WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE Eu - euobserver - The Friday Five - Meta keeps scanning your messages, Germany funds Tesla again, and Frontex flights to Afghanistan revealed

 

The Friday Five Editor-in-chief picks her favourite stories of the week. EU parliament lets Meta and Google keep scanning users’ messages, in a win for ‘Chat Control’ backers. What it means – and why it matters With the European Parliament’s resistance weakening and the powerful European People’s Party group shifting in favour of tougher controls, this surprise win for message-scanning could clear the way for an even more far‑reaching “Chat Control 2.0” that targets encrypted apps next. Exclusive: Frontex returned almost 50 people to Afghanistan this year with help from NGO fronted by UK security veterans The little-known Irara NGO was the largest non-state recipient of Frontex funding last year, receiving some €39m in 2025. The NGO is headed by UK security veterans and operates in 36 countries, including Afghanistan. As Europe swelters, Paris judges say consumers aren’t to blame — TotalEnergies is A Paris judicial tribunal has just ruled on a case brought against TotalEnergies by environmental groups and the City of Paris. The judgment does not halt the company’s fossil-fuel expansion. But it does something the industry has spent half a century resisting: it holds TotalEnergies legally responsible not just for the emissions from its operations, but for the emissions produced when the oil and gas it sells are ultimately burned. Exclusive: Germany bankrolled Tesla buyers with €860m to help hit EU Covid recovery targets – and now gives €71m to Musk’s Berlin gigafactory too Between 2020 and 2023, Germany spent €860m subsidising the purchase of Teslas — a scheme that helped unlock Berlin’s share of the EU’s Covid recovery fund, according to internal documents obtained by EUobserver. Now, Elon Musk’s Berlin gigafactory is also receiving more than €71m in state aid. Who is Karen Malayan: Russia’s top diplomat in Brussels, or yet another spy? Vladimir Putin’s envoy to the EU had a strange career path, a spy-linked uncle, spy friends, and allegedly played a role in pre-Brexit dirty tricks in the UK.   Copyright © 2026 EUobserver.com. All rights reserved.