In recent months, the transatlantic relationship has reached a constructive equilibrium. Both the EU and the US have taken concrete steps to bolster the multilateral order and combat illiberal forces at home. But progressives on both sides of the Atlantic should be realistic about the daunting challenges that lay ahead, and European policymakers should plan […]
Donald Trump
On 8 November 2022, two years after Joe Biden was elected president of the United States, Americans cast their ballots in a highly consequential midterm election. Although the final results may take days or weeks to be known, the vaunted ‘red wave’ that most politicians, pundits and prognosticators had confidently predicted ended up being merely […]
When, back in 2021, as the Foreign Minister of Spain, I approached NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg about Spain hosting the 2022 Summit, I could not anticipate the very specific circumstances that the alliance faces today. I could not have imagined how decisive the Madrid summit would be for peace and stability in Europe.
Europe’s quest for greater autonomy in the area of defence and security has two closely interlinked but nevertheless distinct dimensions: one is the autonomous capacity to launch and sustain military operations, the other is defence-related technological and industrial sovereignty. Through the second half of the 20th century, the existential threat posed by the Soviet Union […]
European policymakers had restrained expectations about their relations with the United States under Joe Biden’s presidency, but they have nevertheless been disappointed. The end of Donald Trump’s years in the White House, and the belief that Biden was a committed Atlanticist and multilateralist, led many Europeans to hope that the US would pull back from […]
The issue of foreign policy was virtually absent from the German election campaign. Once again, one might say. In the 2017 election campaign and in the light of the refugee crisis, domestic politics already played a much bigger role in politics and the media. Topics such as security policy or Europe only appeared in the […]

