Stanley Pignal

Emmanuel Macron drinks *twenty* cups of "ristretto" coffee a day, which is functionally equivalent to having a permanent intravenous cocaine drip.

(From Ania Nussbaum's "Accréditée")

No consolation is so sweet for a French rugby fan nursing defeat than to have England lose—to Italy!—on the same day.

Just because all excellent, deeply reported pieces are long does not mean that all long pieces are excellent and deeply reported.

That's the problem with length: it became a sort of status symbol.

Luxury goods are Europe’s global tax on vanity How to trade cachet for dollars and yuan

My Charlemagne on luxury goods, Europe's global tax on vanity.

How did Europe, an egalitarian continent with a slumping share of global GDP, come to host an industry that thrives on bombastic money-making?

Features a $15,000 Louis Vuitton bone-shaped leather trunk
www.economist.com/europe/2026/...

No I think the plan is let's stick with "28th regime" and we all move to the icelandic corporate code.

oh gawd yeah nearly as tedious as the magazine interview trope of "Celebrity talks about one thing, another thing, and some super quirky third thing!"

My point is that Falklands was legal under Article 51. Like Ukraine defending itself (or arguably Iraq in 2002). It didn't need any sort of legal endorsement from the UN. Indeed, the invasion was *illegal* from the vantage of the Argentinians.

But also surely the Falklands as well, in that case.

In times of chaos, Europe is the muddled power the world needs In praise of the dreaded European working group

Being more predictable than America, less revanchist than Russia or less autocratic than China is a low bar. But with chaos becoming the norm, Europe’s attachment to rules is a kind of defiance

Special Envoy for the Shield of the Americas -- what a job title

This kind of thing always ends well

ChatGPT can't serve up old quotes from Churchill because... something?

How DARE you insult the tax-collection policies of the State of Eritrea! Have you no shame, sir?

I only *write* the day before. the reporting, interviewing, research, travel, analysis etc is obviously done beforehand. Tuesday is just the writing.

How every Charlemagne column starts. 25 hours to deadline!

Spare a thought for Ursula von der Leyen. If she says anything during a geopolitical crisis, she is immediately accused of over-stepping her mandate and gets criticised. If she says nothing she is accused of being missing-in-action and of the EU not having a clue what's going on. Just can't win!

yes, fair point. And the assumption is that the US would not sanction the ECB directly.
I'm still not sure however that a) there aren't better solutions (eg EU using anti-coercion tools now available) and b) that a digital euro offers something akin to a banking experience for anyone under sanctions

genuine question, what are the benefits of tokenised money if you have (like Europe/India/Brazil etc, unlike America) a functional payments system?

Having "digital euros" in the form of deposits in commercial banks seems to work pretty well. what is the flaw we are fixing?

Given France's updated nuclear doctrine, Germany may soon have the distinction of being the only country ever to have hosted two sets of nuclear weapons controlled by foreign countries.

That's the thing with the digital euro: it's usually the third-best answer to whatever (real) problem exists. It's just that often it's the most politically convenient option.

First, the digital euro wallet as currently conceived would not offer a solution; I think the cap being discussed is 3000 euros per account.

Second, you could achieve the aim of having beyond-sanctions accounts more easily (ie set up a beyond-sanctions bank backed by a national government)

I've seen three different European cities run anti-littering campaigns along the lines of "if you throw stuff out in Paris, it'll end up in the sewers, then out to the ocean, then in the Pacific plastic float!"

Like no, the problem if you litter Paris is that it ends up littering Paris.

But I don't think the Baltics (either the govt or its people) get to decide how they're referred to. It is relevant to point out they are former Soviet republics (it helps readers understand Putin's misguided policy towards them); that's what matters. Nobody is suggesting it's meant as an insult

I will happily argue the contrary. The Baltics *are* former Soviet republics, and it's relevant to point it out in the context of Russian revanchism. That the Baltics don't self-identity that way and what the British government of the time thought is not terribly relevant.

how would a CBDC help? The Spuerkess is presumably worried about its continued access to dollar clearing, without which a modern bank can scarcely exist. Does a "digital euro" help with this? I don't really see it.

I still dislike this kind of thing. Without it being a central point of any piece on the Baltics, it really is fine and relevant to point out that they are former Soviet republics. And what the British government recognised or not is neither here nor there.

COLD

Germany's rotten luck strikes again. After having its spy chief stuck in Ukraine after the war started there four years ago, its EU minister ends up stuck in Cyprus after Iran strikes www.euractiv.com/news/germany...

if you are taken hostage abroad, for example, or run into some other sort of trouble, you'd be extremely grateful for a British passport.