The Keel
Past editions
Read past editions of The Keel in full. Policy on Tuesdays. Business on Thursdays.
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Business
China’s industrial surge is forcing Germany to rewrite its business model
Germany is facing a second wave of disruption from China, this time not as an offshore production challenge but as a direct contest in capital-intensive, high-skill sectors that once underpinned Europe’s industrial strength. The…
4 min read -
Policy
Lagarde signals that Europe’s policy mix, not just rates, will determine economic resilience
Lagarde’s remarks place Europe’s economy in a more political phase of adjustment. With inflation no longer the only organising concern, the real test is whether member states can align fiscal choices, industrial priorities, and…
4 min read -
Business
US trade pressure raises the cost of strategic ambiguity for European business
The immediate development is less about a single trade instrument than about a change in bargaining posture from the United States toward the European Union. For European companies, the real issue is that trade…
4 min read -
Policy
EU invasive species screening is becoming a test of regulatory speed, not scientific awareness
The immediate development is not simply better scientific detection of invasive species, but a stronger attempt to turn foresight into earlier regulatory action. The real challenge for the EU is that identifying threats is…
4 min read -
Business
Record western European heat is becoming an operating condition, not a seasonal anomaly
Western Europe's record June-July temperatures mark another shift from climate risk as a forecast to climate stress as a live operating constraint. The immediate issue is not only physical disruption, such as lower labour…
4 min read -
Business
Europe's early heatwave is becoming an operational stress test for business
A developing heatwave across Europe is pushing climate risk from boardroom abstraction into day-to-day operations. The immediate issue is not only higher cooling demand, but the way heat amplifies several pressures at once: weaker…
4 min read -
Policy
EU bank capital rewrite signals lower compliance drag, not lighter supervision
The EBA's review marks a shift from adding safeguards to making the rulebook workable. That matters because European banks have spent years absorbing overlapping capital, buffer and resolution requirements that often achieve similar policy…
4 min read -
Business
EU regulators signal a shift from national oversight to tighter bloc-level market supervision
Europe's market watchdogs are no longer treating cross-border supervision as a technical debate. They are positioning it as a competitiveness issue for the capital markets union, with the implicit view that fragmented national oversight…
4 min read -
Policy
Washington's harder line is turning European defence autonomy from ambition into necessity
The central change is political, not merely budgetary: defence decoupling is moving from a European contingency plan to a possibility driven from Washington. If the United States starts treating military support to allies as…
4 min read -
Business
Hungary tests a mediator role, but the signal for business is political positioning, not imminent peace
Hungary is trying to recast itself from an awkward EU outlier into a usable diplomatic intermediary. That matters less because talks are close, and more because it shows smaller member states are competing to…
4 min read