Category Archives: European Union

Italy considers hiding state flight paths after jamming of von der Leyen plane

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EU member states debate how to make leaders’ flights more secure as Russia blamed for GPS loss

Italy is considering keeping state flights secret after the satellite signal of the aircraft carrying the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, was allegedly jammed by Russia, Italian defence ministry sources said.

Von der Leyen, a fierce critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Moscow’s war in Ukraine, was flying to Bulgaria on Sunday when her charter plane lost satellite navigation aids, delaying its arrival in Plovdiv, and reportedly forcing it to circle an airport for an hour.

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Investigation launched into ‘horrific murder’ of Ukrainian politician in Lviv

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Former parliamentary speaker Andriy Parubiy shot dead as EU ministers meet to discuss measures to force Moscow to the negotiating table

A Ukrainian former parliamentary speaker was shot dead in Lviv on Saturday, authorities said, as European foreign ministers met to discuss increasing pressure on Moscow to end its war against Ukraine.

Andriy Parubiy, a member of parliament who served as parliamentary speaker from 2016 to 2019 and a key figure in Ukraine’s 2013 pro-European Maidan revolution, was shot dead, prosecutors said. A murder investigation has been launched and the president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, condemned the killing as a “horrific murder”.

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Proposals for commercial planes to operate with one pilot shelved after critical EU report

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Regulator Easa concludes there is not enough evidence it is as safe as flying with two pilots as currently required

Proposals for commercial aeroplanes to operate with just one pilot in the cockpit have been put on ice after a report for the European regulator suggested it would make flying more dangerous.

A three-year research project into “extended minimum crew operations” commissioned by the EU Aviation Safety Agency (Easa) found that despite advances in technology there was not sufficient evidence that flying with a single pilot could be as safe as with the two currently required.

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Trump threatens tariffs on countries that ‘discriminate’ against US tech

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Levies and restrictions could hit UK’s digital services tax and EU states such as France, Italy and Spain

Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs and export restrictions on countries whose taxes, legislation and regulations target US big tech companies such as Google, Meta, Amazon and Apple.

In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, the US president said: “Digital taxes, legislation, rules or regulations are all designed to harm, or discriminate against, American technology.”

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‘I can’t sleep, I can’t get on with my life’: how Europe’s tougher rules are keeping families apart

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Tighter family reunification laws are causing long separations, traumatising children, and can push people towards traffickers, campaigners say

Standing outside Germany’s parliament in June, Ahmad Shikh Ali fought back tears as he held up a blurry photo of his three-year-old son. Since fleeing Aleppo more than two years ago, Shikh Ali had done all he could to secure his son a safe future: moving to Hanover, getting full-time employment and wading through endless paperwork so that his wife and son could join him.

He was close to reuniting with his family, with just two cases in front of his in the queue. That was, until Germany’s lower house of parliament passed a bill in June to suspend family reunifications for migrants like him for at least two years.

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Stella Creasy and Richard Tice call for scrutiny over which EU laws UK ditches

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Labour MP says she and Reform MP want a committee set up, after news of UK’s post-Brexit environmental rollbacks

Stella Creasy and Richard Tice are pushing for Labour to allow a Brexit scrutiny committee to be formed in parliament, after the Guardian revealed environmental protections had been eroded since the UK left the EU.

The Labour and Reform UK MPs argue that there is no scrutiny or accountability over how Brexit is being implemented. Creasy, the MP for Walthamstow and chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, said the UK needed a “salvage operation” to clear up the environmental and regulatory havoc caused by Brexit.

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Zelenskyy’s European ‘bodyguards’: which leaders joined Trump talks in Washington?

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Presidents, PMs and heads of Nato and European Commission accompany Ukraine’s leader at White House

European leaders gathered in Washington on Monday for Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s meeting with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, in a show of support for the Ukrainian president. Their presence came amid expectations that Trump would try to bully Zelenskyy into accepting a pro-Russia “peace plan” that would include Kyiv handing territory to Moscow. The Europeans have been described as Zelenskyy’s “bodyguards”, with memories fresh of the mauling he received in February during his last Oval Office visit. So, who are they?

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Israel appears set to approve highly controversial 3,400-home West Bank settlement

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Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has said he believes E1 plan will ‘bury the idea of a Palestinian state’

Israel appears set to give formal planning approval to a highly controversial settlement project for more than 3,400 new homes that has been frozen for decades and which critics say would split the occupied West Bank in half.

Strongly opposed by the international community, the so-called E1 plan would extend the existing Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumim towards Jerusalem, further cutting occupied east Jerusalem from the West Bank, and further separating the north and south of the territory.

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Tighter US border rules are putting European visitors off, says Tui

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Holiday company boss says tourists are opting instead for destinations such as Canada, Africa and Asia

Tighter border rules are putting European tourists off holidaying in the US, according to Europe’s biggest package trip operator.

Tui’s chief executive, Sebastian Ebel, said there had been a “significant decline” in travel to the US, due to a multitude of factors including “the atmosphere, what you hear from border control”.

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EU leaders defend Ukraine’s freedom to decide future ahead of Trump-Putin summit

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Statement on Ukrainian sovereignty signed by all EU leaders except for Viktor Orbán before call with Trump

European Union leaders made a rallying call to defend Ukraine’s freedom to decide its own future in advance of their virtual summit with Donald Trump – convened to discuss US strategy before the president’s talks with Vladimir Putin on Friday.

With the exception of Hungary, all EU leaders signed a joint statement, with Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, also calling for the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to attend the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska on Friday.

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Thousands of hotels in Europe to sue Booking.com over ‘abusive’ practices

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Class action lawsuit argues the online travel platform distorted market with ‘best price’ clauses

Booking.com is facing a class-action lawsuit from more than 10,000 European hotels arguing that the accommodation mega-site used its muscle to distort the market to their detriment over a 20-year period.

The Association of Hotels, Restaurants and Cafes in Europe (Hotrec), which represents the industry within the EU and is bringing the legal action, recently extended to 29 August a deadline for hotel owners to join the suit because of high demand.

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Von der Leyen ducks Trump’s trade blitz – but deal exposes EU’s faultlines

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Europe may have staved off an economic clash, but the compromise leaves the bloc facing higher tariffs and internal discord

There is no doubt that Ursula von der Leyen was under intense pressure on Sunday when she sat next to Donald Trump in the ballroom at his Turnberry golf course before what EU officials knew would be a gruelling round of trade talks.

As the European Commission president emerged less than an hour later to announce that the worst of Trump’s tariff threats had been avoided, the recriminations from inside the EU began almost immediately.

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Thousands in Greece and Turkey evacuate as winds and heat fan wildfires

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Czech firefighters and Italian aircraft join rescue effort in Greece, and firefighter among those killed in Turkey

Thousands of people in Greece and Turkey have been forced to evacuate homes as firefighters in the countries battled to contain wildfires fanned by strong winds and searing heat.

As temperatures in south-eastern Europe exceeded 40C for a seventh straight day, the Greek prime minister praised rescue workers for waging “a titanic battle” to bring blazes under control.

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European Central Bank keeps interest rates on hold despite sluggish growth

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Central bank shuns calls to reduce borrowing costs as higher US tariffs loom

The European Central Bank has kept interest rates on hold as figures showed the eurozone economy maintaining a slow pace of economic growth.

In what was widely expected to be a pause before further cuts later in the year, the Frankfurt-based central bank shunned calls to reduce the cost of borrowing and held its main interest rate at 2% and the deposit rate at 2.15%.

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Zelenskyy pledges new bill on anti-corruption agencies’ independence as protests continue

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Ukraine’s president says outcry is ‘not falling on deaf ears’ as European leaders voice concern at recent legislation weakening anti-graft watchdogs

Volodymyr Zelenskyy promised a new bill to strengthen the rule of law in Ukraine on Wednesday, in an apparent attempt to assuage popular anger at his decision to weaken the powers of two independent anti-corruption agencies.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Kyiv for a second day, while European leaders expressed concern at the Ukrainian president’s contentious decision. The demonstrators gathered outside the presidential office, shouting anti-government slogans.

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French culture minister to be tried for alleged corruption while an MEP, source says

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Rachida Dati denies lobbying for Renault-Nissan carmaker

The French culture minister, Rachida Dati, is to go on trial over alleged corruption and abuse of power while she was a member of the European parliament, a judicial source has said.

Dati, 59, who had hoped to run for Paris mayor in next spring’s municipal elections, was charged in 2019 on suspicions she lobbied for the Renault-Nissan carmaking group while an MEP. She has denied the allegations and has repeatedly sought without success to have the charges quashed.

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Large rise in abuse claims at mines that may be vital to EU’s energy transition, report says

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Researchers find 270 allegations at mineral projects across 13 countries in Europe and central Asia last year

Mines on the EU’s periphery that could be critical to its energy transition have recorded a large rise in allegations of abuse ranging from workplace deaths to soil pollution, a report has found, with a threefold increase in 2024 from the average of the five previous years.

The nonprofit Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC) found 270 allegations of environmental and human rights abuses in transition mineral projects across 13 countries in Europe and central Asia last year, up from 92 the year before.

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Von der Leyen calls for new EU taxes on big firms in €2tn budget proposal

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Plan, which also includes levies on tobacco and electronic waste, ignites major political scrap to define bloc’s future

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has called for new EU taxes on large companies, tobacco and electronic waste as part of a proposed €2tn (£1.7tn) budget.

Announcing the planned EU budget for 2028 to 2034, she effectively fired the starting gun on a major and complex political fight to define the EU’s future.

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Trump threatens to impose drug and chip tariffs as soon as 1 August

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US president talks of low tariff to give pharmaceutical firms a year or so to build, and then making it ‘very high’

Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on pharmaceutical products and semiconductors as soon as 1 August, the latest deadline for the introduction of his “reciprocal” levies on individual countries.

The US president told reporters late on Tuesday the taxes on drug imports could be announced “probably at the end of the month, and we’re going to start off with a low tariff and give the pharmaceutical companies a year or so to build, and then we’re going to make it a very high tariff”.

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EU accused of ‘cruel and unlawful betrayal’ of Palestinians over failure to confront Israel

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Stinging rebuke from Amnesty International follows EU ministers declining to endorse any sanctions over Gaza war

The EU has been accused of a “cruel and unlawful betrayal” of Palestinians and European values after failing to take action to impose sanctions on Israel over the war in Gaza.

The stinging rebuke from Amnesty International, echoed by other human rights organisations, came after EU ministers meeting in Brussels on Tuesday declined to endorse any measures to sanction Israel over the brutal war in Gaza and endemic violence in the West Bank.

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