Published on 17/07/2026 – 16:41 GMT+2•Updated
16:42

Hungary has taken significant steps to restore the rule of law in the two months since Prime Minister Péter Magyar took office, the European Commission said in a report presented on Friday.

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The new government has launched “intense reform efforts”, with several legislative changes already advanced, according to the report, which describes the progress made as “impressive” given the short time since the change of government.

“You have a very radical change compared with last year’s report. Things have moved very, very quickly in the right direction,” a senior EU official told Euronews.

A key development was Hungary’s recent decision to join the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, which investigates and prosecutes financial crimes affecting the EU budget across member states.

The report also highlights progress in several areas, including anti-corruption measures, asset declarations and the work of the Integrity Authority.

Magyar has also dismantled the “Sovereignty Protection Office”, a body established under his predecessor, Viktor Orbán, which could access citizens’ personal data to investigate and sanction alleged foreign agents. The office had been targeted by an EU infringement procedure.

“We see some very positive trends […] in the early weeks of the new government’s mandate, a lot has already been done,” EU Justice Commissioner Michael McGrath said during a press conference presenting the report.

‘Things can’t change overnight’

Despite the reform push, the Commission said significant shortcomings remain in Hungary’s justice system.

“Things cannot completely change overnight,” a senior EU official told Euronews, stressing that many recommendations made in previous years’ reports have yet to be addressed.

One example is the procedure for appointing the Prosecutor General, which remains a concern for the Commission because it could allow undue political interference in individual cases.

The Commission does not rank EU countries’ performance, but publishes dedicated chapters assessing each member state. For Hungary, the remaining concerns include the functioning of the judiciary, corruption risks and unresolved violations of EU law.

Civic space also continues to be classified as “obstructed” in the report. The complexity of registration procedures in Hungary remains a challenge for smaller organisations with limited resources.

The Rule of Law Report could become increasingly important in the coming years, as the European Commission seeks to strengthen the link between compliance with rule-of-law standards and the allocation of EU funds under the 2028-34 EU budget.

Countries that fail to meet these standards could see payments suspended, although Commissioner McGrath stressed that there would be no automatic mechanism triggered solely by the report’s findings.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A tanker came under attack traveling through the Strait of Hormuz taking the route closest to Oman, the British military said Friday.

The report from the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center described the strike as happening early Friday and involving a projectile hitting the vessel.

The UKMTO said the ship sustained minor damage to its port side.

“All crew are safe and accounted for, no environmental impact has been reported and the vessel is continuing to its next port of call,” the UKMTO said.

Iran has been attacking tankers traveling on the route near Oman but did not immediately acknowledge any attack.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United States expanded its airstrike campaign against Iran early Friday by hitting more bridges and collapsing a tower at a key Iranian port, part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to start striking infrastructure to pressure Tehran to ease its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz. Iran launched new missile attacks against U.S.-allied nations in the Middle East, including Qatar, a key mediator in the war.

The interim ceasefire agreed to last month has collapsed, and the region has endured days of back-and-forth attacks by the U.S. and Iran as they battle for control of the strait. Iranian officials say U.S. strikes have killed dozens of people and wounded hundreds of others, with new casualties reported in Friday’s strikes.

When the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent the price of oil soaring and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations.

Speaking in a primetime address to the American public, Trump insisted the war was going well.

“We are likewise winning big in Iran, and you will see the fruits of that labor very, very shortly,” Trump said.

Bridges and a port tower hit in Iran

The U.S. airstrikes hit bridges overnight into Friday in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, killing at least seven people, Iranian state television reported. The attacks hit Bandar Khamir, a city on Iran’s coast on the Strait of Hormuz.

The highway and railway bridge strikes appeared aimed at cutting off Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port, from roads leading into the Islamic Republic’s central region onward to Tehran, the capital.

While other routes still are open, the U.S. strikes could expand further, potentially disrupting both the movement of military materiel and goods needed for Iran’s 90 million people.

The U.S. military’s Central Command said it hit dozens of targets in its latest airstrikes, which concluded at dawn Friday, the sixth night in a row of American attacks.

The strikes also collapsed a tower at Iran’s Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman, a key trade route for landlocked, neighboring Afghanistan, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared the image of the surveillance tower collapsing, part of his effort to assert American control over the strait. That image had circulated social media via activists prior to Hegseth sharing it.

Chabahar port, which Iran had been running with support from India, has been a repeated target of American airstrikes. Iranian state media acknowledged a third round of strikes on the facility without immediately acknowledging the tower’s collapse.

Iran described the tower as overseeing commercial traffic into the port. However, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard also operates at ports across the country.

Iran retaliates by targeting Qatar, a mediator in the war

On Friday, Qatar twice warned the public to take shelter as a barrage of Iranian missiles targeted the nation. People heard explosions overhead as air defenses fired to intercept the missiles. Qatar’s Interior Ministry said falling debris wounded a child.

Qatar, along with Pakistan, is a key mediator in trying to reach an end to the Iran war. But talks have broken down over Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran also targeted Bahrain and Kuwait early Friday. Jordan’s military said it intercepted three incoming missiles Friday morning launched by Iran.

Explosions also could be heard Friday morning in Irbil and Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region as air defenses targeted incoming fire. There was no immediate word on any damage.

Strikes come as Iran and US vie for Strait of Hormuz

Trump has returned in recent days to his threats to target Iranian power stations and bridges to try to compel Iran to loosen its hold on the strait, through which about a fifth of all oil and natural gas traded once passed in peacetime. The U.S. also reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports to halt its shipments of crude oil.

Week-to-week cargo shipments through the strait dropped by almost a quarter at the beginning of the month, according to maritime data firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence. And that was before the recent surge in tit-for-tat attacks.

Given the risks, some oil shippers are transiting the strait with their location devices turned off, but many are just staying put, Lloyd’s said Thursday. A growing amount of the region’s energy is being shipped through pipelines, but not nearly enough to offset the decline in shipping through the strait.

U.S. forces have redirected three commercial vessels trying to run the blockade, disabled one that did not comply and boarded another “to ensure full compliance,” the U.S. military’s Central Command said in a post on X.

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Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, Annika Wolters in Rayong, Thailand, and Stella Martany in Irbil, Iraq, contributed to this report.

UNITED NATIONS — The Democratic Republic of Congo does not view growing American involvement in its critical minerals industry as a contest with China, the country’s foreign minister told Fox News Digital, arguing that Kinshasa needs multiple partners to transform its vast natural wealth into prosperity for its people.

“I don’t like talking about competition. I like talking about complementarity,” Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner said in an exclusive interview at the United Nations.

“A country as big as the USA, but also a country as big as the DRC and as big as China, they do not develop just with one single partner,” she added. “They develop with different partnerships that respond to different needs and that bring different expertise to the table.”

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The comments come as the Trump administration seeks to increase American access to Congo’s copper, cobalt, lithium, gold and other strategic resources, while reducing U.S. reliance on mineral supply chains dominated by China.

A strategic partnership signed by Washington and Kinshasa Dec. 4, 2025, calls for increased economic cooperation, investment and the development of secure and transparent critical-mineral supply chains. The agreement accompanied a broader regional framework linking economic integration to efforts to end decades of conflict between Congo and Rwanda.

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A separate arrangement involving DR Congo’s state mining company Gécamines and commodities trader Mercuria could give U.S. buyers priority access to some copper and cobalt supplies, Reuters reported Dec. 5, 2025. The U.S. International Development Finance Corporation also expressed interest in taking a strategic stake in the partnership.

Kayikwamba Wagner said relations between the U.S. and DR Congo were taking “a more concrete shape” based on mutual economic interests.

She said Kinshasa welcomed “more U.S. interests in the DRC” that could help the country turn its mineral wealth into “tangible transformations for the lives of Congolese,” while also delivering benefits to American partners.

Speaking separately at a high-level U.N. meeting on critical minerals Tuesday, Kayikwamba Wagner warned that the global shift toward clean energy must not reproduce an economic model in which raw materials leave Africa while processing, technology and most of the profits remain elsewhere.

“The global energy transition must not become another extractive transition,” she said. “If it merely replaces one form of dependency with another, it will have fallen short of its promise.”

She called for foreign partnerships to support local processing, infrastructure, technology transfers, research, industrialization and access to financing — not simply secure supplies of raw materials.

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The minerals push is closely connected to the U.S.-mediated peace process between the DRC and Rwanda. The countries initially signed a peace agreement in Washington June 27, 2025, before presidents Félix Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame reaffirmed the deal and signed related economic agreements on Dec. 4. The framework was intended both to reduce fighting and attract Western investment to a region rich in cobalt, copper, tantalum and other minerals.

Kayikwamba Wagner acknowledged that the agreement had not ended the violence but said Washington’s willingness to impose consequences for violations showed that the process remained meaningful.

“This is a 30-year conflict we’re dealing with,” she said. “It’s not going to happen overnight.”

She praised the administration for sanctioning the Rwanda Defense Force and senior Rwandan officials over what the Treasury Department described as their support for the M23 rebel group. Treasury said in March that the RDF had supported, trained and fought alongside M23 as it seized territory and strategic mining locations in eastern Congo. Rwanda has repeatedly denied supporting M23.

“I find it encouraging to see that we have with us a partner that is not willing to give up at the first obstacle,” Kayikwamba Wagner said.

She was in New York as the DRC, which holds the Security Council presidency for July, elevated the connection between natural resources, armed conflict and sexual violence.

Kayikwamba Wagner said rape and other forms of conflict-related sexual violence had risen sharply in areas held by M23 and Rwandan forces, affecting women and girls as well as men and boys.

Victims in occupied areas, she said, often lack access to courts, healthcare or other avenues for redress.

“This is also one of the reasons why we continue to be mobilized against this illegal occupation of eastern DRC,” she said, arguing that restoring state authority was essential to providing survivors with justice and medical care.

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In her U.N. remarks, she cited the Rubaya mining area, which is under M23 control and supplies a significant share of global tantalum demand. She said U.N. experts estimated that at least 1,400 tons of coltan were smuggled into Rwanda during the first year after the mines were seized, generating approximately $800,000 per month for the armed group.

The Treasury Department imposed additional sanctions on June 25 against a network it accused of working with M23 to smuggle minerals from eastern Congo into Rwanda, saying the action was intended to support the Washington peace framework and improve transparency in regional mineral supply chains.