EU’s courtship of Indo-Pacific gets cold shoulder from big powers
BRUSSELS — Europe planned to get dozens of Indo-Pacific foreign ministers to Brussels for talks on Friday, with the EU eager to prove its relevance in a region increasingly under pressure from an...
View ArticleRussia no longer perceived as top threat by Germans
Russia is showing no signs it plans to wind down its unprovoked assault on Ukraine two years after launching a full-scale invasion — but Germans now view issues like migration and the threat from...
View ArticleEU proposes sanctions on Chinese firms for helping Russia
The European Union is for the first time planning to sanction companies in mainland China, and in other countries including Turkey, India and Serbia, for helping Russia circumvent sanctions and buy...
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Von der Leyen’s human rights hypocrisy
Philippe Dam is EU advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen landed in Tunis in July, she knew the country’s security forces had just...
View ArticleRussia’s nuclear space weapon a risk for all, says German Space Command chief
MUNICH — The worst-case scenario of a nuclear weapon detonation in orbit by Russia would be catastrophic, the commander of Germany’s military Space Command, Major General Michael Traut, said late...
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Don’t just blame the US; India is blocking WTO reform too
GENEVA — It took two U.S. presidents to bring the World Trade Organization to its knees. India could deliver the knockout blow. As the global trade body counts down to its 13th ministerial meeting in...
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Rishi Sunak’s playing hardball on UK-India trade — even if it costs him a win
LONDON — It would have burnished Rishi Sunak’s credentials as a global statesman in a crucial election year. If the U.K. prime minister had flown to Delhi last month, he’d have received a hero’s...
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WTO boss too busy — for now — to think about 2nd term
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala says she has too much on her hands to consider a possible second term in charge of the World Trade Organization — for now, at least. “I still have so much to deliver in the short...
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5 ways the EU could help end the war in Ukraine
The European Union may be polishing off a new package of sanctions on Russia, but it’s not hitting the Kremlin where it really hurts. Instead of cracking down on Moscow’s multibillion dollar oil and...
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Putin banked €1B last year from EU fuel buys despite ban
BRUSSELS — The EU last year added €1 billion to Vladimir Putin’s war chest through fuel purchases despite sweeping bans on Russian oil, a new study shared with POLITICO found. In 2023, the EU bought...
View ArticleFrance plants flag in Russia’s backyard with Armenia arms deals
YEREVAN, Armenia — France wants Armenia to know it has its back — amid increased tensions with its neighbor Azerbaijan and strained ties with its historic ally, Russia. On Friday, French Armed Forces...
View ArticleThe West tried to crush Russia’s economy. Why hasn’t it worked?
Oil income: slashed. Oligarchs’ assets: frozen. Access to weapons: choked. Russia has faced a historic slew of penalties from Washington, Brussels and beyond since it launched its full-scale invasion...
View ArticleWTO in ‘damage control’ mode as Abu Dhabi agenda unravels
The future of world trade is about to face a turning point: whether nationalist policies displace an eight-decade shift toward rules-based global commerce. This week’s biennial World Trade...
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Europe, in denial, longs for rules-based global trade order
ABU DHABI — Call them phantom pains: The European Union is the economic power that longs most for a return to the rules-based order that the World Trade Organization once embodied. As the global trade...
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EU’s pretending to be an honest trade cop
Anchal Vohra is a Brussels-based international affairs commentator. She lived in Beirut until recently. As farmers from France, Italy and Belgium spent the last month blocking key streets around the...
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European farmers say they’re being screwed by Big Food. Is a price floor the...
PARIS — Alexandre Vialettes and his 300 sheep feel ignored. Half of the milk he produces near the village of Saint-Jean-et-Saint-Paul, in the south of France, is collected and processed by dairy giant...
View ArticleRishi Sunak’s mother-in-law appointed to Indian parliament
Rishi Sunak’s mother-in-law has been appointed to the Indian parliament’s upper chamber after a career in philanthropy. Sudha Murthy, 73, was chair of the Infosys Foundation, `the nonprofit arm of the...
View ArticleFrance overtakes Russia as world’s No. 2 arms exporter
The big winners of the global weapons race are the U.S. and France while Russia saw a steep fall, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s latest analysis of arms transfers....
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Rishi Sunak’s Brexit trade agenda is faltering. Are the Gulf states his last...
LONDON — On the Red Sea coast at the northwest tip of Saudi Arabia, plans for an outlandish £400 billion ‘mega-city’ featuring an artificial moon and flying taxis are starting to take shape. While far...
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Can anyone control AI?
Can anyonecontrol AI? Inside the shadowy global battle to tame the world’s most dangerous technology. By Mark Scott, Gian Volpicelli, Mohar Chatterjee, Vincent Manancourt, Clothilde Goujard and...
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How China ended up financing the Houthis’ Red Sea attacks
China is unwittingly helping Iran choke off ship traffic in the Red Sea, impairing global trade flows and damaging Beijing’s own interests in the process, Western intelligence officials say. China’s...
View ArticleUS talks with Russia to discourage space anti-satellite nuclear weapons ongoing
The Biden administration is in talks with Russia and allied nations to try and prevent Moscow from positioning an anti-satellite nuclear weapon in space, a senior Pentagon space official said Friday....
View ArticleAI chatbots spread falsehoods about the EU election, report finds
BRUSSELS — Chatbots produced by Google, Microsoft and OpenAI shared some false information about the European election, two months before hundreds of millions head to cast their ballots, according to...
View ArticleDeepfakes, distrust and disinformation: Welcome to the AI election
This article is part of a series, Bots and Ballots: How artificial intelligence is reshaping elections worldwide. From his Boston apartment, Callum Hood has the power to undermine any election with a...
View ArticleTime for a European single market ‘with teeth’ to take on China, India,...
BRUSSELS ― It’s older than the euro and as integral to the EU as being able to cross borders without a passport ― but the single market is failing to deliver while ever-stronger world economies gain...
View ArticleTime to ban TikTok in the EU
Dimitar Lilkov is a senior research officer at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies in Brussels. In mid-2020, a lethal clash occurred between Indian and Chinese troops in the border region...
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A new inconvenient truth: Europe’s global plans all require money no one has
BRUSSELS — EU leaders are on a grandiloquent streak, even by their standards. The EU can stay relevant in a world of resurgent big power politics. Europe won’t drown in the sea of public cash the U.S....
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The EU needs to get its trade mojo back, say Sweden and Finland
The European Union should be using trade policy to reassert its status as an economic heavyweight — not to save the planet. That’s what two of the bloc’s most ardent free traders — Sweden and Finland...
View ArticleIndustry bosses to EU: Help us level up in the global green tech race
HANNOVER, Germany — Europe’s industry is ready to take on state-subsidized Chinese and American rivals in the global green tech race — but Brussels must create the right conditions for it to do so....
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How a second Trump presidency could tear Europe apart
How a second Trump presidency could tear Europe apart The former president’s return would cement a shift in the U.S. as a fact that can no longer be ignored. By BARBARA MOENS, JACOPO BARIGAZZI, KARL...
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India looks beyond Russia for defense imports
Anchal Vohra is a Brussels-based international affairs commentator. She lived in Beirut until recently. The war in Ukraine has exposed the fabled prowess of Russian weaponry as a myth and scared off...
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