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European Union Tag

Posted by Fuzzy Slippers on March 11, 2019 20 Comments
Last month, Mary wrote that British Prime Minister Theresa May Will Give Parliament a Chance to Delay Brexit if They Reject Withdrawal Plan.  The withdrawal plan comes up for a vote on Tuesday, March 12, and May has traveled to Strasbourg to meet with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. The UK is scheduled to leave the EU on March 29 on this year.

Posted by Leslie Eastman on March 07, 2019 14 Comments
The last time we visited Poland, eco-activists were upset with its continued reliance on coal power. The shrieks of green justice warriors will likely grow louder. Poland will continue with plans to dig a canal between its main eastern coastline and the Baltic Sea despite concerns among activists and in the European Union that it could damage the environment.
The Vistula Spit is a heavily wooded sandbank 55 km (34 miles) long but less than 2 km wide which encloses a coastal lagoon. Poland shares both the lagoon and the spit with the neighboring Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

Posted by Mary Chastain on February 27, 2019 22 Comments
The United Kingdom is supposed to leave the European Union next month, but even after two years of negotiations and talks, it may not happen on time. This is why British Prime Minister Theresa May told Parliament if the members reject her Brexit deal on March 12, she will give them an opportunity to vote "on 13 March on leaving with no deal." If the members reject that, the members can "vote on 14 March for an extension to Article 50."

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on February 15, 2019 16 Comments
The European Union wants to challenge the longstanding dominance of the U.S. dollar in oil trade, the French broadcaster EuroNews reported. Brussels has created a working group comprising of representatives from European trade and industry to "challenge the dominance of the dollar" in energy trade and promote the use of euro to price oil imports, the broadcaster said.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on February 13, 2019 17 Comments
The anti-EU parties are poised to win one-third of the seats in the EU Parliament election in May, according to a study titled "The 2019 European Election: How anti-Europeans plan to wreck Europe and what can be done to stop it," released by a pro-EU think-tank. By securing the controlling share of the seats, the anti-establishment rightist parties could "paralyze decision-making at the center of the EU" and end up "curbing the [bloc's] liberal orientation and returning power to member states," the London-based European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) said.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on February 02, 2019 29 Comments
The Trump administration's decision to suspend the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty with Russian triggered sharp responses from Germany and the European Union. "Europeans aghast as end to INF treaty looms," the German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported, adding that the "EU leaders are concerned that the US withdrawal from the INF treaty could spark a new arms race."

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 30, 2019 22 Comments
The top EU court has prohibited bus companies from checking passenger passports on cross-border buses, making it difficult for German police to identify illegal immigrants entering the country, say local media. The ruling by the European Court of Justice could prevent the German police from stopping thousands of illegal border crossings and embolden the migrant traffickers. Last year, the police caught around 14,000 illegal immigrants trying to enter the country by bus and train.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 23, 2019 4 Comments
Israel has called out the European Union for continuing to finance the boycott movement against the country. The EU funneled millions of euros to organizations and activists running the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign between 2017 and 2018, a detailed report issued by the country's Minister of Strategic Affairs revealed. "Contrary to statements by EU Foreign Minister Federico Mogherini opposing Israel boycotts, [the report] reveals that funds continued to be transferred to organizations which promote boycotts against the State of Israel in 2017-2018," Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs said in its press release Wednesday.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 19, 2019 2 Comments
In what can only be described as another foreign policy win for President Donald Trump, the European countries are 'tiptoeing' towards Washington's position on Iran, Reuters reported Friday. Describing the recent shift in European diplomacy, the news agency noted that the "new approach moves Europe closer to U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy of isolating Iran with tough sanctions."

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 16, 2019 31 Comments
Following the British parliament's rejection of Prime Minister Theresa May's Brexit deal, the EU Council President, Donald Tusk, has told the country to stay in the bloc. "If a deal is impossible, and no one wants no deal, then who will finally have the courage to say what the only positive solution is?" the top EU official wrote on Twitter.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 15, 2019 15 Comments
Germany's biggest opposition party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), is pushing for the country to leave the European Union ahead of the EU parliament election. According to the manifesto drafted for the EU election scheduled for late May, the AfD called for Germany to leave the EU if party's demands for drastic reforms were not met. The reforms proposed by the party include abolishing the EU Parliament and giving control back to the national governments.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 12, 2019 2 Comments
Trade between Iran and the European Union is in sharp decline, official Iranian figures show. The drop comes despite EU's ongoing efforts to bypass the U.S. sanctions. In November, President Donald Trump imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran's oil, shipping and banking sectors.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 08, 2019 4 Comments
The leader of the Italian League party, Matteo Salvini, plans to form an electoral alliance with Poland's ruling conservatives in the run-up to the upcoming European Union elections. Salvini is spearheading a campaign to build an anti-establishment alliance ahead of the election. In October, he teamed up with Marine Le Pen's newly-formed French National Rally (NR) to launch the "Freedom Front" coalition. Salvini will meet the leader of Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party, Jarosław Kaczyński, on Wednesday to "strike a deal" ahead of the EU parliament elections scheduled for this May, the public broadcaster Radio Poland disclosed.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on January 03, 2019 33 Comments
Berlin will be lobbying the United Nations to secure a permanent seat at the Security Council for the European Union, German state media said. "Over the next two years, Germany's main concern will be to try and ensure that the European Union as a whole is given a permanent seat," public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported Tuesday. This year, Germany takes up the non-permanent seat at the Council for a two year term.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on December 31, 2018 12 Comments
The year began with an ominous warning from the German authorities. A team of researchers commissioned by the Ministry of Family Affairs found a "correlation between the refugee arrivals and violent crimes." Not that anyone needed a report to prove the obvious. The mainstream German media predictably trashed the findings and politicians in Berlin ignored them.

Posted by Mary Chastain on December 23, 2018 9 Comments
This is not Saturday Night Live. This is not The Onion or Babylon Bee. A Dutch animation artist put together a boy band to encourage the United Kingdom to stay in the European Union.  From NME:
“I cannot believe this is the end,” they pine on the song’s opening lines. “I still feel your love inside me. I still sing your words. I make a wish as your star falls.”

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on December 21, 2018 26 Comments
With British Prime Minister Theresa May failing to get parliamentary support for her plan to leave the European Union and only 100 days until the deadline, Britain is veering towards a "no deal" Brexit. In case of a no deal Brexit, the UK will leave the EU without any formal agreement on the future relationship with the 27-member European bloc. This would mean the UK would be "treated as a 'third country' by the EU with commerce governed by World Trade Organisation rules," British tabloid The Sun reported. Currently the UK's trade, customs, and immigration policies are subject to EU laws and regulatory bodies. Under the blueprint agreement presented by May's government and Brussels, the EU courts will continue to have jurisdiction over many aspects of British life.

Posted by Vijeta Uniyal on December 12, 2018 27 Comments
Representatives from around 150 countries signed the United Nations migration pact in Morocco on Monday. The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, as the agreement is formally known, aims to create a legal framework to handle growing migration from impoverished third world countries to the Western world -- overriding the immigration policies of the individual nation states. German Chancellor Merkel, whose open border policies drew millions of asylum seekers from North Africa and the Middle East into Europe in recent years, hailed the signing of the pact as an "important day." It was is about "nothing less than the foundation of our international cooperation," she added. The German leader "received a standing ovation on Monday after an impassioned speech," the UK newspaper The Guardian reported.
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