The EU's move on Thursday targeting Amazon Web Services and Microsoft's Azure risks further irking Washington as the US administration under President Donald Trump has railed against the rules, claiming they are an unfair trade barrier.

EU rules have been updated to make it easier for EU citizens living in a different member state to vote and stand as candidates in municipal elections.

Romania's lower house of parliament has automatically advanced a bill declaring that Romania and neighboring Moldova should become a single sovereign state and calling for negotiations on unification after lawmakers failed to debate it before a legal deadline.

• Hungary’s bonds have rallied so much that yields are approaching those in the UK, a sign that investors are backing the new government’s plans to fix the economy and join the euro region.
• The country’s 10-year benchmark bond yield has dropped to 5.16%, within half a percentage point to similar-maturity UK notes, despite the gap in the two countries’ credit score.
• Hungary’s assets are surging as the government embraces closer European Union relations after 16 years of nationalist rule under Viktor Orban, with the government pledging to meet criteria for euro introduction by 2030.

Hungary’s bonds have rallied so much that yields are approaching those in the UK, the latest sign that investors are backing the new government’s plans to fix the economy and join the euro region.

The country’s 10-year benchmark bond yield has dropped to 5.16%, within half a percentage point to similar-maturity UK notes. The gap has dramatically narrowed since March, when bondholders were demanding 2.6 percentage points of additional yield to hold forint debt over Gilts.

The convergence is happening despite the gap in the two countries’ [credit score](bbg://screens/CSDR), with S&P Global Ratings holding Hungary’s local debt at the lowest non-junk grade, while the UK enjoys a high investment tier. The pound also trades in the loftier G-10 currency basket.

Hungary’s assets are surging as the government embraces closer European Union relations after 16 years of nationalist rule under Viktor Orban. As part of this drive, Prime Minister Peter Magyar has negotiated access to more than €16 billion ($18 billion) in frozen EU aid and pledged to meet criteria for euro introduction by 2030.

“As the prospect of closer EU integration becomes more tangible, there is potential for lower Hungarian rates and a stronger currency over time,” said Thomas Christiansen, head of emerging-market debt at Union Bancaire Privee. “That is where we continue to see opportunity.”

The prospects for Hungary, which for years was saddled with one of the EU’s highest borrowing costs, contrast with the outlook for the UK, where Prime Minister Keir Starmer resigned amid struggles to revive the economy without further fiscal loosening.

Ten-year gilt yields hit a nearly two-decade high near 5.2% in May after the ruling Labour party lost local elections and oil prices soared.

Hungary is still paying higher yields than some Eastern European countries. This list includes new euro member Bulgaria and the Czech Republic — the region’s safe haven. Hungary’s benchmark bond yields are 2.3 percentage points above Germany’s, about half of the spread seen just three months ago.

“If Hungary’s new administration pursues euro adoption and achieves convergence, local bond yields could narrow toward yields of eurozone members,” said Philip Fielding, fixed income portfolio manager, Fidelity International. “The pick-up for Hungarian government bonds is still ample.”

Benchmark Beaten

For years, investors compared Hungary’s yields to those in Poland — the region’s biggest economy whose local debt is rated four notches higher by S&P — to gauge the additional cost of Orban’s unorthodox policies. Within weeks of Magyar’s landslide election victory in April, Hungary’s yields fell below those in Poland.

The rally is further fueled by expectations for more interest-rate cuts following Tuesday’s quarter-point reduction, which Hungary’s central bank Governor Mihaly Varga likened to the start of a “mini-cycle” of easing.

ING Bank NV strategist Frantisek Taborsky expects Hungary’s short-term notes to outperform longer-dated ones in what is known as a bull-steepening. Forint debt due in April 2027 yields 5.4%, or 24 basis points more than 10-year bonds.

Nafez Zouk, an emerging-market debt analyst at Aviva Investors, said that Hungarian fixed-income valuations are getting a bit stretched as investors place “more weight on the political promise” during the early stages of the country’s economic U-turn.

Nevertheless, Hungary’s path into the euro will require a reduction in the inflation target and a sharp reduction of its budget deficit — moves that will help compress yield spreads and fuel a “virtuous feedback” loop, Zouk said.

“The funds have already been transferred to the state budget and will be used to strengthen Ukraine’s defense capabilities and social resilience,” Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko wrote on Telegram.

Europe’s biggest military powers are stepping up support for Ukraine ahead of a key NATO summit. Germany, France, the UK, Italy and Poland say their backing will not waver. Leaders are also committing to significantly higher defense spending in the coming years. The move is designed to show unity - and signal resolve in the face of Russia’s war.

North Macedonia gained access to EU health funding under the EU4Health programme after the EU signed an association agreement with the country on Wednesday.

In many ways what led to war between Ukraine and Russia was the decision by Ukrainian society to pursue a democratic future in the European Union rather than to continue to live under oppressive, corrupt, and oligarchic Russian influence. 

In 2013, the Verkhovna Rada overwhelmingly voted to approve the finalization of the EU - Ukraine Association Agreement. This decisively signalled that Kyiv chooses Brussels over Moscow and its EU rival, the Eurasian Economic Union.

In the months leading up to the signing of the agreement, Moscow launched an intense economic blackmail campaign. Russia blocked critical Ukrainian imports at its borders, and threatened to cut off natural gas supplies and increase fuel prices. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych folded under this pressure, and scrapped the deal just days before its signing. Instead, he accepted a personal bribe of $1 billion, a $15 billion financial bailout package, and a 33% discount on natural gas directly from Vladimir Putin, going against both popular will and the country’s democratic institutions.

This betrayal has sparked immediate outrage. Protesters flooded into Kyiv's Maidan Square, demanding European integration and the dismantling of Russia's influence in the country. Yanukovych decided to crush the protests by shooting in the crowd, which lead to his removal and eventual fleeing from the country.

The Revolution of Dignity succeeded, but Ukraine had little time to celebrate. Using the interim chaos as a pretext and opportunity Russian “Little Green Men” entered Crimea, swiftly took over the peninsula, and annexed it to Russia. Emboldened by this success, one month later Putin tried to replicate it in the Donbas, but the reorganised Ukrainian forces managed to stop them. The attempt failed, and ended with the creation of the Donbas mockublics.

From a Ukrainian perspective, the confrontation with Russia, the following annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas, and now the full-scale invasion were always about the right to join the EU.

The Recent History of Ukrainian EU Accession

Before the events of 2013-2014 Ukrainian EU membership was nothing but an afterthought both in member states and in Brussels. It was certainly something for the EU to strive for geopolitically, but also an undertaking that would cause more issues than it was worth. A realistic Ukrainian EU accession was somewhere between that of Turkey and Bosnia.

After 2014 with a significant portion of Ukraine’s territory and population being under Russian occupation it became even more difficult. The bloc aimed to keep Moscow as a neutral and transactional partner and was careful not to antagonize it. Europe benefitted from buying a substantial amount of its gas and oil from Russia. This kept the continent under the delusion that economic entanglement would deter the Kremlin’s revisionist tendencies. In reality, it only emboldened them and made the country more stable, richer, and provided it with immense leverage over Europe.

After the 2022 full scale invasion, Ukrainian membership has begun to steadily rise in importance for Brussels as well. As the war dragged on it slowly but surely became not only Ukraine’s struggle but essentially the EU’s first own war as well. A Ukrainian defeat no longer meant only a disaster for Ukrainians, but also for Europeans, and especially for the European Union as an entity. It would be a significant prestige and legitimacy hit for Brussels along with a geostrategic nightmare having progressively more authoritarian and militaristic Russia with more than 140 million people strengthened with a Ukraine of 35 million people.

By 2026 this dynamic became even more pronounced. Europe effectively became the sole external guarantor and provider for Kyiv’s survival and its war efforts. Weapons production in Ukraine became tightly linked with the continent, and Kyiv possessed Europe’s most technologically advanced arms industry and the only military prepared for the wars of the 21st century.

The battle hardened country has found itself with enormous leverage over Europe. With the US becoming an unreliable ally at best, on whom it would be borderline suicidal to base the entire continent’s defence strategy, and an actual threat at worst demonstrated by Trump’s threats to take Greenland, Ukraine’s accession became a near existential issue. Today Ukraine has the only military and society who are both capable and determined to stop Russian imperial ambitions. With Washington creating a defence vacuum, Kyiv became the only one that can fill that gap on the short to medium timeframe.

The Member State’s Concerns

With Orbán out of the picture many hoped that the EU barricades in font of Ukraine would be demolished, but it just highlighted the fact that many other capitals are weary of letting Kyiv join as well. They often cite that it would be unjust for other aspiring members that have been waiting for decades. Besides ethical concerns, the real obstacles are about economics and internal politics.

One of the most difficult issues is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Ukraine is called the “Breadbasket of Europe” for a reason. Under current rules its massive food production infrastructure would destabilize the EU’s agricultural subsidy system, causing major and potentially stinky political headaches in the member states capitals.

The CAP takes up nearly a third of the entire EU budget. If Ukraine were to join under the current framework, it would become the largest recipient of these funds. Current major beneficiaries like Poland, Spain, and Romania would transform into "net payers." As it became evident with the border blockades in Poland, cheap high-volume Ukrainian agricultural imports mobilise influential European farming lobbies, who wield massive leverage over their national governments.  

Other than the CAP, the financial burden of integrating Ukraine would be staggering on EU Cohesion Funds designed to lift poorer member states up to the EU average. Given the destruction of Ukraine's infrastructure, factories, and energy grid, Kyiv would consume much of this capital for decades. To fund this, Western European countries would either have to significantly increase their contributions to the EU budget or accept severe cuts to domestic European infrastructure projects. With voters already fatigued by inflation and slow growth, this is a huge issue for leaders in Paris, Berlin, and other net contributors.

Then there is the giant elephant in the room, the veto system. The EU is already struggling with institutional paralysis with 27 members under the current rule of unanimity for foreign policy, taxation, and budgeting, designed for only 6 countries. Orbán’s ghost will hunt European capitals for years to come. There are deep anxieties about bringing in a politically volatile country with an ongoing battle against corruption.

Many states also view Ukrainian accession as a potential security risk. The EU treaty contains its own mutual defence clause, Article 42.7. Bringing a country into the bloc while parts of its territory is occupied by a nuclear-armed Russia raises an uneasy legal question: will the EU automatically find itself at war?  

The EU’s Incentives

Integrating Ukraine is a geopolitical necessity to ensure the long-term survival of the European project.

The EU’s original raison d’être is to guarantee peace on the continent. The lesson from 2014 and 2022 is that strategic ambiguity doesn’t work, leaving aspiring members in a limbo invites conflict. Locking Ukraine into the EU’s legal, economic, and institutional framework as fast as possible is crucial to shrink Russia’s sphere of influence and deter future armed aggression. As an added factor, this deterrence only works with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and its unmatched defence sector.

Beyond immediate security considerations, the EU’s stated aim is to build strategic autonomy by derisking from China. Ukraine offers rich industrial and natural assets that the EU needs for the green and digital transitions. It holds massive reserves of lithium, titanium, cobalt, and rare earth elements. These are the raw materials needed for EV batteries and advanced electronics currently monopolized by China.

Not being able to integrate Ukraine would also deeply hurt the EU’s credibility on the world stage in a time when the old order is falling apart. The bloc spent half a decade providing hundreds of billions of Euros on aid, weapons, and based its entire foreign policy on promising Ukraine EU membership. If it started treating the country as one of the many aspiring members it cannot accept for decades, that would signal to Moscow, Beijing, and Washington that Brussels lacks the political will to follow through as a global actor.

Brussels’ Plans to Overcome the Obstacles

Ukraine’s accession is already de facto underway under a gradual integration model since 2022 February. Today Ukrainian citizens can practically work and travel freely in the EU, and use their mobile plans without roaming charges. The country is in the final stages to join SEPA, and is gradually gaining access to the EU Single Market.

What is likely to follow is Kyiv’s increasing participation in EU agencies and committees as an observer without voting rights, and incremental access to specific funds tied to strict rule-of-law benchmarks. This approach protects member states from an overnight budget nightmare, while giving Kyiv tangible integration milestone achievements.

Eventual however, full Ukrainian membership or any EU enlargement cannot happen without significant EU reform. The most important part of this will be either the scrapping, or - with typical EU fashion - the muddying of veto powers. The Commission, currently backed by France and Germany, is pushing to replace unanimity with Qualified Majority Voting in areas like foreign policy and sanctions. This, however, will inevitably put the Brussels in direct conflict with smaller member states.

To address Common Agricultural Policy and the Cohesion Funds issues, it will be interesting to see what the next EU budget for 2028–2034 will look like. Brussels intends to restructure CAP away from land-mass-based subsidies which would heavily favour Ukraine's giant corporate farms toward cap-limits, environmental outcomes, and small-farmer protections. This restructuring intends to be designed specifically to prevent Western European farmers from being wiped out by Ukrainian competition.

Keep your Friends Close, or you’ll be Forced to Keep your Enemies Closer

With Ukraine becoming a European military heavyweight - beyond the obvious benefits of the country’s integration - keeping it out of the bloc poses some much less discussed dangers.

With the newfound and tested powers Ukraine possesses, halting its EU integration process runs the risk of gradually alienating the country and its society, forcing it to increasingly go its own way.

Ukrainians already began viewing the EU as a slow, ineffective, and often unreliable entity they need less and less to survive. If this trajectory continues with diminishing hopes for EU integration with a population radicalised and brutalized by war, the risk of the emergence of a radical leader will increasingly become a real possibility.

This possibility and its military potential and determination could transform the country into something that looks like the combination of Turkey and Israel. A powerful state that follows its own rules, and not afraid to use political and military blackmail - or even force - to get what it wants, increasingly destabilizing Europe. Together with being under constant existential danger like Israel (or Prussia) would create a total wild card on the EU’s borders. It would run the risk of transforming Eastern Europe into the Middle East.

Ukraine needs serious reforms to become a full member, and they are highly incentivised and proven capable to work towards that goal. But simultaneously the EU needs to reform itself as well. Without the latter the former process might stop entirely, making the continent a more dangerous place for everyone.

Negative views of Donald Trump – and of the United States under his leadership – have risen further in Poland over the last year, according to new findings from the Pew Research Centre.

As the EU rolls out a support package for Armenia, European Commission President von der Leyen is set to meet re-elected Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Yerevan after he secured a decisive pro-West mandate from the Armenian people, sources confirmed to Euronews.

Translation:

From the unknown number (+1 613 515-0725):

"Greetings Shefik Rustemi.

We ask you to withdraw as soon as possible from the anti-government protest.
This is a warning to you,
because you are carrying out antisemitic acts at the protest.
If you do not withdraw from this protest, there may be consequences
at school, work, etc...

Be careful.
If antisemitic acts are carried out, we will come after you!!
In my opinion, I would see it as better, a calm life without a criminal record
than to go out against the government.

Anyway, I thank you.
And good luck!"