EU officials want to set up a €100 billion wealth fund to bolster “European champions” against American and Chinese business rivals like Google, Apple and Alibaba. The proposal for a so-called European Future Fund appears in an unusually radical raft of plans that European Commission officials want to put onto the agenda of their president-elect, Ursula von der Leyen, whose mandate begins on November 1.
The U.K.’s government under new Prime Minister Boris Johnson has stepped up planning and funding for a no-deal Brexit, but many feel that contingency plans will not be enough to mitigate the fallout from an increasingly likely abrupt departure from the EU.
The politics of the European Union, however, look increasingly pre-democratic. In this new Ancien Régime – much as in the old one – officials condemn petty theft while absolving themselves of more serious crimes. Countries that wish to join the EU are instructed to scrub their institutions of corruption before they can even be considered for accession. Without the slightest hesitation, however, the EU now promotes candidates with a clear record of kickbacks and other dirty deals, as long as they are already senior members of the political class.
Though the biggest headlines of election night may have been of the Le Pen and Salvini victories, the story across Europe is that voters have mobilised in favour of change. A high turn-out in the European Parliament elections has resulted in a surge for smaller parties, notably greens and liberals, which has effectively countered the rise of far-right parties – preventing them from the kind of sweeping successes in the European elections that were predicted earlier this year.
Brussels has misread Beijing’s global aspirations – there is no grand plan behind Chinese acquisitions of European assets. But, as China becomes a stakeholder in Europe, the continent should adopt a pragmatic strategy to profit from this.
Trump has overcome internal resistance and external pressure to deliver an as yet uninterrupted string of foreign-policy successes : North Korea’s “Rocket Man” Kim Jong-un hasn’t launched a rocket in ten months; America’s NATO allies are finally starting to deliver on pledges to increase defense spending toward the 2 percent of GDP target agreed in 2006 ; Mexico has seemingly come to terms on long-overdue NAFTA reforms; the United States has stayed out of the Arab world’s interminable wars in Syria, Libya and Yemen; and the U.S. embassy in Israel moved to Jerusalem in May without sparking the Third Intifada predicted by Trump’s opponents.
Where do Britain and the EU go from here on Brexit? Can and should Britain stay in the EU (from a legal, political, public opinion, or another standpoint) or is separation best? Should Britons get another vote on Brexit or on the final deal? What will Britain’s future relationship with the EU look like, and what kind of an effect will it have on Britain’s economy?
As the first wave of renewed U.S. sanctions against Iran goes into effect Tuesday amid rising street protests over the country’s disastrous economy, analysts are divided about whether popular anger over runaway inflation and unemployment will be directed at the government in Tehran—or at the United States.
The United States is losing ground as the internet’s standard-bearer in the face of aggressive European privacy standards and China’s draconian vision for a tightly controlled Web. The weakening American position comes as the European Union, filling a gap left by years of lax U.S. regulations, imposes data privacy requirements that companies like Facebook and Google must follow.
Photo by Luca Micheli on Unsplash
Were London a city-state, it would have the 20th-largest national economy in the world – larger than the national economies of Saudi Arabia, Argentina and South Africa. Were London a city-state, its national per capita gross domestic product would be greater than that of the United States. Were London a city-state, it would be the 15th most populous country in Europe, with an overall population bigger than that of Austria or Denmark and bigger than the combined populations of Scotland and Northern Ireland.
