分类： politics

France’s political landscape has been upended by a historic announcement: 37-year-old Gabriel Attal, the youngest person to ever hold the post of French Prime Minister, officially declared his candidacy for the 2025 presidential election on Friday. The centrist contender made his announcement against a backdrop of clear blue skies in the small rural village of Mur-de-Barrez, a strategic choice aimed at addressing longstanding criticism that centrist parties lack deep roots in France’s countryside ahead of a contest that will likely be defined by the battle against the rising far-right National Rally (RN).

In his opening remarks to supporters, Attal pushed back against the stagnation that has come to define mainstream French politics in recent years. “I can’t take this kind of French politics anymore, where it’s just 50 shades of managing decline,” he told the crowd, positioning himself as a fresh alternative to both establishment gridlock and far-right populism. When he took office as Prime Minister in 2024 at age 34, Attal made history as France’s youngest head of government, and his rapid ascent through the political ranks has already drawn widespread comparisons to current President Emmanuel Macron, who won the Elysee Palace at 39 in 2017, becoming France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon. Attal will turn 38 in March, just one month before the scheduled April presidential vote, which Macron will not contest as he steps down after two terms.

Attal’s entry into the race creates a crowded field of high-profile candidates from across the political spectrum. He joins former center-right Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, 55, who now leads his own Horizons party, and 74-year-old hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon as major declared contenders. For the far-right RN, the 2025 election represents the party’s strongest chance to seize the presidency in its history, with either party leader Jordan Bardella, 30, or former candidate Marine Le Pen expected to stand as the party’s nominee.

A product of France’s elite education system and an openly gay politician raised in Paris, Attal has opened up about his personal identity in recent months as he lays groundwork for his campaign. In a book published last month, the candidate dedicated an entire chapter to his partner, Stephane Sejourne, a European Commissioner and former French minister whom Attal describes as “the man of my life.” Attal has also spoken publicly about his mixed cultural background and experiences of prejudice: his father is Jewish, his mother follows Russian Orthodox Christianity, and he has said he has faced both anti-Semitism and homophobia throughout his life and career.

Attal’s short tenure as Prime Minister came to an abrupt end last year when President Macron dissolved the lower house of parliament and called snap legislative elections, a risky political gambit designed to halt the RN’s growing momentum that ultimately backfired spectacularly. The result was months of crippling political deadlock and a hung parliament, where the RN emerged as the largest single party in the legislature. Shortly after the dissolution, Attal formally distanced himself from Macron’s government, clearing the way for his independent presidential bid.

On the campaign trail, Attal already faces stiff competition from within the centrist and center-right space, most notably from Philippe, who led Macron’s first government as Prime Minister and has built a strong independent political base. Current polling consistently shows Philippe performing better than other centrist candidates in a hypothetical runoff against the RN nominee. Still, Attal has wasted no time in positioning himself as a candidate connected to working and rural French voters, a contrast to the common critique that Macron’s Renaissance party is too rooted in Parisian elite circles. “The day we stay locked in Parisian offices, in ministries, is the day politics stops,” Attal said in his launch speech. After entering politics in his early 20s, Attal climbed the ranks quickly: he won a seat in the National Assembly in 2017, the same year Macron was first elected, before going on to serve as government spokesperson, budget minister, and education minister between 2023 and 2024. During his time as education minister, he gained national attention for his work addressing school bullying and his controversial ban on the abaya, a loose full-length garment worn by Muslim women, in public schools.

Closing his launch speech, Attal struck an optimistic tone about France’s future, pushing back against narratives of inevitable national decline. “Having travelled a lot in France and met many French people, I’ve come to a conviction — a very strong one — that our finest chapters are still ahead of us,” he said.

When former U.S. President Donald Trump recently suggested that longstanding American arms sales to Taiwan could be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Beijing, it sent shockwaves through global diplomatic circles. For ordinary residents of Taipei, however, the moment has underscored a bleak reality: the island’s security trajectory is ultimately out of their hands.

One week has passed since Trump made the controversial remarks during interviews with Fox News and on Air Force One, and intense speculation continues to swirl over whether decades of consistent U.S. policy toward the democratically governed island could be fundamentally upended. The context of this uncertainty stretches back nearly 50 years, when the United States officially shifted its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. Even without formal diplomatic ties, Washington has remained Taiwan’s most critical international security partner and primary arms supplier, a commitment codified in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act passed by U.S. Congress, which legally requires Washington to provide defensive arms to the island.

Despite widespread anxiety among Taiwanese government officials, who have spent weeks anxiously awaiting Trump’s final decision on a new pending arms package, public reaction on the streets of Taipei has been marked by a quiet, fatalistic calm. Many residents have long held deep reservations about the practical value of additional U.S. weaponry in the face of China’s persistent claims that Taiwan is an inalienable part of its territory, and Beijing’s repeated threats to use force to assert control if necessary.

Nicole Lee, a 46-year-old nurse in Taipei, said she does not believe advanced military hardware would shift the balance of power significantly if a conflict were to break out. “Even if they give us weapons, if we really had to use force against China, I don’t think there would be much we could do,” she explained.

Ben Wu, a 41-year-old delivery driver, echoed Lee’s sentiment, framing U.S. arms sales as little more than a costly “protection fee” for the island. Even with the most advanced weaponry the U.S. can offer, he noted, “it would still be very hard to win” against China’s far larger military force.

To date, Taipei has poured tens of billions of dollars into purchasing advanced U.S. military equipment, including fifth-generation fighter jets, precision high-tech missiles, and reconnaissance drones, all to bolster its defensive capabilities against a potential cross-strait attack. Taiwanese officials have repeatedly reminded the Trump administration of Washington’s binding legal commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act, while top U.S. officials including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer have publicly insisted that no shift in longstanding U.S. policy toward Taiwan is underway.

Still, many ordinary Taiwanese remain deeply skeptical of Trump’s approach to the issue, with many arguing that the former president prioritizes U.S. interests above all other considerations, with little regard for longstanding alliances or commitments. Cynthia Kuo, a 29-year-old elementary school teacher in Taipei, described Trump as the “kind of person who just says whatever pops into his head.” “So I feel like whatever decisions he makes, he only makes them if he thinks they’re good for the United States,” she said. “He’s not going to take other countries into account.”

A 78-year-old retiree, who requested anonymity to speak freely, said the only certain takeaway from the current situation is that Trump cannot be counted on as a reliable partner for Taiwan. “He’s totally untrustworthy,” she said. “I often feel that Trump is a hooligan in international politics.”

Across age groups, residents of Taipei echoed a shared sense of powerlessness in the face of the current uncertainty. No matter the outcome, the final decisions on the pending arms package will be made in Washington, and any subsequent response from Beijing will be shaped thousands of kilometers away from Taipei. For 22-year-old university student Matt Lin, that reality makes personal anxiety feel pointless. “I’m not that worried,” he told AFP. “Whether we worry or not doesn’t really change anything.”

Nearly five years after losing his parliamentary seat in a federal election, one of Australia’s most recognizable conservative political figures is set to make a high-profile return to the forefront of national politics. Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has secured a spot as the only nominee for the federal presidency of the Liberal Party, putting him on track to take the senior party role without any contest.

Details of the nomination were made public after party delegates received a full list of candidates for all internal Liberal Party positions via email on Friday afternoon. With no other candidates put forward for the top administrative role, Abbott is all but guaranteed to win the position when the Liberal Federal Council holds its formal endorsement vote during a scheduled meeting in Melbourne next week.

The road to the presidency saw a last-minute shift earlier in the nomination process: former foreign minister Alexander Downer, who had initially launched a bid for the top job, ultimately withdrew his candidacy to run instead for a vice presidential position on the party’s federal executive.

Abbott will take over the role from outgoing federal president John Olsen, a former South Australian senator who has held the position in recent years.

A veteran of Australian conservative politics, Abbott served as the country’s 28th prime minister from 2013 to 2015. His tenure ended abruptly when he was removed from office via a leadership spill orchestrated by his then-colleague Malcolm Turnbull, who went on to replace him as prime minister and Liberal Party leader. Abbott retained his northern Sydney seat of Warringah until the 2019 federal election, when he was unseated by independent candidate Zali Steggall, ending his decades-long run as a sitting member of parliament.

The Liberal Party’s governing structure places the federal presidency at the heart of the party’s national administrative leadership. The Liberal Federal Council, which will formally confirm Abbott’s appointment, is made up of 14 delegates from every Australian state and the Australian Capital Territory. These delegates include the federal president, the parliamentary party leader, the head of the Young Liberal Movement, the president of the party’s national Women’s Council, and 10 additional appointed representatives.

The party’s federal executive, which includes the federal office bearers, divisional presidents from across the country, and the federal parliamentary leadership team, is required to hold at least four formal meetings each year per the party’s official governing charter. While policy positions adopted by the Federal Council are not legally binding on the Liberal Party’s parliamentary wing, the body’s stances carry significant ideological and political weight that shapes the party’s public policy agenda.

As of Friday, media outlets have not received an official statement from the Liberal Party’s federal branch regarding Abbott’s nomination. Political observers widely view the appointment as cementing Abbott’s return to the front lines of Australian conservative politics four years after his exit from parliament.

As senior diplomats from across NATO gathered in the southern Swedish city of Helsingborg for a critical pre-summit meeting on Friday, European member states moved quickly to press U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for clear answers on the Trump administration’s rapidly shifting plans for troop deployments across the continent. The talks were framed by a urgent goal: defusing growing tensions with President Donald Trump over Washington’s Iran policy, and smoothing over rifts before the alliance’s high-stakes July leaders’ summit scheduled for Ankara, Turkey.

The confusion that dominated the meeting was sparked by Trump himself. Just as foreign ministers convened, the U.S. president announced he would deploy 5,000 additional troops to Poland, a sudden reversal of an earlier plan that had been scrapped by the White House. While the sudden shift drew public praise from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Poland’s foreign minister, it stoked quiet but widespread concern among allies about a growing lack of strategic coordination between Washington and its European partners.

“It is confusing indeed, and not always easy to navigate,” Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told reporters on the sidelines of the gathering. The latest about-face came only weeks after Trump abruptly announced he would withdraw 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany, amid a high-profile public dispute with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Speaking to his NATO counterparts, Rubio pushed back against suggestions that the troop adjustments were intended to punish European allies, framing the moves as routine strategic planning. “All decisions on force posture are not punitive,” Rubio said. “We constantly need to reexamine our deployments to meet our evolving global security needs.”

Many NATO ministers acknowledged that gradual U.S. force drawdowns in Europe were expected, as Washington reorients its military focus to other global threat hotspots and European allies have pledged to take on greater responsibility for their own territorial defense. But leaders stressed that any changes need to follow a predictable, structured framework to give European governments time to build up their own military capacity. “What is important is that it happens in a structured manner, so that Europe is able to build up when the US reduces its presence,” Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide noted.

The Helsingborg meeting was called specifically to address Trump’s repeated public criticism of European allies over their response to his ongoing conflict with Iran, which has included open threats from the president that he could consider pulling the United States out of the 75-year-old alliance entirely. Diplomats told reporters the core goal of the pre-summit talks was to move past current disagreements and set a unified tone for the Ankara gathering, where allies plan to highlight their progress in meeting increased defense spending pledges they made to Trump last year.

“The president’s views, frankly disappointment, at some of our NATO allies and their response to our operations in the Middle East — they’re well documented — that will have to be addressed,” Rubio told reporters. He added that the upcoming Ankara summit would be “probably one of the more important leaders’ summits in the history of NATO.”

In a bid to ease tensions with Washington, a number of European allies have already repositioned naval vessels closer to the Middle East, with plans to assist security operations in the Strait of Hormuz once the Iran conflict concludes. “Europeans have heard the message,” Rutte affirmed. German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul also clarified that Berlin does not expect NATO to launch an independent alliance-led military mission in the region.

Trump’s second term in office has already brought a string of unexpected crises for the transatlantic alliance, including a tense standoff last year when the president openly mused about seizing Greenland from Denmark. Now, the ongoing fallout from the Iran war threatens to overshadow the entire Ankara summit, which NATO leaders had hoped would focus on demonstrating progress toward the commitment European allies made last year: increasing collective defense spending to 5% of GDP by 2030. Diplomats confirmed that a wave of major new arms purchases are being finalized in time for the summit, to show Trump that allies are following through on their promises with tangible action.

Beneath the public scramble to accommodate Trump’s demands, there is a growing quiet consensus among European capitals that the bloc must take increasing responsibility for its own security. Led by Germany, which has ramped up military spending dramatically in recent years, European allies are taking a more assertive stance, though current discussions center on integrating greater European leadership into the existing NATO framework rather than building a separate independent defense alliance.

“As the US reevaluates its level of engagement and presence in Europe within the alliance, it is exactly the opportunity… to Europeanise NATO,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said.

One area where Europe has already begun to take greater independent action is in its long-term support for Ukraine, which remains a core unifying priority for the alliance. Rutte is currently pushing allies to increase commitments to supply weapons to Kyiv, and recently floated a plan that would require all European NATO members and Canada to commit 0.25% of their annual GDP to arms purchases for Ukraine. However, the NATO chief acknowledged that the proposal was quickly rejected by a number of key allies, including major European economies like France, Spain, and Italy, which have already been criticized for contributing less than their fair share to the Ukraine effort.

“What I want to achieve is that the burden is more evenly spread, that there is more burden sharing here,” Rutte said. “At the moment it is only six or seven allies who are doing the heavy lifting.”