Charles de Gaulle had “a certain idea of France.” But does Ursula von der Leyen, the next president of the European Commission, have a certain idea of Europe,...
“Man shall not live by bread alone,” Jesus says in Matthew 4:4. But biblical wisdom seems to have been lost on the organizers of the economic conference held...
The need for a strong, unified Europe has never been greater. But enthusiasm for the European project has rarely been so weak, at least among the young....
People were chanting, praying and crying, or just frozen in total disbelief, as the flames engulfed “their” cathedral of Notre Dame, the object of their...
French President Emmanuel Macron recently launched his platform for the upcoming European Parliament elections. Official reactions to his approach outlined in...
The support from Italy’s populist leaders for the “yellow vest” protests in France is a sad first in the history of the European Union. Never before has one...
Are the “yellow vest” protests across France as consequential as the mass rallies of May 1968? It is too soon to say. The revolt has forced French President...
Has populism won? It would be easy to conclude that it has, especially in light of what is happening in the heart of Europe. Italy, one of the earliest...
The seventeenth-century philosopher and satirist Jean de La Bruyere once quipped that, “Corneille portrays men as they should be, Racine depicts them as they...
“We in France should take Italy much more seriously than we do. There is a lot we can learn from this highly successful country.”That may sound like a quote...
In 1841, the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi completed his celebrated opera Nabucco. “Va, pensiero,” his famous aria describing the fate of the Hebrews in the...
In his book The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, political scientist Edward Luttwak credits Byzantium’s longevity to the quality of its diplomacy. By...
I have a British friend who never travels without his Irish passport, at least not since June 2016, when the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union....
Seven months ago, when Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front had a chance of winning the French presidency, Germany feared for France’s future. But...
The Middle East is often viewed as a region waylaid by feelings of collective humiliation and violent rivalries, both between and within countries. But South...
“I am not afraid,” chanted the crowd that took to the streets in Barcelona after a van was driven into pedestrians on the Las Ramblas promenade, killing at...
The list of crises plaguing the Middle East is growing. In Yemen, a civil war rages amid an uncontrollable cholera epidemic. In Jerusalem, religious violence...
A new triangle of geopolitical emotion has emerged in Europe: Great Britain has ceased feeling superior to France, and France has stopped feeling inferior to...
Before the just-concluded French presidential election, the United States’ National Public Radio (NPR) requested that I give an interview about the outcome....
Relief and pride are the main emotions many French citizens are feeling after the first round of the French presidential election, in which Emmanuel Macron...
Sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, France is poised to hold an election that could make or break the European Union. A victory for the...
“Tell me what you fear and I will tell you what has happened to you,” the psychologist D.W. Winnicott wrote in the early 20th century. It sounds...
Just after British Prime Minister Theresa May’s Lancaster House speech, in which she outlined her government’s objectives in the upcoming negotiations on the...
After the terror attacks in Paris last November – a carefully coordinated series of assaults carried out by multiple attackers, resulting in 130 deaths –...