Arrests over anti-Semitic posters in Brussels

Welcome to the Capitals by Eddy Wax, with Nicoletta Ionta. We welcome feedback and tips here. Sign up here.
In today’s edition:
- Arrests over anti-Semitic posters
- Denmark’s hard line on migration
- First EU-Moldova summit
- Your pricey Sicilian holiday
- Berlaymont job moves

Three suspects have been detained and then released by Belgian police over a poster campaign in the streets around the EU institutions in Brussels, targeting Jews and people working for Jewish organisations.
The posters display the faces, names, and work addresses of nine people working for pro-Israel organisations, and include the accusation that they “lobby for genocide” and “manipulate MEPs into voting in favour of the Zionist genocidal agenda".
“It’s not only a lie, it’s really anti-Semitic to hold them accountable for what is happening in the Middle East,” said Katharina von Schnurbein, EU coordinator on combatting anti-Semitism.
Dozens of posters appeared on 13 June and more last week, peppered across major streets of the EU quarter around the Council and Berlaymont.
“The three suspects have been released. The investigation is still ongoing,” a spokesperson for the Brussels Prosecutor's Office told Euractiv. The group’s website has been blocked by police – but only partially so, and Euractiv was still able to access it.

The website encourages people to download and spread the posters themselves. It is not known who is behind the campaign, which calls itself “Lobby Against”.
Those targeted are three people working for ELNET (a leadership network fostering Israel-EU relations), three working for the AJC Transatlantic Institute (the Brussels-based EU Office of the American Jewish Committee), and three working for the European Jewish Association (EJA). In Washington two people were recently killed outside an AJC event by a man who shouted “Free Palestine!"
“We‘ve got to the stage now where Jews and those who advocate for Israel and Jewish rights are demonized and these people put targets on our backs,” said Alex Benjamin, vice-president of the EJA, who was one of those targeted.
Rabbi Menachem Margolin, who also featured in the posters, said: “I feel unsafe, and I feel I walk around knowing that at any moment something might happen.” The Jewish organisations were advised to increase security at their workplaces in the wake of the campaign.
Asked to respond to the charge that he was lobbying for genocide regarding the war in Gaza, Margolin said: “I think that the Belgian authorities allowed a strong lie and accusation to be spread by giving authorisation to many huge demonstrations that became a festival of hatred towards something which is a pure lie ... This is not genocide."
The International Court of Justice is considering the charge of genocide against Israel over its response to the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas.
Unlike most EU countries, Belgium has neither adopted nor started work on a strategy for combatting anti-Semitism.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Magnus Brunner recently met the organisations targeted “to express solidarity following the deeply concerning and anti-Semitic campaign led against them and their staff”.

The EPP has handed the national conservative ECR group control of a crucial migration file, breaking Parliament rules on dossier distribution. The move, backed by two far right groups, sidelined pro-EU factions.
The move concerns the “safe third country” and “safe country of origin” files, newly presented by the Commission as part of its migration overhaul. Under standard procedure, the group with the highest share of dossier points would be assigned to steer it through negotiations.
In this case, that would have been the Greens, Left, or far-right ESN, one parliamentary source told Nicoletta Ionta. The EPP chair of the Parliament’s civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee, Javier Zarzalejos, allowed EPP, ECR, Patriots, and ESN to break tradition to push through the deal, the source added.
“This is a new low,” said Dutch Green MEP Tineke Strik. Renew’s Fabienne Keller echoed the criticism, warning the deal “jeopardises effective solutions.”

Danish PM Mette Frederiksen welcomed von der Leyen, Costa and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Aarhus Thursday, known as the City of Smiles. Migrants wouldn't have smiled, listening to Frederiksen’s speech.
“People from coming outside who commit serious crimes and do not respect our values and way of life, I don't think they have a place in Europe – and they should be expelled,” she said, calling for a new solution to “lower the influx of migrants to Europe”.
Denmark’s presidency program signals clear intent to back an EU plan to allow countries to establish “return hubs”, in other words deportation centres, outside the bloc.
Italy’s detention centre in Albania is already testing the legal limits of EU law – and with questionable success. But Danish Migration Minister Kaare Dybvad appears undeterred.
“It’s not just about how many are processed – it’s about the effect on migration flows,” he told Euractiv’s Magnus Lund Nielsen when heading into the opening ceremony at Aarhus City Hall. “It’s a priority for us to make it harder to reach Europe. That starts with implementing better returns so people who aren’t allowed to stay are sent home,” he said.
Later, Magnus caught up with Danish MEP Stine Bosse, of the Moderates – part of the governing coalition – on her train back to Copenhagen.
She expressed support for Frederiksen’s message.
“The realisation is setting in across my own group,” Bosse, a member of Renew Europe said. “Some colleagues of course find some of these areas hard to deal with – but I am hopeful that we will find solutions that all can either like or live with.”

Chișinău hosts Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa at the first-ever EU-Moldova summit today, bidding to "[elevate] the relationship to a whole new level" and "recognise Moldova’s strategic importance" for the EU, the country's Deputy PM Cristina Gherasimov told my colleague Alexandra Brzozowski.
EU market access perks and funding are on the table for Moldova, but the EU has a tricky balancing act: While President Maia Sandu hopes to score a domestic win before fraught parliamentary elections in autumn, Brussels must carefully weigh whether to fast-track her country's bid to leapfrog Ukraine on the membership road.
As Moldova faces Russian interference before the September polls, Chișinău also hopes for "strong EU support in the face of hybrid threats, including disinformation and cyberattacks ahead of the elections," Gherasimov said.

GERMANY
The popularity of the Social Democrats (SPD), junior coalition partner of Chancellor Merz, has fallen to 13% in the renowned Deutschland trend poll – its lowest mark in five years. That is only one percentage point above their historical low point and came after a botched party conference last week. Meanwhile, approval of Merz’s performance keeps rising, now at 42%.
ITALY
Italy’s competition authority has asked the European Commission to increase transparency over the pricing algorithms used by airlines, especially on routes serving Sicily and Sardinia. Read more.
SPAIN
It’s shaping as a blockbuster weekend in Spanish politics, with the respective congresses of PM Pedro Sánchez's Socialist Workers’ Party and main opposition Partido Popular overlapping in Madrid. Read more.
POLAND
Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz (PSL, EPP) has rebuked Germany's idea of conducting joint border checks. “On the German side, there are German patrols; on the Polish side, there will be Polish ones,” Kosiniak-Kamysz told TVN24. “The minister from Germany will not tell us what to do in Poland. With sympathy, with respect, but we will protect Polish borders [ourselves]." Read more.
ROMANIA
Romania is facing mounting public unrest after the government presented sweeping austerity measures to curb its budget deficit, now the highest in the European Union. Read more.

Europe’s grand plans to surge ammunition production hinge on a single factory in central Poland – the only place in the EU that still makes trinitrotoluene, or TNT, the explosive core of most weapons production.

The European Commission’s planned revamp of the EU’s long-term budget is stirring uncertainty across many sectors, but especially among farmers, who remain the biggest recipients of EU money. Here's what we know so far about how the 2028-2034 budget will influence the next Common Agricultural Policy. Read more.
Denmark has pledged to exert "maximum pressure" on Hungary in an attempt to resurrect Ukraine's stalled bid for EU membership, but Viktor Orbán remains unlikely to budge off his veto. Read more.

DG JUST’S Nils Behrndt will become one of the Commission’s three deputy secretaries general. He replaces Elisabeth Werner, who went to lead DG AGRI.
The European Parliament wants to feature on the euro bank note in future. Minutes of a meeting of the Parliament’s Bureau reveal that German MEP Sabine Verheyen demanded the Parliament be “depicted on a frequently used banknote denomination” and that its Strasbourg seat should feature.

European Council Presidents Antonio Costa and European Commission President von der Leyen attend EU-Moldova Summit in Chișinău
European Central Bank President Lagarde meets German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin

Contributors: Elisa Braun, Anupriya Datta, Alexandra Brzozowski, Magnus Lund Nielsen, Thomas Møller-Nielsen, Owen Morgan, Nick Alipour, Alessia Peretti, Inés Fernández-Pontes, Aleksandra Krzysztoszek, Catalina Mihai.
Editors: Vince Chadwick and Sofia Mandilara.