Europe

The German village of Wakendorf II, population 1428, was covered in a wave of liquid manure after the seal on a farm silo burst. Locals said there was a “bestial” smell after the 230,000-litre holding tank, on a farm overlooking the village in Schleswig-Holstein, emptied its contents at 11am last Saturday.  Christopher Möller, 22, said […]

There are few greater symbols of Britain’s standing in the world than Gibraltar. But, as MARK MARDELL explains, as the UK moves away from the EU the Rock is gravitating dramatically into its sphere. A British warship, the HMS Trent, has arrived at her new permanent base, Gibraltar, Britain’s last remaining European overseas territory. According to her captain, […]

A bereaved Italian has reacted to Rome’s funeral crisis by putting up 9×7-metre digital billboardsbearing the words, “Mum, I’m sorry I’ve not been able to have you buried yet”. “There are hundreds of coffins waiting,” said Oberdan Zuccaroli, whose mother died of a heart attack on March 8. His aunt, who died on January 9, is […]

The city of Paris has mislaid two 10-tonne art deco fountains that stood near the Port de la Chapelle metro station. The landmarks were built in 1935 but were moved temporarily in 2014 to clear a new tram route for the 2024 Olympic Games. However, no-one now seems to know where they were put. Local […]

Switzerland’s army has launched a drive to attract more female recruits by introducing standard-issue women’s underwear for the first time. At present, female soldiers are issued with the same regulation undergarments used by men. Armasuisse, the Swiss armed forces’ procurement organisation, said that “previous army equipment and uniforms were too little or not at all […]

When former Financial Times editor LIONEL BARBER was granted an audience at the Kremlin, Russia’s president proclaimed the end of the liberal idea. Was he right?

Making the battle against Covid tribal will have tragic consequences. If relations between Britain and the EU before Brexit was finalised were frosty and since then have been distant, then in recent weeks they have become downright ugly. The cause, of course, has been the ongoing row over the AstraZeneca vaccine, developed and deployed here – and derided and […]

Another look at the continent’s weirdest stories, selected by Steve Anglesey. Paris police who boasted about busting a 1.2million euro (£1.03million) haul of MDMA and ecstasy turned out to have seized Haribo sweets instead. The gendarmes wrote on Twitter that after a “fruitful investigation” they had found a “large quantity of drugs to be sold […]

A Porsche 911 convertible which the footballer was caught driving through a red light at 111mph just after buying fetched a huge price at auction A Porsche 911 convertible which Diego Maradona was famously caught driving through a red light at 180km/h (111mph) just 30 minutes after buying has sold for €483,000 (£414,000) at auction in Paris. […]

A new era of advertising in the air is being tested in Germany A new era of advertising in the sky is being tested in Germany, where a squadron of planes flying in formation has written ‘Hallo Berlin’ and ‘Hallo Hamburg’ at an altitude of 3,000m above the cities. The messages are the work of […]

The news you might have missed from around Europe, selected by Steve Anglesey. Cyprus’ Eurovision entry is at the centre of protests over its supposedly sacrilegious lyrics. El Diablo by Elena Tsagrinou has scandalised some in the island nation, dominated by the Greek Orthodox church, with lines like: “I gave my heart to El Diablo” […]

The news you might have missed from around Europe, selected by Steve Anglesey. A group of hapless would-be thieves were arrested in Nancy, north-east France, after a disastrous attempt to rob a friend’s stash of several thousand euros. Two men, one armed with a hunting rifle, aborted their first raid when a woman they did […]

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline is descending into the biggest transatlantic diplomatic crisis since the Iraq War. CATHRIN SCHAER explains how we got here

STEVE ANGLESEY brings you some of the recent stories you might have missed from the continent. A man who used a blow-dryer to thaw a frozen water pipe set his home in southwest Germany on fire, causing 300,000 euro (£262,000) worth of damage. Police in Kämpfelbach-Ersingen said they believed the dryer had been left unattended […]

Covid has damaged populists in power. But it has also assisted those in opposition, especially in Europe where the centre is struggling to protect its population, says NICK COHEN. To say the radical right is deceitful and malevolent is to state the obvious but miss the point. I do not mean to discourage you from fighting […]

News that you might have missed from around the continent, selected by STEVE ANGLESEY Bayern Munich’s superstar players spent a night on a grounded plane at Berlin’s Brandenburg airport because they were 30 seconds too late to take off. The German champions, headed for the Club World Cup in Doha, had arranged for their match […]

JANE MORRICE is a former deputy speaker of the Northern Ireland assembly and helped to implement the Good Friday Agreement. In a very personal essay, she explains how she sees her British, Northern Irish and European identity, in the wake of Brexit. A ‘European unionist’ is everything the name suggests. In the broadest sense, it […]

The EU has blundered catastrophically over vaccines and behaved badly. Let’s be good neighbours about it, says LIZ GERARD. Well, what do you know! Here at last, to celebrate the double anniversary of Brexit and the UK’s first case of coronavirus, is an example of something the government has got right. Something we have done better […]

CATHRIN SCHAER on how the continent sees its vaccine troubles. While Brexit fans were busy trying to shout “I told you so” across the Channel as loudly as possible, following the recent AstraZeneca stoush, Europeans were – as they so often are – more worried about their own backyards than being in a race with Britain. There […]

The EU has survived previous crises. But it is not guaranteed to get through the next one, says JOHN KAMPFNER. “All of us are responsible for the crisis, and all of us have a responsibility to resolve it.” “We cannot shoulder this alone in the long term. We need a European solution.” So said Donald […]

Denis MacShane on the late Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a man who helped modernise France and Europe, and relished an argument and a rivalry. “Your friend, Tony Blair, who does he think he is. He’s now calling for Albania to be let into Europe?” Valéry Giscard d’Estaing stretched out his long legs in the French embassy in […]

Lech Walesa helped create modern Poland. Thirty years after he came to power, MICK O’HARE reports on a complex character and his even more complex legacy When Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party was re-elected in October 2019 under prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki it was on a ticket of more of the same. More right-wing […]

Roy Jenkins – the man that helped Britain join the European Community. This week sees the 100th anniversary of the birth of Roy Jenkins, one of the outstanding British statesmen of the post-war period. He was one of the greatest reforming home secretaries in history, arguably the most successful chancellor of the exchequer since the […]

Globalisation might now be a dirty word for many, while U2 sometimes seem as disliked by an equal number. But, says IAN WALKER, at their finest the band capture a sense of optimism about the connected world. Commercially, U2 are as successful as any band could be. Over the last decade, they made more money […]

In a deeply personal essay, writer PETER GUMBEL explains how the waning of national identities, combined with Brexit, has led him to reassess his own sense of who he is. November 9 is a day heavy with significance for my family: on that date in 1938, my maternal grandfather was arrested in his German hometown […]

The city has been so scrutinised it is difficult to find much more new to say about it. But an enthralling new book has succeeded in this task, says CHARLIE CONNELLY. The early days of the coronavirus seem a long time ago now. Streets fell empty as we hunkered down, shops and businesses closed and […]

Nine writers from across the continent tell us what ‘Europe’ means to them… Ana Pessoa, Portuguese authorEurope is about multilingualism and multiculturalism. We might not speak the same language, we might not share the same cultural background. Perhaps we don’t laugh at the same jokes even and we live very different lives. But we share […]

Europeans have idealised their continent as a place of accomplishment and civilisation, of excellence and enlightenment. But, in a challenging essay, Surinamese-Dutch writer GLORIA WEKKER argues that there is another side to Europe, of exclusion and denial. One evening in the dead of winter 2015, close to zero degrees and with a cold wind searching […]

The Swiss held two important national referendums last Sunday. The first decisively reversed a previous one of 2014 which, by a wafer-thin majority, had sought to end freedom of movement of people with the EU, putting the country’s whole relationship with Europe in jeopardy. The lesson for Brexit Britain, a Swiss friend tells me, is […]

A year ago, monitoring the G7 protests in Biarritz, I was kettled for more than two hours by police under a baking sun. The following day, I was almost choked by tear gas in Bayonne. What I experienced in the southwest of France was part of a heavy-handed police and judicial response to peaceful protest […]

The European Commission has put tackling discrimination at the heart of its mission. That will mean tougher and more frequent clashes with some member states, says Piotr Godzisz. In her first state of the union address as president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen called out hatred and pledged to build “a union […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY comes up with the first half of his rundown of the top 20.