Europe

Despite suffering their worst electoral humiliation since the 1890s, Germany’s Social Democrat party (SPD) is displaying a remarkable combination of arrogance and delusion. Having collapsed to a mere 16 per cent in last month’s election, the party has nonetheless strong-armed Friedrich Merz’s victorious CDU into abandoning fiscal discipline and embracing ruinous debt policies. This audacious blackmail would be impressive if it weren’t so dangerous for Germany’s economic future. Yet amidst this parliamentary chess game, the SPD remains stubbornly blind to the fundamental reason for their historic decline: they refuse to acknowledge that their traditional voter base, the German working class, has decamped completely to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD)

It has long been said by some of Emmanuel Macron’s opponents that he is a president who ‘governs by fear’. It began with his management of Covid five years, when he imposed on France one of the most stringent lockdowns in the world. ‘We are at war’, he declared in a televised address to the nation on 16 March. Now he is at it again, issuing dire warnings about the possibility of war just as America, Russia and Ukraine have started talking about peace. There is still a long way to go before the conflict in Ukraine ends, but the President of France appears pessimistic about the chances of peace.

Might a headscarf bring down France’s coalition government? The question of whether the Islamic garment should be permitted on the sports field has revealed the ideological differences within Prime Minister Francois Bayrou’s fragile government. On the one hand, there are left-leaning ministers such as Elisabeth Borne (Education) and Marie Barsacq (Sport and youth) who see nothing wrong with the headscarf. Others, principally, Gérald Darmanin (Justice) and Bruno Retailleau (Interior), are fiercely opposed. Retailleau recently took Barsacq to task over her stance, saying the headscarf ‘is not a form of freedom, but a form of submission for women’. The headscarf is just the latest attempt by Islamists to destabilise France On

The termination of US government funding for the two venerable radio stations Radio Free Europe (RFE) and Radio Liberty (RL) by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) shows how blindly fanatical the Tesla owner’s axe-wielding has become. Musk claims RFE/RL is run by ‘radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1 billion a year of US taxpayer money’. But that is an ignorant distortion of the truth. For 75 years these beacons of open journalism have provided a lifeline for millions trapped inside dictatorial regimes – a necessary pro-democracy corrective to lies, propaganda and censorship. The stations were originally created to serve audiences behind the Iron Curtain

Bernard-Henri Lévy is running on fumes. Plus ça change. “I slept as always last night, a few hours, with chemistry compelling me to sleep,” the Parisian public intellectual tells me when we speak on the phone. “I miss the process of sleep, the process of getting awake, all parts of the ceremony I miss. But insomnia has given me more than it has taken. More time, certainly more work, more vigilance; I’m awake.” “Maybe I would sleep better if I was British,” Lévy says His latest book, Nuit Blanche, which has yet to be translated into English, is a runaway bestseller in France, where it was released in January. It

Donald Trump’s recent decision to deny Ukraine access to American intelligence data in the war against Russia has concentrated minds on how the US could restrict Britain’s defence capability, from F-35 stealth jets to its independent nuclear deterrent. Some fears are well-founded. Others, such as the recent suggestion by a former French ambassador to the UK that a ‘dual key’ controls Britain’s submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles, are a myth.  The idea is growing in some quarters that now is the moment for Britain to switch away from the US to Europe for defence equipment cooperation. One need not look too far to detect its motivation or to see its naivety. Like

European leaders are in Brussels today for an emergency summit on defence, and the future of both Ukraine and the continent. In a further attempt to hash out a peace plan for Ukraine, the 27 EU heads of state are joined by Volodymyr Zelensky. Arriving this morning, Zelensky declared, ‘It’s great we are not alone’. As part of today’s agenda, members of the bloc are expected to endorse Ursula von der Leyen’s ReArm Europe plan – which will make €150 billion (£125 billion) available in loans for members to boost defence spending. The summit will also likely discuss French President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to extend his country’s ‘nuclear umbrella’ to its

If there is one silver lining to Donald Trump’s Oval Office bust-up with Volodymyr Zelensky last Friday, it is that Europe is finally getting serious on rearmament and defence. Or is it? On Tuesday, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission (EC), announced a package of measures designed to encourage EU member states to up their defence spending. If they make full use of the new proposals, von der Leyen said, it would amount to an increase of up to €800 billion (£661 billion) spent on defence across the bloc. Announcing the package, she declared: ‘We are in an era of rearmament. And Europe is ready to massively

Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are in competition to be the de facto leader of the European response to the diplomatic crisis between Donald Trump and Ukraine’s president Zelensky. The cynic might wonder if Macron isn’t perhaps making the most of the fallout to boost his standing after a calamitous few months. The French president’s reputation has not recovered from his decision last June to call a snap election; the result was political chaos and three prime ministers in six months. Few French have confidence in their president to handle the situation Ukraine effectively Domestically, France is a disaster zone. Lawlessness, immigration and an ailing economy are just three reasons

On Thursday, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) called on his organisation to lay down their arms and dissolve themselves. If they comply, this would put an end to a decades-long conflict with the Turkish state that has claimed the lives of over 40,000 people. The statement was delivered in a crowded press conference in Istanbul by members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy party (DEM). The call appeared to be more or less unconditional. One of the speakers at the end of the conference added that ‘in practice, of course, the laying down of arms and the PKK’s self-dissolution require the recognition of democratic politics