What is your assessment following the latest informal European Council, Orbán’s defeat and the change of government in Bulgaria? Have the political balances shifted? They have changed, but only to some extent. We need to see what political priorities Magyar, the new Hungarian Prime Minister, will pursue. In any case, I would like to point out that, until two years ago, he was a member of the same party as Orbán. Some deadlocks have been broken, such as the €90 billion loan to Ukraine, as Orbán’s veto has been lifted. However, there are other issues where we need to understand what the new government’s stance will be. Incidentally, Orbán did not attend the last European Council, whilst Magyarhad had not yet been officially appointed: so Hungary was not represented, whereas for Bulgaria, the outgoing government was still in place, pending the formation of the new government. ...

Philippe Ward Ten years after the 2016 referendum and more than five years after leaving the single market, the United Kingdom resembles neither the Global Britain promised by Brexit enthusiasts nor the wasteland predicted by its most radical opponents. In April 2026, the country finds itself in a phase of uneasy normalization: a pragmatic yet difficult realignment with the European bloc, against a backdrop of economic slowdown and political fragmentation. ...

Ioan-Victor Popa November 2025: Romania’s presidential and legislative elections sent a shockwave through Europe. The far right’s strong showing in the parliamentary vote, combined with the first-round success of a little-known candidate with fringe views in the presidential race - a result ultimately annulled by Romania’s Constitutional Court - marked a sharp and sudden break with a political landscape long defined by stability. The status quo built on the alliance between the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the National Liberal Party (PNL) absorbed an unexpected blow, made all the more striking by the fact that the Social Democratic candidate, Marcel Ciolacu, failed to make it to the second round - an unprecedented outcome in the party’s history. Parliament emerged considerably fragmented, forcing the former PSD–PNL alliance to seek new coalition partners. ...

Giuseppe Sacco With unusual boldness, the Financial Times published a front-page article based not on verified information—as is the tradition of the London daily—but on rumors, leaks, and indiscretions coming from Brussels and Oslo, though certainly read with great interest in Berlin. According to EU sources, or at least those close to them, the leadership of the European Union is seriously considering the possibility of further backtracking—after other decisions, such as postponing the date after which it will no longer be possible to market cars with internal combustion engines—on one of the main pillars that has shaped the current worldview over the past fifty years: environmental awareness. Within the framework of a true turning point, they are reportedly assessing the convenience and opportunity of abandoning their opposition to oil exploitation in the Arctic region. ...

The defeat of Viktor Orbán carries an очевидent geopolitical dimension. For sixteen years, he had established in Hungary a model for the far right in Europe and the United States. Donald Trump himself had drawn inspiration from it. This model, described as an “illiberal democracy,” was gradually evolving toward a form of authoritarian regime. Its fall therefore also constitutes a new symbolic defeat for Trump. Orbán’s regime had become deeply unpopular. This unpopularity is particularly strong among those under 30: 65% of them voted for the opposition Tiza party, and only 15% for Orbán. There is a strong generational divide: young people suffer from structural unemployment, and emigration in search of work is high. Other converging factors explain Orbán’s predictable defeat. As early as the 2010s, he clearly displayed his ambition to transform Hungary. As Steve Bannon, ideologue of the MAGA movement, pointed out, he was “a Trump before Trump.” The first step in this transformation was control of the media: today, nearly 85% of Hungarian media are under government influence. After public media, the few remaining independent private outlets were gradually targeted. Young people were able to access alternative information through the internet. The judiciary has lost all independence. It is the primary target of far-right governments, along with the press. ...

In mid-March, Romania, together with Austria, Croatia, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, signed a letter addressed to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and to the President of the Council, António Costa, calling for an urgent revision of the deadlines set by the energy transition plan. This issue, seemingly highly technical, brings together a group of states with specific interests: some display a clear hostility toward European institutions in their current form (the most extreme case being that of Viktor Orbán, who has based his electoral campaign on AI-generated videos portraying the EU and Ukraine as public enemies); others have direct economic interests, linked to the nature of their energy consumption or to infrastructure projects, which are largely incompatible with the timelines adopted at the European level. ...

European governments—and the media that follow their lead—continue to react to Donald Trump’s “National Security Strategy” as if the current president had invented Washington’s hostility toward any genuine European unity, whereas he has merely made it provocatively explicit, in well-tested alignment with Moscow. In doing so, the President of the United States provides Europeans with a valuable opportunity to define and focus the urgent correction of the structure and direction of the European Union, toward its independence —not merely “autonomy”— in strategic terms, restoring to its peoples the only sovereignty possible. A further paradox is that Giorgia Meloni —the supposed sovereigntist and former fascist who, as Prime Minister of the Italian Republic, allows herself to be kissed on the head by Joe Biden, only then to become the factotum (certainly not a courtier) of Donald Trump— reminds our homegrown pseudo-Europeanists that there exists another Europe beyond the current EU: that of Ventotene. It will not happen now, but that must be the perspective. ...

Today the whole world is discovering Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish socialist leader who heads a left-wing coalition government. His “no to war” in Iran resonates as a powerful warning signal in the face of the deadly danger threatening the system of collective security established in 1945. The United Nations—whose true meaning was an “organization of nations united against fascism”—was meant to prevent any new war. This “no” is also a resounding rejection of Trumpism. Pedro Sánchez is the only European head of government to oppose head-on the war sought by Donald Trump, by refusing to allow the United States Air Force to use American bases located in Andalusia. By contrast, France and United Kingdom have granted the U.S. military access to their bases as American aircraft methodically bomb Iran, in disregard of international law. This refusal is all the more striking given that Trump’s war initiative appears wholly reckless: a war against a country with a millennia-old history could lead the world toward general chaos. ...