Eu politics

This never-ending circular discussion on customs unions is painful, particularly because the question should have been settled during the referendum. It’s now nearly two years since the vote to Leave the EU in June 2016. But we’ve spent months and months rehashing endlessly the exact same points. That’s profoundly damaging. Rewind back to this time two years ago. The leaders of the Leave campaign were talking about the possibility of the UK signing new trade deals after Brexit with the US, Japan, China, Australia and New Zealand – they were talking of life outside a Customs Union. The other side said we would have more negotiating weight as a big

Obscured by the hubbub of rolling news and the cacophony of Twitter, an important anniversary has passed by virtually unnoticed. The Berlin Wall has now been down for longer than it was up. Berlin’s ‘Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier’ (as the Communists used to call it) stood for 28 years and three months, from August 1961 to November 1989. It’s now been down for 28 years and four months. Its fall reunited the two Germanies, and changed the course of history. So, 28 years on, what can Brits learn from German Reunification? What lessons does the Wiedervereinigung hold for us today? I filed my first report from Berlin in the first year

Moves by the EU to try to stop British armed forces from accessing the Galileo satellite system, and to prevent British companies from bidding for work on it, are, as one senior UK official told the FT, ‘outrageous’. Britain has contributed 12 per cent of the costs. The EU’s argument that to allow British involvement would be a security risk are perverse, given that China, Israel, Ukraine and Morocco are participating in the project. Does anyone really think that relations between post-Brexit Britain and EU will sink so low that European governments will consider us more of a security risk than China? Galileo isn’t principally a military system at all. It is

That EU leaders have agreed to move to the next stage of Brexit talks and rubber stamp the transition period is no great surprise. It took just a matter of minutes this morning for them to wave through guidelines on the negotiations for a future trade deal between Britain and the EU. But while the announcement was something of a foregone conclusion, today’s news is still significant for a simple reason: Brexit talks are progressing in a way some of the doom-mongers said would never happen. Of course, Britain – and the EU, for that matter – isn’t there yet. And a year on from the triggering of Article 50,

France’s socialist party are to be congratulated for pulling off the remarkable feat of selecting as their next leader a man who makes François Hollande look dashing. As one French newspaper said of Olivier Faure, he’s “a man of consensus at the head of a moribund socialist party”. Faure, 49, won’t be officially anointed the first secretary of the socialist party until their congress next month, but the job is his now that his only challenger, Stéphane Le Foll, withdrew from the leadership race on Friday. The word ‘apparatchik’ could have been invented for Faure, a man whose Wikipedia page should be required reading for all insomniacs. It traces his

It wasn’t the weekend that Marine Le Pen envisaged. When last Saturday dawned in the northern French city of Lille, the leader of the National Front probably rose from her bed with a spring in her step. Ten months on from her disastrous performance in the second round of the French presidential election here was Le Pen’s chance to get her political career back on track. Furthermore, she had a little surprise in store for the party faithful, an illustrious guest who would enhance her own international credentials. Sure enough, Steve Bannon elicited a hearty roar from the audience when he strode onto the stage: “Let them call you racist, let

How did she do it? How has Angela Merkel hung on for a fourth term as German Chancellor after being written off so many times? When she’s sworn in as Bundeskanzlerin today it’ll be nearly thirteen years since she became leader of the Bundesrepublik. She’s been read the last rites so often, yet after almost six months of backroom talks she’s back in office. But is she really back in power? Merkel has promised Germany ‘a grand coalition for the little people.’ It’s a catchy catchphrase but can she deliver? Yet another cosy alliance between her centre right CDU and the soft left SPD hardly feels like a new beginning

Here is a message Russian propagandists are sending to Western commentators. It is from Yuliia Popova of REN-TV (which was once an independent Russian station but sold its soul long ago) to David Allen Green of the Financial Times. Hello David, My name is Juliia Popova. I represent Russian state TV channel. Would appreciate it if Matt Singh or any other political analist [sic] could give us a short comment on the matter of the following. We will be happy to know why the British government tries to blame Russian government for the attempted murder of ex-Russian spy, why is it happening right now when even USA on behalf of