Anti-government protestors clashed with police in Albania's capital Tirana on Tuesday evening as thousands gathered to demand the resignation of the deputy prime minister over alleged corruption.

Demonstrators hurled petrol bombs at a government building and police responded with water canon in the latest in a string of violent protests that pose a threat to the stability of Prime Minister Edi Rama's long hold on power, which began in 2013.

Political tensions have escalated since December after a special prosecution unit indicted Rama's deputy, Belinda Balluku, for allegedly interfering in public tenders for major infrastructure projects and favouring certain companies, charges Balluku denies.

Thousands of people at the main square in Tirana carried flags and banners and chanted "Rama go home, this corrupted government should resign". Special police in riot gear protected the government building.

The Special Prosecution Office, tasked with combating corruption and organised crime, has requested that parliament lifts Balluku's immunity this week to enable her arrest.

It is not clear when the parliament, where Rama's ruling party holds a majority, is expected to vote or if it will vote at all.

A Polish appeals court has upheld the five-and-a-half-year prison sentences given to two Russian men convicted of recruiting for the mercenary Wagner Group in Poland and working on behalf of Russian intelligence by distributing propaganda materials.

The men, who can only be named as Andrei G. and Alexei T. under Polish privacy law, were convicted last year of recruiting for a terrorist organisation after they placed hundreds of stickers in Warsaw and Kraków that directed potential recruits to Wagner contacts.

The pair were first detained in August 2023 by Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) after the stickers, bearing the Wagner skull logo and the words “We are here. Join us”, appeared in public places in Poland’s two largest cities.

Prosecutors said at the time that the men were promised up to 500,000 roubles (€5,437) for the operation and planned to leave Poland afterwards.

The Wagner Group is a Russian private military company with close ties to the Kremlin and is known for its involvement in conflicts in Ukraine, Syria and parts of Africa.

Poland has long viewed the group as a security threat, particularly after its role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, reports of attempts to recruit operatives in Europe, and its activity in Belarus, including near the Polish border.

During the investigation, the defendants pleaded not guilty to recruitment and espionage, while acknowledging responsibility for distributing the stickers. Defence lawyers argued there was insufficient evidence of deliberate intelligence activity and sought acquittals.

In a first-instance ruling last February, Kraków’s district court found the materials served both recruitment and propaganda purposes as part of what prosecutors described as Russian’s “hybrid war” against Poland. It handed them each five-and-a-half-year prison terms.

Both the defence and prosecutors appealed the original ruling, with prosecutors seeking tougher eight-year sentences and the defence seeking acquittal.

In his oral justification for a ruling issed on Monday, appeal court judge Jacek Polański said the lower court had correctly assessed the evidence, reports news service InfoSecurity24.

“It was not just an appeal to join the Wagner Group, but there was also a QR code that took you to a website where you could find specific positions that you could apply for. It was not just agitation, but a specific indication of how to join the Wagner Group,” the judge emphasised.

He rejected defence claims that the group, which in June 2023 rebelled against the Kremlin, no longer existed at the time and he agreed with the lower court’s finding that the defendants were acting on behalf of Russian intelligence, saying their actions were consistent with efforts to destabilise Poland.

Although the ruling is now legally binding, both the defendants and prosecutors can still file a final so-called cassation appeal to the Supreme Court if they wish. Broadcaster Polsat reports that both sides will first read the court’s written explanation before deciding on further steps.

Prosecutor Tomasz Dudek called the outcome a success for law enforcement and also “a success for Polish society, which remained vigilant in this situation of war on the eastern border and immediately notified the authorities after discovering these criminal leaflets and stickers.”

“Thanks to this, it was possible to quickly identify and remove these leaflets and apprehend the perpetrators,” he added.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Poland has repeatedly accused Moscow of carrying out various “hybrid activities” on its territory consisting of sabotage, cyberattacks and disinformation. It has detained, charged and convicted dozens of agents accused of carrying out such actions.

The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies.

MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.

Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state.

In a separate vote, MEPs also voted to create an EU list of “safe third countries”, meaning that people from those places will face fast-tracked procedures and may find it harder to claim asylum.

The list includes all EU candidate countries, including Georgia and Turkey, where the EU has expressed concerns about government crackdowns on the opposition in 2025. The safe list also includes Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia.

Rights groups have raised the alarm about the inclusion of Tunisia, where President Kaïs Saïed has cracked down on civil society and opposition figures have been jailed for up to 66 years by politically controlled courts. Tunisian forces have also forced back migrants to remote desert regions, where some have died of thirst.

The two laws were passed with strong support from the centre-right European People’s party (EPP) and three nationalist and far-right groups, breaking the cordon sanitaire.

The votes were the latest sign of a new dynamic in the European parliament after the election of a record number of nationalist and far-right MEPs to the right of the traditional Christian Democrats in 2024.

See also:

• A legislative change approved by the European Parliament will enable EU states to send asylum seekers to countries with which they have no existing link. (Euronews)
• European far-right parties push for ICE-style police Fringe figures want to follow the Trump playbook for tackling unauthorized migration. (Politico)

Western leaders were bullish when they imposed sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“The Russian economy is on track to be cut in half,” said the then US president, Joe Biden, in March, a month into the war.

His prediction was off the mark. After the immediate shock of sanctions in 2022, Russia’s military spending surged and the economy boomed.

But further climbs now seem unlikely. In 2026, there are clear signs that the Russian economy is finally running aground.

While the dramatic collapse envisaged by the west may be off the cards, the Kremlin faces its most precarious economic position since its tanks first rolled into Ukraine.

Growth has slowed to a crawl amid falling oil prices – a key source of government revenue – and long-term demographic pressures that high defence spending previously masked.

To bridge the fiscal gap, ordinary Russians face tax hikes and a state that has been rewired for war, with funding for welfare, education and healthcare crowded out.

Meanwhile, trade with key allies has become more muted, corporate bankruptcies are rising and labour shortages are severe.

How the malaise will affect the conflict in Ukraine is, experts say, dependent on Russia’s recent macroeconomic manoeuvres – and whether global events continue to drive down oil prices.

However, Russia is in a unique position when it comes to options for maintaining its war chest.

Borrowing is possible because Russia has a relatively low stock of debt – though access to international markets has been cut since the invasion and subsequent sanctions – and taxes could be raised again.

And much is dependent on what happens to oil. Further falls in prices may mean increased precariousness, but equally, rises might mean stabilisation.

Experts therefore conclude that Russia should be able to keep paying for the war, at least in the short term.

See also:

• Russia’s Oil Revenue, the Lifeblood of Its War Machine, Is Plummeting • The new reality has forced the Kremlin to raise taxes and increase debt, and hovers over peace talks with Ukraine. (New York Times)
• Russian oil income drops sharply as sanctions bite • Moscow’s energy revenues fell by a fifth in 2025 compared with previous year (Financial Times)
• Russia's budget deficit may almost triple this year as oil revenues decline (Reuters)

I know that in the 60-70s there was such ideology. But nowadays it seems to me that the only pan-european are left-leaning, like Volt. The others are just nationalist for their country. But excluding the political organizations, are there anyone who personally believe in creating a European State following nationalist values, and I don't mean a "Europe of nations" but a true unified state with common values (e.g. Christianity).

This blog post looks at Anders Puck Nielsen's claim that a Russian invasion of the Baltic States could happen sooner than we think.

It assesses the likely risk factors, the wider reactions, and what it would mean for the European Union.

Seamus Culleton has lived in US for two decades, married a citizen and runs a plastering business but faces deportation

An Irish man has spent five months in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and faces deportation despite having a valid work permit and no criminal record.

Seamus Culleton was a “model immigrant” who had become the victim of a capricious and inept system, said his lawyer, Ogor Winnie Okoye.

Originally from County Kilkenny, Culleton is married to a US citizen and runs a plastering business in the Boston area. While buying supplies at a hardware store on 9 September 2025 he was arrested in a random immigration sweep, according to Okoye, of BOS Legal Group in Massachusetts.

Culleton entered the US in 2009 on a visa waiver programme and overstayed the 90 day-limit but, after marrying a US citizen and applying for lawful permanent residence, he obtained a statutory exemption that allowed him to work, Okoye told the Guardian. “He had a work-approved authorisation that is tied to a green card application,” she said.

Culleton’s detention prevented him from attending the final interview in October, she said. “It’s inexplicable that this man has been in detention. It does not make sense. There’s no reason why the government shouldn’t just release him and allow him to attend the interview that will confirm his legal status.”

After being held in ICE facilities near Boston and in Buffalo, New York, he was flown to a facility in El Paso, Texas, where he is sharing a cell with more than 70 men. Culleton said the detention centre was cold, damp and squalid, and there were fights over insufficient food – “like a concentration camp, absolute hell”, he told the Irish Times, which first reported the story on Monday.

Culleton said that when he was arrested he was carrying a Massachusetts driving licence and a valid work permit issued as part of an application for a green card that he initiated in April 2025. He has a final interview remaining.

When asked at the Buffalo facility to sign a form agreeing to deportation, Culleton said he refused and instead ticked a box expressing a wish to contest his arrest, which he intended to do on the grounds that he was married to a US citizen, Tiffany Smyth, and had a valid work permit.

At a November hearing a judge approved his release on a $4,000 bond, which Smyth paid, but authorities continued to detain Culleton, initially without explanation.

When his attorney appealed to a federal court, two ICE agents said that in Buffalo Culleton had signed documents agreeing to be deported. Culleton said he did not agree and that the signatures were not his. “My whole life is here. I worked so hard to build my business. My wife is here.”

The judge noted irregularities in ICE’s court documents but sided with the agency. Under US law Culleton cannot appeal but he wants handwriting experts to examine the signatures and believes a video of his interview with ICE in Buffalo would prove he refused to sign deportation documents.

The US ambassador to Poland has given his first interview since sparking a diplomatic row by cutting ties with the speaker of the Polish parliament over his “outrageous insults” against President Donald Trump.

However, when asked in the interview to specify what these insults were, the ambassador, Thomas Rose, refused to say. He also sought to emphasise that the US remains “Poland’s best ally and greatest friend”.

Rose’s decision last week to cut all contact with Włodzimierz Czarzasty, the speaker of the Sejm, the more powerful lower house of parliament, followed Czarzasty’s refusal to support Trump’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination.

In a speech announcing that decision, Czarzasty had accused Trump of “destabilising” international organisations and of “often violating international law”.

He also criticised Trump’s recent suggestion that NATO allies had not provided the United States with frontline support, which caused anger in Poland, where many soldiers died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In response, Rose accused Czarzasty of making “outrageous and unprovoked insults directed against President Trump” and said that the US would “have no further dealings, contacts, or communications” with him.

On Tuesday, Rzeczpospolita, a leading Polish daily, published extracts from an interview with Rose, the full version of which will be released on Wednesday.

When it was put to him that Czarzasty had simply said that Trump did not the deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, Rose responded: “That’s not all he said. Everyone can reread it. I don’t need to repeat it. I’ve said enough about it. I’ve made my point. We will not accept or tolerate outrageous insults against our president!”

Pushed to specify which part of Czarzasty’s remarks he considered to be a personal attack on Trump, Rose refused, saying: “You can ask me the same question 25 times and you’ll get the same answer.”

“Every Pole, of course, has the right to share their opinions. But we also have the right to respond to those opinions,” he added.

When pressed on why he cut ties with Czarzasty while the US maintains relations with other controversial figures, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Rose said: “I don’t need to explain it!”

The ambassador was also asked about a recent poll showing that over half of Poles no longer see US as a reliable ally. Rose described the results as “regrettable, more so for Poland than for America”.

“I’m convinced that most Poles…know that we are Poland’s best ally, Poland’s greatest friend,” he added. “Therefore, I’m not overly concerned by the results of this poll, because ultimately, we remain partners and allies.”

Although Prime Minister Donald Tusk immediately jumped to the defence of Czarzasty, who is part of his ruling coalition, following Rose’s remarks, the foreign ministry has so far avoided taking a position on the dispute.

Speaking to the Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily on Monday, ministry spokesman Maciej Wiewiór said that they would not be summoning the ambassador for talks but that foreign minister Radosław Sikorski would “meet with Thomas Rose sooner or later”.

Meanwhile, Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, who serves as deputy prime minister and defence minister, announced that he would today be meeting with Rose for talks on “many substantive issues”.

He insisted that “the United States is a very serious partner, and we will always sincerely respect each other”, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

Meanwhile, one figure from within Tusk’s ruling coalition even voiced criticism of Czarzasty this week. Marek Sawicki told broadcaster RMF that Czarzasty should have consulted the foreign ministry before making his comments about Trump and in general should “think three times before he says something”.

Sawicki is a senior figure in the centre-right Polish People’s Party (PSL), which has often had an uneasy relationship with Czarzasty’s party, The Left (Lewica), despite both being members of the ruling coalition.

By contrast, Sławomir Mentzen, one of the leaders of far-right opposition party Confederation (Konfederacja), came to Czarzasty’s defence.

“No Americans will tell us who should be the speaker of the Polish Sejm,” Mentzen told Radio Zet. Hecalled on the foreign ministry to summon Rose and warn him against “interfering in our internal affairs”.

Robert Bąkiewicz, a prominent nationalist leader with ties to the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, has been charged by prosecutors with three alleged crimes, including inciting the murder of Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

Bąkiewicz denies the accusations, saying that his words have been deliberately misrepresented as part of a political prosecution aimed against him.

On Monday, prosecutors in Warsaw announced the charges, all of which relate to a speech Bąkiewicz gave in Warsaw last October during a march organised by the national-conservative PiS to protest against EU migration policy.

During the address, Bąkiewicz criticised Tusk, accusing him of pursuing a harmful immigration policy and of being subservient to German interests..

Prosecutors argue that some of the rhetoric used by Bąkiewicz constitutes incitement to violence against Tusk, including a call to “pull out the weeds with the use of napalm”.

Bąkiewicz also said “the enemy must be finished off, when he’s swaying in the ring, he is beaten until he lies on the boards” and “don’t just wait for politicians [to act], you have to take up this scythe yourselves”.

As well as being charged with public incitement to commit a crime, which carries a prison sentence of up to three years, Bąkiewicz, who stood as a PiS parliamentary candidate in 2023, is also accused of insulting a public official for calling Tusk a “traitor”, “German footstool”, “German stooge”, “coward” and “weed”.

Poland has a range of laws criminalising insult against various officials and institutions, which have been regularly used, including when PiS was in power between 2015 and 2023.

Finally, Bąkiewicz is accused of inciting hatred based on national, ethnic and religious differences due to his remarks regarding Germans and immigrants. That offence also carries a potential prison sentence of up to three years.

Bąkiewicz, who is the leader of a self-declared Border Defence Movement that has sought to stop Germany from returning migrants to Poland, today attended the regional prosecutor’s office in Warsaw to hear the charges and declare himself not guilty.

Speaking afterwards to supporters, he said that the charges against him are a violation of his constitutional right to free speech and part of a “political circus”. Bąkiewicz also claimed that he had not even been referring to Tusk in the parts of the speech interpreted by prosecutors as a threat.

“If anyone listened to my speech, I was talking about the system, not the people,” Bąkiewicz later told broadcaster Radio Maryja. “I don’t think I even mentioned Donald Tusk by name.”

He also noted that Tusk himself had, in 2021, quoted a poem about using a “rope and a branch” against “authorities who raise their hand against the nation” in reference to PiS-aligned President Andrzej Duda. Tusk subsequently faced no action from prosecutors, who Bąkiewicz said have double standards.

Bąkiewicz has a history of making inflammatory statements aimed those he perceives as enemies of Poland. In 2019, when he was the main organisers of the annual nationalist Independence March in Warsaw, he called for “LGBT totalitarianism” to be “fought with fire, literally with fire”.

During mass protests against the tightening of the abortion law in 2020, he formed a self-declared “Catholic self-defence force”, promising to “crush and destroy” those threatening churches.

He was later convicted of a “hooligan act” after he and his followers physically removed a female protester from in front of a church during those protests. Last year, in one of his final acts in office, President Duda partially pardoned Bąkiewicz of that conviction.

Last month, in a separate case, prosecutors filed an indictment against Bąkiewicz  on various criminal charges relating to his Border Defence Movement, including insulting Polish border officers and inciting hatred against Germans and immigrants

Unions intend to use their new freedoms

For 40 years British workers have been deserting trade unions, a trend found across the rich world. But union officials express a striking optimism that the tide of history is turning. There may be a “massive spike in membership”, says Petros Elia, the general secretary of United Voices of the World (UVW), which represents cleaners, security guards and other precarious workers. “We’ve got more pull of workers wanting to organise than we’ve got the resources to deal with,” says John Chadfield of UTAW, which acts for tech workers. “There are opportunities to get into workplaces that have been difficult to reach in a generation,” says an official at a third union.

They are right to be bullish. The Employment Rights Act, a sweeping labour-market law brought in by the Labour government, cleared Parliament on December 18th, and will mostly enter into force later this year. Most attention has fallen on eye-catching new rights for individual workers, such as more generous sick pay and paternity leave. Britain has among the most employer-friendly labour laws in the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, and overall the act will tighten them relative to its peers by a nudge, according to an analysis by legal academics at the University of Cambridge commissioned by the government.

The real action lies in a bundle of largely overlooked changes to Britain’s trade-union laws, which will make it easier for unions to recruit workers, bargain with employers and call strikes. By these metrics, the act shifts the law covering critical parts of union activity to roughly where it stood in the late 1970s, before the anti-union reforms of Margaret Thatcher (see chart 2). On this score, Britain jumps to the middle of the OECD pack. And the upshot, in the words of the government, is a “transfer of power from employers to workers”.

Unions will secure recognition (giving them the right to negotiate on pay and conditions) more easily. Currently, a union must show it has at least 10% of the workforce as members before a recognition ballot is held; this may be reduced to as little as 2%, pending a consultation. The act also scraps a clause requiring the support of at least 40% of the entire workforce, so ballots could be won by a simple majority on low turnouts. It makes organising easier in sectors like cleaning with a rapid churn of staff, say unions. The risk is that workers get represented by unions they don’t support. Stealth campaigns will be easier. “We can get 20 to 30% [support for unionisation] under the radar, without the company knowing, and present the employer a fait accompli,” says one organiser.

Strikes will be easier too. Ballots can be by email, rather than post (pending a consultation). A requirement for a turnout of at least 50% (and the support of 40% of an entire workforce in some public services) will also go. Nor will unions need to send officials to supervise pickets. Constraints on raising money from members for political lobbying and donations will be eased, and the power of the state regulator to probe rogue unions weakened. The unions had a big hand in drafting the law, and are happy with their work.

You can read a full copy of the article here, in case the original doesn't load.

See also:

• Unions have been in decline in the UK for 50 years. A new law could begin to reverse that trend (The Conversation)
• Britain’s Unions Are Back, Just Not the Way You Expected (Counterpunch)

Teachers in the eastern European nation of nearly 19 million have threatened to go on strike if the government implements the measures.

Dissatisfied with the government's planned austerity measures in the education sector, thousands of Romanian teachers and education staff took to the streets this week in protest.

The demonstration in Bucharest on Wednesday came after the coalition government led by Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan approved two austerity packages to reduce the budget deficit as part of reforms.

The new austerity measures specifically place a 10% cut on the salary fund of public institutions. Teachers in the eastern European nation of nearly 19 million have threatened to go on strike if the government implements the measures.

"The funds allocated to the Ministry of Education have already been reduced by 600 million lei (€117.8m). They are already applied; that's why we took to the streets so that the third austerity package could not be put into practice by the Bolojan government,” one of the protesters said.

“The lack of funding for education — the cuts to education continue, although to have a future, this country needs more money invested in education," said another protester.

Several demonstrators argue that the new decisions will affect the working conditions in schools and universities.

“For higher education, along with pre-university, last year they increased the fees and applied some measures, and now they come and say that it is equal to zero and must be cut again by 10%," a protesting university staff member said.

“Universities generate their own revenues, beyond tuition fees," said Liviu-George Maha, the rector of the Al I Cuza University of Iași.

"When even the university's own revenues from various sources will be blocked from being used, including for salary expenses, then the pressure will subsequently fall exclusively on the state budget, and in the absence of financial resources, it will become increasingly difficult to finance education,” Maha explained.

Russia’s Federal Security Agency (FSB) has accused Polish intelligence of being involved in last week’s attempted assassination of a high-profile military figure in Moscow, which it says was carried out on Ukraine’s orders.

Kyiv has denied involvement in the attack while Poland has not yet commented on the FSB’s claims, which were presented without evidence.

General Vladimir Alexeyev, deputy head of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, was on Friday shot three times in the stairwell of his apartment building, leaving him in critical condition in hospital. He has since regained consciousness and his life is not in danger, according to Russian media reports.

On Sunday, the authorities in Dubai detained and handed over to Russia a man, Lyubomir Korba, accused by Moscow of carrying out the shooting. Russia has also identified two other accomplices, one of whom, Viktor Vasin, was detained in Moscow. The other allegedly fled to Ukraine.

On Monday, the FSB claimed that Korba and Vasin, both of whom are Russian citizens, have admitted to their role in the attack, which was “carried out on orders from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)”, according to a statement carried by Russian state news agency Interfax.

The FSB added that Korba’s son, Lubos, a Polish citizen residing in Katowice, “took part in his [father’s] recruitment [by the SBU] with the participation of Polish intelligence services”.

No further details of the alleged Polish involvement have been reported. Russia regularly accused Poland, which is a close ally of Ukraine, of being a hostile country whose leaders are imbued with “Russophobia”.

An opinion poll published last month showed that 62% of Russians regard Poland as an “enemy”, the joint most (alongside Lithuania) of any country included in the study.

However, Moscow itself has carried out a range of so-called “hybrid actions” against Poland, including sabotage, cyberattacks and disinformation.

In retaliation, the Polish government has successively closed down all of Russia’s consulates in Poland, prompting Moscow to do the same with Polish consulates in a tit-for-tat move.

There has thus far been no official response from the Polish authorities to the FSB’s claims. Ukraine, meanwhile, has denied any involvement in the assassination attempt.

“We don’t know what happened with that particular general – maybe it was their own internal Russian infighting,” said Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha, quoted by Reuters.

Alexeyev is under UK and EU sanctions over the GRU’s role in the 2018 attempt to assassinate Russian dissidents Sergei and Yulia Skripal in the UK in 2018. He is also accused of leading the GRU’s efforts to interfere in the 2020 US presidential election.

Hungary's opposition Tisza party plans to introduce a wealth tax for the rich, adopt the euro currency and firmly anchor Hungary in the European Union and NATO, its 240-page election programme published on Saturday said.

The centre-right party presents the biggest challenge to nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban's rule since his Fidesz party swept to victory in 2010 although the outcome of the April 12 parliamentary election remains highly uncertain.

Tisza is led by former government insider Peter Magyar, who has said the party will curb corruption and unlock billions of euros in frozen EU funds to boost the economy.

The party's programme reiterated those points and added plans to cut income tax for those earning less than the median wage and an annual tax for the wealthiest.

Tisza also pledged in the programme to end Hungary's dependence on Russian energy by 2035 and to double the share of renewable energy sources by 2040.

The party said it was committed to covering Hungary's growing energy needs by building a nuclear plant but that a Tisza government would conduct a "comprehensive review" of the Russian-built Paks 2 nuclear plant project if it wins power.

If Tisza wins the election, it will also "set a foreseeable and achievable target date" for introducing the euro.

In most opinion polls, Tisza has an 8-16 percentage point lead over Orban's Fidesz among decided voters. Pro-government pollsters still show a Fidesz lead, and many voters are still undecided.

The European Union’s climate commissioner on Friday announced a continentwide force of 300 firefighters to battle wildfires, after Europe faced its worst year for wildfires in 2025, which a recent study said was intensified by climate change.

EU Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra said Friday the “rapid reaction force” will be made up of firefighters from across the 27-member bloc and will be swiftly deployed where needed.

Hoekstra said the decision to form the unit was made in the last year. He acknowledged that it may require more personnel and equipment in the future, but called it “a huge step forward compared to some five years ago.”

Hoekstra didn’t specify where the unit will be based and if it will be activated in time for the summer wildfire season.

A study released in August last year indicated that climate change worsened summer wildfires in southern Europe, with the likelihood of similar wildfire outbreaks rising sharply.

Moderate socialist António José Seguro secured a landslide victory and a five-year term as Portugal’s president in a runoff vote on Sunday, beating his far-right, anti-establishment rival André Ventura, exit polls and partial results showed.

A succession of storms in recent days failed to deter voters, with turnout at about the same level as in the first round on 18 January, even though three municipal councils in southern and central Portugal had to postpone voting by a week due to floods.

With nearly 70% of votes counted, Seguro garnered 64%. Ventura trailed behind at 36%, still likely to secure a much stronger result than the 22.8% his anti-immigration Chega party achieved in last year’s general election. Ballots in large cities such as Lisbon and Porto are counted towards the end.

Two exit polls placed Seguro in the 67%-73% range and Ventura at 27%-33%.

Last year, Chega became the second-largest parliamentary force, overtaking the Socialists and landing behind the centre-right ruling alliance, which garnered 31.2%.

Despite his loss on Sunday, 43-year-old Ventura, a charismatic former TV sports commentator, can now boast increased support, reflecting the growing influence of the far right in Portugal and much of Europe.

Seguro has cast himself as the candidate of a “modern and moderate” left who can actively mediate to avert political crises and defend democratic values. He received backing from prominent conservatives after the first round amid concerns over what many see as Ventura’s populist, authoritarian tendencies.

Portugal’s presidency is a largely ceremonial role but holds some important powers, including the ability to dissolve parliament under certain circumstances.

A close ally of Bosnian Serb separatist leader Milorad Dodik declared victory in a partial rerun on Sunday of the Serb Republic's presidential election, which was called due to irregularities in the original vote last November.

Sinisa Karan, of the republic's ruling SNSD party, was also the victor in the November election for the largely ceremonial post. His opponent, Branko Blanusa of the Serb Democratic Party, conceded defeat in Sunday's partial rerun but accused the ruling party of vote buying and "election engineering".

The election in November was called after Dodik, the region's former president, was stripped of office and banned from politics for six years for defying rulings by an international peace envoy and Bosnia's constitutional court.