EU Designates Amazon and Google as ‘Critical Financial Infrastructure’ in a Landmark Shift for Europe’s Banking System

The Week That Shaped the World — 14–21 November 2025

Amazon and Google Declared Critical to Europe’s Financial System — and Other Major Stories of the Week

Some weeks arrive with speeches, warnings, summits, the usual theatre.
Not this one.

Politics more or less… dozed off. Ministers repeated lines we’ve heard since spring, diplomats circled the same talking points, and the great machinery of global decision-making moved as if half the bolts were missing. No breakthroughs. No collapses. Just that faint hum of routine — the kind that fills the room when nobody has the courage to admit things aren’t moving.

So we looked elsewhere.
And there — in the numbers, in the markets, in the decisions slipped out by regulators who prefer shadows to microphones — something actually shifted.

Brussels finally said aloud what everyone already knew: the financial system now sits on the servers of Amazon, Google and a handful of other giants. Britain, almost by accident, stumbled into better inflation data than anyone expected. And markets — those confident, chatty creatures — suddenly sounded unsure of themselves, as if realising the AI story they’ve been telling for months might need a footnote or two.

Asia picked up the tremor first.
London caught it later, over the morning headlines.
By then the mood had changed — not dramatically, just enough that you felt it in the background like a door clicking shut.

Meanwhile, the political world kept plodding: another Gaza statement, another Sudan update, another UN mandate extended because no one can risk removing it. Necessary work, but not the kind that shapes a week.

The pulse came from the other side of the map — the economic side — where small decisions have a habit of echoing longer than grand speeches.

“Most weeks pretend to be important. This one didn’t bother — and ended up mattering anyway.”

1. EU Designates Amazon and Google as ‘Critical Financial Infrastructure’ in a Landmark Shift for Europe’s Banking System

Some decisions arrive without spectacle. No frantic midnight briefings. No minister adjusting their tie for the cameras. Just a careful announcement from Brussels — and suddenly the ground feels different beneath your feet.

This week, the EU quietly placed Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft and a cluster of other hyperscale providers into the same category as systemic banks. Not vendors. Not technology partners. Critical infrastructure. The sort that keeps payment systems alive, trading floors breathing, insurance models ticking over. The sort that cannot afford to fail.

It’s a truth the financial sector has been avoiding for years. Everyone relied on the cloud; no one wanted to admit it out loud. Now the paperwork makes the subtext explicit: if the cloud blinks, Europe’s financial machinery catches the flu — or something worse.

Banks will now have to map their dependencies with uncomfortable honesty.
Cloud giants will face the kind of stress testing once reserved for institutions with marble lobbies and brass plaques.
Supervisors will pry deeper, regulators will tighten the perimeter, and risk officers across the continent will start rewriting their assumptions from scratch.

The implications stretch far beyond Brussels.
Britain may not be part of the EU, but London’s financial sector runs on exactly the same servers — the same outages, the same single points of failure, the same blind spots everyone politely ignored. Once Europe raises the bar, the UK will either follow or look outdated within months.

No fireworks, no headlines screaming apocalypse.
Just a structural shift — the sort you only notice if you’re paying attention.

“Power rarely announces its new owners. Most of the time, you realise it only after they start rearranging the wiring.”

2. UK Inflation Falls to 3.6% — and Suddenly Everyone Starts Whispering About Rate Cuts

There are weeks when the British economy feels like a damp matchbox — you tap it, shake it, curse it, and nothing happens. And then there are weeks like this one, where a single number makes Westminster sit up a little straighter.

Inflation has fallen to 3.6%, the lowest in more than two years.
Not a miracle. Not a victory parade moment. But enough to make the Bank of England’s famously cautious economists lean ever so slightly forward in their chairs.

For months, Threadneedle Street repeated the same line like a tired mantra: “We need more evidence.”
Well — here it is.
Falling services inflation. Softer energy costs. A labour market cooling without collapsing. All the ingredients the Bank claimed it needed before it would dare utter the words “rate cut”.

And the markets? They heard it instantly.

Sterling wobbled. Gilt yields slipped. Mortgage brokers — who have aged about fifteen years since 2022 — began quietly updating their spreadsheets. Even the government, still trying to look competent after a difficult autumn, couldn’t resist a small smile. Lower inflation is a gift no chancellor ever refuses, especially when the political weather looks stormy.

But the real story isn’t the number.
It’s the mood shift.

For the first time in a long while, the conversation isn’t about how high rates might go — but how soon they might come down. Not dramatically. Not fast. But enough to breathe a little life back into the housing market and give small businesses a bit of oxygen before winter really bites.

Still, this is Britain.
We’ve seen false dawns before.
The Bank will want more data, more caution, more of its beloved “evidence”.

But 3.6% is a meaningful line in the sand. It tells us the storm is beginning to ease — and that perhaps, just perhaps, the next move will be downward.

“Economies rarely shout their turning points. They murmur — and hope someone’s listening.”

3. Global Markets Trip Over Their Own Confidence as the AI Glow Starts to Flicker

Some weeks the markets swagger.
This week they tripped — not dramatically, just that awkward stumble you pretend didn’t happen while hoping no one saw.

It started with tech stocks. The ones everyone treated like a guaranteed pension plan. The ones that floated through every wobble as if gravity was optional. Suddenly they weren’t soaring — they were blinking. And that blink was enough.

Funny thing: nothing actually went wrong.
No disastrous earnings.
No rate shock.
No new war, coup or scandal.
Just a collective, slightly embarrassed realisation that valuations had been stretched so tightly you could almost hear them creaking.

Nvidia, of course, became the centre of the whole mood swing. It always does. When Nvidia hints at a headache, the rest of the market reaches for aspirin. A few cautious comments, a softer tone on future demand — and suddenly traders remembered that “infinite AI growth” was always more slogan than forecast.

S&P nudged down.
Nasdaq a bit sharper.
The commentary arrived in that familiar tone — breezy, confident, quietly panicked underneath.

London desks felt it too.
You could see it in the morning notes: sentences rewritten three times, qualifiers added, then removed, then added again. No one wants to be the analyst who finally says the obvious — that the AI trade might need a breather and, worse, a reality check.

But the truth is simpler. Boring, even.
Hype ages.
And this particular hype — the “everything-AI-all-at-once” era — is starting to smell faintly of overuse.

This isn’t the start of a crash. It’s the start of a conversation the market has been avoiding: what happens when investors stop applauding and start asking questions.

“Confidence doesn’t vanish. It just walks out of the room quietly and leaves everyone pretending they didn’t notice.”

4. Asian Markets Lose Their Nerve as Nvidia’s Shadow Stretches Across the Pacific

Asia woke up this week in that strange half-light between optimism and dread — the kind traders know too well. Screens flickered, futures drifted, and no one quite said it out loud, but everyone understood: whatever mood Wall Street went to bed with, Asia inherited it at dawn.

And this dawn wasn’t friendly.

Nvidia’s latest signals — neither disastrous nor triumphant, just… muted — were enough to unsettle markets that have built entire narratives on the company’s unstoppable ascent.
Japan hesitated.
South Korea twitched.
Taiwan — always the hypersensitive bellwether of chip sentiment — flinched first.

Funny how a single earnings tone, barely even negative, can make three continents hold their breath.

It wasn’t just the numbers.
It was the feeling — that imperceptible shift when expectations are too high, too neat, too eager to believe their own momentum. The AI boom made heroes out of semiconductor manufacturers, and Asia, more than any region, rode the wave without asking too many questions. Now the questions are appearing on their own.

Will chip demand really grow in a straight line?
Are hyperscale data centres infinite?
Is every government on Earth truly ready to spend billions on AI infrastructure forever?

No one said “no”.
But no one said “yes” either.
And that silence is louder in Asian trading rooms than any headline.

London saw the tremor later in the morning, after the City’s first coffee kicked in. Analysts added qualifiers like confetti: “short-term volatility”, “profit-taking”, “valuation digestion”. All the usual euphemisms for “we’re nervous but don’t want to sound nervous”.

But the bigger point sits just beneath the surface.
When Asia wobbles on chips, the world follows.
Because this isn’t just a tech story — it’s industrial policy, geopolitics, and the global supply chain knotted into a single thread.

And threads, as we know, snap quietly before they snap loudly.

“Sometimes markets don’t need bad news — just the realisation they may have been telling themselves a good story for too long.”

5. UK Raises Deposit Protection to £120,000 — A Policy Change That Says More Than It Meant To

You can always tell when the Treasury is nervous.
They speak softly, bury the verbs, and hope no one reads past the second paragraph. This week’s announcement — lifting deposit protection from £85,000 to £120,000 — had exactly that flavour. Calm on the surface, a little shaky underneath.

The official line was harmless enough.
“Inflation adjustments.”
“Staying in line with economic realities.”
All very tidy, very civil-service beige.

But let’s not pretend.
You don’t raise the guarantee by thirty-five thousand pounds because things are stable.
You do it because the world feels more brittle than it used to.

People have more money sitting in their accounts — not because they’re wealthier, but because everything else has become too uncertain to trust. Small businesses hoard cash because credit is unreliable. Households hold onto savings because the future looks… well, wobbly. Meanwhile, bankruptcies are creeping up in places that don’t usually see them.

So the government moved the line.

Banks gave the usual nods of approval, the polite ones they offer when they know they’ll complain later. Building societies winced — they always feel the squeeze first. And the FSCS, suddenly on the hook for bigger promises, tried to sound unfazed, which is its own kind of theatre.

What’s interesting isn’t the number.
It’s the tone.
A country that spent years pretending everything was fine is now quietly reinforcing the floorboards.

And politically?
Of course it helps. It’s the sort of policy that looks responsible in headlines and costs nothing today. A government under pressure will always take that deal.

Will it change the bigger story?
No.
But it does something subtler — it admits, without saying it, that the old level of “protection” no longer matches the world people are living in.

“When governments adjust the safety nets, it’s rarely generosity — it’s usually an admission they waited too long.”

6. Washington Hands Zelensky a Peace Plan — and Suddenly Europe Looks Very, Very Nervous

There are weeks in international politics when nothing happens, and then weeks like this — when something does happen, but no one quite knows what to make of it. Washington passed Kyiv a plan. A real one. A framework to end the war. Not a rumour, not a corridor whisper, not a journalist’s “according to sources”. A document. Terms. Conditions. A shape.

Zelensky admitted as much, which in itself is remarkable.
He even said he’s preparing to speak with Trump “in the coming days”, which tells you everything about the pressure he’s under. Leaders don’t schedule those conversations unless they’re cornered by reality.

And Europe… well.
Europe reacted the way Europe always reacts when America moves: tight smiles, frantic diplomacy, and the collective realisation that the room has shifted and they weren’t standing where they thought.

What’s in the plan?
Nobody’s saying.
Which means the outline is probably painful.
Talk in diplomatic circles hints at territory. At demilitarisation. At things governments don’t say aloud unless they’re preparing their parliaments for bad weather.

Keen observers noticed the mood in Brussels darken almost instantly. Paris pretended to be calm. Berlin tried to look constructive. London — still trying to remain relevant — issued the usual assurances about “coordination with partners”. When politicians start reaching for those phrases, it usually means they’ve seen the draft and didn’t like it.

But the real tension lies with Kyiv.
Every Ukrainian official knows what a “peace plan” backed by Washington means: it means the conversation is moving whether they want it to or not. The Americans have decided to set the tempo again.

And Russia?
Silent.
Which, as always, is its own statement.

This isn’t the end.
It’s the first crack in the wall — the moment everyone pretends not to have noticed but absolutely has.

“Diplomacy rarely begins with agreement; it begins with someone realising the room has changed while they were still talking.”

7. At the UN, Britain Backs a 20-Point Gaza Plan — and Says Very Little About Why

Some UN votes land with ceremony. Others slip through with the quiet thud of inevitability. This one belonged to the second category.

The Security Council adopted a resolution on a 20-point plan for Gaza — a roadmap stitched together from years of failed talks, exhausted diplomats and the vague hope that “this time” might be different. Britain voted in favour, which shouldn’t surprise anyone, though the explanation speech sounded as if it had been reheated from an earlier crisis.

The UK line was neat enough:
“A critical step.”
“A pathway to peace.”
“A necessary framework.”
All the usual diplomatic Lego pieces, arranged to look reassuring.

But scratch the paint a little and the story changes.
London didn’t sound confident. It sounded… cautious. Almost defensive. As if the Foreign Office knows perfectly well this plan is less a breakthrough and more a holding pattern while everyone pretends the region isn’t boiling over again.

The Americans supported it because they had to.
The Europeans supported it because they always do.
The Russians raised an eyebrow, abstained, and looked pleased with themselves.
The Arab states nodded along while keeping their real opinions to private briefings.

The 20 points themselves?
Broad strokes.
Vague timings.
Plenty of “ensuring” and “facilitating” and “mechanisms” — words that sound solid until you realise they can mean anything or nothing.

And Britain’s position?
Still stuck in that familiar limbo between moral language and limited leverage. We talk about peace as if we can deliver it, while everyone in the region knows the real decisions depend on capitals far from London.

None of this makes the vote unimportant.
It just makes it honest — a reminder that the UN often functions less as a place where problems are solved and more as a place where they’re politely acknowledged.

“In diplomacy, resolutions don’t end crises — they simply mark the moment when everyone agrees to pretend the fire is slightly smaller than it is.”

8. Yvette Cooper Addresses Gaza and Sudan — and Westminster Pretends It’s Still in Control

There’s a particular tone ministers use when they know the country isn’t really listening anymore — calm, practised, slightly too polished. Yvette Cooper had exactly that tone when she stood in the Commons this week to deliver an update on Gaza and Sudan. An “update”, of course, being Westminster-speak for we don’t have good news, but we need to say something.

She talked about humanitarian corridors.
She talked about diplomatic channels.
She talked about Britain’s “ongoing engagement”, which is a lovely phrase that can mean anything from intense negotiation to a moderately active WhatsApp group.

But under all the tidy sentences, the reality was impossible to miss:
Britain is reacting, not shaping.
Watching, not steering.
And trying very hard not to look like it knows that.

On Gaza, Cooper repeated the familiar lines — ceasefire conditions, civilian protection, pressure on actors “across the region”. It sounded responsible, measured, sensible. It also sounded like every speech on Gaza for the past decade, with only the nouns rearranged.

Sudan was similar.
A nod to the humanitarian catastrophe.
A warning about regional spillover.
Phrases like “deeply concerned” and “working closely with partners”, scattered like confetti over a situation that hasn’t responded to polite diplomacy for years.

None of this is Cooper’s fault, of course.
The UK simply doesn’t have the leverage it once imagined it had, and ministers are left to perform the ritual of seriousness while events barrel forward on their own momentum.

MPs murmured approval.
Some stared at their notes.
A few looked as if they were wondering how many more times they’d hear the same speech before something, anything, actually changes.

It wasn’t a bad statement.
It was an honest portrait of Britain’s limits.

“Foreign policy used to be about influence. Now it’s about keeping a straight face while admitting you have very little left.”

9. UN Extends the Abyei Mission — One More Patch on a Conflict No One Knows How to Fix

Some conflicts scream for attention. Others sit in the corner of the map, quietly burning, year after year, while the world keeps promising to “address root causes” and then promptly doesn’t. Abyei — that uneasy strip between Sudan and South Sudan — is firmly in the second category.

This week, the UN Security Council extended the mandate of UNISFA once again.
No ceremony.
No hopeful speeches about turning points or new beginnings.
Just a weary recognition that if peace ever had a chance here, it slipped through the door long ago.

Britain supported the extension, naturally. So did most of the Council. It’s one of those votes where everyone knows the alternative — removing peacekeepers — is unthinkable, and yet leaving them in place feels like postponing a diagnosis no one wants to hear.

The diplomats’ explanations were predictable.
“Protect civilians.”
“Prevent escalation.”
“Stabilise the region.”
All correct, all necessary, all depressingly familiar.

What nobody says aloud is that Abyei has become a sort of international ritual: we extend the mission, we sigh, we say “the situation remains fragile”, and then we move on to the next crisis that feels more urgent because cameras are pointed at it.

Meanwhile, on the ground, nothing really changes.
People still flee.
Militias still probe the lines.
Local leaders still argue over land and identity and the ghosts of a referendum that never happened.
The UN soldiers keep patrolling the same dusty roads, knowing full well they’re holding together a peace that exists only because no one has yet decided to shatter it.

London’s statement, to its credit, didn’t pretend things were improving. It simply acknowledged that chaos in Sudan bleeds across borders, and Abyei is one of the places where the seams break first.

It wasn’t a dramatic moment.
But it was honest in its way — an admission that some crises don’t explode, they just linger until everyone forgets they’re still dangerous.

“Not every failure is loud. Some just fade into the background until the world realises it’s been looking away too long.”

10. COP30 Evacuated After Fire Breaks Out — and the Climate Talks Lose Their Balance Yet Again

There are moments at global summits that feel symbolic — and then there are moments that feel like the universe is mocking everyone involved. COP30 in Belém managed both in a single afternoon.

A fire broke out in the negotiations area.
Not a catastrophe. No injuries. No dramatic footage of delegates sprinting through smoke. Just enough flames and confusion to force a full evacuation — right at the point when the talks had finally inched toward the one subject everyone pretends they agree on: phasing out fossil fuels.

You could almost hear the collective groan echoing across the Amazon.

Delegates filed out into the humid air, clutching badges and half-finished coffees, murmuring to one another about “protocol” and “contingencies” while very clearly thinking the same thing: of course this would happen now. Climate diplomacy has always had a strange talent for losing momentum at the exact moment it needs it most.

Because the truth is uncomfortable.
These negotiations were already fragile — a patchwork of competing national interests, oil-producing states dragging their heels, developed countries arguing over finance, and poorer nations trying not to be drowned, burned or starved while the rich world debates comma placements.

And then the fire arrives.
A literal one, for once.

Brazilian authorities acted quickly, professionally, and with more composure than half the diplomats. But the damage was done — not to the venue, but to the rhythm. Climate summits run on momentum, and once it slips, it rarely returns the same way.

Back in London, the reaction was predictably muted. Polite concern. Offers of support. The usual phrasing about “the importance of continued dialogue”. Everyone knows the UK’s influence on climate policy isn’t what it used to be, so we play the role of the earnest commentator rather than the driver.

When the talks resumed, delegates tried to pick up the thread. But something had changed.
The urgency felt thinner.
The optimism — already rationed — evaporated just a little more.

“Sometimes the fire in the building isn’t the real problem — it’s the one in the negotiations that no one knows how to put out.”