Category: Євросоюз

U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Warsaw strengthens Poland’s position in the European Union, Polish President Andrzej Duda said Thursday. Trump and Duda are to speak to reporters Thursday morning after their meeting at the Royal Castle. It also strengthened Poland’s defense. Wednesday night, the U.S. agreed to sell Patriot missile defense systems to Poland in a memorandum, Poland’s Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said. “A memorandum was signed tonight that the U.S. government has agreed to sell Poland Patriot missiles in the most modern configuration,” Macierewicz said in a news conference broadcast on public television Thursday morning. “I am glad …

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The first meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin Friday will be closely watched but not because of any expectations of progress. While both have expressed a desire to repair relations, expectations of easing what some call a new Cold War are low. As VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Washington, the meeting has been clouded by investigations of the Trump campaign’s alleged links to Russia and Russian hacking of the U.S. 2016 election. …

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The Trump administration on Wednesday renewed an offer to cooperate with Russia in the Syrian conflict, including on military matters, ahead of President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin later this week. In a statement, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. is open to establishing no-fly zones in Syria in coordination with Russia as well as jointly setting up a truce monitoring and humanitarian aid delivery mechanism. The statement came as Trump prepared to meet with Putin on Friday in Germany and as the U.S. seeks to consolidate gains made against the Islamic State in recent …

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Britain will lose its status as Europe’s top financial center unless it keeps borders open to specialist staff, improves infrastructure and expands links with emerging economies, TheCityUK said in a report published Thursday. The report from Britain’s most powerful financial lobby group said continental Europe might eventually become the preferred destination for banks, insurers and asset managers as they relocate business there to retain access to the EU single market. Although companies may begin by initially shifting a small number of jobs to Europe, this may accelerate when property leases expire, they carry out business reviews, or the cost of …

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Europe has made a dangerous turn on the Mediterranean Sea as it looks to Libya for help in slowing the number of migrants attempting to reach the continent in flimsy boats, Amnesty International said in a report released Thursday. The organization called the European Union’s strategy of training the Libyan coast guard to rescue migrants “reckless.” By turning to Libya, a country in chaos that is the jumping-off point for the hazardous journey, the EU has created “A Perfect Storm” — the title of Amnesty’s report — that could hammer often-desperate migrants with a double vengeance. They face the risk …

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A French public prosecutor on Wednesday asked a court to sentence the son of Equatorial Guinea’s president to three years in jail on charges of using money plundered from his country to buy Parisian luxury properties and exotic cars. The public prosecutor also said Obiang should pay a 30 million euro fine and have all his assets in France confiscated. Teodorin Obiang, eldest son of President Teodoro Obiang and a vice-president himself, denies charges of laundering embezzled public funds. He is being tried in absentia. The court’s ruling will come at a later date. The case is the first of …

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The Ukrainian software firm at the center of a cyber attack that spread around the world last week said on Wednesday that computers which use its accounting software are compromised by a so-called “backdoor” installed by hackers during the attack. The backdoor has been installed in every computer that wasn’t offline during the cyber attack, said Olesya Bilousova, the chief executive of Intellect Service, which developed M.E.Doc, Ukraine’s most popular accounting software. Last week’s cyber attack spread from Ukraine and knocked out thousands of computers, disrupting shipping and shut down a chocolate factory in Australia as it reached dozens of …

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France’s new president, Emmanuel Macron, sought to reassure opponents of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday after provoking concern among rebel groups by saying that he saw no legitimate successor to Assad. Former president Francois Hollande had backed the Syrian opposition, demanding the six-year conflict be resolved through a political transition that would eventually see Assad replaced. Macron, a centrist elected in May, said last month he no longer considered Assad’s departure a pre-condition for a negotiated settlement to the conflict, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven more than 11 million from their homes. While he …

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel is standing by her suggestion that Europe can no longer entirely rely on the U.S. as she prepares to host President Donald Trump at the Group of 20 summit. Merkel made the comment during a campaign event in late May. Asked in an interview with weekly Die Zeit whether she would repeat it today, she replied: “Yes, exactly that way. It is, for example, open whether we can and should in the future rely on the U.S. investing so much as it has so far in the United Nations’ work, in Middle East policy, in European …

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Belgian prosecutors said four people had been detained after automatic weapons were found in house searches in Brussels as part a counter-terrorism investigation overnight into Wednesday. Police found Kalashnikovs, bullet-proof vests and ammunition in raids on two garages and four homes in the capital’s Anderlecht district, Belgian media outlet RTBF reported. “During one of the house searches, various weapons were found,” federal prosecutors said in a statement. Prosecutors said the overnight detentions were separate from investigations into Islamist attacks in Paris in November 2015, which killed 130 people, and in Brussels four months later in which 32 people were killed. …

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Ukrainian police on Tuesday seized the servers of an accounting software firm suspected of spreading a malware virus which crippled computer systems at major companies around the world last week, a senior police official said. The head of Ukraine’s Cyber Police, Serhiy Demedyuk, told Reuters the servers of M.E.Doc – Ukraine’s most popular accounting software – had been seized as part of an investigation into the attack. Though they are still trying to establish who was behind last week’s attack, Ukrainian intelligence officials and security firms have said some of the initial infections were spread via a malicious update issued …

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Uber suffered a new setback in Europe on Tuesday when a European Union court adviser said France was entitled to charge local managers of the U.S. ride-hailing app firm with running an illegal taxi service. Uber played down the non-binding opinion from an advocate general at the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ), saying it applied only to a service using unlicensed drivers known as UberPOP, which it had already discontinued in France. Judges will make a final ruling later this year. However, they generally follow the advice of their advocates general and the comments come two months …

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When President Xi Jinping took the stage in Davos in January and painted China as a champion of free markets ready to fill the global leadership role vacated by the United States, German officials couldn’t help but chuckle. Their expectation was that Donald Trump, due to be inaugurated as U.S. president days later, would quickly temper his protectionist campaign rhetoric and patch up ties with Western allies, leaving little space for Beijing. Six months later, as Xi arrives in Berlin for a highly symbolic visit with German Chancellor Angela Merkel before a Group of 20 summit in Hamburg, what seemed …

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Work is underway in Poland’s capital to close streets and set the stage for President Donald Trump, who is due to deliver a public speech during his visit to Poland on Thursday.   Workers are building platforms at a downtown Warsaw square where Trump will speak, and colorful posters can be seen across the city inviting people to attend the event. Signs are up to show traffic diversions from areas where Trump will be during his brief stay in Warsaw.   The speech is hosted by the U.S. Embassy and Ambassador Paul W. Jones has invited the public to attend. …

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Russia and China have agreed on a need for a freeze on North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs as well as large-scale joint military exercises by the United States and South Korea. Hours after Pyongyang announced a missile launch Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he would coordinate with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to promote their plan to combat North Korea’s growing missile threat. “We’ve agreed to robustly promote our joint initiative to find a solution to the Korean issue based on the Russian step-by-step program, and the Chinese ideas of concurrently freezing DPRK’s nuclear activity, as well as …

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U.S. President Donald Trump has joined Pope Francis in offering any help they can for a terminally ill British infant. Trump said in a Twitter comment Monday that if there was anything he could do for Charlie Gard, the 10-month-old child with a rare genetic disease, “we would be delighted to do so.” The baby’s parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, have lost European court decisions to doctors who want to take the baby off life support at a London hospital after reaching the conclusion that he has no chance of survival. The parents, refusing to accept the medical prognosis, …

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French president Emmanuel Macron vowed to uphold his campaign promises to bring about deep changes in France during a joint parliamentary session Monday at the Palace of Versailles. One of his first measures would be to lift the state of emergency that has been in place in France since 2015, but he promised to harden permanent security measures to fight Islamic extremism and other threats. Macron said his government “will work to prevent any new attack, and we will work to fight [the assailants] without pity, without regrets, without weakness.” He also stressed the need to “guarantee full respect for …

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Feted by some British newspapers as proof of a Brexit vote windfall, Britain’s recent export recovery ranks as the worst among Europe’s major economies, according to one closely-watched measure. Surveys of manufacturers across Europe published by data firm IHS Markit on Monday underlined Britain’s challenge as it tries to become an export-led dynamo outside the European Union. The export orders gauge of the UK Markit/CIPS Purchasing Managers’ Index slid to a five-month low in June. While still indicating growth in exports, it left Britain as the weakest performer in terms of foreign orders, barring Greece, among big western European economies …

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A dispute in Turkey over the removal of the theory of evolution from schools is set to escalate further.   Turkey’s main teachers’ union, Egitim Sen announced it is turning to the courts.  “Excluding the theory of evolution from the curriculum and obliging all schools to have a prayer room and water closet (for ablution) destroys the principle of secularism and the scientific principles of education,” said Egitim Sen chair Mehmet Balik, “We will open a lawsuit against these regulations and take these implementations to court.” The education ministry argues there is no religious or political agenda behind the reform …

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French President Emmanuel Macron has announced military and financial support to a group of countries fighting terrorism in Africa’s Sahel region. Macron was in Mali on Sunday to consolidate western backing for a five-nation regional force against the militants. During his visit, an al-Qaida-affiliated group based in Mali released a video of six foreign hostages it is holding for ransom. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports. …

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