Our cover this week. Says it all
06.03.2026 13:47
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Our cover this week. Says it all
France’s new doctrine on nuclear deterrence will reinforce Europe’s collective security in ways that only recently would have seemed unrealistic and unnecessary
A report from île Longue
economist.com/europe/2026/...
Brilliant column this week from @sophiepedder.bsky.social on why France has such trouble convincing the rest of Europe, even when it is right
economist.com/europe/2026/...
from The Economist
You are right of course François and there is a whole paragraph devoted to that point!
“🇫🇷 spends six times more on pensions each year than on defence—and borrows heavily to do so. How is it possible to assert strategic autonomy if you depend on the bond markets to pay your pensioners?”
“If Donald Trump’s capriciousness inspires deep anxiety among Europeans, they are also troubled by another uncomfortable idea: a scratchy sense that perhaps France was right after all”
Europeans confront the unthinkable 😉
economist.com/europe/2026/...
Europe faces a “geopolitical and geo-economic state of emergency” Macron told us, and will be “swept aside” if it does not reform. After its “Greenland moment”, Europe can’t go on as before. The US is “openly hostile” to Europe and wants it “dismembered”
economist.com/europe/2026/...
Can Europe do nuclear deterrence without America? France and the UK are deepening their cooperation. Other European conversations with the continent’s two nuclear-armed powers are also underway
A joint report with @shashj.bsky.social
economist.com/europe/2026/...
Paris is not just about the past
The stunning new Metro station at Villejuif-Gustave Roussy, which opened in 2025, is part of the biggest expansion of the city’s network for half a century
economist.com/europe/2026/...
🕶️🇫🇷🔥
Trump’s imperialist threats to Danish sovereignty over Greenland have put European populists’ ties to the MAGA movement under strain
MAGA v MEGA
www.economist.com/europe/2026/...
Recent warnings from 🇫🇷 and 🇬🇧 military chiefs about the need for Western Europe to prepare society for the losses of war have been met with some incredulity. But the Baltics, Nordics and Poland offer impressive lessons on the concept of “war readiness”
economist.com/europe/2025/...
The mainstreaming and “embourgeoisement” of the 🇫🇷 far-right National Rally
In 2017, 7% of those with a degree voted for the RN in the 1st round. By 2024, the figure was 22%—the same share that voted for Macron’s centrists. Even the gender gap has closed
economist.com/briefing/202...
“France, despite its political chaos, scores pretty well”
We ranked the performance of 36 of the world’s biggest economies in 2025 according to five criteria
France came in 11th place, better than Germany (20th) and Britain (23rd
France’s junior defense minister Alice Rufo calls the US National Security Strategy an “extremely brutal” clarification of its ideological posture. This is the strongest official response from France so far
Macron will join Starmer, Merz and Zelensky in London today. Whatever you think of these three leaders’ domestic politics, the trio is emerging as a forceful new form of European leadership
www.economist.com/europe/2025/...
The French armed forces minister, Catherine Vautrin, says that the drones were “intercepted” by the navy. Whether that means shot down or jammed is not clear
According to French media reports the 🇫🇷 navy last night shot down five drones flying over the Ile Longue, in Brittany, home to France’s SNLE nuclear-armed submarines, the naval component of France’s nuclear deterrent
Trump's national security strategy is out and some of the Europe sections are shocking. "...the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed
gives cause for great optimism."
www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/u...
Unloved at home, vigorous abroad. Macron, Merz and Starmer are forming Europe’s new trilateral diplomatic leadership
economist.com/europe/2025/...
from @economist.com
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
New poll suggests Jordan Bardella would win second round of 🇫🇷 presidential election against any other of four tested candidates ⬇️
Macron on 🇷🇺 “We need to show we’re not weak against the power that threatens us the most”
The 🇺🇸peace plan needed to be “discussed and improved…Nobody can tell 🇺🇦 which territorial concessions they’re ready to make…We want peace but we don’t want a peace that’s a capitulation”
Speaking to RTL today
Across the French region of Languedoc-Roussillon alone, nearly 15,000 hectares of vines—the equivalent of four-fifths of the area of Washington, DC—are being torn out this year
Why vineyards are disappearing in France
In @economist.com this week
economist.com/europe/2025/...
The horror of the terrorist attacks of November 13th 2015 plunged the City of Lights into darkness. Ten years on, Paris is mostly itself again. Yet the trauma lingers: in lives ended, families broken, spaces shrunk and the long shadow of dread
economist.com/culture/2024...
🇫🇷 doing a good job of looking forwards and moving backwards today. It has just published its first national space strategy, 2025-2030. Its lower house has just voted to suspend Macron’s pension reform, the main structural achievement of his second term
www.sgdsn.gouv.fr/files/files/...
In which Bardella calls for a “conversation” with the ECB about supporting French sovereign debt…
Jordan Bardella is France’s most popular politician. His ideas would set 🇫🇷 on a collision path with not only EU institutions but with France’s main partner, Germany. For the RN leader, this seems to be the point
In @economist.com this week
economist.com/europe/2025/...
Our cover this week
“Europe should take heart and recognise its own strength. Its military budget is already four times larger than Russia’s; its economy is ten times larger. Far from shying away from a financial contest with the Kremlin, Europe should embrace it—and win the war”
Roland Lescure knows full well what outsiders make of France’s messy politics. The best way to reassure investors is to “show the world that we’re not just a bunch of Gauls in a village fighting tooth and nail”, he says
Suspending France’s pension reform has dismayed many centrists. In an interview with The Economist @rolandlescure.bsky.social, the new 🇫🇷 finance minister, argues that “It’s the price of compromise and it’s the price of political stability”
economist.com/europe/2025/...
Correction: José Sócrates, former Portuguese Prime Minister, served time in jail in 2014. Apologies for the error!