADRID 🇪🇸

Spain’s conservative opposition has called on Catalonia’s separatists to turn against Pedro Sánchez, accusing his Socialist government of corruption and betrayal. As Junts leader Carles Puigdemont convenes his party in Perpignan to reconsider its support, the uneasy alliance that keeps Sánchez in power faces one of its most serious tests since his narrow re-election last year.

VILNIUS 🇱🇹

Lithuania shut its main airport and sealed its Belarus border crossings on Sunday after objects, likely helium balloons, again crossed into its airspace – the fourth incident in a week. Officials blame smugglers and Belarus’s Alexander Lukashenko for turning a blind eye. Flights were grounded until late Sunday as Vilnius prepares crisis talks over its porous frontier.

LUXEMBOURG 🇱🇺

Ministers met in Luxembourg on Sunday to decide 2026 quotas for a sea that is running out of fish. Sweden wanted steep cuts, Latvia blamed Russia’s trawlers, fishers blamed seals and cormorants. The Baltic, once Europe’s cooperative pond, is now a microcosm of the continent’s environmental policies: everybody agrees it’s dying, but no one agrees who should sacrifice.

Schuman roundabout

PO-FACED: The European Parliament is funding a news training scheme where “young journalists” will be taught about the EU from a man the College of Europe let go over sexual harassment allegations made by his female student.

Sciences Po university in Paris is carrying out the programme, which will see 20 early-career journos taught by six experts, including Olivier Costa, whose contract was terminated by the College last year. He has denied the claims. Funded by Parliament, the course will take place in January and cover topics such as journalistic ethics and European values.

PLOPPING THE QUESTION: Greek MEP Emmanouil Fragkos squeezed out a question to the Commission about hygiene in public toilets. “Does the Commission consider that public toilets in the EU should follow uniform high hygiene standards?” he asked.

Stéphane Séjourné was the unlucky commissioner tasked with replying, perhaps because he’s in charge of industrial strategy. “There are currently no European Standards relating to hygiene in public toilets and the Commission does not plan to implement a ‘hygiene score’,” he wrote. No shit!

Also on Euractiv

Brussels is weighing a plan to end funding for Gavi and the Global Fund by 2030, underscoring the EU’s shift from multilateral aid to influence-driven investment. An internal briefing, seen by Euractiv, argues the bloc should focus on where it can “truly shape governance,” aligning with von der Leyen’s call for a more geopolitical development policy.

The proposal follows Washington’s retreat from global health under Donald Trump and mirrors aid cuts by European donors as budgets shift to defence and industry. Critics warn the shift risks undermining programmes credited with saving millions of lives.

Agenda

📍 Costa attends the 47th ASEAN Summit in Malaysia

📍 Jørgensen travels to Romania for the CESEC ministerial meeting and meets PM Ilie Bolojan

📍 Brunner delivers a keynote at the Sant’Egidio Peace Conference

📍 Von der Leyen attends the Nordic Council meeting in Sweden and a working dinner with business leaders hosted by Ulf Kristersson

📍 Metsola is in Washington for a Strategic Dialogue Roundtable on tech, digital, and artificial intelligence, organised in partnership with the World Economic Forum

Contributors: Maria Simon Arboleas, Magnus Lund Nielsen, Thomas Moller-Nielsen, Elisa Braun, Jacob Wulff Wold, Inés Fernández-Pontes, Aleksandra Krzysztoszek, Natália Silenská

Editors: Christina Zhao, Sofia Mandilara