European Union
Turkey’s EU accession: A useful fiction
By any measure, the German Chancellor debate between Angela Merkel and Martin Schulz last weekend was a dispiriting, monotonous affair. On irrelevant issue after irrelevant issue,…
The Russian ‘taboo’ and the German election
We need to come out of the dead end … Something must be offered so that Putin can change his policy without a loss of face … To express a taboo: I fear that the Crimea must be…
Clash or compromise: The return of history in Poland
Poland today gets almost uniformly bad press in the West, replete with stories alleging that Beata Szydło's government has all but dismantled the foundations of democracy on…
Macron puts his stamp on French foreign policy
French President Emmanuel Macron is striking a new, pragmatic and self-confident tone in the country's foreign policy, for which he's received a lot of kudos. The recent reception…
Trump in Warsaw, Hamburg and Paris
Trump divides. Most people are either staunchly against or for US President Donald Trump – if not the man, then what he supposedly stands for. As most commentators find…
Macron and the uprooting of France
For months the world has waited with bated breath for Emmanuel Macron to save France, Europe and democracy by succeeding in his outwardly improbable campaign to become the next…
Commentary
European politics: The young centrists strike back
Originally published in the Australian Financial Review.
Hervé Lemahieu
Post-Brexit: Will the Kingdom stay united?
British Prime Minister Theresa May's decision to send the formal notice to Brussels that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union within the next two years has…
How Erdogan makes EU opprobrium work in his favour
The recent standoff between Turkey and several European countries shocked the world. For the first time in NATO and EU history, a member (or member candidate, in the case of…
Finally, good news for the European Union
Three major recent developments appear to indicate that the EU, at long last, is on the up again: solid growth in the EU; the populist wave apparently cresting with…