Browsing: EU

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday praised former finance minister and European Commission president Jacques Delors at a state funeral, saying he had “reconciled Europe with its future”. FRANCE 24’s Catherine Norris-Trent reports.

Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church, is facing increasingly strong opposition inside the Vatican. The conservative clan of the Roman Curia – the powerful governing body of the Holy See – accuses him of a laxist vision of Catholic doctrine, particularly regarding the status of homosexual couples and divorced people in the Church. Our Rome correspondent Natalia Mendoza reports from the Vatican’s corridors of power on this growing conflict between tradition and modernity.

As the second anniversary of the Ukraine conflict looms, the female relatives of Russia’s mobilised men are becoming more and more outspoken in calling for their loved ones to come home, with their pickets and impassioned appeals gaining traction on social media. Their activism, despite being largely ignored by state media, remains a sensitive issue for the Kremlin, which is keen to project an image of national unity around President Vladimir Putin ahead of his inevitable re-election in a vote this March.

Turkish authorities have detained 34 people suspected of being linked to Israel’s Mossad intelligence service and of targeting Palestinians living in Turkey, the country said Tuesday. Police raided locations in eight provinces as part of an investigation carried out by the MIT intelligence agency and the Istanbul prosecutor’s counter-terrorism bureau.

Hospital doctors in England on Wednesday began their longest consecutive strike in the seven-decade history of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

Turkey on Tuesday detained 33 people suspected of spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, Turkish media reported, without specifying the nationalities of those detained.

Russia fired scores of missiles and drones at the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and the northeastern city of Kharkiv on Tuesday, killing at least five civilians, wounding dozens and causing widespread damage, officials said. 

The Danish royals gathered for their New Year’s banquet and dinner – and the new Queen-to-be looked radiant.

The year 2024 may have only just begun but it looks set to be an action-packed one. With a number of pivotal political, environmental, cultural and athletic events on the horizon, it can be difficult to keep track of what’s to come. FRANCE 24 sets out a a timeline of a few major events that are certain to define 2024.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky honoured his people’s resilience in times of bloodshed in a long and lyrical New Year speech, while Russian leader Vladimir Putin stressed his country’s unity in a short and stern message that made only passing reference to the war.

Fireworks illuminated skies over Paris, Rio and Sydney to celebrate the entry to 2024, while in Israel, Gaza and Ukraine, rockets and strikes marked the year’s earliest hours.

Denmark’s popular Queen Margrethe II, Europe’s longest-serving monarch, said Sunday that she would abdicate on January 14 and pass the baton to her son Crown Prince Frederik.

French President Emmanuel Macron vowed on Sunday that 2024 will be a year of French pride and hope, marked by the Paris Olympic Games and the re-opening of Notre-Dame Cathedral, in his traditional New Year’s Eve address from the Élysée Palace in the French capital.

From a devastating earthquake in Syria and Turkey to a march on Moscow and the war against Hamas in Gaza, 2023 was full of dramatic moments, from the heartfelt to the heartbreaking. FRANCE 24 takes a look back at 12 key events that defined the year in news. 

Thousands of protesters gathered Saturday in Belgrade in the biggest of a series of rallies against alleged electoral fraud.

More than a dozen people were killed by Ukrainian strikes on the Russian provincial capital of Belgorod, Russia’s emergencies ministry said Saturday, with the Russian defence ministry vowing the strike “will not go unpunished”. 

A celebrity-studded “Almost Naked” party in Moscow’s famed Mutabor nightclub has drawn outrage from Russia’s political establishment, which has become increasingly po-faced since the assault on Ukraine.

While wars are fought between armies or militant groups, conflicts have their keyboard warriors too. It is estimated that more than half of the world uses social media, and many people do not go to traditional media as a source of information at all. As social media use increases, unease has grown among EU decision-makers about the power of these platforms to potentially distort people’s view of the world. The EU has tried to regulate on disinformation through the Digital Services Act (DSA), but how successful has that effort been? Our panellists assess the impact of the DSA and raise other issues that are connected to disinformation, such as spyware and election interference.

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, currently serving a 19-year prison sentence, has been transferred to a penal colony north of the Arctic Circle. The IK-3 penal colony, located in Kharp in the Yamalo-Nenets region about 1,900 km (1200 miles) northeast of Moscow, is considered to be one of the toughest prisons in Russia. Penal colonies are descendants of Soviet-era Gulags, the notorious Stalin-era labour camps where thousands of Russians lost their lives.

Tributes from across Europe poured in for Jacques Delors, a former EU Commission chief who played an instrumental role in European integration, following his death on Wednesday (December 27) at 98.

Lawyers representing Dutch lorry firms claim fines have been issued unlawfully.

France has declared two employees of Azerbaijan’s embassy persona non grata in a move of “reciprocity”, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

Poland’s political battle over state media continued on Wednesday as the new pro-European Union government put them in a state of liquidation in response to the president’s rejection of funding for them.

The iconic landmark normally sees about 20,000 visitors per day this time of year.

Wolfgang Schaeuble, who served as a member of the German parliament for over half a century, has died aged 81, ending one of Germany’s longest political careers in which he helped secure his country’s place at the heart of Europe.