A great product

Contexte, which until now has targeted the French market, has long cracked what makes Brussels tick.

I’ve been in this town for a while myself, and I know what the bubble craves: in-depth information.

Contexte feeds that craving. It isn’t seeking to shock its readers, nor to sway them. Merely to ensure they know what’s going on: who’s deciding, who’s influencing, how things work, and why it matters.

For years its watermark has appeared on many a document that crossed my desk, but it’s not just about leaks: it’s about allying the best of journalism and tech to deploy, decode and display the information our readers need in a wide variety of ways.

Contexte had a Brussels presence since its founding in 2013, and now it’s ready to take on the EU frontally. We’ll do that in a different language, and for a different target audience, but with the same hallmarks and values we’ve always had: clarity, expertise, neutrality. It’s a new chapter in European journalism and I’m proud to be a part of it.

A great topic

For our first EU product, we picked a theme that sits at the centre of many of Brussels’ trickiest economic and political challenges.

Energy regulations are massively complex and technical, requiring significant expertise to understand and master. Behind them sits a topic of great political salience – a market that underpins the economy, and that in recent years threatened to destabilise it.

The central goal of the new European Commission is to boost competitiveness, but pricey energy stands in its way. During the 2022 energy crisis, rocketing bills took a heavy economic toll; and a political one, as disgruntled voters expressed their discontent at ballot boxes.

The political pressure to avoid any repeat of that crisis is intense and real. But it still needs to be married with the pressing need to tackle climate change. Add to the mix an ongoing European war that exposed the dangers of dependency; a new US president who’s put energy products on the front line of his trade war with the EU; and the significant dilemmas faced by a new government in Berlin, and you can see the next few years in energy policy are going to be explosive.

It’s exactly the kind of area where Contexte’s method – uncovering and analysing the politics behind technical issues; exploring and unpicking the technicalities of political decisions – will add value.

A great team

Most of all, this project has given me the chance to work with a fantastic team: a group of talented experts who’ll be well-placed to deliver Contexte’s ongoing commitment to editorial excellence as we go international.

In Anna Hubert, Damien Genicot and Ciarán Sunderland, we have a set of reporters deeply embedded in the EU bubble, with a network of contacts as profound as their policy knowledge.

The team also includes our adaptation editors, Gabriela Galindo and Anna Martino: an entirely new kind of role for an entirely new kind of multilingual journalism. With extensive experience in the media, they’ll ensure that our EU readers don’t miss out on the great scoops and analyses fished out by our French-language reporters, nor vice versa; and that all our reporting matches the needs of our different readers.

It’s the largest team of reporters in Brussels dedicated to energy policy, and also, dare I say, the best: dedicated, well-informed and scoop-hungry.