Europe

Poland is Ukraine’s best friend in Europe. But no alliance can ever be entirely unconditional, and this is as true of the Poland–Ukraine bond as of any other. Poland, which has supplied Ukraine with tanks and fighter jets since the start of the war with Russia, has now said it will stop supplying weapons. The reason for the fall out is one that has been simmering for months: Ukraine’s grain. Since Russia withdrew its Turkish-negotiated free pass for grain exported from Ukraine ports in July, Moscow has been targeting Ukraine’s grain infrastructure at Odesa and elsewhere. As a result, while some neutral vessels are still carrying export cargoes (a laden

Ukraine is reported to have rejected a consignment of Germany’s Leopard 1 tanks – on the grounds that they are technically flawed, and that Ukrainian engineers lack the skills and training to fix them. Embarrassingly for Germany, this is the second time that Ukraine has turned its collective nose up at a delivery of German armour. When the first ten tanks – the advance guard of a total of 110 Leopard 1s that Berlin has agreed to supply to Kyiv – arrived in Ukraine, they too were found to be unsuitable for deployment on the front line. This despite the desperate need for armour to break through Russia’s defence lines

It is Keir Starmer’s misfortune that he arrives in Paris today for a meeting with Emmanuel Macron at the moment Europe faces one of its gravest challenges of recent years. More than 11,000 migrants have landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa in the last week, an unprecedented influx that has exposed the deep divisions within the EU. Labour’s leader reportedly wants to discuss how to better improve relations between Britain and the EU, but he may not have the full attention of the French president. Not only is Europe arguing amongst itself over how to tackle the migrant crisis, but Macron’s own party, Renaissance, is also at loggerheads over the

Things are not going well in Germany’s bid to reach net zero by 2045, five years earlier even than Britain’s own unrealistic target. For months, the German government has been trying to devise a way to save its heavy industry from high energy prices which are sending production fleeing to Asia. Just last year, chemicals giant BASF announced that it would invest in a new £10 billion plant in China rather than Europe, thanks to the cost of energy. Now, the government seems to have found a way. It is going to raid its £200 billion climate transition fund, which was supposed to invest in green technology. The fund was also

The row over Ukrainian grain imports shows that politicians in Eastern Europe can be their own worst enemies. Five Eastern European countries – Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia, led by Poland and Hungary – failed to convince other EU member states that the existing ban on imports of grain from Ukraine, imposed earlier this year, should be extended beyond 15 September. As a result, at least three of them – Poland, Hungary and Slovakia – will now adopt their own restrictions, in defiance of the EU. What is all too clear is that the countries seeking a ban, particularly Poland, have elevated short-term political considerations above their own long-term interest in Ukraine. Their

This week, the European Union opted to extend sanctions on some 1,800 Russian companies and individuals for another six months, but it also lifted sanctions on three wealthy individuals. Alongside this, a recodification of the rights of member states which means that, in the name of preventing ‘exports’, individual Russian travellers’ cars, phones and even toiletries can be seized on entry. These decisions have raised a predictable storm. The three lucky Russians whose sanctions were lifted are the billionaire Farkhad Akhmedov and businessmen Grigory Berezkin and Alexander Shulgin, all of whom had been put under restrictions for their links to the Kremlin. (A fourth man, Colonel Georgi Shuvaev, was also

Emmanuel Macron was in Lille on Thursday evening to watch France defeat Uruguay as the Bleus made it two wins from two in the Rugby World Cup. The president was photographed swigging from a bottle of beer, just your normal rugby fan enjoying the game.  Rugby fans and their president have little in common. He is the strutting epitome of the aloof Parisian elite Macron was also present last week in Paris when France beat New Zealand in the tournament opener, which suggests that either he hasn’t a busy agenda this month or there is a political purpose to his rugby supporting.   The president has long been the self-appointed

They are too expensive. There are not enough of them on the market. It’s too much hassle to charge them. There are lots of reasons why people are still reluctant to switch from petrol to electric cars, with their cost right at the very top of the list. Still, with the world about to be flooded with cheap Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), that is about to change. You might think that anyone seriously worried about combating climate change would welcome that. Except now it turns out that the EU, for all its rhetoric, cares more about protecting its own auto industry and is planning to slap tariffs on Chinese imports.

Emmanuel Macron is not happy. He would love to run for a third term as president but the French constitution precludes such a prospect. Last week, he described the rules as ‘bloody disastrous’, a declaration that earned the president a reprimand from Nicolas Sarkozy in a television interview on Wednesday. The former president has been busily promoting his memoirs in recent weeks, discoursing on all manner of subjects from Putin to mass immigration to the 2027 presidential election. It’s his belief that his former party, the centre-right Republicans, can be resurrected, but only if they ‘take risks’. That means a coalition, similar to the one that swept Giorgia Meloni to

A butcher who has killed the most famous wild bear in Italy is now unable to leave his house for fear of being killed himself. The tragedy calls into question, once again, the wisdom of the ever more fashionable quest by people in cities to rewild the countryside with dangerous animals such as bears and wolves. There are no two ways about it: these animals wreak havoc. If those in the city whose closest encounter with a wild animal is a feral pigeon, sewer rat, or urban fox, want such animals back in the countryside then they must accept that those who actually live in the countryside have the right

Emmanuel Macron spent Monday morning in the presence of the French rugby team and for once he spoke without ambiguity. ‘You are the best prepared team in the world,’ he told them at their training camp south of Paris. ‘You’ll be brothers in arms, fighting from the first minute to the last. The team is bigger than you, just as the nation is bigger than any one of us. Make us proud, make us happy.’  France are indeed the bookmakers’ favourites for the Rugby World Cup, the tournament they are hosting for the first time since 2007. On that occasion, they were similarly confident going into the competition, only to

When I tell people in England I’ve just returned from several years abroad and they find out the country was Russia, it is a real conversation stopper. Their minds short-circuit, they seem to gulp in front of you. What question do they ask next? Do they mention the war? Talk about Tolstoy? ‘Ah… Interesting,’ one woman said to me finally, as though looking at someone’s awful etchings and wanting to be polite. ‘That must have been…difficult for you,’ said another. How can I get across to them that, before February last year, it might have been ‘interesting’ but wasn’t difficult at all? It’s depressing when a country you have warm memories

If you fret about a democratic deficit in the EU or even Britain, turn your mind for a moment to one European country with a very peculiar form of democracy indeed. In this country, divided into two parts which hardly deign to speak to each other, your right to vote, to be returned, and in certain cases to stand for office, depends on your declared ethnicity. The presidency is split among three people, again chosen by law on ethnic lines.  The whole affair is presided over by a High Representative, a kind of international proconsul (previous appointees include Paddy Ashdown; the present one is a softly-spoken German former agriculture minister).