Western Europe Archive

Last weekend, French President Francois Hollande met with Moroccan King Mohammed VI and signed an initiative to send French imams to the Mohammed VI Institute in Rabat, a center opened in March with the stated mission of promoting religious moderation and tolerance to combat radical Islam. The visit was an attempt to mend relations, which Morocco suspended last February for nearly a year following French allegations of human rights abuses. Although the France-Morocco initiative on imams is new, international religious training exchanges are part of an established phenomenon that Jonathan Laurence, a professor of political science at Boston College, calls […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the European refugee crisis and European Union member states’ approaches to addressing it. Earlier this month, Denmark announced that it would not take part in a proposed European Union refugee-quota scheme. In an email interview, Hans Lucht, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute of International Studies, discusses Denmark’s refugee and asylum policies. WPR: How has Denmark’s migrant and asylum policy changed since the center-right Venstre party came to power in June, and what influence has the success of the far-right Danish People’s party had on government policy […]

When this year’s slate of GOP presidential candidates took the stage for a televised debate a couple of months ago, with the flamboyant Donald Trump capturing most of the attention, a number of writers started referring to the group as the Republican “clown car.” The term was obviously meant to be a humorous putdown, dismissing the seriousness and political viability of the large and histrionic collection of would-be presidents. More recently, as the possibility that Trump could emerge victorious started becoming less inconceivable to the establishment, the term fell into disuse. And yet, there is a grain of truth in […]

Germany has never been an entirely comfortable power at the United Nations. The Security Council is, as Russian diplomats like to note, still run by the countries that defeated Hitler in 1945. East and West Germany did not even join the U.N. until 1973. Nevertheless, Berlin now pays over 7 percent of the U.N. budget, while Britain and France cover less than 6 percent each. At regular intervals, the Germans launch quixotic campaigns to win a permanent seat on the Security Council. Time and again, these plow into the sand. Despite these bids for a bigger role, German diplomats often […]

Under Chancellor Angela Merkel, the longest-serving head of government in the European Union, Germany has assumed a central role in a changing Europe. But in both the EU and the world beyond, Berlin often seems a reluctant power, even as Merkel’s popularity at home masks underlying challenges. All of the articles linked below are free for non-subscribers until Sept. 17. The View From Berlin: In winning a third term as chancellor in 2013, Merkel extended the Christian Democratic Union’s hold on power and cemented her dominance of German politics. But she was once again forced to form a coalition government […]

The late-August headlines have been heartrending, from the continued violence of the Islamic State against both people and cultural patrimony, to stirrings of public discontent and rage over government incompetence in several Arab states. The latest of the summer’s tragedies came last week, when the lifeless bodies of 71 migrants, including four children, were found inside a truck in Austria. The horrific discovery moved the ever-expanding tragedy of illegal migration from war zones into Southern and Eastern Europe back into the spotlight. Although many commentators have pointed the finger at Europe’s institutional failings to manage the migration crisis, much of […]

On Tuesday, Ukraine’s right-wing Radical Party announced that it was leaving the ruling coalition over a bill that would give more power to the country’s regions, including in eastern Ukraine, which is currently controlled by pro-Russian rebels. Russia insisted on the decentralization of power as a condition for the truce that was agreed upon in February between Ukrainian troops and separatist rebels, which has unraveled bit by bit. The bill has sparked controversy across Ukraine and put President Petro Poroshenko in a tight spot. Russian-backed separatists say it does not give them sufficient sovereignty in the east, while nationalists claim […]