BRUSSELS (AP) — A top European Union official on Monday warned the United States against interfering in Europe’s affairs and said only European citizens can decide which parties should govern them.
European Council President António Costa’s remarks came in reaction to the Trump administration’s new national security strategy, which was published on Friday and paints European allies as weak, while offering tacit support to far-right political parties.
The document, which was praised by Russia, formalizes in writing months of Trump administration criticism of EU policy and perceived restrictions on free speech that started with a lecture to European allies in Germany in February by U.S. Vice President JD Vance.
It’s “good” that the strategy depicts European countries as an ally, but “allies don’t threaten to interfere in the domestic political choices of their allies," Costa said.
“What we can’t accept is the threat of interference in European political life. The United States cannot replace European citizens in choosing what the good or the bad parties are,” he said in Paris at the Jacques Delors Institute, a think tank.
Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive at the European Policy Centre think tank, said that stridently nationalist parties in Europe will be emboldened by the strategy document and "will intensify efforts to hollow out the EU from within.”
“Pro-European liberal forces need to finally wake up: Trump’s America is not an ally, but an adversary to Europe’s freedoms and fundamental values. His objective is to replace our democratic system with the illiberal populism now entrenched in the U.S.," Zuleeg said.
The strategy was also critical of European free speech and migration policy. U.S. allies in Europe face the “prospect of civilizational erasure," the document said, raising doubts about their long-term reliability as American partners.
But Costa, who chairs summits of the EU's 27 national leaders, said that Europe’s “history has taught us that you can’t have freedom of speech without freedom of information.”
The former Portuguese prime minister also warned “there will never be free speech, if the freedom of information of citizens is sacrificed for the aims of the tech oligarchs in the United States.”
Speaking to reporters in Berlin, German government spokesperson Sebastian Hille underlined that “Europe and the U.S. are historically, economically and culturally linked, and remain close partners.”
“But we reject the partly critical tones against the EU,” he said. “Political freedoms, including the right to freedom of expression, belong to the fundamental values of the European Union. We view accusations regarding this more as ideology than strategy.”
The security strategy is the administration's first since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in January. It breaks starkly from the course set by U.S. President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, which sought to reinvigorate Washington's alliances.
It comes as the U.S. seeks an end to Russia’s nearly four-year war in Ukraine, a goal that the national security strategy says is in Washington's vital interests.
But the text makes clear that the U.S. wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah, and ending the war is a core U.S. interest to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said the document “absolutely corresponds to our vision.” Over the course of the war, Russia has worked to drive a wedge between NATO allies, particularly between the U.S. and Ukraine's main backers in Europe.
“If we read closely the part about Ukraine, we can understand why Moscow shares this vision,” Costa said. “The objective in this strategy is not a fair and durable peace. It’s only (about) the end of hostilities, and the stability of relations with Russia.”
“Everyone wants stable relations with Russia,” he added, but “we can’t have stable relations with Russia when Russia remains a threat to our security.”
Top EU officials and intelligence officers have warned that Russia could be in a position to launch an attack elsewhere in Europe in three to five years should it defeat Ukraine.
Hille noted that “the strategy doesn’t classify Russia as a threat; we don’t share this assessment. We are sticking with NATO’s joint analysis.” Trump and his NATO counterparts noted, in a summit statement in June, “the long-term threat posed by Russia to Euro-Atlantic security.”
However, Hille insisted that “in view of the great security policy challenges, trans-Atlantic cooperation is now and will be in the future of central significance for our common security.”
Geir Moulson contributed to this report from Berlin.
President Donald Trump, right, seated with Sec. of State Marco Rubio, left, at a Kennedy Center Honors reception for recipients at the State Department, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli police forcibly entered the compound of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in east Jerusalem early Monday, escalating a campaign against the organization that has been banned from operating on Israeli territory.
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, or UNRWA, said in a statement that “sizable numbers” of Israeli forces, including police on motorcycles, trucks and forklifts, entered the compound in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
“The unauthorized and forceful entry by Israeli security forces is an unacceptable violation of UNRWA’s privileges and immunities as a U.N. agency,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, officials said President Donald Trump will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Dec. 29 as U.S. officials meet with Netanyahu to move ahead with a U.S.-brokered plan on the future of Gaza. It was not immediately clear where the leaders will meet.
The raid was the latest in Israel's campaign against the agency, which provides aid and services to some 2.5 million Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, as well as 3 million more refugees in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.
Photos taken by an Associated Press photographer show police erecting an Israeli flag on the compound, and police cars on the street. Photos provided by UNRWA staff show a group of Israeli police officers in the compound.
Police said in a statement they entered for a “debt-collection procedure” initiated by Jerusalem’s municipal government, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The agency was established to help the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding the creation of the Israeli state. UNRWA supporters say Israel hopes to erase the Palestinian refugee issue by dismantling the agency. Israel says the refugees should be permanently resettled outside its borders.
For months following the start of the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023, UNRWA was the main lifeline for Gaza's population during Israel's offensive there.
Throughout the war, Israel has accused the agency of being infiltrated by Hamas, using its facilities and taking aid — claims for which it has provided little evidence. The U.N. has denied it. Israel also has claimed that hundreds of Palestinian militants work for UNRWA. UNRWA has denied knowingly aiding armed groups and says it acts quickly to purge any suspected militants.
After months of attacks from Netanyahu and his far-right allies, Israel banned it from operating on its territory in January. The U.S., formerly the largest donor to UNRWA, halted funding to the agency in early 2024.
UNRWA has since struggled to continue its work in Gaza, with other U.N. agencies, including the World Food Program and UNICEF, stepping in. Tamara Alrifai, UNRWA’s director of external relations and communications, said UNRWA has been excluded from ceasefire talks.
“If you squeeze UNRWA out, what other agency can fill that void?” Alrifai said.
Netanyahu met with the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Mike Waltz, and other officials on Monday in a visit the Trump administration said was aimed at pushing forward the U.S.-drafted 20-point plan for Gaza that includes the current ceasefire and following stages.
Israel’s government later said Trump and Netanyahu would meet on Dec. 29 to “discuss the future steps and phases and the international stabilization force of the ceasefire plan.”
With the remains of one hostage in Gaza yet to be handed over to Israel, Arab and Western officials have said they expect an international governing body in Gaza to be announced in the coming weeks. A search was underway on Monday for the hostage's remains, Hamas said.
On Sunday, a senior Hamas official told the AP the group is ready to discuss “freezing or storing or laying down” its arsenal of weapons as part of the ceasefire, offering a possible formula to resolve one of the thorniest issues in the U.S.-brokered agreement.
The war started when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel, leaving around 1,200 people dead and abducting 251 others.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 70,360 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which operates under the Hamas-run government. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but says nearly half the dead have been women and children. The ministry's numbers are considered reliable by the U.N. and other international bodies.
The ministry also says over 370 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since the ceasefire took effect.
Violence has also risen in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where Israel’s military shot and killed one man Sunday night. Officials said he was throwing rocks at soldiers with two others, one of whom was arrested. Palestinian health officials said the third man was wounded. The military said no soldiers were injured.
Palestinian authorities identified the man killed as a 19-year-old from the northern city of Qalqilya.
Israel began construction of a 50-mile (80-kilometer) barrier along its border with Jordan, Israel’s defense minister said Monday.
Israel Katz said the construction was aimed at preventing “efforts of Iran and its proxies to establish an eastern front against the state of Israel.”
The final project will include increased security along 310 miles (500 kilometers) of border areas in eastern Israel, and would cost the government around $1.7 billion, according to Israeli government figures.
Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Doha, Qatar, contributed to this report.
This version corrects the last name of the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to Waltz.
Find more of AP’s Israel-Hamas coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war
Hamas militants and Egyptian workers accompanied by members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) head to Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City to search for the remains of deceased hostages, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)
FILE - People carry sacks and boxes of food and humanitarian aid that was unloaded from a World Food Program convoy that had been heading to Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip, June 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi, File)
FILE - Palestinians grab sacks of flour from a moving truck carrying World Food Programme aid as it drives through Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, Nov. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana, File)
Israeli police and officials hang an Israeli flag on the compound of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees in East Jerusalem, after Israel police forcibly entered the compound, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
FILE - Offices of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, are seen in the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem, Monday, Jan. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean, File)
