Once Kyiv burns through its €90bn, will EU float another loan to keep it in fight?
Hallelujah, we have an agreement to keep Ukraine solvent!
EU climate regulations show it can’t compete in ‘pugnacious new world’
The recently completed COP-30 in Brazil begat no roadmap for a fossil fuel phaseout, disappointing an EU delegation that had hoped to rope the rest of the world into an approximation…
China’s climate envoy humiliates the EU
The European Union came to COP 30 in Belem confident that it could supplant the absent Americans and lead the world with the example of its own plans to achieve Net Zero by…
Immigration: Is Germany still a serious country?
One of the fundamental obligations of public service in a liberal democracy is the requirement to set aside one’s personal opinions and fulfil the programmes of elected…
Human welfare or lower emissions? Pick one
The recent deviation of Bill Gates from strict green orthodoxy must have come as a shock to Europe's eco-elites.
Corporate sustainability and the EU’s muddled energy mire
The economist Thomas Sowell once observed that there are no policies, only tradeoffs.
Does Europe deserve a seat at the Gaza peace plan table?
Like many leaders facing dire straits domestically, French President Macron hoped his control of foreign policy might allow him to claw back some of his lost prestige.
Can Merz survive the (latest) coalition from Hell?
The serial travails of the dying Macron presidency may be dominating the headlines, but the profound dysfunction of Germany’s coalition government holds its own perils for…
No markets: EU steel industry with 300,000 workers stands at the brink
Robert Conquest once observed that everyone is conservative about what they know best.
More EU defence, but where is the money?
The European Union’s schoolmarm in chief, Ursula von der Leyen, has called her unruly charges together this week in Copenhagen, where she will rap knuckles and extract commitments…
Renewed euro crisis? French debt at €3.3 trillion must be focusing minds in Frankfurt
Engineers know that system stability requires a capacity to manage unexpected accidents.
EU elites, watch and learn: Cracker Barrel populism comes for Europe
The odd saga of the Cracker Barrel logo redesign was likely mysterious to many Europeans, should they have noticed the story at all.
Suppressing free speech and free votes: EU intent on crippling democratic resilience
The EU is justly proud of the liberal democracies it nurtured as it expanded beyond its original founding members.
€800bn arms without armies? All dead steel and no soldiers
Once the European Commission opened the €800 billion defence spending honeypot and Germany moved to exclude defence spending from deficit calculations, the big beasts of…
Despite euro-fantasies, Trump, Xi and Putin do not regard the EU as a sovereign state
Much has been made of the lopsided deal Ursula von der Leyen struck with Donald Trump, which among other things traded zero tariffs on US goods for a 15 per cent tax on EU…
Defence now: Europe learns intentions require capabilities
The spectacular raid on Fordow nuclear complex showed Europe the limits of multilateral diplomacy when confronted with irreconcilable demands.
Downstairs are heading Upstairs: It will be a shock to the drawing room
How do you keep the help down in the scullery and well away from the drawing room where they might upset their betters?
Euro-champions to be built on subsidies, but where can the EU find markets?
Moving with its usual lightning speed, the European Commission has pencilled in the end of 2027 for new guidelines designed to relax competition rules and permit mergers between…
Merz will learn from Bismarck, firewall against the AfD may actually be political fuel
Europe pays regular obeisance to remembering “the lessons of the past.
A friendly letter from the American heartland to our European allies
Hello Europe, I’d like to introduce you to America. No, not the America you know.
Haunted by the euro-ghost of Hallstein: the power to collect direct EU taxes
The European Commission finds itself in a bit of a pickle.
For the EU elite, a lesson in how an American succeeds, no credentials needed
Anyone who still doubts that Donald Trump has a wicked sense of humour need only consider his chosen ambassador to the EU, Andrew Puzder, recent CEO of the Hardee’s and…
The new EU defence commissioner, not much money, not much influence
No one knows the hazards of the defence portfolio better than Ursula von der Leyen, whose tenure leading the German defence ministry was marked by a failure to improve procurement…
Censorship fog descends on Europe, world cut off
A performative fury erupted across Europe when the dread Elon Musk not only endorsed Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD), but agreed to host an extended interview on…
EU leads to the Molenbeek Fallacy: luscious benefits but no national pride
The good secular rationalists who founded the European project after the horrors of the Second World War believed that political stability could be restored by meeting the…
What will the EU do when cars become commodities?
Volkswagen has defused the labour crisis sparked by its announcement of impending plant closures with a deal that agrees to keep these factories open and reduce overall worker…
EU must rebuild Syria or Syrian immigrants will stay in Europe
Thirty-three years ago, Jacques Poos, President of the Council of the EU, announced that the impending civil war in Yugoslavia was “Europe’s hour” to take its place…
High-born French and low-born Italians against Chinese Commies: car wars
European car companies are locked in an increasingly bitter struggle to maintain profits and market share amid a secular downturn in sales of internal combustion vehicles…
In France the helicopter air-drops of fresh cash are over
In one of his Letters from Paris published many years ago in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik observed that the French suffer from what he called a “White Helicopter” syndrome.
Outdated software running Germany Inc goes for easy protection not innovation
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader and likely future chancellor Friedrich Merz is sidling cautiously up to the debt brake issue that just demolished the traffic light…