Where is democracy? Unelected establishment judges now stand against elected populists
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a right-populist walks into office. The unelected judiciary says, “We’re investigating you!”
Millions on EU defence? Council tells von der Leyen, ‘Yeah, well, gonna think about it’
Since President Donald Trump re-entered the White House, the United States has been sending a clear signal to its European partners: “You need to do more to defend yourselves.
Trump not ‘aligned with anybody’: how Europe can sell itself to America
In the onslaught of speeches, statements, and executive actions undertaken by the Trump administration, it is understandable that some in Europe may have missed Secretary…
Hey: who’s in charge here?
From the beginning of the Trump administration, Brussels-based officials have been struck by the new president’s complete lack of desire to deal with them.
‘Rules based international order’ is dead, 20th century never coming back
For a moment last week, it appeared that European Union officials finally had realised that the 20th century was never coming back.
The centre-right across the West are being replaced by the populist-right
Nearly everywhere in the West, the centre-right is being replaced as the “mainstream” political party by the populist-right.
Without USAID, the EU will have to pay for its own propaganda
President Donald Trump’s decision to dismantle the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has left Democrats reeling and knees quaking in Brussels.
US does not want to defend Europe any more, but Europeans say ‘Ho-hum’
If you have paid attention to European defence issues and NATO conversations these past few weeks, you’d have thought that something got into the water in the various capitals…
Europe as the Cold War order dies: stagnating, fading, failing, lost
Out of the many actions President Donald Trump took on his first day in office, two caught the eyes of Europeans: his announced withdrawal from both the Paris Climate Accord…
What did European liberals ever get from trusting Joe Biden?
Next week American President-elect Donald Trump will drop the “elect,” and President Joe Biden will pick up "former” before his name.
Austrian voters sick of fakery, they want Kickl, the real thing
In 2023, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer appeared before a raucous crowd in a beer tent, proudly chugging a beer in one go. It made for great pictures and got great press.
‘Progressive democracy’ means destroying the power of the people’s vote
If you listen to establishmentarians in Washington and Brussels, liberal democracy is under threat from anti-democratic populist movements.
Stop popular Kickl: Austria gets ready to form a government that will fail
Since 1945, Austria has only been led by the centre-right People’s Party and the Socialist Party, often in coalition with one another. Sometimes, they will trade partners;
Kallas wants US to be afraid of Russia, but can’t even get Europe to be afraid of Russia
The European Union has no “foreign minister.” It does, however, have the bureaucratically named “High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.
EU does not want a member state in Georgia, it wants a client state
If you would hear it from the liberal internationalists, the battle for the future of democracy is being fought in Tbilisi.
European establishment won’t listen to voters, so national populists will keep winning
Last Sunday’s Romanian elections, in which a populist-right candidate, Călin Georgescu, defied the opinion polls and jumped into top place in the first round of the presidential…
Beria inspires establishment? Show me the man and I will find the crime
There exists in Vienna a curious organisation, which, if you went by its title – The Economic and Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (WKStA, in the German acronym) – would…
JD Vance says leave Musk X alone or the US might not support NATO
Ever since the possibility of a second presidential term for now president-elect Donald Trump first appeared, Brussels has fretted about “Trump-proofing” trans-Atlantic…
Europe finds butter delicious and guns too pricey to pay for defence
The prospect of a second presidential term for Donald Trump has horrified European establishmentarians, who have long portrayed him as a threat.
How the European populist-right is becoming mainstream
There is a concept in sociology called the “Overton window”.
Nazi-communist-fascist-whatever: this is what establishment panic looks like
Last week, The Atlantic magazine published a piece with a bold headline: “Trump is speaking like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini.
More like Ellis Island: Italy’s migrant-processing centres are not Guantanamo Bay
My great-grandfather left Italy in 1921 to sail to the United States.
Ukraine in EU? First, trouble with Hungarians, Slovaks, and the Poles want the bodies back
Shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the beleaguered country formally applied to join the European Union.
Will Germany’s dithering, dull Scholz be ‘Biden-ed’ by his SDP party?
“Scholz survives” blared the Brussels press after his party, the Social Democrats (SDP), narrowly beat the populist-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in recent regional…
Does the cordon sanitaire still really exist?
For decades, the European establishment has drawn a cordon sanitaire (a sanitary cordon, meaning a refusal to deal with certain parties) around parties of the populist-right.
Waging lawfare: Italian prosecutors try to imprison a democratically-elected leader
In 2019 Matteo Salvini, then Italy’s Interior Minister, blocked a boat from the pro-migrant NGO Open Arms charity from docking in Italy.
Surprise! What Ukraine negotiations really need is …Chancellor Scholz?
The Russo-Ukrainian War has been going for over ten years, and it has been nearly three years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of their southwestern neighbour.
In Thuringia two ‘extremist’ parties took half the vote, so where is the centre now?
Every time a populist-Right party is elected, the headlines are predictable.
As Europeans are arrested for what they say, how ‘free’ is Europe’s speech?
While America and Europe are two parts of one West, they have always treated the idea of “rights” differently.
Immigrants and crime bleed socialism out of ‘Red Vienna’
There are few cities in the world more associated with socialism than Vienna -- or “Red Vienna,” as it has been called by socialists and non-socialists alike.