All Europeans should read a speech Koen Lenaerts, president of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, delivered to law students in Leiden in mid-June, writes Caroline de Gruyter. It is a speech about European values and the fundamental place they occupy in Europe’s legal system.
Public procurement is quietly becoming one of EU’s industrial policy tools of choice. We are not the first to try this, and the evidence is sobering, warns Judith Arnal.
What the Socialists, Liberals and Greens can no longer do is denounce the hard-right while sustaining the parliamentary machinery that gives it influence. Yet that is precisely what they have been doing since 2024, and the renewal of the European Parliament presidency is about to expose the contradiction.
Europe’s standing will not be restored by shifting responsibilities from one building to another, moving competences between commissioners and directorates-general, or publishing yet another security strategy.
Uncertainty about the US military commitment to Europe, plus the near-certainty of a continuing threat from Russia, places the UK centre-stage in all defence and security discussions. So who prime-minister designate Andy Burnham appoints as foreign secretary, and defence secretary, is crucial.
To fundamentally understand why it’s strange the EU Commission is throwing its weight behind this new for-profit social platform, you need to understand what lies beneath.
Does a direct link really exist between rising defence spending and budgetary cuts in healthcare, benefits or pensions, as many citizens assume? Is it true that European countries must choose between ‘guns or butter’?
EU governments seek more fiscal flexibility for defence and energy, as calls grow for Eurobonds. But integrating fragmented AAA issuers to deepen the euro safe-asset market might be a more credible first step, says EUobserver columnist Judith Arnal.
In the US, the backlash against AI data centres is bipartisan, organised and growing. But not in Europe, where government are bending over backwards to attract them, writes Albert Alemanno.
Instead of funding European commercial alternatives to American chokepoints, Europe should fund the layer underneath them: infrastructure that is useful because it cannot easily be owned.
Viktor Orbán’s regime turned Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a private Hungarian educational institution, into a talent factory for Fidesz. By opening an office in Brussels and launching multiple events, MCC brought together rightwing politicians, journalists, academics, and other figures from across the world. These activities were facilitated by the peculiar financial arrangements granted to MCC by the Fidesz government.
Autocrats and ‘strongmen’ want us to feel defeated on international law. But ‘the fact that certain laws are being violated does not, of course, mean those laws no longer exist’, writes Caroline de Gruyter.
When Meta announced its Libra/Diem project in 2019, central banks worldwide were confronted with an uncomfortable question: could a private technology corporation issue money at global scale and thereby erode their monopoly over monetary control?
The response was swift. What began as a defensive reflex had become a genuine policy agenda.
Whatever happens on 12 April, the EU will emerge after the Hungarian elections without a suitable plan for the country and its future relations with the Union. Its entire Hungary strategy amounts to a single wager: that Orbán loses, writes Alberto Alemanno.
Debates are becoming more muted as equality experts and activists learn to be silent on questions like Gaza and the illegal US and Israeli attack on Iran for fear of losing their access to much-needed EU funding. It is, as one conference participant says wryly: “The new Brussels effect”.
The EU has spent the last five years building the most ambitious digital regulatory framework on earth. It has regulated platforms, algorithms, AI models, political advertising, environmental claims, and data brokers. It has legal definitions for “very large online platforms” and “general purpose AI models.” But it doesn’t have one for “influencer” – and that’s an interesting oversight.
Calls to lift oil-related sanctions imposed on Russia to limit its war budget are now also being heard in the EU. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán has already urged the EU “to review and lift all sanctions on Russian energy”. And he may not be the only EU leader thinking along similar lines.
“Law is stronger than force”, said Ursula von der Leyen on Greenland. Last week, the EU rightly stressed once more the illegality of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Four days later the US and Israel attacked Iran and the EU forgot about international law.
Usually, Danish foreign minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s Facebook posts earn him an endless stream of insults, cynical comments and worse. But this time it was different.
Europe’s push for an “Airbus of payments” reflects real fears of foreign control, but the political discourse is not getting the diagnosis right. True sovereignty lies not in replacing Visa and Mastercard, but in fostering interoperable European alternatives that compete, writes Judith Arnal.