When TIME first interviewed President Emmanuel Macron in 2015, he was an Economy Minister with a grand plan for a new kind of politics. The next time, in 2017, he had won power at the age of 39 and was putting that plan into action. For our third interview at the halfway point of his first term, our opening question was about the chaotic and sometimes violent reaction to what he has done in office.

Yet Macron hardly looked like a man who had weathered one of the most violent years in modern France, with Yellow Vest protesters burning barricades and hurling vitriol at him. Relaxed in his shirtsleeves in his office in the Elysée Palace on Sept. 9, he betrayed little sign of the turmoil some in his inner circle say he has been through in the past months. “There have been moments, very tough, especially on a personal standpoint,” says Ismael Emelien, a long-time advisor of Macron who left the Elysée in February. “He always knew that since we were transforming the country, it would come wi..

As an American, Jeanne Glenz prizes her right to vote. But, because she lives near Munich with her German husband, exercising that right isn’t always easy.

This year, it could get even harder, depending on the results of an obscure international meeting scheduled to take place in Geneva on Sept. 24-25. If the Trump Administration doesn’t get what it wants at that summit, the United States is set to withdraw from an arcane treaty that governs global mail delivery—leaving commercial shippers and military mail managers fretting, and election officials concerned that millions of overseas Americans will struggle to cast a vote.

“This represents taxation without representation,” says Glenz, a 79-year-old retired psychologist from California.

The White House says it is working “around the clock” to facilitate a smooth exit from the agreement if it comes to that, but the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has telegraphed a more cautious outlook in industry conversations. With few details made publi..

Newly selected British Prime Minister Boris Johnson stormed into 10 Downing Street this past summer vowing to do the impossible: secure a better deal from Brussels than the one offered to his predecessor Theresa May. Johnson threatened to pull the U.K. out of the E.U. on Oct. 31 should that deal not materialize.

Two months later, Johnson’s impossible promise remains very challenging. Not only have the Europeans refused to reopen negotiations, but Johnson’s move to sidestep the British Parliament by suspending it for five weeks triggered parliamentary mutiny–Johnson and his Conservative Party lost their working majority in the House of Commons, and a cross-party alliance of MPs (including a number of high-profile Tories) banded together to pass legislation preventing Johnson from pulling the U.K. out of the E.U. absent a deal. Johnson then demanded a general election to secure himself a mandate to move forward with his do-or-die negotiations strategy with Brussels, but British parliame..

It’s a bright early September day inside France’s presidential Élysée Palace, and President Emmanuel Macron is reflecting on the grueling 12 months just past, with the so-called Yellow Vests (gilets jaunes) protesters raging across the country, many aiming their fury at him.

That was surely enough to rattle any leader. Yet Macron, leaning forward on his leather couch, offers another view. “In a certain way, the gilets jaunes were very good for me,” he says, as the afternoon shadows lengthened on the lawn outside. “Because it reminded me who I should be.”

The question of who Emmanuel Macron should be has occupied the French, and many around the world, in the three years since the then Economy Minister launched a grassroots uprising of his own. That movement would deliver him the presidency in May 2017 and smash a political order that had lasted for half a century. Macron first and foremost saw himself as a reformer, throwing himself into dismantling rules that he believed had long str..

After six days at sea on Sept. 14, the Ocean Viking sailed into port carrying 82 asylum seekers. It was the first rescue ship to dock in Italy since Matteo Salvini, one of Europe’s most fervent antimigrant politicians, lost his job as Interior Minister. He had shut Italian ports to rescue ships like the Ocean Viking, but his coalition government collapsed in August over the direction of migration policy. On Sept. 10 a new coalition took office without his far-right League party. “This is the end of Salvini’s propaganda,” a new minister tweeted.

After becoming Interior Minister in June 2018, Salvini threatened fines of up to €1 million and human-smuggling charges for captains who defied his migrant-entry ban. It had the desired effect: arrivals have fallen to around 6,200 so far in 2019, down from over 20,000 in the same period in 2018. But it also made the journey deadlier; for every 10 migrants who arrived in Italy by sea this year, one has died en route. That’s roughly double the 20..