Author: staff
Forty years ago, on June 12, Spain formally anchored its future to the European Union. As the tremors of the 1979 energy crisis subsided and our new institutions dismantled decades of isolation, the European project was met with fierce optimism. For a generation born under a dictatorship but coming of age in freedom, integration unlocked unprecedented horizons, offering groundbreaking educational opportunities and pathways to global employment. Today, it is our responsibility to deliver that same level of opportunity to a new generation. Spain boasts the most educated youth in its history, yet faces one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Europe.…
Listen on Spotify Apple Music Amazon Music Across Europe, political instability, fragmentation and polarization are increasingly becoming the norm. But how are governments tackling these tensions? On this episode of the Brussels Playbook Week Ender, host Sarah Wheaton and her guests hone in on three countries: France, Greece and Denmark. Dialing in from Paris and Athens are our colleagues Clea Caulcutt and Nektaria Stamouli, and Jakob Moroza-Rasmussen, former secretary general of the centrist ALDE European political party, joins Sarah in the studio where he talks about his native Denmark.From the EU farm funds scandal in Greece, to the upcoming 2027 presidential election in France…
Published on 12/06/2026 – 2:58 GMT+2 Anthropic’s launch of a version of its artificial intelligence model that it previously claimed was too powerful to release has garnered excitement as well as criticism over the cost. Called Fable 5, which some are calling “Mythos Lite”, it is included in the Claude subscription but only until June 22. Users will then have to pay full price, which some online have said is too expensive. “A few prompts just to test it out and it ate 5% of my monthly allowance… I have no reason to use this without a trust fund,” one…
Embattled U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is looking for a clear policy win as he fights to stay in office. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s (DSIT) wide-ranging “national conversation” on growing up in the online world wrapped up less than three weeks ago and attracted more than 116,000 submissions, a level of engagement not seen since the then-Conservative government proposed legalizing gay marriage back in 2012. 89 percent of parents who responded backed a “legal requirement for social media services to be a minimum age of access,” according to a transparency release last week. As recently as Tuesday, DSIT official William Jones told a Family…
Published on 11/06/2026 – 9:21 GMT+2 Police deployed a water cannon against protesters in Northern Ireland on Wednesday as violence continued following a knife attack in Belfast earlier this week. Anti-immigration demonstrators, many dressed in black and wearing masks, gathered for a second night, hurling bricks and bottles at officers and setting vehicles and bins alight despite pleas for calm from authorities. Disorder broke out across Northern Ireland and Scotland on Tuesday night after graphic video footage emerged of the attack. It showed a man straddling another man in the middle of a street as he slashed at his face…
His lawyer, Stanislas Eskénazi of Perspicere, told POLITICO that the exported chemical was not itself illegal and argued that the court had imposed an unusually harsh sentence because Labin was originally from Russia. According to the ruling, Labin and a Brussels-based entrepreneur falsified customs documents and routed shipments through companies in countries including Turkey, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan to conceal their final destination in Russia. At the trial, the federal prosecutor’s office confirmed he is suspected of being a foreign intelligence officer for the Russian GRU. His son, Ruslan Labin, who prosecutors said acted as an intermediary for imports into Moscow,…
Congested motorways, gaping potholes, and dangerous roads. These may very well make Poland the final boss for beginner drivers. According to a new study by Czechvignette.cz, its roads are the hardest to take on in Europe, scoring 99.43 out of 100. The report ranked motorways on factors such as congestion levels, road quality and car density: the higher the score, the more stressful the roads are. Poland combines some of the highest traffic congestion levels (54.77) with poor road quality (4.3 out of seven) and — more seriously — one of the highest road death rates per million residents (52).…
The EU’s 27 countries are racing to finalize a budget agreement between themselves by December, in case French elections slated for April 2027 usher in a far-right president who might want to scupper any deal. The budget, known as the multiannual financial framework, governs the bloc’s central spending, from agricultural subsidies to road-building to cultural projects. “These are the first figures put on the table, we have been very pragmatic and very realistic as to what that means, but it is a basis for negotiations,” said Marilena Raouna, Cyprus’ deputy minister for European affairs. Cyprus’ amendments sparked an opposition campaign…
Updated: 11/06/2026 – 22:12 GMT+2 Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum joined thousands of supporters at a fan zone in Mexico City’s Zocalo Square as Mexico took on South Africa in the opening match of the 2026 World Cup. Fans packed the square to cheer on the host nation. … More
“Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border,” said the pontiff while visiting the island of Gran Canaria. Listen AI generated Text-to-speech