Europe

Irregular border crossings into the European Union dropped by 31 per cent in the first quarter of 2025 to 33,600. The figures, released by Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, appear to show that the EU is getting a grip on illegal immigration. The gangs in charge of the people-smuggling trade are becoming ever more sophisticated and cunning But figures can be misleading. The biggest fall in irregular entries was the Western Balkan route, down 64 per cent on the same period in 2024. This is largely attributable to the accession of Bulgaria and Romania to the Schengen Zone on 1 January this year. As a result, more

Last week, the police in Britain launched a three-week operation codenamed ‘Machinize’. It began with nearly 300 raids on nail salons, vape shops and barbershops, which in recent years have become a common sight on British high streets Thirty-five arrests were made and 97 people suspected of being victims of modern slavery were placed under police protection. More than £1 million was frozen, money the police believe is ‘dirty’, generated by Albanian and Kurdish gangs that control much of Britan’s organised crime such as drugs and prostitution. They also are heavily involved in the people smuggling business, a fact noted in 2022 by Dan O’Mahoney, then the Clandestine Channel Threat

At the start of the month, J.D. Vance delivered the address at the Heritage Foundation in Washington for the premiere of a documentary. ‘Live Not By Lies’ is based on the book by Rod Dreher, who is a friend of the American Vice President’s. Vance informed his audience that backstage Dreher told him of a recent interview he had given to a French newspaper. Broadcast on Le Figaro’s online channel, Dreher was described in the tagline as an ‘American intellectual and friend of J.D. Vance’. As Vance joked, maybe that ‘was meant to tarnish [him] in that country’. It may have been. France does appear to have an axe to

It took just over six weeks for the new German coalition to form. That is very quick: in the past it has often taken months for parties to come to an agreement after elections. So what has made this process so smooth? I would like to think it was a sense of urgency, but I suspect it’s more to do with the programme being easy to agree on. The coalition treaty put together by the CDU and SPD parties is decidedly non-committal and unimaginative – a far cry from the change voters were promised. The 146-page document had barely been released on Wednesday before one of its architects warned that

The right rarely take to the streets in France, but thousands gathered in Paris on Sunday to hear Marine Le Pen pledge to continue the fight. The leader of the National Rally was convicted of embezzlement last week, and among her punishments was a five-year political disqualification. She told her supporters she was a victim of a ‘witch-hunt’ and they roared their agreement. Le Pen had assembled her MPs and supporters in the Place Vauban, in the shadow of the Hôtel des Invalides, built by Louis XIV as a retirement home for old soldiers. In the days leading up to the rally, some of Le Pen’s political adversaries had warned

When Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, who is nobody’s fool, offered Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu a state visit to Budapest last year, he knew a storm would follow. Netanyahu has now arrived in Hungary – and the backlash has duly followed. Orbán has vowed not only to ignore the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant against Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the war between Israel and Hamas; he has said his country will withdraw altogether from the ICC. During a joint press conference yesterday with Netanyahu, Orbán said the ICC had become a ‘political court’. Netanyahu hailed Hungary’s ‘bold and principled’ decision to withdraw from the court.

Marine Le Pen’s political career ended this morning when a Paris judge found her guilty of misusing EU funds. She was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, two of which are suspended and two will be served under an ankle bracelet. She was also fined €100,000 (£84,000) and disbarred from politics for five years. Few anticipated such a severe sentence – it is one that will send shockwaves not just through France but across Europe. Also convicted alongside the leader of the National Rally were 24 other party members – including eight MEPs – all found guilty of channelling €2.9 million (£2.4 million) of EU money to their own party’s coffers.

The British army is overstretched. This is not breaking news to anyone who takes an interest in defence. Although its budget has grown in real terms over the last decade, it has faced a complex network of problems. In only six of the last 25 years has recruitment exceeded outflow, meaning that the army has been consistently under strength. Meanwhile, two of its three armoured vehicles, Ajax and Boxer, are badly behind schedule. Consequently, the new ‘Future Soldier’ reforms have been disrupted, and the gifting of equipment and ammunition to Ukraine has severely depleted stockpiles. The flair for improvisation shown by good soldiers has done much to conceal the worst

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