Category: Євросоюз

One of the world’s biggest cargo shippers announced Saturday that it was pulling out of Iran for fear of becoming entangled in U.S. sanctions, and President Hassan Rouhani demanded that European countries to do more to offset the U.S. measures. The announcement by France’s CMA CGM that it was quitting Iran dealt a blow to Tehran’s efforts to persuade European countries to keep their companies operating in Iran despite the threat of new American sanctions. Iran says it needs more help from Europe to keep alive an agreement with world powers to curb its nuclear program. U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned the agreement in May and has announced new …

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French air accident investigators say that a rapidly spreading fire probably caused the crash of an EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo in 2016, casting doubt on Egyptian authorities’ claims that traces of explosives were found. French investigation agency BEA said in a statement late Friday that “the most likely hypothesis is that a fire broke out in the cockpit and “spread rapidly, resulting in loss of control.” Authorities at Cairo airport declined to comment, saying only that state prosecutors were investigating the case. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief journalists on the matter. …

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British Prime Minister Theresa May secured a cabinet agreement on Friday for her plans to leave the European Union, overcoming rifts among her ministers to win support for “a business-friendly” proposal aimed at spurring stalled Brexit talks. After an hours-long meeting at her Chequers country residence, May seemed to have persuaded the most vocal Brexit campaigners in the cabinet to back her plan to press for “a free trade area for goods” with the EU and maintain close trade tie. The agreed proposal — which also says Britain’s large services sector will not have the current levels of access to …

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So is this what a trade war looks like? The Trump administration and China’s leadership have imposed tens of billions of dollars in tariffs on each other’s goods. President Donald Trump has proposed slapping duties on, all told, up to $550 billion if China keeps retaliating and doesn’t cave in to U.S. demands to scale back its aggressive industrial policies. Until the past couple of years, tariffs had been losing favor as a tool of national trade policy. They were largely a relic of 19th and early 20th centuries that most experts viewed as mutually harmful to all nations involved. …

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Russia is denying any role in the poisoning of a British couple who British authorities insist are the latest victims of Novichok — allegedly a Russian-made military-grade nerve agent first implicated in an assassination attempt on a former Russian spy and his daughter on British soil last March. The initial attack left former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, hospitalized in serious condition for several weeks before their ultimate recovery. The incident set off an international crisis that Kremlin officials seemed less than eager to repeat in the face of renewed allegations.  “Of course we’re concerned that these substances …

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Ankara has criticized Washington’s hardline policy toward Tehran, and with Turkey’s cooperation seen as vital to enforcing U.S. sanctions against Iran, analysts say a new confrontation could be looming. “The implementation of sanctions against Iran will have a negative impact on the entire region and is extremely dangerous,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview Friday with Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu. A senior adviser to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, speaking on condition of anonymity, said “Turkey will only enforce U.N. sanctions and no other. Turkey is not going to be used for other countries’ agendas.” U.S. …

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The U.N. refugee agency says would-be migrants continue to die trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.  The agency says anti-migrant attitudes are complicating efforts to save sinking boats.   The U.N. refugee agency says asylum seekers and migrants continue to die in the Mediterranean, despite a sharp decline in the numbers reaching European shores. In the first six months of this year, the UNHCR says 45,700 asylum seekers and migrants arrived in Europe, while more than 1,000 have either died or disappeared at sea.   The agency says the high loss of life shows the urgent need to …

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Prime Minister Theresa May called on her government to do its duty and agree a plan for Britain’s future outside the European Union, a last-ditch appeal to ministers to put Brexit rows behind them and take a “step forward”. Just hours before hosting a meeting at her Chequers country residence on Friday that she hopes will overcome deep rifts that have hampered Britain’s Brexit plans, May urged her cabinet to agree a way to push on with all-but-stalled talks with the EU. A united stance from the government cannot come soon enough for an increasingly frustrated EU and for many …

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A Polish MiG-29 military jet crashed during a night flight in northern Poland the defense ministry said Friday.   The 33-year-old Polish air force pilot, whose name was not released, was killed, despite ejecting before the crash. His body was found a few hundred meters away from the wreckage. The pilot had some 800 hours of flight time.                 The Associated Press reports that Polish authorities have ordered all of the country’s aging Soviet-made MiG-29 jets grounded pending an investigation.                 Poland has about 30 MiG-29 fighter jets which have been in service for almost 30 years. It …

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Talks to save the 2015 nuclear deal on Friday are unlikely to satisfy Iran, European powers said, and Tehran warned that it could leave the accord if it was not fully compensated for the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions. Ministers from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia meet their Iranian counterpart in Vienna for the first time since U.S. President Donald Trump left the pact in May, but diplomats see limited scope for salvaging it. Trump pulled the United States out of the multinational deal under which sanctions on Iran were lifted in return for curbs on its nuclear program verified …

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British police are searching for the source of contamination that sickened a man and a woman in the area of southern England where a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned in March. The two victims tested positive for a Novichok nerve agent. Novichok is a series of deadly nerve agents designed by the Soviet Union that are generally unavailable outside Russia. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the two poisoning cases have sparked a political row between Britain and Russia. …

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By the time the World Cup is over, 64 matches will have taken place in 12 venues in 11 cities. For many people in Nizhny Novgorod, one of the soccer venues, the monthlong event has been the biggest party in town for decades. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports. …

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A court in Russia has fined Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) for allegedly failing to comply with a Russian law regulating media outlets branded by the government as “foreign agents.” …

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Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has indicated the end of emergency rule before it expires two weeks from now, on July 19. “I suppose the government will be announced on Monday, the Cabinet will start work, and an emergency rule will have ended,” Yildirim said in an interview with the state news agency Anadolu. As a result of the June 24 presidential and parliamentary elections, Turkey moves to a powerful executive presidency. The role of the prime minister will end, and ministers will report directly to the president. During his campaign for re-election, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would …

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Britain’s interior minister says the nerve agent that sickened a man and a woman is the same type used in an attack earlier this year on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter. “This has been identified as the same nerve agent that contaminated both Yulia and Sergei Skripal,” Sajid Javid said Thursday.  He said it is not clear at this time whether the nerve agent that poisoned the British couple, identified by friends as 44-year old Dawn Sturgess and 45-year old Charlie Rowley, is from the exact same batch used in the attack on the Skripals. The couple …

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday she would back lowering European Union tariffs on U.S. car imports, responding to an offer from Washington to abandon threatened levies on European cars in return for concessions. “When we want to negotiate tariffs, on cars for example, we need a common European position and we are still working on it,” Merkel said. U.S. President Donald Trump threatened last month to impose a 20-percent import tariff on all EU-assembled vehicles, which could upend the industry’s current business model for selling cars in the United States. According to an industry source, the U.S. ambassador …

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British Prime Minister Theresa May’s office disclosed details Thursday of a plan for customs ties with the European Union that she hopes will unite warring pro-Brexit and pro-EU factions of her Conservative government. Whether it will get the approval of the bloc is another matter. May’s Cabinet is due to meet Friday at Chequers, the prime minister’s country retreat, in hopes of finally agreeing on a plan for future trade ties that Britain can put to the EU. With just nine months to go until the U.K. leaves the bloc in March, EU leaders have warned Britain that they must …

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Emboldened by its success in the June 24 elections, Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish HDP Party is looking to broaden its support beyond its traditional ethnic base — a move that could redraw the country’s entrenched political borders.  Narrowly passing the 10 percent electoral threshold to enter parliament, the HDP’s success was tinged by some political fallout: Many of its officials were jailed, including nine parliamentary deputies, on terrorism charges alone. HDP also claims there was a media blackout on its campaign and it was a victim of voter suppression by the government.  President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling AKP Party …

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United States Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell reportedly told German auto makers Wednesday the U.S. would back off threats of tariffs on European car imports in exchange for the European Union’s elimination of duties on U.S. cars. The German newspaper Handelsblatt reported Grenell told BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen executives of the proposal during a meeting Wednesday at the embassy in Berlin. Daimler and Volkswagen declined to comment and BMW was not immediately available for comment, the report said. The reported proposal comes after the European Union warned U.S. President Donald Trump last Friday the potential indirect costs of imposing tariffs …

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One pedestrian was killed and at least three others hurt Wednesday in the World Cup host city of Sochi when a car apparently accidentally veered onto a sidewalk. Police told Reuters the driver had fallen asleep when the car was traveling fast on a main street before it crossed two lanes of traffic and rammed into the pedestrians. Police said the accident occurred about 45 kilometers from the stadium in Sochi, one of eleven Russian cities hosting the soccer World Cup. Authorities have promised safe venues for the soccer matches, but last month a taxi driver plowed into a crowd …

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