Opinion
Argument, sourced. Centre-right to right, and not a press office.
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.
On Wednesday Europe's governments deleted 'associate membership' from the EU–Canada summit declaration. On Thursday the Commission president used the phrase in Montreal anyway, and her own chancellor answered with a different name. Canada is not the problem. Who speaks for Europe is.
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.
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.
Finland's president and Norway's prime minister got 90 minutes with Putin and a list of Russian demands. Denmark bristled, Sweden warned of appeasement and Brussels 'took note'. The call achieved little. The reaction says more about Europe.
The Commission wants Frontex to run Europe's deportations, even from outside the EU. It is the right idea and a confession: for years four in five orders to leave were ignored. Now capitals must decide whether to pay for it, after one presidency draft halved the money.
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.
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.
The White House says the first lady brokered a truce for starving, Russian-occupied Oleshky. The same day, the Commission announced an 'expectation' of a seat at peace talks that Moscow says will stay three-way. One of these is diplomacy.
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.
A new Imperial College study puts this summer's urban heat toll at 50,391, nearly half of them over 85. The things that would have saved them are local, cheap and mostly about energy. The Commission's resilience framework, due on 28 October, offers scenarios, plans and 'risk owners'.
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.
Ankara has sent the Mecca defence pact to parliament: an attack on one signatory means help from the others. Turkey says its NATO duties are unaffected, yet the three have already agreed to rush forces to Saudi Arabia against the Houthis. The pact is a symptom of thinning American guarantees, and Europe has no Turkey strategy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
UNIFIL’s 7,500 peacekeepers start leaving southern Lebanon after 31 December. The EU’s answer is a training mission of about 100 soldiers that won’t go south, with Paris and Rome already competing to command it. Hezbollah keeps its guns.
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 Parliament's Sakharov Prize, named after a Soviet dissident, went to the International Criminal Court weeks after US sanctions hit it. The man passed over, Tundu Lissu, hears his treason verdict on 6 November.
Ukraine’s military Starlink was slowed without warning, and Kyiv says it could no longer shoot down jet-powered drones. Brussels answered with a seven-month negotiation and a satellite network whose first launches are due in 2029. The billionaire is not the problem.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The EU’s migration pact had applied for seven weeks when Ceuta was overwhelmed. Now capitals are weighing three options for an emergency plan that may not even be law. Spain is doing the actual work. Brussels should let border states pull the brake.
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.
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.
Drones have hit ships off Romania and Bulgaria, with 23 sailors dead or missing in two weeks. NATO answers with patrol planes and “situational awareness”, and still won’t say whose drones they are. Deterrence starts with saying the word Russia.
The Commission asked for a one-year pause to its methane import rules, admitting importers might not find enough compliant gas. The European Parliament voted for three. The real scandal is the 2024 law that assumed the world's suppliers would simply obey.
Europe sent advisers to a working dinner in Oslo and the Commission celebrated being in the room. The Kremlin said the proposals lacked substance, and Kyiv got cluster warheads overnight. A seat is not leverage.
