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It’s no coincidence these coercive tactics emanate from the European Commission. Though von der Leyen pays lip service to the importance of a free and independent press, in practice, she exercises very tight message control.

‘Scoops’ are doled out to those who play along, while those who don’t are punished by having their access curtailed or denied.

Brussels has long been a place where journalists coddle the powerful instead of holding them to account. It makes life easier. What’s more, many of the reporters here are dependent on EU subsidies and willing to trade journalistic integrity for access – to go along to get along.

When Hungary was still governed by Viktor Orbán, it presented itself as a champion of illiberalism. Yet it was not an outlier. By the end of last year, it had been joined by Italy, Germany, and France in what watchdogs call a common deterioration of civic space. This trans-European trend coincides with efforts to prevent civil society organizations from participating actively in the EU’s political life.

This downward spiral is bound up with a political turn. For this exclusion of civil society from decision-making processes goes hand in hand with pro-corporate politics at the expense of the vulnerable, while reducing once-inalienable rights to privileges that belong only to a few. My recent report “Shrinking Civic Space in the European Union” identifies key political tactics and narrative strategies that have been deployed to scale up attacks on civil society around the EU.

Press conference of the MEPs from The Left group regarding the initiative that urges the European Commission to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

The mood in Berlin is one of quiet concern. Once Europe’s undisputed industrial locomotive, Germany continues to reel from the loss of cheap Russian gas. Spain’s ‘energy miracle’ is a painful reminder to German industry of its own vulnerability.

Christian Ehler, the German EPP heavyweight leading negotiations on the ITRE Commission, attends carefully to all that’s being said in the Ruhr Valley, Germany’s industrial heartland. The fear is simple: industrial flight. Should a chemical giant like BASF or a steelmaker like ThyssenKrupp find that energy costs in Spain are consistently 30-40% below the prices at home, then the ‘Accelerator’ won’t be accelerating industry in Germany, but industrial relocation to the Mediterranean.

German negotiators are advocating that the IAA prioritize ‘logistical proximity to the end consumer’ as a criterion for receiving the extra economic support considered in the regulations"

German negotiators are exerting pressure. They are advocating that the IAA prioritize “logistical proximity to the end consumer” as a criterion for receiving the extra economic support considered in the regulations, a move designed to penalize Spanish factories that are geographically distant from Central European markets.