The EU’s border force Frontex is getting overhauled next Tuesday by a European Commission determined to give the Warsaw-based agency a larger role in deportations, more resources, and more agility to deploy.
EU’s Arctic oil-and-gas pledge leaves a Norway-sized loopholeIf there is no offtake market in continental Europe, no-ne is going to take the risk.
The thing is, EU buyers already buy plenty of gas (and oil) from the Arctic.
The parliament overwhelmingly supported an increased budget and scope for the Erasmus+ programme under the new EU budget on Thursday.
Drones buzz overhead and enemy wi-fi everywhere: Ukrainian veterans describe how they survived in Russia’s ‘kill zone’ (Ukraine Battlefield update, Day 1,701)The kill zone’s constant drone buzz, mined roads and invisible Russian networks are making basic things, such as a phone call, into life-or-death gambles for exhausted Ukrainian troops.
The European Parliament has voted to delay EU methane rules for oil and gas importers by three years, two more than the commission proposed. The vote also extends the delay to European producers and opens the door to reopening the law in 2029.
The ICC has received the EU’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The court’s president judge thanked lawmakers for the recognition and said “there is no peace without justice and no security without law”.
An Italian MEP has gone on hunger strike over the besieged Ukrainian town’s lack of access to food, medicine, clean water and basic care. The only route to escape is tapped with mines and rife with attack drones.
Five Brussels municipalities, home to nearly one-in-three of the city’s residents, have now voted to drive fossil-fuel advertising off their streets. In the city where Europe’s climate laws are written, the industry’s grip on billboards and on lawmakers has to be broken together.
Sunday’s vote could reshape the country’s political future. But even a breakthrough for the student movement would leave a deeper question: can democratic change take root in institutions that protesters say have been hollowed out?
The Polish governing coalition voted in parliament to loosen abortion law on Tuesday – but conservative president is expected to block the change.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) raided the offices of Patriots for Europe in Strasbourg and Brussels.
‘Project Fear’ didn’t work, so why do we keep demonising far-right and left voters?My beef with both far-right and far-left populists is that they’re false prophets.
In Europe, at least, the squeezes on public services, high taxes, debt burdens and crippling costs of living are legacies of the Covid pandemic, wars in Ukraine and Iran and a eurozone crisis that was never fully resolved. These can’t be wished away, and they won’t be cured with caps on immigration, higher taxes on the rich or the promise of earlier retirement.
The EU is pressing allies, such as the UK, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Norway to help close a €70bn shortfall in Ukraine’s funding for next year.
Human cost of Putin’s war emerging in ‘death fields’ of Russian soldiers in Dobropillia (Ukraine Battlefield update, day 1,700)Moscow has concentrated its biggest force near Pokrovsk and faked new front lines on paper. Meanwwhile, the real battle around Dobropillia is reshaping how Europe must think about any ceasefire, which could lock in Russian gains
Defending human and environmental rights could get you in prison, or at least detained – as happened to Italian MEP Benedetta Scuderi. She talks to EUobserver about the double-standard in policing of left and rightwing demos, and the housing crisis sparking much of the youth unrest.
As Europe pours billions into defence and talks up ‘strategic autonomy’, it is quietly undermining its own power by ignoring the students who say they can’t afford the education, housing or stability needed to keep the continent running.
Benjamin Netanyahu has not been Israel’s prime minister for every one of those years. Yet even out of office, Israeli politics rarely escaped his gravitational pull. Hungarians know something about that feeling.
The US is no longer an ally. It’s over.Even an eventual change of American leadership doesn’t mean the US’s bizarre glorification of violence goes away. It is a persistent stain, constantly eroding away at the values of an open and free society.
Both are worth defending here in Europe. The US has chosen its own path. Let it walk it alone.
The EU’s top diplomat has backed the idea of a Black Sea naval mission to protect grain ships from Russian drones – but this would require much more than Europe’s existing Red Sea operation, while air policing might be more effective.
The European Parliament called on more spending to build affordable houses, using funds for regional development that currently comprise up to a third of the present EU budget.
