David Farrar: Should NZ join the EU?

Simon Bridges writes:

This came to mind recently when EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen got cosy with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at her 2026 state of the union address over Canada becoming an “associate member” of the European Union. If it’s good enough for them, why not us Kiwis?

Dr Oliver Hartwich: Spurred by heat from Trump, Iceland votes on reopening frozen EU talks

I have always liked Iceland. My first visit was on a cruise ship in the mid-1990s. Reykjavík felt like a town that had grown from a fishing village, and the country behind was mostly empty.

A few years later, I returned for a proper holiday. It confirmed that earlier impression and added more peculiar observations like tiny but ridiculously priced hotel rooms or spotting puffin on the menu of a restaurant in the capital. In the end, I passed on that and had the most expensive pizza in my life instead.

Robert G Patman: Trump’s new security strategy exposes the limits of NZ’s ‘softly-softly’ diplomacy

President Donald Trump’s recently-issued National Security Strategy marks a decisive break in United States foreign policy. It also poses an uncomfortable challenge for New Zealand and other countries that have long depended on a rules-based order.

The document formalises the most significant shift in Washington’s global outlook since 1947. It confirms, as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned earlier this year, that the “West as we knew it no longer exists”.

Brendan O'Neill: Elon Musk is right about the EU

The Brussels oligarchy really is a menace to liberty and sovereignty.

Europhiles – the most maddening tribe on the internet – are coming for Elon Musk. After Musk dared to blaspheme against the Brussels bureaucracy that they so fervently simp for, they called him a stooge of Vladimir Putin. ‘Putin wants a weaker EU’, said the EU-loving centrists of Renew Europe, and now Musk is doing his bidding by calling for a ‘break-up [of] the EU’. It’s the same low trick every time – utter one word of dissent against their beloved EU oligarchy and they’ll have you down as a running dog of Russia.

Dr Oliver Hartwich: The devilish paradox of Trump’s legacy in Europe

There is a devil in European literature who claims an unexpected virtue: he intends evil but accomplishes good.

In Goethe’s masterpiece “Faust,” Mephistopheles – essentially the devil – tells us: “I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”

This paradox from German literature’s greatest work perfectly captures a surprising phenomenon unfolding today: Donald Trump may be the Mephistopheles that Europe did not know it needed.

John Klar: EU Tariffs and Sweeping Climate Directives Threaten Global Trade

The European Union (EU) is facing off with the United States over tariffs, war with Russia, and increased regulations governing corporations doing business on the continent. Some claim globalist NGOs exert undue influence over modern Europe through the union: Pending laws that seek to impose environmental and social rules on all US and international companies resemble a globalized regulatory structure. The showdown is underway.