Watching Putin’s end-of-year news conference in Sevastopol, Crimea.
Reuters/Pavel Rebrov
The “hot” phase of the Ukraine conflict may have passed, but Moscow and Kiev are hardly warming to each other.
Pushing back against the backlash.
Reuters/Wolfgang Rattay
Germany has been a world leader in taking in refugees, but a xenophobic outcry at a wave of sexual assaults puts the government in a tight spot.
Singing from his own hymn sheet.
Number 10
New research shows that the government’s welfare proposal is out of step with reality.
A man holds a giant pencil as tribute in a solidarity march for Charlie Hebdo victims
Stephane Mahe/Reuters
France was left reeling by the attacks of January 2015 and things only got worse as the year unfolded – so why the political inertia?
Get off my back!
Laurent Dubrule
The Prime Minister will allow ministers to vote as they please in the EU referendum. But did he really have any other option?
The PP, celebrating while it can.
Reuters/Marcelo del Pozo
Spain’s two-party system is now consigned to the history books – but forming a functional government will be anything but easy.
Spain’s ruling People’s Party is predicted to win the election – but not by much.
Reuters/Andrea Comas
Spain’s era of two-party government is coming to an end – but what exactly happens next is far from clear.
The progressive present came after many years of struggle.
Tata Chen
When it comes to queer rights, a new BBC documentary demonstrates that it is not so long since Scotland was the UK’s regressive laggard.
Pulling apart the European crisis response.
REUTERS/Francois Lenoir
“First, do no harm”. It’s not clear that European countries even got that right as they navigated their way through the aftermath.
The next French president? Not likely.
Julien Warnard/EPA
With its share of the vote rising with each election, can the extreme-right party take power on its own? The example of the French communists during the postwar boom suggests otherwise.
Wants to make Czech Rep great again, thinks xenophobia is the perfect way to do it.
Reuters/David W Cerny
He’s been a prime minister and a president but he’s best-known now for his xenophobic interventions.
Taking it in her stride.
EPA
The far-right Front National leads after the first round of voting, leaving Hollande and Sarkozy with some thinking to do.
On guard? Xi Jinping in South Africa.
REUTERS/Sidney Seshibedi
With US$60 billion in new deals announced, Beijing might look like it has the continent wrapped up.
Robinson: ‘Climate change is a threat multiplier.’
James Akena/Reuters
UN special envoy and former Irish president Mary Robinson talks to leading experts about the 2015 Paris climate negotiations.
Yoan Valat/EPA
History shows that for France, assimilation has always been a selective process and anything but universally applied.
Charting a different course.
REUTERS/Kacper Pempel
With economies in Europe and America forging very different recoveries, their central banks are having to navigate by different stars.
A Syrian immigrant and his son after arriving on the Greek island of Lesbos, September 2015.
Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
Do terrorists linked to Daesh slip into the groups of migrants streaming toward Europe? Our response to the Paris attacks and any potential manipulations shouldn’t fall on refugees’ heads.
Climate change is not top of countries like Greece’s agenda right now. Maybe it should be.
Christophe Petit Tesson
COP21 is an opportunity for countries like Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal to reinvent their economies along environmentally friendly and sustainable lines.
A migrant is processed upon arrival in Sicily.
Reuters/Antonio Parrinello
Simon McMahon travelled to Sicily, where arrivals are being ordered to leave without understanding why.
Welcoming migrants and integrating them is a national security issue.
Reuters
The attacks in Paris are putting refugees in the crosshairs, yet it’s the integration of these and past migrants that are key to the security of Europe.