Category: Євросоюз

French presidential hopeful Emmanuel Macron’s party on Saturday called for the resignation of Marine Le Pen’s father from the National Front after comments he made about a ceremony for the policeman killed in an attack in Paris. The policeman was shot dead and two others were wounded April 20, three days before the first round of the presidential election that saw Macron and Le Pen go through to the May 7 second round. The Islamic State militant group claimed the attack. Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front (FN) party’s founder from whom his daughter has sought to distance herself because …

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Macedonia’s rival parties are trading blame for violence in parliament, while world powers are giving opposing reactions to the events. The European Union and the United States condemned Thursday’s attack, in which protesters stormed the Macedonian parliament in Skopje, attacking opposition lawmakers after they elected an ethnic Albanian speaker. Russia blamed the events on the West, saying it had meddled in the Balkan nation’s internal affairs. Pointing fingers In Macedonia, the previous night’s violence turned into a war of words between rival politicians on Friday. Zoran Zaev, the head of the opposition Social Democrats, who were targeted in the attack, …

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France’s far-right National Front, the party of presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, has replaced its leader for the second time in three days. Jean-Francois Jalkh, who was named interim president of the party on Tuesday after Le Pen stepped down, was forced to vacate the office in response to allegations he praised a Holocaust denier. He also expressed doubts about the reality of Nazi gas chambers, which killed millions of Jews during World War II. Jalkh is being replaced by Steeve Briois. Each has served as one of the party’s five vice presidents. Another party vice president, Louis Aliot — …

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The independent Russian television channel Dozhd (Rain) reported Friday that the central executive committee of the country’s ruling party, United Russia, had distributed to its regional branches a list of 36 slogans that party activists should use during party activities next week marking the annual May Day holiday. While, according to Dozhd, the slogans include some praising the country’s president (“Putin is for the People, He is Leading Russia to Success!”) and others condemning corruption (“Praise Honesty, Jail Bribe-takers!”), none of them refers to the Russian prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who happens to be United Russia’s formal head.   The …

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A Russian opposition movement founded by exiled Kremlin critic and oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky says it plans to go ahead with protests against President Vladimir Putin in 32 cities this weekend, despite the fact that authorities have banned the movement and declared it illegal, and police have raided its Moscow offices. The Open Russia movement’s spokeswoman, Maria Galitskaya, said the action will be held as planned. “We insist we do not breach the law since we do not conduct either a meeting, or a demonstration or a picket,” she said.  “We are carrying letters to the president’s reception (office), since someone …

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Russian prosecutors requested a 3½ year prison sentence Friday for a blogger charged with inciting religious hatred for playing “Pokemon Go” in a church. Prosecutors made the request as the trial of Ruslan Sokolovsky, 22, wrapped up in the city of Yekaterinburg. A judge said a verdict in the case would be issued May 11. Sokolovsky posted a video on his blog showing him playing the smartphone game in a church built on the supposed spot where the last Russian tsar and his family were killed. He has been in detention since October. He is charged with inciting religious hatred. …

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Tensions between Russia and the West over security in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia have surfaced at an annual defense conference in Moscow. Major flashpoints include the situation in Syria and NATO expansion. VOA’s Daniel Schearf reports from Moscow. …

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The European Union says it is taking legal action against Hungary over a new law that could force the closure of a foreign-owned university. Budapest’s Central European University was founded by billionaire George Soros after the fall of Communism. Henry Ridgwell reports Hungary’s government wants to impose tough new conditions on its continued operation, prompting street protests in the capital. …

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Scores of protesters in Macedonia have broken through a police cordon and entered parliament, attacking some lawmakers, to protest the election of a new speaker despite a months-long deadlock in talks to form a new government. …

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Scores of protesters, many wearing masks, broke through a police cordon and entered Macedonia’s parliament late Thursday, attacking lawmakers to protest the election of a new speaker despite a months-long deadlock in talks to form a new government. The protesters stormed parliament after the country’s opposition Social Democrats and parties representing Macedonia’s ethnic Albanian minority voted for a new speaker. Shouting and throwing chairs, the protesters attacked lawmakers, including opposition leader Zoran Zaev, who television footage showed bleeding from the forehead.     Television footage showed Zaev and other Social Democrat lawmakers surrounded by protesters waving national flags, shouting “traitors” …

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Tensions between Russia and the West over security in Europe, the Middle East and Asia have surfaced at an annual defense conference in Moscow. Major flashpoints include the situation in Syria and NATO expansion. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gave a stark warning about the expanding threat of terrorism and conflict across the globe at the opening Wednesday of the two-day Moscow Conference on International Security. “The situation in the world is not becoming more stable or predictable, rather the opposite,” he said. “In front of our eyes we see that tension on both global and regional levels is on …

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Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Thursday that the U.K. will probably join the United States in further military action against Syria if asked to do so, whether or not Parliament gets a vote on it.   Johnson said it would be “very difficult to say no” if the U.S. sought British help for a military mission against the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad.   British lawmakers in 2013 rejected a request by then-Prime Minister David Cameron to authorize U.K. airstrikes in response to Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Britain is part of an international coalition targeting the Islamic State …

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After “the battle of Whirlpool,” when Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron both went hunting for France’s blue-collar vote at a threatened home appliance factory, the presidential candidates clashed over fish in a return to more traditional campaigning on Thursday. The anti-European Union far-right populist Le Pen was up before dawn to cruise aboard a fishing trawler on the Mediterranean. The sea trip was her latest television-friendly effort to portray herself as the candidate of France’s workers against the centrist former banker and finance minister Macron, whom she paints as the candidate of the financial, political and pro-EU elite.   …

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Britons Thursday not to delude themselves that they would continue to enjoy EU rights after Brexit and insisted the bloc would only agree on future ties with London after they have nailed down a deal to leave. Striking a firm tone in a speech to the Bundestag lower house of parliament before a weekend summit on Brexit, Merkel also said talks on Britain’s financial obligations to the EU would have to be addressed early on in the talks. “A third state, and that’s what Britain will be, cannot and will not have at its disposal …

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A French court has refused Serbia’s request to extradite former Kosovo Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj to face war crimes charges. The court in Colmar released Haradinaj after its ruling Thursday. French police originally detained Haradinaj in early January on a Serbian arrest warrant, a move that raised tensions between Serbia and Kosovo. Serbian authorities want to try him for alleged offenses related to the 1998-99 war in Kosovo. An international war crimes tribunal in The Hague put Haradinaj on trial twice on charges that included murder, cruel treatment and torture from his time as a commander of the Kosovo Liberation …

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Thirty One years ago this week, the world eyes focused on the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl, where the world’s worst nuclear accident was contaminating swaths of what was then the Soviet Union. Now, that nuclear wasteland is being transformed into a solar farm that could generate as much energy as two units of the doomed nuclear plant. VOA’s Oksana Ligostova reports from Kyiv, narrated by Steve Redisch. …

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A South African pact with Russia’s Rosatom to build nuclear reactors was deemed unlawful by a High Court on Wednesday, casting fresh doubt over the country’s energy plans. Operator of Africa’s only nuclear power station, Eskom wants to add 9,600 megawatts (MW) of nuclear capacity — equivalent to up to 10 nuclear reactors — to help wean the economy off of polluting coal in what could one of the world’s biggest nuclear contracts in decades. South Africa and Russia signed an Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) in 2014 that sealed a cooperation pact between state-owned nuclear group Rosatom and state-owned utility Eskom. Judge …

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Turkish warplanes hit Kurdish militant targets in northern Iraq on Wednesday and killed six militants, the military said, in a second day of cross-border raids. A military statement said the air strikes targeted the Zap region, the Turkish name for a river which flows across the Turkish-Iraqi border and is known as Zab in Iraq. The air strikes hit “two hiding places and one shelter, and killed six separatist terrorist organization militants who were understood to be preparing an attack,” the statement said. The raids were part of a widening campaign against the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has …

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The European Union has launched legal action against Hungary over a new higher education law that critics say is aimed at shutting down a university founded by billionaire philanthropist George Soros.   European Commission President Valdis Dombrovskis said Wednesday that the EU’s executive arm has sent a “letter of formal notice” to Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government, which is a first step in legal action.   Dombrovskis said the move is based on “an in-depth legal assessment.”   The Commission believes the law could infringe on European rights to provide services, but also on academic freedoms and the right to …

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Pope Francis’ visit to Egypt, due to begin Friday, comes at a time of historic troubles for Christians in both Egypt and the rest of the Middle East. It will be just the second visit by a Roman Catholic pontiff to the Arab world’s most populous country, following a ground-breaking trip by Pope John Paul II to Cairo in 2000. The papal visit follows two bloody terror attacks targeting Coptic churches in Egypt’s second largest city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta town of Tanta earlier this month, on Palm Sunday. More than 40 people were killed and dozens injured …

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