The Social Democrats’ patronage system has long channelled funds to local officials who drum up support for their party. They and AUR now present themselves as austerity’s opponents. “The so-called pro-Europeans have delivered nothing but taxes, war and poverty,” crowed Mr Simion after the no-confidence vote. His party is Romania’s most popular, with support at 33% in polls (ten points ahead of the PSD). Should the EU worry about a new Orban-style sub-bloc? Mr Simion has little love for Russia, but opposes aid to Ukraine, which he claims mistreats its ethnic Romanians. Should he win power, he could upend plans for Ukraine to build drones in Romania and disrupt the country’s role in training Ukrainian fighter pilots. But a snap election that could allow Mr Simion to form a government is unlikely. Mr Dan says he wants a new coalition instead, perhaps led by a technocratic prime minister. Mr Radev too may prove less troublesome than his words suggest. Bulgarian defence firms have boomed since the start of the war, selling Soviet-style munitions to Ukraine. Rheinmetall, a German armsmaker, is planning a €1bn ($1.2bn) shell factory in Bulgaria, financed partly by an EU scheme. Mr Radev will hardly want to stifle the defence industry with an arms embargo on Ukraine. “Bulgaria sees EU countries as its natural family, but reserves the right to maintain its own positions,” says Ivo Hristov, a deputy prime minister. On corruption, Mr Radev talks a good game. He has pledged quick reforms of the country’s judicial system and dismissed the deputy head of the national-security agency for alleged political meddling. He also plans a parliamentary anti-corruption commission. But fighting corruption is a long- term institutional commitment; one election victory may not change much. Perhaps most worrying for Europeans in these days of transatlantic tension is his affinity with America. Mr Radev, a graduate of an American air-force fighter-pilot programme, often touts his American connections. His realist foreign-policy views have much in common with those popular in MAGA- world, and his desire to end the Ukraine war and get back to trading with Russia would go over well with J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s vice-president. Not quite “Russians in the room”, then. But, for the likes of Mr Tusk, they are nonetheless too close for comfort. ■
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Real Madrid’s boss calls an election Europe’s once-dominant club will put its leadership to its members May 21st 2026 Even Real Madrid’s many detractors would concede that under Florentino Pérez, its president for most of the past 25 years, it has been the world’s dominant football club. In that period it won each of the European Champions League, the World Club Championship and the Spanish league seven times. Its latest revenues of €1.2bn ($1.4bn) are ten times higher than in 2000. But the team has become dysfunctional, with no grand trophy for two years. This month two players quarrelled twice during training and were each fined €500,000. A recent spineless surrender to Barcelona gifted their arch-rivals the league title. And fans have taken to booing Kylian Mbappé, the team’s highest-paid player.
Mr Pérez, a 79-year-old construction magnate, has faced other setbacks. His plan for a European league was squashed. An expansion of the Bernabéu stadium, originally budgeted at €575m, has cost €1.3bn and counting. On May 11th Mr Pérez suddenly called his first press conference in more than ten years. He gave a rambling and paranoid performance, attacking the press, referees and a campaign “in the shadows” against him. Only 16 months into a four-year term, he announced a fresh election for the presidency. Real Madrid is a member-owned, non-profit organisation. Mr Pérez doesn’t derive any direct financial benefit from it. But the prestige and other indirect benefits are huge. The club is one of Spain’s most important institutions. “The presidential box at Real Madrid is one of the most coveted places to be,” says a Spanish banker. “It’s a good conduit for business.” Previously unopposed, Mr Pérez faces a rival in Enrique Riquelme, who owns an energy business. He is linked to Ignacio Galán, also an energy-firm chairman and an old foe of Mr Pérez. Under rules set by Mr Pérez, challengers must present by May 23rd a slate of directors and bank guarantees equal to 15% of club expenses. Mr Riquelme says he has the money but complains about the timing. The club’s future may thus be in the hands of its 100,000-odd members. Membership is cheap, at €179 a year, though a season ticket for matches costs up to €3,200 on top. There is a long waiting list. Members are not necessarily active fans: some sell their tickets on. Such is Mr Pérez’s influence that few in or outside the club are prepared to call openly for his departure. Mr Riquelme’s bid may fail. But he has put down a marker. Should he not win this time, he will no doubt get a rematch. ■ 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/2026/05/21/real-madrids-boss-calls-an-election
How Europe is fighting for digital sovereignty Escaping its dependence on America’s tech giants is a tall order May 21st 2026 A LOOK AT Europeans’ software budgets shows why they are worried about dependence on America. Germany’s federal government pays almost half a billion euros a year in licence fees to Microsoft, an American software firm. A rough calculation by a French business association finds that large French companies buy more than $50bn in software and cloud services annually from Uncle Sam’s tech giants. Euro-zone imports of intellectual property services from America have ballooned to $200bn a year and counting (see chart). That is not surprising. Cloud and artificial-intelligence services could prove more transformative than online shopping, social media or internet search. And the four biggest American cloud and AI firms—Amazon, Google, Meta
and Microsoft—are miles ahead of Europe. German politicians crow about a new €1bn ($1.16bn) data centre near Munich; America’s big four invested over 350 times that in 2025 alone. Of almost 100 notable AI models released in the past year, according to Epoch AI, a research firm, only one was from the European Union. The grip of American tech is, if anything, growing tighter. Policymakers are keen to change that. On June 3rd the EU will unveil a tech-sovereignty package, including a cloud and AI development act. In April France announced it was switching all government computers from Windows to Linux, an open-source operating system originally from Europe. Germany is likely to task domestic firms with setting up a cloud for administrative data, and its domestic intelligence service has opted for ArgonOS, a French data analytics firm, over America’s Palantir. Businesses are also diversifying. In 2022 most firms surveyed by Accenture, a consultancy, said they only considered American cloud providers. That share dropped to less than 20% in 2025. Europeans have three big worries. The first is that sensitive data and services may not be safe. America’s Cloud Act gives its government the power to request data from tech firms even when hosted by a subsidiary abroad. Some fear that America might wield tech as a geopolitical weapon, in the form of a
kill-switch that can turn off services. That scenario is somewhat cartoonish, says an EU insider, but the dependence is real. Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, lost access to his email after being placed under sanctions by America. American tech giants and big cloud service providers, known as hyperscalers, respond to such fears with what they term “sovereign offerings”. Microsoft promises European users never to cut them off, and to fight American data requests in court. Google has an “air-gapped” cloud with no connection to the public internet for clients with high security needs, including one of its newest customers, the German armed forces. But critics call such offers “sovereign-washing”, as the firms are ultimately under American control. Europe needs a layered approach, argues Topi Manner, CEO of Elisa, a Finnish telecoms and cloud provider: “The most sensitive data [should be] kept in Europe, in highly secure data centres, and the big hyperscalers for the less sensitive parts.” A second worry is that American digital services spread harmful content, and dominate markets to the detriment of European businesses and media. The rise of AI has intensified that concern, as users turn to ChatGPT and its competitors for advice on everything from shopping to politics. Europe has countermeasures, but they are controversial and slow. The bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) and Digital Services Act (DSA) let it punish anti-competitive behaviour and force tech giants to change their services. In April alone, the European Commission sent preliminary warnings to Meta, for breaching age restrictions, and to Google, demanding that it grant third parties access to search data. Other investigations are under way. One concerns whether Google’s and Microsoft’s cloud services are governed by the DMA—if so, it could require them to unbundle their services. Such measures may create a bit more room for competitors, but are unlikely to make Europe much less dependent on America. Fear of alienating America and putting NATO at further risk looms. Mario Draghi, a former chairman of the European Central Bank, argued this month that the EU must become more assertive, but “what is holding us back is security.”