All tagged European Politics

After a massive overtime extension on London’s withdrawal process, the United Kingdom finally blew the whistle on its exit from the European Union on January 31, 2019. Following the U.K.’s withdrawal from the EU on February 1, 2020, however, it’s unlikely that Britain will ever come to see another Beckham grace the Bernabéu — or any other European football team — in quite the same way, carrying implications far beyond the stadium.

The media’s coverage of the Gilet Jaune movement in France gives the false impression that the French openly challenging Macron’s government through protest and strike is anything new. Alghough France desperately needs Macron’s reforms, the President must lean slowly and deliberately into them, accounting for those that will need help and time to adjust. For Macron’s marathon of reforms, only slow and steady will win the race.

In the last decade, we witnessed many stable Western democracies degenerate into populist rancor and anti-establishment upheaval. Yet, it is the capacity of the people to learn and adapt that has always proven Democracy’s ace. Perhaps now more than ever, Democracy needs a course-correct.

The Kremlin often wields access to its oil and natural gas supplies as deft foreign policy tools to pressure nations into political and economic action beneficial for Russia. In the interest of U.S. national security, we should respond with new policies in response to Russian energy weaponization.

The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 left Spain scrambling to reassemble a broken economy and combat soaring unemployment. European austerity measures and Catalonian dreams of independence have since occupied all of Madrid’s bandwidth and effectively back-seated Spanish foreign policy for over a decade. With the rise of Pedro Sánchez and the wounds of the financial crisis healing, Madrid has turned its attention back to Brussels, and is ready to assume the role of a leading power in Europe. 

It is well known the world over that the European Union is a major economic power thanks to the single market. Yet, it is far behind other major world powers in arms development and sales. Despite the inclusion of weapons in the single market, there exists no common market for the defense. The advantages to unifying the defense industry and creating a single market for defense are clear and undeniable.

The 2019 European Elections will be taking place in less than a year. Yet by and large, political parties do not seem particularly interested. There’s no campaigning. Parties aren’t talking to members. No plans are being drawn up. If the European Elections sometimes feel like an afterthought, it’s at least partly because parties seem to treat them as such.