Each year, the European Commission and its implementing partners publish hundreds of EU development tenders, inviting organisations to submit proposals across areas ranging from energy policy and climate action to trade facilitation and critical raw materials. The budgets are significant, the procedures are demanding, and the competition is serious. Yet the volume of activity in this market is deceptive. Many organisations, including consultancies, research institutes, think

Guns without foundations As European leaders commit to historic levels of defence spending, a structural problem is being systematically underweighted in public debate: the basic materials from which modern weapons are made are, to a remarkable degree, sourced from the very states that European rearmament is designed to deter or hedge against. The immediate catalyst for renewed focus is the conflict environment. Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine has driven sustained demand for

On 16 July, the European Commission tabled its plan for the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) , the EU's seven-year budget for 2028–2034. As summer recedes and Brussels' engine whirs back to life, it is a good moment to look under the bonnet. Europe's seven-year budget is never just an accounting exercise. It is a statement of priorities, and, this time, an admission that the world has changed faster than Brussels' machinery was designed to move. Why now?  Because th