Category Archives: European Union

Far-right Facebook groups ‘spreading hate to millions in Europe’

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Avaaz uncovers 500 accounts using fake news to spread white supremacy message

A web of far-right Facebook accounts spreading fake news and hate speech to millions of people across Europe has been uncovered by the campaign group Avaaz.

Facebook, which is struggling to clean up the platform and salvage its reputation, has already taken down accounts with about 6 million followers before voting in the European elections begins on Thursday. It was still investigating hundreds of other accounts with an additional 26 million followers, Avaaz said.

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Theresa May to reveal new Brexit deal

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Prime minister to give details of plan to get withdrawal agreement bill ‘over the line’

Theresa May is to set out the details of her “new deal” on Brexit in a speech at 4pm as she paves the way for a last-ditch attempt to take Britain out of the European Union before she leaves Downing Street.

The prime minister’s spokesman said cabinet had discussed, “alternative arrangements, workers’ rights, environmental protections, and further assurances on protecting the integrity of the UK in the unlikely event that the backstop is required”.

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Brexit: May to give speech at 4pm with details of ‘new’ deal for MPs – live news

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Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, as Theresa May’s cabinet met to consider the contents of the Brexit EU withdrawal agreement bill

PM’s speech is called ‘A new Brexit deal - seeking common ground in Parliament’

In the urgent question in the Commons earlier on British Steel, which is on the brink of collapse putting 5,000 jobs at risk, Andrew Stephenson, the business minister, said the government “leave no stone unturned” in supporting the UK steel industry. He said:

I can reassure the house that, subject to strict legal bounds, the government will leave no stone unturned in its support for the steel industry ...

We can only act within the strict bounds of what is legally possible under domestic and European law.

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Tories scrabble for new Brexit vision in place of Theresa May’s ‘doomed’ plan

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Chancellor argues no-deal Brexit would betray leave vote, as chances of PM’s bill fade

The expected demise of Theresa May’s Brexit plan has sparked open lobbying over an alternative Tory vision, with the chancellor, Philip Hammond, arguing that proponents of a no-deal Brexit are betraying the referendum result.

The cabinet will on Tuesday discuss the final details of what Downing Street call a “new and improved deal” to be presented to MPs, expected to include reassurances on areas including the Irish backstop, workers’ rights and environmental protections.

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Dutch Eurosceptics dream of united front to roll back EU

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FvD will join divided ranks of Europe’s populist right where alliances are in flux

In the conference room of a slightly soulless hotel on the neat outskirts of the eastern Dutch town of Emmen, a crowd of 100 or so had gathered to hear a former MEP and European commission staffer tell them there is far too much Europe.

“Everyone wants more EU. We want less,” said Derk Jan Eppink. “Take power back from Brussels, return it to nation states. With our French, Italian, Polish, Spanish partners, we will be a united front.”

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Nigel Farage doused with milkshake in Newcastle

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Man arrested after Brexit party leader is latest EU elections candidate to be soaked

Nigel Farage has been hit by a milkshake in Newcastle city centre, after a spate of similar incidents against far-right candidates in the European elections campaign.

The Brexit party leader appeared to be furious after the incident and was heard to mutter, “it’s a complete failure, you could have spotted that a mile off” as his security team led him away.

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These elections could define Europe. It must urgently rediscover its founding spirit | Natalie Nougayrède

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Facing challenges from Russia, China and the US, the continent can no longer neglect its core values of peace and human rights

Sometimes, when it comes to Europe, things are clearer from afar. Take Viktor Orbán’s encounter with Donald Trump last week: a love-fest perfectly timed to signal that this US president is out to disembowel the European Union, if not break it entirely. Ahead of the European elections, here was Hungary’s self-proclaimed “illiberal” prime minister – a man teaming up with Italy’s far-right strongman Matteo Salvini – receiving his long-awaited anointment from a white-nationalist US president who has called the EU a “foe”.

Meanwhile, in Syria, barrel bombs and Russian military ordnance continued to rain down on Idlib’s hospitals and schools, as the noose tightened on 3 million civilians trapped in the last rebel-held area that the president, Bashar al-Assad, wants to reconquer. Historians will perhaps one day tell us whether Vladimir Putin timed that particular offensive to coincide with other items on his EU-destroying agenda, already well on display with disinformation campaigns aimed at helping extremist political forces across the continent.

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Turkey insists on right to drill for energy reserves off Cyprus

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Dispute likely to escalate after Nicosia said it would seek to arrest anyone caught drilling

Tensions over energy resources in the eastern Mediterranean have risen sharply after Turkey said it would “exercise its sovereign rights” to drill off Cyprus in flagrant defiance of warnings from western allies.

As the dispute over potential gas reserves intensified, Ankara insisted its state-of-the-art drilling ship, the Fatih, and its support vessels would begin operations in waters viewed by the EU as being within the island’s exclusive economic zone.

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Theresa May prepares ‘bold’ last-ditch offer to MPs on Brexit bill

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Prime minister will ask her cabinet to sign off on concessions this week

Theresa May will ask her cabinet to sign off a package of Brexit concessions this week, as she gears up for one last bid to win over MPs and salvage something concrete from her troubled premiership.

With the Conservatives on course for a drubbing in Thursday’s European elections, the prime minister hopes the results will focus the minds of her own MPs and persuade them to support the long-awaited withdrawal agreement bill (WAB).

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‘Future of Britain is in Europe,’ the Queen told Germany in 1988

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Diplomatic cables reveal the monarch also appeared to back the creation of a single market

The Queen confided to the German ambassador that she believed the future of Britain lay in Europe, newly released diplomatic cables from 1988 have shown.

“Some have not realised this yet,” the monarch allegedly said of her subjects. She also appeared to back the creation of the single market.

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Europe’s Greens ready to be kingmakers in EU elections

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Green candidates, on course for their best showing, could play a big role in a divided parliament

Europe’s Greens are on course for their strongest showing to date in next week’s European elections – and could find themselves kingmakers in a newly fragmented EU parliament.

“We’ll be at the table,” said Bas Eickhout, an MEP from the Netherlands and a co-candidate of Europe’s Green parties for European commission president. “We have a good chance to determine the new majorities. And we will have our demands, on green issues, social issues, and the rule of law.”

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Europe’s far-right leaders unite with a vow to ‘change history’

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Matteo Salvini and Marine Le Pen are joining with allies to create what may be the third-largest bloc in the European parliament

Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini led a rally of his European far-right allies in front of Milan’s Gothic cathedral on Saturday. He pledged to change history after this week’s EU elections by making the populist alliance one of the largest groupings in the European parliament.

Flanked by France’s Marine Le Pen and leaders from nine other nationalist parties, Salvini began his speech to the packed Piazza del Duomo by quoting the British writer GK Chesterton: “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him but because he loves what is behind him.” He added that his group would remould Europe “not for our sake, but for our children”.

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Keir Starmer blames ‘wannabe Tory leaders’ for Brexit talks failure

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Shadow Brexit secretary says impasse could be broken by allowing confirmatory vote

The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, has blamed “wannabe Tory leaders” for the breakdown of cross-party talks as he renewed his call for a second referendum on leaving the EU.

The government and Labour sought to blame each other after talks to find a compromise Brexit plan collapsed on Friday, leaving any remaining hopes of an imminent solution to the impasse in tatters.

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Scotland won’t be independent within EU, says Farage

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Brexit party leader dismisses Nicola Sturgeon’s campaign for independence within EU

Nigel Farage has called on “genuine Scottish nationalists” to vote for his Brexit party in next week’s EU elections, as he described Nicola Sturgeon’s campaign for an independent Scotland within Europe as “the most dishonest political discourse anywhere in the world”.

As anti-racist protesters chanted outside the venue, Farage told cheering supporters at a rally in Edinburgh: “If you’re genuinely a nationalist lend your vote to the Brexit party, let’s get out of the EU and then have an honest debate about independence.”

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May and Corbyn blame each other as Brexit talks collapse

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Tories and Labour point to each other’s internal divisions after negotiations fail

The government and Labour have sought to blame each other after cross-party talks to find a compromise Brexit plan collapsed, leaving any remaining hopes of an imminent solution to the impasse in tatters.

While both sides insisted the discussions had taken place in good faith, Theresa May said a sticking point had been Labour splits over a second referendum.

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Labour avoids party split over Common Market – archive, 17 May 1971

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17 May 1971: Mr Wilson and Mr Callaghan succeeded in persuading both pro- and anti-Market groups not to insist on firm decisions on either tactics or principle

Labour Party leaders last night came to the sensible conclusion that it was not worth splitting the Labour movement wide open over the Common Market when Mr Heath and the Conservative Party were already faced with the even more immediate and difficult problem of rallying a respectable Parliamentary majority for entry on the basis of Tory votes without the aid of Labour MPs.

That was, to all intents and purposes, the outcome of a full afternoon session of Labour’s national executive committee and the Shadow Cabinet of the Parliamentary Labour Party, at which Mr Wilson and Mr Callaghan succeeded in persuading both pro- and anti-Market groups not to insist on firm decisions on either tactics or principle. For the time being, the heat is out of the European issue inside the party.

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May averts Tory mutiny by agreeing to set her exit date after Brexit bill vote

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1922 Committee agrees to let PM wait until after vote on withdrawal agreement bill in early June

Theresa May has agreed to set a timetable for her departure as prime minister in the first week of June, leading MPs to believe she will trigger a leadership contest before the summer.

Sir Graham Brady, the chair of the 1922 Committee of backbenchers, said she would agree a timetable for the election of a new leader after her Brexit legislation returned to parliament for a final attempt in the week of 3 June.

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Jean-Claude Juncker: I regret not challenging ‘£350m a week’ claims

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EU commission president says he should have spoken out on Vote Leave’s Brexit campaign

Jean-Claude Juncker has said he regrets failing to rebut claims made in the run-up to the Brexit referendum about the hundreds of millions of pounds the UK would save each week if it left the EU.

In an interview in which the European commission president also criticised the Austrian chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, over his recent Brussels-bashing, Juncker said he could not understand why he had failed to speak out.

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Majority of Europeans ‘expect end of EU within 20 years’

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Three in 10 think conflict among EU countries is a realistic possibility, survey finds

More than half of Europeans believe the EU is likely to collapse within a generation, despite support for the bloc hitting heights not recorded in more than a quarter of a century.

In France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Greece, the Czech Republic and Poland, a majority of people surveyed thought EU disintegration was a “realistic possibility” in the next 10 to 20 years.

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Merkel: Europe must unite to stand up to China, Russia and US

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German chancellor also shares views on Brexit and climate crisis in interview

Europe must reposition itself to stand up to the challenges posed by its three big global rivals, China, Russia and the US, Angela Merkel has said before her final European election as German chancellor.

Facing challenges that range from Russian interference in elections to China’s economic clout and the US’s monopoly over digital services, Europe needs to get better at putting up a united front, Merkel said in a wide-ranging interview shared with the Guardian.

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