India has imposed limits on gasoline and diesel sales at retail fuel stations to avoid supply crunches, with commercial consumers banned from buying any fuel from retail stations, Bloomberg reported, noting there will be daily limits on diesel sales.
The diesel cap was set at 200 litres per vehicle or customer, with resale of the fuel forbidden, Reuters noted in a report on the news. Commercial users, meanwhile, will have to get their fuels from bulk sellers after their rush to retail fuel stations drained some of them. Fuels are cheaper at retail stations to shield consumers from the oil price shock.
The limits will be in effect for an initial period of 90 days, per the government order that instituted them. They can be canceled earlier, however, the document also said.
Since the war in the Middle East began and cut off over 40% of India’s crude oil flows, those that passed through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the highest-flying economies in Asia, have seen their oil import bill soar, investors fleeing the capital market, and the local currency plunging to an all-time low against the U.S. dollar.
As a result, the world’s third-largest crude importer saw its wholesale inflation jump to 8.3% in April from a year earlier, significantly accelerating from 3.88% annual inflation in March, driving wholesale fuel prices higher. These surged in April, with gasoline prices up by 32.4% and diesel prices up by 25.19%. That’s up from a monthly rise of 2.5% for gasoline in March, and 3.62% for diesel. For May, inflation is seen rising by 4% as a result of the energy price surge, with wholesale inflation soaring by over 9%.
Because of the energy flow disruption, India ended a four-year freeze on fuel prices, hiking them four times in the space of a single month.
Northeast Heat Wave Arrives As World Cup Matches Get Underway
As the World Cup starts, a prolonged spell of summer heat is expected to grip New York and much of the Northeast through the end of the week and into the weekend.
Daytime temperatures are forecast to reach the 90s across several major cities, while high humidity will make conditions feel even hotter, according to Bloomberg.
Forecasters expect the most intense heat on Thursday and Friday, when heat alerts will be in place across large parts of the region. Multiple cities along the East Coast could see daily temperature records challenged or broken as the unusually warm air mass spreads across the area.
The timing coincides with the start of several FIFA World Cup matches in the Northeast, including games scheduled in New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. While temperatures are expected to ease somewhat after sunset, spectators and athletes may still face hot and uncomfortable conditions during evening events.
Bloomberg writes that the heat is also expected to drive up electricity consumption as households and businesses rely more heavily on air conditioning. Transportation networks could experience disruptions as well, since extreme temperatures can affect rail infrastructure and overhead power systems, leading to slower train service.
Elsewhere, a separate weather system is creating risks across parts of the Midwest. Forecasters have warned that strong thunderstorms could bring damaging winds, large hail, isolated tornadoes, and localized power outages, potentially affecting travel and other infrastructure.
Endgame Finally? Iran Peace Deal Signing Expected Within 24 Hours, Technical Talks To Follow, Pakistan’s Sharif Says
After Friday witnessed a rare moment of agreement between Tehran and Washington saying that indeed a peace deal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is indeed ‘very close’ – there’s been more color issued by Pakistan.
The country’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said that the United States and Iran have agreed to the final text of the agreement, but that curiously Pakistan is now preparing for an electronic signing expected within the next 24 hours.
Is this going to be history’s first Docusigned peace agreement?
Sharif further indicated this signing will be followed by technical-level talks this upcoming week – but this is definitely where the proverbial devil will be in the details.
Contained within the MoU signing will reportedly be an extension of the April 7 ceasefire by 60 days, during which the Strait of Hormuz would gradually reopen – or we should say that this is at least the very optimistic version of things, given that Tehran still insists that its military is in control of the Strait, which the Pentagon has flatly rejected is a a reality.
So Iran is seeking to hold on tightly to its obvious geographic leverage, while the US is rejecting that this is the case at all.
Another interesting possibly point of contention – but which looks to be merely papered over for now – is the status of the nuclear file, which has long been a major point of fierce contention.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made clear Friday Iran’s understanding that terms dealing with the country’s nuclear program would be finalized in the 60 days after the initial agreement is signed. So in essence, this means Iran could get its wish of pushing nuclear negotiations back, only after the hot conflict has clearly ended. Iran has long sought to separate the issues of a final end to the war from consideration of its nuclear program.
Importantly Araghchi indicated the two sides could extend the 60-day period further, and a yet a lot could go wrong in such an extended interim. Still, it remains that Washington – and certainly the American public – doesn’t have the appetite for an escalation that would lead to a boots-on-the-ground scenario complete with full regime change operations (and this means almost inevitable nation-building).
We are closer to a peace deal than ever before. With finalisation likely expected in the next 24 hours, Pakistan is preparing for the electronic signing of the peace deal immediately after, followed by technical level talks next week.
CNN earlier floated the possibility of peace being firmed up in a formal ceremony held in Geneva. The following Saturday report seems to lend credence to this as an impending scenario:
The foreign ministers of Pakistan and Switzerland expressed hopes of a breakthrough in peace negotiations to end the US war with Iran during a Saturday phone call, according to Islamabad’s Foreign Ministry.
Though no further details were offered, the sides said they hoped the effort would contribute to regional peace and stability.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar and Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis reportedly agreed to maintain close contact ahead of talks expected to take place prior to an upcoming G7 summit in nearby Evian, France, from June 15-17.
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal is again alleging a familiar US narrative – that there are deep rifts within Iran over just how to respond to US deal-making efforts. The question is to what degree the civilian leadership actually holds the power to make final decisions, or also how tight a grip the IRGC holds over this process.
“Iran faces its own political dilemma in selling a deal to hard-liners in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are steadfastly opposed to giving in to Trump’s demands for limits on its nuclear program, especially without upfront concessions from Washington,” WSJ writes. “But it has absorbed damage during the war and from the U.S. blockade of the Persian Gulf, pushing Tehran toward an agreement.”
Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi said he discussed the draft MoU with the U.S. in a joint meeting with the Russian and Chinese ambassadors in Tehran. “The strategic partnership between Iran, China, and Russia, will continue with full strength,” Gharibabadi said. pic.twitter.com/8srDtnobyF
— Ariel Oseran أريئل أوسيران (@ariel_oseran) June 13, 2026
In the meantime peace and red lines are still being hotly tested:
U.S. forces shot down multiple Iranian one-way attack drones heading toward the Strait of Hormuz, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday, in the latest military flare-up even as Washington and Tehran cite progress in peace talks.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the drones had posed a threat to commercial traffic.
President Donald Trump had warned Iran earlier on Friday against firing more drones at ships attempting to transit the Strait, saying Tehran “better get their act together, and FAST!”
Iran’s strategy has been to smell blood in the water and capitalize – sensing a bit of White House panic (the longer this drags on… quagmire being a key dreaded word), and so it has an interest in prolonging the economic pain and global energy shock toward exacting a pound of flesh from the Trump administration (so long as the Islamic Republic itself can survive the stand off).
Anthropic Blocks Foreign Access To Fable 5, Mythos 5 After U.S. National Security Order
About four days after Anthropic released Claude Fable 5, a next-generation “Mythos-class” AI model, the frontier AI lab led by Dario Amodei revealed late Friday that it was disabling foreign customers’ access to these cutting-edge models, citing an export-control directive from the federal government.
“The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees,” Anthropic wrote on X around 9 p.m. ET.
The AI lab’s website stated that the federal directive was received around 5:21 p.m. ET. To ensure compliance, the lab was forced to shut off Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all customers.
Anthropic continued, “The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Claude models is not affected.”
The US government, citing national security authorities, has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States, including foreign national Anthropic employees.
Anthropic pointed out that it understands the government’s concern centers on a potential method of bypassing, or “jailbreaking,” Fable 5.
Dario’s company laid out some of Fable’s safeguards:
We have instituted strong safeguards that greatly reduce the likelihood that Fable is misused for tasks related to cybersecurity (among others). In fact, our safeguards are so strong that many users have complained that they are overly broad.
In the weeks leading up to the launch of Fable, Anthropic worked with the US government, the UK AISI, multiple private third-party organizations and internal teams to red-team Fable’s safeguards for thousands of hours in total.
These tests showed that Fable’s safeguards are substantially more effective than those of any previously deployed model.
No testers have yet been able to find a universal jailbreak—a jailbreak method that can very broadly bypass the model’s safeguards, unblocking a wide range of cyber capabilities.
We suspect that perfect jailbreak resistance is not currently possible for any model provider. Every safeguard used in the industry is vulnerable to non-universal jailbreaks (which can elicit some cyber information in specific circumstances), and it is likely that universal jailbreaks will eventually be found in the future. We stated this clearly when we released Fable 5.
Given that perfect jailbreak resistance does not appear to be possible today, Anthropic adopted a defense in depth strategy with Fable 5. We aimed to make jailbreaks either narrow (in the case of non-universal jailbreaks) or very expensive to produce (in the case of universal jailbreaks), and to combine this with thorough monitoring to quickly detect and shut down any successful attacks. This is also why Anthropic has required 30-day retention of customer data with Fable—a policy change that carries real costs for us with customers, but that allows us to research and mitigate jailbreaks.
We stand by this defense in depth strategy. It reduces the risks posed by Fable, making them comparable to the risks of existing models already deployed across the industry.
We have not even received a disclosure of a concerning non-universal potential jailbreak that led to a harmful result. The potential jailbreaks that have been disclosed to us are either entirely benign responses or are minor findings that provide no Mythos-specific uplift.
Last week, shortly after Tuesday’s Fable release, BMO analyst Brian Pitz told clients, “We maintain that Anthropic is the leading pure-play AI lab, combining best-in-class model intelligence with its cutting-edge, benchmark-leading Claude Fable 5 frontier model released June 9, 2026; with clear commercial traction and momentum in its enterprise offerings.”
Pitz said, “Anthropic’s strengths are particularly evident in coding, agents, and enterprise, where Claude has emerged as a leading model powering tools such as Claude Code and Cowork, both of which have scaled rapidly. This reinforces the company’s advantage in translating model intelligence beyond benchmark performance into viable, real-world applications—what we view as the next key battleground in AI.”
The release of Claude Fable 5 prompted Pitz’s team to declare, “While it is too early to crown a winner among foundation models, we see Anthropic and OpenAI as the leading pure-play AI labs today.”
In George Orwell’s 1984, Great Britain was just a province of Oceania named “Airstrip One” as a none-too-subtle nod to the U.K.’s role as host to the heavy bombers of U.S. Eighth Air Force during World War II.
Four decades past the real 1984, and there’s still no Oceania. But Britain looks more and more like Airstrip One as Parliament considers a bill opening up everyone’s smartphone to government supervision — and jail time for tech execs who don’t submit.
You had to figure this was probably coming, right?
Right.
Reclaim the Net reports that “Ministers are reportedly drafting a law that would force Apple, Google, and the rest to make it impossible for a child to send, receive, view, or share a single nude image, with the executives who refuse facing up to five years in prison.”
That might sound all well and good, but as usual, For the Children™ is little more than the government’s justification for total surveillance.
“You cannot block every naked picture someone might stumble across without inspecting every picture, every message, every video call, every streamed film, on every device, all the time,” Reclaim noted, with nudity serving as “the excuse and the unbroken view into your phone is the actual prize.”
The industry term is “client-side scanning,” which sounds much nicer than “a government mandated app that looks at everything on your phone all the time.”
And even that sounds better than “Big Brother is Watching You,” which is exactly what it is.
As already required by Britain’s Online Safety Act, Apple and Google forcibly install age verification on every iPhone and Android device in the UK via app store updates.
No, it can’t be uninstalled.
As I reported in January, what this means in practice is that London’s Office of Communications (“Ofcom” in Newspeak) mandates on-device software able to read everybody’s “private” messages in real-time and scan their images, too, before any personal encryption tools come into play.
London pinky-swears that it’ll only look for CSAM and terrorism-related materials, but as the Telegram’s Zia Yusuf put it back then, “the slippery slope is obvious” and “mission creep is inevitable.” The country looking to ban traditional chef’s knives (really!) in the name of safety simply cannot be trusted with this much digital power.
Nobody can, really.
The way things work now, if you don’t pass the mandatory age check, the iPhone software bars adult websites on every installable browser, and the Communication Safety feature scans every AirDrop, FaceTime, Messages, and photo for nudity, blurring whatever it catches. And the Android filter works in a similar way.
All For the Children™, naturally.
But as Reclaim also pointed out, client-side scanning is “a general-purpose content scanner pointed at one target this year and swivelable toward any other the next, a flyer for the wrong march, a banned book, a face the Home Office has taken against.”
Now that the software is installed, Parliament can authorize the Home Office to ignore the age check and look for whatever it wants to on literally everyone’s device. That’s exactly what Parliament wants to do next.
Orwell envisioned ever-present two-way telescreens mounted on almost every wall that could only try to monitor everyone all the time. He never envisioned a telescreen that people would pay good money for, carry around 24/7, and trust with their every notion and secret.
The Swedish government has announced plans to reduce the age of criminal responsibility to 14 after dropping plans to lock up violent offenders as young as 13 in special prison units.
Earlier this month, Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer announced plans to cut the age from 15 to 13, but on June 11, he said there was not enough support in parliament for that and that he had agreed to compromise at 14.
“We are going to propose that the age of criminal responsibility should be cut to 14 instead of 13 years old,” Strommer told reporters.
Currently, anyone under 15 who is suspected of having committed a serious crime is sent to a youth home, run by social services, and cannot be sentenced to a custodial sentence in prison.
Strommer said in 2025 that more than 50 children under 15 were suspected of murder or attempted murder.
There has been a surge in gang crime and drug-related violence in Sweden over the past 20 years, and it now has one of the highest rates of shootings and bombings in Europe, dozens of which were carried out by minors.
Thousands Of Gang Members
Swedish police estimate there are 17,500 active gang members and around 50,000 who are loosely associated with them.
Magnus Lindgren, a former police chief in Uppsala County and current secretary-general of the Safer Sweden Foundation, told The Epoch Times last year that there were about 15,000 “very dangerous criminals” in Sweden, who were divided evenly into biker gangs, football hooligans, and criminals from around 60 high-crime neighborhoods.
Organized crime gangs, such as the Foxtrot Network, use social media to recruit teenagers and children as young as 11 to commit acts of violence, including bombings and murders.
The recruiters, who operate anonymously, post adverts in special groups on social media apps and offer money through banking apps.
The EU’s law enforcement agency, Europol, launched Operational Taskforce GRIMM in April 2025 to target so-called “violence-as-a-service,” which it said often used “young perpetrators.”
After the 2022 elections, Ulf Kristersson, the leader of the center-right Moderates, formed a government that includes the Christian Democrats and Liberals, but has the crucial support of the right-wing Sweden Democrats, who campaigned against immigration and in favor of tougher criminal justice measures.
Kristersson’s government has overhauled Sweden’s criminal justice system, giving the police more powers and introducing tougher sentences for violent crime.
Under the new plans, children aged 14 who are convicted of violent criminal offenses will be sent to special prison units.
The U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child recommends that the age of criminal responsibility should be no lower than 14, which is the average across the European Union.
Swedish organized crime networks are also operating in Denmark, Norway, and Finland, and also in the Netherlands and Belgium, which have the two biggest ports – Rotterdam and Antwerp – for importing narcotics, hidden in cargo.
On March 12, 2025, sanctions were imposed on Rawa Majid, the alleged leader of the Foxtrot Network, one of Sweden’s largest organized crime groups, by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
OFAC stated that the gang trafficked illegal drugs and carried out attacks on Israelis and Jews in Europe on behalf of the Iranian government.
Norwegian Teen On Trial
A Norwegian teenager, Johannes Natland, was arrested in Huddersfield, England, in March 2025 and is currently on trial in London, where he has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to murder on behalf of the Foxtrot Network.
Natland, who was 18 at the time, was found in possession of two handguns and 17 bullets and has admitted to possessing firearms.
Giving evidence in court this week, Natland said he had been offered 25,000 euros ($29,000) to kill someone but said he planned to shoot himself in the foot to get out of having to do it, the BBC reported.
“I thought if I was to say no, I would be in serious danger, they’re going to hurt my family,” Natland said. “I thought they’d kill me.”
The Epoch Times reached out to Natland’s barrister, Paul Hynes KC, for comment but did not receive a response.
Hungary is dismantling the restrictive digital asset framework introduced under former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a policy overhaul that will decriminalize crypto trading and eliminate the prison sentences that had driven major platforms from the country, government spokesperson Anita Kobol said Thursday, according to Bloomberg.
The rollback marks a full reversal of legislation that took effect July 1, 2025, after parliament passed rules criminalizing the use of unlicensed exchanges and certain unauthorized high-value crypto transactions.
Those transactions — ranging between 50 million Hungarian forints (roughly $162,000) and 500 million forints (roughly $1.62 million) — subjected individuals to prison terms of up to two or five years, depending on the transaction value.
Service providers operating without a central bank license faced sentences of up to eight years.
The rules required approved validation for both crypto-to-fiat and crypto-to-crypto conversions, a burden that led platforms including Revolut to suspend crypto services in Hungary and triggered an EU probe into whether the restrictions complied with bloc-wide regulations.
Domestic trading volumes fell as local firms absorbed steep compliance costs.
Hungary’s politically motivated safeguards against bitcoin
Zoltán Tanács, Hungary’s Minister of Science and Technology, characterized the previous rules as “politically motivated” rather than market safeguards and announced the government’s intent to scrap the penalties.
The new administration plans to abolish criminal prosecution for market participants, revise cybersecurity rules affecting approximately 4,000 Hungarian businesses subject to the NIS2 directive, and align national law with the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation.
Officials have identified Estonia as the template for rebuilding Hungary’s digital regulatory environment. Tanács said the reforms should draw international platforms back to Hungary and reduce friction for domestic operators, according to Bloomberg.
The shift carries significance beyond Hungary’s borders. The Orbán-era framework was one of the most restrictive in the European Union, and the EU’s inquiry had put Hungary at odds with the broader MiCA framework that governs crypto activity across the bloc.
Alignment with MiCA would bring Hungary in line with the regulatory standard now binding all 27 member states.
Hungary’s pivot follows a wider trend of governments reconsidering punitive crypto policies. In April, Pakistan’s central bank lifted an eight-year ban on cryptocurrency operations, part of a broader move toward regulatory openness across emerging markets.
The convergence of those shifts suggests that restrictive unilateral frameworks face mounting pressure as institutional adoption of digital assets accelerates globally and cross-border regulatory coordination deepens under frameworks like MiCA.
The Hungarian government has not yet set a timeline for when the legislative changes will take effect.
Romania Asks Ukraine To Add Self-Destruct Function To Stray Drones, After One Exploded At Its Port
Errant Ukrainian drones which wonder across borders and into neighboring Baltic and Eastern European countries are becoming enough of a problem to where some NATO allies pushing for a self-destruct function.
Romanian Defense Minister Radu Miruta has proposed that Ukraine program its maritime drones to self-destruct if they veer into the country’s territorial waters, coming just on the heels of a major disaster.
The remarks were prompted by a Magura-type kamikaze naval drone having exploded in Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta on Friday.
Others also detonated while still at sea east of the city, apparently close enough to Romanian waters to be of serious concern – though Ukraine’s navy bit back by alleging that Russian signal jamming is to blame.
Miruta said that “maritime drones can be programmed so that, if control is lost, they are unable to enter Romanian territorial waters and will self-destruct once they are 12 nautical miles from the coast.”
“This should be a default feature built into the system from the moment the drone is launched into the water,” he said.
A sea drone self-destructed near an oil terminal in Romania’s Black Sea port of Constanta, without causing casualties, as Ukraine said Russia jammed the vessel causing it to drift off course https://t.co/aiiVBb6zoIpic.twitter.com/FbtP0DlxPf
The drone explosions were serious, just judging by the photographs and videos alone:
A Ukrainian maritime drone that was being used in the country’s war against Russia exploded Friday at a Black Sea port in Romania, while three other sea drones exploded outside the port, Romanian authorities said. No one was hurt.
The drone that self-detonated in the port of Constanta exploded at around 10:30 a.m., after the area had been secured and isolated by the Romanian Intelligence Service, coast guard and the Defense Ministry, authorities said.
The Romanian government described in a statement: “Immediately after identifying the drone, the Ministry of Defense contacted its Ukrainian counterparts, who confirmed that they had lost control of the operation of four drones.”
“The other three drones self-detonated — two offshore and the third outside the port,” it added. “Confirmation of these events came from both the Ukrainian side and from data obtained by the Romanian authorities.”
Romanian media report the (what appears to be a Magura-type) sea drone discovered in Constanta Port may have carried dozens of kilograms of explosives. The device was found near ARSVOM headquarters and later self-detonated after authorities evacuated and secured the area.… pic.twitter.com/2UanLH7s2w
There have also been a lot of errant aerial drone incidents of late, prompting NATO to scramble aircraft and shoot them out of the sky. These aerial drones might need a self-destruct feature as well.
Six years ago, in 2020, French political leader Marine Le Pen described the Migrant Pact, which was then in the planning stages, as the “suicide of Europe.” She said it would bring 60 to 70 million new migrants to Europe, as Remix News reported at the time.
Europe is about to find out just how prophetic its critics have been. On June 12, the highly contested EU Migration Pact officially came into force, instantly triggering a sharp political divide across the continent.
Brussels is already signaling a hardline approach toward resistance; the bloc’s own EU Migration Commissioner recently admitted that the Union is preparing a “crackdown” on member states that refuse to comply with the new relocation directives.
At the heart of the controversy is the pact’s mandatory migrant quotas, framed by Brussels as “burden-sharing.” In practice, critics argue this distribution system allows nations like Germany and France a convenient mechanism to offload asylum seekers onto Central and Eastern European nations – such as Poland and Hungary – which have historically maintained strict anti-refugee stances.
Europe’s anti-immigration politicians are already responding to what they say is a law that will bring disaster to Europe. Le Pen, six years later, is calling for a “constitutional referendum on immigration.”
“Tomorrow, the Migration Pact will enter into force. It will require the States of the European Union to welcome migrants, under penalty of fines. When we come to power, we will propose to the French a constitutional referendum on immigration, the only means to regain control of our migration policy,” she wrote on X.
Demain, le Pacte des migrations entrera en vigueur. Il imposera aux États de l’Union européenne d’accueillir des migrants, sous peine d’amendes.
Lorsque nous arriverons au pouvoir, nous proposerons aux Français un référendum constitutionnel sur l’immigration, seul moyen pour…
The financial penalties for defiance are severe. Non-compliant governments face fines as high as €21,000 per migrant, potentially costing dissenting nations hundreds of millions of euros. Furthermore, the pact allows for these financial penalties to be adjusted upward in the coming years, which could quickly escalate the cost of non-compliance into billions of euros.
Meanwhile, other establishment European politicians are celebrating the move. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz tried to frame the migration pact as a positive for controlling immigration.
“The migration turnaround has been initiated—nationally and at the European level. As of today, the Common European Asylum System applies: better control and order, faster procedures, and a fair distribution of responsibility. The reform must be implemented effectively. This is how our country will benefit,” wrote Merz.
Die Migrationswende ist eingeleitet – national und europäisch. Ab heute gilt das Gemeinsame Europäische Asylsystem: bessere Steuerung und Ordnung, schnellere Verfahren, gerechte Verteilung von Verantwortung. Die Reform muss effektiv umgesetzt werden. So profitiert unser Land.
— Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz (@bundeskanzler) June 12, 2026
Of course, the EU is also trying to sell the pact on social media as well.
Fairer rules, shared responsibility and stronger coordination. The EU pact on migration and
asylum starts applying today.
Linguistically, the EU’s emphasis on sharing a migration “burden” represents a stark rhetorical departure from the peak of the 2016 refugee crisis. A decade ago, newcomers were widely championed by Brussels as Europe’s future workforce—the doctors, lawyers, and engineers destined to salvage the continent’s aging pension systems. Today, that idealistic language has been replaced by the utilitarian vocabulary of managing a “burden.”
Strategically, the pact acts as a political pressure valve. By reducing the immediate concentration of migrants in Western Europe, Brussels hopes to blunt the rapid electoral rise of populist right-wing parties. Simultaneously, the framework seeks to introduce demographic diversity into Eastern European nations, which EU leadership has long criticized as being overly homogenous and politically conservative. Over the long term, the naturalization and family reunification of these migrants could fundamentally alter the electoral dynamics in these traditionally conservative regions in favor or left-wing and pro-migration parties.
However, Central and Eastern European populations remain overwhelmingly opposed to forced relocation. Decades of polling show a deep societal preference for maintaining current demographic structures, setting the stage for protracted constitutional and political gridlock between national capitals and Brussels.
Hungary under new leadership
The EU’s political chess board has also shifted significantly with Hungary’s recent transition of power. Former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, long the most fierce opponent of Brussels’ migration quotas, has been succeeded by Prime Minister Péter Magyar.
A report in Euractiv’s newsletter questions “whether some national governments are ready” for the EU Migration Pact, which has “raised questions over whether Brussels will need to crack down on non-compliant capitals.”
In an interview, Migration Commissioner Magnus Brunner said they are ready to use “sticks” to make countries like Hungary fall into line.
“There are sticks and carrots in the pact. So, you get funding, you get money, only if you apply the pact,” he said.
In fact, Euractiv is quite open that Magyar may be more than willing to sell out the public on the issue of migrant quotas.
“Péter Magyar, Hungary’s prime minister, once firmly opposed to the EU migration pact, is now keeping his options open. Pressed by the opposition Fidesz to rule out implementation, he sidestepped the question, saying only that ‘there will be no illegal migrants in Hungary’ under a Tisza government,” wrote Euractiv.
This carefully worded distinction leaves the door wide open for the arrival of migrants who are processed “legally” under the parameters of the new EU framework. Unsurprisingly, Commissioner Brunner has lauded the new Hungarian administration’s shift, calling the government “very constructive” and adding, “Our job is to explain the advantages for Hungary and make them visible on a political level.”
Certainly, Brunner was smart enough to not frame the new migration pact as the “suicide of Europe” while trying threaten the new Hungarian government. He can be given that much credit.
Writer and philosopher Ayn Rand was often accused of inventing cartoonish villains.
Rogues like Ellsworth Toohey in “The Fountainhead” would scheme to seize the global economy’s commanding heights in pursuit of a distorted sense of justice.
But the people who hold such ideas don’t just appear in cartoons or in Rand’s novels.
Enter Thomas Piketty and company.
In early June, Piketty – the French economist whose work on inequality has made him something of a rock star even while being serially challenged for methodological errors, data imputations and cherry-picked baselines – and his large team unveiled what can only be described as a villainous plan.
It’s a comprehensive program for global managed decline dressed up in the language of climate justice and equality.
The plan is far too ambitious for most nations to accept.
But given the influence of Piketty and his circle of economists on U.S. wealth taxes and prominent global policy proposals, we should take its underlying ideas seriously.
Piketty’s plan would cap GDP per capita in wealthy countries at roughly $69,000, far less than America’s current $94,430.
The plan would also limit annual global economic growth to between 0 percent and 0.5 percent. Monsieur Piketty would allot only 0.115 percent annual growth to the U.S, whose GDP has expanded by more than 3 percent on average since 1930. This would hurt not just the billionaires but every American.
The plan would mandate an international three-day work week and reduce construction activity by 70 percent, manufacturing by 87 percent and even leisure-sector activity by 58 percent.
There would be massive and punishing trade actions against noncompliant countries.
It envisions a “Global Justice Fund” financed not by taxing carbon but by global wealth and income taxes.
This fund would be 20 times the size of current development aid and would be administered by a new international bureaucracy answerable to heaven knows who.
Don’t be fooled by Piketty’s training as an economist.
This is not economic thinking. Consider the utter inconsistency of relying on a vast stock of wealth (mostly from the U.S.) for redistribution while suffocating long-term growth to near zero. Much of the value of the assets needed to finance this scheme would be destroyed. It is also disqualifying to claim that sub-Saharan Africa will grow at 4 percent if we crush the economies that provide the capital for its investments and buy its exports.
Let’s ask the uncomfortable question: What would it require to enforce Piketty’s plan?
About this matter, he is conveniently vague.
Confiscating something on the order of 10 percent of world GDP and redirecting it through a newly created supranational body does not happen by asking nicely.
You cannot restructure the global economy at that scale without a coercive apparatus that dwarfs anything in human history.
The mechanism must be authoritarian.
It would require a world government with the power to tell billions of people which jobs they may and may not hold, what they may build, what they may eat and how many hours they are permitted to work.
And to what end?
“Climate change” is an insufficient answer when Piketty’s entire edifice is built on a discredited foundation. The report relies on a baseline from the “RCP8.5” climate scenario that projects Earth warming by as much as 4.8 degrees Celsius by 2100. But last month, the UN’s own climate panel officially retired RCP8.5 (always a high-end estimate) as “implausible.” A more central projection is around 2.7 degrees Celsius. Replies to Piketty’s X feed pointed this out immediately. His response, as far as anyone can tell, has been silence.
That leaves the inequality argument. Worldwide income inequality is nearing a 150-year low, but Piketty insists that radical redistribution of wealth is essential for the Global South. And where have billionaires and wealth been popping up fastest in recent decades? Embarrassingly, data from Piketty’s World Inequality Database confirms that it’s in South and Southeast Asia and East Asia. These are the exact Global South regions that have spent recent decades rescuing hundreds of millions of people from poverty through market-directed economic growth.
A core confusion of the degrowth ideology is its conflation of inequality and poverty, in fact two very different things. Reducing inequality by making everyone poorer is not a victory for the poor. The billions of people still lagging in the global income distribution have one realistic path out: growth. Dynamic, market-driven, property-rights-protected growth is the only proven path to prosperity. It’s also the path to environmental improvement, which costs money.
Degrowth is the ultimate luxury belief.
It’s dreamed up by tenured professors in Paris and progressive think-tank pundits in Brussels.
These are people who already have high incomes, comfortable apartments, generous health care and pensions and whose ideas would pull up the ladder on billions of poor people.
Rand’s villains always insisted they were acting for the greater good. They always had elaborate plans. They always needed just a little more power to make it work. And they thought little about the terrible burdens their plans would impose on ordinary people.
