Six years after it was formed out of the ashes of a bankrupt Alitalia, ITA Airways (ITA) commemorated its official entry into the Star Alliance network at a recent gala in Rome. From the vaulted porticos of the Villa Miani, the Italian carrier marked the occasion with lighting coloured in the brand’s royal blue, live music and a team of 23 flight attendants in uniform representing some of the global network’s roster. Also on the itinerary were a number of speeches delivered by Germans – with a few attempts at Italian to varying degrees of success.

The presentation came on the heels of a challenging few years for the airline as it struggled to find its place in the market, culminating in Lufthansa Group’s purchase of a 41 per cent stake in the company last year. At the same time, former Air Dolomiti CEO (and Lufthansa pilot) Joerg Eberhart was appointed CEO of ITA. 

The German-Italian combination seems ripe for cultural clashes as far as branding goes but so far the effects have been positive. ITA’s fleet and network has been gradually growing and in 2025 the airline reported its first-ever full-year net profit of €209m. Days prior to the gala, ITA relaunched its Heathrow to Rome service, after having left the market two years ago partly due to the high price of slots at the UK airport. ITA says that with the Star Alliance link-up and Lufthansa Group membership, passengers stand to benefit.

“Our airline being now part of Star Alliance and Lufthansa Group opens so much more of the world to [our customers],” says Eberhart. Passengers will have access to more loyalty perks and 1,000-plus lounges worldwide. “And with us in the family, there’s more of Italy to be explored for the other airlines’ loyal customers,” he adds.

While recent success has been bolstered by some years of a healthy airline industry, the looming effects of the conflicts in the Middle East could dampen ITA’s momentum. This is the sort of moment where being part of a larger group, rather than an independent airline based out of a second-tier European market, can help weather any turbulence. The German carrier group can mitigate risks by shifting assets, co-ordinating schedules and streamlining the overall network according to where demand is rising or falling, or where fuel availability becomes problematic. ITA taking on two slots at Heathrow from Lufthansa is one good example. And the added Star Alliance integration will mean streamlined IT and processes, plus better chances to fill airplanes as partner airlines feed passengers to each other.

With regards to brand essence, ITA is keen to maintain its image as Italy’s carrier, even as it integrates into the middle-European Lufthansa Group. That means focusing on Italian cuisine and hospitality, and partnering exclusively with Italian labels for onboard items such as amenity kits by Italian wellness brand QC Terme and uniforms by Brunello Cucinelli. And if the gestures toward Italian food and culture come alongside increased reliability and a more streamlined passenger experience, that’s sure to be a win for both the company and its customers. 

As we enter a period where carrier networks have begun to shrink, with flights cancelled and capacity constrained, it’s no small thing for passengers to have access to wider groups and alliance networks to reach their desired destinations. At the end of the gala, guests were handed traditional colomba di pasqua Easter cakes in ITA-blue boxes – a move signalling that even while ITA aims to leverage its new global partnership, it intends to hold fast to its Italian identity.

Over the past two days, the watchmaking industry has come together at Geneva’s Palexpo exhibition centre for Watches and Wonders, its most important annual gathering. In between booth tours – each brand has a dedicated space and there’s stiff competition for the most creative set design – new collection presentations and plenty of champagne receptions, journalists and buyers discussed the year’s most impressive novelties, as well as the future of the industry at a time of geopolitical tension. While Cartier’s new iteration of the Baignoire was particularly popular, much of the conversation among C-suite visitors touched on how the war in Iran is impacting consumer consumption.

One CEO told me that any hopes of the industry recovering from last year’s sales slowdown were crushed when the Iran war started. Still, executives remain convinced of the industry’s resilience and ability to bounce back over time. For many watchmakers, this means investing in the future: opening new manufacturing facilities (ahead of the fair, Audemars Piguet announced a new site in Meyrin) or kickstarting training initiatives for young watchmakers, such as Cartier’s education programme, which launched earlier this month in partnership with the King’s Foundation and involves building a new workshop in the UK.

There was also renewed attention on innovation and on highlighting the high level of handwork that goes into creating a timepiece – making it a sensible investment, even in tougher economic times. Tag Heuer presented a new in-house movement, developed over several years, while Van Cleef & Arpels offered one-of-a-kind métiers d’art watches that showcase the house’s expertise in miniature painting and enamelling.

At Vacheron Constantin the focus was the new Overseas Self-Winding Ultra-Thin, with a movement just 2.4mm thick that still offers 80 hours of power reserve – an engineering feat. “Vacheron Constantin was founded 271 years ago – and during this long history we’ve had some good times and some difficult times,” says Christian Selmoni, the house’s style and heritage director. “Through it all, you have to stay creative, you have to stay innovative and consistent in your efforts. There’s no reason to change the way we work.”

Others made a similar point: creativity thrives in moments of challenge. Audemars Piguet’s artisans began experimenting with skeleton watches during the Great Depression, while the Royal Oak was born out of the quartz crisis of the 1970s.

Change is afoot today, too. Houses are not only renewing vintage designs and pushing the boundaries of the craft but also rethinking how they communicate – opening booths to wider audiences and hosting events across the city. Cultural relevance, increasingly, is proving to be the ultimate luxury.

Natalie Theodosi is Monocle’s fashion director. Monocle recently sat down with Piaget’s CEO, Benjamin Comar. Read the story here.

As Israel deepens its military campaign against Iran and its regional proxies, its ambassador to the UAE, Yossi Avraham Shelley, gives his first interview since the conflict began. Speaking on Monocle Radio’s The Briefing, he strikes an uncompromising tone: Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and ballistic-missile capabilities, he argues, remain an existential threat that Israel cannot afford to leave unresolved. 

Yet the theatre stretches beyond Iran. Despite the announcement of a ceasefire, Israeli strikes have continually hit Lebanon despite mediators, including Pakistan, suggesting the agreement extended to that front. Ambassador Shelley maintains that Lebanon constitutes a separate conflict and points to Israeli warnings issued ahead of the strikes – including text messages and leaflets – as an attempt towards mitigation. 

His remarks come on the same day that Israeli and Lebanese officials were set to meet in Washington for their first high-level talks in decades, a development that signals tentative diplomatic movement even as hostilities continue across the region. For ambassador Shelley, however, any progress with Lebanon hinges on confronting the role of Hezbollah, which he describes as both a dominant force within the country’s government and a proxy for Iran. In his view, meaningful diplomacy cannot advance while Hezbollah retains military and political influence – ultimately placing Lebanon within the broader confrontation with Tehran.

The conversation also turned to the resilience of the Abraham Accords, a set of agreements signed in 2020 between several Arab states and Israel. Despite the pressures of the war, Shelley insists that ties between Israel and the Emirates are not only holding but strengthening, framing the relationship as part of a broader alignment against what he describes as destabilising forces in the region. 

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

There are talks taking place in Washington between Israeli and Lebanese officials – the first such discussions in decades. Are you hopeful anything will come of them?
Someone has to take responsibility. We never had a real fight with Lebanon as a country. There are no territorial issues – in 2000 we left what we call the Litani region. So we can move forward. But Hezbollah is the problem. It is a terrorist organisation and that is what prevents progress.

So are you optimistic about these talks?
We have to be optimistic. But first, we have to finish the problem with Iran. If that is resolved – if Iran is defeated or agrees to new terms – then we can move towards a different Middle East.

Where do you think things stand now with Iran? Would Israel accept the situation as it is today?
No, of course not. We didn’t start this. Iran attacked us [with] more than 400 ballistic missiles. That’s a fact. There are two major problems: one is the nuclear facilities. You cannot allow a regime that supports terrorism to have nuclear weapons – they would have immunity and could threaten everyone. The second is ballistic missiles. People don’t understand what that means. A [one tonne] ballistic missile is like throwing a bus onto your house. People cannot survive that. This is about our future. We cannot let it continue.

But negotiations were ongoing before the conflict escalated. Why act during that period?
Iran is the only country that openly says it wants to destroy Israel. This is not a normal conflict – it is an existential threat. We have problems with neighbours, yes, but those can be resolved. We have peace with Egypt and Jordan. But if someone says they want to eliminate you, you cannot just wait. You have to act.

Has Israel underestimated the strength of the Iranian regime?
I don’t agree that they are strong. This is a regime that rules by force. The potential for change is with the Iranian people. What we want is to eliminate their capability to destroy us – that is the objective.

Have you achieved that?
We have reduced their capabilities by about 60 to 70 per cent. We destroyed key nuclear-enrichment facilities, the centrifuges. That is very important. But we cannot play a cat-and-mouse game where they rebuild deeper underground. They don’t want to stop.

If you’ve achieved that much, why does the war continue?
Because this is not an attack, it’s a defence. We want one thing: for them to stop. If they say, ‘Here is the nuclear programme, we [will] stop,’ then it’s over. But why continue building missiles with a range of thousands of kilometres? That means: if you don’t obey, we will attack you. That is the threat.

A ceasefire was announced but Israel continued strikes in Lebanon. Why?
The ceasefire did not include Lebanon. Lebanon is another conflict. Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran and we cannot allow it to establish itself like that.

But civilians were killed in those strikes, [including] women and children.
If terrorists are operating from within civilian areas, that is the reality we face. Before we attack, we warn people – we send messages, flyers, telling them to leave. But Hezbollah is embedded there. That is the situation.

The Abraham Accords have held through this conflict, despite tensions. Has that surprised you?
The Abraham Accords have faced challenges from the beginning. This is another test. And you can see [that] they are holding. The UAE was attacked as well. Why? Because it is a friend of Israel. We share goals: protecting our people, growing our economies. These are strong foundations.

Do you think ties with the UAE will be stronger after this conflict?
Yes, for sure. We have mutual goals – economic growth, security, stability. Not only with the UAE but with others as well. People want to work with those who build, not those who destroy.

Finland has long sold itself as Europe’s model of preparedness. This is the country of bomb shelters beneath apartment blocks, emergency grain stashes and a reserve army so large that officials from bigger European capitals mention it with a hint of envy. Since joining Nato, Finland’s reputation as the alliance’s northern sentinel has only grown. So, when Ukrainian drones recently flew into Finnish airspace undetected, before crashing on their way to strike Russia, there was cause for some alarm. 
 
The practical question is obvious enough. How does an aircraft linked to an active war pass through the skies of one of Europe’s most militarised border states without interception? But the resulting political query makes matters more uncomfortable still: why are the authorities so unsure of themselves?

Early official statements were muddled and public communication was patchy at best. The Helsingin Sanomat newspaper accidentally referred to the drones as being Russian (having mistakenly relied on AI tools in the newsgathering). Then came the prime minister’s remark that the failures were “alarming”, a striking admission in a country where governments usually prize calm competency above all else. Finns are accustomed to hearing that their institutions are prepared – learning that those bodies were caught by surprise does not sit well.

The temptation will be to treat this as a Finnish embarrassment. It is, however, more usefully read as a European one. For all the talk of rearmament since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, much of Europe’s defence thinking remains rooted in older assumptions about how war begins and what readiness looks like. Ministers still like to announce purchases of fighter jets, artillery systems and missile batteries. These are visible, expensive symbols of seriousness. But they are designed largely for conventional threats. The battlefield in Ukraine has made one point repeatedly. Expensive platforms do not automatically protect against cheap, improvised or technologically modest threats. Equipment built to track bombers and puncture armour-plated vehicles might still struggle with a low-flying drone assembled for a fraction of the price of the missile sent to destroy it.
 
Finland is not alone in this. It has simply become the first European state to confront the gap so publicly. The more interesting failing might lie not in radar coverage but in the state’s response. In Finland, national resilience is often discussed in physical terms: bunkers, stockpiles, conscripts, ammunition depots. Yet resilience also depends on something less tangible, namely, public and professional confidence – or, knowing what to do when the pressure is on. When official messaging turns hesitant or contradictory during a live security incident, that confidence weakens. In a crisis, competence must be visible.
 
None of this means that Finland’s preparedness has been exposed as a fiction. Far from it. Finland remains one of the few European countries to have taken territorial defence seriously throughout the post-Cold War decades, maintaining mandatory conscription for men, regularly mobilising reservists for refresher exercises and fortifying its long eastern frontier, even while much of Europe downsized. Its armed forces are credible, its strategic culture is mature and its political class generally grasps that geography still matters. Most of Europe would be wiser if it thought a little more like Finland. But even serious countries can prepare for the wrong version of the next war.
 
The real lesson here is not that Finland has failed. It is that preparedness cannot be treated as a finished project. The institutions that made Finland resilient in the 20th century will not, by themselves, guarantee security in the 21st. Europe now needs to think harder about drone defence, low-altitude surveillance, civil-military co-ordination and the bureaucratic agility required to respond to events faster than official processes.
 
Finland’s reputation as the prepper of Europe remains deserved. Yet reputations are useful only if they survive contact with reality. If even the Finns can be wrong-footed by a handful of drones, then the rest of Europe needs to ask itself what vulnerabilities of its own remain hidden. 

Warm spring light spills across a dark-wood counter, fresh terrazzo floor and rows of tables studded with comfy cow-horn dining chairs. Laughter ricochets off tall walls as glasses of pale rosé glint in the sun from the generous full-height window. We’re at the pre-opening of Café Jikoni, tucked under a concrete pleat of the skirt-like O’Donnell + Tuomey-designed V&A East Museum in Stratford. 

The restaurant is buzzing with press, friends, family and the plates of soon-to-be-sampled delights being whisked to waiting diners. There is the whiff of warming baharat from the lamb sausage roll, a toasted sandwich with Goan aubergine achaar (pickle) and gooey cheddar, and rigatoni with lentils and anchovies. It’s a new site and a fresh challenge for the team behind Marylebone’s beloved Jikoni restaurant on Blandford Street – but one that the team appears to be handling with relish.

“What has been interesting for us is how you bring true hospitality to a public institution and make it feel fresh,” says chef Ravinder Bhogal, sitting beside co-founder and partner Nadeem Nanjuwany. “That’s something I feel really proud of. Everything, from our bread and pickles to dessert, is made in house from scratch.” 

Bhogal’s South Asian, Kenyan, Persian and British influences combine at Café Jikoni, resisting swift classification in ever more cunning and comforting ways. The menu touts curries and baked potatoes, buddha bowls and iced buns. But all made better – flecked, freckled and fizzing with unexpected spices, unfamiliar additions or unlikely ingredients. It’s culinary alchemy of the highest order. The inventiveness of the original restaurant is here in abundance, albeit in a subtly more museum-manageable format with plenty of sandwiches (hot or cold), nibbles for kids and takeaway packaging (if you prefer).  

As we talk, museum director Gus Casely-Hayford arrives, beaming and congratulating Bhogal and Nanjuwany on a seamless first service. “I could write an essay in praise of Gus – he’s a rare breed,” says Bhogal with obvious affection. “His vision for this place is to make a public institution feel like it belongs to the public.” It wasn’t just Casely-Hayford who the pair needed buy-in from – part of the consultation involved the V&A Youth Collective, a group of local 18- to 24-year-olds. “That was the most terrifying pitch; they are the toughest critics,” says Bhogal. The upshot was everything from greater sensitivity around price points to conversations around representation. “Stratford has a very young population, so it was really wonderful to sit down with them and ask them about what matters.”

On a practical note, and for the brand, there were hurdles, from engineering space for the extractor fan to making a window to give the chefs some natural light. But what’s it like taking a West End favourite to the East Bank of Stratford? How do you scale a bijou and beautiful restaurant to the appetites and obligations of a public museum? And what if people don’t already know Jikoni? “We might not explain anything [about ourselves] if the person is coming in just to experience the museum,” says Nanjuwany. “They might just want a nice coffee.” 

Bhogal agrees. “Our coffee is so thought about,” she says. “It comes from Uganda and there’s complete traceability [in collaboration with Workshop Coffee]. Whether we’re explaining it or not, someone will feel that they’ll taste it in the quality. So, it’s all those little touches.” It’s a refreshing thought. Not all restaurants need concepts. It’s the food, not the philosophy, that most people end up chewing over anyway. 

Hospitality is more about intention than simple brand building, how things are done rather than needing to interrupt people mid sip to explain the concept. The ethos here is in everything – but blissfully, it’s not forced down your throat along with the miso-cream banana bread.

As the plates are cleared, talk turns to business. Both Nanjuwany and Bhogal are optimistic about keeping their company culture intact while hiring more staff and reacting to the subtle differences between a sit-down dinner service and a café set-up. The entrepreneurs seem to adore a new challenge. Nanjuwany has worked in design, agriculture and orchard-fresh apple juice, while Bhogal is, among other things, a writer, journalist and broadcaster. Both believe that their endeavour can do good as well as being good.

“When you have a business that’s growing, [it’s important] to be able to point or spend in a really positive way: from incredible farmers who are really looking after the land to women’s co-operatives who make our tablecloth or healthcare for our team,” says Bhogal. “Or the fact that we only use wind and solar energy,” says Nanjuwany. “We’re calling that restorative hospitality,” he adds. “This idea that you can use purchasing [to do good]. We feel that we’re just completing that model because now even our rent goes towards a public good.”

Replete, impressed and feeling inspired by the ambition of the project (and the yuzu kick of the strawberry iced bun), Monocle asks about the area. “Whether you’re in Stratford or Marylebone, the purpose of a restaurant is to restore,” says Bhogal. Coffee cups clink as the sun catches the London Stadium outside, visible like a halo beyond a landscaped garden amid the fast-changing former Olympic site from 2012. “[That means] restoring each other, our team, our guests, our neighbourhood, the wider community,” she says. “And hopefully the wider world around us.” It’s a big responsibility for a humble museum café. But you sense that Bhogal and Nanjuwany aren’t a pair to bite off more than they can chew. 
jikonilondon.com

Few maisons move as fluidly between watchmaking and jewellery as Piaget. Under CEO Benjamin Comar that duality is not a balancing act but a defining principle. “From the beginning, Piaget approached the watch as a piece of jewellery,” Comar tells Monocle. “It was always about design, about gold, about how the object sits on the body.” That philosophy crystallised in the late 1960s, when the house introduced bold cuffs and pendant watches – what Comar calls “a jewellery way of wearing time.” Today that spirit remains intact. “There has always been this culture of jewellery watches and watches within a jewellery expression.”

It’s a timely position. As the market rediscovers a taste for expressive, design-led pieces, Piaget’s archives feel less like history and more like a blueprint. But Comar is careful to stress that revival doesn’t mean nostalgia. “We don’t present things in a backward-looking way. We reinterpret them with modern people, modern styling,” he says. “The aim is not to look back but to make them relevant now.”

That relevance lies, in part, in Piaget’s particular brand of boldness – an interplay of elegance and eccentricity. Cocktail rings return alongside sculptural watches; hard-stone dials feel both retro and quietly radical. “There’s always a little extravagance,” says Comar. “But it must remain refined.”

Craftsmanship, however, is where Piaget continues to distinguish itself in an increasingly crowded field. The maison’s expertise in ultra-thin movements allows for unusually expressive dials, particularly in hard stone. “Our dials are about 0.4mm thick,” he says. “You have to find the right part of the stone, cut it, polish it, without breaking it. It’s extremely delicate work.”

The result is more poetry than technical showmanship. “When you look into these stones, there is depth,” he says. “You can look at them like a night sky. There is emotion in them.” In a market increasingly shaped by technology, this tactility matters. “We need one foot in the past and one in the future,” adds Comar. “Craft reassures us.”

That sense of permanence also underpins Piaget’s response to a more uncertain global climate. While some might frame fine watchmaking as a safe haven, Comar prefers a quieter formulation. “Our role is to create objects that last,” he says. “Pieces [that] you can wear for 20 or 30 years and then pass on.” He talks of the Polo 79, a watch that Piaget revived in 2024. “That is what we are proud of. Not something opportunistic but something enduring.”

It’s a philosophy that finds a natural stage at Watches and Wonders, where Piaget presents its latest collections each spring. For Comar, the fair remains as vital as ever. “It’s a moment of encounter,” he says. “People thought digital might replace it but it hasn’t. You need to see the pieces, to feel them on the skin.”

Beyond the spectacle it is also a space for exchange between collectors, partners and critics alike. “You have compliments but also criticism,” he says. “That’s important. It’s a real conversation.” As audiences broaden and more clients attend in person, that conversation is only deepening. But Comar resists over-segmentation in a market often driven by novelty, it’s not about chasing time but designing to outlast it. “We try to show as much as possible to everyone,” he says. “People are mature, they know what they like.”

As the fragile US-Iran ceasefire seems to falter, Monocle Radio is broadcasting live from the UAE this week. In the latest episode of The Globalist, Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, and editor in chief, Andrew Tuck, speak to Mohamed Khalifa al-Mubarak, the chairman of Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism. Behind the scenes, the tall, trainer-wearing chairman stands against an 18-metre-long reproduction of a 4,000-year-old sailing boat inside Abu Dhabi’s vast, sand-toned Zayed National Museum. It’s the kind of setting that lends itself to big ideas and Al-Mubarak doesn’t shy away from them. “Since the first ballistic missile, we haven’t stopped,” he says. “We haven’t had a day off.”

For Al-Mubarak, engaging with culture is a way to deal with the conflict. “Culture is the light at the end of the tunnel,” he says. In a region where war is often framed in terms of territory, trade routes or geopolitics, Abu Dhabi is making the argument that culture is as crucial as ports or pipelines. 

The Zayed National Museum isn’t a space designed purely for tourists or soft-power optics. School groups move through its galleries and families linger over artefacts that tell stories of hardship, trade and survival. “Our forefathers were here when oil wasn’t discovered, when they were battling left and right,” says Al-Mubarak. The museum is a space for memory and, importantly, continuity. In times of instability, that matters.

In a country where most residents are expats, culture is also being used to redraw the boundaries of belonging. “When we say that 200 nationalities are local, we really mean it,” says Al-Mubarak. Museums, festivals and public spaces are shared ground, places where identity is less fixed and more negotiated. This has implications beyond the UAE. Across the Middle East, culture has often been caught in the crossfire, literally and figuratively. Here, it is being positioned as a stabiliser – something that can hold a diverse population together, even as external pressures mount.

For Al-Mubarak, culture is also a long-term asset. “These institutions are not for the next five years,” he says. “They’re for the next 100 years.” The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi remains under construction, acquisition committees are still meeting and investments continue, even as uncertainty caused by the war lingers. 

This is where sceptics – particularly in the Western media – might raise an eyebrow. Can cultural ambition transcend geopolitical volatility? Al-Mubarak’s response is characteristically unbothered, borrowing from LL Cool J. “Don’t call it a comeback – I’ve been here for years,” he says. There’s a degree of bravado to this statement but the UAE has a track record to back it up. The country has weathered economic downturns, a global pandemic and regional conflict, each time recalibrating, rather than retreating. 

As Monocle Radio broadcasts from across the country this week, that recalibration will be visible everywhere – and I know because I live here. Hotels are busier, exhibitions and events are returning and conversations are less focused on whether the conflict will stop and more on how it will evolve. 

None of this is to suggest that culture can resolve conflict. It cannot. But what Abu Dhabi is showing is that culture can shape how a society endures it. In a week where anything could still happen, that feels like something worth paying attention to.

On Sunday night, with most of the votes counted, it became clear that Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, had suffered a crushing electoral defeat. Péter Magyar, his victorious challenger, stepped onto a stage by the Danube in Budapest and told a sea of cheering supporters, “Together we liberated Hungary.” Celebration continued deep into the night, the air reverberating with the sound of motorists honking their horns. For long stretches, it was almost impossible to cross the river, with bridges and public transport clogged with crowds of young people, many of whom had voted for the first time. Across the city, bars stayed open late. Music played from open windows and parties spilled out onto the street.

Such was the outpouring of relief after 16 years of rule by Orbán and his Fidesz party. During that time, corruption became endemic, healthcare and education frayed and the economy stalled, paralysed by a system that rewards cronyism. All the while, Orbán constructed what he described as an “illiberal” state, with a tamed media and judiciary, a fixation on “traditional” values and a foreign policy friendly to Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the European far-right.

Magyar now promises to reverse this and return Hungary to the European fold as a reliable partner. Indeed, his rise began with Europe, when his party, Tisza, contested the European Parliament elections in June 2024. Speaking to me after a rally in western Hungary at the time, Magyar said, “I want to change Hungary completely. The Hungarian people are tired of the lies, corruption and propaganda.”

The 45-year-old Magyar was born into a family of lawyers and reportedly kept a photo of Orbán in his room as a boy. He earned a law degree at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University near Budapest before becoming a diplomat in Brussels and part of the establishment.

He came to prominence in February 2024 when a corruption scandal involving the granting of a pardon to a sexual abuser brought down two Fidesz figures: one was Hungary’s then-president, Katalin Novák, and the other was Magyar’s ex-wife, former justice minister Judit Varga. Until then a staunch ally of Orbán, Magyar turned against him.

Tisza went on to win almost 30 per cent of the vote in the EU elections – impressive, though everyone suspected that this was only a rehearsal for a far larger prize, which Magyar has now claimed. His victory was the result of relentless campaigning, during which he criss-crossed the country many times over, delivering as many as seven speeches in a single day. As one Tisza voter told me during the celebrations on Sunday, “Everyone saw this, so we hoped and believed.”

Even amid the jubilation, however, there was some scepticism. Many voters see parallels with the past and are suspicious of Magyar’s populist-lite style and his Fidesz origins. In his victory speech, he promised to rid the country of corrupt officials. But an uncomfortable question hangs in the air: now that Tisza has secured a two-thirds supermajority in parliament, giving it sweeping powers, will Magyar go after Orbán himself?

As the transition begins, he faces a difficult task – perhaps harder than winning the election. During his years in power, Orbán built a system that penetrated Hungary so deeply that it’s hard to see beyond it. As another former Fidesz insider once told me, “There’s no playbook for getting out of Orbán’s playbook.” So, as the emotions settle, what’s next for Hungary?

Alexei Korolyov is Monocle’s Vienna correspondent, reporting from Budapest. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.

As Monocle Radio begins a week of live broadcasting from the UAE, the country’s minister of state at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Noura bint Mohammed Al Kaabi, joins us from the Zayed National Museum. The Middle East is just six weeks into a regional conflict that continues to test the Emirates’ security, infrastructure and diplomatic posture. For now, a fragile ceasefire holds, though the outlook remains uncertain following the failure of weekend talks in Islamabad to produce a permanent deal.

The pace of developments has been swift, with mounting pressure on key trade routes and renewed focus on the stability of the Strait of Hormuz. Questions have emerged over how Gulf states will position themselves as alliances shift and the limits of ceasefire diplomacy become clearer.

Against this backdrop, Al Kaabi sets out the UAE’s position: resilience at home, continuity in the face of disruption and a more assertive call for accountability as the next phase of negotiations begins to take shape.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

You’ve described the past weeks as ‘unsettling’. How would you characterise where the UAE stands now?
We are living in very difficult times. For more than 40 days, the UAE has been under attack, with more than 3,000 missiles targeted at the country. Yet today, it stands in a position of resilience and strength.

Being here at the Zayed National Museum is symbolic. This institution represents an idea – and that idea is what is being attacked. This is not simply about geography. The UAE has not been part of this war, yet it has been targeted. The words that define this moment are resilience and continuity.

After the failed talks in Islamabad, were you surprised that no agreement was reached?
For us, a ceasefire is not the end – it is only the beginning. The UAE has been clear: we need accountability. We need these hostilities to stop.

The Strait of Hormuz must remain an open, international waterway. It cannot be held hostage by any country. The global economy depends on it, from trade and energy to food security and the environment. Our position is focused and consistent: accountability, stability and ensuring that the systems underpinning global commerce remain protected.

With talk of potential blockades and shifting alliances, what is the UAE’s immediate priority?
Our priority is to defend our sovereignty – our land and our people. But we are also looking ahead. If this continues, we must ask: can we rely on existing routes? Should we develop alternatives?

This moment is a test. And how a country responds to such a test defines it. In the UAE, life continues. Schools operate, businesses function and society adapts. There is continuity, even under pressure.

At the same time, we are reassessing our relationships and our long-term strategy in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment.

Do you expect the UAE and the wider Gulf to align more closely with the US or diversify partnerships further?
The UAE has always been a country that builds relationships. We are open, outward-looking and home to people from across the world. Our partnerships with the US span sectors such as AI, education and culture. At the same time, we are deepening ties with countries such as China across trade, technology and research.

Going forward, relationships will continue but with greater clarity. Safety comes first. We must be honest about threats and about the ideologies that have destabilised the region for decades. The key question is whether we allow the next generation to inherit the same cycles of conflict or whether we break them.

The UAE’s response has been widely noted for its communication and co-ordination. What has been key?
We have invested in communication capabilities for years. During the coronavirus pandemic, we prioritised transparency – and that approach continues today.

What matters is consistency and clarity. Communication happens at multiple levels, from leadership to experts to the wider community. Leadership has been visible, present and engaged, whether visiting hospitals or speaking directly to people.

We also consider the human side: how people feel, how they experience alerts, how they process uncertainty. Because when this ends – and we hope it ends soon – we will need to support our communities in adjusting to a new reality.

What might that ‘new reality’ look like for the UAE?
The UAE has always been about people. Its strength lies in the diversity of those who call it home.

What we have seen during this crisis is solidarity. Despite everything, people have chosen to stay. That belief in the system is fundamental.

There is often a perception that life here is transactional or temporary. But what we have witnessed proves otherwise. There is a deeper connection; a shared sense of belonging As our leadership has said: everyone in the UAE is an Emirati. In a polarised world, that is something we must protect. 

Listen to more from our coverage in the UAE on the Globalist.

Since being back in London, I’ve retained a Turkish compulsion. Every time that I see someone at work, a street cleaner, say, or a shop worker, I feel the urge – no, the need – to say “kolay gelsin”. In Turkey you say it to anyone who is exerting themselves – it literally means “may it come easy”. You say it down the phone to your bank’s call-centre worker when you finally get past the on-hold music and to the man on the street struggling home with his shopping. You can say it ironically if someone is facing a long weekend with the in-laws. You can even use it at the migration office, where the bureaucrat and I say it to one another as we pick through a problem in my Turkish paperwork.

These four syllables smooth the rough edges between urban tribes and social classes in Istanbul, creating frictionless moments of civility in the big city. Kolay gelsin is an acknowledgement that you both see and appreciate the effort that someone else is putting in. It is a social leveller, its grammar unafflicted by the Turkish formal and informal registers. It’s the kind of phrase that punches holes in the walls that we build up around ourselves in a megacity of strangers. In fact, Turkish is rich in them: there is also geçmiş olsun (may it be behind you), applicable to illness or any kind of misfortune. And as a nation of gourmands, Turkey also has its version of bon appétit: afiyet olsun, which is printed on napkins or menus, and even uttered when someone is just taking a sip of water.

English-language cities need an equivalent of kolay gelsin. London is a place that enjoys stout, single-syllable pleasantries – please, thanks, cheers – and while any of those could be used in similar situations, none capture the broad spectrum of its sentiment. “May it come easy” doesn’t have the succinct ring or charm of the original. Earlier this week I inadvertently let out a kolay gelsin when I passed one of the builders who has been shovelling skips full of earth out of the garden next door.

“Huh?” 
 
“May it come easy,” I said.

He stared back. “Right. OK.”

In that moment he might have wanted to use one of the snippier Turkish replies: kolaysa sen yap – meaning “if it’s easy, you do it”. And I wouldn’t have blamed him – “may it come easy” sounds imperious, even mocking to Anglo ears.

What we need is a phrase that will slip naturally into our street-speech, a phrase that both acknowledges the toil of the recipient and bestows the giver with the glow of having contributed positively to city life. “Good job” sounds a little patronising. “I hope it’s not too difficult” feels like a curse.

Perhaps the answer is simply to import kolay gelsin unaltered, in the way that English is so good at. Kismet is Turkishism fully absorbed into London English. It is one of the more pronounceable Turkish phrases, short in length and sweet sounding yet its force is far stronger than its literal meaning. Within the English language it can take on new regional accents and nuances, and perhaps even one day be accepted into the Oxford English Dictionary (given that the 2025 Oxford Word of the Year was “rage bait”, a little civility wouldn’t go amiss). And for Turkey, what better soft-power tool? President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan presents the tough face of his country, while the tourism board promotes the clichés. But if Turkey wants to endear itself, this might be the key. 

Happy Monday – kolay gelsin!

Hannah Lucinda Smith is Monocle’s Istanbul correspondent. For more from Lucinda Smith, read: 

– Coasters be damned – a well-worn table is the heart of a home

– Turkic states are investing in soft power but it’s Ankara that seeks to steal the show

– Street food is still a defining force in the culinary scene of Istanbul