You should play them some good music to counteract this shameful royalist propaganda youtu.be/-srLjMRjoVI?...

Sadly, German ordoliberals remain unable to think about demand as an important factor.

🔥 Finally an EU leader says it out loud:

“We have been incredibly naive in entrusting our democratic space to social networks that are controlled either by large American entrepreneurs or large Chinese companies, whose interests are not at all the survival or proper functioning of our democracies.”

Really nice gesture by the German government to prepare the chat control groundwork for when the AfD will come to power.

In a digital world, talking to sensitive sources is nearly impossible without encryption. The EU’s #ChatControl plan is an attack on accountability journalism - and a gift to surveillance

So much for the European single market

For WTO wonks - The European Commission has now given up trying to justify the deal with the US as being compatible with article 24. “It isn’t credible that we can turn this into an FTA” Sabine Weyand said today.

This is a change from what they were saying before

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."

me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

Great news that there's a new rare earth magnets plant in Europe! Maybe not the most strategic move for it to be located just across the river from Russia...

"Europe’s EV Makers Line Up at Estonia Rare-Earth Magnet Site"

Over on X, Viktor Orban and Swedish PM Ulf Kristersson are having a twitter fight. Worth reading Kristersson's thoughtful reply in full, though I doubt Orban will be swayed by it. It is more an effect of the politicisation of EU-internal politics, where PMs treat each other as political opponents.

To be fair, they sometimes do things at 5pm on a Friday.

You need red tape to cut red tape.

"The transition will happen with or without US participation. By withdrawing from these industries and blocking allies from Chinese partnerships, America risks becoming a bystander to the biggest economic transformation of our time."
Great thread on our report:

1/ New report from @bentleyallan.bsky.social's Net Zero Policy Lab: As the US withdraws from green tech industries and pressures allies to follow suit, China is stepping in to power the developing world's energy transition. The scale is staggering.

www.netzeropolicylab.com/china-green-...

This is how you protect your democracy. The US is a demonstration of what happens when you don't. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

The problem for real pro-Europeans is that Bardella is right. The US trade deal is absolutely poisonous for them if they try to defend it.

The Parliament debate of the EU-US trade deal shows the problem the Commission made for itself by not going for a fight with Trump.

It’s now the far-right that can claim to stand for the interest and the honour of Europeans.

This puts the real pro-Europeans in a difficult position, going forward.

Brutal poll by Le Grand Continent and Cluster 17:

51% of European citizens think the EU-US trade deal is a "humiliation" while 77% say it mostly favours America's economic interests. Only 13% think it's an "equal compromise" between the two sides.

Different topic, but « cosplaying adults-in-the-room » is the perfect description of how the EU’s political leadership has been acting since Trump came to power.

Always good to read a solid Baltic perspective by @glandsbergis.bsky.social on the situation with Ukraine. On the day the government offices were attacked by Russia.

We are sleepwalkers.

substack.com/@glandsbergi...

We’ve seen this play out repeatedly across Europe. Each time, mainstream parties hoped to undercut the far right by echoing its language. Each time, the effect was to legitimise and empower the very forces they wanted to contain.

There are ways to rebalance the #EUUS trade deal

Ignacio Garcia Bercero, Former US negotiator at the European Commission, now at @bruegel.org , makes suggestions to @europarl.europa.eu 's INTA committee on what it can do as it prepare to enact EU side of deal

🇪🇺🇺🇸

borderlex.net/2025/09/02/g...

Very good tactic to bury some of the outrage over the US deal under the heaps of outrage over the Mercosur deal.