The strongest message that can come out of Thursday’s EU summit would be if European leaders fully commit themselves to completing the EU single market, without which Europe cannot unlock the growth potential needed to cover rising defence spending and build a truly inclusive economy, write Enrico Letta and Pascal Lamy.
Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine shows how the continent has not yet solved the problem of what order comes after imperial collapse
Gaza is treated as a temporary humanitarian problem rather than a long-term political failure requiring accountability, protection, and reconstruction. Once the violence becomes less visible, so does the obligation to act, writes Mahmoud Shehada in Gaza.
Ten years ago, Germany symbolised Europe’s ‘Willkommenskultur’ (Welcome Culture). Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open borders to refugees in 2015 was framed as a moral and historical responsibility. What has happened since?
Without meaningful safeguards, the EU-Mercosur agreement – as it stands – risks locking the EU into a system that expands imports of meat produced under conditions that fall far below EU regulations. The deal would lower tariffs — without requiring imported products to meet equivalent European animal welfare standards.
Cyprus is in the first month of its EU presidency. The island took the role having spent more than a decade dismantling its reputation as a permissive financial hub, not least for wealthy Russians, and repositioning itself within the Western political, economic and security framework.
The far-right founder of Portugal’s Chega (“Enough”), André Ventura, is a former sports TV commentator from the world of showbusiness — and came a close second in January’s presidential election on an anti-Roma, anti-Muslim, racist and sexist platform.
The EU and the West’s premise is simple and comforting: Hamas must go, Israel will not rule Gaza, and therefore a reformed Palestinian Authority must step in. But this consensus rests on a political fiction, writes Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah.
For Europeans, order is something the police restore under law, not something the army imposes under executive will. Fortunately, EU member states built constitutional architecture to prevent what the US Insurrection Act enables.
Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney had a proposal at Davos — ‘middle states’ should work together, not taking sides between the US, Russia or China, but defending free trade and international law. This is a nice idea, but the question is whether it is powerful enough to calm the world and restore some order to the chaos.
The Greenland crisis can be used as a strategic trigger to reinvigorate the Nordic enlargement of the European Union, with Iceland and Norway offered membership. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom should also offer bilateral defence treaties to Oslo and Reykjavík — providing a politically significant safety net should Nato become paralysed.
The real question is not whether Europe has an anti-racism strategy, but whether it is willing to let the strategy shape its core political actions, narrative and leadership. We should not confuse adopting a strategy with mainstreaming anti-racism across the policies that most affect people’s lives to tackle it at its roots.
Europe will not, and should not, determine Iran’s future, but its choices will affect the conditions under which Iranians attempt to reclaim their right to self-determination.
The EU, instead of contending itself with the undignified role of a subservient payer and sidekick of US interests, must prioritise a robust and ambitious diplomatic strategy towards Israel, moving from mere statements of discontent to actionable efforts that hold the Israeli government accountable for its blatant violations of international law, writes former EU ambassador Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff..
With US public opinion overwhelmingly against a military takeover of Greenland, a joint initiative from the US Congress and the European Parliament might be the best bet to sway Donald Trump’s mind.
After president Trump’s repeated proclamations that he wants ‘to have Greenland’, military officials and diplomats from Greenland, Denmark and NATO have been trying to find a way-out of the current crisis. The EU should step in and defuse the artificial tensions through democratic means.
The PFAS corporate lobby should have been chastened by the revelations of the devastating impacts of forever chemicals – this has not happened.
Is Europe ready to understand that defending Ukraine means defending its own future – and to act accordingly, without delay?
The protests that began in December 2025 are not about prices alone. They represent a sustained challenge to a political system widely perceived as irreparable. Recognising that reality is not radicalism. For Europe, it is strategic realism, writes Babak Rezaeedaryakenari from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
A multinational European contingent, rotating and modest in size, would internationalise the security of Greenland. Any hostile act would no longer be a bilateral issue between Copenhagen and Washington, but an incident involving several European states. This would not be a force designed to fight the United States, nor a step towards militarising the Arctic.