Category: Євросоюз

The Catalonian government on Thursday launched its official campaign for an independence referendum, which Madrid has declared illegal, buoyed by the support of the capital Barcelona. Crowds filled a bull ring in the northeastern city of Tarragona, applauding and shouting “We will vote!” as regional president Carles Puigdemont arrived to rally support for the October 1 vote. In a boost for the credibility of the referendum, the mayor of Barcelona said earlier on Thursday that the vote would go ahead in the city, having previously expressed concern that civil servants involved may lose their jobs. A town hall spokesman was …

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In the Turkish capital, Ankara, the trial of two educators charged with terrorism has started.  The defendants have been on a hunger strike for more than five months to protest their firing as part of a government crackdown after last year’s failed coup. Their hunger strike and trial have become a focal point of government opposition. The Ankara courthouse where Semih Ozakca and Nuriye Gulmen are on trial was surrounded by a large security presence. Police outside the court prevented opposition parliamentary deputies from reading a declaration of support for the educators who are accused of supporting a prohibited left …

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Fans of the old Latin Mass descended on Rome on Thursday for their annual pilgrimage, facing indifference to their cause, if not outright resistance, from none other than Pope Francis.   Ten years after Pope Benedict XVI passed a law allowing greater use of the Latin Mass, Francis seems to be doing everything possible to roll it back or simply pretend it never happened.   In recent weeks, he has affirmed with “magisterial authority” that the reforms of the 1960s allowing for Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than Latin were “irreversible.” Last week he gave local bishops …

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The United States is responding to Russian propaganda with new media efforts aimed at countering “Kremlin distortions” with objective news, Broadcasting Board of Governors CEO John Lansing told a Senate panel. Lansing said Thursday he has seen a “global explosion of propaganda and lies,” and said the government agency he oversees is now actively countering that disinformation with facts. BBG is the parent organization for VOA and other broadcast entities. Lansing detailed BBG efforts to counter Russian disinformation by reaching Russian speakers around the world. Specifically, Lansing mentioned “Current Time,” a Russian-language news network, which, according to a promo video …

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Military officials in Belarus have sought to calm Western fears about major war games with Russia involving thousands of troops, tanks and aircraft, just hours before they are due to get underway.   The Zapad (West) 2017 maneuvers, mainly in Belarus this year, have caused concern at NATO and in neighboring countries. Some members of the alliance, including the Baltic states and Poland, have criticized a lack of transparency about the exercises and questioned Moscow’s real intentions.   “We are not threatening anyone,” Oleg Voinov, an adviser to the Belarusian Defense Minister, told journalists Thursday. “We have chosen military bases …

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dismissed U.S. concerns about his government’s recent decision to buy an S-400 missile defense system from Russia. In a speech Wednesday to mayors from his ruling AK Party, Erdogan said of the U.S., “They went crazy because we made the S-400 agreement. What were we supposed to do? Wait for you? We are taking and will take all our measures on the security front,” he added. The multibillion-dollar missile purchase has dealt another blow to deeply strained relations with the United States, which spent months lobbying against the deal.  “We have relayed our concerns to …

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British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson will meet with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in London on Thursday to discuss issues including Hurricane Irma, North Korea and Libya, his office said. Johnson, who this week visited the British territories of Anguilla and the British Virgin islands to see the devastation caused by Irma, will discuss the international response with Tillerson and French Political Director Nicolas de Riviere. “I’ve seen firsthand the devastation Hurricane Irma has caused people in the Caribbean. Close coordination with our allies is vital for both the short-term and long-term recovery efforts,” Johnson said in a statement …

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Spain’s state prosecutor has summoned more than 700 Catalan mayors who have backed an independence referendum, in an escalation of Madrid’s efforts to block the vote that it has declared illegal. Officials engaging in any preparations for the vote could be charged with civil disobedience, abuse of office and misuse of public funds, the prosecutor said in a letter delivered to local authorities on Wednesday. If the mayors do not answer the summons, police should arrest them, it added. One mayor said the legal move was unprecedented. “We don’t think any European country has ever tried to make more than …

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After more than a year of separation, Syrian refugee Ammar Hammasho was finally, albeit briefly, reunited with his wife and four children through a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire in Cyprus. Hammasho, who is from the war-ravaged Idlib region, fell to his knees and kissed each of his three eldest children through the three-meter-high barrier encircling a migrant reception center at Kokkinotrimithia, west of the Cypriot capital Nicosia. His youngest son, Jumah — named after their second-born who was killed in an air raid in 2015 — was held up by his wife, Shamuos. He kissed the protracted palm …

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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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