For Moldova, joining the European Union is no longer simply a question of adopting thousands of pages of European legislation. It is a race to transform a state whose institutions, economy and political culture still bear the marks of decades of Soviet rule and a difficult transition while resisting pressure from a Russia determined to keep the country within its orbit.
Border controls have now become political weapons wielded against fellow EU member states. And EU policies designed to ease and lift those controls appear increasingly powerless.
“Putin Always Chickens Out”, so far, but his humiliations in Ukraine, as well as Chinese pressure, could push him to test Nato resolve like never before.
“People with an Islamic background … do not want an open, free European society,” Frederiksen told MPs, in reaction to a humanitarian crisis in Morocco.
The EU debates how to rewrite its farm policy, miners’ fields, blocked borders and undercapitalised smallholders. It reveals a looming showdown over who will actually profit from Europe’s next big enlargement.
The US has formally launched a review of its military presence in Europe, aiming to push allies to take greater responsibility for defence. While the move could accelerate Nato’s Europeanisation, it could also create a dangerous “transition gap” before the continent’s capabilities are ready.
China became a hub of industrial manufacturing because it was able to produce essentially the same goods as Western countries, but much more cheaply. Something similar is now happening in artificial intelligence.
From higher defence budgets to tighter control over social media, liberals are quietly backing a more muscular state they once resisted, arguing it is the price of keeping European freedoms alive.
The company SpaceX entered the stock market at an unprecedented price, with its plan to move AI into space and transform internet communication. What were its beginnings, and what does its success mean for the planet today?
Behind the outrage over one minister’s words lies a deeper, unspoken reality laid bare by diplomats and experts: Belgrade never really buried the Milošević-era narrative about Kosovo, it just learned to speak it more quietly in Brussels.
As warnings of possible provocations from Moscow pile up, a system of ditches, trenches and bunkers is beginning to take shape along the 950-km border that the Baltic states share with Russia.
With almost the entire government on the chopping block, Ukrainians could soon feel the impact in everything from frontline energy security to schooling in minority regions and already‑strained relations with Poland and Hungary.
Even the relevant EU commissioner, Dubravka Šuica, acknowledged the central obstacle: “To be open, the key problem is access to Gaza,” she said.
With the European Parliament’s resistance weakening and the powerful European People’s Party group shifting in favour of tougher controls, this surprise win for message-scanning could clear the way for an even more far‑reaching “Chat Control 2.0” that targets encrypted apps next.
Ahead of the key meeting of EU foreign ministers on Monday (13 July), the European Commission has circulated an options paper exploring ways to restrict trade between the EU and Israeli illegal settlements in the West Bank. Here, EUobserver explains them.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s pivot back toward Nato has brought drones, missiles and Black Sea leverage to the West. For this price, Europe is quietly tolerating rigged party leaderships and pre‑summit mass arrests at home.
The far-right are increasingly taking the lead in EU migration policies as the mainstream centrist parties continue to be lured by their ideas.
As hospitals overheat, schools close and thousands of elderly people die, France’s Greens and far right are tearing into each other over whether mass air‑conditioning is a lifeline or a dangerous illusion.
Officials say that, to appease the US, ‘burden-shifting’ rather than simply ‘burden-sharing’ will be one of the main themes in Ankara as the EU and others face pressure to ramp up their own production of defence and security equipment.
As Zelensky publicly rebuked the role of European companies like a Russian-owned alumina refinery on Irish soil, Dublin assumes the EU Council presidency under pressure to stop exports to Russia of a key component for its defence sector.