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.

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.

Germany’s political establishment has been hit by a result it can no longer easily contain. The AfD took just under 44 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt, leaving the CDU languishing at just over 17 per cent and putting the nationalist-populist party only three seats short of a majority.

Germany’s post-war political order has taken another heavy blow. The AfD won 43.9 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt, crushing Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU on just 17.4 per cent and coming within three seats of an outright majority.

Germany’s political establishment is facing the result it spent years trying to prevent. The AfD’s 43.8 per cent victory in Saxony-Anhalt is not just another eastern protest – GMF sees it as a direct threat to Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Germany’s post-war political order.