Geopolitics

Progress made by EU candidate countries on accession-related reforms

EU accession progress broadly tracks reform, but Montenegro’s advance and North Macedonia’s stalled talks show politics still matters

Marek Dabrowski and Maria Catarina Louro

Who Is the Swing Vote?

Rebecca Christie

Less focus on poverty reduction? An evaluation of the EU 2028-2034 development aid plan

European Union development aid is emphasising poverty reduction less and directing attention to other geopolitical priorities

Costanza Greppi Maturana and Niclas Poitiers

Europe's China shock 2.0

A record surplus, a fractured response and the limits of Brussels' ambitions

Alicia García-Herrero, Philippe Le Corre and Yuyun Zhan

Stack battles: the US-China artificial-intelligence rivalry is moving beyond chips alone

China is challenging US leadership in both AI hardware and software, with Europe unlikely to catch up

Alicia García-Herrero and Bertin Martens

Europe and its allies must plan to offset the AI dependency risk

A sudden suspension of Anthropic’s most powerful models for non-Americans previews a world in which access to AI can be abruptly cut

Alicia García-Herrero and Soumitra Dutta

The energy shock for which there is no playbook

The US-Iran conflict may be ending but coping with its inflation and fiscal consequences will be challenging for months ahead

Gene Frieda

2026 European energy crisis fiscal response tracker

This dataset provides an overview of the fiscal measures implemented by European governments to mitigate the 2026 energy shock in Europe

Ben McWilliams, Thomas Mramor, Alexander Roth and Simone Tagliapietra

Europe must prepare for a possible oil supply crunch

With falling commercial and emergency oil reserves, Europe’s oil price shock could soon become a volume crisis – a scenario for which it must prepare

Thomas Mramor, Alexander Roth, Simone Tagliapietra and Georg Zachmann

Macron and Merz need to tackle the veto to really unlock EU enlargement

A Franco-German plan to ease EU candidates into the single market should be accompanied by a reduction in the veto rights of current members

Nina Vujanović

Europe’s economic outlook: managing short-term shocks is no longer enough

Ricky Li and Jeromin Zettelmeyer

How do trade restrictiveness and trade policy uncertainty affect FDI? An empirical investigation

Rising trade barriers and uncertainty are choking FDI inflows, hitting low and middle-income investors hardest in a fragmented global economy

Hites Ahir, Luca Bettarelli, Davide Furceri, Francesco Frangiamore, Jonathan D. Ostry and Francesco Scianna

Symbolic membership for Ukraine could bring practical security benefits to the EU

An idea for associate EU membership for Ukraine now, in parallel with negotiations on full membership that will take years, should be taken seriously

Heather Grabbe

A plan to revitalise the World Trade Organization

Saving the WTO will require EU-led alliances, better subsidy disciplines and new plurilateral routes, even if some initiatives sit outside the WTO

Ignacio García Bercero