PARIS — Parisian voters will in March choose a new mayor for the first time in 12 years after incumbent Anne Hidalgo decided last year against running for reelection. Her successor will become one of France’s most recognizable politicians both at home and abroad, governing a city that, with more than 2 million people, is more populous than several EU countries. Jacques Chirac used it as a springboard to the presidency. The timing of the contest — a year before France’s next presidential election — raises the stakes still further. Though Paris is not a bellwether for national politics — the far-right National Rally, for example, is nowhere near as strong in the capital as elsewehere — what happens in the capital can still reverberate nationwide. Parisian politics and the city’s transformation attract nationwide attention in a country which is still highly centralized — and voters across the country observe the capital closely, be it with disdain or fascination. It’s also not a winner-take-all race. If a candidate’s list obtains more than 10 percent of the vote in the first round, they will advance to the runoff and be guaranteed representation on the city council. Here are the main candidates running to replace Hidalgo: ON THE LEFT EMMANUEL GRÉGOIRE Emmanuel Grégoire wants to become Paris’ third Socialist Party mayor in a row. He’s backed by the outgoing administration — but not the mayor herself, who has not forgiven the 48-year-old for having ditched his former job as her deputy to run for parliament last summer in a bid to boost his name recognition. HIS STRENGTHS: Grégoire is a consensual figure who has managed, for the first time ever, to get two key left-wing parties, the Greens and the Communists, to form a first-round alliance and not run their own candidates. That broad backing is expected to help him finish first in the opening round of voting. Emmanuel Grégoire. | Thomas Samson/AFP via Getty Images His falling-out with Hidalgo could also turn to his advantage given her unpopularity. Though Hidalgo will undoubtedly be remembered for her work turning Paris into a green, pedestrian-friendly “15 minute” city, recent polling shows Parisians are divided over her legacy. It’s a tough mission, but Grégoire could theoretically campaign on the outgoing administration’s most successful policies while simultaneously distancing himself from Hidalgo herself. ACHILLES’ HEEL: Grégoire can seem like a herbivorous fish in a shark tank. He hasn’t appeared as telegenic or media savvy as his rivals. Even his former boss Hidalgo accused him of being unable to take the heat in trying times, a key trait when applying for one of the most exposed jobs in French politics. Polling at: 32 percent Odds of winning: SOPHIA CHIKIROU Sophia Chikirou, a 46-year-old France Unbowed lawmaker representing a district in eastern Paris, hopes to outflank Grégoire from further to the left. HER STRENGTHS: A skilled political operative and communications expert, Chikirou is one of the brains behind left-wing populist Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s last two presidential runs, both of which ended with the hard left trouncing its mainstream rival — Grégoire’s Socialist Party. Sophia Chikirou. | Joel Saget/AFP via Getty Images She’ll try to conjure up that magic again in the French capital, where she is likely to focus her campaign on socially mixed areas near the city’s outer boundaries that younger voters, working-class households and descendants of immigrants typically call home. France Unbowed often performs well with all those demographics. ACHILLES’ HEEL: Chikirou is a magnet for controversy. In 2023, the investigative news program Cash Investigation revealed Chikirou had used a homophobic slur to refer to employees she was feuding with during a brief stint as head of a left-wing media operation. She also remains under formal investigation over suspicions that she overbilled Mélenchon — who is also her romantic partner — during his 2017 presidential run for communications services. Her opponents on both the left and right have also criticized her for what they consider rose-tinted views of the Chinese regime. Chikirou has denied any wrongdoing in relation to the overbilling accusations. She has not commented on the homophobic slur attributed to her and seldom accepts interviews, but her allies have brushed it off as humor, or a private conversation. Polling at: 13 percent Odds of winning: ON THE RIGHT RACHIDA DATI Culture Minister Rachida Dati is mounting her third bid for the Paris mayorship. This looks to be her best shot. HER STRENGTHS: Dati is a household name in France after two decades in politics. Culture Minister Rachida Dati. | Julien de Rosa/AFP via Getty Images She is best known for her combative persona and her feuds with the outgoing mayor as head of the local center-right opposition. She is the mayor of Paris’ 7th arrondissement (most districts in Paris have their own mayors, who handle neighborhood affairs and sit in the city council). It’s a well-off part of the capital along the Left Bank of the Seine that includes the Eiffel Tower. Since launching her campaign, Dati has tried to drum up support with social media clips similar to those that propelled Zohran Mamdani from an unknown assemblyman to mayor of New York. Hers have, unsurprisingly, a right-wing spin. She’s been seen ambushing migrants, illicit drug users and contraband sellers in grittier parts of Paris, racking up millions of views in the process. ACHILLES’ HEEL: Dati is a polarizing figure and tends to make enemies. Despite being a member of the conservative Les Républicains, Dati bagged a cabinet position in early 2024, braving the fury of her allies as she attempted to secure support from the presidential orbit for her mayoral run. But the largest party supporting President Emmanuel Macron, Renaissance, has instead chosen to back one of Dati’s center-right competitors. The party’s leader, Gabriel Attal, was prime minister when Dati was first appointed culture minister, and a clash between the two reportedly ended with Dati threatening to turn her boss’s dog into a kebab. (She later clarified that she meant it jokingly.) If she does win, she’ll be commuting from City Hall to the courthouse a few times a week in September, when she faces trial on corruption charges. Dati is accused of having taken funds from French automaker Renault to work as a consultant, while actually lobbying on behalf of the company thanks to her role as an MEP. Dati is being probed in other criminal affairs as well, including accusations that she failed to declare a massive jewelry collection. She has repeatedly professed her innocence in all of the cases. Polling at: 27 percent Odds of winning: PIERRE-YVES BOURNAZEL After dropping Dati, Renaissance decided to back a long-time Parisian center-right councilman: Pierre-Yves Bournazel. HIS STRENGTHS: Bournazel is a good fit for centrists and moderate conservatives who don’t have time for drama. He landed on the city council aged 31 in 2008, and — like Dati — has been dreaming of claiming the top job at city hall for over a decade. His low profile and exclusive focus on Parisian politics could also make it easier for voters from other political allegiances to consider backing him. Pierre-Yves Bournazel. | Bastien Ohier/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images ACHILLES’ HEEL: Bourna-who? The Ipsos poll cited in this story showed more than half of Parisians said they “did not know [Bournazel] at all.” Limited name recognition has led to doubts about his ability to win, even within his own camp. Although Bournazel earned support from Macron’s Renaissance party, several high-level Parisian party figures, such as Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad, have stuck with the conservative Dati instead. Macron himself appears unwilling to back his party’s choice, in part due to Bournazel being a member of Horizons, the party of former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe — who turned full Brutus and publicly called on the president to step down last fall. “I don’t see myself putting up posters for someone whose party has asked the president to resign,” said one of Macron’s top aides, granted anonymity as is standard professional practice. Polling at: 14 percent Odds of winning: ON THE FAR RIGHT THIERRY MARIANI Thierry Mariani, one of the first members of the conservative Les Républicains to cross the Rubicon to the far right, will represent the far right National Rally in the race to lead Paris. Though the party of the Le Pen family is currently France’s most popular political movement, it has struggled in the French capital for decades. Thierry Mariani. | Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images HIS STRENGTHS: The bar is low for Mariani, as his party currently holds no seats on the city council. Mariani should manage to rack up some votes among lower-income households in Parisian social housing complexes while also testing how palatable his party has become to wealthier voters before the next presidential race. ACHILLES’ HEEL: Mariani has links to authoritarian leaders that Parisians won’t like. In 2014, he was part of a small group of French politicians who visited then-President of Syria Bashar al-Assad. He has also met Russia’s Vladimir Putin and traveled to Crimea to serve as a so-called observer in elections and referendums held in the Ukrainian region annexed by Russia — trips that earned him a reprimand from the European Parliament. Polling at: 7 percent Odds of winning: SARAH KNAFO There’s another candidate looking to win over anti-migration voters in Paris: Sarah Knafo, the millennial MEP who led far-right pundit-turned-politician Éric Zemmour’s disappointing 2022 presidential campaign. Knafo has not yet confirmed her run but has said on several occasions that it is under consideration. HER STRENGTHS: Though Zemmour only racked up around 7 percent of the vote when running for president, he fared better than expected in some of Paris’ most privileged districts. The firebrand is best known for popularizing the “great replacement” conspiracy theory in France — that white populations are being deliberately replaced by non-white. She appeals to hardline libertarian conservatives whose position on immigration aligns with the far right but who are alienated by the National Rally’s protectionism and its support for the French welfare state. Sarah Knafo. | Bastien Ohier/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images Knafo, who combines calls for small government with a complete crackdown on immigration, could stand a chance of finishing ahead of the National Rally in Paris. That would then boost her profile ahead of a potential presidential bid. If she reaches the 10 percent threshold, she’d be able to earn her party seats on the city council and more sway in French politics at large. ACHILLES’ HEEL: Besides most of Paris not aligning with her politics? Knafo describes herself as being “at an equal distance” from the conservative Les Républicains and the far-right National Rally. That positioning risks squeezing her between the two. Polling at: 7 percent Odds of winning: EDITOR’S NOTE: Poll figures are taken from an Ipsos survey of 849 Parisians released on Dec. 12.

PARIS — A generational reckoning is brewing in Paris and Berlin, where a new wave of younger politicians is putting pensioners on notice: The system is buckling and can’t hold unless retirees do more to help fix it. Culture, language and local politics may add a distinct flavor to each debate, but the European Union’s two biggest economies are dealing with the same issue — how to pay for the soaring costs associated with the retirement of baby boomers.   The problem is both demographic and financial. Declining birthrates mean there aren’t enough young people to offset the boom in retirees at a time when economic growth is sluggish, salaries have stagnated and purchasing power isn’t evolving at the same rate as it did for previous generations. And with the cost of real estate skyrocketing, young people feel that buying a home and other opportunities afforded to their parents’ generation are increasingly out of reach.  With budgets already strapped thanks to priorities such as rearmament in the face of Russian aggression, reindustrialization and the green transition, a growing number of young politicians from the center to the right of the political spectrum are calling out retirees for not contributing to the solution.  Some lawmakers in Germany, like 34-year-old Johannes Winkel, are calling for greater “intergenerational justice.” The 38-year-old French MP Guillaume Kasbarian is going a step further, arguing France should rethink its pay-as-you-go system — similar to Germany’s — in which current workers fund retirees’ pensions through taxes. The 38-year-old French MP Guillaume Kasbarian is going a step further, arguing France should rethink its pay-as-you-go system — similar to Germany’s — in which current workers fund retirees’ pensions through taxes. | Amaury Cornu/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images Targeting pensioners is a politically dangerous proposition. They are a reliable voting constituency, heading to the ballot box in greater numbers than younger generations — and they lean centrist. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative bloc got an estimated 43 percent of the vote among people aged 70 and above in February’s general election, and older voters helped Macron secure reelection in 2022.  French Budget Minister Amélie de Montchalin told lawmakers last month that she didn’t “want to trigger a generation war” over the government’s fiscal plans for next year.  But she — and her counterparts across the Rhine — may not have a choice. ‘FAIR TO ALL GENERATIONS’ Lawmakers in France are sparring this week over a highly contentious plan to freeze inflation adjustments on pension payments next year, part of a wide-ranging effort to trim billions of euros from the budget and get the deficit below 5 percent of gross domestic product. The debate in France echoes similar conversations in Germany, where Winkel is among a group of young conservatives who rebelled against a pension reform package put forth by Merz’s government, saying current benefits for older people are too generous and asking for a plan that is “fair to all generations.”   A group of leading economists argued in an op-ed in German newspaper Handelsblatt that Merz’s proposed pension package would be “to the detriment of the younger generation, who are already under increasing financial pressure.”   The leaders of Germany’s coalition set out to resolve the dispute last week, with Merz vowing to take on a second, more far-reaching set of pension reforms as early as next year.   Winkel is among a group of young conservatives who rebelled against a pension reform package put forth by Merz’s government, saying current benefits for older people are too generous and asking for a plan that is “fair to all generations.”  | Photo by Nadja Wohlleben/Getty Images But it’s unclear whether that proposal has appeased all young conservatives. In a letter this week, the group said its 18 lawmakers would decide individually how they will vote on the immediate pension package, which is set to go for a vote on Friday. Every vote will matter, as Merz’s fragile coalition has a majority of only 12 parliamentarians. On Tuesday, Merz’s center-right bloc held a test vote to see if there was enough conservative support to pass the pension reform package. The results of the internal vote were unclear. Opinion surveys in Germany and France show that much of the public favors protecting existing pension systems and benefits. Leftist parties in both countries have also strongly pushed back against measures that would freeze or lower pension benefits, arguing that the public pension system is a core element of social cohesion. But intergenerational cracks are emerging.  “Measures on pensions show a generational cleavage: They are massively rejected by pensioners but supported by nearly one out of two in the younger generation (18-24),” according to an analysis from French pollster Elabe published in October.  In another poll from Odoxa, a small majority of working-age people in France agreed that current pensioners are “better off because they were able to leave earlier than those still working.” KEY DIFFERENCES There are key differences between France and Germany, however. Pension benefits in France are far more generous than in Germany, and help keep the poverty rate among people aged 65 and above lower than that of the general population.  The opposite is true in Germany, where the over-65 population is worse off than those younger than 65, in part because public pensions became comparatively lower after pension reforms passed in the 2000s.  Ultimately, however, demographics and economics vary so much from one generation to another that it’s almost impossible to make a pension system “fair,” according to Arnaud Lechevalier, an economist at the Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. The idea that each generation can have the same return on investment on their working-aged contributions is, in Lechevalier’s words, “a deeply stupid idea.”

LONDON — The self-styled “eco-populist” leader of Britain’s Green Party couldn’t be ideologically further from right-wing firebrand Nigel Farage. But, as Zack Polanski presides over a leap in his party’s poll ratings, he’s actively channeling the Reform UK leader’s media strategy, and putting himself front and center of the argument for change. It’s a high-stakes gamble that, like Farage, could see him accused of turning the outfit into a one-man band. But so far, it appears to be working. “I don’t want everyone to agree with what I or the Green Party is saying,” Polanski told POLITICO in an interview. “What I do want everyone to know is, I’ll always say what I mean.” ‘REACHING THE CEILING’ Polanski won a landslide victory in the Greens’ heated summer leadership election, handing him the reins of a party that made strong inroads at the last election — but still has just four Members of Parliament. Though the Greens stress many spokespeople will continue to represent the organization, he undoubtedly dominates media appearances, and the party is pushing him as an electoral asset. “We were reaching a ceiling of where you could get to by [the] ground game alone,” Polanski reflects of the Greens’ past performance. “What maybe was holding us back was not being heard in the national media.”  Next month, he’ll walk a well-trodden path for British politicians wanting to raise their profile with an appearance on “Have I Got News for You,” the BBC’s long-running satirical quiz show poking fun at politicians. Despite the cheeky reputation, it’s a national institution and a firm part of the establishment with a large national viewership. Previous guests include Farage himself — and Boris Johnson. Polanski says he wants to “make sure that the media have an easy access point” to the party, and the Green leader seems willing to go to places where he’ll have to put up a fight, too — including a colorful on-air battle with Piers Morgan. He’s even launched his own podcast, currently ranked ninth in the U.K. Apple Podcasts charts for politics shows. Some of the numbers lend credence to the Green leader’s theory of the case. The party now has more than 150,000 members, according to its own estimates, compared to 68,500 when Polanski took over. That puts it ahead of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in membership numbers. As Nigel Farage bids to eclipse the Conservatives as a right-wing force in British politics, he has used regular defections to Reform UK to show he’s on the march. | Carl Court/Getty Images Polanski also appears to have overseen a steady polling uptick for the left-wing outfit, as borne out in POLITICO’s Poll of Polls. “There’s a definite and obvious increase,” says YouGov’s Head of European Political and Social Research Anthony Wells.  “He’s already far better known than [predecessors] Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay were.” Wells cautions: “It’s not like the public are in love with him, but the public do … dislike him less than most of the party leaders,” Wells adds. CONVICTION POLITICS As Farage bids to eclipse the Conservatives as a right-wing force in British politics, he has used regular defections to Reform UK to show he’s on the march. Polanski has tried similar, crowing about defections by ex-Labour councilors from the left. In video campaigning, too, Polanski has taken a leaf out of Reform’s book. He peppered his leadership run with arresting monologues to camera, and he has opted to weigh in on — rather than duck — the divisive issue of immigration. A video by the coast urged voters to “hold that line together” against the “super rich” rather than attacking asylum seekers crossing the English Channel in small boats. “The biggest draw for those films is the fact that Zack is prepared to speak about these things — like a lot of other politicians aren’t,” argues the film’s creator Jeremy Clancy, who leads a creative agency making films for progressive outlets. Clancy used to serve as senior communications manager for ex-Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn. Praising the contribution of migrants when polling shows the public want lower levels is a risky bet. The Green leader argues voters will respect a clear stance, even if they disagree. “People who know that their politicians are telling the truth and are speaking with conviction are always preferred,” he says. Like Reform, Polanski’s team has so far tried to paint in populist, primary colors. His first party political broadcast — a convention by which parties are given guaranteed five-minute TV slots — was filmed in the early hours as a metaphor about billionaires sleeping comfortably while others struggle. “Both were efforts to visualize things that you can’t see and to consciously make them as simple as possible,” Clancy says. Those short videos racked up millions of views. Whether this translates into electoral success, however, remains a wide open question. Next May’s local elections will offer the first real ballot box test of Polanski’s pitch. Ipsos’ Research Director for Public Affairs Keiran Pedley says the Greens are “still waiting for that breakthrough moment” and now need to “seal the deal” with voters. He cautioned against assuming cut-through for a leader will lead to electoral success. Pedley compared Polanski to ex-Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg — who lost seats at the 2010 general election despite a major polling bounce mid-campaign off the back of strong televised debate performances. For now, those who’ve joined the movement seem bullish. “The Greens have gone from being a one-issue party, which is the environment, to basically being the broad left party,” said Swindon Borough Councilor Ian Edwards, who joined the Greens in October after resigning the Labour whip earlier this year. But he added: “We can’t rely on just a leader. We’ve got to prove ourselves.”

Donald Trump this spring dubbed himself the “fertilization president.” But some conservative family policy advocates say he’s done little so far to publicly back that up and are pushing to get the White House in the remaining months of the year to prioritize family policy — and help Americans make more babies. A top priority is a pronatalist or family policy summit that spotlights the U.S.’s declining fertility rate. Other asks, which typically run through the White House’s Domestic Policy Council, include loosening regulations on day cares and child car seats, further increasing the child tax credit and requiring insurers to cover birth as well as pre- and post-natal care at no out-of-pocket cost. While the Trump administration has advanced a handful of policies explicitly billed as “pro-family,” some conservative advocates are dismayed that the president has not done more on one of his campaign’s most animating issues. The lack of movement threatens to dampen enthusiasm among parts of the Republican Party’s big tent coalition, including New Right populists, who worry about the erosion of the U.S. workforce, and techno-natalists, who advocate using reproductive technology to boost population growth, as the GOP stares down a challenging midterm election. “I think there are people, including the [vice president] and people in the White House, who really want to push pro-family stuff,” said Tim Carney, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who recently wrote “Family Unfriendly,” a book that has become popular in conservative circles. But “it hasn’t risen to the forefront of the actual decision-making tree in the White House, the people who can put some velocity on things.” “It’s all nascent,” Carney added, but “it is going to be something that Republicans want to talk about in the midterms.” White House aides acknowledge advocates’ restlessness, but argue that even as it has yet to take action on the suite of explicitly pro-family proposals advocates want, they have taken a whole-of-government approach to family policy. Privately, the White House is deliberating its next moves now that the GOP’s tax and policy bill passed. It’s taking a two-pronged approach: addressing financial pressures and infertility issues that prevent people from having children; and helping couples raise kids in alignment with their values. That latter bucket includes bolstering school choice and parental rights, promoting kin- and faith-based child care, and other actions that can help with the costs of raising children, including health care and housing. “You saw what we were able to accomplish in 200 days. It was a lot. Just wait for the next three-and-a-half years,” said a White House official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy. “There’s a lot of opportunity to accomplish a lot through pure administrative action, through the bully pulpit and, of course, if we need to, through working with Congress.” The official couldn’t rule out a family policy event hosted by the White House in the future. “Look, the president loves to convene stakeholders and thought leaders and policy leaders,” the official added. While they understand the White House has had its attention fixed on other issues, like foreign policy, immigration, and trade, pronatalists are anxious for the administration to do something about the declining birth rate. They see it as, quite literally, an existential crisis. “Demographic collapse has become the global warming of the New Right,” said Malcolm Collins, who along with his wife Simone, are two of the most outspoken techno-natalists and have pitched the White House on several policies. “And this is true, not just for me, but for many individuals within the administration, and many individuals within the think tanks that are informing the administration.” The Trump administration has advanced a handful of policies that conservatives argue will support families and, they hope, encourage people to have children. The president’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill made permanent the child tax credit first passed as part of Trump’s first-term Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, increased the rate and adjusted it for inflation on an ongoing basis. The legislation also established a one-time $1,000 so-called baby bonus for children born in 2025 through 2028. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy instructed his agency to give preference in competitive grants to communities with higher-than-average birth and marriage rates. Critics of the administration note that the megalaw will make it harder for people to keep their Medicaid insurance, the president’s proposed 2026 budget eliminates childcare subsidies for parents in college, and Trump’s CDC eliminated a research team responsible for collecting national data on IVF success rates. But family policy advocates say on the whole they see progress, though not nearly enough to reverse the trend of declining birth rates. “From my conversations with folks in the administration, there is definitely interest in doing something visible on the family stuff. They feel like they’re going down the list — homelessness, crime, obviously immigration — of different things and families’ time will come,” said Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center who focuses on family policy. The U.S. birth rate has been declining since the Baby Boom ended in the early 1960s, falling from 3.65 births per woman in 1960 to 1.599 in 2024, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. There are similar trends across high-income nations, in part the result of easier access to contraception, changing societal values favoring careers over having children and high costs of living. The issue came to the fore during the campaign when Trump promised government-funded in vitro fertilization in an effort to allay concerns over his anti-abortion stance. A few months later, then-Sen. JD Vance doubled down on controversial comments about the country being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies” and argued for more babies in the U.S. Elon Musk, perhaps the most prominent pronatalist, was Trump’s biggest financial booster during the campaign and a key adviser in the early days of the administration. There is no agreed-upon solution to the problem of a declining birth rate. Hungary is held up as a model by pronatalists for its family friendly policies but its birth rate remains low, despite exempting women with four or more children from paying income tax, among other incentives. The birth rate also remains low in Nordic countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland that have generous paid parental leave and heavily subsidized childcare. Still, advocates in the U.S. have a list for the Trump administration they believe will make a difference, arguing that even if they fail to increase the birth rate, they would support families. Some policies that pronatalists hope the Trump administration will pursue are more typically associated with the left, such as expanding child tax credits, which Trump did in the GOP megalaw, and reducing the costs of child care. But others have a home in the libertarian wing of the GOP, such as cutting regulations on day care and curbing car seat rules. Some of these proposals, pronatalists acknowledge, come with more risk but would overall result in more births. For decades, social conservatives led the GOP’s charge on families, arguing in support of policies that promote two-parent, heterosexual families. But declining birth rates, coupled with a broadening of the GOP coalition, has broadened the lens to focus on increasing the birth rate, a new pronatalist tinge. In an effort to keep their nascent and fragile coalition unified, neither social conservatives nor the techno-natalists are pushing policies at the extremes — like banning IVF or creating genetically modified super soldiers. That helps explain why the president has not taken action on one of his most concrete promises, making IVF free, despite receiving a report on it in May. A second White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said expanding IVF access for families remains “a key priority,” but declined to offer specifics on the status of any policy moves. “This issue is a winner for the Republican Party, it’s a winner for women, it’s a pro-life issue,” said Kaylen Silverberg, a fertility doctor in Texas who has consulted with the White House on IVF. “This will result in more babies, period.” But social conservatives are morally opposed to IVF both because of a belief life begins at conception and because they don’t think that science should interfere with the natural act of procreation. The proposal would also be quite costly. Instead, they want the White House to support something called reproductive restorative medicine, which can include supplements and hormone therapy, that they say will help women naturally improve their fertility. “The point of President Trump’s campaign pledge was to help couples with infertility have children. There’s a way to do that that’s cheaper, faster, less painful and more preferable to couples,” said Katelyn Shelton, a visiting fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Bioethics, Technology and Human Flourishing Program who worked at the Department of Health and Human Services during the first Trump administration. While most of the family policy conversation has been concentrated on the right, it’s also starting to grow on the left, alongside the so-called “abundance” movement focused on reducing government bureaucracy. Both the National Conservative Conference and the Abundance Conference this week in Washington hosted panels on family policy. Reducing barriers to building housing is “good for families,” said Leah Libresco Sargeant, a senior policy analyst at the Niskanen Center, a think tank that describes itself as supporting free markets and effective government, who co-moderated the Abundance Conference’s family policy panel. “That’s not kind of a family centered policy per se, [but] it’s a good policy that’s good for families.” Ultimately, many conservative family policy advocates argue there is only so much government can do to address what they see as a fundamentally cultural and religious problem. It’s a posture that the GOP’s historically small-government contingent takes as it pushes back on their new populist bedfellows. “I do not think that the problem of people not having enough kids is a problem of economics. I think that is very often a line that is used in order to promote a larger government populism,” said conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. “This is a predominantly religious problem, it’s a cultural problem.” Pronatalists have a lot of hope in the future of the GOP in part because of Vance, the administration’s most prominent and ideologically committed proponent of family policies, to carry the mantle, either during Trump’s presidency or as part of his own 2028 presidential bid. They love that Vance brings his children on official trips and is open about carving out time during the day to spend with them. “Our political leaders are inherently cultural leaders,” Carney said. “Bringing his kids with him to Europe and at the inauguration — where the little one, she was sucking on her fingers, so they had put Band-Aids on some of them so she wasn’t sucking all of them at once — all of those things that show a loving family and that kind of stuff, I think that can be culturally really productive.”

François Bayrou, France’s latest embattled prime minister, is blaming the country’s 19 million over-60s for pushing state finances to the brink. Looking likely to be the latest French leader to fall on his sword, Bayrou is going down fighting — albeit fighting old people. The working-age population faces “slavery,” he said, because it’s having to repay “loans that were light-heartedly taken out by previous generations.” Bayrou wants to force through €43.8 billion worth of budget cuts to bring French spending under control. But he faces a largely hostile French parliament, with the left and the right signaling they will vote him down at a confidence vote he’s called on Sept. 8. Where France, Europe’s second-largest economy, is going, the rest of the continent will probably follow. Not only do the country’s unsustainable finances threaten to drag the rest of the EU into a debt crisis of the kind that rocked the eurozone a decade and a half ago, but France’s troubles foreshadow a phenomenon that’s going to hit pretty much every European country sooner rather than later: Populations are getting older, meaning there are fewer workers to pay for an ever greater number of pensioners. How governments tackle that could be the challenge of our age.  NOT OK, BOOMER Bayrou, born in 1951, is blaming his fellow boomers. The over-60s make up over one-quarter of France’s population ― a share that is expected to rise to a third by 2040. They are either drawing a pension or about to, putting increasing pressure on France’s exploding public debt, which now exceeds €3.3 trillion.  The centrist prime minister, allied to President Emmanuel Macron, staked his reputation on insisting there’s no alternative to a path of fiscal rectitude. France’s €400 billion annual pensions bill is equal to 14 percent of national gross domestic product. The costs will increase by €50 billion by 2035, while a decade later the bill will be a cool half a trillion euros. Bayrou, a former justice and education minister who has tried three times to become president, has long been a proponent of putting the national books in order. But going after the oldies in such a blatant way is a new twist.  That’s probably because he knows he’s got little left to lose. As France’s third prime minister in a year, Bayrou has served a little under nine months and doesn’t look likely to make it past that. France’s Socialist party, which Bayrou would once have counted on as an ally, has turned its back on him over pensions reform — an issue that exploded after the government raised the retirement age from 62 to 64. Last week, Bayrou warned that young people will be the biggest victims of the ballooning debt.  The over-60s make up over one-quarter of France’s population ― a share that is expected to rise to a third by 2040. | Patrick Landmann/Getty Images “All this to help … boomers, as they say, who from this point of view consider that everything is just fine,” he said in a televised interview. He has since clarified that he never advocated “targeting boomers” ― technically those born between 1946 and 1964 when the postwar population exploded ― but the message is clear: The older generation needs to do some belt tightening. “There is a risk of cannibalization, whereby we finance the present and the past at the expense of the future, and we are doing this more and more,” said Maxime Sbaihi, a fellow and former director of Institute Montaigne, an economic think tank. “The French are not aware of the demographic situation in France, they think that France is a young country, that we can stop working at 60, there is a kind of collective imagination that is difficult to shake,” he added. This ignorance, he said, is leading France toward a brutal, painful adjustment of its social system. TO THE GUILLOTINE! France’s pensions bill accounts for one-quarter of all government spending; Italy is the only European country paying out a larger share proportionate to its economy. Pensions account for over half of France’s €839 billion increase in public debt between 2018 and 2023, former Treasury official Jean-Pascal Beaufret warned. “For us millennials, Bayrou’s speech about boomers … will be our Robespierre at the Convention of the 8th of Thermidor,” Ronan Planchon, a journalist for the conservative newspaper Le Figaro, wrote on X, a reference to how the French revolutionary leader was sent to the guillotine after denouncing his own compatriots. Bayrou has warned the biggest victims of the ballooning debt will be young people.  | Alain Jocard/AFP via Getty Images Pensions have long been a political taboo, with France nearly always seeing street protests whenever an overhaul is mooted. Fresh demonstrations are planned for Sept. 10.  But given the country’s aging population, politicians are reluctant to challenge a group that represents a big slice of their vote, and that holds the lion’s share of the country’s wealth and savings. Compared to other items on the budget, pensions are particularly hard to adjust, said Hippolyte d’Albis, an economist and professor at the ESSEC Business School. “It’s an expenditure that is binding on society because the parameters that determine it — most notably the annual indexation of basic pensions — are set by law and can only be changed by passing a new law,” he said.  In 2024 the national deficit stood at 6.1 percent of GDP — double the 3 percent allowed under the EU’s fiscal rules. Paris forecasts that the deficit will not fall below 3 percent until 2029.  Economy Minister Eric Lombard suggested things could get bad enough to require the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to bail the country out — treatment usually reserved for financial basket cases like Argentina. He backtracked a few hours later after a large wobble in the stock market.  François Bayrou wants to force through €43.8 billion worth of budget cuts to bring French spending under control. | Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA The markets are already well aware of France’s troubling fiscal trajectory; the country has already had its credit rating cut by the major credit ratings agencies. It’s now a stone’s throw away from seeing its borrowing costs surpass those of Italy, long a byword for reckless spending and unsustainable debt.   France’s pensions system is unbalanced, but in demographic terms the country is actually a lot better off than many of its peers, with the second-highest fertility rate in the EU, at 1.7 births per woman. Italy and Spain, for example, face an even more stark fiscal cliff as the population ages, with only 1.1 to 1.2 births per woman. “France is the developed country where the standard of living in retirement is the highest compared to the average standard of living of working people,” said Thierry Pech, director general of progressive think tank Terra Nova. He said that raising the working age, which France has already done, is in some ways the “most brutal method.” “It wouldn’t be unfair to involve the wealthiest retirees,” he said. “But it would require a bit of political courage and a lot of education.” 

Poverty in old age will be the norm for a large chunk of Europe’s population unless current retirement policies undergo deep reform, the EU’s workplace pensions regulator has warned. “One in five Europeans is already at risk of living in poverty at old age,” said Petra Hielkema, chief of the Frankfurt-based European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority. “[That’s] a ridiculously high percentage, frankly. And if you then look at women, they have a 30 percent larger risk for that,” she told POLITICO in an interview. And it’s getting worse: Europe’s population is aging rapidly, and within 40 years there will be only 1.5 workers for every pensioner. That’s half the current ratio. “Some countries are already there. And that’s unsustainable,” Hielkema said. “Europe has a pension problem and countries that do not have strong supplementary pension systems are really at risk.” For decades, the standard European model has been to rely on a government state pension system to look after citizens in old age. But as people live longer and birth rates fall, the cost of funding these systems is soaring. Add to that the other costs of an aging population, such as health and aged care, and the taxpayer bill becomes eyewatering. One answer is to create complementary private or workplace pension systems to ensure people have a personal pot of pension savings they can draw on in retirement. Scandinavian countries are the best equipped to face the incoming crisis because they have a range of different sources for pensioners: a pay-as-you-go pension system, occupational pension funds — which means that when you work, you also save for your retirement — and further investments in pension products. But many countries, especially in Eastern and Southern Europe, rely mainly on state pensions and have smaller pension checks compared to salaries. In many cases, citizens aren’t really aware of their situations because public authorities and employers don’t provide them with a full overview of their pension entitlements. Brussels can do little more than make suggestions because the competence is at the national level. Still, Hielkema, a Dutch national who has run the occupational pension authority since 2021, is convinced there is “momentum” for a huge change, which will give EIOPA a bigger role. Poverty in old age will be the norm for a large chunk of Europe’s population unless current retirement policies undergo deep reform. | Georgi Licovski/EPA “One, we see the problem is getting bigger, and so do individual governments. And two, let’s be honest, why [are] pensions on the agenda? Because we need more investments, and one way to generate more investments is to move savings from bank accounts into investment products,” she said. WE HAVE A PLAN In the next few months the European Commission will issue recommendations on savings accounts and pensions to address the EU’s demographic and financial challenges. By the end of the year it will propose that governments set up digital accounts for the savings and investments available for each citizen, systems to track pensions, dashboards to communicate pension benefits, and tax incentives to make retirement saving more attractive. It will also review EU rules for workplace pension funds and pension investment products. The key measure in the package is a system to automatically enroll people in occupational pension funds, similar to what is already in place in the United Kingdom, Poland and Italy. “Automatically, you will be included in the pension funds if you work. If you don’t want that, you have to consciously opt out.” Currently, she said, people could opt into a workplace pension, but inertia means few do. “The assumption is that the inertia will also work the other way around,” EIOPA’s chief said, meaning few people would opt out. Where it is in place, the mechanism works and leads to more people saving through their jobs for their retirement, she said.  The idea is to have “something that is also available for people who are self-employed or who are gig workers, to ensure that also they can save for later,” she added. Ultimately national governments must launch such reforms, and the topic of pensions is politically explosive. François Bayrou’s French government lost the support of the Socialists when workers and employers failed to find an agreement on pension reforms. This summer, Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz suggested that young people save for their retirement, triggering a backlash from trade unions in defense of the state pension system. How much is at stake? In Germany workplace pensions amount to €267 billion, whereas in Sweden — a country with one-eighth the population of Germany but where almost everyone has a pension fund — workplace pension savings amount to €516 billion, or 92 percent of GDP.

The European Union’s economy would have looked far weaker after the pandemic without foreign workers, European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde said Saturday, warning policymakers not to ignore migration’s role even as it fuels political tensions. Speaking at the U.S. Federal Reserve’s annual symposium in Wyoming, Lagarde said an influx of foreign labor helped the eurozone absorb successive shocks like soaring energy costs and record inflation, while keeping growth and jobs intact. Employment in the bloc expanded by 4.1 percent between late 2021 and mid-2025, nearly matching gains in gross domestic product (GDP), she noted. “Although they represented only around 9 percent of the total labor force in 2022, foreign workers have accounted for half of its growth over the past three years,” Lagarde told the gathering of central bankers. Without that contribution, she added, “labor market conditions could be tighter and output lower.” Lagarde singled out Germany and Spain as examples. Germany’s GDP would be about 6 percent lower today without migrant labor, while Spain’s strong recovery also “owes much” to foreign workers, she said. Across the eurozone, employment has expanded by more than 4 percent since 2021, even as central bankers pushed through the steepest rate hikes in a generation. The ECB president argued that migration has played a crucial role in offsetting Europe’s shrinking birth rate and growing appetite for shorter working hours. That, she said, helped companies expand output and damped inflationary pressures even as wages lagged behind prices. But Lagarde also acknowledged the politics. Net immigration pushed the EU’s population to a record 450 million last year, even as governments from Berlin to Rome move to restrict new arrivals under pressure from voters flocking to far-right parties. “Migration could, in principle, play a crucial role in easing labor shortages as native populations age,” Lagarde said. “But political economy pressures may increasingly limit inflows.” She stressed that Europe’s labor market has emerged from recent shocks in “unexpectedly good shape.” But she cautioned against assuming that dynamic will last: demographic decline, political backlash and shifting worker preferences still threaten the eurozone’s resilience.

BRUSSELS — Exhausted firefighters. Traumatized evacuees. Charred villages. Red horizons, all flames and smoke.  The dramatic images from wildfires tearing through Spain and Portugal year after year have become a mainstay of Europe’s increasingly blistering summers, a symbol of the devastation wreaked by climate change.  But while global warming fuels the flames, the Iberian Peninsula isn’t destined to turn into a fiery hellscape every year. Experts say that most of the damage is, in fact, preventable — if only authorities at regional, national and European levels would act.  “Climate change plays a role here, that’s for sure, but it’s not the main cause, and this cannot be used as an excuse for what governments must do in terms of prevention,” said Jordi Vendrell , director of the Pau Costa Foundation, a nonprofit focused on wildfire management.  This year’s fire season is already the worst on record. Across the European Union, blazes have consumed more than 1 million hectares so far this year — an area larger than Cyprus. Most of that land has burned over the past two weeks in the Iberian Peninsula, where at least six people have died. The scale of this year’s disaster has kicked off an unusual reckoning in both countries as to why Spanish and Portuguese citizens are exposed to such a deadly threat each year.  “My house, my neighbor’s house, my entire town of Castrocalbón has gone up in flames because our authorities are incompetent,” 74-year-old Josefina Vidal cried out at a protest in the central Spanish city of León on Monday. Across the border in Portugal on Tuesday, mourners at a firefighter’s funeral declared Prime Minister Luís Montenegro persona non grata.  Politicians on both sides of the border are keen to avoid being held responsible, and are taking pains to blame the fires on uncontrollable factors like climate change and arson, or past decisions taken by their political rivals. At best, the debate centers on firefighting resources.  Yet experts say that preventing destructive blazes is both simpler and cheaper than fighting them. And the conditions that create firestorms are largely due to how countries manage — or rather, don’t manage — their land. THE CLIMATE FACTOR That’s not to say climate change isn’t playing a role.  The global increase in temperatures, driven by the burning of fossil fuels, does not spark fires. But it creates conditions for flames to spread with ease: More intense and frequent heat waves — such as the searing heat Spain and Portugal endured in recent weeks — dry out soils and plants, rendering forests and land more flammable.  Scientists stress that while halting global warming is crucial to avoid even worse heat waves and droughts, governments must also urgently minimize the risk of climate-fueled disasters. The scale of this year’s disaster has kicked off an unusual reckoning in both countries as to why Spanish and Portuguese citizens are exposed to such a deadly threat each year. | Brais Lorenzo/EPA In the case of fires, that mostly means ensuring there’s less stuff for flames to feast on.  While climate change is ratcheting up fire risk, “the fires we’re seeing are the result of decades of rural exodus and the absence of forest management,” said Arantza Pérez Oleaga, vice dean of Spain’s Official College of Forestry Engineers.  LEAVING THE LAND As more and more farmers and shepherds migrated to cities in recent decades, uncontrolled vegetation took over the forests, meadows, orchards and cropland they once managed. An estimated 2.3 million hectares of Spanish land are now abandoned.  This provides abundant fuel for catastrophic wildfires. The amount of biomass in Spain has surged by 160 percent over the past 50 years, said Eduardo Rojas Briales, forest expert at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.  Halting land abandonment is the key to preventing fires, experts say. Yet currently, with the rural population aging and struggling to make a living, it’s a trend that’s expected to continue.  “We need a strong primary sector,” said Víctor Resco de Dios, forest engineering professor at the University of Lleida. Crops such as olive orchards “traditionally served as firebreaks,” he added. “Now we have the problem that with rural abandonment, crops are less common.”  The wild shrublands and young forests that sprang up in their place may look like land returning to its natural state. But Resco de Dios says that the romantic “Disney ecology” vision many Europeans have of untouched nature is not only a fantasy — it’s actively dangerous.  “We need to make people understand that cutting trees is not an ecological crime,” he said. “On the contrary … if we plant trees and then we forget about them, then we’re just planting the fires that we’ll have in 20 or 30 years from now.”  Forestry experts, scientists and even conservationists agree: Letting Europe’s nature grow wild, without active management, is fueling the devastating fires.  Prevention, they say, means creating diverse landscapes, felling trees to create fire breaks, and developing a rural policy that ensures farmers and shepherds can make a living.  Crucially, it also means letting some fires burn, as long as they don’t spin out of control — ending what experts call a counterproductive policy of extinguishing all flames. In the Mediterranean, “our landscapes, they burn in the past, they are burning in the present, and they must burn in the future,” Vendrell said .  PREVENTION PARADOX Yet political debates about fire management tend to focus on fighting the flames when the land is already burning. In Spain, for example, conservative-led regions and the left-wing central government spent the past week trading blame over firefighting resources.  Experts say that preventing destructive blazes is both simpler and cheaper than fighting them. | Pereira Da Silva/EPA But governments more readily invest in firefighting equipment than prevention. Spain’s firefighting budget is double that of its prevention spending, even though preventing fires is much cheaper than fighting them.  “If we want firefighters to be able to stop a fire, of course, they have to have the means,” said Resco de Dios. “But … they cannot do their job, even if they have all the resources in the world, because the landscapes that we have do not allow them to work.”  Still, the task governments are facing isn’t easy, or cheap. Halting land abandonment will take significant long-term investment in rural communities, said Pérez Oleaga.  Stimulating demand for material such as wood is essential, she added. “There is a reason why there are fewer fires in places like Soria or the Basque Country,” where “the forests are pruned and managed because you still have sawmills and other businesses that make a living from the forests.” The Spanish environment ministry, which also oversees policies related to demographic change, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Portugal’s environment ministry blamed the fires on extreme weather, but said that the country was planning to invest €246 million a year until 2050 in measures to boost forestry industries and land management.  There are signs that fire prevention is getting more attention amid growing frustration over how authorities handle the fires. On Thursday, Spain’s special prosecutor for environmental issues opened an investigation into the lack of forest management plans in connection with the fires.  But all experts interviewed acknowledged that politicians have few incentives to take preventive action, given that the results are often not visible for years or decades after the next election.  “For a politician, the calculation is simple,” said Pérez Oleaga. “You can take a picture next to the firefighting plane you bought with EU funds, but you don’t get to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony when you use public cash to clean up a forest.”

Brexiteer Nigel Farage is packing his trunks and flip-flops and preparing to jet off to sunny Albania — if a recent social media exchange with its Prime Minister Edi Rama is to be believed. Balkan watchers and Farage fans have been treated to an unexpected sight when logging onto the social platform X recently: an artificial intelligence-generated image of Rama and the Reform UK leader in skimpy Victorian-style swimsuits, relaxing on a beach, with “VISIT ALBANIA” emblazoned across it in a quirky font. This was quickly followed up by another image of the two at sunset, again on a beach, sharing a glass of wine while draped in each other’s respective flags. The two have been trading barbs after the Albanian prime minister threw major shade at a “very dark” post-Brexit Britain and its controversial migrant policies. Farage retaliated by telling Rama to “take all the criminals back,” insisting that one in 50, or even more, Albanians in the U.K. are behind bars. It only escalated from there. Rama, in a series of X posts, called Farage’s figures “bonkers” and questioned how many were convicted due to the U.K.’s “outdated immigration and visa system,” yet decided to kill Farage with kindness and invite him to visit to enjoy “real sun, real hospitality, and even more facts about Albania and its fabulous people.” Farage eventually accepted the invitation on the condition that he would discuss the return of Albanian prisoners. Since a 2023 agreement with the Conservative government of Rishi Sunak, just eight Albanian prisoners have been repatriated, according to U.K. Justice Minister Nic Dakin during a House of Commons grilling. SO WHAT COULD BE ON FARAGE’S HOLIDAY ITINERARY? Farage and Rama were both approached for comment on when the former’s flight was due to arrive. Although no response was received by the time of publication, POLITICO decided to create a draft itinerary, just in case. 1. Visiting bunkers: Albania is home to up to 700,000 concrete bunkers built during the totalitarian communist regime of dictator Enver Hoxha. They were to provide defense against any possible invaders, something that could inspire Farage in his bid to fend off an “invasion” of migrants from across the English Channel. 2. Meet some sworn virgins: Farage has been vocal in his criticism of the “woke” agenda and his plans to ban the “transgender ideology,” so perhaps a meeting with some sworn virgins could be of interest. Also known as “burrnesha,” these are women who, to assume the responsibilities of a deceased father or male head of the family, take a vow of celibacy and adopt male dress, mannerisms and behavior. While diminished in numbers with just three remaining, and while strictly not related to the LGBTQ+ community, it might give him some food for thought. 3. Drink raki: After upsetting Bulgarians with similar rhetoric against potential migrants, Farage took a trip to the country in 2013. He was filmed enjoying a glass of wine and the charms of some local musicians and dancers. Farage may be tempted to swap his trademark pint of ale for some raki, a potent spirit made from grapes or plums, and while away the summer nights. 4. Visit the Bektashi World Headquarters: Having previously been accused of peddling anti-Muslim rhetoric, Farage could broaden his horizons with a trip to the Bektashi World Headquarters in Tirana, home to a moderate sect of Sufi Islam that welcomes women and alcohol in their rituals. They are also possibly going to become Albania’s version of the Vatican if a 2025 announcement by Rama to turn them into a sovereign state within the country comes to fruition. 5. Go back to his roots: As the great-grandson of a German immigrant who fled to the U.K. in search of a better life and the husband of a German woman, Farage could pay his respects at the German War Cemetery in the center of Tirana. Depending on the timing of his visit, he could also be the guest of honor at the joint ceremony hosted by the U.K. and German ambassadors every Remembrance Sunday. He could also check out a fragment of the Berlin Wall outside Rama’s office while he’s at it. Albania is home to up to 700,000 concrete bunkers built during the totalitarian communist regime of dictator Enver Hoxha. | Armando Babani/EPA 6. Visit the Puppet Theatre: Farage has described himself as a “pantomime villain” and said that when he leaves politics, “I want to go to the theater.” So he could use his visit to Albania as a chance to visit the historic Puppet Theatre. Lovingly restored with European Union funds after the 2019 earthquake, it may also remind him of the time he called French President Emmanuel Macron a “puppet” of former European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker. 7. Visit the statue of Queen Elizabeth II: In the northern town of Has, where more than 80 percent of locals have family in the U.K., a statue of Queen Elizabeth II has been erected in the center. Farage could also head over to nearby Kukës, another city with strong ties to the U.K., where he can visit “Costa Caffe,” and count the number of cars with telltale yellow British number plates. The city was also the first in the world to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize due to its assistance to some 400,000 Kosovar refugees during the 1998-1999 war, a tale of empathy that could inspire a change of heart in Farage. 8. Have a nice cuppa: Farage famously had a coffee cup thrown at him during the 2024 election campaign, but he can expect a much warmer welcome in Albania. While not big fans of tea, locals take coffee very seriously, and Tirana has one of the highest numbers of coffee shops per capita in Europe. Furthermore, besa, the Albanian code of honor that puts guests above god and even family, means he is at (almost) no risk of a repeat incident. 9. Just chill at the beach: According to Rama’s AI-generated images, sitting on the beach is going to be top of the agenda. Albania’s coastline stretches for some 276 kilometers, passing along the Adriatic Sea and the Ionian Sea, and offers plenty of opportunity for him to take a well-deserved break. BUT SERIOUSLY, WHO IS RIGHT? In October 2024, the Telegraph published an article that alleged 52,000 Albanians were living in the U.K., with 1,227 in jail, apparently the source of Farage’s claims. POLITICO contacted the Albanian ambassador to London, Uran Ferizi, to ask for their data on the number of Albanians in the U.K. He said: “We believe there are more than 300,000,” and shared a document that notes the Telegraph’s figures exclude naturalized Albanians, U.K.-born Albanian children, and “tens of thousands” of Albanians with Greek and Italian passports, as indicated by consular records. As for the number of Albanians imprisoned, the embassy document states it does not account for age, sex and socioeconomic status and continues that when adjusting for demographic imbalances and the actual number of Albanians in the U.K., the implied imprisonment rate is: “approximately 1 in 500.” If Farage concedes his facts are wrong, Rama has requested he be the first to tell anyone bad-mouthing Albanians “not to do it again.” Watch this space.

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Germany needs to significantly expand its armed forces — and it’s concluding the only feasible way to do so is to introduce some form of national service. Latvia recently did so; Sweden and Lithuania joined Europe’s ranks of national-service nations several years ago; and even the U.K., which ended military service long before the end of the Cold War, has floated the idea. Teenagers, it seems, are in vogue. But rather than merely talking about them, we should invite them to contribute their ideas to national security. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius — the country’s perennially  most popular politician — is trying to fix to an increasingly urgent problem: the Bundeswehr’s shortage of soldiers. In recent months, Europe’s largest country committed previously inconceivable sums to its armed forces, but even the shiniest new equipment is useless without soldiers. And Germany is already some 50,000 short of the 230,000 to 240,000 soldiers the coalition government wants it to field. (At the end of last year, the Bundeswehr had 181,174 men and women on active duty.) Pistorius, much-liked for his pragmatism and for speaking in ways the public can easily understand, has a practical solution in mind, and that is to create a “new military service” based on Norway’s selective military service. The Norwegian system — which I’ve frequently highlighted as a model other countries could adopt and adapt — sees all 18-year-olds assessed for military service, with only a small percentage eventually selected. It’s a clever system because modern militaries don’t need human masses for trench-style warfare, and the selectivity makes military service extremely attractive. Sweden adopted a similar model a few years ago, and now Pistorius wants Germany adopt it too. But it’s a gamble. What if enough young Germans don’t accept the offer of military service the way Norwegians so enthusiastically do? What if the Bundeswehr needs so many soldiers that being selected for military service doesn’t quite resemble getting a place at Oxbridge? Would the government then force them to serve? That’s the Gordian Knot the defense minister must now solve, and the coalition’s Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union on the one hand, and the Social Democrats on the other are divided on the issue. The U.K., which also wants to grow its military, faces recruitment challenges too. At the moment, its armed forces comprise 148,230 active-duty personnel, and they have fallen short of recruitment targets. Even though the armed forces have produced some truly impressive recruitment advertisement campaigns in recent years, the numbers refuse to leap. The issue is much the same in other European countries that don’t have military service. Even some that do haven’t managed to make the prospect of serving (including signing up for active duty after competing military service) quite as attractive as Norway does. One-quarter of Norwegian conscripts go on to active duty. Sweden and Lithuania joined Europe’s ranks of national-service nations several years ago. | Artur Reszko/EPA But there’s a solution: Ask the teenagers. Discussions around military service naturally focus on what might work, what should work, how the youngsters might respond, how they can be incentivized to participate and much else. But the teenagers themselves aren’t consulted. Imagine if they were. Just as we appoint seasoned experts to write national-security strategies, we could invite young people to participate in task forces focusing on military service and related matters. Naturally, such task forces would have to be led by senior government officials, but the rest of the membership could be comprised by young people of serving age. In fact, the defense of our countries now hinges on our young people. They have skin in the game — and just as important, they’re extremely likely to have good ideas about how military service should be set up. Of course, they wouldn’t be able to provide recommendations regarding the military training itself, but they’d be the best possible experts on what might make Gen Z and its successors want to be part of national security, and what national security should look like. This goes beyond what kind of sleeping quarters they might like. For example, would they consider getting a driver’s license as part of their military training — as Germany is considering — a significant carrot? How would they get young tech types interested in the armed forces? What about educating the general public about what the armed forces do? The latter is a particularly crucial undertaking now that virtually every European country says it wants to spend more money on defense but is struggling to get the message out. Young people might have good, constructive ideas; solutions the rest of us have failed to think of. And let’s remember they aren’t just potential national-service participants: They’re also the future stewards of our countries. Whatever we decide today will have an impact — whether positive or negative — on the future of our nations. Let’s get them involved.