Category: Євросоюз

Russia has delivered an S-300 surface-to-air missile system to Syria, it said Tuesday, in defiance of Israeli and U.S. concerns that the arms sale would embolden Iran and escalate the Syrian war. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu told President Vladimir Putin during a meeting broadcast by Rossiya 24 TV: “The work was finished a day ago,” adding that the system would improve the security of Russian military personal in Syria. Russia decided to supply the system after Moscow accused Israel of indirectly causing the downing of a Russian military jet near Syria in September. Israel voiced regret at the death of …

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Following are some of the many possible contenders to succeed Jean-Claude Juncker as EU chief executive after elections to the European Parliament in May. Apart from electoral uncertainty, it is unclear that national leaders will follow Parliament’s call for them to pick a European Commission president from among the lead candidates of parties contesting the ballot. Conservatives Manfred Weber — An MEP for 14 years, the 46-year-old German has led the biggest EU parliamentary group since 2014. He has declared he will run and he can be confident of support from German Chancellor Angela Merkel despite his youthful years and lack …

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Greenland Prime Minister Kim Kielsen presented a new minority government on Tuesday, ending a political crisis that started when he lost his majority last month with the withdrawal of a pro-independence party. Kielsen of the social democrat Siumut party told a press conference in the capital Nuuk that he had agreed with the liberal-conservative party Atassut and the separatist, center-left party Nunatta Qitornai to form a minority government with the support of The Democrats, state broadcaster KNR reported. A political stalemate on the Arctic island has delayed expansion of major airport projects of strategic interest to both Washington and Beijing …

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Kosovo’s president sees only a small chance of a border deal with Serbia emerging soon, but it is an opportunity that must be pursued, he said Tuesday after western Balkan talks in Geneva. An agreement on a lasting peace between the two countries, including the demarcation of 400 km (250 miles) of border, would open the way to prosperity and closer ties to the European Union, as well as full international recognition for Kosovo, President Hashim Thaci said. “Although the chances are very slim, there’s still a good momentum, a good window of opportunity, to reach a historic agreement between our two states,” he told reporters. “I understand there …

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Sweden’s parliamentary speaker on Tuesday gave a center-right bloc of parties two weeks to form a government, granting its leader a broad mandate that he may struggle to fulfill following inconclusive national elections. The opposition four-party Alliance won 143 seats in the 349-seat legislative chamber in the September 9 ballot, one fewer than the center-left bloc headed by the Social Democrats. Both blocs face a daunting task to form a government, having ruled out cooperating with the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, which hold the balance of power with 62 seats, and also considered unlikely to team up with each other. “The …

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A female suspect allegedly paid tens of thousands of euros for the assassination of a Slovak reporter, whose death shocked the nation and led to the resignation of its prime minister, prosecutors said Monday. The suspect, identified as Alena Zs, allegedly ordered the murder, paying €50,000 ($58,100) and forgiving a debt of €20,000. The hitman was identified as Tomas Sz, a former police officer. Two other accomplices are in custody. Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova were found dead from gunshots wounds at their home near Bratislava in February.  Kuciak, 27, had been reporting on links between Slovak politicians …

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Britain cannot be bullied, Brexit minister Dominic Raab said on Monday, sharpening the government’s criticism of the European Union for taunting Prime Minister Theresa May and souring difficult Brexit talks. May’s ministers have come out one by one at their party’s annual conference in the city of Birmingham to warn the EU that they will embrace leaving without a deal if the bloc fails to show “respect” in the talks to end Britain’s membership. Just six months before Britain is due to leave the EU in the country’s biggest shift in foreign and trade policy in more than 40 years, …

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Eurozone nations put Italy’s government under immediate pressure Monday over its budget proposals, which they said would pile more debt on Italians and skirt the rules of good fiscal housekeeping shared by the 19 nations using the euro currency. Italy’s populist government announced last week it would increase spending next year, pushing the budget deficit out to 2.4 percent of GDP, past a 1.6 percent limit the government had earlier said it would observe. While still below the EU limit of 3 percent, the move breaks with Italy’s recent efforts to reduce its debts and sets up a clash with …

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The association of Polish lawyers called on the government on Monday to abandon a plan for legal reform it says could undermine attorney-client confidentiality as part of a broader campaign to take control of the judiciary. The Dziennik Gazeta Prawna daily and other media say the plan would enable prosecutors to ask lawyers to divulge details of conversations with their clients and make similar demands of doctors and journalists. At the moment, only a court can make such demands. The government has not confirmed the media reports or outlined its plans in detail. Prosecutor general and Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro …

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U.S. Ambassador to Romania Hans Klemm says the country’s legal system is being “dismantled” by legislators in order to protect their own interests. Klem said Monday in a speech to University of Bucharest law students and faculty that judicial officials are being “increasingly targeted politically, and in the media for court decisions and public opinions that political leaders see as endangering their private interests.” Klem said the result will be less accountability, more criminality, and less international cooperation in the fight against global threats, such as cybercrime, human trafficking, corruption, money laundering, and terrorism. The Social Democrat government has made …

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French singer Charles Aznavour has died at the age of 94, French media reported on Monday, citing his spokesman. Aznavour, who was born Shahnour Varinag Aznavourian in Paris to Armenian parents, sold more than 100 million records in 80 countries. He was often described as France’s Frank Sinatra. Aznavour began his career peddling his music to French artists of the 1940s and 1950s such as Edith Piaf, Maurice Chevalier and Charles Trenet. He discovered his talent for penning songs while performing in cabarets with partner Pierre Roche, with Roche playing the piano and Aznavour singing. It was after World War …

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European Union and NATO officials are urging Macedonia to move forward with procedures to change its name, which would pave the way for the country to join both entities. EU Enlargement Commissioner Johannes Hahn said in a tweet that he expects “all political leaders to respect this decision and take it forward with utmost responsibility and unity across party lines.”   NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted: “I urge all political leaders and parties to engage constructively and responsibly to seize this historic opportunity,” adding that NATO’s door is still open to Macedonia “but all national procedures have to be completed.” …

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Nobel Prizes are the most prestigious awards on the planet but the aura of this year’s announcements has been dulled by questions over why so few women have entered the pantheon, particularly in the sciences. The march of Nobel announcements begins Monday with the physiology/medicine prize. Since the first prizes were awarded in 1901, 892 individuals have received one, but just 48 of them have been women. Thirty of those women won either the literature or peace prize, highlighting the wide gender gap in the laureates for physics, chemistry and physiology/medicine. In addition, only one woman has won for the …

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Macedonians voted Sunday whether to change the name of their country – a move that could pave the way for it to join NATO and the European Union. Following a deal with neighboring Greece after decades of dispute, Macedonians voted on whether to change the country’s name to North Macedonia. Nationalists, including Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, urged a boycott of the vote Sunday, resulting in low voter turnout.  Macedonia’s electoral commission said two days ago the referendum results would be declared invalid if less than 50 percent of the eligible voting population went to the polls. Even if the referendum …

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Few Macedonians turned out to vote in a referendum on whether to change the name of their country – a move that could pave the way for it to join NATO and the European Union. According to election officials, only about a third of eligible voters cast ballots Sunday. But more than 90 percent of those voting cast a ballot in favor of changing the country’s name to North Macedonia. Macedonia’s electoral commission said two days ago the referendum results would be declared invalid if less than 50 percent of the eligible voting population went to the polls. Macedonian Prime …

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Traditional two-handled ceramic jars known as amphoras were used extensively in ancient Greece to store and transport a variety of products, especially wine. These days they are more likely to be found in shipwrecks than in stores. But wine-filled amphoras are once again being found on the sea floor, not from sunken ships, but deliberately placed there by a special Eastern European winery. Faith Lapidus explains. …

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Prime Minister Theresa May will unveil plans Sunday to levy an extra fee on foreign buyers of homes in Britain, saying she wanted to stop it being as easy for those who do not live in the country to buy homes “as hard working British residents.” May, struggling to unite her governing Conservatives behind her Brexit strategy, hopes to use her party’s annual conference in the English city of Birmingham this week to reset her agenda to tackle growing inequality in Britain. Aware that the opposition Labour Party staged a successful conference last week and set out new policies targeting …

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Macedonians go to polls Sunday to vote on whether to change their country’s name to Republic of North Macedonia, urged by a pro-Western government to pave the way for NATO and EU membership by resolving a decades-old name dispute with Greece. The referendum is one of the last hurdles for a deal reached between Macedonia and Greece in June to settle their quarrel, which has prevented Macedonia from joining major Western institutions since it broke away from then-Yugoslavia in 1991. Greece, which has its own northern province called Macedonia, has always maintained that Macedonia’s name represented a claim on its …

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Tension flared in a familiar section of the Balkans as thousands of people marched Saturday in Kosovo’s capital against a possible territory swap with former war foe Serbia, while the Serbian government put its troops on alert after special police were deployed to Kosovo’s Serb-dominated north. Serbia reacted after Kosovo’s special police moved into an area around the Kosovo side of the strategic Gazivode Lake, said Marko Djuric, director of Serbia’s Office for Kosovo and Metohija. Kosovar President Hashim Thaci visited the area near Serbia’s border Saturday, a move that temporarily redirected attention away from the large opposition protest in …

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Catalan separatists clashed with police Saturday in downtown Barcelona, with two arrests being made, as tensions increased before the anniversary of the Spanish region’s illegal referendum on secession that ended in violent raids by security forces. Separatists tossed and sprayed colored powder at the local police, filling the air in a thick rainbow cloud and covering anti-riot shields, police vans and the pavement on a downtown boulevard in a panoply of bright colors. Some protesters also threw eggs and other projectiles and engaged with the police line, which used baton strikes to keep them back. The clashes erupted after local …

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