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The truth behind the €64.6-billion budget deal agreed by EU leaders
The European Union might soon add an additional €64.5 billion to its common budget. But it comes with fine print.
The top-up was for months the object of fierce bargaining among member states, each of whom, mindful of the upcoming elections to the European Parliament, pushed hard to see their wish list come true.
The negotiations kicked off in June, soon after the European Commission unveiled its proposal, and culminated in an extraordinary summit on 1 February, where Viktor Orbán, under tremendous pressure from his fellow leaders, lifted his monthlong veto.
“We had certainly some difficult choices to make, but we had a very good result,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said after the meeting.
Once the gridlock broke, a new figure emerged: the bloc’s budget for 2021-2027, worth €2,018 billion in current prices (including €806.9 billion for the COVID-19 recovery fund), will be given an additional €64.6 billion until the remainder of the period.
The political deal is a considerable downgrade from the €98.8 billion top-up originally envisioned by the Commission. The executive argued the public coffers had been exhausted by the economic shockwaves of the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the energy crisis, record-breaking inflation and devastating natural disasters, leaving the budget deprived of financial flexibility to react to unforeseen events.
But from the very onset, the €98.8-billion draft was met with strong resistance from member states, who would have been compelled to provide more than €65 billion in brand-new contributions. Rising interest rates, sluggish growth and diminishing revenues made the idea of writing such a cheque to Brussels all the more intolerable.
Diplomats haggled hard over how to cut down the fresh money to the bare minimum, playing a game of mix-and-match to plug the gaps.
So what’s new and what’s old in the budget top-up? Let’s break down the numbers.
Ukraine Facility: €50 billion
Boosting aid for Ukraine is the raison d’être of the revised budget. In fact, it was the only envelope that leaders left intact.
Under the agreement, the EU will establish the Ukraine Facility to provide the war-torn nation with €50 billion between 2024 and 2027 to keep its economy afloat and sustain essential services, such as healthcare, education and social protection.
The pot will combine €17 billion in non-repayable grants and €33 billion in low-interest loans, meaning member states will only subsidise the former. The money for the loans will be borrowed by the Commission on the markets and later repaid by Ukraine.
Brussels will roll out the Facility in gradual payments to guarantee reliable and predictable financing. In return, Kyiv will be asked to carry out structural reforms and investments to improve public administration, good governance, the rule of law and the fight against corruption and fraud – all of which can help the country advance its EU membership bid.
In a small concession to Viktor Orbán, the only leader who opposed the Ukraine aid, leaders will hold a debate every year to assess the Facility’s implementation, but this high-level discussion will not be subject to a vote (or possible veto). “If needed,” the deal says, leaders might invite the Commission to review the package in two years.
If the co-legislators agree swiftly on the regulation that underpins the Facility, Brussels will send Kyiv the first tranche in early March.
Migration management: €9.6 billion
This envelope survived the negotiations almost unscathed and it’s easy to see why: migration management is a key priority shared by all countries, particularly those in Southern Europe who bear the brunt of irregular arrivals.
The Commission originally asked for €12.5 billion to cover expenses on border control, relations with the Western Balkans, and the hosting of millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. The executive said the extra money was needed to realise the ambitions of the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, the holistic reform of the bloc’s migration policy that is nearing the finish line.
Leaders mostly agreed and granted €9.6 billion. “Migration is a European challenge that requires a European response,” they said in the deal.
New technologies: €1.5 billion
The EU is intent on being a leading player in the cutthroat race for cutting-edge technologies. For that, it needs money – a lot of money.
ADVERTISEMENTThe Commission – fulfilling a grand promise made by President Ursula von der Leyen – designed the Strategic Technologies for Europe Platform (STEP) to finance avant-garde projects and promote EU-made high-tech. STEP was designed to help all member states, from the richest to the poorest, access much-needed liquidity in equal conditions.
Von der Leyen initially asked €10 billion for STEP to reinforce ongoing programmes like InvestEU and the Innovation Fund. But leaders shot down the idea and allocated only a meagre fraction: €1.5 billion to prop up the European Defence Fund (EDF).
Unforeseen crises: €3.5 billion
Since the early days of 2020, the bloc has been engulfed in back-to-back crises. From a lethal airborne disease to floods and fires that wrought untold havoc, Brussels has had a hard time adapting its tight budget to a ballooning list of expenses.
In its original proposal, the Commission requested €2.5 billion to bolster the Solidarity and Emergency Aid Reserve, which is triggered to deal with major natural disasters, and €3 billion for the Flexibility Instrument, which, as its name suggests, can be used to respond to any sort of critical situation.
Despite the worsening effects of climate change and a strong diplomatic push from Greece, a country badly hit by wildfires, leaders did not go all the way: their deal earmarks €1.5 billion for emergency aid and €2 billion for the Flexibility Instrument.
ADVERTISEMENTInterest payments: zero
As a result of the aforementioned crises, the EU had to press the pedal to the metal on its joint borrowing, most notably to build the COVID-19 recovery fund.
The €800-billion plan, which will be rolled out until 2026, comes with a considerable bill of interest payments, which drastically swelled as inflation hit double digits and the European Central Bank retaliated with consecutive rate hikes.
Facing a lofty invoice, the Commission pleaded with member states to add €18.9 billion to the budget review, an amount that immediately raised eyebrows. (The figure to cover overrun costs is variable and is now estimated at €15 billion.)
In the end, leaders opted for a three-step “cascade mechanism.” First, money will come from the existing provisions within the recovery fund. If this is not enough, Brussels will draw funds from programmes that are underperforming and the Flexibility Instrument. If this is still not enough, the third step will kick in and create an instrument financed by “de-commitments,” financial envelopes that were unspent or cancelled.
Only when all of this has failed will the cascade hit leaders as the Commission will be entitled to ask member states to provide direct contributions.
ADVERTISEMENTRedeployments: €10.6 billion
All the numbers listed above make a total of €64.6 billion but there’s a catch: countries will only cough up €21 billion. How is it possible?
Besides the €33 billion in loans from Ukraine, which involves the Commission and Kyiv, member states decided to shift €10.6 billion from ongoing EU initiatives: €4.6 billion from Global Europe, €2.1 billion from Horizon Europe, €1.3 billion from assistance to displaced workers, €1.1 billion from agriculture and cohesion funds, €1 billion from EU4Health and €0.6 from a special reserve to cushion Brexit disruption.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior Commission official said the overnight cuts to Horizon Europe, the bloc’s flagship research programme, and EU4Health were unfortunate and “difficult to swallow.”
“At this point in time, it’s impossible for us to really tell you what this will mean in practice,” the official said about the potential effects of the €10.6-billion redeployment push.
In the case of EU4Health, the chop represents about 27% of the money left in the envelope, established less than four years ago in response to the pandemic. The demanded changes to both Horizon and EU4Health are likely to enrage the European Parliament, which needs to co-approve the budget review.
ADVERTISEMENT“This is something that is not easy,” the senior official added. But “we will religiously follow what the legislators decide.”
For the wife, Zhao Yaliang, the pictures are visual love letters from her husband, the imprisoned artist Gao Zhen.
Mr. Gao is in a Chinese detention center, awaiting trial and almost certain conviction on charges that he broke a law against slandering the country’s heroes and martyrs, according to Ms. Zhao. He is being prosecuted for irreverent sculptures of the revolutionary leader Mao Zedong that he made more than 15 years ago, before the law even existed.
Mr. Gao, 69, is part of a generation of avant-garde Chinese artists that achieved international fame in the 2000s. While he later emigrated to the United States, Mr. Gao was detained in August 2024 at his studio on the outskirts of Beijing when he and his family visited China.
The authorities have since blocked Ms. Zhao, a writer and photographer, from leaving the country. She and their son, who is a U.S. citizen, have been stuck in China for over a year. The State Department said in a statement that the United States was “deeply concerned” about Mr. Gao’s arrest and the restrictions placed on Ms. Zhao. “We strongly oppose any exit ban that prevents a U.S. citizen child from departing China,” it said.
Speaking by video chat, Ms. Zhao, 47, says that while in detention, her husband wrote letters and made some 80 of these hand-torn pictures — a version of the traditional folk art of Chinese paper cutting, or jianzhi.
“He’s telling me to take better care of myself and our son,” she said, pointing to an image of a woman with two streaks running down her face — a portrait of herself weeping.
Mr. Gao faces up to three years in prison for acts that “damage the reputation” of Chinese heroes and martyrs.
His arrest under that law, which was passed in 2018, is testimony to how much the space for expression has shrunk in China. In the early 2000s, he and his younger brother Gao Qiang held secret exhibitions in Beijing and got away with taking on taboo topics like the 1966-76 decade of political turmoil known as the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in the death of their father, and the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. Known as the Gao brothers, the duo were seen as cultural ambassadors to the West, representing a China that was more willing to face its past.
In today’s China, that kind of reckoning has become nearly impossible, as the leader Xi Jinping has overseen a crackdown on the questioning of official narratives. The law against slandering martyrs and heroes has also been used to punish journalists, stand-up comedians and regular citizens making comments online.
Mr. Gao was arrested for three provocative sculptures of Mao Zedong that he made with his brother. In one, the revolutionary is depicted with breasts and a Pinocchio nose; in another, a group of Chairman Maos with guns prepare to execute Jesus Christ. The third, called “Mao’s Guilt,” portrays the former leader, who was responsible for years of famine and upheaval, kneeling in repentance.
“Mao Zedong has been dead for nearly half a century, yet his ghost still haunts China, harming Chinese people,” said Mr. Gao’s brother, who also emigrated to New York. He said the Chinese authorities had arrested Mr. Gao merely for doing his job as an artist.
“This humiliation,” the brother said, “torments me every day.”
The trigger for Mr. Gao’s detention may not have been his art but his decision to move to the United States. He and his family relocated from Beijing to New York in 2022, joining his brother and other government critics who have been driven away by Mr. Xi’s crackdown and severe pandemic-era controls.
When his mother-in-law became ill last year, his wife decided to return for a visit. Mr. Gao insisted on joining her and their son, even though friends warned it could be dangerous. He wanted to revive their work studio and argued he was not important enough for the police to bother with. As a permanent U.S. resident Mr. Gao had traveled back and forth between China and the United States without issue for the last decade.
But on the morning of Aug. 26, almost three months after he had returned to China, more than 30 police stormed Mr. Gao’s art studio in Sanhe City in Hebei Province, near Beijing. Four of the officers grabbed Ms. Zhao, forcing her and their son into the kitchen. She tried to comfort their son as they watched officers pin her husband to a couch and handcuff him.
“Now with him being taken away, I realize that we were always living on the edge of a cliff,” Ms. Zhao said.
Victoria Zhang, a friend of the Gao brothers and president of Kunlun Press and the Borderless Culture and Art Center in New York, believes the Chinese authorities want to make an example of Mr. Gao to silence others who have moved overseas.
“Don’t assume that just because you’ve fled abroad, the Chinese Communist Party can’t touch you. The moment you return home they will punish you,” Ms. Zhang said.
Ms. Zhao later attempted to return to New York with her son but was stopped at the airport in Beijing by officials who said she was not allowed to leave on national security grounds. When she tried to go to the U.S. Embassy for help, the two were intercepted by police and taken back to Sanhe City.
“It’s the strategy they always use — controlling your family to get you to confess quickly,” she said. Despite this, she says her husband will not plead guilty.
She and their son are staying in an apartment in Sanhe City, where they lead an existence in limbo. While Jia longs for New York, where he went by the name of Justin, Ms. Zhao tries to keep his life as normal as possible. After he missed the first semester of first grade, the police found a local school for him to enroll in. The mother and son’s days are now filled with school and after-school activities, and her attempts to limit his screen time. They spend weekends in the 798 Art District in Beijing, where the Gao brothers once held exhibitions.
Still, she worries about the trauma her son has experienced. For a time, he refused to leave her side, and he still wakes up at night with nightmares. Although the boy saw his father being detained by police, Ms. Zhao tells him that “Dad is just away at work.” This has also become the story that the son now repeats at school when classmates ask.
“In reality, he understands. He knows everything. He just wants to comfort me,” Ms. Zhao said.
Along with the letters, the torn paper portraits were a source of solace for Ms. Zhao, but now all their correspondence has been stopped. In August, Ai Weiwei, the dissident Chinese artist, published a letter that appeared to be from her husband. Since then, Mr. Gao has been cut off from getting pen and paper, in what Ms. Zhao believes is punishment for that public communication. And he can no longer send or receive letters.
Ms. Zhao says her husband’s health has suffered during detention. He has often needed a wheelchair, and he may be suffering a hardening of the blood vessels called arteriosclerosis, which could cause a stroke and other problems.
She worries about his mental health too. He has been banned from using the detention center’s library and he is not allowed time outdoors, she said.
Ms. Zhao now spends her days working on some of her husband’s projects and keeping a diary with Jia. Their lawyer is allowed to have weekly meetings with Mr. Gao at the detention center, but she is not allowed to see him. She and her son go anyway, waiting outside.
“I get to feel a little closer to him,” she said.
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Two teenage asylum seekers from Afghanistan have been jailed after admitting to the rape of a 15-year-old girl in a U.K. park, officials have confirmed.
According to police, the victim had been in Leamington in Warwickshire with friends on May 10 when they met Jan Jahanzeb and Israr Niazal.
The teenage girl began talking with them before they asked her to join them on a walk.
They then led her to a park area known as Newbold Comyn, where they raped her, Warwickshire police confirmed in a statement released online.
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Two teenagers admit rape charges in UK court proceedings after a park attack.
Following the attack, the teenager managed to flag down a passerby, who contacted local police.
Detectives launched an investigation using CCTV footage and photographs the victim had taken on her phone earlier in the day.
Officers were able to identify and arrest the two 17-year-old suspects.
Jahanzeb and Niazal were charged with rape and later appeared before the youth court in Coventry, where they admitted the offense.
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Two teenage asylum seekers from Afghanistan were jailed after admitting to the rape of a 15-year-old girl in Leamington, Warwickshire. (Peter Thompson/Heritage Images/Getty Images)
At their sentencing hearing at Warwick Crown Court on Monday, the judge lifted reporting restrictions that had previously prevented the pair from being named because of their age.
It was also confirmed in court that both are Afghan asylum seekers.
Jahanzeb was sentenced to 10 years and eight months, while Niazal received nine years and 10 months.
Both will begin their terms in a Young Offenders’ Institution and will be transferred to an adult prison at a later stage.
They were also placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for life and handed indefinite restraining orders.
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Police officers in the U.K. (Jacob King/PA Images via Getty Images)
U.K. Detective Chief Inspector Richard Hobbs praised the victim for her courage in coming forward.
“This was a hugely traumatic incident, and I can’t speak highly enough of the victim for the bravery she has shown,” he said in a statement.
He added that the investigation had been handled by specially trained officers who had supported the victim from the outset.
“Jahanzeb and Niazal went out of their way to befriend the victim with the intention of raping her. The length of their sentence reflects the severity of their crime and the need to protect the public from them,” he added.
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DCI Hobbs said he hoped the case would reassure other victims of sexual violence that they would be listened to and supported if they report offenses.
“We will always investigate thoroughly and sensitively, and do everything in our power to bring offenders to justice,” he added.
Central American nation on edge after voting plagued by fraud claims and a recent history of contested elections.
Published On 8 Dec 2025
Election officials in Honduras have released updated voting results from the country’s November 30 election, following a three-day pause in tallies amid allegations of fraud and inconsistencies.
With 89 percent of ballots tallied on Monday, the conservative candidate Nasry Asfura held a slim lead of 40.21 percent over centrist contender Salvador Nasralla, who has 39.5 percent.
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Rixi Moncada, a leftist candidate with the governing LIBRE party, is trailing in third place, with 19.28 percent.
“After carrying out the necessary technical actions (with external auditing), the data is now being updated in the results,” Ana Paola Hall, president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), said in a social media post.
Allegations of fraud had dominated the lead-up to the election, and statements from United States President Donald Trump have likewise stirred controversy.
In the final days before the election, Trump indicated that he may not be able to work with anyone but Asfura. That, in turn, led to an outcry from other candidates who accused the US leader of election meddling.
The electoral body stated that about 14 percent of the tally sheets showed inconsistencies and would be reviewed. Hall added in her post that candidates must “stay alert and, where applicable, file the corresponding challenges in accordance with the law”.
Following a coup in 2009, Honduras experienced a period of repression and disputed elections that left many sceptical about the legitimacy of the electoral process. Security forces killed at least 16 people when they opened fire on protesters following a contested vote in 2017, with about 30 killed in protests across the country.
The prolonged vote-counting has fuelled concerns that similar clashes might erupt.
The opposition has also criticised Trump’s stated preference for Asfura as a form of interference, given his threat that US support could be withdrawn if he did not win.
Trump has previously written, “If he [Asfura] doesn’t win, the United States will not be throwing good money after bad.”
Moncada, the LIBRE candidate, has said she will not recognise the results that took place under “interference and coercion”. Nasralla has also said that Trump’s interference may have cost him votes.
Accusations of impropriety are widespread, with a conservative member of the CNE panel accusing a LIBRE member of “intimidation”, and Nasralla saying that “the corrupt ones are the ones holding up the counting process”.
Rights groups and civil society organisations have called for patience and transparency.
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