Europe politics

Europe politics

After a day of turmoil where the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, called for Starmer to resign, Labour MPs rallied around the prime minister after a speech in parliament. Miliband described Starmer as liberated, 24 hours after the departure of his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he hoped that the truest version of Starmer would now show itself to the country.

We may be, in the course of 2026, coming to a point where the whole thing becomes unsustainable, because so much of the Russian economy has been distorted so much by the building up of the war economy at the expense of the civil economy. I think defying the laws of economic gravity can only go on for so long.

You don't need a degree in political science to understand why so many supposedly centrist European leaders have begun talking about immigration in terms that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. Far-right parties across the continent have fuelled their rise by seizing on the issue as a political cosh with which to beat their more mainstream and established rivals, whom they accuse of complacency, inaction and a failure to defend borders.

The European Commission would be open-minded to discussing closer trade ties with the UK, including a customs union, a senior EU official has said. The EU economy commissioner, Valdis Dombrovskis, told the BBC that the European bloc was ready to engage with an open mind when asked about a customs union.

For the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the EU's trade pact with India was the mother of all deals. Seen from the other end of the telescope, it looked like the mouse of all deals, with just 4bn (3.5bn) in tariff reductions a rounding error in a 180bn trading relationship. But that misses the point: this is about economic heavyweights resetting the terms of their cooperation because of Donald Trump's use of tariffs as a tool of economic and political compulsion.

The Common European Asylum System (CEAS) is the European Union's legal framework to create uniform, fair, and efficient standards for processing asylum applications. The system's reform, agreed in 2024, will become legally binding in Germany and throughout the EU in June, 2026. EU member states had a two-year implementation period during which the new rules including stricter border procedures were transposed into national law.

Technically, we will be ready in 2027, Zelenskyy told reporters, Reuters reported, adding that by the end of 2026 Ukraine will have implemented the main steps required for membership. I think the European Commission may have a slightly more nuanced view on that, given its last year's progress report pointing to some level of preparation in many areas, with only limited progress on some of the key issues, such as fight against corruption, or insufficient capacity in some areas looked at by the EU.

As part of a bill to strengthen rights for passengers, MEPs have swung behind proposals to allow passengers to take one personal item, such as a handbag, backpack or laptop, as well as a piece of hand luggage weighing up to 7kg (15lbs) and with combined dimensions of 100cm (39in). The case alone would be bigger than the current maximum permitted free cabin item on Ryanair and others.

Repression cannot go unanswered, said Kaja Kallas, the EU's foreign policy chief, on Thursday. The paramilitary organisation has played a significant role in suppressing demonstrations in Iran. Any regime that kills thousands of its own people is working toward its own demise, she wrote on X. Hannah Neumann, chair of the European parliament's delegation for relations with Iran, said the IRGC listing was a long-overdue political signal that massive violence and transnational repression will no longer go unanswered.

Jakub Krupa Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the negotiations with the US over a security guarantees agreement were 100% done and the deal was just waiting to be signed, as Russia has praised the trilateral talks with Ukraine and the US over the weekend as held in constructive spirit. It would be a mistake to expect any significant results from the initial contacts But the very fact that these contacts have begun in a constructive spirit can be viewed positively.

In an incisive analysis of the new age of predatory great powers, where might is increasingly asserted as right, Carney not only accurately defined the coarsening of international relations as a rupture, not a transition. He also outlined how liberal democratic middle powers such as Canada but also European countries must build coalitions to counter coercion and defend as much as possible of the principles of territorial integrity, the rule of law, free trade, climate action and human rights.

In part due to the war in Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions on Russian pipeline gas, European countries have become dependent on shipments of US liquified natural gas (LNG), according to a paper co-authored by the Clingendael Institute, in The Hague, the Ecologic Institute, in Berlin, and the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. The development is fraught with risk at a time when Trump has shifted towards a more explicitly interest-driven, protectionist and ideologically charged approach, the paper says.

A fresh round of tariffs on European exports would cost Germany and Europe dearly, the president of the German auto industry association has said, as he called for a smart response coordinated by Brussels. The costs of these additional tariffs would be enormous for German and European industry, especially in these already challenging times, said Hildegard Muller, the president of the VDA trade organisation. What is crucial now is a smart, strategic response from Brussels that is coordinated with the countries affected, she added.

Senior European diplomats are due to hold crisis talks after Donald Trump said he was targeting eight European nations with tariffs over their support for Greenland. Italy's prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said Trump's tariffs were a mistake, and the Dutch foreign minister, David van Weel, described the US president's threats to allies as blackmail, as reaction from European leaders continued to pile up.

For the first time since the end of the second world war, France has recorded more deaths than births, suggesting that the country's long-held demographic advantage over other EU countries is slipping away. Across the country in 2025, there were 651,000 deaths and 645,000 births, according to newly released figures from the national statistics institute Insee. France had long been an exception across Europe, with birthrates that topped many of its neighbours'.

On Wednesday Brussels is due to outline the terms of the 90bn loan it has promised to Ukraine, amid internal tensions over whether Kyiv can use the money to buy US as well as EU weapons. On the same day, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is due to meet ministers from Denmark and Greenland, as Donald Trump continues to insist that the US will take ownership of the latter one way or another.

The process of forming the 3-week-old right-wing coalition government in Prague after the general election in early October was protracted and difficult. One ministerial post remains empty after backlash against the coalition's preferred candidate. In addition, the requisite vote of confidence for the new Cabinet has not yet been held in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Czech parliament.

The Minister for Media, Patrick O'Donovan, has deactivated his X account, saying he is "uncomfortable" with the platform and its AI tool Grok, which has been criticised for allowing the creation of sexually-explicit images without consent. The Fine Gael TD confirmed the move after attending the Stripe Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition in Dublin yesterday, where he was questioned by media about the controversy surrounding Grok and the wider misuse of artificial intelligence.

This week, Sanchez did not wait for a joint EU statement to issue judgment on the US's illegal military intervention to capture the Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro: he swiftly joined Latin American countries in condemning it. A few hours later he went even further, saying the operation in Caracas represented a terrible precedent and a very dangerous one [which] reminds us of past aggressions, and pushes the world toward a future of uncertainty and insecurity, similar to what we already experienced after other invasions driven by the thirst for oil.

Italy has increased its demands around safeguards in the Mercosur trade deal, even as EU officials insist the long-delayed agreement is edging closer to completion, a development that has sharpened tensions within the Irish Government ahead of a major farmer-led protest planned for Saturday. Rome is now seeking to lower the trigger point for suspending Mercosur imports to 5pc, down from the 8pc threshold currently proposed, Italy's stance on the deal is said to be decisive ahead of a crucial EU vote expected on Friday.

It's one step forward, one step back in Europe's relations with the US. Just hours after the Coalition of the Willing made a big step towards providing Ukraine with long-awaited security guarantees with potential UK and French troops deployments and all briefly seemed to be going in the right direction once again, the White House said that using US military is always an option for acquiring Greenland.

"The new right-wing populist government of Andrej Babis has made a firm pledge to ensure Czechia never adopts the euro. Instead, the government will seek to enshrine the Czech crown as legal tender and guarantee the right to use cash. "We commit that our government will not adopt the euro nor take any steps towards its introduction," reads the policy program approved by the new government a coalition of Babis's ANO party, the euroskeptic Motorists for Themselves and the far-right SPD at its inaugural cabinet meeting on Monday."

Vladimir Putin's war has upended security and defence across the continent, and as the European Union and Nato dig in for a fourth year of fighting, senior officials have a message for countries around the globe. Almost everyone who spoke to Guardian Australia during a recent visit agrees: war in Europe has made conflict in the Indo-Pacific more likely and countries including Australia need to be better prepared.

The document was widely condemned in Europe as representing a seismic shift in the 70-year transatlantic alliance with its dark references to a purported threat of civilisational erasure with migration and censorship creating strife, cratering birthrates and loss of national identities. Its threat to interfere in European politics and oppose what it termed as elite-driven, anti-democratic restrictions on core liberties in Europe was condemned as unacceptable by the president of the European Council of leaders, Antonio Costa.

Irish MAGA and an Irish Trump

In countries with ageing populations, there's a growing likelihood that many of us will be. But behind the dream of a cosy retirement, the economic reality is ever more complex. As populations age, the number of younger people entering the workforce is shrinking and that's a big problem for pay as you go state pension schemes where employees fund the pensions of an expanding cohort of retired people.

The biggest shake-up of green trade rules for decades comes into force today, as companies selling steel, cement and other high-carbon goods into the EU will have to prove they comply with low-carbon regulations or face fines. But a lack of clarity on how the rules will be applied, and the failure of the UK government to strike a deal with Brussels over the issue, could lead to confusion in the early stages, experts warned.

Powerful new IRA mortars had significantly impacted the morale of British Army personnel stationed in south Armagh.

"The police concluded their investigation against me in connection with the Budapest Pride march in June with a recommendation to press charges," he said in a video posted to Facebook. "They accuse me of violating the [new law on] freedom of assembly, which is completely absurd." Karácsony approved the Pride event and took to the streets with hundreds of thousands of marchers in defiance of the ban. Celebrants anointed Orbán "King of European Pride."