Opinion
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Preference Without Consequence: The GSP+ Enforcement Gap
Every country inside the GSP+ tier held all twenty-seven required conventions through 2023 to 2025. The joint report covering those years sets torture, curtailed expression, and impunity beside that fact,…
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The Instrument Europe Holds and Will Not Use
All twenty-seven member states of the European Union hold that Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are unlawful. That position is not contested inside the Council. Council conclusions have…
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The Gulf-Sized Gap in Europe’s Energy Dependency
Two wars that have nothing to do with each other produced the same headline this…
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A NATO-Style Pact Under Fire: What Pakistan’s Saudi Test Means for Europe’s Own Alliance Debates
A mutual defence pact signed less than a year ago is being tested in practice…
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Collective Punishment, Announced and Repeated
Governments rarely tell you what they are about to do to a civilian population. They…
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The Median Line: Ratifying a Veto Over Hormuz
After a week in which the United States struck Iran three times and Tehran declared…
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The Caracas Model: Regime Change Without Occupation, and the Method Europe Refuses to Name
The story everyone told in January was the raid. Two and a half hours, a…
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The Bridge Doctrine: When Washington Made Trade Infrastructure a Target, It Aimed at Europe’s Map
The consequential act of this week’s fighting was not the ninety targets struck along Iran’s…
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The Bomb and the Ledger: Europe’s Syrian Wager Comes Due
Two devices detonated within minutes of each other on Tuesday, one concealed in a rubbish…
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Scriptural Diplomacy: What Tehran Recited, and Who It Refused to Seat
Iran let scripture do the speaking at Khamenei’s funeral, grading each delegation by verse. The…
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Europe’s Bazooka, Holstered by Choice
Europe met Washington’s deadline and called the result stability. The more revealing decision was quieter:…
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Government by Instrument: Housing and the Fiction of Non-Competence
The European Union has crossed a line it drew for itself, and it will not…
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The World Is Closing Its Doors
From the Americas to the southern tip of Africa, the door is closing on the…
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Europe’s Carbon Border Is Becoming Its Sharpest Instrument Abroad
As the emissions trading scheme reopens its free-allowance question, the carbon border adjustment mechanism is…
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The Corridor That Could Not Coordinate
Europe, institutional design, and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor after the 2026 Iran war. Europe…
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The Child Sexual Abuse Regulation and the Limits of EU Legislation
On 29 June the Council and Parliament will sit down for the fifth and final…
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Europe’s Carbon Market Blinks First
The conclusions of the European Council meeting of 18 to 19 June carry a single…
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EU Deportation Law: The Path Europe Chose, and the One It Skipped
On 17 June the European Parliament passed the strictest deportation law in its history, to…
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Islamabad Memorandum: A Diplomatic Feat with a Deferred Peace
The Islamabad Memorandum is signed and the war declared over. Yet Washington met none of…
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The Summit That Held Together by Giving Way
The G7 left Evian this week without the torn-up communique and the departing-aircraft broadside that…
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Europe Won the Gulf by Default, Not on Merit
Brussels read this week’s decision to accelerate Strategic Partnership Agreements with the six Gulf states…
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The Law Implemented, yet the Mandate Lost
The Migration and Asylum Pact that becomes applicable across the Union on 12 June is…