Armenia’s election will test its leader’s pivot to the West Let down by Russia, Nikol Pashinyan wants to make up with Azerbaijan and join the EU May 14th 2026 In 2023 Armenia finally lost a decades-long intermittent war against neighbouring Azerbaijan over a bit of territory known as Nagorno- Karabakh. Since then Nikol Pashinyan, Armenia’s prime minister, has been trying to wrest a diplomatic victory from the jaws of military defeat. Let down by Russia, Armenia’s longtime patron, he is pivoting to America and Europe and working on a peace treaty with Azerbaijan. On June 7th voters will give their verdict on his efforts in a general election. Opinion polls suggest he will probably win.
European leaders have lent their support. On May 4th Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, hosted a meeting of the European Political Community (EPC), a group of countries in and around the European Union. The next day the EU held its first bilateral summit with Armenia. The bloc is offering Armenia up to €2.5bn ($2.9bn) in infrastructure funding—more than 10% of its annual GDP. Armenia hopes to become a member one day. Plenty of Armenians dislike Mr Pashinyan. Murals of fallen soldiers dot Yerevan, reminders of his failures during the war. Outside the EPC summit, protesters waved the flag of Artsakh, the erstwhile ethnic-Armenian statelet in Nagorno-Karabakh. Some refugees from the territory wanted their relatives’ bodies to be transported to Armenia; others called for Azerbaijan to free prisoners-of-war. Several demonstrators predicted that the pro- Western pivot would backfire. “He is turning Armenia into a playground for geopolitical games,” says one young man who fled Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023. Nationalist politicians are stoking discontent. Samvel Karapetyan, a Russian-Armenian oligarch who leads the most popular opposition group, is under house arrest for calling for the government to be overthrown (he denies the charge). When your correspondent visited him in his swanky mansion, Mr Karapetyan accused the government of kowtowing to Azerbaijani demands. Mr Pashinyan, he says, is “attempting to trigger” a war with Russia. Such views are not uncommon in Yerevan, a stronghold of the old elite. But they are rarer in the countryside, where the government has built roads and schools. Residents of border regions might benefit most from peace. Mr Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party polls at around 30%, well ahead of Mr Karapetyan’s outfit. Mr Pashinyan has flaws. The anti-corruption drive of his first term has waned, and he has a populist streak that riles his opponents. “You get a lot more monologue than dialogue from Pashinyan,” says Thomas de Waal of Carnegie Europe, a think-tank. In March the prime minister was filmed arguing with a Karabakh refugee who refused to accept a Civil Contract campaign badge. He later apologised.
The Kremlin could meddle, too. Russia provides 85% of Armenia’s gas and maintains an army base there. Russian companies own vital infrastructure, a legacy of debt-relief deals made by previous Armenian leaders. Russia recently banned the sale of some batches of Jermuk, an Armenian water brand, on dubious sanitary grounds. Such tactics will probably deepen Armenians’ distrust of their old patron. “The Armenian political mind is very prone to look for saviours around the world: Moscow, Brussels, Washington,” says Maria Karapetyan (no relation of Samvel), a Civil Contract MP. “My party thinks we don’t need to look for saviours.” Armenia’s dependence on Russia proved toxic. Now it is trying to play the field. ■ To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//europe/2026/05/14/armenias-election-will-test-its- leaders-pivot-to-the-west
The world’s best-sounding nightclub is in an unexpected place Why DJs are flocking to an obscure town in west Germany May 14th 2026 AS YOU APPROACH the dancefloor, you feel the bass before you hear it. Enter the throng, and you are bathed in a sound so clean it seems to reorganise the air around you. Since opening in late 2023, Open Ground, based in a reconstructed wartime bunker in the west German town of Wuppertal, has earned a reputation as one of the best-sounding nightclubs in the world. It is another universe from the lavish fleshpots of Las Vegas or Ibiza. But for a certain sort of nightlife connoisseur, this post-industrial town has become an essential stop. Open Ground is the brainchild of Markus Riedel, a local who set up the club with financing from his brother, an entrepreneur. Sick of clubs with terrible
sound, Mr Riedel and his business partner, Mark Ernestus, veterans of the Berlin music scene, recruited acousticians to turn their concrete shell into an aural delight. Polyester-lined panels absorb auditory “reflections”, leaving a crystalline sound that brings out details lost in muddier spaces. This wizardry is complemented by speaker technology custom-made for the space. “It’s a temple for music,” enthuses Darren White, aka dBridge, a dj who performs at the club. An eclectic approach to genre expands the appeal. Mr White says his circles are abuzz with talk of Open Ground. As word spreads, djs approach the club seeking bookings. “Everyone who has played wants to play again, and everyone who hasn’t wants to,” chuckles Arthur Rieger, its programming chief. Open Ground has helped nudge Wuppertal, Germany’s 17th-biggest town, onto the map. Some youngsters studying in nearby cities like Cologne base themselves here in part to be nearer the club, says Mr Riedel. One local, encountered in the unexpectedly calm lobby during a dancefloor break, enthusiastically reels off a litany of trivia about the town’s history. All of it —surprisingly, for the ranting of a bug-eyed raver at 3am—turns out to be true. (Wuppertal spawned Friedrich Engels and heroin, among other claims to fame.) As rents soar and an abstemious Gen Z displaces its hedonistic elders, many clubs in Germany and beyond are confronting Clubsterben, or “club death”. A midsized venue in Wuppertal cannot reverse that tide. But it has lifted spirits, quickened pulses—and provided a haven for clubland’s most discerning ears.■ To stay on top of the biggest European stories, sign up to Café Europa, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//europe/2026/05/13/the-worlds-best-sounding-nightclub-is- in-an-unexpected-place
To understand European voters’ anger, look at their rent bills Rent-control policies are making Europe’s housing shortage worse May 14th 2026 When Bourgeois Fincas, a property agency in Barcelona, lists a flat for rent on the internet, it gets 200 enquiries within an hour or so and it is let within a day. “It’s been like this since last year,” says Jaume Cortes, who works there. “The change is brutal.” The agency is based in the Eixample, a leafy grid of elegant 19th-century streets that stretches north from the city’s historic Gothic heart. In many cases the new tenants are digital nomads or other foreigners seeking a second home in the sun. But at the bottom of the market the competition is just as fierce. In poor suburbs of Barcelona and Madrid agents report individual rooms being fought over, some rented by the hour by shift workers who take turns sleeping there.
All across Europe, cities face housing shortages. Average house prices in the EU surged by 60% between 2015 and 2025, well ahead of household incomes. In many places rents take up much more than 40% of average salaries, a threshold that can imply financial difficulty (see chart). Housing is an urgent political issue: some link the populist right’s rise to the difficulty of finding a home, especially for the young. In Spain and the Netherlands polls find it is the top public concern. The EU talks of a “housing crisis”; its 27 national leaders are due to discuss this at a summit this year. In 2024 the European Commission appointed a housing commissioner for the first time (shared with energy). It plans to tweak rules to allow more public investment and let governments limit tourist flats. Housing markets vary from country to country. Germans tend to rent their homes, while southern and eastern Europeans prefer to buy. Public and social housing (ie, those subsidised or run by non-profit organisations) makes up 30% or more of the stock in the Netherlands and in Vienna. By contrast, in Spain public housing accounts for just 3.4%. The EU average is 8%.
Yet the surge in rents and house prices is taking place across the continent, a symptom of a growing mismatch between supply and demand. Nowhere is the shortage more acute than in Spain. The Bank of Spain reckons there is a shortfall of 700,000 homes. There are 1.2m more households now than in 2021, mainly because of massive immigration. But Spain builds fewer than 90,000 homes per year. On top of that, sun-seeking foreigners account for up to a fifth of buyers. There are shortages elsewhere, too. Germany is building only around half the 400,000 new housing units economists say it needs each year. France will start around 300,000 new homes this year, according to its Building Federation, but that is some 220,000 fewer than it needs. Immigration is one factor, but so is the steady dribble of people from countryside to city. A census in Spain in 2021 found 3.8m empty homes, 14% of the total, mostly in poor repair or in small towns or villages where few want to live. Much the same applies in Italy. One response to the crisis is rent controls. These are longstanding in Germany. In the Netherlands, where the waiting list for social housing in Amsterdam is almost 11 years, a centrist government greatly expanded them for private rentals in 2024. In Spain in 2023 the Socialist-led administration