About: The Brief
The Brief – Climate dominoes
The EU wants to prove that its climate action credentials are genuine, which means being top of the class in taking the Paris Agreement seriously. That could all hinge on a series of meetings scheduled for next month. So no pressure then…
The Brief – Ermine-clad soft-Brexit warriors
The House of Lords, with its ermine clad members, is hard to love. Unelected, the members have an average age of 69. A retirement home for political grandees and business moguls, it makes the House of Commons seem like a beacon of multi-cultural modernity.
The Brief – Selmayr stays. What next?
Is the Selmayr affair closed? That, at least, is how the Commission reads the resolution adopted by the European Parliament today.
The Brief – Campaigning in the gutter
Propaganda is as old as language, and political campaigning is a grubby old game. As long as there have been elections, politicians and their advisors have been lying to voters.
The Brief – What will we do without the dirty Brits?
The EU's much-touted common defence and security policy was nowhere to be seen in the past week, just when the world came dangerously close to the verge of a US-Russia conflict over Syria.
The Brief – Mattarella’s Hodgepodge conjecture
Cracking one of the unsolved Millennium Prize Problems entitles talented mathematicians to a $1 million reward. Venerable Italian President Sergio Mattarella has an even more difficult equation to solve as government-forming talks seem futile.
The Brief – The wording war against ‘killer robots’
Killer robots may not speak Spanish as well as Terminator. But they could be as destructive as that famous killing machine with an Austrian accent in the not too distant future.
The Brief – ‘Thank you, Mr Zuckerberg’
Europeans are feeling smug one month before the EU's landmark data protection regulation comes into effect.
The Brief – The long Good Friday
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement – a political deal that put an end to decades of terror and tensions.
The Brief – Economics by populism
One of the reasons so many voted for Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz yesterday is the good state of the Hungarian economy.
The Brief – Spain’s judicial headaches
Spain became embroiled this week in various judicial quagmires. Cases affecting two fugitives, one of its nationals abroad and a foreigner in the Peninsula, tested the relationship between politics and justice, and Spain’s handling of the Catalan issue.