Ireland took over the rotating presidency of the EU Council this week, and while here covering the launch I stopped by the Port of Cork in Cobh, formerly known as Queenstown. From here at “Heartbreak Pier”, where I’m standing in the video, my great great great grandfather Daniel Keating Jr immigrated to New York in 1860. This was the last thing in Europe he ever saw.

He was escaping wretched poverty and starvation as a result of the potato famine, which had hit his town of Skibbereen outside Cork particularly hard. He sailed to America in search of a better life - and more than anything, in search of hope. He might have been bemused to know that 146 years later, his great great great grandson would make the same journey in reverse. Not for economic necessity as was the case for him, but also in search of hope.

In this video shot in Cobh port, I talk about how when I emigrated from the United States to Europe at the end of 2006, people in both the US and EU couldn’t quite grasp the concept. The US doesn’t have a tradition of emigration, only immigration. We’re taught from a young age, in both Europe and America, that the US is the place where dreams come true. Why would anyone leave? Having grown up in American society, I wasn’t all that surprised that people in the US didn’t quite get the idea that I was leaving and did not have the intention of coming back. But what really took me aback was that Europeans also didn’t get it. Time after time, I encountered confusion at the idea that I would leave the US and not want to go back.

So on this 4th of July, I reminisced about this time period, back before the Trump era when Europeans found it strange that an American would want to leave America. It’s a topic that’s been coming up a lot during the readings and interviews for the French edition of my book, Le Continent Captif. I’ve stressed this idea of being an emigrant rather than an “expat”. But I’ve also stressed how different this experience is for an American vs any other immigrant, because we can never really escape our home country. It follows us wherever we go.

I hope you enjoy the video, and happy 4th of July for those who celebrate.

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Italian-American relations have been thrown into chaos this week after a very public spat between Donald Trump and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. But as I wrote earlier this week, this is about much more than who asked who for a selfie. This was an abrupt change of strategy not just for Meloni, a former Trump ally, but for Europe as a whole. The far-right Italian primer minister is one of if not the most politically smart leaders we have in the EU right now, and she is without a doubt the most powerful woman in Europe. So the fact that she has chosen this moment to publicly break with Trump tells us a lot about the point of weakness the US president is now at following the Iran War debacle.

I talked about what the Meloni-Trump spat means for Europe, and whether other leaders will follow her in growing a spine, with Luke Johnson from the Public Sphere Substack. We also talked about the backstory behind the treaties governing the use of US bases in Europe, the context behind all this that was largely missing from a lot of the media coverage.

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On Thursday night, at the June European Council summit, EU prime ministers and presidents discussed whether they should switch to a tougher strategy on EU-China relations. Frustrations with China dumping exports into the EU market (while not allowing EU companies access to the Chinese market) have reached boiling point. Even Bejing’s biggest European trade partner Germany is ready to do something about it (or at least, that’s what Chancellor Olaf Scholz is saying publicly).

But not everyone is in agreement. While France (backed by Italy) is pushing for a tougher line, Germany has been more reticent while Spain has questioned the wisdom of starting a trade war with China just as Europe is being abandoned (and threatened) by its longtime ally the United States.

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On 4 June, Le Continent Captif, the French edition of my book The Owned Continent, was published. I’m now doing promotion rounds for the book in French (keep an eye on the events section of the website) and the first stop was a reading at Librebook multilingual bookshop in the expat-heavy Brussels neighbourhood of Ixelles. It follows a reading of the English book there in March.

Thanks to everyone who came out for the reading, we had a really good discussion there with some excellent questions.

The reviews are coming in from France. This one from l’Express has a headline focused on one very small part of the book saying European federalists should embrace the fact that English has become a lingua franca for the union understood by more than half of EU citizens. I knew this would strike a nerve in France, which has fiercely resisted this development for years. But it’s really not at all the point of the book, I’m not even advocating for any action on that front! I’m simply asking for people in France to stop denying the current linguistic reality in Europe.

Anyway the review itself is quite positive and focuses on the actual topic of the book (resisting American dominance), I think the headline editor just saw a click-bait opportunity to lead with this one small part of the review. Fair enough, I guess I shouldn’t complain if it gets more people to read it. But I really hope I don’t end up getting sidetracked by this one point in all my French interviews, it really isn’t important enough to merit such long debate in my opinion. But I know other people feel differently, and I’m willing to defend my position that resisting English is counter-productive for Europe.

You can purchase the French or the English edition at Librebook, Waterstones or The European Bookshop in Brussels. For more purchasing options, click here.

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GLOBSEC, an annual event that combines Davos and the MSC with a focus on central Europe, took place in Prague this week. Dave Keating from Gulf Stream Blues and Julien Hoez from The French Dispatch were both there moderating panels, and in this live video they discussed their observations from the conference and what it says about the readiness of Europe’s leaders to accept reality when it comes to the new USA.

Also discussed: what is needed to make the EU ready to stand up to America and finally become a sovereign independent power - and why the establishment’s visceral reaction against treaty change is a major mistake.

Posts mentioned during the video:

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In today’s Substack video I talked about the summit of EU prime ministers and presidents taking place in Cyprus today and the planned dinner discussion about the EU’s Article 42.7 inserted into the 2009 Lisbon Treaty and how it would work in practice.

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My quick take on what yesterday’s surprise tsunami of a defeat for Viktor Orban means both in practical terms for the EU and Ukraine and in more symbolic terms for the White House’s regime change efforts in Europe.

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Following similar threats over the past days from his secretary of state and secretary of war, Donald Trump has today said he is considering taking the United States out of NATO in retaliation for European countries not joining his war on Iran. But his words reflect a far more troubling reality than his empty threats: the US is already effectively out of NATO, even if it technically remains in.

“I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” Trump told The Telegraph newspaper in an apparent cold call. The comments came hours after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News that if Europe doesn’t join this war then the US may leave NATO and pull its troops and bases out of Europe. “NATO wasn’t just about defending Europe, but allowing us to have military bases in Europe for our

Donald Trump has been badgering European countries to join the Iran War now that he is losing it. But he did not consult them beforehand, and did not try to assemble a ‘coalition of the willing’ as George W. Bush did before the Iraq War. Now that he is flailing, he wants to draw Europeans into his mess. As one French general put it last week, Europeans joining this war now would be like buying a ticket for the Titanic after it already started sinking. And yet, we see some countries slowly getting drawn in - most notably the UK.

I spoke with Luke Johnson from the Public Sphere Substack about how the war is impacting Europe and what European leaders should do. We discussed my Substack post from last week where I explored whether it would make sense to agree to Trump’s demand to send ships to the strait of Hormuz in exchange for concessions on Ukraine and tariffs. In the end, I concluded that such a bargain might sound like a smooth play at first, but when you fully explore it, you realise it doesn’t make any sense.

We also discussed why Europe’s failure to ramp up renewables after the loss of Russian gas in 2022 has made it very vulnerable in the current crisis, particularly for the least-prepared countries including Germany and Italy. Unfortunately, I concluded, the instinct of many European leaders right now seems to be to halt climate action and renewables investment in reaction to the current crisis, as we saw at last week’s European Council summit.

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Thanks to everyone who came to The Owned Continent book reading and Q&A at Librebook bookstore tonight, it was a great conversation and I was really grateful for all the thoughtful questions from the audience.

The conversation was hosted by Jakob Hanke Vela, Brussels Bureau Chief for the German newspaper Handelsblatt and former author of Politico Playbook.

Stay tuned to the book’s events page for news about future readings in Brussels, London and Berlin!

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