Author: staff
Updated: 14/02/2026 – 7:00 GMT+1 Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond this February 14th, 2026 – latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel. … More
The software sector is experiencing its worst market sell-off since the depths of the 2008 financial crisis, but this time the trigger is not a banking collapse, it is artificial intelligence. The US sector fell 14.5% in January, its worst monthly performance since October 2008. The sell-off accelerated in early February, with a further 10% decline in less than two weeks. At the heart of the rout is a growing investor concern. Many fear that AI tools may not simply enhance existing software products, but erode parts of the subscription-based business models that have underpinned the sector’s growth for more…
It’s Valentine’s Day, giving POLITICO the chance to speculate about an ever-closer union of a different kind. POLITICO’s EU Influence newsletter asked Marjorie Libourel, a Brussels-based matchmaker who works with clients in the bubble, how she’d pair up some of the top Commission names. (Note: These are hypothetical. We’re sure none of the commissioners are in the market for love). Ursula von der Leyen (European Commission president) A very successful woman, Type A, very career-focused and occasionally isolated. Libourel would pair her with a “discreet, reliable, solid and grounded” man like Margaret Thatcher’s husband, Denis, or Angela Merkel’s spouse, Joachim…
What Kristersson’s comments lay bare is the lasting damage done to relations between many European governments and the U.S. after Trump’s demands to take “ownership” of the island away from Sweden’s neighbor Denmark. “For very obvious reasons, trust took a hit, no doubt,” Kristersson said this week, shortly before traveling to the Munich Security Conference. “I’m not at all saying that it is unreparable, and I don’t think it is either, but of course the tone the Americans used against Europeans, Canadians, Denmark, is not building trust.” It is clear that the conflict between the U.S. and European countries reached…
Europe and the U.S. “face the same sort of threat and the same threat actors,” said Cairncross, who advises Trump on cybersecurity policy. Rather than weaning off America, wean off China, he said: “There is a clean tech stack. It is primarily American. And then there is a Chinese tech stack.” Claiming that U.S. tech is as risky as Chinese tech is “a giant false equivalency,” according to Cairncross. “Personal data doesn’t get piped to the state in the United States,” he said, referencing concerns that the Beijing government has laws requiring firms to hand over data for Chinese surveillance and…
At a Thursday meeting of NATO’s defense ministers, “I felt a shift in mindset where the Europeans were not only saying, ‘Hey, we are going to spend much more,’” Rutte said. “The shift in mindset is Europeans saying, ‘We need to take more the lead in NATO,’ … and this is exactly what the United States wanted.” That “makes it easier for the United States to stay anchored in NATO,” Rutte added. The remarks come one day after an unusually cordial intervention from Deputy Pentagon chief Elbridge Colby at Thursday’s meeting of alliance ministers in Brussels — which some Europeans…
Europe needs to rebuild a new defense architecture, and that includes nuclear deterrence, especially now that the New START treaty limiting the American and Russian arsenals has expired, the French president said. Earlier on Friday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz confirmed that talks were ongoing with Paris about how France’s nuclear weapons could contribute to Europe’s security. Pressed about Merz’s comments, Macron said he will provide more “details” in his upcoming speech. France and some European countries are looking to see “how we can articulate our national doctrine with special cooperation, common security interest, this is what we’re doing for the…
Other European leaders, suggesting coordination among them, also stressed the mutual benefits of the postwar alliance, including Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. As leaders gathered in Munich, he wrote on X that the Western alliance is far too important to be allowed to fall apart. “The relationship between the U.S. and Europe is wounded, but should be maintained,” he wrote, adding, “We need to be honest about the fact that our relationship has suffered a blow. This does not at all mean we should abandon the transatlantic relation.” EU Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius also talked in terms of reshaping the Western alliance,…
Published on 13/02/2026 – 21:10 GMT+1 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not attend the Berlin Format meeting on Ukraine held on the sideline of the Munich Security Conference (MSC). The meeting was attended by leaders from a dozen European countries including Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, France’s Macron, Germany’s Merz, as well as the heads of the European Commission, European Council and the NATO military alliance. The cancellation reportedly came at the last minute amid scheduling conflicts. Rubio is set to address the conference on Saturday morning, but arrived already on Friday, where he met the Syrian, Chinese and German delegations,…
MUNICH — Europe must be able to strike back in cyberspace, as the strategy to deter adversaries is no longer enough, the EU executive’s tech and security chief told POLITICO. “It’s not enough that we are just defending … We also have to have offensive capacity,” the European Commission’s Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen said in an interview on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday. For years, European capitals have held back from stating publicly that they support offensive cyber operations — known as “hacking back” — because of fears that such operations could trigger retaliation and escalation from…