Category: Євросоюз

Neutral Sweden has launched its biggest war games in two decades with support from NATO countries, drilling 19,000 troops after years of spending cuts that have left the country fearful of Russia’s growing military strength. On the eve of Russia’s biggest maneuvers since 2013, which NATO says will be greater than the 13,000 troops Moscow says are involved, Sweden will simulate an attack from the east on the Baltic island of Gotland, near the Swedish mainland. “The security situation has taken a turn for the worse,” Micael Byden, the commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, said during a presentation of …

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European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker urged European Union governments on Wednesday to use economic recovery and Brexit as springboards toward a closer union, built on an expanded eurozone and a pivotal role in world trade. In his annual State of the European Union speech, Juncker sketched out a vision of a post-2019 EU in which 30 countries would be using the euro, with an EU finance minister running key budgets to help states in trouble. Tax and welfare standards would converge and Europe, not the United States, would be the hub of a free-trading world. The EU chief executive stressed …

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Tens of thousands of women who survived enslavement and rape during the 1992-95 Bosnian war are still being denied justice, according to a report from Amnesty International. A quarter of a century after the conflict began, rights activists say many of the survivors are living in poverty and have lost all hope the perpetrators will face trial. Henry Ridgwell reports. …

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Venezuela’s government and opposition will hold a round of talks in the Dominican Republic on Wednesday, France’s foreign minister said on Tuesday, warning Caracas that it risked EU sanctions if it failed to engage in negotiations. Venezuela has been convulsed by demonstrations against leftist President Nicolas Maduro, accused by critics of knocking the oil-rich country into its worst-ever economic crisis and bringing it to the brink of dictatorship. “I was happy to learn that dialogue with the opposition would restart tomorrow in the Dominican Republic,” Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a statement after meeting his Venezuelan counterpart, Jorge Arreaza Montserrat, …

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Former governor of Odessa and onetime Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was served Tuesday with a legal notice to appear before a Ukrainian court to explain why he broke through a cordon of police and border guards to enter the country from Poland. The legal move adds more drama to a weeks-long political standoff roiling Ukraine between the country’s president, Petro Poroshenko, and his onetime ally, Saakashvili, who was stripped of his Ukrainian citizenship in July by the government. Saakashvili, who claims Poroshenko revoked his citizenship illegally after the two fell out, has now sworn to rally opposition parties behind him. …

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Italy’s lower house of parliament approved on Tuesday a bill aimed at curbing fascist propaganda, more than 70 years after the death of wartime dictator Benito Mussolini. The draft law, proposed by the ruling Democratic Party (PD), follows a politically charged summer, with human rights groups warning of growing racism in Italy in the face of mass immigration across the Mediterranean from Africa. Under existing laws, pro-fascist propaganda is only penalized if it is seen to be part of an effort to revive the old Fascist Party. The new bill raises the stakes by outlawing the stiff-armed Roman salute, as …

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Islamic State flags are not flying in Bosnia, Prime Minister Denis Zvizdic said on Tuesday, dismissing allegations by some European leaders that radical Bosnian Muslims in the Balkan country were posing a terrorist threat for Europe. Bosnian Muslims generally practice a moderate form of Islam but some have adopted radical Salafi Islam from foreign fighters who came to the country during its 1992-95 war to fight alongside Muslims against Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. Some joined Islamic State in Syria and Iraq but police said departures had stopped completely in the past 18 months and more than half of those …

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Eiffel Tower employees planned a walkout, angry carnival workers snarled traffic around Paris’ Arc de Triomphe, and Paris police girded for potential violence as unions and others hold nationwide protests Tuesday against changes to labor laws they fear corrode job security.   The protests are the first big public display of discontent with President Emmanuel Macron’s presidency, which kicked off in May amid enthusiasm over his promises of reviving up the French economy but is now foundering amid anger over the labor decrees and other domestic troubles.   The prominent CGT union is leading Tuesday’s protests, calling for strikes and …

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When thousands of Russian troops wheeled and maneuvered through the steppes of southern Siberia two years ago, as part of massive military exercises known as Tsentr, Western experts spotted something unusual. Amid Defense Ministry orders for tank brigades, paratrooper battalions, motorized rifle divisions, and railroad cars carrying howitzers, there were orders for the federal fisheries agency. “And I wondered, ‘What the hell is the fisheries ministry doing?’” recalls Johan Norberg, senior military analyst at the Swedish Defense Research Agency. The eventual conclusion, he says, was that the Russian fisheries fleet was seen by military planners as an intelligence asset, playing …

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The European Union’s counter-terrorism coordinator says the Islamic State group still has about 2,500 fighters from Europe among its dwindling ranks.   Gilles de Kerchove told German daily Welt in an interview published Tuesday that the extremist group used to have about 5,000 European fighters in Iraq and Syria.   De Kerchove says about 1,500 fighters have since returned home and 1,000 have been killed. He says many of those remaining are likely to die fighting or at the hands of IS if they desert, while some may move to other conflict areas such as Somalia or Yemen.   According …

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France on Monday urged Chadian authorities to press ahead with parliamentary elections after securing billions of dollars in pledges from donor countries aimed at helping to revive the country’s struggling economy. President Idriss Deby, who was re-elected in 2016 after gaining power in 1990 at the head of an armed rebellion, said in February that lack of financial resources meant Chad’s parliamentary elections would be postponed indefinitely. “The legislative elections are an important moment in democratic life,” French foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes Romatet-Espagne told reporters in a daily briefing. “We hope in this regard that the Chadian authorities … will …

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A Turkish court remanded five prominent staff from the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper in custody on Monday in a trial which President Tayyip Erdogan’s critics have condemned as an attack on free speech. The court said the newspaper correspondents and executives, some of whom have already been detained for 10 months, should remain in detention until more evidence was presented. “The court has decided to keep the arrested until witnesses are heard,” chief judge Abdurrahman Orkun Dag said after a 13-hour session, adjourning the case for two weeks. “After hearing the witnesses, we think a more healthy decision could be reached.” …

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Scientists say DNA tests on a skeleton found in a lavish Viking warrior’s grave in Sweden show the remains are those of a woman in her 30s. While bone experts had long suspected the remains belong to a woman, the idea had previously been dismissed despite other accounts supporting the existence of female Viking warriors. Swedish researchers used new methods to analyze genetic material from the 1,000-year-old bones at a Viking-era site known as Birka, near Stockholm.   Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson of Uppsala University said Monday the tests show “it is definitely a woman.”   Hedenstierna-Jonson said the grave is particularly …

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The Polish government is abandoning a plan to include in Polish passports images of landmarks that are today within the borders of Ukraine and Lithuania. Poland’s Interior Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said Monday his ministry has picked other images to include in place of the two disputed ones.   The plan had angered both of the neighboring countries, with the Ukrainian government calling it an “unfriendly step.”   The disputed images were of a Polish military cemetery in Lviv, Ukraine, and the Gate of Dawn in Vilnius, Lithuania.   The government’s proposal appeared to break a longstanding practice of not making …

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The Dutch government says it will continue contributing to the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali and NATO’s force in Afghanistan. The Cabinet on Monday informed Parliament about the extension into next year of Dutch participation in the military missions. The foreign ministry said in a statement that the fragile international security situation means that “the Netherlands will continue to take its responsibility.” It says that the priority in the missions is “fighting terrorism and preventing irregular migration.” About 250 Dutch troops will take part in the Mali mission in …

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Some black and mixed-race residents of the hurricane-devastated French territory of St. Martin have expressed anger at a perception that white tourists were given priority during the evacuation of the island that France acquired during colonial times.   The anger over perceived discrimination — whether or not based on fact — is exposing underlying racial tensions that have long plagued France’s far-flung former colonies, especially its Caribbean islands.   St. Martin resident Johana Soudiagom told local television Guadeloupe 1ere that mainly white people were selected for evacuation on Friday following Hurricane Irma above mixed-race islanders on a boat from the French island …

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Devastation from Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean will sharpen the demands from small island nations that top fossil-fuel consumers help them cope with damage attributable to climate change, according to representatives of some of those countries. That will put island nations on a collision course with the United States and other rich countries during United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany, in November. The United States, under President Donald Trump, has doubts about global warming and has vowed to withdraw from a global pact to fight it, while other wealthy nations have long resisted calls to pay for climate-related “loss …

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Mikheil Saakashvili, the former president of Georgia and later a Ukrainian citizen, crossed from Poland into Ukraine in a crowd of his supporters Sunday. Saakashvili has been stateless since his former mentor, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, stripped him of Ukrainian citizenship two months ago. He is wanted in Georgia on charges related to his political career there, and Tbilisi has asked the Kyiv government to extradite him, but it is not clear whether the request will be honored. Saakashvili said he wanted to return to Ukraine to contest Poroshenko’s action stripping him of his citizenship while he was out of …

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Norwegians voted on Sunday in a parliamentary election whose outcome is too close to call, with opinion polls showing Prime Minister Erna Solberg’s centre-right government and the opposition center-left bloc running neck and neck. Solberg’s Conservatives want to cut taxes if they win a fresh four-year mandate, while the centre-left led by Labor’s Jonas Gahr Stoere seeks tax hikes to fund better public services. The outcome could also impact Norway’s vital oil industry because to form a government either Solberg or Gahr Stoere is likely to depend on one or more parties that seek to impose limits on exploration in …

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she was optimistic that a dispute over how to distribute asylum seekers in the EU would soon be resolved after a court ruled on Wednesday that member states must take in a share of refugees who reach Europe. Speaking to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung (F.A.S.) newspaper two weeks before a national election in which she is expected to win a fourth term, Merkel said she welcomed the court’s decision. Separately, the newspaper also reported that in negotiations between member states about redistribution, a compromise was starting to emerge which would link accepting refugees to payments …

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