Economy
Small firms, trade, the fixed cost of the new duties.
The euro area beat forecasts this summer. France was the only big economy to shrink, its third quarter without growth. The finance minister blames the heatwave and energy prices. INSEE's own table points somewhere closer to home: a state that keeps consuming while investment falls.
Christine Lagarde will leave the ECB in February, nine months early. Brussels promises a successor 'without delay', and the timing lets Macron help pick one before French voters go to the polls. A central bank that asks to be kept out of politics has just timed its exit around an election.
Germany's politicians and unions are furious that Audi's boss thanked Trump on a campaign stage in Georgia. They are much quieter about the deal that sent him there: a 15% tariff Brussels called 'the best we could get', and a $600bn investment pledge.
France's ten-year borrowing cost hit its highest since 2002 this week, and investors now charge Paris more than Athens, Rome or Madrid. Moody's rules tonight. The bigger story is who Brussels' old leniency has lined up to pay for it.
Belgium's ten-year rate passed Greece's this week for the first time since 2008, as Eurostat put its 2025 deficit at 5.2% of GDP. On the same night, Bart De Wever's coalition met to agree €10 billion of savings and broke up without a deal.
The ECB meets on 29 October with euro-area inflation at 3.8%, driven by energy, and national rates ranging from 2.4% to 6.1%. Rate rises cannot reopen Hormuz, and national tax choices are making the single rate even blunter.
EU energy ministers meet on 29 October to discuss EU-wide demand cuts as the Hormuz crisis drags on and gas storage sits at 74%. Before Brussels tells households to use less, it owes them an account of why Europe is still this exposed.
The Left, Greens and SPD want to use Germany's never-used Article 15 to take over big landlords' flats. Their own paper caps compensation at €16bn, keeps starting rents where they are, and delays the transfer to 2029, in a city that admits its budget is in trouble.
The European Council president wants a deal on the 2028–34 budget at a November summit, with a wider menu of new EU revenue sources. MEPs keep asking for more. Voters in France, Italy and Poland go to the polls next year. Why the rush?
António Costa says the EU will 'normally' cover two thirds of Ukraine's new €70bn need for 2027. Helping Kyiv is right. Calling a loan repayable by Russian reparations a loan, and 'burden-sharing' a plan, is not.
Parliament's centrist groups have agreed to cut the 2035 car target from 100% to an 87.5% tailpipe cut, plus green-steel credits and a 5% margin that keeps combustion cars on sale. The ban is going. The planning is not.
