business

The rupture in the transatlantic relationship has left European leaders struggling to know how to think, let alone act, with any autonomy. Europe most urgently needs a mind of its own on the Middle East. Tragically, EU governments were just beginning to turn the page after a year and a half of complicity with the … Read more

When a group of Russian and Iranian foreign policy officials arranged to meet in Moscow for a conference titled “Russian-Iranian cooperation in a changing world”, they probably did not anticipate just how timely that phrase would turn out to be. Seated around a table on Wednesday at the President hotel near the Kremlin, officials from … Read more

After coordinated protests across Europe last weekend, it’s easy for the ethically conscious tourist to feel uncertain. Across southern Europe – and particularly in Spain, Italy and Portugal – there are headlines blaming visitors for everything from overcrowding to housing shortages. In gentrifying neighbourhoods, slogans such as “Tourists go home” have appeared on walls and … Read more

Call it the five-for-five summit. When Nato leaders meet in The Hague next week, European allies will sign up to a phoney transatlantic bargain in which they pretend they will spend 5% of their economic output on defence and Donald Trump pretends in return that he is committed to Article 5 of the Nato treaty, … Read more

A British woman whose family cannot return to the UK because of Brexit visa rules has said she feels “forgotten and rejected” by the country of her birth. Sarah Douglas moved to Italy to teach English in 2007 before marrying Matteo Ricci, an Italian software developer, in 2010. The couple had always planned to settle … Read more

Discussing the dilemma facing western diplomats in confronting Iran’s nuclear programme, Henry Kissinger wrote in 2006: “Diplomacy never operates in a vacuum. It persuades not by the eloquence of its practitioners but by assembling a balance of incentives and risks.” Rarely has the balance of incentives and risks been placed so starkly in front of … Read more

What would you do if the world was to end tomorrow? The premise itself may be both timeless and timely at this moment when authoritarianism is on the rise globally. But that’s not really what causes the nail-biting excitement at the doorstep of Volksbühne theatre in Berlin. On a chilly June evening, a predominantly female … Read more

Labour is cutting the farming budget in England by £100m a year, spending review figures show. Despite the decrease, the budget has been cautiously welcomed by nature and farming groups, as there were fears the Treasury had wanted to reduce the funding further. Farmers have felt squeezed by the Labour government’s policies over recent months, … Read more