Category: Євросоюз

Full Name: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Created: 1945. Mission: To build a culture of peace, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information. How does it work? UNESCO’s primary decision-making body is the General Conference, comprising all 195 member states. It meets every 2 years to set the policies and programs of the agency. It is overseen by a Director-General, who is appointed every four years. Programs: UNESCO’s activities are focused on five areas.     Attaining quality education for all and promoting lifelong learning     Mobilizing scientific knowledge and policy for …

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The foreign ministers of Hungary and Ukraine clashed on Thursday over Ukraine’s new law banning teaching in minority languages, with Budapest threatening to retaliate by blocking Ukraine’s aspirations to integration in the European Union. Hungary said on Tuesday it would ask the EU to review its ties with Ukraine over Kiev’s decision to stop secondary school instruction in ethnic minority tongues including Hungarian. Ukraine, which has sizable Hungarian, Russian and Romanian minorities, passed legislation on Sept. 5 obliging teachers to use only Ukrainian in secondary schools, saying it wanted to help minorities integrate and get public sector jobs. The move …

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The European Union’s Brexit negotiator said Thursday that that little progress was made with the U.K. in a fifth round of talks on the country’s departure from the EU in 2019, and that he cannot yet recommend broadening negotiations to include trade.   Michel Barnier said that despite the “constructive spirit” shown in this week’s negotiations in Brussels, “we haven’t made any great steps forward.” On the question of how much Britain has to pay to settle its financial commitments, he said: “We have reached a state of deadlock, which is disturbing.”   Barnier said he would not be able …

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Several prominent German foreign policy experts on Thursday urged the incoming German government not to turn away from the United States despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s unilateral “America First” stance. The group of leading experts published a manifesto in the weekly Die Zeit saying the “success and security of Germany and Europe is based on the system” of a liberal, international order and multilateral institutions, which Trump is fundamentally questioning with his “power-based, nationalist politics.” They wrote that because of America’s current course, Germany – which recently held national elections and is still in the process of forming a new …

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Spain is holding its annual national day celebration Thursday under the cloud of the country’s biggest political crisis since a failed coup four decades ago. Spaniards lined the streets of Madrid carrying national flags as unionists used the holiday military parade to show unity in the face of moves by Catalonia to declare independence. The wealthy region’s intention to break away has plunged Spain into its worst political crisis since an attempted military coup in 1981. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy issued Wednesday an ultimatum to Catalonian President Carles Puigdemont to clarify by Monday whether he has formally declared independence for …

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Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, said on Thursday a landmark arms control treaty that helped end the Cold War was in peril and called for a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to save it. Gorbachev, 86, said U.S.-Russia relations were in the throes of a “severe crisis” and that the treaty, which banned all Soviet and American short and intermediate-range land-based nuclear and conventional missiles, was now at serious risk. Gorbachev signed the pact — the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty — in 1987 along with then U.S. President Ronald Reagan in Washington. Russia, …

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Nerves are fraying in the Brexit talks, negotiators are trying to work out if the other side is bluffing about walking away, and a ticking clock is fast narrowing British options come March 2019. Philip Hammond, Britain’s finance minister, echoed recent EU assertions when he said that a transition period to some new relationship was a “wasting asset,” the value of which would “diminish significantly” for both sides if its form remains unclear to businesses much after the start of the New Year. As negotiators in Brussels make little progress before Prime Minister Theresa May meets EU leaders next week, …

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Turkey is calling for a normalization of relations with the United States following rising diplomatic tensions between the NATO allies. “Our wish is that relations between the two allies get back to normal soon. We, as Turkey, will not give up on common sense at a time when regional and global tensions have been rising,” said Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in a speech to provincial governors in Ankara. Relations are deeply strained following the arrest of local U.S. consulate employee Metin Topuz on terrorism and espionage charges in relation to a failed coup last year against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. …

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Russia’s domestic security agency said Wednesday it detained six people in Crimea accused of involvement in an extremist organization, a move described by one of the suspects’ lawyer as part of Moscow’s crackdown on the Crimean Tatars. Emil Kurbedinov, a lawyer for one of the six detainees, said that police also rounded up nine other Crimean Tatars who protested the detentions in the Crimean town of Bakhchisarai. The Federal Security Service or FSB, the main KGB successor agency, said it has stopped the activities of a local cell of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamist group which Russia and several other ex-Soviet …

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There have been four outbreaks of highly pathogenic H5N8 avian flu in farms in central and northern Italy since the start of the month and about 865,000 chickens, ducks and turkeys will be culled, officials said on Wednesday. The biggest outbreak was at a large egg producing farm in the province of Ferrara. The outbreak was confirmed on Oct. 6 and about 853,000 hens are due to be culled by Oct. 17, the IZSV zoological institute said. Another outbreak involved 12,400 broiler chickens at a smaller farm in the province of Vicenza. The other two were among a small number …

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The Danish government wants to increase its defense budget by 20 percent over the next five years in response to Russia stepping up military activity in eastern and northern Europe. Much of the West has been troubled by Russia’s actions since its 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula Crimea and its support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine in a war that has killed more than 10,000 people. Baltic countries have grown increasingly alarmed. Last year Russia, saying it was part of routine drills, moved ballistic nuclear-capable missiles to its enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea and deployed …

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The Council of Europe is asking Italy to explain what its naval ships are doing off Libya’s coast amid concerns that Europe-bound migrants who are sent back to Libya face “a real risk” of torture or inhuman treatment. In a Sept. 28 letter published Wednesday, the council’s human rights commissioner, Nils Muiznieks, warned Interior Minister Marco Minniti that Italy again risked violating the European Convention on Human Rights. The convention prohibits exposing people to “torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Italy announced in July it was sending naval units to Libya’s coast to help the local coast guard …

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Dinner at the Barcelona home of Catalonia-born Montserrat Armisen, an independence supporter, can be a tense affair. “He criticizes us and doesn’t let us eat in peace,” said Armisen of her husband, Gustavo Gomez, a Colombian who favors keeping the Spanish state intact, and their children, Jordi, 18, and Nicolas, 27. “We go to our protests, return and don’t say anything, but he just carries on,” said Armisen, 55. “It bothers us because there is no respect for us from his part.” For many in Spain, the Catalonia crisis that threatens to fracture the country is also tearing at ordinary …

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Russia accused the United States on Tuesday of pretending to fight Islamic State and of deliberately reducing its airstrikes in Iraq to allow the group’s militants to stream into Syria to slow the Russian-backed advance of the Syrian army. The Pentagon strongly denied the accusations, saying that the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State posts data every day on the number and result of strikes for the public to see. In the latest sign of rising tensions between Moscow and Washington, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that the U.S.-led coalition had sharply reduced its airstrikes in Iraq in …

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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan pledged gas, investment and support for the Balkans on Tuesday, in an apparent bid to expand influence in a region frustrated by the slow pace of EU accession. His two-day trip to Serbia — a mainly Orthodox Christian country at fierce odds with Turkey during Yugoslavia’s bloody collapse — could help grow Turkey’s role in a region that spent centuries under Ottoman rule and remains susceptible to big-power rivalries. Turkish influence is already strong among fellow Muslims in Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo. Serbia is Russia’s closest ally in the Balkans. “Together with Serbia and with the …

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European Union Council President Donald Tusk said Tuesday that Brexit negotiations will not move to the next stage focused on trade relations before December at the earliest — not later this month, as Britain was hoping. Tusk bemoaned the slow pace of divorce negotiations with London and said it was still far too early to move to the next phase of planning a new trade relationship because the initial breakup talks have yet to reach “sufficient progress.” “We are negotiating in good faith, and we still hope that the so-called ‘sufficient progress’ will be possible by December,” Tusk said.   …

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The Italian government on Tuesday called for confidence votes in the lower house of parliament to try to force through an electoral law that is likely to penalize the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. The new voting law, which would be used in a national election due by next May, is backed by the ruling Democratic Party (PD), former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (Go Italy!) and the anti-migrant Northern League. Unlike the current rules, the new system, known as the Rosatellum, would allow the formation of broad coalitions before the ballot, a factor likely to hurt the maverick 5-Star, which …

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Leaders in Catalonia are facing increasing domestic and international pressure to abandon plans to declare independence from Spain, ahead of a planned speech by Catalonia’s regional president. Catalan regional leader Carles Puigdemont is due to address the regional parliament on Tuesday, and Spain’s government is worried the legislature will vote for a unilateral declaration of independence. Puigdemont has not revealed what his message to lawmakers will be. Political leaders, both domestically and internationally, urged Catalan leaders on Monday to back down to ease growing tensions in the country. Major speaks out Barcelona’s mayor was the latest to speak out against …

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A satirical look at the European Union and its bureaucracy, which opens with a pig running amok in one of Brussels’ main squares, has won the prestigious German Book Prize. Austrian writer Robert Menasse scooped a 25,000 euro prize for his novel Die Hauptstadt (The Capital) on Monday, on the eve of the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair. Europe’s future hangs in the balance as Britain wrangles with Brussels about the terms of its departure from the bloc after the June 2016 Brexit vote. Despite efforts to provide a united front, the other 27 members remain deeply divided over …

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Any escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula is unacceptable, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in a phone call on Monday. U.S. President Donald Trump warned over the weekend that “only one thing will work” in dealing with Pyongyang, hinting that military action was on his mind. “Lavrov underlined the inadmissibility of any escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula, to which the USA’s military preparations lead, and called for contradictions to be resolved by diplomatic means only,” the foreign ministry said in a statement. Lavrov also demanded the return of Russian diplomatic …

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