In a sign that world geopolitics is shifting before our eyes, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor said ahead of the ongoing summit of the BRICS states that the global order needs a rebalancing away from the Western powers, asserting the BRICS' wish to provide the necessary counterweight.
Each time you think Hungary’s estrangement from the EU couldn’t get any worse, another front opens up - this time, over Budapest's turn at the helm of the rotating six-month EU Council presidency in the second half of 2024.
It is a truism that a political movement debating its reasons for existing knows it’s in trouble. It’s no surprise that the National Conservatism conference held in London this week coincided with the fourteenth year of a Tory government that looks both incompetent and out of ideas, not to mention nearly twenty points behind in the polls.
There was surprise earlier this year when the Swedish Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard – whose government holds the six-month rotating presidency of the EU Council - told reporters that trade access and aid could be denied to countries who refuse to cooperate on migrant returns.
"Come back, Mr President" was Viktor Orbán’s rallying cry at the second annual meeting of the US Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) on Thursday (4 May). It does not take a genius to figure out that it was Donald Trump he was referring to. And the momentum is still building.