We are told every day that we are in a mighty struggle between liberal democrats and illiberal populists. We are told that ‘we’, the former have to defend our freedoms against ‘them’, the latter.
This framing is wrong and it is a gift for semi-authoritarian parties, warns Michael Meyer-Resende.
Preserving this Greek carve-out sends precisely the wrong signal. It tells companies that sufficiently valuable commercial interests may eventually secure exemptions. It tells member states that delaying agreement can produce favourable outcomes. And it tells Moscow that Europe’s political unity remains negotiable when influential industries are affected.
The FBI chief Kash Patel is heading to Moscow, where he is to be hosted by the Russian security service, the FSB. Nothing wrong with that in principle: under the previous administration the then CIA chief Bill Burns regularly acted as message-carrier to the Kremlin. But news of the visit comes as allies’ trust in American spookdom is hitting new lows, warns Edward Lucas.
While an internal panel cleared Karim Khan of misconduct, US and Israeli pressure has pushed ICC governments toward a politically charged removal vote that quietly rewrites the court’s own rules.
The Azerbaijani regime has arrested investigative journalists and dismantled independent media, leaving virtually no one on the ground to report on corruption and trade violations. And yet the EU Commission and German government are placing their trust in the authoritarian petro-state.
By filming a story of exile and homecoming in Western Sahara, Christopher Nolan’s production turned an unresolved homeland into scenery — and exposed the need for ethical standards governing film locations.
Nearly 75 percent of the EU’s building stock is energy inefficient and most homes were never designed to cope with the increasingly hot summers Europe now faces.
All Europeans should read a speech Koen Lenaerts, president of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, delivered to law students in Leiden in mid-June, writes Caroline de Gruyter. It is a speech about European values and the fundamental place they occupy in Europe’s legal system.
The EU has left the door open to age-estimation by behavioural profiling, and the EU’s own data protection authorities have warned that this can be more intrusive than the verification it replaces, inferring age from a user’s activity at scale, with weaker accuracy for the children it is meant to protect.
Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy team may feel nervous about briefing the boss this week. Among recent bad news, the Chinese Communist Party has delivered a double snub to the Kremlin, writes Edward Lucas.
Kyiv dismissed the reformer who was making the concept of speed its defence ministry’s organising principle – just as Russia begins to copy the model, and days after Europe signed up to build on it. So what now?
The EU has probably missed the boat in imposing trade measures against solar panels or electric vehicles (EVs) without China viewing this as a direct, offensive measure (and in turn, incurring harsh retaliation)
MEPs voting to shield themselves from investigation? Sadly, that’s all too typicalMEPs in the European Parliament’s budgetary control committee voted to shield the Patriots for Europe group from any criminal investigation into misspending EU funds.
A tribunal created for one conflict — while acts of aggression in the Middle East and Latin America go unanswered — serves the court’s critics their strongest argument on a silver platter: that international criminal justice is a selective instrument of Western power, not a universal principle.
From Trojan Horse in Brussels to executive for China’s BYD – Hungary’s Szijjártó makes classic ‘revolving doors’ moveWith Chinese electric car giant BYD already under fire over allegations of forced labour and huge state subsidy that is destroying Europe’s domestic car industry, Hungarian former foreign minister Péter Szijjártó’s latest move exposes just how easily powerful insiders can cross the line between public office and private corporate interests.
Presented as a transparency exercise, a draft European Parliament report would curb the Court of Justice’s power to defend judicial independence across the Union and with it the legal infrastructure on which the EU’s citizens, companies and rights depend, warns Alberto Alemanno.
The lobbyists’ goal is to convince MEPs to radically dismantle the existing EU rules on pesticide authorisation and use, rules meant to keep too toxic products off the market.
Whether it’s Nigel Farage’s secret multi-million pound crypto donations, or Marine Le Pen’s corruption conviction, anything that catches the far-right out is, by default, against the will of the people.
EU governments can’t kick their fossil fuels addiction, even when they want toEven if public authorities sometimes have the right idea of where the energy transition needs to go, they still can’t bring themselves to do what’s needed to phase out fossil fuels.
As the EU finalises its 21st sanctions package, two sanctioned vessels carrying critical oil and gas infrastructure are sailing towards Russia. Europe still has time to act.