Set up after World War II with ten members, there are now 32 nations seeking a consensus as they deal with an aggressive Russia and a rising China alongside terrorism, cyber war and budget controversy
Macron's gamble in dissolving parliament has backfired, and the legislature will be reshaped after a surge in support for populism. But an outright majority after run-off voting looks unlikely.
Macron and Scholz have suffered humiliating defeats triggering concern of a bigger shift to the right in France and Germany. If this happens, Europe's power balance could fundamentally transform.
For decades the far right sat on the periphery of Western politics, dismissed as angry skinheads or deluded neo-Nazis by the centrist mainstream. No longer.
A big pro-EU bloc should still hold sway even if the ultra-nationalists make gains. More broadly, the results will act as a barometer of public mood in the first vote since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Twin fears of an inward-looking Donald Trump and a westward-looking Vladimir Putin have left officials in Europe's treasuries urgently revising their budgets to make room for more defence spending.
It is curious that amid the global attention on the Gaza war, very few commentators have remarked on the way that European imperialism laid the foundations for the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The political goal was a US and European effort to demonstrate the capacity for connectivity idea generation, or less generously, to try and out-China the Chinese Belt Road Initiative.
The Saudi pioneer of the prose poem reveals why her recent collections were linked by the theme of water and how the artform means she has lived many lives.
One of the biggest names in the stricken financial sector calls for 'hope' amid the crisis that has reduced millions to poverty and ruined the country's reputation. There is now a detailed plan.
Over 6,000 people have been sheltering in woodland in Olala in Amhara for two months having already fled from civil war. The international community is not doing enough to help.
No stranger to rivalries, the governor of the Central Bank of Libya is technocrat who has had to develop his political wiles, most recently clashing with the prime minister. Is this the next Gaddafi?