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.
A simple snapshot of a small grocery shop in Amsterdam reveals the power of human geography and how it can shape society. Without embracing diversity, European cities cannot re-invent themselves.
The Iran war exposed the risks of being too closely tied to US military posture, which is why some Gulf states are repositioning themselves not merely as consumers of security but as architects of it
Supporting Israel used to help politicians get elected, but with Americans far more critical of Tel Aviv's influence on US policy, it has now become a liability at the ballot box
Sliman Mansour, the renowned Palestinian painter who used clay from his land to make his works after deciding to boycott art materials produced by Israel, has died at the age of 79