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Brussels, my love? Elites gather in Davos as key election year starts

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Brussels, my love? Elites gather in Davos as key election year starts

Global elites gathered in Davos this week but is the annual shindig in the Swiss Alps really the best place to cure the world’s ills? Our panel was quite critical.

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Brussels, my love? was a Davos special this week, with Méabh McMahon on the ground to get insights into conversations, speeches, as well as interviews with some of the conference’s heaviest hitters.

The Davos meeting’s theme this year was “Rebuilding Trust” which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen touched upon in her speech, warning that the “top concern for the next two years isn’t conflict or climate. It is disinformation and misinformation, followed closely by polarisation within our societies.”

2024 is an especially important year on that front as over half the world’s population will cast a vote including in the European Parliament election in June, and the US Presidential in November.

EU Commissioner for Transparency Věra Jourová also discussed misinformation, telling Méabh in an interview that “uncertainty is one of the drivers of the far-right with Big Tech”. She added that in her discussions with platforms such as social media firms like Meta, Tik-Tok, and X (formerly Twitter), she stresses “the need to protect our electoral system against hidden manipulation”.

Dharmendra Kanani from Friends of Europe who joined us in the studio back in Brussels said: “I would like to hear more is what they (the Commission) have been doing the past 18 months. We haven’t just discovered we’re having an election this year.”

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Anna Nalyvayko from the Wilfried Martens Centre was another one of our panellists and she concurred. 

“It is not happening just now. It has been happening for years. We have seen this, you know, happening, I think, for at least the past ten years, but it’s only now being taken seriously. And I think what is very important to think about here is that misinformation and disinformation can undermine the legitimacy of newly-elected government,” she said.

The Davos meeting is now always preceded by a report by Oxfam on wealth inequalities worldwide. This year’s edition revealed that the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes to almost €800 billion since 2020, while the world’s poorest 60% – almost 5 billion people – have lost money.

The NGO’s Interim Director Amitabh Behar described it as the “era of billionaire supremacy where people with gigantic bank balances – often greater controlling economy, systems, policies, making them richer and richer.”

Petros Fassoulas, the Secretary General of the European Movement International and our third panellist this week, said in reaction that people are “feeling that the democratic system we have at the moment isn’t delivering for them.”

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Many, he added, are now questioning whether democracy is a form of governance that can deliver the answers they need on the economy, the environment, and social issues.

Nobody is sure Davos holds the answer to these life-changing questions, nor whether those in attendance all have the same priorities.

But it made for a great discussion.

Watch Brussels, my love? in the video player above.

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Video: Owner of Swiss Bar Detained in Fire Investigation

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Video: Owner of Swiss Bar Detained in Fire Investigation

new video loaded: Owner of Swiss Bar Detained in Fire Investigation

Prosecutors in Switzerland ordered Jacques Moretti to be detained after investigators questioned him and his wife, Jessica Moretti. Officials are looking into whether negligence played a role in last week’s deadly fire at their bar, Le Constellation.

By Meg Felling

January 9, 2026

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Greenland leaders push back on Trump’s calls for US control of the island: ‘We don’t want to be Americans’

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Greenland leaders push back on Trump’s calls for US control of the island: ‘We don’t want to be Americans’

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Greenland’s leadership is pushing back on President Donald Trump as he and his administration call for the U.S. to take control of the island. Several Trump administration officials have backed the president’s calls for a takeover of Greenland, with many citing national security reasons.

“We don’t want to be Americans, we don’t want to be Danes, we want to be Greenlanders,” Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and four party leaders said in a statement Friday night, according to The Associated Press. Greenland, a self-governing Danish territory and a longtime U.S. ally, has repeatedly rejected Trump’s statements about U.S. acquiring the island.

Greenland’s party leaders reiterated that the island’s “future must be decided by the Greenlandic people.”

“As Greenlandic party leaders, we would like to emphasize once again our wish that the United States’ contempt for our country ends,” the statement said.

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TRUMP SAYS US IS MAKING MOVES TO ACQUIRE GREENLAND ‘WHETHER THEY LIKE IT OR NOT’

Greenland has rejected the Trump administration’s push to take over the Danish territory. (Thomas Traasdahl/Ritzau Scanpix / AFP via Getty Images; Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Trump was asked about the push to acquire Greenland on Friday during a roundtable with oil executives. The president, who has maintained that Greenland is vital to U.S. security, said it was important for the country to make the move so it could beat its adversaries to the punch.

“We are going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not,” Trump said Friday. “Because if we don’t do it, Russia or China will take over Greenland, and we’re not going to have Russia or China as a neighbor.”

Trump hosted nearly two dozen oil executives at the White House on Friday to discuss investments in Venezuela after the historic capture of President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3.

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“We don’t want to have Russia there,” Trump said of Venezuela on Friday when asked if the nation appears to be an ally to the U.S. “We don’t want to have China there. And, by the way, we don’t want Russia or China going to Greenland, which, if we don’t take Greenland, you can have Russia or China as your next-door neighbor. That’s not going to happen.” 

Trump said the U.S. is in control of Venezuela after the capture and extradition of Maduro. 

Nielsen has previously rejected comparisons between Greenland and Venezuela, saying that his island was looking to improve its relations with the U.S., according to Reuters.

A “Make America Go Away” baseball cap, distributed for free by Danish artist Jens Martin Skibsted, is arranged in Sisimiut, Greenland, on March 30, 2025. (Juliette Pavy/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

FROM CARACAS TO NUUK: MADURO RAID SPARKS FRESH TRUMP PUSH ON GREENLAND

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Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Monday that Trump’s threats to annex Greenland could mean the end of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

“I also want to make it clear that if the U.S. chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything stops. Including our NATO and thus the security that has been provided since the end of the Second World War,” Frederiksen told Danish broadcaster TV2.

That same day, Nielsen said in a statement posted on Facebook that Greenland was “not an object of superpower rhetoric.”

Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen stands next to Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen during a visit to the Danish Parliament in Copenhagen on April 28, 2025. (Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix/AFP via Getty Images)

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White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller doubled down on Trump’s remarks, telling CNN in an interview on Monday that Greenland “should be part of the United States.”

CNN anchor Jake Tapper pressed Miller about whether the Trump administration could rule out military action against the Arctic island.

“The United States is the power of NATO. For the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously Greenland should be part of the United States,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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What Canada, accustomed to extreme winters, can teach Europe

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Euronews spoke to Patrick de Bellefeuille, a prominent Canadian weather presenter and climate specialist, on how Europe could benefit from Canada’s long experience with snowstorms. He has been forecasting for MétéoMédia, Canada’s top French-language weather network, since 1988.

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