Western Europe Archive

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR contributor Rachel Cheung and Assistant Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curate the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. Subscribers can adjust their newsletter settings to receive China Note by email every week. The Chinese government has long denied any human rights abuses in Xinjiang province, even as an increasing number of reports shed light on its brutal repression of mostly Muslim Uyghurs there. But in the face of mounting international pressure and now sanctions, Beijing is going on the offensive to silence critics of all stripes. Shortly after the United States, United Kingdom, European Union […]

There were grim anniversaries last week, a year since the first coronavirus lockdown in the United Kingdom. This time last year, I had developed a strange, breathless cough that didn’t go away for eight weeks. But I was one of the lucky ones. More than 127,000 people in the U.K. didn’t make it. The U.K. may have been overtaken more recently by other European countries, like the Czech Republic and Hungary, for the unhappy distinction of having the highest COVID-19 death rate per capita in the world, but it’s still close to the top spot, as is the United States. […]

In mid-March, the British government released its Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, titled, “Global Britain in a Competitive Age.” This was followed a week later by a more focused defense review. The two documents represent the end products of an exercise conducted by the government every five years, a combination of stocktaking, horizon-scanning and threat assessment, with some new policy announcements thrown in. This one began in 2020, but its completion was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The headlines surrounding the latest review have focused on the announcements that the U.K. would increase the size […]

Dutch voters went to the polls last week and the results were, well, a bit muddled. Anyone claiming to have detected a dramatic and unequivocal message from the Netherlands is guilty of, at the very least, exaggerating the significance of an outcome that really was a mixed bag. Headlines like the one in The Washington Post—where, full disclosure, I’m a contributing columnist—declaring that the Dutch elections add to evidence of “the far right’s global retreat” betray wishful thinking. There’s a good chance that the far right is in an initial phase of a global retreat, but that was not in […]

The arrest of the Spanish rapper known as Pablo Hasel in February sparked violent protests in his native Catalonia, but also across Spain. Judging from international news coverage, Spain’s young people had erupted in anger over a lack of free speech in the country, 46 years after its post-dictatorship transition to democracy. A closer look, however, reveals a more complex story about how the Catalan independence movement drove these protests, as well as a more nuanced debate about European versus American concepts of free speech, even as Spain forges ahead with an already-promised reform to its free speech law. The […]

If anyone was still holding out any hopes that the change of administrations in Washington would cool down tensions with China, last week’s first meeting between the Biden administration’s two top foreign policy officials and their Chinese counterparts should put them to rest. In a no-holds-barred exchange of remarks in front of reporters before the private discussions began, both sides lambasted each other with a litany of grievances, perceived slights and criticisms. The Chinese delegation’s willingness to forcefully challenge the American side in such a public forum serves as further confirmation, if any were still needed, that the days when […]

In early February, France revealed that one of its nuclear-powered attack submarines had completed a mission in the South China Sea. The rare announcement, two years after the passage of the frigate Vendemiaire through the Taiwan Strait, was a clear signal of a growing French, but also European, interest in the sensitive region. European awareness of its strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific is a slow train coming. Even for France and the U.K.—which, as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and nuclear powers with a tradition of power projection, have long been interested in East Asia—there has been […]

BERLIN—Like all young Germans, Lilli Fischer has lived nearly all of her conscious life during Angela Merkel’s tenure as chancellor of Germany. Now 21 years old, Fischer was just a newborn in 2000, when Merkel took over leadership of Germany’s center-right party, the Christian Democratic Union or CDU; she was just 5 years old when Merkel became the country’s first female chancellor in 2005. Fast forward to today, and Fisher, too, has entered public life. Frustrated by the education policies of the state government in Thuringia, her home in the country’s east, she first got involved in politics while she […]

It’s been called a “coup” attempt at the British registry for .uk domain names, and it has broad implications for internet governance. You may not have heard of Nominet, the company in question. You may not have heard of ICANN, either—the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. But these two nonprofits are quite significant in the inward-looking world of internet governance. Nominet, a not-for-profit company, is owned by approximately 2,500 members—individuals and organizations, from GoDaddy to mom-and-pop shops, that are involved in domain registration and associated services, such as hosting, web design and email provision. Some of those members, […]

MADRID—Last month’s election in Catalonia underlined the deep and longstanding divisions in the region over whether to seek independence from the rest of Spain. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party may have won the most votes, but separatist parties together won the most seats in the regional Parliament and are poised to form a government. However, the record-low voter turnout of just over 53 percent raises questions about how much of a mandate the new Catalan government will have. The rift between separatists and unionists has dominated both Catalan and Spanish politics for a decade, and the regional polls […]

The member states of the International Criminal Court recently appointed British lawyer Karim Khan as the ICC’s next chief prosecutor. He is expected to start his nine-year term in June, replacing Gambian attorney Fatou Bensouda in the role. Khan is a veteran of the international legal world, having served as both prosecutor and defense counsel in a number of prominent cases. He also recently led a special U.N. investigation into crimes committed by the Islamic State group. But his upcoming stint as the ICC’s chief prosecutor will arguably be his most challenging assignment yet, given the many criticisms the court […]

Italy fell into a political crisis in late-January, when, following disagreements in the coalition then headed by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, a small but crucial part of the government withdrew its support. Without the backing of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva party, Conte no longer had the required majority in Parliament. Given the dire straits of Italy’s health system and economy due to the coronavirus pandemic, the unexpected move raised concerns over the country’s ability to effectively continue its vaccination campaign and lay the foundations for economic recovery. Those fears were alleviated on Feb. 18, when Mario Draghi, […]

On a snowy afternoon in January, 24-year-old Thanujan Sellathurai delivered a speech in front of a small crowd of protesters from the Tamil community in Geneva. He called for the United Nations, which has several of its agencies headquartered there, to condemn the “brutal atrocity” that had just taken place in Sri Lanka. Authorities at the University of Jaffna, on the northern tip of Sri Lanka, had ordered the bulldozing of a memorial paying tribute to the victims of the Mullivaikkal massacre, a mass killing of Tamil civilians that took place in May 2009, during the last few days of […]