The European Commission wants to be seen as Europe’s strategic brain. This report asks how much steering power it actually has. The answer is uncomfortable. Brussels can frame debates, launch initiatives and warn about risks, but when hard choices appear, control slips back to national capitals. Strategy is talked up, not locked in.

Europe’s far right is watching Washington, and it likes what it sees. This study argues that a second Trump era would not just shake the US system but turbocharge radical right movements across Europe. The shock is not ideological inspiration alone. It is the signal that disruption works and that liberal guardrails can be bent or ignored.

France still talks like a global player, but this analysis shows how domestic chaos is hollowing out its international role. Political fragmentation, protest politics and permanent campaigning are dragging foreign policy down to size. Paris wants influence abroad while barely holding authority at home.

The analysis takes stock of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s first hundred days and finds a government eager to signal strength but constrained by the same limits that trapped its predecessors. Rhetoric has sharpened, priorities look clearer, and ambition is back in Berlin. The problem is delivery.

Europe’s China policy is being rewritten by events it does not control. This report maps the geopolitical forces pushing Brussels from naïve engagement toward guarded competition, and exposes how slow, divided and reactive the shift remains. As rivalry hardens, Europe talks tougher but still struggles to turn awareness into leverage.

Europe says it is getting serious about China. This report suggests otherwise. Across trade, technology and security, the EU is still caught between recognition and reluctance. The risks are clearer than ever, but action remains cautious, uneven and heavily constrained by dependence and division.

Germany’s China policy has flipped from cosy commerce to uneasy competition, and this report explains why the old model finally broke. Berlin spent years selling the idea of win-win trade while piling up dependency and risk. Now reality has intruded. China is no longer just a market. It is a strategic challenger, and Germany is scrambling to adjust without wrecking its own economy.