European indecision (and silences) on products from Israeli settlements
You often see them in the supermarket: oranges, grapefruits, dates, wine and SodaStream that come from illegal Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. Since at least the early 1990s, the European Union has allowed these products on its market without any restrictions – even as international courts have repeatedly ruled the settlements illegal. Now, upon […]
The Alliance’s “European pillar” did its homework last year, but it may not be enough
The NATO summit and the unknowns over Europe’s security “Reconvergence” between the United States and Europe, or a rupture in the transatlantic relationship at least until the end of Donald Trump’s term? The summit of NATO heads of state and government on July 7-8 will be a decisive test for relations within the Alliance. Europeans […]
A summer filled with music and dancing, the art of falling and questioning love
JULY 23-26. WOMAD, THE WORLD’S FESTIVAL / WILTSHIRE, UK How lovely it is to travel through music Womad was invented by Peter Gabriel, and the first edition, in 1982, went so badly financially that Genesis had to play a reunion concert to cover the debts. Yet at one of the more recent editions, when the […]
The fight to join a European Union very different to the one we left
As I told a conference in Brescia, we used to laugh at Italy, as they churned from one Prime Minister to the next, one unstable government after another. We’re not laughing now. By “we,” I mean the United Kingdom, home to the so-called Mother of Parliaments, with its reputation for sensible, clever, pragmatic politics. The […]
How we can measure the human capital lost in the Brexit divorce
I had been living in London since 2010, says Lea Ypi, but in 2016 “I wasn’t yet a British citizen, I wasn’t a European citizen, I was only an Albanian citizen, and for the first time my ambition to simply be a citizen of the world was shattered: I have to apply for citizenship here […]
If Brexit is so great, why hasn’t anyone copied it?
Brexit is so awful that in ten years nobody has copied it. In fact, if there was ever a silver lining to the vote on 23 June 2016 – it was hot and rainy in London back then, and people walked around in a daze, trying to stick together – it was that it stemmed […]
The inheritance feuds in the Mango household: the father, the son and the cliff
There are plenty of quarrelsome dynasties in Europe and around the world, but what for many people remains a mere fantasy — killing a wealthy relative — almost always stays just that: a fantasy. Except in certain cases, such as that of the Andic family, owners of the Spanish clothing chain Mango. The founder, seventy-one-year-old […]
A third Mitteleuropa, a new Europe, or every country for itself
Since its inception in 1957, the European Community (renamed the European Union in 1993, but remaining a simple association of states) has long exerted a considerable centripetal force, fuelled by the advantages that membership promised, delivered and continues to deliver. However, the rapid evolution of the international political, cultural and economic landscape after 1991 has […]
The necessity of finding words to define the devastation of Russian aggression
“Warning. Three motorbikes are flying towards Dnipro.” This is a message from the Telegram channel of the local news service in the city of Dnipro, in south-eastern Ukraine. Anyone unfamiliar with the reality of this country might think that two-wheeled vehicles are racing towards the city at high speed. In reality, it is a warning […]
Inside W, the European social network where “being human” matters
Anna Zeiter became convinced that a wholly European social network was needed more than ever after J. D. Vance’s speech at the Munich conference, when the US vice-president lashed out at a “backward” Europe, where “freedom of speech is in retreat”. “It was a wake-up call for Europe; at that very moment, I thought we […]