Bartosz Brzezinski

1 week ago | politico.eu | Bartosz Brzezinski

In the summer of 1982, seven heroin users were admitted to a California hospital paralyzed and mute. They were in their 20s, otherwise healthy — until a synthetic drug they had manufactured in makeshift labs left them frozen inside their own bodies. Doctors quickly discovered the cause: MPTP, a neurotoxic contaminant that had destroyed a small but critical part of the brain, the substantia nigra, which controls movement.

2 weeks ago | politico.eu | Bartosz Brzezinski

While a follow-up deal is taking shape, political sensitivities in several EU countries are slowing progress — and raising the risk that trade preferences lapse without a fallback. Poland’s presidential runoff falls on June 1, days before ATMs expire. In both Poland and Romania, some candidates have portrayed Ukrainian agriculture as a threat to local farmers. What should be technical talks on quotas have become politically charged, and Kyiv wants to avoid a messaging misfire.

2 weeks ago | politico.eu | Bartosz Brzezinski

The European Commission will let Ukraine’s emergency access to the EU market expire in June, Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen confirmed Tuesday — ruling out an extension of the current regime while signaling that many existing trade limits are likely to remain in place. The temporary suspension of tariffs and quotas — dubbed the Autonomous Trade Measures — was granted after Russia’s 2022 invasion and will end on June 5.

2 weeks ago | politico.eu | Bartosz Brzezinski

BRUSSELS — Donald Trump may not drink beer, but this week he messed up a lot of people’s pints. Beer was quietly added Wednesday to a list of aluminum-linked products now subject to a 25 percent U.S. import duty. The move, buried in a bureaucratic annex and part of a broader trade war unleashed by the Trump administration, has left European brewers fizzing with confusion — and drinkers foaming with rage. The uncertainty goes beyond cans.

3 weeks ago | politico.eu | Bartosz Brzezinski |Gregorio Sorgi

BRUSSELS — A political fight is brewing inside the European Commission over the future of the European Union’s farm policy — and Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen is already in the trenches. With President Ursula von der Leyen and her budget chief Piotr Serafin exploring ways to overhaul the €387 billion Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), Hansen is pushing back hard against any move to split it up.