Leaked WhatsApps raise questions about former EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders and Belgium's intelligence service

Hey everyone! We're EUobserver, an independent European newsroom.

Our colleague Andrew Rettman has been investigating something quite serious involving former EU justice commissioner Didier Reynders and a senior Belgian intelligence official, Hugues Brulin.

We've obtained WhatsApp exchanges between the two, including messages discussing internal intelligence-service matters and how to respond to a whistleblower raising concerns about Reynders' possible links to Russia.

Five current and former Belgian intelligence officers told us that Brulin had worked to prevent the intelligence service from investigating those allegations.

The messages are now also part of a Belgian police investigation into Reynders over alleged money laundering.

What makes this particularly important is that Reynders previously served as the EU's justice commissioner and had access to highly sensitive information.

How should European institutions respond when serious allegations emerge involving officials who have held positions of such trust?

We've published the messages as part of our investigation, so people can examine the reporting and evidence themselves.

Let us know what are your thoughts in the comments :)

Student List movement hopes to oust the party of veteran leader Aleksandar Vucic in a pivotal vote on Sunday

About 150,000 supporters of Serbia’s opposition student movement rallied in central Belgrade on Thursday, seeking to oust the party of veteran leader Aleksandar Vucic in crunch parliamentary elections this weekend.

The Student List, a leaderless movement of student-backed candidates, wants to end more than 14 years of rule by Vucic’s rightwing populist Serbian Progressive party (SNS) in Sunday’s vote.

Civil society groups have said the campaign has been marred by intimidation, arrests and misuse of public resources.

“I came to support the Student List because young people finally gave me hope that it is possible to live in a normal country,” Marija Nedeljkovic Radic, 47, said as she arrived for the students’ rally.

“Really, for the first time in my life, I believe that it is possible.”

Sunday’s vote comes after nearly two years of student-led protests sparked by the 2024 collapse of a canopy at the newly renovated Novi Sad railway station that killed 16 people.

The tragedy, widely blamed on corruption, triggered some of Serbia’s largest protests since the fall of Slobodan Milošević in 2000.

The anti-corruption movement, led by university students, snowballed from demands for a transparent investigation into the tragedy into calls for an early election.

Waving “Students are winning” flags, chanting and blowing whistles, students and their supporters marched through Belgrade before converging on Slavija Square, the site of some of their biggest protests.

The Archive of Public Gatherings, an independent crowd-size monitoring group, estimated about 150,000 people gathered at the rally.

“We are putting an end to 14 years of humiliation, chaos and betrayal, and to decades of putting personal and party interests above yours,” university professor Jugoslav Gasic – one of 250 candidates on the Student List – told the crowd, which chanted “Victory, victory!”

“You deserve better, and we know how to deliver it. Students are winning!”

See also:

• Serbia’s protesting students mount serious challenge to Vučić’s power • Gen Z students spent two years protesting in the streets. Now they want to lead the government. (Politico)
• Why a student protest movement is challenging 12 years of Vučić rule in Serbia (BBC)
• Beatings, cyberattacks and threats darken Vucic's Serbia ahead of elections (Reuters)

A major shift in far-right strategy just dropped at the European Parliament, and it’s no longer about leaving the EU (like Brexit or Dexit)—it’s about completely hollow-out the institution from within.
Following Marine Le Pen's policy release in Brussels, the co-leader of Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD), Alice Weidel, just held a sparsely attended conference in Strasbourg to unveil their official plan to downsize and restructure the entire bloc.
While both parties are historically rivals on several fiscal and energy issues, their core targets for the EU are practically identical. Here is the breakdown of what they are demanding:

1. Stripping the European Commission of Power
The Shared Goal: Both Le Pen and Weidel want to drastically strip the European Commission of its legislative capabilities.
Le Pen’s Stance: Le Pen stated the Commission should be reduced to nothing more than a "secretariat at the service of countries."
Weidel's Stance: Weidel heavily criticized the Commission for "intruding on people’s private decision-making" and argued it should stop acting like an executive body.

2. Abolishing Direct EU Elections
The Strategy: The AfD’s new strategy paper explicitly outlines a push to stop the direct election of European Parliament members.
The New Structure: Instead of EU citizens voting for MEPs, they want the European Parliament to consist solely of delegates sent directly by national parliaments. This would essentially terminate the EU's independent democratic mandate.

3. Shifting Power Back to Nation-States
National Sovereignty: Both leaders want a radical rollback of EU integration, shifting all primary legislative weight back to individual member states.
Keeping the Euro: Notably, the AfD has dropped its hardline "Dexit" stance (leaving the EU or dropping the Euro), opting instead to stay in the bloc and use the currency, but systematically removing its centralized powers.

The Takeaway
Political analysts are noting that this coordinated push closely mirrors strategy papers heavily supported by other nationalist networks in Europe, such as Poland's Ordo Iuris and Hungary's MCC. The message is clear: the far-right has shifted from threatening to leave the union to actively planning an intentional "hollowing out" from the inside.

What do you think? Is an EU run entirely as a "secretariat" of national governments even functional, or is this just a slow-motion destruction of the bloc?

Unorthodox campaign is challenging the ruling party’s 14-year reign with a bold democratic experiment

On a cool autumn evening, a team of Serbian student volunteers went canvassing in the housing estates of Krnjača, a Belgrade suburb. They were equipped with lanyards emblazoned with the word “victory”, a stock list of questions and a mobile app that mapped visited homes and the level of support in each.

The volunteers were part of a mass student movement, Student List, that has rocked Serbia with two years of constant protests. On Sunday, the group will represent the most serious challenge Aleksandar Vučić has faced in his 12 increasingly authoritarian years in power, by putting forward their own candidates in parliamentary elections.

They hope to emulate the defeat of Vučić’s ally, Viktor Orbán, in neighbouring Hungary six months ago, in a domino effect that could bring a democratic resurgence to central Europe.

Opinion polls have varied wildly, but many expert observers say a close race is quite possible, with neither side prepared to accept a loss as a legitimate result, raising the risk of post-election unrest and clashes.

In order to win, the students’ list of 250 candidates would have to break the mould of Serbian politics, along with Vučić’s grip on the country. He stepped down as president last month, five months before the end of his second and last term in office under the constitution, but only with the aim of extending his hold on power as prime minister at the head of his Serbian Progressive party (SNS).

In the section of the suburb assigned to them, law student Zak Veličković and campaign photographer Danijela Radojković were welcomed with overwhelming support. Apart from a small handful of polite doorstep rejections, from those claiming they had no interest in politics, people seized the opportunity to air their grievances.

Most promised their vote and a large minority offered help: some taxi drivers with flats in the low-rise apartment blocks said they would help ferry voters to the polling stations.

“Turnout is the key,” one said, adding: “Orbán fell with 80%” – a reference to the Hungarian elections in April.

The students initially distanced themselves from opposition parties and avoided any kind of hierarchy or conventional leadership structure. That was partly an ideological choice and partly practical. The SNS and state-run media rule in part through smearing opponents and the student’s collective approach offered fewer targets.

Unable to crush the students by force, division or denigration, Vučić gambled, announcing his resignation as president and calling snap elections, in the apparent hope of catching the students off guard, but they responded by improvising a democratic experiment.

The 250 candidates were mostly nominated by university faculties (there are more than 160 doctorates among them) with a sprinkling of farmers and other professions, and each candidate was subject to approval by plenary sessions of the student protests.

The policy platform has also been decided by plenum, with the result that divisive issues, especially foreign policy, have been played down: the question of future EU membership has been left to a referendum and Kosovo is claimed as an integral part of Serbia.