European Union
Macron’s mission to China
During French President Emmanuel Macron's visit to China, which concluded last week, his choice to gift China's Xi Jinping with a horse was apparently prompted by Xi's words of…
Breakdown in Berlin
Since the beginning of Germany's election campaign a few months ago, Christian Lindner has demanded his role on centre stage. His slightly dishevelled face stared out in black and…
Macron, America and Iran: Searching for a middle way
French President Emmanuel Macron is considering a visit to Tehran in early 2018. Macron would be the first French President to visit Iran since Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in 1976,…
Populism, nationalism, separatism: The EU’s new, and old, challenge
A brief recapitulation of what has happened in Europe in recent weeks, with Austria first. The parliamentary election will likely bring 31 year-old Sebastian Kurz to power, easily…
German elections: The collapse of consensus
It is unusual for a major party to assume a 'great responsibility' by being relegated to opposition. But this is precisely the situation facing the German Social Democrats (SPD)…
Turkey’s EU accession: A useful fiction
By any measure, the German Chancellor debate between Angela Merkel and Martin Schulz last weekend was a dispiriting, monotonous affair. On irrelevant issue after irrelevant issue,…
The Russian ‘taboo’ and the German election
We need to come out of the dead end … Something must be offered so that Putin can change his policy without a loss of face … To express a taboo: I fear that the Crimea must be…
Clash or compromise: The return of history in Poland
Poland today gets almost uniformly bad press in the West, replete with stories alleging that Beata Szydło's government has all but dismantled the foundations of democracy on…
Macron puts his stamp on French foreign policy
French President Emmanuel Macron is striking a new, pragmatic and self-confident tone in the country's foreign policy, for which he's received a lot of kudos. The recent reception…
Trump in Warsaw, Hamburg and Paris
Trump divides. Most people are either staunchly against or for US President Donald Trump – if not the man, then what he supposedly stands for. As most commentators find…