Iceland is preparing to decide its European future in a referendum that could reopen a debate shelved for more than a decade. On August 29, Icelanders will be called to the polls to vote on whether they want the government to resume accession negotiations with the European Union or not. The Nordic country had already applied for membership in 2009, in the midst of the financial crisis, but four years later, with the economy recovered and a change of government, it withdrew from the talks.The center-left government of Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir, at the start of its term, wanted to hold the consultation during the year 2027. But from Reykjavik they acknowledge that the threats from the President of the United States, Donald Trump, about Greenland (located just 300 kilometers away) have contributed to increasing uncertainty in the North Atlantic, and have influenced the decision to advance the referendum by one year.From the executive, the vote for yes is defended, justifying that in a time of turbulent waters in a region disputed between world powers to be the gateway to the Arctic, the country needs the stability and security that the EU can offer. On the side of no are all the opposition parties, who warn of the possible effects of accession on key sectors such as fishing, and warn of the risk of losing national sovereignty before European institutions.One month before the referendum, the campaign is gaining intensity and polls show that Icelanders remain deeply divided on the issue. The most recent poll by public broadcaster Rúv reveals that 54% oppose accession to the EU, compared to 46% who are in favor. However, polls by the country's main newspaper, Morgunblaðið, give a narrow victory with 52% of votes in favor of reopening negotiations with the EU, against 48% who oppose it.

The grand chamber of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) is made up of 15 judges, but the most influential magistrate and the most visible face – reads the verdicts, such as the one backing the amnesty– is the president of the court of Luxembourg, Koen Lenaerts (Mortsel, 1954). A Fleming with a great academic and professional career, especially in European justice.

New reform from Brussels that lowers environmental ambitions. The European Commission has proposed this Friday that European industry can reduce pollutant emissions at a slower pace than provided for in current legislation. That said, in return, these factories will have to increase green and decarbonization investments.

European Commission's wake-up call to Spain amid a wave of corruption cases plaguing Pedro Sánchez's government. In its annual rule of law report, Brussels warns that Spain has made "little" or "limited" progress in strengthening measures against conflicts of interest and lobbying, and in improving transparency in asset declarations by leaders and senior officials. Furthermore, although it highlights the Anti-Corruption Plan promoted by the Spanish government, it regrets that "the practical implementation of existing rules has not improved".

The path to amnesty in Europe has come to an end. Luxembourg has endorsed the law agreed between the PSOE, Junts, and Esquerra, which allowed Pedro Sánchez to be re-elected as Spanish president. Before this sweet ending, however, the measure went through a tortuous path with obstacles, largely accentuated by the tentacles of the Spanish right and far-right in the European Union institutions.

Happy end to the amnesty in its journey through European justice. The endorsement from the highest court in Luxembourg is almost absolute. It not only denies that its application affects the financial interests of the European Union and violates the anti-terrorism directive, but it fully defends the spirit of "reconciliation" between Spain and Catalonia of a law that allowed Pedro Sánchez to be invested with the votes of Junts and Esquerra. "It has the express purpose of favoring political reconciliation," has ruled the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

Key ruling for the application of the amnesty and the political and judicial future of leaders such as Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) will rule this Thursday around 10 a.m. on the legality of the regulation and will point the way to the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court, the National High Court and the rest of the Spanish courts, some of which refuse to apply it.

The government of Pedro Sánchez maintains his bet on a Spanish socialist leads an international organization in a context of right-wing growth. The Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Luis Planas, will fight to be the next Secretary-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), but will have to face complicated candidacies to defeat, especially that of Irishman Phil Hogan.

Junts reopens the investigation into MEP-elect Toni Comín over internal complaints ofpsychological, physical, and sexual harassment by two former party advisors in the European Parliament. The Guarantees Commission of the pro-independence party temporarily halted it on February 2, even though a resolution from the Eurochamber had already ruled that there was "sufficient evidence" to take the former minister to court. It wasn't until four months later, on June 5, that it decided to reactivate it, according to various Junts sources informed to ARA.

The European Union remains deadlocked on sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It is one of the pressure measures that has been on the table of the EU Foreign Affairs Council for the longest time and is gaining increasing support among member states. In fact, as the head of European diplomacy, Kaja Kallas, explained at a press conference, a "majority" of European Foreign Ministers have expressed their support for prohibiting trade with the occupied territories of the West Bank at this Monday's meeting in Brussels, but she did not announce any legal proposal or forecast for its realization.

The European Commission maintains its intention to impose a digital age of majority, but lowers the age figure. After commissioning a study from a group of experts, the head of the Community executive, Ursula von der Leyen, announced this Monday that she will present a proposal to limit the use of social networks for young people and that it will prohibit minors under 13 years of age from opening an account without the supervision of their parents or legal guardian.

Let's think about the man sentenced to thirty years in prison who looks out the window and sees, beyond, through the bars, the green meadow where he thinks he can go, free, one day. It is hope that sustains him. But thinking that something desired will happen, although it alleviates the suffering of waiting, is not enough: the wait must be active, actions must bring hope closer to reality.The actors are the ones who can change the plot. For the world's geostrategy, it is the citizens of the United States, Israel, and Europe, who vote, who can most actively influence the historical moment we are living in; not those of China or Russia, to whom their states do not grant this possibility. The weight of the BRICS in world politics – that is, of the Global South – is growing, but it is not yet decisive.In November, the midterm elections will be held in the USA, and it is possible that the majorities in the chambers of Congress and the Senate will shift from Republican to Democratic. More possible in Congress, more difficult in the Senate. There are reasons for the American voter to feel deceived: the unnecessary war in Iran, growing inflation – after Trump criticized Biden's – the president's abuse of power – which the Supreme Court has corrected – in attempting to suppress the right to citizenship for those born in the USA... And also the failure of immigration policies: in what way has ICE, the US border police, improved them, beyond reducing the rights of American citizens and causing suffering and anguish to immigrants, more or less in an irregular situation, but settled in the country? And tariffs, what has changed? And in Ukraine, the war that Trump said he could end in a day, where are we now? The conflict created with NATO and the EU, what has it served? Member states are backing out, actively or passively, of investing 5% of their GDP in defense, as Trump demanded. More than a state policy, it was a business.Now Trump is talking about the communist threat. Is he inventing a problem again to later claim he has solved it, as he did with Iran? The president can claim that in Central and South America – in Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, and Argentina – he has friendly governments that are stable. Or are they stable because they are his friends? Isn't this practicing the interventionism he denigrated before winning the elections two years ago? He has taken on a burden he didn't have. It is true that the voter's memory is short, but, so much so? If citizens have a thread of memory, Trump and the Republican Party could lose this November. The distance between what he promised and what he has achieved is great.Elections in Israel could cause Netanyahu to lose his majority. The reason? Citizen fatigue with a war that has been changing objectives – eliminating Hamas terrorism in Gaza, protecting northern Israel and ending Hezbollah in Lebanon, stabilizing Syria, defeating Iran...–, the end of which is not on the horizon and which makes one think it is being maintained to postpone the prime minister's trial. This is a difficult argument to refute for the Israeli voter, right and left, and highly destructive for Netanyahu. Who should they vote for? And why? If maintaining the war distances them from collaboration and understanding with the states in the region – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Emirates, etc. –, if the Abraham Accords are dead with this policy, why don't they move to the next phase of the conflict and extract benefit from the war they have supposedly won? What is the "eternal" war for? Changing the government could prevent the problem they already have from getting bigger, after the extermination war in Gaza and the apartheid in the West Bank, which have changed the international perception of Israel: from victims they have become seen as perpetrators. But, above all, the US no longer monolithically supports Israel as before; their interests are beginning to diverge.

After a few decades of globalization and industrial delocalizations, Europe has seen that it must regain technological sovereignty to survive. The pandemic held up a mirror to us: we didn't even know how to make masks, let alone mechanical respirators. Our automotive industry is suffering because it depends more and more on components it has to import, such as batteries or computer systems. The war in Ukraine and the Trump presidency have made us realize that we not only have to be able to defend ourselves but also to produce the high-tech weapons needed today. The AI revolution has made it clear that the champions of the sector are in the USA and China, with some European exceptions like the French Mistral AI. The EU urgently needs to close the gap with the other two major blocs if it wants to remain a relevant global player. And this need is especially acute in a field in which we have lost ground and which is currently decisive: information and communication technologies (ICT), which include AI and the chip industry.Our technological lag is paradoxical, because since the 80s the EU, then the EEC, has subsidized research, development and cooperation between industry and academia. Indeed, first it was the ESPRIT program, focused on ICT, and then the successive framework programs, which cover all sectors. Likewise, member states, Spain, and also Catalonia, have had subsidy programs for decades with the same objectives. On the other hand, if we compare ICT sovereignty in the 80s with that of today, the result is devastating: we have gone from having many computer manufacturers (Bull in France, ICL in the United Kingdom, Siemens in Germany, Secoinsa in Spain, Telesincro in Catalonia, etc.) to having none. Regarding the mobile phone revolution, which began in Europe, it has shifted to Asia and the US. Chip manufacturing, which in the 80s motivated plans and subsidies for microelectronics throughout Europe and Spain in particular, has concentrated in Asia, with the honorable exception of the Dutch ASML, which supplies equipment to Asian chip manufacturers. Supercomputing subsidies have served to have some well-placed facilities in the international rankings of the sector, but their contribution to technological sovereignty and the ICT industry is quite limited. As for software, things have not gone better, and we have already discussed the AI landscape in Europe.

NATO's memory is selective. None of the leaders wanted to recall the good relations between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin despite the invasion of Ukraine, Ankara's blackmail of Sweden to allow it to join the Atlantic Alliance, or the country's authoritarian drift, which has preemptively repressed and detained dissident activists and journalists before and during this week's summit. Three reasons why, in the past, allies set aside the hard core of the organization in Turkey, and some even suspended or restricted arms sales to the country.

Donald Trump has turned NATO summits into a show that revolves around himaround him. As last year, the President of the United States arrived in Ankara railing against the North Atlantic Alliance itself and the vast majority of its partners. He insulted them, humiliated them, and threatened them from the outset. And then, the European allies and the secretary general of the military organization, Mark Rutte, focused on calming him down and de-escalating the tension through praise and kind words. It seems that the flattery had an effect and, finally, as the master of military understanding, he forgave them for the alleged grievances and in the final press conference declared his "love" for them. A happy enough ending compared to how it began. However, these U-turns and all the spectacle that Trump staged in Ankara highlight more than ever the great problems and challenges that NATO has, and especially the European allies, in dealing with the President of the United States.

What do Leo XIV, Donald Trump, and Xi Jinping have in common? That all three have understood that the emergence of artificial intelligence is no longer just a technological issue, but a global strategic fact. The Holy Father opens his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas warning that humanity faces a “decisive choice”, and closes it with a fundamental question: how can we care for the human person in the age of AI? Trump, in turn, presented the American plan a year ago to “win the race” for artificial intelligence, convinced that whoever dominates this ecosystem will set global standards and reap the economic and military benefits. Xi Jinping, with more measured but no less ambitious language, has also placed AI at the center of China's coming years, to the point of wanting to introduce it massively into industrial processes and move towards artificial general intelligence.And meanwhile, what are we doing in Europe? Not much, to be honest. Facing a continent scorched by climate change, with an uncaring, nationalist and anti-European right gaining ground, and with a war entrenched in the backyard, the European Union appears slow, hesitant and, too often, inefficient. The problem is not just that we struggle to react to AI; it's that AI arrives at a time when the whole old world order seems to be falling apart at the same time. Therefore, the discussion about algorithms, data and machines is also a discussion about power, dependence and political future.It is worth reading the papal encyclical not as a text strictly about technology, but as a warning about the course of a planet that is more insecure, more unpredictable, and more multipolar than what the men and women of my generation have known. We are witnessing —first with condescension; then with disbelief, and now with stupefaction— the undoing of an order that seemed more solid to us than it was.Trump has called into question institutions and alliances that we believed unassailable: the United Nations, NATO, free trade, even the very idea of the West. Today, Europeans are no longer entirely sure whether the United States is a reliable ally or not. And this is perhaps its hardest lesson: in international politics, what was white yesterday can be black today, and beneath the civilized veneer of institutions, the old law of the strongest continues to beat.

New warning from the European Commission to the big American tech companies. Brussels announced on Friday that it has "preliminarily" concluded that the social networks Instagram and Facebook have an addictive design, which breaches EU digital services legislation. Should Meta – the parent company of both applications – not put an end to the practices that contribute to addiction required by the European Commission, the company faces a multi-billion euro fine, which can reach a maximum of 6% of its annual global turnover.

Europe, today, has two pillars. An economic and political pillar, which is the European Union, and a political and military one, NATO. Both are headquartered in Brussels, but they have gone decades almost without speaking to each other. However, Europe's strength derives precisely from this double pillar. During the summit of the military alliance being held this Tuesday and Wednesday in Ankara, European leaders will have to recognize without mincing words that the second pillar of Europe must be urgently rebuilt.

Donald Trump is setting fire to relations with Europe and puts Greenland back in the crosshairs just hours before the NATO summit begins. "Greenland should be under the control of the United States, not Denmark," said the North American leader from Ankara (Turkey). Although the leaders' meeting was to focus on rearmament and aid to Ukraine, the President of the United States took the opportunity to revive his expansionist desires with the territory of a NATO ally and member state of the European Union such as Denmark.

NATO has no court or coercive power that can force a member state to reach 5% of its gross domestic product (GDP) in military spending. However, the rest of the allies, especially the United States, can exert all kinds of diplomatic pressure, economic and military to pressure countries like Spain, which refuses to accept Donald Trump's demands and wants to stay at 2.1%. And this is what the Secretary General of the Atlantic Alliance himself, Mark Rutte, has hinted that the White House will do against Pedro Sánchez's government.