Paul Taylor

Jun 18, 2024 | theguardian.com | Paul Taylor

After a disastrous decade in which they blew up Britain’s relationship with the rest of Europe, shrank trade and made life miserable for cross-Channel travellers, the Tories can’t leave office soon enough for most continental Europeans. “Good riddance!” is the cry from Lisbon to Helsinki as London’s erstwhile European partners hope that a new Labour government will start to rebuild relations with the neighbours that have suffered the most severe damage since the end of the second world war.

May 1, 2024 | theguardian.com | Paul Taylor

In the latest of his visionary speeches on the future of Europe, Emmanuel Macron called for the EU to transform itself into a military power or face “death”. Yet his own presidency of France may be about to enter a long twilight zone unless he can reverse his party’s deepening slump in June’s European parliament election.

Jan 30, 2024 | theguardian.com | Paul Taylor

The will of the people expressed in free elections and the rule of law upheld by independent courts are two of the pillars of a liberal democracy, or so we were taught at school. Yet these two core principles keep colliding in increasingly polarised societies from Washington to London, Paris to Berlin and Warsaw to Jerusalem, with populist politicians demanding that “the will of the people” override the constitution, treaties or the separation of powers.

Jan 17, 2024 | theguardian.com | Paul Taylor

With two wars raging on its borders, a world retreating from free trade and globalisation, strong migratory pressure on its southern shores, rising rightwing populist movements clamouring for national, not European, solutions and Donald Trump looming on the horizon, Europe is facing an extraordinary set of global challenges.

Dec 22, 2023 | ca.news.yahoo.com | Paul Taylor

Photograph: Stevens Tomas/ABACA/ShutterstockChristmas wouldn’t be Christmas in France without a good old-fashioned brouhaha about cribs and candles in official buildings.