Western Europe Archive

BAMAKO, Mali—“The terrorists are quick,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters after a summit with the leaders of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso in Ouagadougou in May. “This is why we have to be quicker, so that we can beat them.” What happens in the Sahel, the vast sub-Saharan region of Northern Africa, “is not only the responsibility of the region, but is also a European responsibility,” Merkel added in what was for her some uncharacteristic alarmism. “If chaos gains the upper hand here—something we want to prevent—other areas would be impacted.” The sight of Merkel standing side […]

A new five-party coalition government was formally appointed in Finland earlier this month, led by Prime Minister Antti Rinne. Rinne’s Social Democratic Party narrowly won legislative elections in mid-April with only 17.7 percent of the vote, leading it to partner with four smaller parties to form a left-leaning majority coalition in the Parliament. But the far-right populist Finns Party placed a close second in the elections with 17.5 percent, and it has emerged as the most popular party in Finland in recent public opinion polls. In an email interview with WPR, Teivo Teivainen, a professor of world politics at the […]

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an ongoing seriesabout press freedom and safety in various countries around the world. During his campaign for the presidency in 2017, Emmanuel Macron assiduously cultivated good relationships with the French press. He appeared to enjoy his interactions with the media, and his message always seemed tailored to his audience. In his interviews with mainstream newspapers and networks, he peppered his answers with philosophical references, projecting a sense of genuine intellectual engagement. When he spoke with the tabloids, he answers were soft and frivolous, and the coverage was fawning. The campaign was “a masterpiece […]

Just two weeks after the far-right Brexit Party emerged as one of the winners of the European Parliament elections, Nigel Farage’s new political outfit was presented with its first opportunity to win a British parliamentary seat. It was in a by-election in the constituency of Peterborough that appeared firmly slanted in its favor. Peterborough voted to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum by a clear majority of nearly 61 percent. Its disgraced Labour MP, Fiona Onasanya, who was only elected in 2017 by a paper-thin margin of 607 votes, had been recalled by her own party after being […]

Can the norms and institutions of liberal democracy still effectively arbitrate the issues driving debate in Western democracies? The ideological movements roiling politics throughout Europe and the United States have been seen as a popular backlash against the elite technocratic policy consensus of Third Way globalization. But in some ways, they portend a new form of contesting politics that is fundamentally incompatible with the premises on which liberal democracy is based. These movements may be working within the system to achieve their aims for now, but in the long run, the battles they seek to join could represent existential threats […]

Last week, President Donald Trump joined world leaders to commemorate Operation Overlord, history’s most ambitious amphibious invasion and a portent of the extensive U.S. international engagement that was to come in the wake of World War II. The pageantry of the event, which marked the 75th anniversary of D-Day, and the poignancy of the Normandy landings’ last surviving veterans, could not conceal the brutal truth: The ties that have bound the United States to its European partners in the decades since that war are badly frayed. For the first time in the postwar era, an American president has repeatedly undermined […]

Many people in the United Kingdom’s coastal fishing communities supported the “Leave” campaign during the 2016 Brexit referendum, since they consider European Union rules that allow other member states’ fishing boats to trawl British waters to be unfair. Now, British politicians committed to Brexit will have to make good on their promises to “take back control” of the U.K.’s rich fisheries. But that will prove difficult and may not even be in the best interest of British fishing communities, says Ben Drakeford, a senior lecturer at the University of Portsmouth in the U.K. who specializes in fisheries economics. In an […]

When the last of the ballots had finally been counted in the recent European Parliament elections, it became abundantly clear that one of the biggest losers was Britain’s Labour Party, and its Brexit strategy most of all. The party finished in third place, behind both Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party and the ardently pro-Remain Liberal Democrats, with a mere 14.1 percent of the total vote. If the results are anything to go by, then Labour’s attempts to appeal to both Leavers and Remainers by being as ambiguous as possible about Brexit have actually had the opposite effect and alienated both sides […]

France is stepping up its naval activities in the Asia-Pacific. Last month, the French navy conducted joint exercises with the United States, Australian and Indian navies, just weeks after a separate naval drill with India that involved two aircraft carriers. In April, the French frigate Vendemiaire made a rare passage through the strategically important Taiwan Strait. Some observers fear that these maneuvers could heighten tensions with Beijing, but so far, both France and China have worked to prevent that from happening, says Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. In an email interview […]