Europa Surgit

Europe is rising. Keep up.

A sunlit glass tower with open doors and golden bridges linking surrounding labs, while a sealed dark tower stands apart under a wide morning sky.

Opinion

Fund the open ecosystem, not the closed copy

Imec's Leuven cleanrooms already run High-NA lithography, and Brussels holds the Chips Act 2.0 tools to scale them. Washington is building a copy of Leuven with American interests first.

One glowing computer tower by a coast joined by light lines to many others across the sea at sunrise, symbolising a single national machine growing into a continental network.

Opinion

Denmark had the luck. Europe needs the plan.

Gefion is approaching full capacity and gained a new owner as demand is expected to rise at least sixfold within five years. One Danish supercomputer is luck; a European network of them, owned across borders, would be a plan.

A figure completes the final link of a golden chain rising from a workshop toward a satellite in a sunrise sky.

Opinion

Europe funds the satellite but SpaceX flies it. Stop that.

A Bremen satellite with paying customers is set to launch on an American rocket, while the €22.1 billion pledged in Bremen sits next to European launch firms that need orders. Buy the rockets and the satellite chain becomes fully European.

A figure takes a full place at a long table alongside many others in golden daylight, symbolising equal membership at a shared research table.

Opinion

Give Australia the whole seat at Europe's research table

Canberra paid its way into Horizon Europe and its scientists will work on equal terms with ours from 2027. The 2028 framework should make full association, European Research Council grants included, the standard offer to every country that meets the rules.

A spacecraft approaching a small cratered asteroid beside a larger one, bathed in golden light against deep blue space.

ESA's Hera begins close-up study of asteroid Dimorphos

The spacecraft has entered its early characterisation phase around Didymos, four years after NASA's Dart impact altered the asteroid's orbit. First detailed images will be presented in Berlin on 25 November.

Many small camps converge with paths of light on a single central watchtower under a sunrise sky.

Opinion

71% want an EU army. Kallas has said no.

Seventy-one per cent of the public backs it and billions in joint defence money are already moving, so the doubters are behind the facts. The next summit should put a European command on the agenda and tie the cash to it.

A single large empty chair in sunrise light, with a row of small toppled chairs set aside and two silhouetted figures walking toward it.

Opinion

One seat, or Europe's security is sold separately

Moscow wants each NATO country signing its own pact, Finland already said no. A single mandate, carried by Kallas, turns Europe's seat at the next talks into the answer.

A refinery's towers and tanks silhouetted at sunrise, one golden flare rising into a wide bright blue sky.

Ukraine strikes Volgograd oil refinery

Ukraine's latest refinery strike, on Lukoil's Volgograd plant, left four workers dead, and the campaign since late October has hit plants with over a third of Russia's refining capacity.

A chip blueprint rises through an open factory door at sunrise, where a new plant grows under a wide sky.

Opinion

The design door is open. Now legislate the factory floor.

From early 2027 imec's pilot line hands European designers the tools to model leading-edge chips. Parliament and the Council must keep their own mid-2027 date and pass Chips Act 2.0, so those designs are made in Europe.

Silhouetted figures approach an open chair at a long table, lit by sunrise through tall doors

Opinion

No settlement signed without Europe in the chair

Moscow refused to widen the talks, so our defence must not be settled in a phone call. Back the one seat we have already chosen: ceasefire first, then a settlement Europe endorses only because it was in the room.

A glowing framework rises from a shared blueprint as anonymous figures build it together against a golden sunrise sky.

Opinion

The Nordics wrote Europe's defence blueprint. Copy it, all of it

Sweden's record spending still leaves NATO's capability targets unmet, and money alone will not close the gap. Only a binding legal framework for joint procurement and shared planning can, so the EU should build one modelled on the Nordic agreement.

Beams of light from many towns merge into one great shield filling a sunrise sky.

Opinion

One attack hit eight countries. Europe needs one shield, not twenty-seven.

Hackers shut down supermarket refrigeration from Palermo to Helsinki, and each capital answered alone. Italy's Sala Cyber blocked 630,000 malicious events, and the EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday can extend the Tallinn Mechanism so it shields every member state.

One empty chair at the head of a long table facing open doors and a rising sun, silhouetted figures gathered behind it as one group.

Opinion

Europe has one seat at the table. It must speak with one voice.

Russia, Ukraine and the United States meet in Abu Dhabi over Ukraine's post-war order. Our leverage, from sanctions to reconstruction, sits in Brussels, so EU leaders in Dublin must agree on one negotiator with a written mandate.

A crowded migrant dinghy at dawn approaches a larger rescue vessel, silhouettes against a gold sunrise over the sea.

At least 20 dead in two migrant boats off Crete, two arrested

The Greek coastguard and Frontex pulled survivors from four boats south of the island between Saturday and Monday, including a toddler taken to hospital. Frontex named the eastern Mediterranean the EU's busiest route in October.

Silhouetted figures with keys walking through a shadowed wall of locked houses toward new sunlit homes under an open sky.

Opinion

Hoarded homes are a European failure, not a Spanish one

Thirteen funds own 100,000 homes in Spain, and a country is reaching for expropriation because the market outgrew it. Europe should finance affordable rental supply before every capital improvises its own drastic law.

Rescuers silhouetted against a golden dawn dig through a mountain of rubble where a school once stood

Russian strike on Komyshuvakha kills at least 53

Rescuers and police died in the attack, which the UN says may have violated international humanitarian law. Talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations are set for Abu Dhabi on 10 and 11 November.

A long wall of closed locks bars a dark fortress gate while silhouetted figures stand in sunlight before a golden sky.

EU adds names to Russia sanctions list, bringing total near 4,600

The newly listed people and companies in Russia's military-industrial complex face asset freezes, and natural persons face travel bans, and turn over at least €20 billion a year. Work on a 22nd sanctions package continues without an adoption date.

Empty judges' chairs in a sunlit courtroom as robed figures approach

Opinion

Let the Sejm's judges sit

Karol Nawrocki has refused for seven months to swear in four judges elected by Poland's parliament. When one office stalls a constitutional court, Europe is right to say the answer is a working court, not a standoff.

Fragmented islands with separate figures beside one unbroken road leading into sunrise

Opinion

Ban addictive design EU-wide, not country by country

Brussels has the evidence, the findings and the law to stop infinite scroll and autoplay. It must decide now, because a patchwork of national bans leaves you unprotected in Lisbon or Tallinn.