A large archive around the 2027 French presidential election: official sources, political news, institutional videos and reference content — all in one place.
An advocate-general at the European Court of Justice suggested judges dismiss a case from the French parliament, which wants to annul EU rules on relocating asylum seekers.
Confusion reigns on the future of a Rwandan-led mission in Mozambique for which EU funding ends on Sunday.
Trouble starts when the centrist parties begin to sound alike. When moderate left and moderate right converge into a governing centre, voters lose real choice within the system. When democracy loses its internal opposition, it begins producing external opposition. This is the consensus trap.
Emmanuel Macron says France is an 'ethical partner' for African countries as he seeks to increase Paris's diplomatic and economic influence on the continent. However, diplomatic immunity for French troops, no-shows from Brussels, and an angry Macron hushing a crowd nearly overshadowed the event.
Dozens of political leaders and business bosses will gather in the Kenyan capital this week, hosted by France's Emmanuel Macron and Kenya's William Ruto. But will amount to more than hot air?
Germany, Greece, Romania, the Czechs, and Finland also licensed millions of euros of Israel arms exports in 2024, according to the latest EU data.
In a strategic about-face, the Czech Republic is looking to join French President Emmanuel Macron's initiative to build a pan-European nuclear deterrent.
As Péter Magyar prepares to take the helm of Hungary on 9 May, the era of "super-ministries" and party loyalists is being dismantled in favour of an Atlanticist, expert-led cabinet. From a former Shell global vice-president managing the economy to a Nato-backed diplomat steering foreign policy, the incoming Tisza government marks a radical shift back toward the European mainstream. We look at the key figures — from banking titans to world-renowned surgeons — tasked with restoring the rule of ...
"The ever and fast deteriorating situation calls for such action [on Israel", a joint Franco-Swedish proposal said.
Emmanuel Macron is slowly reaching the end of his two terms as president of the French Republic. But who will succeed him?
A leading Palestinian human rights advocate has been refused a visa to address the European Parliament, despite both Belgium and the Netherlands being prepared to grant entry.
Is your baguette a health risk? France's cadmium levels are three times higher than those of its neighbours, fueled by phosphate fertilisers and industrial legacy. Léa Marchal explores why France lags on safety limits and what this means for people's daily diet.
"If they attacked a French or Italian boat [in Hormuz after the war], it’s Iran against the world not Iran against the US,” said retired Italian admiral Giampaolo Di Paola.
France's plans for a €70bn expansion of its nuclear energy production come after EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said that abandoning nuclear had been a "strategic mistake".
France would only lead a Hormuz mission "once calm returns, once the military objectives of the US are attained", it said after EU powers met the US secretary of state. Marco Rubio said: "Ukraine is not America's war, and yet we've contributed more to that fight than any other country in the world."
In France and across Europe, the right casts the left as a threat. Yet left-wing parties still find ways to unite at the ballot box. At the same time, far-right actors are increasingly normalised, while anti-capitalist groups are pushed to the political margins.
"As the [Middle East] region enters a period of religious holidays, I think everyone should calm down and the fighting should stop," said French president Macron in Brussels.
It is easy to treat the case as just a French affair. In reality, the appeal carries wider international stakes and has become a stress test for the rule-of-law ecosystem under pressure across the EU.
"We are establishing a purely defensive and supportive mission … which will allow, once the hottest phase of the conflict is over, escorting container ships and tankers [through Hormuz]," said French president Emmanuel Macron in Cyprus on Monday.
While leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom condemn Iran and consider defensive steps, they stop short of direct war involvement, coordinating cautiously with the United States. Here’s a closer breakdown of how each country is positioning itself.
“Far-left kills.” That’s how extreme-right protesters have described the death of Quentin Deranque. A formula also used by various political figures in France and Europe to blame far-left and antifascist movements in a broader sense. Can this dramatic event weaken antifascist movements across Europe?
The ex-ministers, ambassadors, and diplomats accuse French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot of spreading disinformation and called for a correction of his comments about UNrapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese.
The 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index from NGO Transparency International, has found that global corruption is worse than a decade ago, with democracies particularly slipping.
Ministers responsible for competitiveness met for two days in Cyprus, but the talks produced little in the way of concrete decisions, and suggest an agreement on “Buy in Europe” rules is still some way off.
Any approach to current events in Iran that is driven primarily by self-interest and opportunism – condemning human rights abuses perpetrated by the regime, while readily ignoring violations by other actors – risks alienating the Iranian population in the long term, regardless of whether the Islamic Republic endures or not.
Germany and France have been trying to maintain a friendship since the 1960s — a friendship that is supposed to guide the rest of the continent. However, this doesn’t really work anymore. Why do they struggle to find a united position on Donald Trump’s ongoing threats? Could this lack of unity hamper Europe’s response?
Left-wing critics of EU foreign relations chief Kaja Kallas have "smelled blood" in joining Russian calls for her resignation on X, as she responded by telling Greenland it was "not alone" against US threats.
The EU Commission has closed its second call for projects aimed at diversifying and expanding the bloc's access to critical raw material — receiving more than 160 applications for strategic projects.
EU leaders are set to draw up ways to use their ‘nuclear’ trade weapon, its anti-coercion law, later this week to hit back at threats by US president Donald Trump to impose extra tariffs on European opponents of his plan to annex Greenland.
The United States remains an important supplier of LNG gas to the EU, says the European Commission — even as Donald Trump ramps up trade-war threats in order to seize Greenland, and experts warn it creates a potentially high-risk geopolitical dependency.
The EU, instead of contending itself with the undignified role of a subservient payer and sidekick of US interests, must prioritise a robust and ambitious diplomatic strategy towards Israel, moving from mere statements of discontent to actionable efforts that hold the Israeli government accountable for its blatant violations of international law, writes former EU ambassador Sven Burgsdorff.
With US public opinion overwhelmingly against a military takeover of Greenland, a joint initiative from the US Congress and the European Parliament might be the best bet to sway Donald Trump's mind.
US president Donald Trump will meet EU leaders at Davos after starting a trade war over Greenland, while MEPs vote on €90bn for Ukraine.
Total billionaire wealth in the EU reached €2.4 trillion by late November, exceeding Italy's entire GDP of €2.2 trillion and approaching France's €2.9 trillion economy, a new Oxfam report found.
A US decision to unleash trade war against EU and Nato allies over Greenland has struck another blow inside the Western family, delighting Russia.
EU states mostly kept quiet on US military threats against Iran, while China voiced outrage, at nerve-wracking UN talks in New York.
There was intense digital interference during last year's Dutch parliamentary elections, with generative AI political content playing an increasing role and producing vast engagement, according to the Dutch Hybrid Election Integrity Observatory.
Discrimination against Roma is still common all over Europe, with far-right parties using an 'us versus them' narrative to gain support in elections.
A Vienna-based migration organisation is setting up operations in India in an effort to attract IT specialists to Europe, even as EU governments move to tighten asylum rules.
EU Commission president said on Thursday that Greenland can count on the EU, but when it comes to security, she passed the responsibility to Nato, while pledging to keep working with the US, despite renewed threats.
A €1.5bn EU plan to kickstart domestic battery production failed to convince MEPs who warned that proposed funding is dwarfed by Chinese state support.
The fate of the EU's trade relations with the United States and Mercosur lie in the hands of the European parliament, where a simple majority will determine ratification or rejection.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer spent much of 2025 trying to persuade people there was substance to his ‘reset’ on EU-UK relations, which he's been talking about since taking power in July 2024.
The European Commission wants Ukraine to receive the first instalment in April of a €90bn loan, as Russia continues its assault.
EU Commission researchers found that most EU states – except Cyprus, Finland, and Sweden – could produce more than 50 percent of their 2024 energy consumption with rooftop solar panels.
The last 11 years have been the hottest ever recorded. The world is fast approaching the 1.5°C limit set by scientists, according to Europe's centre for weather forecasts.
European plans for a Ukraine peacekeeping force sound as outdated as using cavalry in WWI, says one of Ukraine's top soldiers, major Oleh Shyriaiev, in a phone interview from the front line in northern Ukraine.
The PFAS corporate lobby should have been chastened by the revelations of the devastating impacts of forever chemicals – this has not happened.
A report by Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl found that many of the changes in the European Commission's digital omnibus overlap with the desired changes from Big Tech companies and major tech lobbies.
The EU's earmarked €620m in aid for Syria is largely aimed at restoring basic services and living conditions in an effort to encourage Syrian refugees in Europe to go home.
EU foreign relations chief Kaja Kallas has cast doubt on Germany's prediction that the Iranian government will shortly fall.
Is Europe ready to understand that defending Ukraine means defending its own future - and to act accordingly, without delay?
World regulators, including Malaysia, Indonesia and the UK have taken action against AI Grok, with calls for the European Commission to intervene via its Digital Services Act, in response to users producing sexualised deepfakes with the chatbot.
The European Court of Auditors says the EU's proposed €409 bn competitiveness fund is too vague to guarantee transparency and traceability of funds. Auditors warn the proposal could repeat mistakes made with the pandemic recovery fund.
Olivér Várhelyi, the European health commissioner, repeatedly brushed off allegations he had headed a spy-ring during his term as Hungary's ambassador to the European Union.
The protests that began in December 2025 are not about prices alone. They represent a sustained challenge to a political system widely perceived as irreparable. Recognising that reality is not radicalism. For Europe, it is strategic realism, writes Babak Rezaeedaryakenari from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands.
The EU is against regime change in Iran, while condemning violence and drafting new sanctions, with a foreign policy largely unchanged since before the protests turned deadly.
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Evi Kiorri speaks with Ina Delić, youth engagement officer at Caritas Europe, and part of the very generation she’s advocating for, about the lived reality of Europe’s housing crisis, and what it means for young lives and futures.
Eighteen EU member states, including Germany, have refused to commit to any resettlement quotas for primarily UN-recognised refugees, as the bloc collectively spurns those with legitimate claims to international protection.
Russia's Oreshnik missile strike near to Poland was a "warning" amid plans for European troops in Ukraine, but Emmanuel Macron and Giorgia Meloni still want to talk to Vladimir Putin.
Housing costs across the EU kept climbing in late 2025, new Eurostat figures show, with prices up 63 percent over the past decade, and rents 21 percent higher.
A multinational European contingent, rotating and modest in size, would internationalise the security of Greenland. Any hostile act would no longer be a bilateral issue between Copenhagen and Washington, but an incident involving several European states. This would not be a force designed to fight the United States, nor a step towards militarising the Arctic.
Russia has dampened hopes of a quick Ukraine ceasefire by rejecting a key US and European project on security guarantees.
The Trump administration ordered a US withdrawal from over 60 international organisations, including the UN climate summits, drawing sharp EU criticism over weakened global cooperation.
The Venezuelan people themselves must decide their country's future through free and fair elections — democracy cannot be delivered on the tip of a bayonet, writes MEP Hilde Vautmans of Renew Europe.
The EU is aiming to impose a 20th round of Russia sanctions on the fourth anniversary of the full invasion of Ukraine, on 24 February — despite the US-led ceasefire talks.
Slovakia’s Hungarian minority are protesting against the state’s ongoing use of wartime decrees to confiscate private land on ethnic grounds. Now the president has signed a decree making it a criminal offence, with up to six months in prison, to criticise the land confiscations.
Chatbot Grok recently generated sexual content on Elon Musk's X that appears to be illegal, raising fresh questions about how EU law applies. With the Digital Services Act and the AI Act in force, here’s what the rules and potential penalties mean for platforms and AI services operating in the EU.
To understand Donald Trump’s foreign policy in Venezuela and Greenland, it must be seen as part of an emerging 'neo-royalist' world order driven by the interest of hyper-elites, not national interest, argues political scientist Abraham Newman.
The US show of power in Venezuela could make a Ukraine ceasefire less likely, despite new Paris talks on Western peacekeeping troops.
The European Commission appears to have been snubbed in a statement from several member states in defence of Greenland, following renewed threats by US president Donald Trump to seize the autonomous Danish island.
France, Spain, and Denmark mildly rebuked the US over its actions in Venezuela at UN crisis talks, whilst China, most of Latin America, and African states voiced outrage.
Speculation is growing that Donald Trump will join close ally Israel in recognising the breakaway republic of Somaliland — in a move that would deepen its existing rift with Brussels about the Horn of Africa.
The European Commission is looking into Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok, after the model's "spicy" mode began generating sexualised deepfakes of women and minors in bikinis and transparent clothing.
US regime change in Venezuela was an "opportunity for democratic transition", the EU Commission has said, as the UN Security Council meets in New York to take stock of global reaction.
The European Commission has stopped short of condemning Donald Trump’s renewed claim to take over Greenland, even as international outrage mounts after the dramatic abduction of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.
Loneliness doesn’t stop at city limits or country borders. In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Evi Kiorri explores how isolation takes root in both Europe’s bustling cities and its quiet rural towns.
Since the financial crash of 2008, large volumes of funding are now flowing through entities whose balance sheets are opaque, leverage difficult to measure, and activities capable of amplifying shocks when liquidity becomes scarcer.
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Evi Kiorri explores what life is really like far from the cities, speaking with Emanuele Monaco, who left urban life to build a distillery in rural Puglia, Italy.
Cyprus is one of the bloc's smallest and most remote members. It takes over the rotating EU presidency in January for a continent mired in the Ukraine war, migrant deportations and economic insecurity.
Finland is the only EU country with a female majority while in Italy and Czechia, men dominate the diplomatic corps.
In this long read, EUobserver explores what to watch in 2026 — from geo-economics and global power shifts to key elections across the bloc, defence needs, climate dreams, migration dilemmas, technological developments, and social tension.
EUobserver's journalists break down geoeconomics, key elections, defence, climate, migration, technology, and social tensions to look out for in 2026 – in a short, free version of the full analysis.
At Cold War–scale rearmament, Europe’s risk is not military weakness, but losing democratic control over power
Russia is suspected of starting the new year by escalating anti-EU hybrid warfare with another cable-cutting attack in the Baltic Sea.
Chinese officials have indicated that they will file a complaint to the World Trade Organisation against the EU’s new carbon levy, which came into force on Thursday (1 January), describing it as "unfair" and "discriminatory."
As Europe’s baby boomers enter retirement, experts agree that reforms are needed to ensure the sustainability of European pensions. However, there is considerable debate on which reforms should be implemented and how they impact elderly poverty and pension inequality.
The EU has warned that Israel’s decision to suspend dozens of international aid organisations in Gaza risks cutting off life-saving assistance as winter conditions and displacement deepen the humanitarian crisis.
If Europe wants to remain a symbol of democratic, open spaces, it must defend its values not only with hard power but with imagination and empathy. This means positioning culture at the heart of EU policy.
Europe debates shorter workweeks as Poland pilots a four-day model without pay cuts, following mixed experiences and perspectives from the UK, France, Spain, Lithuania and Greece, balancing productivity, wellbeing and competitiveness concerns.
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Evi Kiorri examines how digital tools, remote work, and workplace expectations are taking a toll on us and whether the growing push for a legal right to disconnect can help turn things around.
Europe's top security conference has re-invited far-right "extremists", while denying it did so under US pressure.
Austria’s central bank governor has urged his government to row back on its opposition to the EU’s trade agreement with the South American Mercosur bloc, warning that the economic ‘opportunity’ of increased exports is too big to ignore.
What does it really mean to be a rainbow family in the European Union? In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Evi Kiorri explores the promise and the shortcomings of the European Certificate of Parenthood, a regulation meant to ensure that parenthood rights are recognised across all 27 EU countries.
The Lithuanian party’s possible move into Patriots for Europe follows a court conviction of its leader for inciting hatred against Jews and downplaying the Holocaust.
Kosovo's Albanian nationalist leader has won a third term in office, while warning the EU about Serbia's pro-Russian drift.
The EU has called on the international community to maintain its recognition of the “unity, the sovereignty and the territorial integrity” of Somalia after Israel recognised the breakaway province
The problem is not the absence of diplomacy, but the persistence of strategic ambiguity: a peace process advancing faster than the legal, security and political frameworks needed to support it.
In this episode of Europe Talks Back, Evi Kiorri explores how Europe's so-called culture wars are used to divert attention from structural economic issues.
Displaced Ukrainians with disabilities face severe barriers to mobility, healthcare, and services amid the war. Local coordinators and international support provide assistive devices, accessible transport, and advocacy, linking inclusion to postwar recovery.