Western Europe Archive

Editor’s Note: This is the final article in a series about NATO members’ contributions to and relationships with the alliance. Italy has long worked to improve ties between NATO and Russia, an effort that has continued even after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. At the same time, the country has urged NATO to focus more on threats facing the alliance’s southern flank, including insecurity resulting from migration. In an email interview, Alessandro Marrone, senior fellow with the Security, Defense and Space Program at the International Affairs Institute in Rome, describes Italy’s role in NATO and how this shapes […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on LGBT rights and discrimination in various countries around the world. The recent vote by German MPs to legalize same-sex marriage was seen as an example of the law catching up with public opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was certain same-sex marriage would be approved, voted against it herself, leaving people guessing as to whether her vote reflected her values or was a strategic calculation. In an email interview, Dr. Beate Küpper, social psychologist on the Faculty of Social Services at the Hochschule Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences in […]

In this week’s Trend Lines podcast, WPR’s editor-in-chief, Judah Grunstein, speaks with associate editors Karina Piser and Robbie Corey-Boulet about French President Emmanuel Macron’s agenda, from reforms in France and strengthening Europe to security in West Africa—and how Donald Trump’s Bastille Day visit to Paris fits into it. If you’d like to sign up for the beta version of WPR’s Africa-only subscription, you can do so here. It’s free for the first two months. And if you like what you hear on Trend Lines, as well as what you’ve seen on WPR, please think about supporting our work by subscribing. […]

What a difference a few months can make in British politics. In early May, a confident Prime Minister Theresa May looked well on her way to securing a much bigger majority for her Conservative Party in the House of Commons on a platform of “strong and steady leadership” and a promise to deliver on Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party looked out of touch with the real concerns of most British people and seemed destined for electoral oblivion. So the shock result of a hung parliament after the U.K. general election on June 8 not only transformed the British political landscape, […]

European progressives are feeling cautiously optimistic. Last year, in the shadow of the United Kingdom’s shock referendum vote for Brexit and then the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, many in Europe were fearful of a so-called contagion effect. With looming elections in the Netherlands and Austria, European leaders braced for their own populist backlash against liberalism, the European Union and international free trade. Inspired by Trump and against the backdrop of a pan-European refugee crisis, populist nationalists seemed poised to reimpose themselves onto the political agenda. Once again, a major crisis loomed on the horizon […]

Italy’s center-right parties performed impressively in last month’s local elections, prompting former Prime Minister and Democratic Party head Matteo Renzi to acknowledge that the polls “could have gone better” for his center-left formation. But turnout was just 46 percent, according to Reuters, and there were questions as to whether the results are predictive of how the various parties will fare in next year’s general elections. In an email interview, Mark Gilbert, a professor of international history at Johns Hopkins University-SAIS Europe, describes the factors that fueled the center-right’s success and the issues that are most important to Italian voters. WPR: […]