The new European leadership team

On international affairs, the new European leadership team will have to deal with an interesting deck of cards. I mean the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, the US Donald Trump, the very strategic Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, the unreliable Boris Johnson in the UK, just to mention some of them. I could add Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu in Israel, if he survives the next round of elections, Nicolás Maduro, and so on. That is a most unique scenario that is waiting for them. The international scene shows all the signs of a perfect storm. And I am not mentioning the tricky situation around Iran, a major epicentre of a potential catastrophe. 

On the domestic front, within the EU space, they will be confronting Matteo Salvini, the strong man in Italy, Viktor Orbán and his neighbours in the Czech Republic and Poland, political instability in Belgium, Spain and Romania, as well as lots of pressure to move faster in areas that divide the European nations, such as the common defence, the climate emergency, the Brexit negotiations, and the pivot to Africa.

This is a most challenging environment. It requires a very strong and united leadership team. Not easy, not easy at all for a team that comes to power almost by chance. Let’s keep watching how strong and determined the new team is.