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In English, burning issues means matters of very urgent concern, most important. When I tried to find the French equivalent of that, Linguee gave me a few hits like
- questions brûlantes (which seems too close to the original English to be idiomatic in French)
- Problèmes / affaires urgent(e)s (which seems too explicative)
Is there an idiomatic set phrase for this?
Brûlant actually works very well in that case, it sounds idiomatic to me in sujets brûlants, questions brûlantes… Absolutely safe to use here.
Il nous reste à traiter les deux questions brûlantes évoquées ce matin.
Je préfère confier ce sujet particulièrement brûlant à quelqu'un d'expérimenté.
It might be your best bet over other translations, because brûlant keeps the double connotation of very urgent and very delicate. Some of that is lost in affaires urgentes given by Linguee.
