Western Europe Archive

What does Meghan Markle mean for multilateralism? Since the British royal wedding on Saturday, commentators have been lining up to interpret the political and social significance of the fact that a “mixed race American divorcee actress” is the newest member of the House of Windsor. This is not all froth. The marriage ceremony—with its emphasis on black culture and heritage, both British and American—has added a positive spin to debates about race and identity in the U.K. If you believe the British media, Markle’s nuptials with Prince Harry could also reshape debates about Brexit, class and the role of religion […]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Last week, in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, German Chancellor Angela Merkel solemnly declared that from now on Europe would have to take its destiny in its own hands. It’s hard to disagree with Merkel. But that was already true the first time she expressed the sentiment in May 2017, in the aftermath of Trump’s first visit to Europe as president. In the meantime, Europe has not done anything to fundamentally address the challenge of managing trans-Atlantic relations under Trump. As a result, […]

On Saturday, thousands of demonstrators marched in Paris to express their disapproval of French President Emmanuel Macron on the one-year anniversary of his election. Macron has wasted little time following through on his campaign promises of economic and fiscal reforms. But his efforts to overhaul France’s labor regulations as well as his willingness to use extraordinary executive powers to push through his agenda have led critics to call him authoritarian and the “president of the rich.” In an email interview, George Ross, distinguished Jean Monnet Chair and visiting professor of political science at the University of Montreal-McGill Center for Excellence […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing series about religious minorities in various countries around the world. In early February, a month before Italy’s inconclusive elections, the leader of the far-right party the League, Matteo Salvini, called for the closure of all “illegal” Islamic centers, declaring that “Islam is incompatible” with Italian values. The rise of Islamophobia in Italy has coincided with an anti-immigrant backlash to the migrant crisis that saw just under 120,000 immigrants arrive in the country in 2017 alone, many of them Muslims from Africa and the Middle East. But the question of unregistered Islamic […]