Browsing: EU

Talking Europe hosts Austrian author Robert Menasse, the winner of the 2023 European Union book prize. The award was set up in 2007 to foster a European spirit and promote understanding of the EU from a cultural perspective. The prize has previously been bestowed on such towering figures as Jonathan Coe, Philippe Sands and Tony Judt. Menasse is the only writer to have won the award twice. We discuss his prize-winning novel “The Enlargement”, which takes places against the backdrop of the actual enlargement of the European Union. It forms the second novel in his trilogy, after “The Capital” in 2019.

City breaks shouldn’t feel draining.

It’s thought police were on the lookout for a killer before the mass shooting after two people were found dead in a nearby forest.

A Russian drone attack hit a residential building and injured at least two people in Kyiv on Thursday, authorities said, in a rare breach of the Ukrainian capital’s air defences.

A 24-year-old student killed more than 15 people and wounded dozens more at a Prague university on Thursday in the Czech Republic’s worst shooting in decades, before authorities said the attacker was “eliminated”. The shooting erupted at the Charles University’s Faculty of Arts, which sits near major tourist sites like the 14th-century Charles Bridge. FRANCE 24’s Ian Willoughby reports.

Czech police say a shooting in downtown Prague has killed an unspecified number of people and wounded dozens of others. Police gave no details about the victims or the circumstances of Thursday’s gunfire in the Czech Republic’s capital. The shooting took place at the arts faculty of Charles University located in the centre of Prague, FRANCE 24’s correspondent Ian Willoughby said, citing police reports.

Poland’s pro-EU government on Wednesday launched a reform of state media and sacked their management as right-wing lawmakers staged a sit-in to protest the changes and public broadcasts were interrupted.

Irish premier Leo Varadkar is trying to drag the UK before the European Court of Human Rights.

The new deal will significantly change how the bloc processes migrants.

A group of French lawmakers met on Tuesday to try and strike a deal on a contested bill that will toughen France’s immigration laws and has highlighted the difficulties for President Emmanuel Macron of running the country with no majority in parliament. Beyond the details of the controversial bill on which left and right-wing lawmakers sought to see eye to eye, “this is a political power struggle, a tug of war for who is really controlling this flagship law,” FRANCE 24’s Catherine Norris Trent said.

The current 10-year trend is “going in the wrong direction”, warns the worrying environmental report.

A volcanic eruption began on Monday night in Iceland, south of the capital Reykjavik, following an earthquake swarm, Iceland’s Meteorological Office reported.

Delegates from Russia’s ruling party unanimously backed President Vladimir Putin ’s bid for re-election at a party conference in Moscow on Sunday, state agencies reported, just a day after the Kremlin leader’s supporters formally nominated him to run in the 2024 presidential election as an independent. Meanwhile Putin warned of “problems” with neighbouring Finland after it joined NATO earlier this year, saying Moscow will create a new military district in north-west Russia in response, in an interview published Sunday.

Reuters exclusively reported that Apple (AAPL.O) has offered to let rivals access its tap-and-go mobile payments systems used for mobile
The post Apple offers to let rivals access tap-and-go tech in EU antitrust case  appeared first on Reuters News Agency.

A Vatican tribunal on Saturday convicted a cardinal of embezzlement and sentenced him to 5 ½ years in prison in one of several verdicts handed down in a complicated financial trial that aired the city state’s dirty laundry and tested its justice system.

“This is the first cardinal to be prosecuted in a Vatican criminal court”, said FRANCE 24’s correspondent in Rome, Italy, Seema Gupta.” Cardinal Angelo Becciu is the most senior Vatican official to face such charges; “the 75-year-old cardinal was a former advisor to Pope Francis, so he was somebody who would meet with the pope and he was seen as a papal contender”. 

French actor Gerard Depardieu’s Legion d’Honneur medal is under review following a string of allegations about sexual aggression and a TV documentary in which he was heard making lewd comments about women. 

French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday called for an “intelligent compromise” over a controversial immigration bill as his government battles a political crisis following the rejection of the flagship legislation in parliament.

Talking Europe sat down with the prime minister of Bulgaria, Nikolai Denkov, during a crucial EU summit that approved the start of EU accession talks for Ukraine and Moldova – but failed to find an agreement on budget support for Ukraine. We take the political temperature in the summit room with our guest, and discuss some regional and Bulgarian developments as well – notably Sofia’s efforts to join the Schengen free travel area, which is currently under negotiation between Bulgaria, Romania, Austria and the European Commission. 

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been removed from a prison near Moscow and taken to an undisclosed location, his spokeswoman said Friday, citing a court representative.

Russian President Vladimir Putin questioned the International Olympic Committee rules mandating Russian athletes compete at the Paris Olympics as neutrals. 

New Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government was sworn in by the president on Wednesday, the final step in a transfer of power that marks a huge change after eight years of nationalist rule.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces the biggest parliamentary test of his premiership on Tuesday when lawmakers vote on his flagship migration policy of sending asylum seekers who arrive illegally in Britain to Rwanda. Sunak is seeking to revive his key plan after the UK Supreme Court ruled last month that Rwanda was an unsafe place to send those arriving in small boats on England’s southern coast, concluding it would breach British and international law.

French opposition lawmakers on Monday rejected an immigration bill without debating it, in a major blow to President Emmanuel Macron ’s government, which had championed the proposed law as one of its flagship measures. The government has yet to decide whether to keep pushing for the adoption of the bill intended to strengthen the country’s ability to expel foreigners considered undesirable or withdraw it.

It’s the second coming of Donald Tusk with implications well beyond Poland’s borders. Two months after a general election marked by a huge turnout comes a comeback for the center-right leader. Tusk’s first stint as prime minister was followed up by a move to Brussels where as president of the European Council, he found himself clashing with the leadership of his own country.