Dave Keating

3 weeks ago | davekeating.substack.com | Dave Keating

National EU telecoms ministers meeting in Luxembourg today adopted an update of the EU’s Cybersecurity Blueprint, stressing that the risk of a cyberattack by hostile foreign actors taking out critical European infrastructure is very real - and may have already happened. Now, the EU and NATO are going to coordinate a hybrid civilian and military response.

3 weeks ago | davekeating.substack.com | Dave Keating

Last week, US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem travelled to Poland and gave far-right presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki the full-throated endorsement of the US government. It wasn’t because Nawrocki in particular has attracted her admiration, in fact she didn’t seem to know much about him specifically. The endorsement wasn’t about who he is, but rather who he isn’t. He is not part of the centrist, rule-of-law-abiding governing majority in the EU.

3 weeks ago | davekeating.substack.com | Dave Keating

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen went further than she’s ever done this week in calling for the European Union to take distance from the United States. Accepting the Charlemagne Prize at a ceremony in Aachen, the one-time capital of the Frankish Empire where the eponymous emperor is interred, the EU president called for a new “Pax Europaea for the 21st century”. The implicit suggestion, of course, was that it should replace the Pax Americana of the 20th century.

4 weeks ago | theparliamentmagazine.eu | Dave Keating |Stéphanie Yon-Courtin

Viktor Orbán’s crackdown on LGBT rights in Hungary will come to a head next month. The European Commission has an opportunity to support the bloc's citizens with more than just words. Hungarians march in downtown Budapest to protest against a new law banning Pride events in early May. (Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo)Hungary is once again dividing EU leaders and other countries in the bloc over how to respond to its latest rule-of-law provocation: banning LGBT Pride events.

4 weeks ago | davekeating.substack.com | Dave Keating |Julien Hoez

This week was a week of ‘no’s. No to Trump’s “retaliatory” tariffs, no to Catalan becoming an official EU language, and no to President von der Leyen’s commissioners attending the illegal Budapest Pride on 28 June. Dave Keating from Gulf Stream Blues (in Barcelona) and Julien Hoez from The French Dispatch (in Brussels) talked about the week that was, and what’s coming next (including Sunday’s presidential election in Poland).