Stanley Pignal
@spignal.bsky.social
Charlemagne columnist & Brussels bureau chief, The Economist. Past stints in Paris, Mumbai, London. Français. Personal feed. Bio 👇. https://medium.com/@spignal/stanley-pignal-bio-2acd9b705ceb Charlemagne@economist.com
If you're going to read a trashy novel – and everyone should read the odd trashy novel – you can do a lot worse than Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer, who just died. I remember reading it age 15 (not so terribly wise in retrospect) pretty much in one sitting, it's like 600 pages long.
The litterature Nobel this week will go to yet another novelist (I bet). It should instead go to an author who had mastered some element of non-fiction. How about Robert Caro, the greatest living biographer? Karl Ove Knausgård, the memoir maestro? Or Emmanuel Carrère, the non-fiction novelist? 🧵
In May I wrote about "Bre-entry"™️, which is back in the news. In short: the EU would *love* to have Britain back (a G7 country with a huge capital market and military). But the main concern will be the enduring fear it would try to leave again. www.economist.com/europe/2026/...
Bre-entry may be the next drama to grip the European Union
An old friend comes knocking
economist.com
Re-upping my Charlemagne from last month on Europe's budding French debt problem. Alas it turns out to have hit the nail pretty close to the head. www.economist.com/europe/2026/...
America has a whopping debt. But Europe has the whopping debt problem
The French-size problem at the heart of the EU
economist.com
S&P 500 unchanged over three months -- with earnings expectations up and price/earnings multiples down. This is *exactly* what you would expect to happen when interestst rates are being driven higher by a mix of growth and inflation. Sometimes markets make sense.
I think the flip-side of diplomatic immunity is you should have to stick to diplomatic business. You can't have a cadre of people shielded from repercussions in their business career because they have diplomatic ties. That was never the idea.
John Reed@johnreedwrites.ft.com · 5d agoManchester City chair shielded by diplomatic immunity as.ft.com/r/e621c125-c...
A town in Germany has banned the laying of Stolpersteine, the "stumbling stones" remembering victims of the Holocaust. A couple of years I interviewed Gunter Demnig, the artist who came up with the scheme, and met the family behind one of the over-100,000 stones. www.economist.com/europe/2023/...
Stolpersteine grieve for victims of the Nazis, one at a time
Gunter Demnig’s paving stones spark countless acts of remembrance
economist.com
Mainstream narrative of China shock decimating EU industry may be overblown • Over past decade, China accounted for just one quarter of growth in bloc's extra-EU imports • China's share of EU’s imports has barely moved over past decade, rising from 20.5% to 22.3% www.economist.com/business/202...
The first thing I will do when I am appointed global dictator is mandate that PDF/report pages have to match, ie if the report page says it's page 28 it HAS TO BE on page 28 of the bloody PDF.
Good piece from @spignal.bsky.social on why Europe’s populists haven’t demonized China. I think the main reason is that they are too busy demonizing their own governments. Paying attention to (and talking about) foreign countries is a step too far. economist.com/europe/2026/...
Why Europe’s populists don’t criticise China
An ideal target gets a free pass from the demagogues
economist.com
Even as most voters still plump for pro-capitalist outfits, parties on the populist left in Europe feel they have the revolutionary wind in their sails. Register to discover why bit.ly/4rEE7I8 Illustration: Peter Schrank
So I think maybe I just figured out why @timeshighered.bsky.social has not reported anything negative about James Orr. I could very well be wrong, but here we go: In 2024, THE signed an agreement with Hungary's Culture and Innovation Ministry which oversees Hungarian higher education..
Samantha Asumadu@samanthaasumadu.substack.com · 2w agoThere is one article that mentions Cambridge Associate Professor James Orr on the @timeshighered.bsky.social site since 2025. There is no photo of him in it. No mention of his alleged misconduct. No mention of his alleged criminal conduct or indeed Christofascism or ethnonationalism.
This is pretty incredible. Stocks of banks, travel agents, gyms, phone companies and other companies who benefit from "consumer inertia" got wallopped yesterday. The common thread: AI agents will allow people to get better deals. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
If Kissinger didn't have to give back his Nobel after Chile and East Timor then let no one ask this goodly man of peace to return the FIFA Peace Prize.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2w agoTrump to the UN: "Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic, and do it quickly? Do I drive them into hell?"
A couple of years ago, as Trump II was starting, I was looking for a way to write about Canada and the EU in a way that wasn't achingly dull. Here's a thought: why doesn't Canada join the EU? Well, as it happens… Some (bylined!) thoughts in The Economist www.economist.com/europe/2026/...
Café Europa newsletter: Canada’s love-in with the EU
Stanley Pignal, our Charlemagne columnist, explores what EU “associate membership” would actually mean for Canada
economist.com
LMFAO -- Trump is holding an event at the White House right now but there's no audio because the press pool isn't there. The Newsmax host notes that this is an example of Trump's attacks on the press "backfiring just a little bit"
French-German spreads now at 100bps, the highest level since July 2012 (the month of Draghi's "whatever it takes" speech). This is NOT Greek crisis territory. But it is becoming pretty uncomfortable both politically and economically.
My most contrarian opinion is that, while you have a constitutional right to print whatever you want, you have no constitutional right to an access badge to the White House. It's very disturbing media are excluded from briefings. But it is an order of magnitude less worrying than actual censorship.
People who have seen the De Gaulle films. Do I need to see them in order, and/or is one of them better than the other?
Trump plans to greet Xi Jinping as he gets off his plane next week. He has only done this for one other leader in his second term. Three guesses who that was.
German chancellor + "frugal" allies: We need a SMALLER EU budget because that's what Draghi recommends. Spanish economy minister: We need a BIGGER EU budget because that's what Draghi recommends. www.politico.eu/article/five... www.politico.eu/article/a-co...
it remains fascinating that google, regularly purveyor of the world's best AI, insists on putting its worst model in front of exactly the people who are hardest to convince AI can help them
Tim Harford@timharford.ft.com · 3w agoI've been checking the source of quotes for my forthcoming book, and the performance of Gemini is extraordinary. I paste the quote into Google, and Gemini will barge in with the wrong answer over and over again. It's not an occasional thing - it's reliably wrong. Very odd.
Bannings kids from social media is a policy that creates more problems than it solves. But the EU's proposed approach - a staggered system that recognises teens can benefit from social connections, but that they should be regulated - is a sensible way to do it. From von der Leyen speech yesterday
People think crude oil is a wild market, but let me tell you about potatoes, man. in Europe we've gone from them being given away for free last year to an impending shortage because of the heat. www.ft.com/content/8eda...
Heatwave triggers potato shortage in Europe
Extreme weather wiped out about 3.1mn tonnes of spuds, worth up to €620mn
ft.com
Good FT take on Canada-EU by @henryjfoy.ft.com and @andybounds.bsky.social. Announcing "associate membership" has a lovely feel, but the reality is likely to be a slog. Germans *on the record* already saying they don't like the term "associate" anything. www.ft.com/content/7b1a...
Why Mark Carney’s romance with Europe can only go so far
Berlin opposes fast track to EU ‘associate membership’ for Canada, with officials warning Ottawa risks angering other partners
ft.com
A reminder that there is no such thing as "associate membership" of the EU, that to create one would require re-opening the EU treaties, which in turn requires referenda in several countries and probably a decade of haggling. or it's a PR thing.
This is it. It finally happened. I need a particular cable, which I know I once possessed, but have since thrown out. Dads everywhere have been vindicated.
