Washington is pushing Europe towards a security order in which America carries less of the burden. Geopolitical Futures sees US negotiations with Moscow over Ukraine and demands for Europeans to defend themselves as parts of the same strategic shift – responsibility is moving back towards regional powers.

Europe survived a bruising year of transatlantic confrontation, but EUISS warns against believing America’s midterm elections will bring the old relationship back. Washington challenged European allies over Greenland, threatened NATO troop withdrawals and piled pressure on the EU over trade and digital regulation.

Europe still talks like a rule-maker in a world increasingly shaped by bargaining, competing powers and countries determined to choose their own partners. DIIS argues that the shift to multipolarity is exposing a serious weakness in European foreign policy – the assumption that European priorities and values will automatically carry universal authority.

Europe creates innovative companies but is struggling to keep them when they need serious money to grow. CER’s policy brief finds a stock-market system losing ground to the US – fragmented exchanges, weak equity investment and too few large companies capable of delivering heavyweight IPOs.

Hungary is undergoing its biggest political overhaul since Viktor Orbán and Fidesz took power in 2010. OSW’s assessment finds that Péter Magyar has used a two-thirds majority and exceptionally strong public support to tear into the institutional system built during 16 years of Fidesz rule, restore ties with Brussels and pull Hungary back towards the Western mainstream.

Germany’s reputation for predictable, consensus-driven politics is taking a serious hit. The AfD’s 43.8 per cent victory in Saxony-Anhalt more than doubled its 2021 vote and left it only three seats short of an absolute majority.

Europe thought it could buy migration security by paying authoritarian neighbours to guard its borders. The Ceuta crisis has exposed how fragile that bargain can become.