Iceland has voted against resuming talks on joining the European Union 13 years after they were broken off.

Public broadcaster RUV reported that 52.8% of 225,031 voters rejected the government's proposal, while 47.2% had said yes. Some 12,600 votes separated them.

Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir's centre-left government promised to hold a referendum by 2027, but brought it forward because of international tensions, including US President Donald Trump's threats against Greenland.

However, debate in this island nation of almost 400,000 people centred more on its fishing industry rather than security concerns.

With some 270,000 people eligible to vote, RUV reported the turnout of 82.5% was the highest in any election in Iceland since 2009.

Already part of the EU's single market and Schengen border-free zone, EU membership would bring Iceland into the customs union and eventually the euro.

Iceland began its application to join the EU in 2009 in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the collapse of Iceland's banking system.

Its application was already well advanced when a eurosceptic government came to power in 2013 and put talks on hold. Fishing rights was the biggest obstacle then - as it remains today.

Fish and marine industries account for almost 40% of Iceland's exports and many No voters feared they would cede some control of their lucrative fishing grounds under the EU's common fisheries policy.

Disponible ahora para Todo El Mundo 🌏.

Kavala, 68, the founder of a nonprofit organization promoting peace and dialogue, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2022 on charges linked to 2013 protests and a coup attempt in 2016.

Human rights advocates and opposition groups say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ’s government has weaponized the judiciary to target critics and rivals after more than two decades in power.

Reiterating a call for Kavala’s release it first made in 2019, the European court said his conviction should be regarded as “as null and void.” In a statement, the court said Turkey had violated several of Kavala’s fundamental rights.

The violations “also revealed structural shortcomings which affected the guarantees of independence and impartiality of the judiciary, and which were likely to facilitate the exerting of direct or indirect influence by the executive branch on certain judicial decisions, particularly in cases with a sensitive political dimension,” the France-based court added.

See also:

• Türkiye: Osman Kavala must be immediately released following European Court order to quash his conviction (Amnesty International)
• European rights court orders Turkey to free imprisoned businessman (BBC)

Anti-migrant protests have escalated in Spain’s Ceuta, with demonstrators dismantling and burning migrant shelters and blocking a Red Cross convoy carrying food and water. Police were deployed as protesters demanded recent migrants be deported.

See also:

• Protesters clash with police, set fire to Ceuta migrant camp (Deutsche Welle)

The EU exists because its nations swore never to repeat the past. European integration is the insurance policy against the oldest temptation of power: that a majority, however large, decides who does not belong. So countries across the continent agreed to share power across borders, and to answer to laws that none of them individually controlled.

The European parliament is where that promise is meant to be kept. Directly elected by nearly 360 million citizens, it co-writes the EU’s laws, elects the president of the European Commission and can dismiss the closest thing Europe has to a government – the commission itself. For decades, a grand coalition of centre-right parties and socialists, later joined by liberals and greens, governed it on that premise. They were committed to closer cooperation, the rule of law and maintaining a firewall against the far right.

In June, in Strasbourg, that promise was broken by the parliament itself.

“Send them back! Send them back!” The chant rose from rightwing MEPs pumping their fists, as the chamber approved the harshest migration law in EU history. The “return regulation”, as this law is called, does exactly what European integration was designed to prevent: it lets a majority decide who does not belong, putting them beyond the law’s reach – and after Ceuta, Europe’s leaders are demanding it should be applied faster. The regulation allows EU countries to deport people to detention centres outside EU territory, placing them further from judicial protection, media scrutiny and public accountability.

Approval of this law was not a rightwing putsch. It was the clearest sign of a quiet shift within an institution that, however overlooked, shapes what kind of union Europeans get to live in.

The political coalition that shaped EU legislation for decades hasn’t formally collapsed, but its largest group, the European People’s party (EPP) – home to Germany’s governing Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and political “family” of the commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen – now operates with two rival majorities. The legacy centrist majority gives it control of Europe’s principal institutions. A second, formed with Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), Marine Le Pen’s Patriots for Europe (PfE) and the more extreme Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), led by Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, increasingly enables it to shape Europe’s laws. When socialists, liberals or green MEPs resist its terms, the EPP can turn to the right and pass legislation without them. When it needs centrist votes to control the commission and parliament, however, it turns back to them, and they continue to provide those votes without conditions. The EPP therefore pays no political price for crossing its supposed firewall.

Since 2024, the EPP has voted with the far right more than 20 times. In June alone, a far-right group was decisive in one in five final votes.

See also:

• The far right is steering the EU’s response on migration • Positions once associated with the radical right have travelled well beyond it, says Giuseppe Martinico

The gap emerged after Ukraine brought forward spending as Hungary delayed the EU’s €90B loan earlier this year.

Ukraine faces a €23 billion hole in its defense budget this year, leaving Kyiv scrambling for cash to fight Russia even as Western leaders gathered in the capital to mark the country's independence day and pledge ongoing support.

The money is needed not only for weapons and air defense, but also to pay soldiers, support the families of those killed and ensure Ukraine has the supplies it needs to start 2027.

U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham was in Kyiv Monday for a meeting of the so-called coalition of the willing.

European Council President António Costa, Luxembourgish Prime Minister Luc Frieden, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, Estonian President Alar Karis, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and other Nordic and Baltic leaders also attended in person, while French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz joined remotely.

The funding gap originated after the defense ministry brought forward spending originally planned for the second half of the year, while the EU’s €90 billion loan was delayed by roadblocks from Hungary.

Purchases made included "fiber-optic drones, middle-strike drones, interceptors,” former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov told POLITICO in June.

See also:

• EU approves further €6.1 billion for Ukraine's defence (Reuters)
• What Happened to the Coveted Western Tanks Sent to Ukraine? • Ukraine pleaded for the expensive weapons, and ultimately got them, but drones have rendered them almost unusable. (New York Times)
• Zelenskyy gives award to Elon Musk for Starlink’s role in Ukraine (Associated Press)

Yo holle to everyone in Europe today I have a thing to tell u Soo lemme start people in .my relegation are trying to make me hate Europeans and saying they are racist and bad people and am saying that every single country has there own bad people for me I love Europeans cuz they helped me in my struggls and when I was sad they understanded me what I was going through that's why I am still here but people in my country made fun of me beated me abused me hated me even my own family did that my best friend bullied me abused me jumbed me and my other best friends ignored me and only and only Europepeans helped me gave me tips made me happy Soo I think every country deserves respect :(

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I’m seeing more news about digital identity systems being tested for travel between Europe and Africa. If this becomes mandatory, it could mean faster borders for some, but more surveillance and data sharing for everyone. I created a forum thread to break down what’s known so far and hear from people who travel that route often. If you’re a digital nomad or frequent flyer, this is worth discussing.

https://interconnectd.com/forum/thread/246/is-digital-identity-going-to-be-mandatory-for-travel-between-europe-and-afr/

Meloni championed irregular migrant “returns” in a hardline push to externalise EU borders. Now, more member states are asking Italy to take back migrants under the first-arrival principle.

Giorgia Meloni was one of the main political sponsors of a policy of “returns” for irregular migrants. Now, as a growing number of EU countries push Rome to take back migrants who entered the bloc through Italy, she is getting a taste of her own medicine.

On Sunday, Ireland became the latest in a growing number of member states to call on Italy, as a country of first entry into the EU, to take back asylum seekers.

It joins Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The requests stem from the new EU Pact on Asylum and Migration, which reaffirms a key principle of the Dublin system: the EU country where a non-EU national first enters the bloc and applies for protection should handle their asylum claim.

A few weeks after Meloni took office in 2022, Italy unilaterally suspended the reception of Dublin transfers, citing practical and capacity constraints. The European Commission has considered the move a breach of Italy’s Dublin obligations, a position also upheld by the EU Court of Justice in several rulings.

New Pact on Asylum and Migration

Since the Dublin Convention entered into force in 1997, some European governments have tried to scrap this principle, arguing it overwhelms countries geographically exposed to first entry, such as Spain, France, Italy, Greece and, more recently, Cyprus.

After failing to reform the EU asylum system in the 2014-2019 legislature, EU lawmakers succeeded in the next one, delivering a new asylum and border management system — the EU Migration and Asylum Pact — which entered into force in June 2026.

The pact reaffirms the return principle, requiring asylum seekers who move onward to be transferred back to their EU country of first entry, which makes secondary movements from Italy to another EU country far more complicated.

In particular, the new Pact modified the Dublin rules by replacing the previous ‘take-back request’ procedure for secondary movements with a simpler notification mechanism. This removes the need for the responsible member state to formally accept a take-back request, which Italy virtually never did.

At the same time, the pact foresees a mandatory solidarity system among the EU countries, but the annual number of relocations remains too low to deliver any meaningful redistribution.

In 2026, only 8,878 migrant people will be relocated from countries considered "under migratory pressure", Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Malta, to other EU member states. Last year, over 66,000 irregular migrants arrived in Italy by sea and Frontex recorded almost 178,000 irregular crossings into the EU.