Category: Євросоюз

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Tuesday that the United States and the European Union should have a free trade agreement, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for work on such an accord to resume. President Donald Trump has withdrawn the U.S. from an agreement with nations around the Pacific, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but the fate of a proposed trade deal with the EU has been less clear. Merkel vowed recently not to give up on that accord, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Ross told a conference in Berlin attended by Merkel that the U.S. had made a “conscious …

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Albania’s ruling Socialist Party pledged on Tuesday to flush out corrupt judges, create more jobs and tackle the cannabis trade on the path towards European Union membership, after final results confirmed their win in a parliamentary election. Chief election officer Klement Zguri said the final official preliminary tally from Sunday’s vote showed the Socialists won 48 percent, or 74 seats in the 140-seat parliament, and the main opposition Democratic Party 29 percent, or 43 seats. The Democratic Party and a smaller third party, the Socialist Integration Movement (SIM), which won 14 percent, or 19 seats, both accused the Socialists of …

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A wave of cyberattacks that hit Ukraine and Russia spread beyond the borders of those countries, wreaking havoc on government and corporate computer systems in Europe and across the Atlantic. Banks, government offices and airports in Ukraine were among the first to report the cyberattack. Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Pavlo Rozenko tweeted a photo of his black computer screen, saying the government’s headquarters had been shut down. Multiple international firms reported being affected Tuesday. They included America’s Merck pharmaceutical company, Russia’s Rosneft oil giant, the Danish shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk, British advertising giant WPP and French industrial group Saint-Gobain. “We …

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It has been a year since Britain voted to leave the European Union by a narrow margin of 52 percent. While the question on the ballot paper may have been simple, the divisions exposed by last year’s referendum cut far deeper. After 12 months of political turmoil, analysts say British society is beginning to resemble that of the United States, with values dictating the divisions in society rather than traditional party politics. Professor Anand Menon, from the UK in a Changing Europe program at Kings College London, points to the death penalty issue as an indicator of a person’s values. …

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U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis travels this week to Brussels, where he will consult with NATO allies on troop contributions and other support in Afghanistan before announcing his own decision on increasing the number of U.S. forces in that war-torn country. But as VOA Pentagon correspondent Carla Babb reports, the new strategy is likely to be more of the same. …

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Prime Minister Theresa May struck a deal on Monday to prop up her minority government by agreeing to at least 1 billion pounds ($1.3 billion) in extra funding for Northern Ireland in return for the support of the province’s biggest Protestant party. After over two weeks of talks and turmoil sparked by May’s failure to win a majority in a June 8 snap election, she now has the parliamentary numbers to pass a budget and a better chance of passing laws to take Britain out of the European Union. May and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Arlene Foster presided at …

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Thirteen EU nations voiced support on Monday for a proposal to empower the bloc’s executive to negotiate with Russia over objections to a new Russian gas pipeline to Germany, despite opposition from Berlin. At an informal debate among EU energy ministers, Germany’s partners in the 28-nation bloc spoke out against Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline plan to pump more gas directly from Russia’s Baltic coast to Germany. EU nations are expected to vote in the autumn on the European Commission’s request for a mandate to negotiate with Russia on behalf of the bloc as a whole. Germany, the main beneficiary …

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The European Union’s commissioner in charge of enlargement said on Monday the bloc will help Macedonia make key reforms such as ensuring judicial and media independence to unlock the country’s path towards EU and NATO membership. Johannes Hahn arrived in Skopje on Monday to attend a cabinet meeting scheduled to debate a reform agenda. “Tomorrow the first experts from the European Union will be in town to assist you in all these reforms,” Hahn told reporters after he met the cabinet. Last month’s election of Zoran Zaev’s cabinet ended a two-year long political crisis, the biggest since Western diplomacy helped …

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British Prime Minister Theresa May has tried to reassure millions of Europeans living in Britain that their lives and those of their families will not be disrupted when London leaves the European Union in 2019. May’s post-Brexit residency proposals offer EU nationals “settled status” in Britain with broadly the same rights as native-born English, Scots and Welsh, and the same access to health care, education, welfare and pensions. EU “settlers” would be subject to British law without recourse to the European Court of Justice. “We want you to stay,” May said in a message to the estimated 3.2 million European …

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The list of high-rise apartment towers in Britain that have failed fire safety tests grew to 60, officials said Sunday, revealing the mounting challenge the government faces in the aftermath of London’s Grenfell Tower fire tragedy. All of the buildings for which external cladding samples were so far submitted failed combustibility tests, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid said. As of late Sunday, that includes 60 towers from 25 different areas of the country_ double the figure given a day earlier. The number of buildings at risk is likely to grow as owners and local officials provide more samples for safety tests. …

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Italy’s center-right parties were the big winners in mayoral elections on Sunday, partial results showed, in a vote likely to put pressure on the center-left government ahead of national elections due in less than a year. In the most closely watched contest, the northern port city of Genoa – a traditional left-wing stronghold – seemed certain to pass to the center-right for the first time in more than 50 years. The candidate backed by the anti-immigrant Northern League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party will get around 54 percent of the vote, compared with 46 percent for the candidate backed …

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Albanians voted in parliamentary elections Sunday as the country looks to bolster its democratic credentials ahead of potential European Union membership talks. After polls closed, officials said preliminary turnout was just over 45 percent based on data from more than half of the polling stations, compared to 53.5 percent four years ago.  Preliminary election results are not expected until Monday.   The ruling Socialists and the rival Democrats are the leading parties looking to gain an outright majority in the parliament of the NATO-member country of 2.9 million people. The country gained EU candidate status in 2014, but movement has …

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A forest fire in southern Spain forced the evacuation of at least 1,000 people and threatened a national park famous for its biodiversity and endangered species, authorities said Sunday. The fire started on Saturday night on Spain’s southern coast, then advanced east to reach the Donana Nature Reserve, one of the country’s most important wildlife sanctuaries and a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1994. “The fire has entered in the limits of the reserve, and that is where we are focusing our efforts,” Jose Gregorio Fiscal Lopez from the regional Andalusian authority in charge of the environment told Spanish national …

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Turkish police stopped protesters and attempted to disperse those marching for LGBT rights in Istanbul Sunday, a day after the governor banned the march. The French press agency, AFP, reported rubber bullets being fired to break up the crowds. Organizers of the march had vowed to gather in Taksim square despite the event being banned by the Turkish government for the third year in a row. “We are here again to show that we will fight in a determined fashion for our pride,” the Pride Committee said in a statement Sunday. On Saturday, the governor’s office announced it would not …

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The jihadis’ targets in Europe are depressingly repetitive: the Brussels metro, the Champs-Elysees in Paris twice, tourist-filled bridges in London twice and a U.K. rock concert. And that’s just the past few months. The steady stream of attacks on centers of daily life have drawn pledges from Europeans not to let terrorists change how they live, but in ways large and small they already have. There is a heightened awareness and quicker reactions, especially in the hardest-hit countries of France, Britain and Belgium, that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. In Brussels on Tuesday, a 36-year-old Moroccan …

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Six people, including three children, were injured Sunday after a car ran into pedestrians outside a sports center in the northern English city of Newcastle where people gathered to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr. Police said the incident was not believed to be terror-related.   Northumbria Police said they arrested a 42-year-old woman, who remained in police custody. The force said it was not looking for other suspects in the incident outside Westgate Sports Center on Sunday morning.   They say a full investigation was underway to determine what happened, but “there is nothing to suggest that this …

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Albanians were voting Sunday in a general election that follows a landmark agreement between the country’s two biggest political parties to look past their bitter differences and back efforts for Albania to eventually join the European Union.   Holding a free and fair election is key to launching EU membership talks for the nation of 2.9 million, which is already a NATO member. After earning EU candidate status in 2014, Tirana has struggled to pass important reforms vital for its bid to advance to EU — namely deeply reforming its corrupted justice system.   Eighteen political parties are running for 140 …

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Hundreds marched in Warsaw on Saturday to protest widespread logging in Europe’s last primeval forest, a project undertaken by Poland’s conservative government. The ruling Law and Justice party has allowed increased logging in the Bialowieza Forest, a vast woodland that straddles Poland and Belarus, alarming environmentalists who say it threatens a natural treasure. The forest has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. The government says it has increased logging to fight an outbreak of bark beetle, which has infected many spruce trees. But ecologists see that as a pretext to increase timber production for profit, saying authorities have been …

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Britain’s Parliament was investigating a “sustained and determined” cyberattack on its email user accounts Saturday. Parliamentary officials said the attack seemed designed to identify weak email passwords. As a precaution, remote email access for MPs was disabled, said a statement released by the House of Commons. “Earlier this morning we discovered unusual activity and evidence of an attempted cyberattack on our computer network,” an email sent by parliamentary officials to those affected said. “Closer investigation by our team confirmed that hackers were carrying out a sustained and determined attack on all parliamentary user accounts in an attempt to identify weak …

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The Ukrainian military has said that two soldiers were killed and two wounded in the eastern part of the country despite a cease-fire that began Friday. In a statement posted on Facebook on Saturday, the military accused anti-government rebels of firing artillery rounds in both the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. The statement did not provide details about the casualties. The two sides and representatives of Moscow and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) agreed on the cease-fire on June 21. It is intended to last until August 31 to allow locals to harvest crops. Representatives of the …

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