One of the quieter diplomatic efforts in the Middle East is the one between Saudi Arabia and Israel on a normalisation deal. Less dramatic than the cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas, those secretive talks continued despite the war in Gaza.

Efforts to normalise relations go back decades, the Abraham accords in 2020 being the furthest they have gotten so far. Then came the 7 October attack, complicating the conclusion of such an accord, though unlikely to derail it. Israel and Saudi Arabia both have a strategic interest in pursuing normalisation, in defeating Hamas and keeping Iran in check. The crucial difference now is Saudi Arabia's insist on recognition of a Palestinian state, which Israel is reluctant to give.

Despite the war, secretive talks continued to be held between the two states, with the US giving Riyadh security guarantees, plus support in civilian nuclear know-how and economic investments in technology.

Normalisation is a big deal for Israel and Saudi-Arabia. A deal would help Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country's de facto leader, deliver on his ambitious Vision 2030 and thus secure his claim to become the next king of Saudi Arabia. It would assure Israel more security, and give it a big partner in the region.

A main tenet is security. Normalisation promises more military cooperation and arms deals between the two nations. Saudi Arabia is an interested customer in Israel’s air defence system. They also use Israel’s spy software to monitor dissidents in the kingdom.

Economically, the deal between the two would invite more investment into the kingdom. Some of the most ambitious projects under the Abraham accords are the fibre optic cable linking Tel Aviv to Persian Gulf countries, as well as a planned railway expansion that would connect Saudi Arabia to Israel via Jordan.

Culturally, normalisation has been in the making for years. Saudi Arabia has reworked its school curriculum to gradually eliminate references to Israel as the enemy and take a more neutral stance. The media has been instrumental too, inviting Israeli officials or airing programmes that promote peace with Israel. Sports plays a crucial role too, with the crown prince's vision to turn Saudi Arabia into a world class venue for sports.

Those diplomatic efforts will have to be carefully pursued not to provoke a revolt of Sunni muslims in solidarity with the Palestinians, as the war continues to cause civilian death and displacement. Saudis will need a two-state solution for normalisation to become acceptable, as Iran is watching this space.

Paola Egonu is without a doubt one of the best athletes Italy has ever produced. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to describe her as the Michael Jordan of women’s volleyball. But after helping her team win gold at the Olympics, she has unwittingly found herself at the centre of a political controversy over Italy’s citizenship laws. It reflects a European trend towards debates about citizenship that will only intensify as ageing populations necessitate more immigration, and with it more new Europeans.

Italy’s current citizenship laws make it easy to be an Italian citizen if you are descended from an Italian, but very hard to be one if you were born in Italy to non-Italian parents. Now almost 6m Italians live abroad, or somewhere around 10% of Italy’s current population. In the meantime, it is a struggle sometimes for those who are born in Italy and have lived there all their lives to gain citizenship as children, if their parents aren’t Italian. Egonu, born to Nigerian parents in Italy, only became an Italian citizen when she was 14.

The Italian centre-left opposition wants to change this law. The PD’s own proposal has been to introduce a jus soli law, which would establish citizenship by birthright. But the issue has also divided the government internally. Forza Italia wants what it has called a jus scholae. This would allow those born in Italy to foreign parents, or those who arrived as young children, to become citizens once they have completed a full five-year school cycle. Lega strongly opposes this, saying that the law is fine as it is.

Within the governing coalition, Forza Italia is fighting an uphill battle. But it helps establish the party’s image more strongly as a voice of modern Italy in the government. It is also, we think, not the last we will hear of the issue. Italy, with one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe, will need immigrants to come as much as anyone else. Many will stay for longer, and have families in the country. Some children of immigrants will be like Egonu, and achieve global renown that makes others rethink what it means to be Italian.

This is not exclusive to Italy either. In various directions, citizenship has become a major topic across Europe. Germany recently changed its previously very restrictive citizenship laws. It allows dual citizenship in more cases, and cut its qualifying period for naturalisation from eight to five years of residency. Children of non-German parents born in Germany now automatically get citizenship after at least five years of residence. Spain's fast-track naturalisation system for nationals of Latin American countries has been an aspect of its recent success with integrating newcomers. 

In others, however, the discourse has gone in the opposite direction. France’s own jus soli laws were a source of controversy, with the far-right Rassemblement National having talked about scrapping it before. The party also wanted to limit the kinds of positions dual citizens could access. Until recently, in the Netherlands Geert Wilders’ PVV wanted to restrict dual citizens’ voting rights.

On both sides of the debate, however, what we have noticed is how much focus there is on edge-cases. Proponents of changing citizenship laws often point to exceptional individuals, especially athletes like Egonu. Opponents gesture at deviants and criminals, or possible security threats. But neither of these describe the vast majority of people in this situation, who live fairly regular lives in their families’ adopted homes.  

We recall the role Donald Tusk played during the Brexit standoff in the UK, when, as president of the European Council, he personally campaigned during the 2019 election for anti-Brexit parties. We thought at the time that this act was massively counter-productive, and it may have played a role in the UK’s big pro-Brexit swing later that year.

This weekend we were reminded of Tusk’s diplomatic skills when he posted a message on social media that read as follows:

“To all the initiators and patrons of Nord Stream 1 and 2. The only thing you should do today about it is apologise and keep quiet.”

Considering that his country has not acted on the European arrest warrant by the German public prosecutor and allowed the prime suspect to leave the country, this is not something we would have advised him to write. We agree with him that the entire Nord Stream project violated Europe’s joint security interests. We said so long before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. It also caused long-term damage to the German economy because it discouraged diversification into sectors that are less dependent on energy. But given the current political climate in Germany, we think it is counter-productive to treat German outrage about the Nord Stream bombing in that way. It is one thing to oppose Nord Stream 1 and 2. It is another to support its violent destruction. We recall Jens Stoltenberg, the former Nato general secretary, as saying that an attack on the Norwegian pipeline system would constitute a Nato Art. 5 trigger. Germany is mercifully not treating the pipeline explosions as an act of war. But it constitute an act of sabotage, that raise important political questions about Germany’s future support for Ukraine.

Handelsblatt writes that that the German public prosecutor and German and foreign security services have concluded, independently of each other, that the explosions were the work of a Ukrainian commando. Theoretically, this does not exclude the possibility of a false flag attack, but they are dismissing this possibility. The lack of concrete evidence of Russian involvement weakens the support for that theory. The German government says nothing and points to the investigation. The CDU is demanding full transparency from Germany’s allies. That’s the political scene into which Tusk launched his message to shut up and apologise.

The Wall Street Journal story last week was the first cohesive, yet still incomplete, account of what has happened. It is already starting to play into German politics. Sahra Wagenknecht has elevated German policy on Ukraine to her main campaign theme in the three eastern German elections next month. She has also shifted her previous stance on the AfD. She no longer rules out the possibility of supporting AfD legislation, as she put it, should this situation arise in one of three state parliaments. At the same time, she erected a political firewall against all parties that support US missiles on German soil. She now accuses Ukraine of terrorism. If she gets the numbers that polls are currently suggesting, we would expect her message to have a profound effect on German politics. The polls are difficult to read. Her party is new. We should prepare for results that lie well outside the error margins of opinion polling. But she is on course to displace the Left Party as the main political force to the left of the SPD. As Germany approaches a federal election next year, we would expect Ukraine to become a major campaign theme.

Could Taylor Swift influence Austria’s upcoming general elections next month? Her three concerts in Vienna were cancelled after a terror plot was foiled. The young Beran A., an Austrian citizen with North Macedonian roots, had planned to drive into the crowd of Swifties, then rampage through them with a machete and blow himself up at the end. The media refers to it as an Isis-inspired terror attack. Its political ramifications may just have started with a focus on security policies and immigration.

Austria’s intelligence service did not find out about this threat, but got tipped off by various other intelligence services, including from the US. This is a story in itself.

Austria’s former intelligence service, the BVT, was considered untrustworthy and compromised due to Russian infiltration. Western intelligence services have become reluctant to share information with the Austrians for that reason. In 2018, the BVT was raided by the police, and its boss was suspended by then-interior minister Herbert Kickl, who now heads the far-right Freedom Party. In 2021, the current government, a coalition between the conservative People's party and the Greens, closed the BVT and replaced it with the Directorate of State Security and Intelligence, the DSN.

Karl Nehammer, the Austrian chancellor, has been promoting cooperation with other intelligence services to foil the Swift plot as an example that Austria’s reputation abroad has been rebuilt. The prime minister calls to expand the intelligence service's powers to combat terrorism. One tool for this is the so-called Bundestrojaner, a software similar to the Israeli Pegasus, that allows intelligence services to monitor peoples’ desktop computers, laptops and smartphones, including their social media postings. This proposal was voted down in the Security Council meeting on Tuesday, including by its own coalition partner, the Greens. Such a law may also be ruled unconstitutional by the courts.

The far-right Freedom party, the FPÖ, is calling instead for a ban on political Islam as well as an investigation into what happened. The Greens want an investigation too, including by the Control Commission for the Protection of the Constitution into how fast the DSN passed its information on to the military to safeguard public and national security.

The elections are only a month away, and the foiled terror plot is likely to frame the debate. Kickl’s Freedom party is leading the polls with 27%, ahead of the conservative People's party with 23% and the Social Democrats with 22%. Over the past month the Freedom party has been losing while the People's party has been gaining in the polls. Could this event change their trajectory?

The People's party will continue to give itself the credit on security by undoing the old BVT intelligence service, pointing fingers at how Kickl let the old intelligence service continue. The background of the attacker matters too. He was a second-generation Muslim immigrant, born and raised in Austria, who apparently became radicalised online via sermons uploaded by hate preachers from around the German-speaking world. Immigration is important for all Austrian voters on the right, but in particular for far-right voters. Their Freedom party stands to benefit the most from this.

Wildfires have been a regular summer occurrence in Greece. This year’s mega fire may not have been the largest, but it is the first time that one has spread into the suburbs of Athens, destroying or damaging apartment blocks and businesses. This comes after the government had promised a more modern and efficient approach towards fire prevention and firefighting.

There were images of people standing on their balcony with hoses trying to prevent the fire from reaching their apartments, and fire fighters aided by volunteers extinguishing fires at businesses in normally busy streets. One woman working in a flower business did not escape the fire. The magnitude of the fire and the fact that it reached the greater Athens area, where nearly half of all Greeks live, shocked everyone. Commentators and local media already treat this as a major operational and political failure of Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government. An assessment of why the fire could spread so fast and could not be stopped before reaching the urban neighbourhoods will ultimately determine the political costs for the government.

Mitsotakis has faced his fair share of natural disasters. During his five years in power Greece has seen not only fires, but also floods and even snow blizzards. Only last year Greece had seen the largest fire ever, destroying 96,000 hectares in Evros. This year, the fire was 10,000 hectares and reached the capital. Unlike in northern EU member states, where natural disasters are often a regional competence, in Greece it is the responsibility of the national government, and thus it gets the full blame if things go wrong. Operational mishaps can easily turn into a political crisis.

Summer is the firefighting season in all Mediterranean countries. The challenges they pose are not getting smaller due to climate change. Northern EU countries are sending some of their fire fighters to support their Greek colleagues for this period. After every fire, the government gets judged due to the level of preparedness and operational response.

Usually wildfires destroy natural habitats, which the government then promises to replant, and some houses that needs rebuilding. Mitsotakis predecessor, Alexis Tsipras, faced one of the worst political backlashes after 104 people died in a fire in Mati, a holiday seaside town close to Athens. This year’s fire was not as deadly, but it did reach the outskirts of Athens itself. A hospital had to be evacuated and people had to be notified. A new level of response was necessary.

Could the fire have been contained earlier? Government officials promised ahead of the summer better prevention using AI and drones for constant aerial patrols. Questions from the opposition parties are already piling up, amongst them whether the government spent enough on fire prevention and firefighting. Macropolis cites a think tank study suggesting that Greece only claimed €5.3m out of the earmarked €556m of the recovery fund. This low absorption rate suggests that there is clearly some unpreparedness in tapping into the recovery funds.

It is astonishing how weak the European response to a potential escalation in the Middle East is. Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer and Olaf Scholz yesterday issued a joint statement urging Iran and its allies to refrain from attacks that would endanger a ceasefire in Gaza. Israel was not mentioned once. Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been the main mediators to get Israel and Hamas to restart negotiations on a ceasefire and hostage release this Thursday. This comes as Iran is expected to retaliate against Israel’s twin killing of the leader of Hamas’s political wing in Iran and a senior commander of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The US is ramping up its deterrence capacities in the region with the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, as well as a submarine carrying guided missiles. Everyone is waiting for Iran to make its move, hoping that it will show restraint.

With all this noise of the war, the prospect of a two-state solution is slipping away. It never was on Benjamin Netanyahu’s agenda. The Israeli Attorney General also raised concerns about Netanyahu single-handedly deciding on matters such as the ceasefire and hostage deal, or the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran which could trigger a larger war in the region. Haaretz writes that those decisions are to be taken jointly by the cabinet, where the prime minister should be considered as the first amongst equals, not as the sole ruler of the cabinet. Netanyahu insists on total victory, and reprimanded Yoav Gallant, his defence minister, for questioning this war goal. Netanyahu’s total victory includes the assassination of Hamas's leadership. This includes Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the 7 October attacks, who is now Hamas's political leader and chief negotiator. These two goals, negotiating a ceasefire and total victory, are ultimately incompatible.

There are reasons to be alarmed by how this war altered Israel’s own reality and what could emerge after the war. Ilan Baron and Ilai Saltzman warn in their article in Foreign Affairs that the country is on an increasingly illiberal, violent, and destructive path that could lead to its own undoing. Israel is becoming increasingly authoritarian, not only towards Palestinians but towards its own citizens too. The brutality of the military occupation and the imperatives of being an occupying military power have a corrupting effect on all of Israeli society. This could end up for Israel being run by a Jewish judicial and legislative council and right-wing religious extremists, nothing short of a Jewish version of Iran’s theocracy, they warn. All this is the longer term context to what is happening now. And today’s actions will determine which way it can go.

The US plans to put a take-it-or-leave-it compromise for a cease fire on the table. What next? We know where Donald Trumps stands. One question is whether Kamela Harris, if she were to win November's election, would be tougher on Netanyahu than Joe Biden was.

Why do rich countries have a such a problem with immigration? They are the ones whose workforce is shrinking and whose economies need immigration to continue to function. But not all countries can integrate immigrants well and match them with their skill shortage profiles, while xenophobia is on the rise.

There is no escape. Migration will be a reality as long as political conflict and climate change ravage our planet. The recent boom in migration may have passed, its peak as the Economist suggests. This is partly due to less job vacancies and increased anti-immigration measures. The EU concluded morally dubious pacts with African countries to deter migrants from coming and increased its deportations. Some EU countries refuse to take more migrants, while others have zero-migrant targets in their policy agendas. Far-right parties are increasingly voted into power, and bring with them an anti-immigrant policy. The US is riding the anti-migrant wave too. Donald Trump uses migration as his card against the Democrats, promising mass deportation of illegal immigrants if elected into power, and to continue building his famous border wall to prevent further migration. Mass deportations could have harmful effects on services, where migrants used to work, driving up costs for the whole economy.   

Countries experiment with how to deport migrants. Not only are those arriving by boat or foot illegally facing higher risks of being returned. The UK, Canada and the US are also cracking down on student permits for migrants whose intention is to work. Migrants get blamed for abusing the social systems, for bringing in drugs and crimes, though data seem to suggest that there is not much difference between the migrant community and their hosts.

The rise in migration provoked an unsettling desire of far-right parties and their supporters for getting rid of immigrants as the fear of violence and disorder grows. The division into them and us is getting fuelled by the populist media and politicians with their focus on deportation and deterrence.

They rely on stoking up fears and nostalgia. The recent riots in the UK against Muslim communities revealed a shocking degree of Islamophobia, exacerbated by misinformation and far-right influencers. The trigger was the stabbing of three young girls in Southport, in north-western England. Muslims were immediately blamed, wrongly as it turned out. Taylor Swift’s cancelled concerts in Vienna due to a discovered plan for a terror attack by Islamic State sympathisers is likely to be seized upon as another example of how our way of life is compromised.

And yet, EU countries with their shrinking and ageing populations, and increased healthcare services, are reliant on migrants. Countries like Germany face acute labour shortages that cannot be closed without migrants. This contradiction remains unaddressed. 

Is inflation still a monetary phenomenon? Can it be a bureaucratic one? We see evidence of a self-sustaining inflation dynamics due to red tape. It affects certain sectors, and others not at all. As the world becomes more digitial, the problem will get worse.

We have seen in the UK the number of regulations rising since Brexit and the pandemic. Inflation increased mostly in highly regulated sectors like electricity and childcare, while products in highly competitive markets like television, clothing and toys, products have actually recorded a significant drop in prices. These should be one-off price level effects in those regulated sectors, not a source of continued inflation. Once a kindergarten has arranged its affairs to comply with the latest health and safety regulations, childcare prices should no longer need to rise. Unfortunately, this has not been the experience.

In our increasingly digitalised world, regulation begets regulation. More security features will become necessary that requires dedicated staff or outsourcing which ultimately means more costs for the consumer.

Over the past decade, markets have changed structurally. Our transactional lives have become increasingly digital, be it for money, work, knowledge or purchases. Banks are closing down their branches, working from home became the new thing since the pandemic, news are read online, and delivery services bring whatever you order online directly to your home. In urban areas one can stay at home without ever going out and still participate in most markets be it labour, product or leisure.

But this retreat from the physical world of interaction also has its price. Trust is something that not easily translates into the digital world. Those who sell have to gain a track record first. There are new security features for transactions too that add to an increasingly complex process. We all have to click now many times on captcha photos to proof that we are not a robot before we can enter the next window. We also have to assure banks every new transaction that we know whom we are dealing with and that this is indeed no fraud. 

The internet is a truly global market where rules are set by the provider, not the government. Protection is thus also taking many new forms in this world where no single institution acts as a guarantor of last resort. Regulators have been trying to define common rules for this unwieldy global market. National and European regulators protect property rights for services by regulating the usage rights geographically. Insurers demand new procedures from online suppliers to limit their exposures. Privacy laws in the EU and the UK are now holding companies accountable for ensuring the privacy of customer data, be it their finances or their email address. To do this well means a company has to check on security features with all its service providers. While cloud and software solutions is to facilitate the online experience of the customer, the legal responsibilities behind are getting more complex.

Then there is the US, with its foreign policy drive to sanction countries that is to be policed in the transactional sphere. We experience ourselves that we have to fill in many more due diligence forms with our US clients to ensure them that our source material is not compromised. We had calls with onboarding teams of financial companies that had to check that our procedures were up to their standards. Since Brexit we also had to prove that we existed as a legitimate company to our EU customers that had been with us for a decade. All these are cost factors for every company.

We do not think that we are yet the end of this regulatory inflation dynamic. We observed that those questionnaires became more sophisticated and diverse over the years. We have no doubt that this created a market for new experts to excel on what they are doing and to respond to quite diverse security demands. This comes at a cost for all market participants.

The drive to protect increases prices and thus inflation. It creates a new market to insure sellers and buyers, and to help them prove that they are who they said they are, and that they do what they said they do. It used to be so easy in the physical world. Now we have created many more steps to replace trust with byte-sized processes, and there are no limits to how far this can go.

It is no surprise that the economic climate in France has deteriorated since the surprise dissolution of the National Assembly. The prospect of a hung parliament with no clear majority for a government suggests political paralysis at best, and chaos at the worst. Uncertainty about widely different outcomes in politics puts business investments on hold in a time when France should expect a boost from the Olympic games, which are starting today. Insee calculated in the spring that the Olympics could add 0.5pp in GDP and that France could achieve 1.1% growth. This growth scenario is about to fade into the distance.

Business morale is low after the announcement of the snap elections. The Insee business climate index has recorded a fall of 5pp in July down to 94. Business prospects have deteriorated in industries and in services. Only construction has been holding up, at only 1pp down.

It is the first survey conducted after Emmanuel Macron’s announcement of the dissolution of the assembly. Most of them did not record the outcome, however. Depending on the sector, between two thirds to three quarter of the survey responses came back before the outcome of the second round. So the next survey may show an even worse deterioration. Business climate surveys are a slightly delayed snapshot of the mood in industry, retail and construction sector. They reflect what is known at the time. When circumstances change, so do the responses. Without hard data it is difficult to know what those mood indicators actually mean.

But to assume that the political impasse has an effect is a save assumption to make. Bruno Le Maire also warned that it will be vital for business that a government is nominated  in August to end the political immobility that is costly for economic growth and public finances.

Politics is not the only factor, however. France, like Germany, is affected by the deterioration of the global economic outlook. Geopolitical risks due to the wars, a slowdown in the Chinese economy, weaker growth prospects in the euro area, and an uncertain outcome from US elections are global risks.

The question is whether France will be fast to adapt and reinvent itself. That very much depends on where the attention of the next government, and in fact the whole nation, will be. On repealing the pension reform or encouraging new investment and businesses. Voters opted for the first. No time for business people to be optimistic.

One of the first Netflix shows we can remember watching wasn’t in English, but in Spanish. Casa de Papel, or Money Heist, was a fun and quirky crime drama originally broadcast in Spain on domestic TV. Netflix acquired the international broadcasting rights, and brought the show around the world in 2017. Netflix employed this business strategy many times over afterwards. The firm would find a non-English show, buy up its distribution rights, and use dubbing and subtitles to bring it to a much wider audience. Eventually it started commissioning its own, like the Korean thriller Squid Game in 2021.

Thanks to its first-mover advantage, Netflix has now all but won the streaming wars. It has more subscribers than its rivals combined, and has achieved profitability. In the last quarter, it far exceeded Wall Street’s expectations for its subscriber figures, and has a uniquely international footprint amongst the mostly American video streaming platforms.

Netflix, with its international strategy, is a beneficiary and progenitor of one of the big forces of our time – cultural globalisation. Its rise lagged its older sibling, economic globalisation, only taking off when the internet became widespread and more accessible. But it has had more staying power too. The world is becoming more economically protectionist. There is no sign yet, however, of our increasing cultural interconnectedness abating.

Spanish crime shows and Korean dramas are just one manifestation. Pop stars are now global, as Taylor Swift has proven. But they are also more diverse. Before Swift, the big global pop phenomenon was the boy band BTS, again from South Korea. They were preceded by Despacito, a Spanish-language Puerto Rican song that became a global hit in 2017 after a remix was released featuring Canadian singer Justin Bieber.

The internet may not have changed our economies as significantly as we hoped. Hence Robert Solow’s famous quip about seeing computers everywhere, except for the productivity statistics. But it has changed our societies. In our own immediate social spaces, many of us have become more isolated and atomised. But it has never been easier to connect with someone who shares the same interests as us, on the other side of the world.

It’s not unusual now either to hop straight from playing a Swedish-developed video game with someone from Indonesia that they’ve never met in person to an Indian YouTube video. Machine translation has made this even easier. As long as you are communicating with someone over text, they can speak in their language, and you in yours, in virtual real-time. Wikipedia, one of the genuine marvels of the internet, gives us access to almost anything we could want to know about almost anywhere in the world for free, at our fingertips.

This is at odds with a political climate that seems increasingly beholden to political nationalism and economic protectionism. It almost feels like a reaction to this more open world – the first instinct is to shut borders, both to goods, and people, maybe in an attempt to escape outside ideas too.

It also poses a problem for our own ideas about how nationalism takes root. Many of the clearest manifestations of nation-states are economic: trade barriers, tax systems, social transfers, and the like. But mainstream political-scientific theories of nationalism are mostly cultural in origin. They are descendants of Benedict Anderson’s concept of the imagined community.

The idea is that nations are rooted in the notion that a group of people share an existence, and understanding, with people who occupy a given place, but who they have never met. Literacy and the printing press are the big facilitators of nationalism, and borders are its most concrete manifestation. Culture takes geography as its raw material – poetry, novels, or songs about mountains, forests, seas, and rivers, all connecting people to place. Then it imposes its new realities back on geography.

We face, however, a period in which this is breaking down. The imagined communities people inhabit are increasingly virtual spaces, unconnected to where they are physically in the world. They may well be more like communities of interest, and not as exclusive as the old nationalist communities. But this poses difficulties for the way we think about the relationship between our politics and our identity. Either we have to rethink the imagined community, and its relationship to nationalism, or we need to rethink the nation.

There are more practical difficulties for those of us who support European integration too. At first glance, cultural globalisation is great. National borders have been inhibitors of closer relations across Europe, and one of our biggest issues has been language gaps. But many attempts at fostering a stronger EU have focused on setting up new European borders, and trying to create a new European identity to supplant old national ones. What if, like the nations, this is now obsolete? Perhaps Europe itself becomes irrelevant.

World events today bear this out. Both in the US and Europe, how we have reacted to Israel’s war in Gaza demonstrates the continued power of globalisation. Many of us, especially younger people, mostly find out about and experience the conflict through social media, not legacy media with its national perspectives. It has produced a kind of radical empathy that transcends our borders, regardless of the side people take. But here in Europe, that debate has, perhaps, come to overshadow our own interest in what’s going on in the next country or two over from us.