Analysis & insight
Long-form perspectives on the events reshaping Europe’s strategic choices. International politics, energy security and the economics of resilience.
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2026
Before winter, measure the time needed to restore power
The renewed focus on grid sabotage should shift attention from visible protection to tested restoration capacity.
Sanctions need capacity, not just another package
The EU's July measures raise a familiar question: can implementation resources keep pace with legal ambition?
Europe's grid bargain: who pays for shared security?
A negotiating position on electricity networks is a start. Cross-border cost allocation will decide what gets built.
An energy shock is also a test of fiscal solidarity
The Middle East crisis demands immediate protection without rebuilding Europe's long-term exposure to fuel volatility.
Carbon accounting becomes trade infrastructure
The definitive CBAM regime makes reliable production data an economic asset—and a potential new barrier to entry.
2025
Belém's unfinished bargain: implementation without illusion
Climate diplomacy needs a practical division of labour between universal agreement and smaller implementation coalitions.
A simpler carbon border must remain a credible one
Exempting small importers can make climate policy more effective if enforcement follows emissions and evasion risk.
A transatlantic trade truce is not strategic certainty
The EU-US framework creates breathing space. European firms still need predictable rules and credible alternatives.
The Hague's spending pledge needs a capability audit
A larger defence commitment will improve deterrence only if budgets become usable forces and resilient infrastructure.
Tariff uncertainty is its own trade barrier
Europe should measure the cost of delayed decisions alongside the cost of the duties themselves.
The Baltic switch: sovereignty through interdependence
Synchronisation with continental Europe changes who manages risk. It does not remove the need to manage it.
2024
Climate finance after Baku: count the risk transferred
Headline finance goals conceal differences between usable grants, expensive loans and promises that never reach projects.
Draghi's investment question is a governance question
Europe needs a way to choose, finance and complete common projects—not merely a bigger investment target.
Europe's AI rules need a market that can use them
Regulatory authority is valuable. Computing capacity, procurement and contestable markets determine its reach.
Electric-vehicle tariffs buy time, not competitiveness
The EU's proposed duties on Chinese EVs need an industrial purpose that survives beyond the border.
Critical minerals: the missing middle is processing
A mine is not a supply chain. Europe's raw-materials strategy must connect extraction to customers and communities.
The Red Sea shock is a working-capital crisis too
Longer voyages tie up cash as well as ships. Europe's response needs to reach the firms with the smallest buffers.
2023
After Dubai, sequence the energy transition
COP28 changes the language of energy diplomacy. Its implementation will be decided in grids, budgets and social bargains.
Gaza and the cost of inconsistent diplomacy
Civilian protection, hostage release and de-escalation belong in one coherent European policy.
Grain corridors are institutions, not just routes
The end of the Black Sea Initiative exposes the limits of treating food security as a problem of shipping alone.
Economic security needs a stopping rule
Europe's new strategy needs a test for when intervention is justified—and when it should end.
Credit Suisse and the sovereignty of the balance sheet
Emergency liquidity can buy a weekend. It cannot settle the political risks of a banking system's structure.
A subsidy race Europe should refuse to run
The Green Deal Industrial Plan should compete for productive capacity rather than for the largest headline subsidy.
2022
The oil price cap is an enforcement problem
A ceiling on Russian oil prices is a mechanism for changing incentives, not a number that enforces itself.
After Nord Stream, resilience starts with repair
Europe needs an answer to infrastructure disruption that does not depend on immediate attribution.
The politics of saving the last cubic metre
A common gas-saving target cannot substitute for an agreement on which losses Europe is prepared to share.
After Madrid, deterrence needs a delivery schedule
NATO's new strategic language matters only if it changes the readiness, logistics and staying power of European forces.
Europe cannot buy its way out of gas dependence
Replacing Russian supply is urgent. Reducing the demand that makes coercion possible is the more durable task.
When sanctions become a test of European solidarity
Russia's invasion puts a new premium on Europe's ability to distribute the costs of collective action.