European Union

The E.U.’s faith in Iran is foolish, dangerous—and a mystery.

“I wasn’t born chancellor,” said German leader Angela Merkel in an ad for her 2009 reelection campaign. She repeated the phrase in late October at a press conference to announce her coming resignation as chairman of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Recent state elections have…

Italy’s coalition government came to power in May partly by winning an economic argument: The tight-budget “austerity” policies promoted by the European Union in the wake of the financial crises that began a decade ago were a sucker’s game, at least for slow-moving economies like Italy’s. Now the…

The failed Macedonia referendum.

What started as a rebellion in rural England over agricultural regulations has become a continent-wide quarrel about who governs whom.

A fight delayed.

The politics of protectionism mean it's here to stay.

Christopher Caldwell on the euro and the damage it wrought.

I wish I’d bothered to learn more poetry when I was younger so that I could think beyond Yeats’s done-to-death “Second Coming” when musing about British politics right now. Perhaps in 2018 it is better explained in meme form, as the dog in the burning house muttering “This is fine,” or the sweating…

On July 25, 2018, at approximately 3:00 p.m. eastern daylight time, the tweets fell silent, and a truce was declared on the European front of the trade war between the United States and, well, the rest of the world. President Donald Trump of the United States of America, and President Jean-Claude…

Analyzing the trade "deal" Trump made with the European Union.

When Theresa May goes down, Jacob Rees-Mogg will be Tory executioner and Tory kingmaker.

The nation-state reconsidered.

One of the last laws in Europe banning abortion, Ireland’s eighth amendment, was decisively rejected by voters on May 25. The plebiscite’s result allows the amendment to be struck from the country’s constitution. Once that happens later this year, Irish women will no longer have to smuggle in…

People have been forecasting the end of the euro since the currency came into being in the late 1990s. Yet the euro has survived five sovereign bailouts—including three successive ones of Greece (the continent’s most troubled economy)—and two bank rescues aimed at Spanish and Cypriot banks. The…

The European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the organization that licenses EU television broadcasts and hosts the annual Eurovision Song Contest, has terminated its contract with a Chinese broadcasting company. The company, Mango TV, cut one of the songs from the contest’s broadcast—the gay-themed…

The Eurozone had a slow recovery from the Great Recession, and now that recovery is slowing down.

There are two ways of looking at Brexit. One is confusing, the other is clear, and both are true. Many people in Britain would prefer not to look at all at Brexit. They would prefer to undo it by calling a second referendum, or contriving a slow legislative throttling that, like the assassination…

Sunday morning on ABC News’ This Week, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross made two basic errors discussing Donald Trump's new trade proposals: He understated both the immediate harm of President Trump’s steel and aluminum import tariffs and the future harm from possible retaliatory actions by America’s…

Since January, the most important person in the campaign for the Italian elections coming on March 4 has been a missing person. Sad selfies of Pamela Mastropietro, a troubled 18-year-old from Rome, have appeared on the front pages of Italy’s newspapers since her body was found, chopped up, rinsed…

Over the past five years, the State Grid Corporation of China has come close to performing a feat that the European Union, despite its 13 trillion euro economy, has failed at for two decades: create an electricity grid stretching across much of Europe, introducing efficiencies and economies of…

It’s time for the January 2018 Hypocrite of the Month awards. The nominees are . . .

Paris

Second Thoughts: London’s Metropolitan Police Service, aka Scotland Yard because its original entrance was located on Great Scotland Yard, is re-considering two rules that seem to have had consequences that could easily have been foreseen.

America, the New York Times groans (chortles?), was "ostracized" by the other G20 countries at the recently concluded meeting in Hamburg. And with Angela Merkel leading the band of ostracizers. And on not one but three issues: immigration, climate change, and trade. These are all worth examining in…

Not since 2011, when Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi was captured on a wiretap disparaging the size of her backside, has Angela Merkel suffered so grievously from the boorishness of allies. Donald Trump, on his first diplomatic visit to Europe, strong-armed the prime minister of Montenegro. He…

Do Brexit, unbridled immigration, Russian aggression, and mounting nationalist sentiment augur the imminent end of the European project?

Do Brexit, unbridled immigration, Russian aggression, and mounting nationalist sentiment augur the imminent end of the European project?

"Everyone said it would be impossible to do what we did," France's new president, 39-year-old Emmanuel Macron, told a crowd of politely applauding supporters in the courtyard of the Louvre shortly after the polls had closed on May 7. "But they didn't know France!"

London

The United States might waver on Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia but Europe will not, the European Union's foreign policy chief said Friday, so long as a standing agreement to stop the fighting in Ukraine is not fully implemented.

"Brexit means Brexit," Theresa May said in July 2016 when she replaced David Cameron as Britain's prime minister. Since then, May has continued to insist that Brexit will mean Brexit, but without offering even a taste of what Brexit means. Would it be a "hard Brexit," cutting Britain off entirely…

"Brexit means Brexit,” Theresa May said in July 2016 when she replaced David Cameron as Britain's prime minister. Since then, May has continued to insist that Brexit will mean Brexit, but without offering even a taste of what Brexit means. Would it be a "hard Brexit," cutting Britain off entirely…

British prime minister Theresa May has been in office for just five months. It hasn't been smooth sailing. Grappling with the aftermath of Brexit, May has faced anti-Brexit legal challenges, tough negotiations with disaffected European Union leaders, and a parliamentary revolt over plans to expand…

The European state system, Leon Trotsky wrote in 1932, resembles "the 'system' of cages in an impoverished provincial zoo." The European Union, the ideal of postwar reconstruction, was intended to replace the tariffs, borders, and belligerence of the old Europe. With the euro currency and the "four…

The European state system, Leon Trotsky wrote in 1932, resembles “the 'system' of cages in an impoverished provincial zoo." The European Union, the ideal of postwar reconstruction, was intended to replace the tariffs, borders, and belligerence of the old Europe. With the euro currency and the "four…

The Italian prime minister will resign. Reuters has more:

Turkey's Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, appears as the sole person in his country's politics who knows what he wants. Erdogan seeks absolute power and acts against all obstacles to his ambitions. He is eager to identify new "enemies" whose purported conspiracies he believes justify his…

With everything he said on the campaign trail, it was inevitable that the relationship between President-elect Donald Trump and the European Union would start off on the wrong foot. But if Trump appreciates that the liberal democracies of Europe are still the best friends that America has in the…

Ventotene, Italy

Ventotene, Italy

Phew! "Turkey sends tanks into Syria ...," CNN headlined on Thursday. "The goal is to crush ISIS." It's about time Turkey joined the war against Islamist terror. Some had suspected Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan of having a soft spot for ISIS, even of letting his country be used as a supply…

Donald Trump unleashed a new populist messenger on Wednesday night who declared Americans can defeat the establishment and the media just as the British people did in voting to leave the European Union.

The French have a clear vision of how want Britain's decision to leave the EU should play out: British businesses out of the EU, French businesses into the U.K.

It was the mayhem that made Theresa May. Britain’s unexpected vote to leave the EU crushed financial markets and plunged some Remainers into angry, unhinged, and tellingly snobbish mourning: It was, one author explained, "the revenge of the Brownshirts, a dictatorship of the illiterate and the…

Last month, when voters in the U.K. decided to exit the European Union, the pound plummeted and market chaos ensued. The media speculated as to which companies might pull out of the country. And everyone wondered how the referendum would impact the flow of immigration. But there's an even graver…

When historians seek to explain an event, they often divide their explanation into three parts. In the long run—what the French Annales School called the longue durée—there are deep historical structures, mental frameworks or other slow-to-change systems. In the intermediate term, there are…

In a clip posted earlier today by member of European Parliament and leader of the UK Independence Party Nigel Farage, the architecht of Brexit had his day in the sun before his fellow MEPs.

In a speech to the European Parliament Thursday, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas accused rabbis of "demanding" that the Israeli government poison Palestinian water.

The United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union Thursday, spurring the resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron and a drop in markets, as well as praise—or resigned acceptance—from major American political figures.

London

British Prime Minister David Cameron has announced his plans for resignation after consultation with the Queen.

London

Voters in the United Kingdom will be choosing — in a referendum to be held by the end of next year, and perhaps as early as June — whether or not to stay in the European Union. Barack Obama wants the U.K. to stay put and is reportedly planning "a big, public reach-out" to persuade Brits to stick…

The walls are going up all over Europe; we shall not see them lowered in our lifetime. The dream of "ever-closer union," and the eventual merging of nations into a United States of Europe, is over. From the white cliffs of Dover in the west, where David Cameron refused to follow Brussels's orders…

The EU has never looked worse. Last week alone, Denmark rejected the deepening of ties with the EU in a referendum, France's anti-EU party received a leading number of votes in its regional election, and Sweden, Germany, and Austria have all reinstated border control—effectively ending Schengen for…

Europe’s migrant crisis, the continent’s greatest humanitarian disaster since the aftermath of World War II, continues to worsen. The summer began with mass drownings in the Mediterranean and bickering between the European Union and the governments of its member states over who should foot the bill…

Across the Middle East, there is concern about the nuclear deal with Iran. By releasing frozen assets and removing economic sanctions, the deal seems to facilitate renewed aggression. Won’t that encourage more violence from Iranian terror proxies, like Hezbollah and Hamas? The international…

A mass outbreak of syphilis, the radical economist and member of parliament Costas Lapavitsas told an interviewer, is about the only thing the European political establishment did not threaten Greece’s voters with before the country’s early-July referendum. 

Flushed with the success of its five-year effort to restore prosperity to Greece, Brussels’ eurocrats have turned their attention to Italy, and ruled that the country’s famous buffalo mozzarella need not be made with fresh milk: powdered milk will do just fine. So Italy will have to repeal a 1974…

Riga, Latvia

Frankfurt "For the first time in this election I'm feeling nervous," one FDP member just confessed. And he should be. ZDF's final poll (Politbarometer) was released, and the race could not be tighter. At the moment, Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union is holding steady at 40 percent. Its…

David Cameron leaves things late. Leadership by essay crisis, it has been called, a nod to procrastination by generations of students. But his belated response to the mounting political turmoil over Britain’s membership in the EU​—​a speech proposing an in/out referendum​—​won’t save him from…

Debtors of the world, unite—you have nothing to lose but your IOUs!

A phony peace is unlikely to end much better than a phony war. When the European Central Bank (ECB) poured a total of $1.3 trillion in cheap three-year funding into the continent’s financial institutions, that’s what it got. Sure, it beat the alternative. Lehman part deux was staved off yet again.…

Last week Germany reclaimed its status as the leading power in Europe. In the two years since it became apparent that Greece was, essentially, bankrupt, there have been dozens of emergency meetings of the countries that use the common European currency, the euro. Most of the euro-using states…

"A man attending a wife-swapping party without his wife.” So a very annoyed French negotiator at the latest European summit characterized British prime minister David Cameron’s refusal to trade the future of his nation’s financial center for the approval of the 26 other members of the European…

One way to gauge the present state of European unity is to know that Turkey, which has energetically sought membership in the European Union for the past decade, is now having second thoughts about the enterprise. According to the German Marshall Fund, in 2004, three-quarters of Turks thought EU…

A lot of intelligent money people think this is make-or-break week for the euro. They say that by Friday, December 9, either there will be a path toward resolution of Europe’s debt crisis, or events will accelerate toward a breakup of the single currency. One such is Morgan Stanley analyst Arnaud…

Berlin

Greece is a far away country about which we know very little, as Neville Chamberlain described Czechoslovakia right before developments there brought the world closer to World War II. France has not been a great friend in recent times of America—remember Freedom Fries?—so its travails aren’t…

A doctor ignored by a smoker won’t celebrate if lung cancer strikes. Britain’s euroskeptics are generally too worried about the consequences of the Eurozone’s thoroughly predictable crisis to submit to the temptations of I told you so. Well, most of them are. The United Kingdom may be outside the…

"Libya will travel a long and winding road to democracy."

We are all Europeans now. Doubt that—and just try to get news about the American economy on the financial news networks on any morning. No luck. Lots of talk about German chancellor Angela Merkel’s balancing act—trying to keep from being turfed out of office, while still sending Germans’…

The German Marshall Fund has released data from its annual Transatlantic Trends survey. The most striking finding: “there remains a very strong transatlantic difference of opinion over whether war is sometimes necessary to obtain justice, with 75% of U.S. participants  agreeing with that concept…

With the debt ceiling debate behind us, now might be a good time to get back to the biggest problem currently facing the world economy: the eurozone. While the European debt crisis may have slipped off Americans' radar screens in the past weeks, its significance has not diminished.

The U.S. economy might be on the verge of a double-dip recession, while Europe is paralyzed by a massive debt crisis afflicting the governments on the periphery of the eurozone. Alarming as they are, both of these stories are just part of an even gloomier overall economic picture of the West.

A spectre is haunting Europe​—​the spectre of the disintegration of the eurozone. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcize this spectre: German chancellor and French president, the Brussels eurocracy and the bonus-laden bankers. Let the ruling classes tremble. The…

It has been easy to snicker in recent weeks at the politicians who designed the euro, which appears on the verge of collapse after a decade as the common currency of a dozen countries in the European Union. Last May, the continent’s finance ministers put together a $145-billion package to bail out…

Late last month, EU Home Affairs commissioner Cecilia Malmström announced the resumption of the Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP), under which American counterterror investigators have consulted and analyzed selected data on international bank transactions originating in Europe. (Note that…