One of the biggest elections in this “ultimate election year” is the one scheduled for June, when more than 400 million people in 27 countries will be eligible to vote for a new European Parliament. The elections will have considerable impact not only for the people who live in Europe but also for the rest of the world.
After almost two years of stalemate and political wrangling, Northern Ireland’s power-sharing governance system is back up and running. But the latest boycott that paralyzed the government was just the latest in a long line of disputes that has seen Northern Ireland’s dysfunctional legislative body shuttered for long periods.
As the U.K.’s Conservative Party hurtles toward an extinction-level event in elections later this year, some observers have pointed to Canada’s elections in 1993 as a fitting precedent for the total collapse of a once-dominant conservative party. Yet for all the similarities, the differences between the two cases are also revealing.
Spain is often lauded for being a great place to raise children. But UNICEF’s latest report card on child poverty among the world’s most affluent countries, released in December, shows a much less rosy picture. Spain sat near the bottom of the list, with more than 1 in 4 children living in poverty and little progress in the past decade.
French President Emmanuel Macron wants to establish France and Europe as the world’s “third pole of stability” by building bridges with Global South countries. But his credibility is undermined by his consistently demonstrated inability to attend to France’s own Global South—its overseas departments, regions and collectivities.
The European Union is making efforts to step up in security, proposing a joint defense spending program and setting targets for increased joint weapons purchasing and procurement. But can the EU actually become a security provider, rather than a security consumer dependent on the U.S.? There are good reasons to remain skeptical.
As Europeans come to terms with the long-term consequences of Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine and growing isolationist sentiment in the U.S., the potential of a more militarily self-reliant EU has begun to affect internal policies and debates in Brussels that will influence European politics over the coming decades.
In recent weeks and months, farmers across Europe have taken to the streets to protest against rising production costs and falling wholesale prices. Disruptive farmer protests in Europe are nothing new, but these demonstrations are unprecedented in both scale and nature, provoked by a perfect storm of seismic global events.