Nations
Capitals still make choices. We score the ones that gold-plate, delay, or tell the truth.
PiS broke Poland's Constitutional Tribunal. On Friday night Tusk's side tried to take it back with a borrowed clause from the law on ordinary courts, riot police at the gate and a president shoving his way inside. Brussels spent eight years saying the rule of law is about procedure. Now it gets to prove it meant it.
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.
At least 68 people died when a high-speed train was cleared to run past a red signal into a stationary train near Toledo. Spain's transport minister blamed an 'inexplicable' order from his own rail control centre. After Adamuz in January, nobody resigned. This time the question is who answers for the system.
After 14 years, a canopy collapse and record turnout, Vučić is finished. Within hours von der Leyen, Costa and Kos were promising Serbia's 'future in the European Union'. The students never campaigned on it. Brussels should ask itself why.
An hour of Joan of Arc, optimism and 'new obscurantisms' in Orléans. One sentence was a plan: no authority, 'not even a European one', will rank above France's constitution. Brussels taught Paris that France is special. Now it may have to argue the opposite.
Paris police counted the same 110,000 marchers as last week. This time the looting largely stayed away. Order turned out to be a choice, and the Trappes suspect has told police what he did with the Saturday France didn't choose it.
A gunman killed a 26-year-old and shot a 12-year-old girl in a headscarf eight times, her mother says. France's anti-terror prosecutor suspects a racist motive. On the eve of Le Pen's party congress, the right has to apply its own rule.
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.
Vučić quit the presidency to run for prime minister in Sunday's election, and an independent poll has the student movement narrowly ahead. Brussels, which signed lithium deals and looked away for a decade, has no part in this story.
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.
After two years in committee and a year before the election, the Sejm has passed two narrow abortion bills that President Nawrocki is expected to veto and the coalition cannot override. For both camps, the fight may be worth more than the law.
Rome and Madrid ended their three-month border spat over Ceuta with a phone call. The Commission’s own list shows eight Schengen states still running “last resort” checks, some citing a beach in North Africa. The fault lies at the outer border, not in the capitals.
Ahead of Spain's 29 November election, the state-run CIS gives the Socialists 34% and the PP 22.2%. Private pollsters for papers of every stripe put the PP five to nine points ahead and the right above 176 seats. The CIS estimate runs on a model named after its president.
Germany, France and at least six other capitals want 'associate membership' cut from the EU–Canada declaration before the Montreal summit on 29–30 October. Closer ties with Ottawa make sense. Governing by slogan does not.
Brussels is offering to park its demand for cut-price fees for EU students so Andy Burnham can have his 20 November summit. But the deals signed that day would stay switched off until the fees row is settled. Goodwill, with a timer.
Washington has cut its brigades in Europe from five to three and says “we still love you”. Romania, Poland and the Baltics are offering cash to keep US troops, while the EU’s €150bn defence loan fund has paid out about 9 percent. The east pays twice.
At 3 a.m. on Sunday, 25 October, most of Europe goes back an hour, because an EU directive says so. A 2018 plan to end it passed Parliament and then died in the Council. The fix is simple: give the clocks back to the nations.
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 AfD won 39 of 83 seats in Saxony-Anhalt. After an AfD speaker got four votes too many, the CDU decided its MPs will leave the chamber when the AfD's Siegmund runs for premier. A party that can't trust its own MPs with a secret ballot has a bigger problem than the AfD.
Macron, Meloni and Merz stayed home, so Brussels' two presidents will be Europe's face at Hungary's great national day. They come bearing unfrozen funds. Budapest's own figures show about €2 billion of Hungary's money expired while it was frozen.
Another suspected Russian spy is arrested in Germany, and US intelligence calls the Leipzig airport drone the opening shot of a campaign Putin ordered. The GRU colonel linked to it is already under EU sanctions. Europe keeps winning the arrests and losing the argument.
Same weekend, same looting, two answers. France restricted everyone's right to march. Meloni's decree created a crime of violent protest and made parents pay for what their teenagers smash. It is not perfect, but it aims at the right people.
On Sunday Macron told France the half-million marchers had legitimate demands. By Thursday Lyon had banned all protests and Paris tried to stop a student march. A state that couldn't protect a town hall is now policing the law-abiding.
