Brussels has classified ChatGPT as a search engine under the Digital Services Act, a first for an AI chatbot, and designated Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms. All three have four months to comply.

The European Commission has designated ChatGPT as a Very Large Online Search Engine and Reddit and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms under the Digital Services Act, subjecting all three to the bloc's strictest online safety regime.

The designation will prove particularly consequential for ChatGPT because the Commission has concluded that an AI chatbot that pulls live results from the internet functions, in regulatory terms, as a search engine — not merely a platform.

Under the DSA, online services that reach more than 45 million monthly users in the EU — roughly one in 10 of the bloc's population — are classified as either Very Large Online Platforms or Very Large Online Search Engines, depending on what they do.

The three services now have four months — until the end of November — to comply with a suite of obligations reserved for the largest platforms, including annual systemic risk assessments covering illegal content, the protection of minors, effects on users' mental and physical wellbeing, fundamental rights, electoral processes and public security.

They must also submit to independent audits and share data with regulators and vetted researchers.

The Commission will supervise compliance in cooperation with Ireland's Coimisiún na Meán, the digital services coordinator for ChatGPT and Reddit, and the Netherlands' Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) for Roblox.

The designations bring the total number of platforms and search engines under the DSA's strictest tier to 28.

I was thinking about, most of what I read is what I was used to. Especially because I'm northern italian I thought was normal to not give as granted everything will be 0 to 9, I thought was sick thinking after a dinner you are dating a person... it was how I went grew as I thought a part of "grey area" early period is just normal, I mean, privacy and personal space means lots in my culture. Also means you can play and much stuffs with me but then my personal space is important. The same for the untold part, let's see what will happens... to me was how it works.

I went grew like that, I'm start to wondering if it is cultural.

English translation of the news:

A xenophobic attack reportedly occurred on Saturday afternoon in Berlin-Friedrichshain. A 42-year-old man allegedly insulted a 25-year-old man in Turkish and struck him on the head, police announced on Sunday.

The suspect told officers that he wanted to "hunt Indians." According to a spokesperson, police found a flag with three crescent moons in the 42-year-old's backpack. This is the current logo of the extreme nationalist Turkish party MHP, which, according to the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, is considered the parent organization of the far-right "Ülkücü" movement (Grey Wolves).

Furthermore, officers found a blank-firing pistol with ammunition and a readily accessible knife on the arrested man. According to reports, the suspect had initially approached passersby seemingly aimlessly in the plaza in front of Ostkreuz station before attacking the 25-year-old at a bus stop.

Pre-trial detention is being considered

The suspect was handed over to the State Security Police. He was scheduled to appear before a duty judge on Sunday for a hearing to determine whether to issue an arrest warrant.

Five EU states are racing to build migrant 'return hubs' before new rules are put in place, with Uganda and Rwanda rumoured as the most likely sites – but recent cases point to significant legal and practical obstacles, while the actual numbers do not match the expectations.

The EU's migration policy has increasingly centred on the controversial notion of using "return hubs" to externalise irregular migrants to third countries, as enshrined in the recently adopted Return Regulation.

Nineteen EU countries are convinced this is an "innovative solution" to pursue for migration management, as made clear in a joint letter sent to EU leaders last June, suggesting the centres would become a reality sooner rather than later.

Yet fundamental questions about how the policy would be implemented remain unanswered. How would return hubs work? Where would they be located? And which problems have they run into so far? Here, Euronews breaks down the main issues around the new migration mantra – and why the reality might not match the political narrative.

What are the legal and practical problems?

The Return Regulation does not explicitly require a human rights impact assessment, but it does state that "such an agreement or arrangement may only be concluded with a third country where international human rights standards and principles in accordance with international law, including the principle of non-refoulement, are respected".

In 2024, the EU Ombudsman criticised the Commission for signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Tunisia on border control and migration management without conducting a human rights impact assessment.

Even though the UK is no longer an EU member, the reasoning behind its Supreme Court ruling against the Rwanda asylum-transfer scheme in November 2023 is instructive: the court found Rwanda was not sufficiently safe given the risk of persecution or ill-treatment. The incoming Labour government abandoned the scheme as a result.

Meloni's own relocation scheme in Albania has run into similar judicial trouble, with Italian judges questioning the designation of countries such as Bangladesh and Egypt as "safe" – a designation Italian authorities had relied on to examine asylum applications through an accelerated procedure.

Crucially, the court cases stemming from the Albanian centres have now reached the EU Court of Justice, which has yet to rule on a central question: whether Italy can transfer someone subject to a detention order outside the EU.

Will the hubs work?

Transferring irregular migrants outside the EU's borders is likely to require lengthy negotiations with host countries, and past cases show legal challenges can easily sink the project if human rights safeguards are not in place.

In the meantime, relocating irregular migrants within the Union has proved far more straightforward, though this piles more pressure on frontline countries like Italy to uphold the country-of-first-arrival principle.

The previous experiences of externalisation or offshoring of migration management have been extremely costly, legally contested, and operationally very limited.

Despite years of preparation and massive financial investment, a total of four people were voluntarily relocated from the UK to Rwanda before that scheme was scrapped. Italy initially projected housing around 3,000 migrants a month in its Albanian centres; the actual figure has reportedly been a mere 500 in total since the conversion into a deportation centre in March 2025.

The entire bill amounts to over €670 million, and according to a recent study from an Italian University, detaining migrants in these centres has proven much more expensive for Italy than hosting them on its own territory.

Iceland has voted against resuming talks on joining the European Union 13 years after they were broken off.

Public broadcaster RUV reported that 52.8% of 225,031 voters rejected the government's proposal, while 47.2% had said yes. Some 12,600 votes separated them.

Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir's centre-left government promised to hold a referendum by 2027, but brought it forward because of international tensions, including US President Donald Trump's threats against Greenland.

However, debate in this island nation of almost 400,000 people centred more on its fishing industry rather than security concerns.

With some 270,000 people eligible to vote, RUV reported the turnout of 82.5% was the highest in any election in Iceland since 2009.

Already part of the EU's single market and Schengen border-free zone, EU membership would bring Iceland into the customs union and eventually the euro.

Iceland began its application to join the EU in 2009 in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the collapse of Iceland's banking system.

Its application was already well advanced when a eurosceptic government came to power in 2013 and put talks on hold. Fishing rights was the biggest obstacle then - as it remains today.

Fish and marine industries account for almost 40% of Iceland's exports and many No voters feared they would cede some control of their lucrative fishing grounds under the EU's common fisheries policy.

See also:

• The real reason Iceland rejected the EU • It’s the fish, stupid. (Politico)

Disponible ahora para Todo El Mundo 🌏.

Kavala, 68, the founder of a nonprofit organization promoting peace and dialogue, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in 2022 on charges linked to 2013 protests and a coup attempt in 2016.

Human rights advocates and opposition groups say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ’s government has weaponized the judiciary to target critics and rivals after more than two decades in power.

Reiterating a call for Kavala’s release it first made in 2019, the European court said his conviction should be regarded as “as null and void.” In a statement, the court said Turkey had violated several of Kavala’s fundamental rights.

The violations “also revealed structural shortcomings which affected the guarantees of independence and impartiality of the judiciary, and which were likely to facilitate the exerting of direct or indirect influence by the executive branch on certain judicial decisions, particularly in cases with a sensitive political dimension,” the France-based court added.

See also:

• Türkiye: Osman Kavala must be immediately released following European Court order to quash his conviction (Amnesty International)
• European rights court orders Turkey to free imprisoned businessman (BBC)

Anti-migrant protests have escalated in Spain’s Ceuta, with demonstrators dismantling and burning migrant shelters and blocking a Red Cross convoy carrying food and water. Police were deployed as protesters demanded recent migrants be deported.

See also:

• Protesters clash with police, set fire to Ceuta migrant camp (Deutsche Welle)

The EU exists because its nations swore never to repeat the past. European integration is the insurance policy against the oldest temptation of power: that a majority, however large, decides who does not belong. So countries across the continent agreed to share power across borders, and to answer to laws that none of them individually controlled.

The European parliament is where that promise is meant to be kept. Directly elected by nearly 360 million citizens, it co-writes the EU’s laws, elects the president of the European Commission and can dismiss the closest thing Europe has to a government – the commission itself. For decades, a grand coalition of centre-right parties and socialists, later joined by liberals and greens, governed it on that premise. They were committed to closer cooperation, the rule of law and maintaining a firewall against the far right.

In June, in Strasbourg, that promise was broken by the parliament itself.

“Send them back! Send them back!” The chant rose from rightwing MEPs pumping their fists, as the chamber approved the harshest migration law in EU history. The “return regulation”, as this law is called, does exactly what European integration was designed to prevent: it lets a majority decide who does not belong, putting them beyond the law’s reach – and after Ceuta, Europe’s leaders are demanding it should be applied faster. The regulation allows EU countries to deport people to detention centres outside EU territory, placing them further from judicial protection, media scrutiny and public accountability.

Approval of this law was not a rightwing putsch. It was the clearest sign of a quiet shift within an institution that, however overlooked, shapes what kind of union Europeans get to live in.

The political coalition that shaped EU legislation for decades hasn’t formally collapsed, but its largest group, the European People’s party (EPP) – home to Germany’s governing Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and political “family” of the commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen – now operates with two rival majorities. The legacy centrist majority gives it control of Europe’s principal institutions. A second, formed with Giorgia Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), Marine Le Pen’s Patriots for Europe (PfE) and the more extreme Europe of Sovereign Nations (ESN), led by Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland, increasingly enables it to shape Europe’s laws. When socialists, liberals or green MEPs resist its terms, the EPP can turn to the right and pass legislation without them. When it needs centrist votes to control the commission and parliament, however, it turns back to them, and they continue to provide those votes without conditions. The EPP therefore pays no political price for crossing its supposed firewall.

Since 2024, the EPP has voted with the far right more than 20 times. In June alone, a far-right group was decisive in one in five final votes.

See also:

• The far right is steering the EU’s response on migration • Positions once associated with the radical right have travelled well beyond it, says Giuseppe Martinico

The gap emerged after Ukraine brought forward spending as Hungary delayed the EU’s €90B loan earlier this year.

Ukraine faces a €23 billion hole in its defense budget this year, leaving Kyiv scrambling for cash to fight Russia even as Western leaders gathered in the capital to mark the country's independence day and pledge ongoing support.

The money is needed not only for weapons and air defense, but also to pay soldiers, support the families of those killed and ensure Ukraine has the supplies it needs to start 2027.

U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham was in Kyiv Monday for a meeting of the so-called coalition of the willing.

European Council President António Costa, Luxembourgish Prime Minister Luc Frieden, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, Estonian President Alar Karis, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and other Nordic and Baltic leaders also attended in person, while French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz joined remotely.

The funding gap originated after the defense ministry brought forward spending originally planned for the second half of the year, while the EU’s €90 billion loan was delayed by roadblocks from Hungary.

Purchases made included "fiber-optic drones, middle-strike drones, interceptors,” former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov told POLITICO in June.

See also:

• EU approves further €6.1 billion for Ukraine's defence (Reuters)
• What Happened to the Coveted Western Tanks Sent to Ukraine? • Ukraine pleaded for the expensive weapons, and ultimately got them, but drones have rendered them almost unusable. (New York Times)
• Zelenskyy gives award to Elon Musk for Starlink’s role in Ukraine (Associated Press)