Analysis: Europe — 27 October 2026
French consumer confidence falls to 80, lowest since 2013
French household confidence fell to 80 in October, against 85 expected and a revised 85 previously, InvestingLive reported. That is the weakest reading since 2013 and well below the long-term average of 100, last seen in December 2021. Households reported worse past and expected finances, unemployment fears rose to 61 — the highest since March 2021 — and expected-price readings climbed. The survey coincides with French 10-year yields still above 5 per cent. Wolfgang Münchau, in UnHerd, treats that level as not yet a full crisis but close to a servicing doom loop: higher rates raise the deficit, which forces more borrowing and still higher rates.
Belgium is the first neighbour in the firing line. Its debt-to-GDP ratio is 108 per cent. Prime Minister Bart De Wever has said Belgium “must distance ourselves from the French situation to prevent it from spreading.” Münchau recalls the last eurozone crisis, when each government insisted it was “not Greece.” France and Italy are the EU’s second- and third-largest economies and among its most indebted. Moody’s recent decision to keep France’s Aa3 rating briefly narrowed the France–Germany 10-year spread from about 176 to 160 basis points and helped a bounce in the CAC 40; the bond premium remains large.
Münchau’s analysis is that no plausible French government after next April’s presidential election can cut the deficit, avoid unrest, meet EU fiscal rules and stay in the euro at once. Neither Marine Le Pen nor Jean-Luc Mélenchon wants a euro exit, yet he argues a default would freeze banks that use sovereign debt as ECB collateral and could force a French departure. The unfinished monetary union — no fiscal union, no single capital market, no common sovereign instrument — is, on this view, the structural flaw. Whether Belgium can ring-fence itself, and whether London’s capital markets stay insulated, is still an open market question.
Sources: UnHerd, InvestingLive.
Vučić concedes Serbian election as Student List wins 52%
Aleksandar Vučić conceded Serbia’s parliamentary election on Sunday night. Independent pollster CRTA put the Student List (SL) at 52.45 per cent and Vučić’s “United Serbia” list at 39.2 per cent, UnHerd’s Lily Lynch reported from Belgrade, with turnout near 70 per cent, the highest in decades. Every one of SL’s 250 candidates was chosen through student plenums; none was a professional politician. Reports of intimidation and beatings at polling stations, riot police near the electoral commission, and groups of men in black in central Belgrade had led many to expect a disputed result or street violence. Vučić instead said, “It is clear that we have lost these elections.”
The movement grew from two years of protest after a Novi Sad station canopy collapsed on 1 November 2024, killing 16. Critics tied the renovation to corruption; the slogan was “corruption kills.” Students blockaded faculties, rode to Strasbourg and Brussels, and held 16-minute silent vigils. Vučić waited, then sacrificed a prime minister, then — protesters allege — used a sonic weapon, beatings, Pegasus spyware and pre-election raids. He framed the unrest as a Western “colour revolution.” Past anti-Vučić waves had faded; this one became an electoral list and excluded the old opposition.
The open questions are governing, not winning. SL is leaderless and ideologically mixed — nationalists, liberals and leftists — and says it wants to dismantle the SNS system rather than become a conventional party. Foreign policy is mostly continuity: an SL representative pledged no change in Serbia–Russia ties and no sanctions on Moscow. The EU is Serbia’s main trading partner, but the list contains both europhiles and eurosceptics. Whether a protest coalition can run the state without a single leader or a shared programme is the test that starts now.
Sources: UnHerd.