business

France is stuck in economic limbo, without a budget and soon, possibly, without a government. The prime minister, François Bayrou, has called for parliament to hold a confidence vote on 8 September and, now that parties of the left and far right have pledged to bring down the government, on paper he doesn’t have the … Read more

After an unusual August of geopolitical summitry, the reality is sinking in that Europe is on its own in defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and hence its own security against Russian aggression and cannot count on much support from the United States. The sense of strategic loneliness in an increasingly brutal global power contest follows a summer … Read more

The late Dutch author and Holocaust survivor Marga Minco once wrote about an empty house in Amsterdam where she and a group of artists and students took refuge towards the end of the second world war. Last month, the house she lived in for decades was squatted by a new generation of the dispossessed. In … Read more

During a summer in which European leaders have focused on shuttle diplomacy with Donald Trump over trade and Ukraine, they have maintained a discreet silence regarding another crisis in Europe’s east. For more than nine months, mass student-led protests in Serbia have been challenging the authoritarian rule of Aleksandar Vučić, who has been in office … Read more

You wouldn’t know it to look at the tourist board ads, but the emblem of modern Ireland is probably a shopping centre. And now that emblem has found its bard, in the form of Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson, the Irish pop star and songwriter better known as CMAT. She is a woman wielding a creative energy … Read more