Politico EU

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron’s shock announcement last week of France’s plans to recognize a Palestinian state seemed like a failed gambit at first.

The United States and Israel torched the move. Reaction domestically split across party lines as expected.

But fast-forward a week and it’s clear Macron was ahead of the curve. The United Kingdom and Canada have both followed France’s lead, albeit with caveats, and Germany appears to be inching closer to rein in its historically staunch support for Israel unless it does more to end the humanitarian catastrophe playing out in Gaza.

The shift in favor of recognition may be of little solace to those on the brink of famine in Gaza, but it’s clear that Macron was at the forefront of Western Europe’s push in favor of this historical demand of the Palestinian people.

“This is definitively a French moment,” said Hamza Hraoui, the director of the Paris-based global public affairs firm MGH Partners. “It’s a point scored for French d..

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Wer regiert die Welt – und was treibt sie an?
In unserem Sommer-Spezial geht es um die mächtigsten und umstrittensten Politikerinnen und Politiker unserer Zeit. Wir zeigen, wie sie denken, entscheiden – und was das für uns bedeutet. Ein Politiker pro Tag, ein Blick hinter die Kulissen der Macht.
In der Machthaber-Serie:

04.08.2025 – Wladimir Putin
05.08.2025 – Marine Le Pen
06.08.2025 – Javier Milei
07.08.2025 – Xi Jinping
08.08.2025 – Giorgia Meloni
11.08.2025 – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
12.08.2025 – Benjamin Netanjahu
13.08.2025 – Narendra Modi
14.08.2025 – Friedrich Merz
15.08.2025 – Mohammed bin Salman
16.08.2025 – Ursula von der Leyen
Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig.

Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis:
Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Je..

Listen on

Spotify

Apple Music

Amazon Music

Wer regiert die Welt – und was treibt sie an? In unserem Sommer-Spezial geht es um die mächtigsten und umstrittensten Politikerinnen und Politiker unserer Zeit. Wir zeigen, wie sie denken, entscheiden – und was das für uns bedeutet. Ein Politiker pro Tag, ein Blick hinter die Kulissen der Macht.

In der Machthaber-Serie:

04.08.2025 – Wladimir Putin
05.08.2025 – Marine Le Pen
06.08.2025 – Javier Milei
07.08.2025 – Xi Jinping
08.08.2025 – Giorgia Meloni
11.08.2025 – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
12.08.2025 – Benjamin Netanjahu
13.08.2025 – Narendra Modi
14.08.2025 – Friedrich Merz
15.08.2025 – Mohammed bin Salman
16.08.2025 – Ursula von der Leyen

Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig.

Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis:
Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. ..

LONDON — JD Vance is on a summer break in Britain. He’s not always been such a fan.

Donald Trump’s second-in-command hasn’t exactly been shy in expressing what he really thinks about the U.K. over the years, branding it an “Islamist” hellhole bent on ending free speech. But apart from that!

As he holidays in the idyllic Cotswolds (dubbed the “Hamptons of England“) — including a stay at U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s taxpayer-funded country pile — Vance will see if his pontificating from afar matches reality.

POLITICO runs through five occasions where Vance did not hold back in his assault on old Blighty.

1) Britain is an “Islamist country”

Vance made this outburst before Trump selected him as his VP pick. Last July, the then-Ohio senator called the U.K. an “Islamist country” after Labour ousted the Conservatives from Downing Street.

Speaking at the National Conservatism Conferencein Washington, D.C., Vance recounted a conversation with a friend about the dangers of nuclea..

Elbridge Colby spent the last several years in Washington making a name for himself as an experienced, restraint-minded foreign policy leader eager to focus the U.S. military away from Europe and toward the Indo-Pacific.

But since joining the second Trump administration as the Pentagon’s top policy chief, Colby has made a series of rapid-fire moves that have blindsided parts of the White House and frustrated several of America’s foreign allies, according to seven people familiar with the situation. All were granted anonymity to speak freely about Trump administration dynamics.

Flanked by a team of handpicked policy experts and staff from Capitol Hill, Colby has gotten out ahead of the administration on several major foreign policy decisions.

He prompted last week’s decision, first reported by POLITICO, to halt shipments of some air defense missiles to Ukraine, which caught many Trump allies and lawmakers off guard. This week, President Donald Trump said he would reverse the decision..

President Donald Trump is ready to sign a punishing Russia sanctions bill that GOP hawks have pushed for months. But only if it changes to give him more control.

A senior administration official granted anonymity to discuss the president’s view said that “conceptually there’s an openness” to the bill from Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), but the person suggested that the legislation needs to preserve what the White House sees as the president’s sole authority to oversee U.S. foreign policy.

The current draft of the bill allows the president to waive a 500 percent tariff on countries that buy Russian oil and uranium for up to 180 days, and Graham said Tuesday he has agreed to revise the bill to allow for a second waiver, subject to congressional oversight.

The administration’s desired changes would solidify the president’s waiver authority, ensuring that Congress has no power to question Trump should he decide to end the sanctions.

“The current version would subject the president’s for..

As the Trump administration identified pro-Palestinian academics to target for deportation, it relied heavily on an anonymously-run pro-Israel website that has been criticized for doxxing, according to newly unsealed court documents and testimony at an ongoing trial.

To support President Donald Trump’s deportation drive, the Department of Homeland Security assembled a “tiger team” of intelligence analysts who built dossiers on about 100 foreign students and scholars engaged in pro-Palestinian activity, the records show.

More than 75 of those people were identified by the shadowy website Canary Mission, according to deposition testimony unveiled this week in a case challenging the Trump administration’s targeting of pro-Palestinian scholars.

The federal judge currently overseeing a trial in the case unsealed the deposition transcripts, which contain hundreds of pages of sworn testimony by administration officials about the campus deportation effort. Some of the details in the transcr..

The European Union and Israel have reached a deal to expand humanitarian aid entering Gaza, the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas announced Thursday.

“This deal means more crossings open, aid and food trucks entering Gaza, repair of vital infrastructure and protection of aid workers. We count on Israel to implement every measure agreed,” Kallas said.

The measures will be implemented in the coming days, making sure that aid is delivered directly to the local population and that there is no aid diverted to militant group Hamas, Commission spokesperson Anouar El Anouni said at a media briefing.

The measures Israel and the EU agreed upon include an increase of daily trucks for food, fuel and other items entering Gaza, the opening of several other crossing points in both the northern and southern areas, the reopening of the Jordanian and Egyptian aid routes, as well as the distribution of food supplies through bakeries and public kitchens throughout the Gaza Strip.

Israel blocked all food d..

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney on Monday announced an ambitious defense spending target that would end Canada’s status as a NATO laggard and mollify frustrated Americans.

Carney committed to meeting the alliance’s current spending target of 2 percent in 2025, half a decade ahead of Ottawa’s previous commitment.

Carney’s announcement comes less than a week before he hosts President Donald Trump at the G7 summit in Alberta. The accelerated spending also follows amplified calls from the U.S. president and his Canadian ambassador, Pete Hoekstra, for Ottawa to honor its unfulfilled 11-year-old commitment to the target.

Carney framed the new spending as a necessary response to a more dangerous world that has left Canada more vulnerable to threats in the Arctic — and less protected by Americans.

“A new imperialism threatens. Middle powers must compete for interests and attention, knowing that if they’re not at the table, they’re on the menu,” Carney said, repeating a go-to line from ..

Five days after his election victory in February, Friedrich Merz’s world collapses. That’s how he will describe it later.

That Friday evening, he steps off the stage at a large conference center in Hamburg’s port, where cruise ships usually moor. He has just been hailed as “the future federal chancellor,” and more than a thousand party supporters have cheered on their chairman at a rally of the local chapter of the Christian Democratic Union, Germany’s main center-right party. At around 8:15 p.m., he shakes a few hands in farewell, then drops into the backseat of his official car for the three-hour drive home. It is February 28, 2025.

Merz checks his phone and notices a message from his spokesperson. He should watch a video, preferably immediately. Merz pulls out his iPad, opens the link, and recognizes a room familiar to anyone who follows politics. Two armchairs upholstered in gold damask sit in front of a fireplace with no fire burning. In front of the fireplace is a table made of..