The EU thread

[Sheilbh]

So on the Franco-German divide - why it matters is because of the debate we're seeing now around European growth and economic strategy.

Macron's done a big speech plus big interviews with 7 European papers broadly calling for French things: common European debt instruments, a buy European policy and strategic autonomy talking with and working with more countries. Which is all good but also slightly couched/deflated with the demand that Europe speaks to Putin because the US does while Europe doesn't meaning Trump is shaping Russia-Ukraine while Europe isn't - and there's something to that, but this feels a lot like the common European problem of mistaking voice for power and thinking the meeting is the objective. It's not clear to me what Europe would be saying to Putin that it's not already communicating so the purpose of the meeting would be to show that Europe too can have a meeting with Putin (which I think just elevates him).

Merz and Meloni have also done a big launch (more aligned with VDL's proposals) which are about the needs for comprehensive Europe deregulation. Not just fiddling about the edges but that the European economy is too stifled by regulation and compliance more generally. Merz has already rejected common debt and also said buy European is just another layer of regulation - although it might be worth having in a small number very key, very strategic sectors. But also more openness to (ultimately) the US and China.

I think they're both right and you need both (and actually goes for the UK too). There needs to be significant deregulation, and significant spending with a preference to domestic industry. The problem with Macron's view is that I don't think Europe can easily decouple from the US or move to more of a fortress Europe economy without exposing a lot of European weaknesses and vulnerabilities, while I think Merz's view on openness would ultimately be exploited by China and the US.

I think that France and Germany were the engine but their divisions reflect that there are many different views from all member states on their national strategies in an age of competing great power politics. But also that European integration in the glory days was to some extent powered by American hegemony, which helped smother the need for the EU to clarify it's own direction (it just followed the leader) and that even helped in recent years when there haven't been the heroic leaps of integration (because of strongly different views) but just the bare minimum progress to keep the process going.

[Zoupa]

So on the Franco-German divide - why it matters is because of the debate we're seeing now around European growth and economic strategy.

Macron's done a big speech plus big interviews with 7 European papers broadly calling for French things: common European debt instruments, a buy European policy and strategic autonomy talking with and working with more countries. Which is all good but also slightly couched/deflated with the demand that Europe speaks to Putin because the US does while Europe doesn't meaning Trump is shaping Russia-Ukraine while Europe isn't - and there's something to that, but this feels a lot like the common European problem of mistaking voice for power and thinking the meeting is the objective. It's not clear to me what Europe would be saying to Putin that it's not already communicating so the purpose of the meeting would be to show that Europe too can have a meeting with Putin (which I think just elevates him).

Merz and Meloni have also done a big launch (more aligned with VDL's proposals) which are about the needs for comprehensive Europe deregulation. Not just fiddling about the edges but that the European economy is too stifled by regulation and compliance more generally. Merz has already rejected common debt and also said buy European is just another layer of regulation - although it might be worth having in a small number very key, very strategic sectors. But also more openness to (ultimately) the US and China.

I think they're both right and you need both (and actually goes for the UK too). There needs to be significant deregulation, and significant spending with a preference to domestic industry. The problem with Macron's view is that I don't think Europe can easily decouple from the US or move to more of a fortress Europe economy without exposing a lot of European weaknesses and vulnerabilities, while I think Merz's view on openness would ultimately be exploited by China and the US.

I think that France and Germany were the engine but their divisions reflect that there are many different views from all member states on their national strategies in an age of competing great power politics. But also that European integration in the glory days was to some extent powered by American hegemony, which helped smother the need for the EU to clarify it's own direction (it just followed the leader) and that even helped in recent years when there haven't been the heroic leaps of integration (because of strongly different views) but just the bare minimum progress to keep the process going.

Macron's done a big speech plus big interviews with 7 European papers broadly calling for French things: common European debt instruments, a buy European policy and strategic autonomy talking with and working with more countries. Which is all good but also slightly couched/deflated with the demand that Europe speaks to Putin because the US does while Europe doesn't meaning Trump is shaping Russia-Ukraine while Europe isn't - and there's something to that, but this feels a lot like the common European problem of mistaking voice for power and thinking the meeting is the objective. It's not clear to me what Europe would be saying to Putin that it's not already communicating so the purpose of the meeting would be to show that Europe too can have a meeting with Putin (which I think just elevates him).

Merz and Meloni have also done a big launch (more aligned with VDL's proposals) which are about the needs for comprehensive Europe deregulation. Not just fiddling about the edges but that the European economy is too stifled by regulation and compliance more generally. Merz has already rejected common debt and also said buy European is just another layer of regulation - although it might be worth having in a small number very key, very strategic sectors. But also more openness to (ultimately) the US and China.

I think they're both right and you need both (and actually goes for the UK too). There needs to be significant deregulation, and significant spending with a preference to domestic industry. The problem with Macron's view is that I don't think Europe can easily decouple from the US or move to more of a fortress Europe economy without exposing a lot of European weaknesses and vulnerabilities, while I think Merz's view on openness would ultimately be exploited by China and the US.

I think that France and Germany were the engine but their divisions reflect that there are many different views from all member states on their national strategies in an age of competing great power politics. But also that European integration in the glory days was to some extent powered by American hegemony, which helped smother the need for the EU to clarify it's own direction (it just followed the leader) and that even helped in recent years when there haven't been the heroic leaps of integration (because of strongly different views) but just the bare minimum progress to keep the process going.

So two things here:

1) Why do you qualify common European debt instruments, a buy European policy and strategic autonomy talking with and working with more countries as "French things"?

2) regarding Putin, the meeting is the point. The optics are the point. There is no scenario where Putin makes any real concessions for the time being. There is no ceasefire, armistice or peace deal happening for the foreseeable future, as Putin has decided that he's fine with the current costs russia is paying. I think everyone in Europe knows this and no one in the Trump admin wants to know this. That's why the Witkoff/Kushner/Florida/UAE meetings are all theatre.

[Sheilbh]

So two things here:

1) Why do you qualify common European debt instruments, a buy European policy and strategic autonomy talking with and working with more countries as "French things"?

Because they feel fairly traditional French views on European integration. A leader of an EU member state has called for Euobonds, buy European and strategic autonmy - which member state do you think they're from? It's probably France - and certainly not Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the Nordics etc.

2) regarding Putin, the meeting is the point. The optics are the point. There is no scenario where Putin makes any real concessions for the time being. There is no ceasefire, armistice or peace deal happening for the foreseeable future, as Putin has decided that he's fine with the current costs russia is paying. I think everyone in Europe knows this and no one in the Trump admin wants to know this. That's why the Witkoff/Kushner/Florida/UAE meetings are all theatre.

I agree - but I was talking about Macron's comments calling for Europe meeting again with Putin. As far as I can see it would elevate him because the only purpose would be to demonstrate that Europe can also get a meeting Putin.

[Sheilbh]

Not really EU but just posting this here as a European story - I'd seen some reporting on the trial in Italy of a man who'd gone to Sarajevo to shoot a sniper rifle for fun. But this is unbelievable and awful:

TOM KINGTON
Sarajevo sniper tourists 'killed children by day, then partied at night'
Rich foreigners, including Britons, have been accused of paying to shoot children and pregnant women during the siege of the Bosnian capital in the early 1990s
Tom Kington, Prijedor
Friday February 13 2026, 9.35am, The Times

At the end of a day spent killing women and children with their expensive sniper rifles, the visitors to Sarajevo liked to celebrate until the small hours, devouring roast pork and knocking back brandy.

"They would go to the cafe at 6 to 7pm and stay until 5am, singing and laughing," recalls Aleksandar Licanin, who says he witnessed the revelry.

The foreigners who paid for the privilege of killing innocent civilians were mainly wealthy men, but there were women too, claimed Licanin, 63, who was a volunteer with a Bosnian Serb tank unit at the time. They included Britons, Italians and Germans, he said.

Reports have circulated for years about the so-called Sarajevo safari, which is said to have drawn rich foreigners to the hills above the Bosnian capital in the early 1990s as it was besieged by Bosnian Serb forces during the Balkan wars.


Photographers Paul Lowe and David Turnley run for cover beside the Holiday Inn hotel, which was home to the media during the war, in 1992
TOM STODDART/GETTY IMAGES

In return for payments of up to £88,000, the visitors were allegedly allowed to use Bosnian Serb sniper positions to shoot residents taking cover in the city below, reportedly paying more for the privilege of killing children or pregnant women.

Their victims were among the more than 11,500 slain during the four-year siege.

Licanin agreed to meet The Times in Bosnia to reveal everything he remembers about the alleged shooters, as magistrates in Italy investigate claims that Italian hunters were among them.

On Monday they questioned an 80-year-old truck driver and gun collector from Pordenone in northeast Italy, who denied involvement. Three more suspected Italian shooters are due to be questioned.

After staying silent for three decades, Licanin said he was ready to talk because the Italian investigation was under way.

"I want the truth to come out and I was waiting for a real investigation to start," he said as he chain-smoked in a café in his hometown of Prijedor.


Aleksandar Licanin
TOM KINGTON FOR THE TIMES

"I am prepared to stand up and tell the Italian magistrates what I know."

According to Licanin, his war got under way in 1993 when the Bosnian Serb community he belonged to in Sarajevo split with the local Muslim Bosniaks, as ethnic and religious rifts started to fuel conflict across the disintegrating Yugoslavia.

Interned by Bosniaks, the then 31-year-old made it to the Serb-controlled Grbavica neighbourhood of Sarajevo and signed up with a tank unit run by Bosnian Serb forces which took part in the deadly siege of Bosniak-held areas.

His commander, Slobodan Todorovic, was a former officer in the disbanded Yugoslav army, Licanin said.

Setting up in the city's Jewish cemetery, which commanded views over Sarajevo, Licanin's unit shared the vantage point with a 200-strong Serb militia, the Novosarajevo Chetnik Detachment run by former postal worker Slavko Aleksic.

Licanin said his unit was fed co-ordinates to target by commanders, but Aleksic's snipers were picking off their own victims.

"Aleksic had a restricted area in the cemetery 200 metres from us which we could see," he said. "They were shooting at women, children and the elderly. They were out of control and Aleksic was obviously a psychopath, you could see it in his eyes."

Licanin said he first saw well-dressed foreigners taking up positions with Aleksic's snipers in 1993 or 1994. "They wore expensive leather jackets and I was told they were Italians, Germans and British," he said. "They were helped to find targets, and shooting from the cemetery was a clear shot — you had everything."

The foreigners, who were billeted in a compound near the cemetery, would also hand over 500 to 1,000 Deutsche Marks [about £200 to £400] to be given a prized sniper spot in tall buildings, Licanin said.

"After the hunt a cafe would be cleared out to make room for them and Aleksic's jeep, which had a skull mounted on the bonnet, would arrive. We would leave: we didn't want contact with them," said Licanin.



"They ate a lot, feasting on meat — roast pig and lamb," he said, adding that beer, whisky and cognac were also served. "They were celebrating killing people. I can't imagine how you can live with killing a child."

Licanin added that he was not surprised to see foreign women paying to kill. "It seemed normal since the Serbians had female snipers too," he said.

"All of the snipers were just pure sadists."


A Sarajevo resident runs to avoid snipers in 1992
GEORGES GOBET/AFP

His claim that women were among the tourist snipers was backed up by Zlatko Miletic, the then chief of police in Sarajevo who was running an anti-sniper team.

"I remember a woman from Romania who must have killed more than ten people," he told Balkan news channel N1 this month. "Those foreign snipers were deeply dug into concrete trenches and it was difficult to neutralise them," claimed Miletic, who is now a member of parliament in Bosnia.

"They killed dozens of children and women," he said, adding: "We had information that [the Aleksic militia] was hosting these people for money and that most of them came from Italy."

Licanin claimed that one of the Serbs helping the foreign snipers was Aleksandar Vucic, then a young member of the far-right Serbian Radical Party, today the authoritarian president of Serbia.


Aleksandar Vucic in an interview earlier this month
DJORDJE KOJADINOVIC/REUTERS

"He would be at the cafe and would translate for the foreigners," Licanin said.

Vucic has said he was not working with Aleksic at the time but merely present in Sarajevo as a journalist.

Licanin was encouraged to speak out by Croatian investigative journalist Domagoj Margetic, who also claimed in November that Vucic was involved in the "human safari". He was dismissed as a peddler of "malicious disinformation, purpose-built to erode the institutional credibility of the Republic of Serbia and its president", by a spokeswoman for the Serb leader.


Domagoj Margetic
TOM KINGTON FOR THE TIMES

Aleksic died in December, but just before his death he denied that Vucic was part of his militia and ruled out hosting foreign snipers. Margetic has since alleged that Serbian intelligence may have engineered his demise in case he changed his story.

The theory was also promoted by a Serbian lawyer, Cedomir Stojkovic, who was accused of "inciting violent change of the constitutional order" by a Serbian court, banned from posting on social media and is now under house arrest after refusing to comply.

In Zagreb, Margetic told The Times that before his death, Aleksic left his archive to an ex-militia colleague who has now handed it to him. Margetic produced type-written documents apparently bearing Aleksic's signature giving Vucic permission to escort foreigners in Bosnia in the early 1990s.

The journalist has denied allegations that the documents are fake and has posted some online, including one which names an Italian shooter. Margetic has redacted the Italian's name, leaving only the initials R.R. "I have informed the Italian magistrates of his name," he said.

Margetic claimed he had been hearing reports about the shootings since the late 1990s. "Associates of Aleksic told me you could pay to fly in by helicopter to Sarajevo, or travel there by truck from Belgrade, or by a bus with Serbian volunteers which left Belgrade on Thursday nights and returned on Sunday. The return fare was 2,000 Deutsche Marks [about £800]."

Witnesses in Sarajevo at the time have since said that shootings increased at weekends.

Margetic said he was told by militia contacts that shooters came from Russia, Romania, Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, the US, Canada and the UK.

He added: "I was told they would pay more to shoot children and pregnant women."

Claims of the human safari story have emerged slowly since the 1990s. In 2007 US Marine John Jordan, who was in Sarajevo at the time, spoke of "tourist shooters". A 2022 documentary by Slovenian film maker Miran Zupanic called Sarajevo Safari prompted Italian journalist Ezio Gavazzeni to investigate, in turn triggering the Italian investigation.

A former Bosnian intelligence officer, Edin Subasic, has said that a Serbian soldier taken prisoner in Sarajevo revealed he had met a group of five Italian snipers. After Subasic complained to Italian intelligence officers, they told him in early 1994 they had put a stop to the visits.

Lighting another cigarette in the cafe in Prijedor, Licanin said he recalled seeing foreigners shooting in Sarajevo right up until the Dayton Agreement finally put an end to hostilities over a year later, in November 1995.

After the war he got married and found work as a lumberjack, but the trauma of combat never left him. "My wife says I still have nightmares, although I don't remember them in the morning," he said.

"The foreigners who came to Sarajevo had sick minds. I bet they don't have nightmares."

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Might be not a bad idea to start investigating if similar scumbags aren't partaking in the human safari in Cherson.
And make 'em pay with their lives and have their possessions proscribed.

[Norgy]

Not really EU but just posting this here as a European story - I'd seen some reporting on the trial in Italy of a man who'd gone to Sarajevo to shoot a sniper rifle for fun. But this is unbelievable and awful:

I am speechless.
I know I should not be surprised or shocked, yet I manage to be. 

[Sheilbh]

It's obscene - I hadn't heard there were rumours about this in current conflicts although I suppose it wouldn't be a surprise if there is a monetisable desire to kill. But I'd seen some stories about the Italian investigations, but reading that piece it's really stuck in my head. I think it's evil.

[Jacob]

It is abject evil.

[HVC]

Not saying it's not true, but I does sound a hell of a lot like the caricature of the evil rich person.

[Valmy]

Look I don't demand that everybody be perfect. We all have our moral failings. But can we try not to be completely depraved monsters? Is that too much to expect from people?

[Grey Fox]

In late capitalism world where most of the wealth is captured by the very few and hard work does not provide enough to have a good life. Yes.

[Duque de Bragança]

Not saying it's not true, but I does sound a hell of a lot like the caricature of the evil rich person.

Strong Count Zaroff vibes actually, with the caveat that even Count Zaroff would give a fighting chance to his victims or prey.

[Sheilbh]

Not saying it's not true, but I does sound a hell of a lot like the caricature of the evil rich person.

Yes. Although worth noting the Italian magistrates are investigating a truck driver - we're talking thousands of dollars in the 1990s. An expensive holiday but not the preserve of the rich (I think it's perhaps similar the everyday sex tourists in South-East Asia?).

But I had a similar sense of incredulity especially when it got to the guy with a skull on his car - then there was a picture of the car.

But with the Balkans and Italian involvement and such an extaordinary story I can't help but think of the highly problematic (but fantastic) writer Curzio Malaparte who was posted as a reporter for Mussolini's Italy in the Balkans and wrote several extraordinary autobiographical books. In one he recalls meeting Ante Pavelic when he was the head of the Ustashi:

While he spoke, I gazed at a wicker basket on [his] desk. The lid was raised and the basket seemed to be filled with mussels, or shelled oysters, as they are occasionally displayed in the windows of Fortnum and Mason in Piccadilly in London. 'Are they Dalmatian oysters?' I asked Pavelic. [He] removed the lid from the basket and revealed the mussels, that slimy and jelly-like mass, and he said, smiling, with that tired good-natured smile of his, 'It is a present from my loyal Ustashi. Forty pounds of human eyes.'

For a long-time his writing was interpreted as a form of reportage, including this section. It's since been established that he entirely made it up - but that it was perhaps a synecdoche for the wider enthusiastic (but not industrial) violence of the Ustashi. Except in the time when it was still considered reportage it was picked up in the Balkans and Malaparte was very widely known for that specific story. It then ends up forming a regularly repeated part of Serbian propaganda.

[mongers]

....
But I had a similar sense of incredulity especially when it got to the guy with a skull on his car - then there was a picture of the car.

....

If a war lasts more than a few months, depending on the climates, there's going to be increasing numbers of human bones lying around unburied, so I'm not sure that element is indicative of the story's truth.

Gruesome war trophies are not that uncommon in war, no doubt there is a lot of horrendous content posted online from the Ukraine war, but I'm not going looking for it.