Europe

Germany’s tragedy is that it isn’t ready for the future

How do we defend Europe without the Americans? With Donald Trump inciting Russia to ‘do whatever the hell they want’ to Nato members not paying enough, it’s clear a Trump 2.0 could shatter the alliance. This isn’t news. Leaders of Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, have known this since Trump took office in 2017. They know what’s strategically necessary to fill the gap. The trouble is, this would be politically impossible for Berlin. A Trump-led unravelling of Nato would confront Germany with a daunting to-do list Compensating for the United States, which provides 70 per cent of alliance defence spending, would be staggeringly costly for Germany. It would transform spending habits

The future looks bright for Spanish bullfighting

In one of my local bars, in the Andalucian town of Antequera, there’s a poster on the door advertising bullfighting classes for kids. Aged between about ten and fifteen, I see these students practicing every week in the bullring, taking turns to play the bull by pushing around a pair of wooden horns attached to a single wheel – a specially-made device that looks like a weaponised unicycle. A young bullfighter was awarded one of the animal’s ears for a good performance Some of these kids, no doubt, dream of bullfighting glory, of becoming one of a very small number of bullfighters, or toreros, who are paid tens of thousands

Jonathan Miller

Is Macron considering using France’s emergency powers?

Does Emmanuel Macron have one more joker to play? Perhaps. His petulant decision to dissolve the National Assembly has been difficult to understand. His political movement looks like it will come third behind the rightish Rassemblement National and the ultra-leftist New Popular Front, a coalition of trots, Antifa activists, and loopy greens. Privately, the polling companies are confessing a lack of confidence in the numbers so far, which show Rassemblement leading, the left trailing in second and Macron’s party in third. We’re waiting for some more authoritative polls at the end of week. The pollsters are struggling to make sense of, in effect, 577 separate elections held across two rounds.

Will Christine Lagarde crush Marine Le Pen?

The National Rally is comfortably leading in the polls. The charismatic Jordan Bardella is set to become the next Prime Minister. And Marine Le Pen looks to be heading for power in France. When she gets there, however, she faces a potentially far more lethal opponent than the bruised and increasingly powerless President Emmanuel Macron. The President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde. In reality, the next big issue in Eurozone politics will be whether Lagarde crushes Le Pen – and whether that risks compromising the independence of the Bank for good.  Lagarde has the power to crush Le Pen. The only real question will be whether she chooses

James Kirkup

A Danish lesson for Labour in how to revive Britain’s economy

The coincidence of the 2024 general election and the Euro 2024 football tournament is a great lesson in the myopia of Westminster and its creatures. Somewhere, deep in our hearts, we do know that the vast majority of people in Britain (OK, England and Scotland) are far more interested in the football than in the ups and downs of the campaign. But does that stop us fixating on the minutiae of that campaign? Not at all: for political nerds, this is our championship, after all, one of those (quite) rare moments when all the stars, all the heroes and villains, are on the pitch together, generally kicking lumps out of each

Gavin Mortimer

France’s left-wing coalition would unleash migrant chaos on Britain

Emmanuel Macron has described the left-wing coalition’s manifesto as ‘totally immigrationist’. The Popular Front, which brings together Communists, Greens, Socialists and Anti-Capitalists, was formed at the start of last week to contest the upcoming parliamentary elections. While there has been the odd divergence on personnel – notably who should be prime minister in the event the left wins the election on 7 July – one issue on which the Popular Front is agreed is immigration: the more the better. The French left describes immigration as ‘an opportunity’ for the Republic Its manifesto states that once in power it will establish a maritime rescue agency to help bring migrants across the

Jonathan Miller

Will French voters be revolted by the new popular front?

The Nouveau Front Populaire has been formed to take on Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen in the French legislative elections. It is a coalition of ultra-leftists, woo-woo greens, a candidate who has been identified as an active Antifa activist, the tottering geriatric residue of the French communist party and also many traditional opportunistic socialists. These include former president François Hollande, who has leveraged his support for a safe seat in the Corrèze, and Raphael Glucksmann, who had previously been positioning himself as the sensible face of the left. He has now aligned himself with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the tantrum-prone Gaza-obsessed Trotskyist who rules the hard left France Insoumise. The new

Gavin Mortimer

Kylian Mbappé’s veiled Le Pen warning won’t save Macron

France’s prime minister was out and about on Monday mixing with the proles south of Paris. ‘I’m going to shake your hand because you’re all right,’ said one old man, accepting the outstretched hand of Gabriel Attal. ‘But you’ll have tell the president to shut his trap.’ Attal didn’t quite know how to respond, mumbling that he was campaigning for the parliamentary and not the presidential elections. The old man wasn’t finished. ‘Listen, you’re not doing too bad…but the president, he’s the one causing all the trouble.’ ‘I don’t want to represent a country that doesn’t correspond to our values,’ said Mbappé, a footballer friend of Emmanuel Macron It will

London can thank Macron for becoming Europe’s largest stock market

When Paris overtook London as the continent’s largest stock market two years ago, it was widely seen as a significant milestone in Britain’s relative decline. It was a sign of the City of London’s weakness – and it was evidence that the UK’s departure from the European Union was slowly destroying its once powerful financial markets. But hold on. This week, London has reclaimed top spot. French president Emmanuel Macron’s high-risk gamble on a general election has already backfired, at least financially, and he has now gifted financial leadership back to London.  Thanks to France’s president, the smart money is leaving Europe On Monday, the total value of all the

France could pay a heavy price for Macron’s Liz Truss-attack on Le Pen

As Emmanuel Macron heads into a fraught election, France’s president is repeatedly warning voters of the calamitous consequences of electing Marine Le Pen’s National Rally into government. In doing so, he is effectively weaponising the bond market. His allies point to what unfolded under Liz Truss’s government. The message to voters is clear: don’t even think about. The debt crisis is largely of Macron’s own making Throwing a ‘grenade’ at those considering backing National Rally might be smart politics, but it is very dangerous economics – and the consequences may be catastrophic for the country he leads. You can hardly blame Macron for panicking: his decision to call a snap

Gavin Mortimer

Why the French left hate Macron as much as Le Pen

Over a quarter of a million people marched through France on Saturday and I was among their ranks as an observer. According to much of the media, the march was against Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party, which dominated last week’s European elections. But among the tens of thousands of protestors in Paris I saw and heard as much opposition to Emmanuel Macron. The president’s name was on placards and in chants as the procession left the Place de la Republique for the Place de la Nation. So, too, was Jordan Bardella’s. The 28-year-old president of the National Rally – and the man who Le Pen says will be

John Keiger

Is France’s left-wing coalition more dangerous than Le Pen?

French and international media cannot break their fixation with the ‘extreme right’. They continue to target the Rassemblement National (RN) as the ultimate menace for the 7 July legislative elections. But as of Friday, a more potent threat to French political and financial stability has raised its head: the radical left-wing ‘New Popular Front’ (NPF). This coalition of greens, communists, socialists and Trotskyists dominated by the radical-left La France Insoumise party (LFI), surprised many by their agreement to field common constituency candidates and a common manifesto.   Following the bitter breakup two years ago of the radical left-wing NUPES coalition, prospects for a new agreement were slim. Something close to civil war had

Patience is running out with Nato in the Baltic states

You can’t miss the vast banner emblazoned on the high-rise building overlooking central Vilnius. It reads: PUTIN, THE HAGUE IS WAITING FOR YOU. Not one to mince their words, the Lithuanians. And neither are the Latvians or Estonians. In the face of an increasingly menacing Kremlin, the Baltic states – on Nato’s front line against Russian aggression – display an in-your-face bravado, which nevertheless overlays a palpable unease about the future. Many thousands disappeared into its bowels, never to be seen by their families again The threat posed to them by Russia was the issue which dominated much of the debate in the Baltic countries during the lead-up to the

Katja Hoyer

The Euros couldn’t come at a worse time for Germany

Like many Germans, I remember the summer of 2006 with fondness. We hosted the football World Cup, and for a few glorious weeks the country was transformed. The sun literally didn’t stop shining. Every cafe, bar and park seemed to have the football on TV. The country was in an exceedingly good mood.  When it became public that German police would not be allowed to display German flags, opponents pointed out that rainbow colours were still allowed The ‘summer fairytale’ of nearly two decades ago holds such a cherished place in collective memory that it would be difficult to rival even at the best of times. But Euro 2024 isn’t

Why the EU is cracking down on Hungary’s migrant policy

We are set for another high-profile tussle between Budapest and Brussels. Yesterday the EU Court of Justice chose to impose a whopping €200 million fine on the Hungarian government for failing to apply EU asylum laws, a fine that increases by €1 million for every day the infringement continues.   Politics is never very far from the surface with the EU court The legalities as ever were murky, but essentially Brussels’s complaint was this. EU law requires that asylum seekers be allowed into a member state to seek protection and to stay there until their claim is handled. Originally Hungary had prevented this by corralling applicants in border reception centres, until the Court decided in

Gavin Mortimer

A left-wing government would spell tragedy for France

It has been the craziest week in French politics for decades but for the Republic’s police it’s business as usual. On Tuesday night, they were called to the Trocadero in the centre of Paris to search for four individuals who had violently mugged three Americans. Four youths of Moroccan origin, the youngest of whom was 11, were taken into custody. A day later in Marseille, a known drug dealer was gunned down in what police believe was a tit-for-tat killing between rival cartels. A few hours later, in the same city, a man was shot dead by police after he had thrown a Molotov cocktail at officers. The left’s philosophy

Gavin Mortimer

Macron has unleashed political chaos on France

It is difficult to see how France will emerge from next month’s election peacefully. Flames are licking at the edges of the Republic and the man who lit the tinder was Emmanuel Macron when he called a snap election for 30 June and 7 July. Macron held a most unpresidential press conference on Wednesday in which he lashed out at his enemies but offered no explanation as to why he reacted the way he did on Sunday evening. There are some in France who believe it was a temper tantrum. Emmanuel Macron has suffered few humiliations in his effortless rise to the top. Sunday’s battering in the European Elections was

Jonathan Miller

Can Macron still outplay Le Pen?

Petulance, panic and performance. President Macron’s broadcast following the evisceration of his party in last weekend’s elections for the European parliament had elements of all three. Wearing a black tie as if in mourning, he looked shocked, exhausted and angry. ‘The rise of the nationalists and demagogues,’ he said, ‘is a threat not only to our nation but also to our Europe and to France’s place in Europe and in the world… The extreme right is both the impoverishment of the French people and the downfall of our country. So at the end of this day, I can’t pretend that nothing has happened. I decided to give you the choice.

John Keiger

France’s future looks far from certain

The much loved and quintessentially French singer, Françoise Hardy, born in 1944, died last night. French certainties are disappearing. The Fifth Republican regime could be next. President Macron’s stunning decision on Sunday night to dissolve the National Assembly in the wake of the remarkable victory of the Rassemblement National (RN) in the European elections is likely to turn a political crisis into a crisis of regime.  Following Macron’s 2022 re-election, devoid of a working majority, France entered a slow-building crisis. The fall-out continues to contaminate the political life of the country. After the agonising demise of the Socialist party, yesterday saw the implosion of the Republican party, the Gaullists who

Gavin Mortimer

Can a ragtag coalition stop Marine Le Pen?

The left in France may not be much good at winning elections but they are excellent when it comes to forming coalitions. Within 24 hours of Emmanuel Macron’s shock announcement on Sunday night of a snap election on 30 June, left-wing parties made a declaration of their own. A coalition of Communists, Socialists, Greens and the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) – similar to the one formed for the 2022 parliamentary elections – would fight the election in a coalition called ‘The Popular Front’. Prime minister Gabriel Attal described his former party’s decision to ally with LFI as ‘revolting’ The first such ‘Popular Front’ in France was created in 1936