Insights

Welcome back to the Global Month Ahead, Global Counsel's briefing on the events and stories that will define the month to come. In each episode, Global Macro Associate Director Isabelle Trick will hear from different members of the GC team to preview the month's stories before they are in the headlines.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has entered its second month, and Global Counsel continues to go beyond the headlines to cover the crisis through interactive events, in-depth analysis, and daily briefings.

While the repercussions of the Russian invasion of Ukraine can be felt globally, the surrounding region is undoubtedly the most affected. The Baltics and Central European countries face an existential threat and are looking for security guarantees from the international community. A reprioritisation of public spending is inevitable due to economic worries and the strain…

Anikó Zsebik, Yi-Fang Lee and Alessandro Gangarossa unpack a recent trade squabble between Lithuania and China over the former’s new Taiwan-friendly policies.

What do recent events in Poland tell us about the rule of law in the EU? Stephen Adams, Anikó Zsebik and Denzil Davidson look at how the question of EU-level legislation has collided with current events in Poland and what it means for other member states and the wider debate on sovereignty.

For several years tensions around the conduct of the PiS government have buffeted bilateral relations between Warsaw and Brussels and other members of the European Council without quite reaching breaking point. In part this is because both sides have tiptoed around pushing it there. However, in the wake of the Polish Constitutional Court’s (PCC) ruling on the supremacy of…

Meaningful policy action on climate change entails costs and reforms for almost all economic activity, and at the European level we are starting to see what this means in practice. 

The covid-19 vaccine rollout in Central and Eastern Europe, including the Western Balkans, has not been immune to politicisation. Vaccination is seen as a powerful tool to accelerate post-covid economic recovery alongside stimulus packages, but with Russia and China getting involved, some compare it to the debate on national security concerns about critical infrastructure…

The emergence of fragmented political landscapes has been an increasingly shared phenomena in European capitals in the past decade. The financial crisis was a profound shock for many European traditional centre-left and centre-right parties, which were dropped by the electorates both for their handling of the crisis and its aftermath. In their wake, smaller, often less…

After relief at the agreement on EU spending priorities for 2021-27, the Brussels establishment was caught off-guard last week by vetoes from Hungary and Poland over the obscure-sounding “rule of law conditionality”. A requirement of the European Parliament and of a qualified majority of member states, this affects a tiny proportion of the €1.8 trn package, effectively…