Areas which are, in functional economic terms, a single city, have ended up divided into multiple states, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Or is there?

In 2010, Croatian was made the 23rd official language of the EU. People warned at the time it would cause a problem in the future when Montenegro, Serbia & Bosnia joined because they would refuse to use a language labelled as 'Croatian' It was suggested that the EU instead use The Hague's term BCS

When I say the politics will become increasingly obvious... I mean look at this. If you want to unite the left/centre and split the Tories, without a big spending committment there's no better option.

Luxembourg didn't request that their official language, the Luxembourgish dialect of German, become an EU official language. Nor did Belgium request it for Flemish or Austria for Austrian. But the Western Balkan accession countries are going a different route. And that will cost EU taxpayers a lot

Enisa Kafadar, Daniel Bunčić and Ronelle Alexander, just to name a few. And the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

"...China has designs on Taiwan.” All of this, Juncker argues, can only strengthen the hand of those pushing for European defence and sovereignty. “No member state will be able to resist alone what is taking shape. We will simply be obliged, by the force of events, to move forward."

“Many heads of state and government are in favour of a European army but do not dare say so,” says former 🇪🇺President Jean-Claude Juncker. “The Americans are dropping us, Trump is sowing disorder, the Russian threat is looming..."

Today's long read: Language is a VERY sensitive topic in Europe. And that's why nobody wants to go near the issue of whether Montenegrin, which linguists classify as a dialect of Serbo-Croatian, should become the EU's 25th official language. But there are long-term implications of this decision.

America right now is the maddest place on earth. Like watching a David Lynch film.

This is classic EU national government behaviour. And because the EU’s most powerful institution (the Council) is virtually unknown to citizens (who receive no civics education about the EU), they get away with it. It suits national leaders to keep their citizens ignorant of their voting there.

This isn't the first time this has happened. At the end of last year, a European Commission disinformation strategy was reportedly scrubbed of any mention of the United States after an intervention by 🇪🇺President von der Leyen's office.

The paper reports Lithuania was also convinced by 🇺🇸 to drop their sponsorship.The French government was also leaned on, but refused. “There’s absolutely no reason for us to change our commitments” a 🇫🇷source told The Guardian. “We stick to supporting civil society."

The EEAS claims they only just noticed it, but it has been on the conference agenda (of the event they were sponsoring) for months. “The organisers chose to frame some of the discussions in a way which does not align with the official positions held by the EU," an spokesperson told The Guardian.

"What this amounts to is a purported defender of free speech at the state department using the enormous power of the US government to try to pressure Americans from criticizing their government” said Nina Jankowicz. This is the specific panel the 🇺🇸state department wanted to silence.

This seems to be yet another case of geopolitics trumping climate concerns in Europe. The Earth is on the back burner. EU climate and environment law have been steadily diluted over the past two years as part of the "simplification" (deregulation) push.

New: France and Germany have struck a deal to weaken the EU's planned combustion engine phase-out even further. In exchange for 🇫🇷 support to scrap the plan for new cars to all be EV by 2035, 🇩🇪 will back the 🇫🇷 'made in Europe' push to exclude 🇬🇧