Category: Євросоюз

Austria raced Saturday toward a snap election as Chancellor Sebastian Kurz pulled the plug on his coalition with the far right after its leader was caught on video offering to fix state contracts with a woman posing as a Russian oligarch’s niece.  The far-right Freedom Party’s Heinz-Christian Strache resigned as vice chancellor and party leader after the video was released by two German news organizations. He acknowledged that the video was “catastrophic” but denied breaking the law.  Kurz, a conservative who formed a coalition with the Freedom Party a year and a half ago, said the apparent video sting, in which Strache discusses contracts in return for financial or political …

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The leader of France’s far-right National Rally is predicting that a group of like-minded right-wing populists will achieve `’an historic feat” in next week’s Europe-wide elections. Marine Le Pen is joining leaders of other nationalist parties Saturday in Italy for a rally organized by League leader Matteo Salvini in front of Milan’s Duomo cathedral ahead of the May 23-26 European Parliamentary elections.   Le Pen said she believes the Europe of Nations and Freedom parliamentary group “will perform a historic feat to pass from the 8th place in Europe to third or maybe second.”   Analysts believe that the two …

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Austria’s vice chancellor has resigned. Heinz-Christian Strache stepped down Saturday after two German newspapers — Der Spiegel and the Sueddeutsche Zeitung — posted video footage of him appearing to offer state contracts to a potential Russian benefactor. Strache said Saturday he was the “victim of a targeted political attack,” but admitted that his actions in the video were “stupid and a mistake.” Political analysts say the scandal throws into the question the governing coalition between Strache’s anti-immigration Freedom Party and Chancellor Sebastian Kurz’s center-right People’s Party. Neither politician has commented on the future of their alliance.   …

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Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called a crisis meeting late on Friday after two German newspapers published footage purportedly showing his deputy discussing state contracts with a potential Russian backer in return for political support. Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was filmed talking about the contracts with someone posing as the niece of a Russian oligarch in Ibiza in July, 2017, months before parliamentary elections, Der Spiegel and Sueddeutsche Zeitung said.  Strache did not reply to a request for comment on the video. Reuters was not able to verify the authenticity of the footage independently, and the German newspapers did not say how …

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The United Nations said on Friday at least 18 health centers have been attacked in the past three weeks in northwestern Syria, prompting a confrontation between western powers and Russia and Syria at the Security Council over who is to blame. While the area is nominally protected by a Russian-Turkish deal agreed in September to avert a new battle, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces — backed by Russians — have launched an offensive on the last major insurgent stronghold. Some three million civilians are at risk, the United Nations said. “Since we know that Russia and Syria are the only …

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Brexit talks appear to have collapsed a day after British Prime Minister Theresa May set out a timetable for her exit from office — the latest sign of a government in tatters. Britain’s Labor party head Jeremy Corbyn has sent a letter to May saying the Brexit talks have “gone as far as they can” because of the instability of her government and its refusal to change its position.  The two major British parties have been at a stalemate for weeks over a deal outlining the conditions by which Britain will withdraw from the European Union. The deadline for withdrawal …

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Germany on Friday authorized battery-powered scooters on its streets and cycle paths but banned them from pavements to protect pedestrians as the two-wheeled craze continues to spread across Europe. Following fierce debate over road safety and the impact on traffic, the upper house adopted a proposal by Transport Minister Andreas Scheuer to approve the “electric propulsion vehicles” for road use. They are either loved or loathed in Europe’s biggest economy. “In Germany, souls are divided over e-scooters. Rarely has a new technology aroused such strong popularity — and such strong rejection,” said Achim Berg, president of Germany’s IT federation Bitkom. …

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U.N. agencies are expressing anger and sadness at the deaths and injuries of dozens of civilians, including children, hit by airstrikes on the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, Thursday night. This is just the latest tragedy to hit Yemen, which has been at war for more than four years.The U.N. human rights office reports nearly 7,000 civilians have been killed and 10,800 wounded as of November 2018. Most of the deaths and injuries are due to aerial bombardments by the Saudi-led coalition, it reports. Saudi Arabia entered the civil conflict in March 2015 in support of the Yemeni government, which is locked …

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Britain’s tumultuous divorce from the European Union was again in disarray Friday as last-ditch cross-party talks over breaking the Brexit impasse “have gone as far as they can go,” Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn wrote to Prime Minister Theresa May, because of the instability of the government. Corbyn said the Conservative Party’s moves toward selecting a new leader mean the government has become “ever more unstable and its authority eroded — undermining confidence in the “government’s ability to deliver any compromise agreement.” Nearly three years after the United Kingdom unexpectedly voted in a referendum to leave the EU, it is …

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Ukraine’s ruling coalition broke up Friday after the People’s Front party quit outgoing President Petro Poroshenko’s faction, potentially paving the way for incoming President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to call a snap election.  “We declare our withdrawal from the current coalition, the cessation of its activities … and the initiative to form a new coalition with a new agenda,” Maksym Burbak, the People’s Front faction leader, told parliament. Parliament now has one month to form a new coalition or else the president can dissolve parliament and call snap parliamentary elections. Zelenskiy won a landslide against Poroshenko last month but his newly formed …

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Russia on Thursday presented a draft resolution to the Security Council accusing the UN’s chemical weapons watchdog, the OPCW, of politicization just before a new probe begins of chemical attacks in Syria. The draft text, seen by AFP, states that the Council — where Russia holds veto power — is the only international body that can impose measures on countries that violate the Chemical Weapons Convention. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) agreed last year to set up a mechanism that would identify the perpetrators of chemical attacks, a move bitterly opposed by Russia and Syria. Russian …

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The EU on Thursday defended its push to reform the European defense industry in a retort to U.S. accusations that the overhaul would shut out allies such as Washington from European projects. The skirmish over military spending comes as transatlantic ties are at a long-time low with fears running high that cooperation at NATO could be endangered. In a letter seen by AFP, two senior officials said that the European Union “remains fully committed to working with the U.S. as a core partner in security and defense matters” despite the planned changes. However, the EU officials also insisted that the …

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The United States on Thursday imposed sanctions on a Chechen group and five people, including at least three Russians, over allegations of human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and the torture of LGBTI people.  The sanctions against the Terek Special Rapid Response Team in the Chechen Republic and the five were announced by the U.S. Treasury under the Magnitsky Act. They included suspects in the deaths of Russian whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky and Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.  The 2012 Magnitsky Act is named after the 37-year-old Russian auditor and imposes visa bans and asset freezes on officials linked to his death in prison 2009.  Those targeted on Thursday included Elena Anatolievna Trikulya and …

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Cossack region is a hotbed of Russian conservatism and nostalgia for an imperial past. …

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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called for a compromise to ease tensions over a plan to build a cathedral in a popular park in the nation’s fourth-largest city that has sparked protests and drawn nationwide attention. Unsanctioned protests in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg were held for four consecutive days near a central park where two local tycoons are planning to build a new cathedral. Several dozen have been detained, and 21 of them have been handed jail terms ranging from 2 to 10 days for disobeying police, according to local authorities. The protests reflected outrage over authorities …

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The winners and losers in European Parliament elections next week are likely to be determined in the suburbs of the continent’s cities, which are turning into three-way electoral battlegrounds. The elections are being seen as a moment of truth for an array of anti-migrant nationalist populist parties, which hope to reverse European integration. Establishment Conservatives are hoping they can shore up their support in the suburbs in the face of strong challenges from left-wing progressives and nationalist populists, who have been campaigning against EU integration and for a “Europe of Fatherlands.” Populists are forecast to make significant gains in the …

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A longtime chief of the Basque militant separatist group ETA was arrested Thursday on the streets of a French Alps town after being on the run for 17 years, Spain’s Interior Ministry said. Jose Antonio Urruticoetxea Bengoetxea, known by the alias Josu Ternera, has been the most wanted ETA member since 2002. Interpol, the global police body, had issued a red alert against him. Spanish authorities accuse him of crimes against humanity, multiple killings and belonging to a terrorist organization. ETA, whose initials stand for “Basque Homeland and Freedom” in the Basque language, killed more than 850 people during its …

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Spain this week withdrew a frigate assigned to a U.S. navy task force ordered into the Persian Gulf. The decision is widely seen as reflecting persistent fears of Spain’s socialist government about getting involved in a possible war with Iran.   The government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez made the decision despite the risk of further straining frayed relations with the United States that could endanger major U.S. defense contracts with Spain’s expanding naval industry. Spain’s newest Class-100 frigate, the Mendez Nunez, was being showcased with the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier group under a cooperation agreement signed with Washington two years …

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Several thousand people rallied Wednesday in Russia’s fourth-largest city as the showdown between authorities and activists protesting the plans to a build a cathedral in a local park entered its third day.    Thousands gathered in a riverside park in Yekaterinburg in the evening. Some were on bicycles, more camped out on the grass, and others were walking their dogs.    As night fell, protesters turned on their mobile phone lights and flashlights, chanting, “We stand for the park!”   Security measures for what has largely been a peaceful protest were heightened on the eve of the rally, with hundreds of riot police …

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel says that Europe needs to “reposition” itself in a changing world and is welcoming European powers’ unity over Iran, a contrast with their deep divisions over the Iraq war 16 years ago. Merkel said in an interview with Germany’s daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung released Wednesday that Europe needs “forward-looking” arguments and stressed that “simply pointing to seven decades of peace is no longer enough to justify Europe.” Before European Parliament elections May 23-26, she said there is “no doubt that Europe needs to reposition itself in a changed world,” in which some post-World War II certainties no …

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