Browsing: EU

Poland’s parliament voted in favour of Donald Tusk becoming prime minister on Monday, putting an end to eight years of nationalist rule and setting the stage for a thawing of relations with the European Union.

Allies of the jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Monday that they had been unable to locate him for six days, and that he had likely been transferred to another facility.

French artificial intelligence start-up Mistral AI announced Sunday it had raised 385 million euros ($414 million), becoming one of Europe’s two AI leaders.

EU member states and lawmakers clinched a deal on Friday on how to draft “historic” rules regulating artificial intelligence models such as ChatGPT — after 36 hours of negotiations.

Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne on Friday visited the French overseas island of Mayotte, the poorest place in the European Union, amid a growing water crisis. Due to a drawn-out drought compounded by years of underinvestment and water mismanagement, the island’s inhabitants have access to water only one every three days.

The war in Ukraine has forced a major rethink in European security, with both Sweden and Finland abandoning their long-standing policy of non-alignment and applying for NATO membership last year. But while Finland was admitted into NATO this April, delays have persisted on Sweden’s entry, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan linking a serious of unrelated issues to Ankara’s ratification of Sweden’s accession – the latest of which is a potential sale of US F-16 fighter jets to Turkey. We discuss what Sweden’s entry to NATO would actually mean with Sweden’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Tobias Billström.

Denmark’s parliament on Thursday adopted a law criminalising the “inappropriate treatment” of religious texts, effectively banning Koran burnings after a series of desecrations of Islam’s holy book sparked anger in Muslim countries over the summer.

Europe Briefing – Gunman on the run in Brussels & Conor McGregor running for Irish presidency Police in Brussels are still hunting Friday’s gunman -…

Increasing uncertainty surrounds Western funding for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s escalating efforts to cripple the nation’s energy infrastructure.

There was a clear failure in the psychiatric care of the radicalised Islamist suffering from mental troubles who stabbed a German tourist to death in central Paris at the weekend before being arrested, France’s interior minister said Monday.

FRANCE 24’s terrorism expert Wassim Nasr discusses the suspect, who was known to French authorities, in the deadly knife attack in Paris on December 2, 2023. “This is the same kind of case of what happened in Vienna in 2020: a national, who never went to Syria, tried to go there, went to prison, went through a deradicalization program, changed his mind on the way and committed the attack.”

French police arrested a man who targeted passersby in Paris on Saturday night, killing a German tourist with a knife and injuring two others, France’s interior minister said. FRANCE 24’s Charlotte Hughes tells us more.

A man known to French authorities for radical Islamism and mental health troubles stabbed a tourist to death and wounded two other people in central Paris late Saturday night before being arrested, with prosecutors opening an investigation into a suspected “terrorist plot”.

Some 200 far-right demonstrators gathered in Paris on Friday night to protest the death of a French teenager who died last month after being stabbed during what appeared to be a brawl that broke out at a village dance. Although the circumstances of the incident remain unclear, the far right has framed it as a symbol of France’s increasingly insecure society amid immigration.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Friday boosting troop numbers by 15 percent, in a move the army said was due to “threats” associated with the Ukraine offensive.

Talking Europe hosts Pascal Canfin, the chair of the environment committee at the European Parliament. He is a former French government minister and a former director of the French branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). We take a look at what is coming out of the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, and at the state of the EU’s green transition. Canfin maintains that 80 percent of the laws planned under the EU’s Green Deal should be finished by the end of the current legislative term – something he calls “massive and unprecedented”.

Russia’s Supreme Court on Thursday effectively outlawed LGBTQ+ activism, in the most drastic step against advocates of gay, lesbian and transgender rights in the increasingly conservative country.

NATO member Finland on Wednesday closed its last remaining border crossing with Russia after the government decided to seal the entire border with its eastern neighbor amid rising political tensions.

Singapore and Zurich tied for the world’s most expensive city this year, followed by Geneva, New York and Hong Kong, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) said on Thursday as it cautioned that the global cost-of-living crisis was not yet over.

EU member countries and the European Parliament said Wednesday they have reached a preliminary agreement on curbing industrial emissions, including those from intensive poultry and pig farms and from ore mines.

French authorities arrested the leader of a multinational tantric yoga organization Tuesday on suspicion of indoctrinating female followers for sexual exploitation.

A special tribunal on Wednesday acquitted French Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti in a conflict of interest in a case that has embarrassed President Emmanuel Macron’s government.

It all started with the tragic death of a teenage boy attending a village dance in southern France. Although the circumstances surrounding his death remain unclear, members of France’s ultra-right immediately blamed it on “anti-French” sentiment, descending on the region en masse to avenge his death.

Parthenon marbles row: Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has expressed dissatisfaction with the decision made by his British counterpart, Rishi Sunak, to cancel the planned talks.

New documents surfaced in September indicating that Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel may have played a double role during World War II, serving not only as an informant for the Nazis but also as a member of the French Resistance. But a historian who has analysed the new evidence says he has “serious doubts” about her alleged membership in La Résistance, suggesting the French fashion icon may have used the documents to restore her reputation after the war.