Browsing: EU

Talking Europe hosts Andrej Plenkovic, the prime minister of Croatia. We unpack the dense agenda of the October 26-27 EU Council and debrief the summit’s conclusions on the Israel-Hamas war, particularly the call for “humanitarian corridors and pauses” to ensure aid to the Palestinians in Gaza. We also discuss developments in southeastern Europe, such as the recent re-introduction of border checks, and ask what those mean for Croatia and the other countries concerned.

Almost a month into the war between Israel and Hamas, the European Union is still struggling to speak with one voice. While EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has expressed unconditional support for Israel, some of her own staff have signed a letter criticising her position, along with employees from other EU institutions. Some EU member states continue to express strong support for Israel, such as the Czech Republic and Hungary, while others worry that such stances may harm the bloc’s image.

EU leaders on Thursday failed to convince Kosovo and Serbia to make a breakthrough in the protracted push to normalise ties between the two Balkan neighbours.

Last year, ferocious wildfires destroyed thousands of hectares of one of France’s most picturesque forests. Now French authorities are battling an invasion of beetles that are devouring the weakened pines of La Teste-de-Buch, in the southwestern region of Gironde.

EU leaders will on Thursday debate whether to call for a “humanitarian pause” or “pauses” in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. FRANCE 24’s Dave Keating reports.

‘Rest in peace, Ju, and may your light continue to shine in our hearts.’

Hamas frees two hostages who had been held captive in Gaza, as confirmed by both the Palestinian group and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The release came after mediation efforts by Qatar and Egypt, with a spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing announcing the captives’ freedom.

A Paris judge has charged two men suspected of links with the Islamist gunman who killed two Swedish football fans in Brussels this month, French anti-terror prosecutors told AFP on Tuesday. 

The United Nations on Monday expressed concern over the “atmosphere of mutual suspicion” in Kosovo, calling for “critical” de-escalatory measures between it and Serbia.

Reporting from Brussels, FRANCE 24’s Dave Keating says the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is dominating the agenda at the EU foreign ministers meeting Monday. The big question is whether the 27-member bloc can agree on a call for a humanitarian ceasefire. But the EU has long been split on the Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Russian missile strikes killed at least six postal workers and wounded 16 others Saturday, when they hit a mail depot in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, officials said.

Belgian Justice Minister Vincent van Quickenborne said on Friday he has decided to step down, following pressure over how Belgium had handled the case of a Tunisian gunman who had pledged allegiance to Islamic State and killed two people in Brussels this week.

In this edition we focus on Poland, where opposition parties have won enough seats in the parliamentary election to oust the ruling conservative Law and Justice party after eight years in power. To analyse this major shift and what it means for Poland’s place in the EU, we speak to Danuta Hübner, a member of the main opposition Civic Platform party. She’s a former Europe minister for Poland and a former European commissioner who’s now an MEP in the European Parliament. 

The EU announced probes Thursday into Facebook owner Meta and TikTok, seeking more details on the measures they have taken to stop the spread of “illegal content and disinformation” after the Hamas attack on Israel. 

France’s justice minister vowed Wednesday to crack down on those behind a flurry of false bomb alerts that caused chaos at airports and tourist sites after emailed threats triggered evacuations at airports in Lille, Lyon, Nantes, Nice, Toulouse and Beauvais near Paris.

Another war at Europe’s doorstep. Tensions are felt all the way here, so why is it so hard to get the messaging right?

Critics of the European Commission president coming down like a ton of bricks on Ursula Von der Leyen after a visit to Israel where the former German defense minister left out language on the suffering of Palestinians. She later rectified.

Belgian police early Tuesday arrested a suspected gunman thought to have who killed two Swedes with stunning viciousness.  The gunman, who is thought to have terrorist motives, created such fear in Brussels that authorities shut down a Belgium-Sweden soccer match and held 35,000 fans inside for several hours as a precaution. 

The EU will seek a global phase-out of fossil fuels and for their use to reach a peak in this decade, according to the member states’ common position adopted unanimously late Monday.

Polish opposition parties appear to have won enough votes in Sunday’s parliamentary election to oust the governing nationalist conservative party, with the highly-anticipated election bringing out the largest numbers of voters in decades. So far exit polls and around a quarter of votes that have been counted confirm a “remarkable” victory for the three parties opposing the right-wing Law and Justice party, said France 24 corresepondant Gulliver Cragg, reporting from Warsaw.

Poland’s liberal opposition on Monday celebrated exit polls showing it had won a parliamentary majority in elections on Sunday which saw the highest turnout since the fall of Communism.

Armenia’s President Vahagn Khachaturyan has signed the ratification of the Rome Statute, recognising the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) despite Russian warnings, a statement said Saturday. 

The main party leaders facing off in Poland’s upcoming parliamentary election called on voters to give their respective parties winning support as they held final campaign rallies Friday. Opinion polls suggested a close race as the country remains deeply divided on several key issues. FRANCE 24’s Gulliver Cragg reports from Warsaw, Poland. 

The main party leaders facing off in Poland’s upcoming parliamentary election called on voters to give their respective parties winning support as they held final campaign rallies Friday. Opinion polls suggested a close race.

Talking Europe hosts the newly appointed EU Commissioner for Climate Action, Wopke Hoekstra. The EU has put the Green Deal at the heart of its policy making, and Hoekstra was confirmed in the key job after somewhat fractious hearings in the European Parliament, where some MEPs drew attention to his past work for oil and gas giant Shell. We discuss his plans for implementing the green transition, and the upcoming COP28 summit in Dubai.

The EU faces what is arguably its stiffest foreign policy test since the war in Ukraine. A devastating attack on Israel by Hamas has been met with a massive Israeli response in the Gaza Strip. It is being described as the worst chapter in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the war of October 1973. We discuss how convincing – or otherwise – the EU’s response has been so far, as well as the EU’s messaging mess when it comes to the question of continued development aid to the Palestinians.