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Moldova at the Crossroads: The Political Economy Behind Europe’s Next Enlargement Test

For more than three decades, Moldova has stood somewhere between geography and geopolitics, between a Soviet inheritance and a European ambition. Today, as Chişinău edges closer to the European Union, the country’s journey offers a revealing test case for whether the EU is truly prepared politically, institutionally, and economically to absorb new members in an era defined by war, shifting power balances, and internal fragmentation.

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Moldova at the Crossroads: A Small State Navigating Big Geopolitics

Few countries illustrate Europe’s fractured geopolitical landscape as vividly as Moldova. A nation of under three million people, it has carried the heavy weight of contested histories, overlapping identities, and unresolved conflicts for more than a century. Today, Moldova again finds itself at a moment of profound transformation—caught between war on its border, competing political narratives at home, and the gravitational pull of the European Union.

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Hungary’s Faith Diplomacy: The Rise and Realities of the Hungary Helps Program

In the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade (Külgazdasági és Külügyminisztérium) in Hungary there operates a State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians and for the Hungary Helps Program.¹ According to official descriptions, no other country in the world has a state or diplomatic body with this exact name or mandate.² The budget line for this Secretariat appears in the Ministry’s chapter of the state budget under the title “Hungary Helps Program” (HHP) and at the sub-heading of that name.³ For the current year, the appropriation is approximately HUF 5.6 billion.⁴

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A New Chapter for the Transatlantic Economy

The chandeliers glittered in the ballroom of the Atlantic Council as diplomats, ministers, and executives filtered in for the opening session of the Geoeconomics Forum. The event promised high-level conversation on trade, technology, and global markets, but there was little illusion about the stakes: the EU–US relationship is being reshaped in real time by war, energy shocks, and the race for technological supremacy.

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Tobacco, Regulation, and the Future of Choice in Europe

The European tobacco industry stands at a crossroads. On the one hand, it continues to provide governments with a stable and predictable revenue stream—second only to income tax in Germany, and accounting for up to 5 per cent of annual budgets in countries such as Romania and Poland. On the other, the industry faces mounting political exclusion, regulatory mistrust, and a growing push for prohibitionist approaches that risk undermining both innovation and consumer choice.

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Liberalism’s Crisis of Confidence in Europe

From Brussels to Berlin, Europe’s liberal parties are struggling to define their role in an increasingly fragmented political landscape. Once the kingmakers of the European Parliament, they now find themselves relegated to the fifth-largest group, unable to balance left and right as they once did.

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Sporting Ambitions and Strategic Shifts: How Business, Policy, and Legacy Shape the Future of Athletics

In a world where geopolitical influence, technology, and entertainment converge more than ever before, the business of sport is fast becoming one of the defining arenas of global competition. In the second part of my conversation with Marlon Gilbert-Roberts, CEO of Business to Sports Group (B2S), we delved deeper into the shifting ground beneath international sport—spanning EU regulation, commercial partnerships, emerging markets, and athlete futures.

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From the Courtroom to the Touchline: How Law, Strategy, and Trust Are Shaping the Future of Sport – PART 1

Sport has long since outgrown the confines of stadiums and scoreboards. Today, it is an economic powerhouse, cultural soft power tool, and global platform for technological innovation. Few people understand this complex intersection of law, commerce, and performance better than Marlon Gilbert-Roberts, a former international criminal lawyer turned CEO of the Brussels-based consultancy Business to Sports Group.

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The Brave New Biology of Xenobots

“We are standing at the frontier. And when you stand at the frontier, you must stay curious — and critical.”
— Simon Verghote, ULB researcher in bioethics and synthetic biology

It begins with a frog, and a question as old as philosophy itself. In a laboratory at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Simon Verghote is part of a group exploring xenobots — tiny programmable organisms designed by artificial intelligence, constructed from real living cells.

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