US President Donald Trump on Monday used violent unrest in France as an argument against Democrats in his battle ​to defend a Kansas Senate seat long held by Republicans but in danger of falling to his political opponents.

In Brussels, in a rare move, the European Commission – which is usually silent on the domestic policies of EU member states – commented on Monday, October 19, on the protests that took place in France on Saturday and especially on the violence that accompanied them.

Through its spokesperson, the European Commission condemned the looting, calling it "unacceptable," and reminded Paris that the right to peaceful protest "must be protected." In the European Parliament, the center-right European People's Party (EPP) and the far right quickly sought to politicize the issue by organizing a debate on Monday evening in Strasbourg, whose title sparked controversy within the chamber: "France, Italy, Belgium: Anti-democratic violence and destruction perpetrated by far-left groups."

France is far from alone in seeing protests over the cost of living and public concern about theconsequences of rising energy prices. In the coming months, high-stakes elections – set against a backdrop of growing far-right movements – are scheduled to take place in Spain, France, Italy, Poland and Greece. During their meeting in Brussels on October 15, European heads of state and government held lengthy discussions on how to lower their citizens' energy bills, with all of them mindful of the Yellow Vest movement, which set France ablaze in the fall of 2018.

In Rome, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni held an emergency security council meeting on Monday afternoon to assess the situation after the weekend's riots and looting. On Sunday, she took to social media to denounce the "gangs of thugs" who "set cities ablaze," such as Milan, where clashes broke out between youths and the police, and where 271 rioters were arrested, including 220 minors – scenes of "urban guerrilla warfare," according to RAI, the public broadcaster.

On Monday evening, Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini announced on X that the government would deploy "500 additional troops to defend Milan." In the Lombard capital, the clashes were most dramatic around the Piazza del Duomo. Young people, masked or hooded, threw trash bins, iron bars and electric scooters at riot police, who responded with tear gas. In the surrounding streets, many shops were vandalized.

The city's chamber of commerce estimated the damage at €1 million, including both material damage and lost revenue for shop owners. "Law enforcement has already warned us about new protests planned for the weekend [of October 24 and 25], urging us to 'be ready' to close or to close earlier," said its president, Marco Barbieri. Other clashes also took place this weekend in Turin and Bologna, notably in response to calls from student groups.

Since the beginning of October, many high schools across Italy have gone on strike, especially in Turin and Rome. Protesters have condemned not only the dilapidated state of some school buildings but also the policies of Prime Minister Meloni's government, which they accused of failing to curb energy prices and of funding the war in Ukraine instead of investing in education. A draft decree from the education minister, which would limit the number of foreign students per class and ban the full-face veil, has also sparked anger among many young people, particularly in far-left circles.

"Here, the situation is more or less following what is happening in France and is starting to really heat up," said Niccolo de Carli, a restaurant server and activist with the far-left Potere al Popolo party in Turin, who took part in demonstrations in the Piedmont capital over the weekend.

The anger is running just as high in the south, where truck drivers, as well as farmers and fishers, have blocked several major roads and highway toll booths in Calabria and Campania for the past four days, protesting in particular against the cost of fuel.

This toxic social climate came to a head on Saturday in Rome, where the CGIL, the country's largest labor union, brought together nearly 100,000 people, joined by opposition leaders including Elly Schlein of the center-left Partito Democratico and Giuseppe Conte of the populist Movimento 5 Stelle. Maurizio Landini, secretary general of the Confédération générale italienne du travail (CGIL), called for a general strike on November 20.

In Belgium, following protests organized in France, a few hundred people took to the streets of Brussels and Liège on Saturday. Liège is the Walloon city where a movement among Belgian high school students began on October 1. The turnout was lower than during previous demonstrations – especially the one on October 9, which, in addition to youth movements, brought together tens of thousands of people in Brussels to protest against the federal government's austerity measures.

But Saturday's demonstrations were marked by violence. In total, police in Brussels and Liège reported nearly 200 arrests, including more than 25 minors. In the capital, protesters built barricades, threw projectiles, and set fire to bicycles and scooters near the Gare du Midi train station. Cars were also set ablaze in the Marolles neighborhood, and the windows of the Brussels federation headquarters of the Parti Socialiste were smashed. "The vandals are not the youth, they are brainless troublemakers. Don't lump them all together," said Ahmed Laaouej, leader of the PS in Brussels. Meanwhile, the interior minister, Bernard Quintin (Mouvement Réformateur, MR), denounced what he called "sheer and simple violence."

At the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, the body responsible for managing education for French-speaking students, Education Minister Valérie Glatigny held the first meeting of her advisory committee on October 13. She created the committee this summer in response to the ongoing teachers' protests that have been taking place in Belgium for several months. However, unions remain skeptical.

In Spain, where hundreds of tents have occupied the Puerta del Sol in the heart of Madrid and squares in other cities across the country for more than three weeks, protests have so far remained largely peaceful. Set up since September 26, the demonstrators have called for measures to tackle soaring rents and the difficulties of accessing housing, which have become one of the main issues in the upcoming early elections on November 29.

In the capital, these encampments have sparked significant tensions with regional authorities. On Monday, the conservative president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who has been seeking their removal for several weeks, drew a parallel with the violence that occurred in France and Italy. "They want nothing but violence and harassment, because the anti-democratic left of this country refuses to accept the verdict of the ballot box," she said.

Also in Madrid, since October 14, teachers have been staging a rolling strike to demand higher wages and smaller class sizes. On Monday morning, about 200 of them blocked a highway in the capital. The protests could intensify on November 11, as the main Spanish labor unions have called for a general strike – the first time in 14 years.

On Sunday in Lisbon, a people's assembly called for an "Iberian general strike" on November 11, in coordination with the Spanish movement. In Portugal, too, the housing crisis has been fueling protests. On Monday, dozens of tents filled Rossio Square, in the heart of Lisbon, and Praça Dom João I in Porto. These encampments followed a series of demonstrations that culminated on Saturday, with rallies in Lisbon, Porto, and Coimbra, organized by the Confederação Geral dos Trabalhadores Portugueses (CGTP), the country's main labor union.

Several tens of thousands of people marched in the capital to demand higher wages and pensions in response to the rising cost of living. Discontent was fueled by soaring real estate prices, which have more than doubled since 2017. Protestors also condemned a reform by the center-right government led by Luis Montenegro, which was aimed specifically at speeding up tenant evictions in the case of unpaid rent.

In Porto, where the first tents appeared about 10 days ago, the occupants say they planned to continue their protest until the end of the year. Despite warnings from the police and an initial eviction, the demonstrators have continued their presence, and the gatherings have remained largely peaceful.

Protests in northern Italian cities like Milan devolved into riots over the weekend. Meanwhile, in the south, farmers and truckers have blocked traffic over rising fuel prices.

Posting this because the housing crisis is hitting people across Europe, not just in one country.

For those in the EU who want to do something about it, there’s a European Citizens’ Initiative, “Right to Housing! Now and Forever”. It asks the Commission to propose a permanent EU housing fund, limits on short-term rentals, vacancy registers and stronger tenant protection. With 1 million signatures from at least 7 countries, the Commission must formally respond.

You can sign here: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/064/public

What do you think of the article’s argument? Does your country need an EU-level approach?

AI-generated photos falsely claiming to show an elderly couple being “stripped and robbed” during unrest in France have racked up millions of views. Amplified by far-right accounts, the images fuelled inflammatory claims about Muslims, Jews and the riots. The FRANCE 24 Observers traced one image to an AI photo montage published by a pro-Israel account. The images were created using OpenAI tools, and the alleged assault remains unverified, with no official reports confirming the attack.

A revolt in France? A sign of youth in distress? Donald Trump and the Kremlin prefer to view the protests that took place on Saturday, October 17, in Paris and across France – marked by looting and acts of vandalism that continued into Sunday – as evidence of the "decline" of a Europe they accuse of having thrown open its borders to migrants from Africa and the Middle East. In their view, it is the first act of a supposed "war of civilizations."

Rarely have reactions from Washington and Moscow so closely aligned, both in substance and in tone. The US president feigned alarm on his Truth Social platform on Sunday: "France is burning!" Ignoring the demands raised by high school and university students for more resources for education, and showing disregard for the distress of the middle class, whose cost of living has been partly raised by the war in Iran that he himself launched, Trump analyzed the anger of the French as coming solely from "people from an entirely different world," he wrote. "People with hatred in their hearts" eager to destroy "that once great country," he went on, as if in possession of detailed profiles of the vandals, of whom he knew nothing. "Close your Borders and take control, before it is too late!" the US president warned, echoing the rhetoric hammered home by European far-right parties, who portray immigration as the "scourge" of Western nations.

"Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion. They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn't listen," Vice President JD Vance had already pontificated the day before on X. In a message posing as compassionate, he wrote, "I pray [for] France," while warning Americans of what could happen should they be tempted to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections on November 3. Laura Loomer, an influencer from the Make America Great Again sphere, openly embraced racist rhetoric: "The most destructive species on planet earth is the African Muslim. Don't believe me, just look at Paris," she posted on X on Sunday.

'The West is collapsing'

Sharing footage of flames in Paris and describing French President Emmanuel Macron as "shaking with fear," Russian media outlets and pro-Kremlin bloggers seemed to exult, painting a picture of "chaos" engulfing Europe, a civilization they claim is in decline for having abandoned its Christian values. Russian President Vladimir Putin remained silent on Sunday. But on X, Kirill Dmitriev, his special representative for relations with the US, appeared to echo Washington's words, seeing in France "Western civilization's suicide through migrant chaos."

Dmitriev also portrayed the climate of violence as the result of European errors in energy policy and sanctions against Russia, which, he said, deprived European households of cheap Russian gas. "The West has fallen because of an inability to discuss and correct consequential mistakes on migration, energy, and warmongering," wrote Dmitriev on X. Trump, on October 11, froze the implementation of new sanctions targeting Russian gas and oil, shocking his European allies.

"An intellectual arc has formed from Washington to Moscow," said Shahin Vallée, a political economy researcher at the German Council on Foreign Relations. The ideological alignment of Trump and Putin – leading figures of what Macron called in January 2025 the "reactionary international" – is nothing new. Protests and headline-grabbing incidents in recent months across Europe have frequently fueled the fantasy, both in Russia and the US, of a white, Judeo-Christian civilization under threat.

"This is interference," said François Heisbourg, adviser on Europe at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London, seeing in these comments – amplified by the MAGA sphere on social media – a way to boost, ahead of elections, the arguments of Europe's far-right parties, most of which are close to the Kremlin. The expert also recalled Washington's stated intention, set out in the National Security Strategy released in December 2025, to "reestablish strategic stability with Russia." The document warned of Europe's "civilizational erasure" and declared that "the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism," while calling for "cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations."

'Axis of evil'

On Sunday, several representatives of the European far right openly adopted the rhetoric of the Trump administration and the Kremlin. "If we don't wake up, the carnage in France is our future. We need to return to law, order, and borders," declared Nigel Farage, leader of Reform UK, on X. Farage is an ally of Jordan Bardella, president of the Rassemblement National, with whom he shares the conviction that European "civilization and values" are "under attack" from immigration.

In Germany, Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), was quoted Sunday by the daily Rheinische Post as seeing the clashes in Paris as an "attack on Western civilization by migrant mobs and far-left agitators," arguing that "open borders and mass immigration" were responsible for the violence. "This is what awaits Europe with Islamo-leftism. Barbarians ravaging all that remains of beauty and civilization," said Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain's far-right Vox party, on X. "The axis of evil that unites left-wing extremists and Islamic fanatics is the number one danger to confront and defeat," wrote Matteo Salvini, leader of the anti-migrant League and Italy's deputy prime minister, on the same platform, sharing footage of Limoges city hall in flames.

With just months to go before France's presidential election, the clashes between law enforcement and protesters, the looting, and scenes of devastation above all reflected, according to the international press, the end of Macron's era and the twilight of a centrist approach to politics. October 17 "signed the death certificate of Macronism," wrote the Spanish daily El Pais on Sunday, as some political leaders feared the movement would spread. "What is happening now in France is a double warning for Germany," said CDU MP Yannick Bury, president of the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly, quoted Sunday by Rheinische Post. He linked the protests to the inability of political leaders to carry out necessary reforms.

In Italy, the mobilization of French high school students has already, since Friday, contributed to a wave of youth-led protests in major northern cities, while in the south, a movement of farmers and truck drivers has staged multiple blockades to protest rising fuel prices. "Protesting is a right. Setting our cities on fire is not," warned Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Saturday, as scenes of looting multiplied in Milan during demonstrations in which some called to "do like in France."

The proposed talks come as Washington eases economic pressure on Moscow while pressing Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian oil infrastructure, raising concerns in Kyiv that the Kremlin is securing concessions without making any of its own.

So sad to see this beautiful 140-year-old town hall in Limoges burn.

Between January and September 2026, the number of irregular border crossings into the European Union “continued to fall, recording a drop of almost one-third compared with the same period last year,” Frontex, the EU Border and Coast Guard Agency, said in preliminary figures released today (19 October).

Brussels wants to secure digital infrastructure in the Arctic as melting ice and growing geopolitical tensions turn the polar region into a strategic corridor for trade, communications and security.

Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa will join Hungarian PM Péter Magyar in Budapest on Friday to mark 70 years since the 1956 uprising, signalling a reset in EU-Hungary ties after Viktor Orbán’s years in power.

Led by Andreas Schieder (S&D), a seven-member European Parliament delegation representing five countries and six political groups will join the ODIHR Election Observation Mission to assess whether the vote on 25 October is conducted in accordance with national laws and international standards

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Donald Trump of trying to pressure Kyiv into surrendering to Russia, escalating a week-long row with the US president.

Zelenskyy also offered a new proposal to accede to Trump’s request to stop targeting Russian refineries, which was aimed at combating high diesel prices, in exchange for deliveries of more Patriot air-defense missiles.

“Now, we have dangerous days ahead of the elections,” Zelenskyy said, referring to the Nov. 3 midterms in the US. “My latest model was: We don’t target Russian diesel, you give us missiles for Patriot systems to protect our facilities. But they just want us to stop attacking diesel. And if we strike that, they will disconnect us from something.”

As relations between the US and Ukraine reached a new low, Zelenskyy laid out what he said were a series of unfriendly moves by Washington toward Kyiv. Those include the deliberate slowing of Starlink internet speeds, which are crucial for Ukrainian troops fighting Russia, and delaying already scarce deliveries of Patriot interceptors for ballistic missiles, which have become a nightmare for Ukrainian cities, he said Sunday in an interview with Bloomberg.

“I believe steps have been taken to convince Ukraine to capitulate,” Zelenskyy said while sitting in his office in Kyiv. “I am not saying that this is the goal our partners are pursuing. I don’t want to think that our American partners believe the war” against Russia “could be ended sooner at Ukraine’s expense. But that’s how it looks.”

Tensions between Ukraine and the US reached a nadir after Trump struck a deal with Vladimir Putin under which Washington would refrain from further tightening sanctions on Russia in exchange for Moscow supplying limited volumes of diesel to the global market to curb rising prices. Trump sparked blowback from member of his own party when he said late Friday he would waive part of a new Russia sanctions law named after the late Senator Lindsey Graham.

Zelenskyy added that relations with the US may improve after the US midterm elections.

“Politics is very aggressive during election time,” he said. “I think it is agony now, but after elections, life will continue and I believe it will be calmer.”

The US has demanded that Kyiv stop striking Russia’s oil refineries. The Trump administration has argued that those attacks have contributed to high energy prices, particularly for diesel, even though global supplies have been much more significantly affected by the US war with Iran. Ukraine has said it’s ready to halt strikes on refineries if Russia refrains from attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

Both sides, however, have continued to target energy facilities, with Ukraine resuming after pausing for several days to see if Russia would adhere to the “energy ceasefire” announced by Trump. Ukraine said Russian forces hit substations over the weekend, leaving tens of thousands of families without power, while Russia battled fires at the St. Petersburg oil terminal and other industrial facilities.

Zelenskyy’s spoke after Ukraine complained that SpaceX, the US-based company owned by Elon Musk, slowed Starlink internet speeds in Ukraine. The satellite internet service is crucial for Ukraine’s troops and has been one of the country’s key battlefield advantages in its war against Russia, now in its fifth year.

Asked who ordered the move, Zelenskyy pointed to “the authorities, the White House,” citing “sources” he didn’t identify. He says that Starlink internet speeds cut out at speeds above 161 kilometers (100 miles) per hour in Ukraine, while beyond the country it works without any limitations. Russian drones are traveling at around 400 kilometers per hour.

Zelenskyy also said the US is delaying deliveries of interceptors for Patriot air-defense systems used to shoot down Russia’s ballistic missiles, which inflict the heaviest damage on infrastructure in Ukrainian cities.

“We have paid for the weapons” including anti-ballistic missiles under so-called PURL program, Zelenskyy said. “A part of the supplies has been authorized” by the US side, “while the rest haven’t been. And this is not a technical issue.”

The US is currently supplying Ukraine with only 12 Patriot interceptor missiles a month, roughly a quarter of the pace under Joe Biden’s administration, Zelenskyy said. Under Trump, the US is selling those missiles to Ukraine, Biden was providing them for free as military assistance.

“I think that the president of the United States does have good relationship with Putin,” Zelenskyy said. “But one thing doesn’t work here. Currently, Trump can’t force Putin to end the war.”

In the meantime, Zelenskyy remains in close contact with Trump’s key envoys for Ukrainian peace talks, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, saying Sunday that they’re discussing another meeting, likely later this week. The trio had already met in Kyiv in early September. Back then, Kushner and Witkoff first went to Moscow for talks with Putin before making their first visit to Ukraine for negotiations with Zelenskyy.

The standoff with the US comes at the worst possible moment for Ukraine, as the country braces for an exceptionally challenging winter.

Russia’s use of jet-powered drones, coupled with a severe shortage of interceptors, has left Ukraine increasingly vulnerable to airstrike surges, undermining public morale. The country is already enduring hours-long blackouts, while its largest cities are bracing for even worse disruptions, including potential cutoffs of heating, water supplies and sewage.

Asked, how he would describe efforts to repair relations with the US, Zelenskyy said, “I think that when the potential risks for Ukraine are of tsunami proportions, one should intervene while it’s still just a mild storm. I believe much more is at stake than the diesel deal.”

European companies face “devastating” retaliation from Washington if Brussels presses ahead with plans to restrict American rivals such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX from parts of the European market, the US ambassador to the EU has warned.

Andrew Puzder’s warning comes after the European Commission this year proposed reserving part of its spectrum band that allows smartphones to connect directly to satellites for European players. That would limit the frequencies for Chinese and US companies such as SpaceX, which operates the Starlink satellite network.

Asked whether European companies should fear retaliation, Puzder told the FT that they “should be wary that it could happen and it would be very devastating for those companies”, given the size of the American market.

The proposed changes to the bloc’s spectrum allocation have already raised fierce criticism from SpaceX, which has warned the move risks poorer connectivity in Ukraine where its Starlink service has been critical to civilian and military communications since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The proposed changes are part of a broader push to strengthen Europe’s technological sovereignty.

European policymakers are seeking to reduce their dependence on American technology amid concerns about the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump and the risk of relying on foreign companies for critical infrastructure.

The European Commission has introduced a Cloud and AI Development Act that would impose sovereignty requirements on providers of sensitive cloud services, while seeking to help European technology companies to scale up and provide alternatives to US tech companies.

Puzder said he recognised Europe’s right to protect sensitive government information but warned against using legislation to favour domestic companies at the expense of American competitors.

“If the purpose is to make United States less competitive, I think that that’s not a legitimate goal of this kind of legislation,” Puzder said. “You don’t make European companies more competitive by making US companies less competitive.

“We have best-in-class products in this area. They’re reliable products, they’re trusted products. We don’t need some kind of synchronised mediocrity.”

The ambassador also questioned whether the EU’s enforcement of its Digital Markets Act, which seeks to curb the power of the world’s largest technology companies, was really aimed at improving competition or more at generating revenue for the European budget, given the multibillion-euro fines on American companies.

“You start to wonder, are we trying to deal with the competition in the digital marketplace or are we trying to generate revenue from American companies to benefit Europe?”

Puzder argued Europe’s ambitions to strengthen its own tech industry risked being undermined by its regulatory approach and by discouraging investment from the American companies, as US tech companies are growing increasingly frustrated by the EU’s regulatory restrictions and fines.

Instead of seeking to curb the dominance of American companies, Brussels and Washington should join forces to compete with China in the race to develop AI, Puzder said, echoing comments from Trump that “the worst thing that could happen is that we lose this race to China”.

The ambassador urged Europe “to let go of this regulatory mindset where they’re going to try and stop things because we’re in a race with China” — both on AI and on quantum computing.

He said the US has the ingredients to win that race “but it’d be a lot easier if we were working with Europe instead of fighting Europe”.

The Commission said the proposal “incentivises the entry into the market and diversification of EU suppliers, while remaining open to non-EU operators”.

Poland has condemned an attack by masked Israeli settlers on a delegation of European diplomats – including Polish ones – that was visiting the West Bank.

It called for a “decisive response from the Israeli authorities”, saying that the incident is “further evidence of the settler violence that the Palestinian population in the West Bank faces on a daily basis”.

The attack has likewise been condemned by France and Belgium, whose nationals were also in the delegation, and the European Union, as well as by the Israeli foreign minister.

Hungarian PM Peter Magyar said he would not object to Ukrainian grain crossing Hungary, as long as it only transits to other destinations, after Volodymyr Zelenskiy asked neighbours to help as Russian attacks have almost halted Black Sea exports. Magyar also assured Zelenskiy of his full solidarity over the “inhuman Russian aggression” against Ukraine.

Anti-government protesters continued calls for Edi Rama to step down as violent clashes between demonstrators and police again took place.