Bloc warned against making symbolic gestures not backed up by concrete action
The European parliament has declared a global “climate and environmental emergency” as it urged all EU countries to commit to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The vote came as scientists warned that the world may have already crossed a series of climate tipping points, resulting in “a state of planetary emergency”.
Continue reading...From steel to railways, Beijing is spending billions in EU countries. But are there strings attached?
The Yiwu-to-London train pulls into the DB Eurohub terminus in Barking, east London, 18 days after leaving the Chinese city, a trading centre south of Shanghai. Over the course of its 7,500-mile (12,000km) journey to Europe, the train has wound its way through Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Belgium and France, following part of the old east-west Silk Road.
This freight-rail link is just one of many new routes that, along with roads and ports, form China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Whether the branding is an elaborate PR exercise or a new version of the Silk Road, what is real is that as China globalises, its investment is being gratefully sought across Europe. From ports to power stations, football clubs to financial companies, from the Norwegian city of Kirkenes to the Greek port of Piraeus and the Portuguese national grid, Chinese investment has become indispensable to the European economy. However, the country’s rise as a global economic power poses a strategic dilemma for European governments. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, warned in March that the “period of European naivety” about China had to end.
Continue reading...Labour leader would negotiate new deal with EU, which would be put to a public vote alongside remain
Jeremy Corbyn would take a “neutral stance” in a future Brexit referendum, he has announced, after facing mounting pressure in recent days to pick a side.
Appearing in a special BBC Question Time programme, in which Boris Johnson was attacked over racism and Jo Swinson found herself on the back foot over Brexit, Corbyn confirmed for the first time he would not campaign either for leave or remain.
Continue reading...President of the European Central Bank says US/China tariff war should be seen as an opportunity
Christine Lagarde has called for European governments to boost innovation and growth with higher rates of public investment, in her first major speech as president of the European Central Bank.
Speaking to an audience of bankers in Frankfurt, Lagarde said that rising trade barriers triggered by the US/China tariff war should be grasped by European governments as an opportunity to build a stronger internal market.
Continue reading...Prospect of crashing out of EU leaves UK more exposed to global financial risks, thinktank says
The UK’s GDP growth rate will slip to 1% next year even if a no-deal Brexit is avoided, according to the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation.
The OECD said the economy would slow down from growth of 1.2% this year if parliament passes Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal before the 31 January deadline, before returning to 1.2% in 2021.
Continue reading...Contributions from European countries drop as progress on 0.7% target goes into reverse
Less than 10% of EU aid money reaches the countries where it is most needed, according to a study that found levels of assistance had dropped for the second year running.
The EU and its member states remain the biggest development donor group in the world – investing €71.9bn ($61bn) in 2018, more than half of global aid – but its contribution was 5.8% lower than in 2017, the European NGO network, Concord, found in its AidWatch report.
Continue reading...Expert warns of ‘huge inequality’ in capital, while Lithuanian males live shortest lives
Men from west London, one of the wealthiest areas of the UK, have the longest life expectancy of males in Europe with a newborn baby expected to live to the age of 82, according to statistics published to mark International Men’s Day.
The data from the EU department Eurostat suggests that only men from the city centre of the Spanish capital, Madrid, tend to live as long as the fortunate subset of Londoners.
Continue reading...The country’s traditional powerhouses on the centre-left and the centre-right face a moment of reckoning
Postwar German politics has a reputation for being moderate, consensual and a touch on the dull side. But there have been moments of high drama. In November 1959, for example, the Social Democratic party (SPD) abandoned its historic ambition to replace capitalism with socialism, dropped the Marxist account of class struggle and began to pitch itself as a broad-based Volkspartei (people’s party). History vindicated the decision. For the next 50 years or so, the SPD vied for power with the country’s other great political force, the CDU (and its CSU Bavarian ally), as both parties regularly achieved a vote share of over 40%.
Famed for their practice of big-tent politics, what the CDU and SPD would give for such numbers now. The agonies of Brexit and the rise of rightwing populism have claimed the political limelight around Europe. But those looking for clues to the continent’s future would do well to watch Germany closely over the coming weeks.
Continue reading...Three PMs attend marketing sales event on how wealthy can snap up citizenship from $100,000
Three prime ministers took to a stage in the ballroom of a five-star London hotel this week offering the world’s wealthiest people “golden passports” and citizenship of their countries in return for hundreds of thousands of pounds of investment or flat “contributions”.
Allen Chastanet, the prime minister of the Caribbean island of St Lucia, told about 300 members of the super-rich elite and their advisers gathered at the Rosewood hotel for “global citizenship conference” that his country’s economic mission was “going after high net-worth individuals and giving them a comfortable place to live”.
Continue reading...Over 20 years, the debate about freedom of movement has become skewed by a hostile narrative. By Rachel Shabi
Few chance encounters have had a greater political impact than Gordon Brown’s fateful meeting with Gillian Duffy on an April morning in Rochdale in 2010. When the then prime minister was caught on a hot mic calling the Labour-voting pensioner a “bigoted woman” – after she cornered him with complaints about immigrants “flocking” into Britain – it did not just sink his floundering campaign. It set the tone for the way immigration would become the most toxic issue in British politics for the decade to come.
When New Labour came to power in 1997, just 3% of the public cited immigration as a key issue. By the time of the EU referendum in 2016, that figure was 48%. During those intervening years, the issue came to dominate and distort British politics – exactly according to the script established by Bigotgate. Brown’s gaffe both consolidated and gave credence to a political coding that would shape everything that came after: the “hostile environment”, the Windrush scandal, the EU referendum and the revival of Britain’s far right – deploying a narrative in which sneering, out-of-touch, big-city politicians who favour foreigners and open borders are hopelessly oblivious to the struggles and the so-called “legitimate concerns” of ordinary working people (who, in this scenario, are always white).
Continue reading...Uncertainty over UK citizens’ future status is prompting some European employers to steer clear
Past 40, and nearly five years after he arrived in Madrid, John Halliday is moving back to the UK and in with his parents. He had “nowhere else to go”, he says: Brexit had cost him his job and made other Spanish employers reluctant to hire Britons.
Related: Britons in Europe face citizens' rights 'lottery' in event of no deal
Continue reading...More people given temporary status as backlog of unresolved cases reaches half a million
The proportion of EU citizens being granted a temporary, more precarious “pre-settled status” in the UK has continued to rise, the latest Home Office statistics show, and the backlog of unresolved cases has grown to more than half a million, causing unease among campaign groups that support EU nationals living in Britain.
All of the estimated 3.4 million EU citizens resident in the UK must apply for settled status if they want to continue living here legally after Brexit. The latest EU settlement scheme statistics show that 590,300 people applied for settled status in October, bringing the total number of applications to 2,450,000.
Continue reading...Britain will lose influence in international affairs after it leaves the EU, the outgoing president of the European council has said. Speaking at the College of Europe, Donald Tusk said Brexit would be the 'real end' of the British empire
Continue reading...The prime minister delivers the first big set-piece speech of the campaign as Labour pledges £26bn extra per year for NHS
That’s all from us for this evening. Thanks for reading and commenting. For a comprehensive rundown of the day’s events, see my colleague Andrew Sparrow’s daily election briefing:
Related: Andrew Sparrow's election briefing: Johnson won't change Brexit stance to please Farage
Related: Boris Johnson heckled over floods but does not apologise for 'slow response'
Hoey also said complained that MPs had spent the last two years trying to thwart Brexit, telling LBC:
We’ve had two years of parliament – a remain parliament – doing everything they can to stop us leaving; by different methods and some not so serious as others. But most of the Labour MPs in there and a substantial number of Conservatives have tried to stop it.
Continue reading...European court of justice says origin must be identified in decision likely to anger Israel
The European Union’s top court has ruled that EU countries must oblige retailers to identify products made in Israeli settlements with special labels, in a ruling likely to spark anger in Israel.
The European court of justice (ECJ) said in a statement that “foodstuffs originating in the territories occupied by the state of Israel must bear the indication of their territory of origin”.
Continue reading...PM says there will be no checks on goods going from Northern Ireland to rest of UK
Boris Johnson has been accused of misleading the public about his own Brexit deal, after footage emerged of him telling exporters in Northern Ireland they will not need to fill in extra paperwork.
After a rocky start to the general election campaign in which Jacob Rees-Mogg had to apologise for his comments about victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, and the Welsh secretary, Alun Cairns, resigned, footage emerged of the prime minister regaling businesses with the benefits of his deal.
Continue reading...Mitsotakis government seeks foreign capital from new residents in prosperity drive
Not so long ago the idea of Greece announcing tax relief measures to entice the global rich would have been regarded as a joke. With the EU’s weakest economy, and a leftist government in power, the world’s wealthy were keen to keep their distance.
But in a marked departure of policy, the centre-right administration led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis has offered an array of incentives to attract the rich.
Continue reading...Former Speaker tells foreign media UK is better off as part of EU power bloc
Days after bowing out as Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow has described Brexit as the biggest mistake Britain has made since the second world war.
Bercow, who was persistently accused of bias by Brexit-backing MPs during his term as Speaker, gave a valedictory speech to the Foreign Press Association, revealing himself to be a remainer.
Continue reading...The Guardian’s political sketch writer is supposed to make up his own jokes. But politics has been so ludicrous and psychedelic that he’s just written down what happened and taken credit for the laughs
I didn’t think twice when I was asked to become the Guardian’s political sketch writer. Not only was it a huge honour to follow in the footsteps of so many great writers, such as Norman Shrapnel and Simon Hoggart, but what better job could there be for a satirist and lifelong politics nerd? Yet in February 2014, I imagined it would be a niche slot. Centre-stage, certainly, for the big set pieces of elections and budgets, but otherwise strictly for obsessives like me who could find humour in exchanges over proposed improvements to the Kettering bypass at transport questions on a Thursday morning.
Yet almost from the day I started, it was as if our politicians had chosen to overdose on psychedelics. The surreal rapidly became the all too real. Sketches that used to be comedic diversions, lighthearted puncturing of pomposity, incompetence and duplicity through exaggeration and flights of imagination, became almost straightforward reportage. I didn’t have to make anything up, I just had to more or less write down what people said and claim the laughs for myself. A transcription service, if you like.
Continue reading...Experts warn of dangerous consequences as nuclear deal continues to unravel
Iran has announced a tenfold increase in enriched uranium production as Tehran backs away from its nuclear deal with the west.
Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation, said enriched uranium production was now at 5kg per day, up from 450g two months ago. The announcement coincided with the 40th anniversary of the Iranian takeover of the US embassy.
Continue reading...