‘We paid dearly’: Living with the scars of coronavirus in Europe’s ‘ground zero’
CODOGNO, Italy — One year and many deaths ago, the outcome of a nasal swab in a tiny hospital in Codogno, a village in the Italian province of Lodi, foretold the disaster that was about to engulf...
View ArticleWho wants to be a soldier? Germany grapples with far-right extremism in its...
BERLIN — In many nations around the world, those who serve their country in uniform are honored with parades and adulated as heroes. Not so in Germany. In a country where any semblance of militarism...
View ArticleWhen the coronavirus came for me
MILAN — The first thing I think, when I find out the result of my COVID swab, is that I wish I had a diary or a calendar of some kind. It’s a strange and ridiculous thought, but I feel as though I...
View ArticleEU’s moral dilemma in the Sahel
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — When Ahmado Bikienga heard that villages near his home were being seized by armed Islamists, he didn’t expect the violence would force him to flee too. “We didn’t know...
View ArticleMy time on Europe’s haunted seas
Mathilde Auvillain is a journalist and former press officer of the rescue ship MV Aquarius. The memories come floating back like bodies drowned at sea. In October 2016, I joined the crew of a civil...
View ArticleThe German exception (or how I got vaccinated before you did)
William Glucroft is a freelance journalist in Berlin It started with a tip-off. It ended with a prick. Just like that, I got Pfizered in Berlin. After months of waiting and wondering — and watching...
View ArticleShe left politics to drive a garbage truck
GOTHENBURG, Sweden — Some politicians follow life after politics with a glitzy PR job at a global tech company. Others prefer to rack up gold-plated consultancies. Ann-Sofie Hermansson drives a...
View ArticleMorocco uses migrants to get what it wants
Sam Edwards is a freelance journalist in Barcelona When 6,000 people pushed off a Moroccan beachfront Monday, swam around two border walls and waded into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, the question was...
View ArticleWhy Europe’s recovery plan won’t work — unless it tackles corruption first
Ioana Petrescu is a senior fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School and a former Romanian finance minister. Plans cooked up in Brussels tend to...
View ArticleGermany overcame its history. Why can’t Poland?
William Echikson is director of the European Union for Progressive Judaism office in Brussels. Just over three decades ago, I met a young German diplomat in Paris. His name was a mouthful: Arndt...
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Why thousands are fighting the Bulgarian government: ‘They have no vision for...
SOFIA — Since the beginning of July, a wave of anti-government protests has rocked Bulgaria. Thousands have taken to the streets to protest rampant corruption and a deterioration in the rule of law,...
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Italy’s unlikely pop leftist
Giulia Blasi is a writer and activist based in Rome, and the author of the feminist primer “Manuale per ragazze rivoluzionarie” (Rizzoli, 2018) and “Rivoluzione Z” (Rizzoli, 2020). ROME — As Italian...
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No more Mr. Nice Europe
Hans Kribbe is author of “The Strongmen: European Encounters with Sovereign Power” (Agenda Publishing, 2020). Some 15 years ago, European Commission President Romano Prodi proposed a vision of Europe...
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In cod we trust: How fish became such a Brexit problem
John Lichfield is a former foreign editor of the Independent and was the newspaper’s Paris correspondent for 20 years. PARIS — Forget the loaves. With a Brexit cliff edge looming, the question is who...
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Any Brexit deal is better than no deal
PARIS — Despite the mantra on both sides that “no deal is better than a bad deal,” almost any agreement on future trade relations between the U.K. and the EU would be better than none. As the tortuous...
View ArticleFlanders’ dark stain
Othman El Hammouchi is a Flemish author and columnist based near Brussels. There is something rotten at the heart of Belgium. For decades, the country has used its particular position — as the...
View ArticleDon’t stop saving ‘zombie’ jobs
Paul Taylor, a contributing editor at POLITICO, writes the Europe At Large column. PARIS — Across Europe, finance ministries are pressing to phase out the furlough schemes that have kept workers idled...
View ArticleEye of the storm: Lombardy faces second COVID-19 nightmare
MILAN — In the capital of Italy’s northern Lombardy region, those who live near hospitals have started counting ambulance sirens again. Until a few weeks ago, it seemed Italy might be spared the...
View ArticleHow to minimize the impact of the coronavirus on the economy
The coronavirus pandemic is bad for business. Local lockdowns, restrictions on social gatherings and travel disruptions have slowed economic activity, cut off supply chains and forced companies to...
View ArticleThe US election’s other loser: European populists
Paul Taylor, a contributing editor at POLITICO, writes the Europe At Large column. PARIS — However narrow and contested, Joe Biden’s victory in the U.S. presidential election will have a salutary...
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