Everything about Calais is grey. The sky is grey, the roads are grey, the mesh fences with their tangles of razor wire are grey. Even the bottle of water I’m drinking appears, in the coastal gloom, to be grey. Calais …
The EU is sleepwalking into anarchy
All eyes may be on the Italian election results this morning, but Europe’s got much bigger problems on its hands than the prospect of a Right-wing government. Winter is coming, and the catastrophic consequences of Europe’s self-imposed energy crisis are …
Can Europe survive the age of strongmen?
The latest military assault by Azerbaijan’s oil-rich dictator Ilham Aliyev on tiny, democratic Armenia places the European Union, once again, in an awkward position. On the one hand, as EU leaders never cease to remind us, the continental bloc stands …
Can the nation survive Elizabeth?
I was camping by a lake when I heard the news. My son and I were off fishing and hiking in Connemara in the Irish west, hunting down pollock and wrasse and trout, and plunging into bogs on the slopes …
Italy will win the food wars
Twice each week, a caravan of macellai, pescivendoli, and fruttivendolo comes to town. They swell the streets beneath a medieval castle keep in the 14th-century northern Italian city where my family maintains a home. When time allows, on Tuesdays or …
Why the populists failed
If you want to feel a certain sense of dread, look around you, at the accumulating challenges facing Western societies, and at the leaders chosen to manage them. The archetypal, boringly competent, technocratic politician of the past 40 years stands …
Is Giorgia Meloni an EU puppet?
Italy’s first-ever summer election does not take place for another month, but the outcome already appears certain: the country’s centre-Right coalition — comprising Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, Matteo Salvini’s Lega and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia — is leading the …
Civil disobedience is coming
Britain may be recovering from a heatwave, but its politicians are already fearful that winter is coming. Only now, more than 170 days since the war broke out, are policymakers realising the potentially catastrophic implications of their gung-ho approach towards …
The EU has created a new dictatorship
Seifeddine Ferjani was just ten years old when he arrived in the UK. It was 1990, and his family had been forced to flee Tunisia after his father, Said, became close to the opposition figure Rached Ghannouchi. For the next …
Øyvind Bremnes | One year of monitoring adverse reaction reports in Europe
After a year of monitoring adverse reaction reports in Europe, Øyvind Bremnes presents on the over-whelming amounts of data, worrying trends, and urgent need for access to, and analysis of, detailed data.
Looking at datasets from EUdravigilance which covers approximately …
The Greek myth has been crushed
We Greeks have a reputation for being insufferable nationalists, most of whom genuinely believe that Greek culture is superior to that of other nations and peoples. We were even anointed the most culturally chauvinistic Europeans in a recent Pew survey. …
Europe has lost the energy war
After a decade of financial austerity, is Europe now on the brink of a new age of energy austerity? The city of Hanover has recently introduced strict energy-saving rules that include cutting off the hot water in public buildings, swimming …
Will Europe survive?
In our age of crisis, the state has been reawakened, breaking the taboos of the past few decades. But it’s still an uphill climb. Over the past 40 years, there was broad political agreement that markets were not to be …
How Mario Draghi broke Italy
Mario Draghi’s defenestration has left the Italian — and indeed international — establishment reeling in horror. This is not surprising. When he was nominated as Italy’s prime minister at the beginning of last year, Europe’s political and economic elites welcomed …
Why millennials are dropping out
With inflation soaring, trust in governments plummeting, and the global economy teetering on the brink of collapse, one might expect to see the masses out in the streets, calling for the heads of their rulers. But instead of rage and …