The Trump administration is considering sanctions against three French magistrates, according to the German magazine Der Spiegel, causing concern within the French judiciary. The judges in question sentenced Marine Le Pen on March 31, 2025, to four years in prison, including two mandatory years, and five years of ineligibility for embezzlement of public funds.
On December 30, 2025, the weekly publication reported on its website anonymous accounts from former US administration officials who said that Washington intends to sanction European magistrates and officials suspected of targeting the far right in France or in Germany. Der Spiegel explicitly cited the case of the three French judges.
“If such claims were proven true or were to materialize,” declared Peimane Ghaleh-Marzban, the president of the Paris judicial court, on January 6 during a session welcoming new magistrates, “they would constitute unacceptable and intolerable interference in our country’s internal affairs, which should provoke condemnation from the public authorities.”
We’re not even talking about building our own alternatives to Visa and MasterCard yet. Everyone keeps talking about Wero which seems more like a replacement for SEPA instant payments.
I’d suggest you spend 5 minutes learning about wero, then.
We also have other payment systems, like the EC cards in Germany.
Okay, so how do I actually use a Wero card in a physical store? And without an American controlled phone OS, since right now all of Wero lives in the banks’ apps and there’s no actual card?
Never heard of it, so it won’t work in my country. Visa and Mastercard only. Those are the only ones that are truly EU-wide.
You can’t, yet. However, the original claim was…
Which is not true. We are talking about it, even working on it. Needs a few years, tho.
Last I heard there’s still no talk of a Wero solution that works without a phone though. No card, only apps and those only run on American-approved phones.
About the “only run on American approved phones”: not really. They work on most phones (and the number of degoogled OS is growing) and banking apps not using NFC often DO work on those phones. You only need to lock the bootloader, not root and use microg. A few companies now sell refurbished (or even new) phones equipped this way so your average non-techie can buy a geopolitically agnostic phone.
Many banking apps require play services too unfortunately. You’d then have to switch banks based on who doesn’t.
Also how do you make NFC payments without NFC? Or more generally, with no NFC and no card, how do you pay IRL?
Wero is QR code based.
What do I do with a QR code if I don’t want a smartphone? Or if my battery is empty?
I can see way too many negatives compared to having a physical card. And as of now there’s no talk of a wero card. The only EU wide alternative to Visa and MasterCard right now is cash which isn’t always the best option either.