Europe

Berlin awoke this morning in a state of shock. Although opinion polls had predicted that the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) would do well in yesterday’s eastern state elections in Thuringia and Saxony, the cold reality that the anti-immigration, anti-Islamist party has topped the polls in Thuringia and come a close second in Saxony, takes some getting used to, even for cynical Berliners. Mainstream centre and leftist parties in Germany have vowed to form a ‘brandmauer’ (firewall) against the AfD The German capital is a left-wing island surrounded by the sea of states of former East Germany, which are rapidly moving to the far right. The AfD scored more than 30

The Paralympics begin in Paris tomorrow but the feel-good factor generated in France by the Olympic Games at the start of the month has long since evaporated. Anne Hidalgo, the Socialist mayor of Paris, was perhaps a little premature in declaring on August 7 that the success of the Games had ‘crushed the far-right’s message’. That message, according to Hidalgo, is one of negativity and division, challenging the prevailing progressive view of France as a country of happy multiculturalism. By far-right she meant the ten million plus people who had voted for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in July’s parliamentary elections. ‘Something incredibly positive is happening, and even good news,

Believing that membership of the European Union was undeniably beneficial for the UK economy, many Remainers struggled to understand why the majority had voted against it. One hypothesis was that ‘Leavers’ felt they’d missed out on the benefits – that perhaps people who thought the wealth hadn’t been spread around fairly had voted for Brexit in order to teach the greedy elite a lesson. Here in Spain, it’s tourism that, to the authorities’ surprise, has suddenly proved unpopular. It’s easy to see why they considered tourism to be undeniably beneficial. After all, it accounts for about 13 per cent of GNP and a quarter of the new jobs created in

It’s the rentrée politique this week in France, the start of the political year, a bit earlier than normal. It promises to be a macedoine of absurdist farce and media frenzy. On Friday President Emmanuel Macron, the principal personality in this drama, will begin to see the leaders of some (but not all) of the 14 or 15 political factions that form the dysfunctional National Assembly. A negligent wager with no upside and unlimited downside – and this from the so-called Mozart of finance His mission is to appoint a prime minister who can cobble together some semblance of a credible, durable government in the EU’s second-largest economy. An economy that already does

The sea lanes of Europe were busy last weekend. On Sunday, more than 700 migrants crossed the Channel from France to England, taking the total number this year to 18,342 – a 13 per cent increase on 2023. On the same day, 421 migrants in twelve boats disembarked on the Italian island of Lampedusa, and more have arrived since, swelling the numbers to over 500. The diversity of the nationalities of arrivals in Lampedusa is a fascinating and alarming snapshot of the crisis confronting Europe. The people stepping ashore hailed from Egypt, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ghana, Gambia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Liberia and Syria.  There are now too many gangs operating in Asia, the Middle East

Last week saw dramatic events in Catalonia as Carles Puigdemont, wanted for almost seven years by Spanish justice for spearheading the region’s illegal declaration of independence in 2017, reappeared in the centre of Barcelona and delivered a rousing speech to some 3,500 of his adoring supporters. Then, just as suddenly, he disappeared – to the massive embarrassment of the several hundred policemen who were standing close by waiting to arrest him (though two of them, it seems, may have connived in the escape).    Puigdemont says that he’s now back in Waterloo, south of Brussels, where he’s made his home since 2017: the Belgian authorities refuse to extradite him to Spain. In

As the Olympics draw to a close tonight, two things have delighted the French. The first is that the Games turned out to be fairly successful, overlooking the weird opening ceremony. The other is the general amusement here that Britain managed to beat France at its own national summer sport: rioting. If Froggie-bashing has for years been a favourite pastime of the British, the scenes on the streets of Britain have given the French a chance to retaliate with relish. News channels gleefully interrupted their coverage of French Olympic triumphs for live feeds of the clashes on British streets. Pundits were ripped from enjoying the beach volleyball to launch a flotilla of op-eds and

Hungary is no stranger to spats with its European neighbours. Under prime minister Viktor Orbán’s leadership, it has exercised veto rights to block Ukrainian military aid and Russian sanctions, delayed the Nato accessions of Sweden and Finland and shrugged off EU asylum regulations. For Budapest, the disputes have proven to be effective leverage in unfreezing funds — once €30million (£25 million), now some €22million (£19 million) — held by the Commission over rule of law violations and corruption concerns. For the EU, Hungary is a diplomatic headache – and one that may be about to get worse. When Hungary assumed the bloc’s rotating presidency last month, Orbán flew to Moscow

The riots that have erupted across England in the last week have been splashed across Europe’s newspapers and broadcast on the primetime news. There have been editorials in France’s Le Monde, video reports in Spain’s El Pais and podcasts in Sweden’s Aftonbladet. The Italian newspaper, La Stampa, published video footage of disturbances in Plymouth on Monday night, and described the rioters as a mix of ‘extremists and hooligans’. Why did the anti-immigration riots not explode first in France or Germany? Some of the coverage has been superficial. The editorial in Le Monde read: ‘The current riots raise the painful question of the underestimated influence of the far-right in the UK, in a country that likes to recall its traditions

On 16 May, 1944, as the first full trainloads of Hungarian Jews trundled towards Auschwitz, the SS decided to clear out the area known as the ‘Gypsy family camp’ to make room for the new arrivals. The family camp housed several thousand Roma and Sinti (Roma with German roots) people. Like the Jews, they were classified as racially inferior and enemies of the Third Reich. But while Jewish arrivals were immediately removed from their loved ones, Roma families were often allowed to stay together. Their numbers were much smaller and they refused to be separated. Claimant 3102250 finally received the standard compensation for her ordeal That day, the Roma and

In the last years of Louis XVI’s reign, French finances were in a parlous state. State debt had ballooned, its servicing became exorbitant, and France’s creditworthiness sunk. The need to raise taxes after years of profligacy forced the monarch to summon the Estates General – the first time since 1614 – to obtain their approval. A series of scandals linked to the monarchy fuelled popular anger. All ushered in the July 1789 Revolution.  Against a background of French debt at 112 per cent of GDP, a budget deficit of 5.5 per cent and the EU taking out special measures against France for persistently ignoring the EU stability pact, this week

Writing of the state of France in the twilight of the fateful Second Empire, the left-wing journalist Henri Rochefort observed: ‘France contains 36 million subjects, not including the subjects of discontent.’ Has anything changed since 1868? From the European to the legislative elections, France is a profoundly divided nation. At present and probably until mid-August, she has a caretaker government because the National Assembly is irremediably split into three camps. One might have thought that the Paris Olympic Games could have united the country. Instead, it has deepened division. France was desperate to be enthralled, and above all, distracted by the Games France was desperate to be enthralled, and above all,

The good news for France is that their athletes have been winning some medals in the Paris Olympics. The bad news, well, that just keeps coming for the organisers and for Emmanuel Macron, who had wanted to use the Games to showcase his country. The latest debacle is the postponement of the men’s triathlon event this morning because the water in the River Seine is too filthy. Organisers can hardly say they weren’t warned. Things clearly aren’t quite working out as Macron hoped. First there was the attack on the country’s rail network last Friday; the president had hoped the day would be all about the splendour of the Opening