Category Archives: European Union

All UK arrivals in EU should be quarantined, says Angela Merkel

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German leader’s comments come as disease control agency says Delta variant will account for 90% of EU cases by end of August

Angela Merkel has said travellers from the UK should be quarantined wherever they arrive in the EU, as the union’s agency for disease control forecast that the Delta variant of Covid will account for 90% of cases in member states by the end of August.

Ahead of Thursday’s summit with fellow EU leaders, the German chancellor said she wanted better coordination to fight the spread of the highly transmissible variant that has surfaced strongly in the UK and is now bedding down in the bloc.

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Moving on: why the EU is not missing Britain that much

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On the 5th anniversary of Brexit, commentators reflect on the EU’s success at rallying together after Britain’s exit

On the night of 23 June 2016 a storm broke out over Brussels. Rain poured, thunder rolled and lightning flashed over the headquarters of the European Union’s institutions.

Then in the small hours came a political thunderbolt almost no one had forecast: the UK had voted to leave the union. Five years on, the Brexit tempest has subsided – in Brussels, if not in London.

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EU prepares to cut amount of British TV and film shown post-Brexit

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Exclusive: number of UK productions seen as ‘disproportionate’ and threat to Europe’s cultural diversity

The EU is preparing to act against the “disproportionate” amount of British television and film content shown in Europe in the wake of Brexit, in a blow to the UK entertainment industry and the country’s “soft power” abroad.

The UK is Europe’s biggest producer of film and TV programming, buoyed up by £1.4bn from the sale of international rights, but its dominance has been described as a threat to Europe’s “cultural diversity” in an internal EU document seen by the Guardian.

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Hungary’s LGBT protests and Juneteenth Day: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms from China to Colombia

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New EU rules would permit use of most polymers without checks, experts warn

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Proposals would allow common plastics to be used despite valid concerns about possible harms, scientists say

New rules on chemicals to be debated by the EU this week would allow most polymers to be used without further checks, according to a group of scientists.

Only about 6% out of about 200,000 polymers would require extensive safety checks under proposals being discussed as part of Europe’s Reach chemicals regulations.

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EU founding father Robert Schuman moves a step closer to sainthood

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Pope Francis gives ‘venerable’ status to post-war French statesman and supporter of European unity

Robert Schuman, a French statesman who was an early advocate for the bloc that evolved into the European Union, has moved ahead on the Catholic church’s path toward possible sainthood.

The Vatican said Pope Francis on Saturday approved a decree declaring the “heroic virtues″ of Schuman, a former prime minister and finance minister after the second world war. In 1950, as foreign minister, he developed a plan to promote European economic unity in hopes of furthering peace.

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‘It’s such a relief’: how Europe’s Covid vaccine rollout is catching up with UK

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More supplies and vaccination centres have put France, Italy and Germany back on track in battle against coronavirus

On Friday morning, Leyla Çelik woke up with butterflies in her stomach. For weeks, the 22-year-old student at Berlin’s Freie Universität had tried in vain to get an appointment for her first Covid-19 vaccine shot so she could volunteer as a polling station administrator at federal elections in September. “I’d basically given up hope.”

But last week her university had suddenly got in touch via email, offering her a chance to get a first dose of Moderna vaccine on campus, and within a few days. By 9am on Friday, the anxiety has turned into euphoria: “It’s such a relief,” said the native Berliner, nursing her achey shoulder at Freie’s biology institute, converted into a vaccine delivery point as of this week. “At last I can catch a train or a bus without feeling anxious.”

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EU fails in court action to secure urgent 120m doses of Oxford Covid vaccine

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But Brussels court says AstraZeneca should have used UK plants in the past to fulfil EU deliveries

The EU has failed in a legal attempt to secure an urgent 120m vaccine doses from AstraZeneca by the end of this month, while securing a judgment that sites in Oxford and Staffordshire should have been used in the past to make good on deliveries.

The court of first instance in Brussels ordered the Anglo-Swedish company to deliver just 10m more than it has already provided by the end of September, and make “best efforts”, including potentially the use of UK facilities, to provide the further 220m jabs to which it is contractually committed.

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Lack of citizens at EU’s citizens’ debate raises eyebrows

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Analysis: Legitimacy of Future of Europe talks called into question as only a quarter of citizens likely to take part

The socially distanced places are set, the guests will soon arrive. Everything is ready for the EU’s most ambitious attempt to debate with citizens. Everything, except most of the citizens who are meant to be involved.

The Conference on the Future of Europe, an 11-month consultation whose centrepiece will be citizens’ assemblies across the EU, holds its first working session at the European parliament in Strasbourg on Saturday. While a full complement of EU politicians and officials are expected in the Rhine city, about only 27 citizens are likely to take part – a quarter of the total who would usually participate in such meetings, according to the conference website.

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EU ‘has blood on its hands’, say activists calling for border agency’s abolition

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Coalition of rights groups demanding Frontex be defunded claim EU policies have ‘killed over 40,555 people since 1993’

Activists, captains of rescue ships and about 80 human rights organisations across the world have launched an international campaign calling for the European border agency to be defunded and dismantled.

In an open letter sent last week to the European Commission, the Council of the EU and the European parliament, the campaign coalition highlighted the “illegal and inhumane practices” of the EU border agency, Frontex, which is accused of having promoted and enforced violent policies against migrants.

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British food and drink exports to EU fall by £2bn in first quarter of 2021

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Industry body says analysis of HMRC data shows structural rather than teething problems with Brexit

British food and drink exports to the EU fell by £2bn in the first three months of 2021, with sales of dairy products plummeting by 90%, according to an analysis of HMRC data.

Brexit checks, stockpiling and Covid have been blamed for much of the downturn, but the sector has said the figures show structural rather than teething problems with the UK’s departure from the EU.

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Number of EU citizens seeking work in UK falls 36% since Brexit, study shows

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Figures from the jobs website Indeed expose the impact on employers as they struggle to recruit staff

The number of EU citizens searching for work in Britain has fallen by more than a third since Brexit, according to a study that exposes the impact on UK employers as they struggle to recruit staff.

Figures from the jobs website Indeed show searches by EU-based jobseekers for work in the UK were down by 36% in May from average levels in 2019. Low-paid jobs in hospitality, the care sector and warehouses recorded the biggest declines at 41%.

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More than half of Europe’s cities still plagued by dirty air, report finds

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Data shows only 127 of 323 cities had acceptable PM 2.5 levels despite drop in emissions during lockdowns

More than half of European cities are still plagued by dirty air, new data shows, despite a reduction in traffic emissions and other pollutants during last year’s lockdowns.

Cities in eastern Europe, where coal is still a major source of energy, fared worst of all, with Nowy Sącz in Poland having the most polluted air, followed by Cremona in Italy where industry and geography tend to concentrate air pollution, and Slavonski Brod in Croatia.

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UK excluded again from EU’s Covid-safe travel list, but US added

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British tourists face continued restrictions as bloc opens up to other vaccinated travellers

British tourists face continued restrictions on travelling to the EU this summer even as the bloc opens up to others, including residents of the United States.

Eight countries are to be added to a list of countries from where the EU says non-essential travel is safe, but the UK has not been included.

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UK asks EU to suspend Northern Ireland sausage ban

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Brexit minister Lord Frost asks for ‘a bit of breathing space’ to negotiate deal and head off trade war

The UK has asked the EU to suspend an imminent ban on the sale of British sausages in Northern Ireland to give both sides “breathing space” to negotiate an agreement on the Brexit protocol and avert a trade war.

Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, was speaking days after Boris Johnson warned he would do “whatever it takes” to protect Northern Ireland’s position as part of the UK.

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States lift Covid restrictions as US passes 600,000 deaths – live

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– Joan E Greve and Maanvi Singh

The chief executive of Morgan Stanley has become the latest US banking boss to call for an end to remote working, telling his New York staff that anyone who feels safe going out to a restaurant should return to the office.

James Gorman admitted that the bank would take a different approach in countries such as India or the UK – where fewer than 25% of its 5,000 London staff have been going to work in person – due to stricter Covid restrictions.

Related: Morgan Stanley boss tells US staff to be back in office in September

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British nationals in France face losing rights if they miss residency deadline

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Call to extend 30 June deadline over fears Britons will lose access to healthcare and pensions

Campaigners have warned that tens of thousands of British nationals living in France and three other countries risk losing local healthcare, employment and other rights if they do not apply to remain resident in the next 14 days.

British in Europe, a group set up to protect the post-Brexit rights of about 1.2 million UK nationals living on the continent, have called on France, Latvia, Luxembourg and Malta to extend their 30 June deadline as the Netherlands has done, to 30 October.

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One in five people in parts of EU pay bribes for healthcare, survey finds

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Corruption report says third of EU residents used personal connections to access care during Covid crisis

Almost a third of residents in the EU relied on personal connections to access healthcare during the Covid crisis, and around one in five in Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Lithuania paid a bribe for such services, a report on corruption has found.

Across the EU’s 27 member states, nearly two-thirds (62%) of the 40,000 respondents in a survey conducted by Transparency International said corruption in their government was a major problem and three-quarters (76%) said it had been stagnating or getting worse.

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UK and EU try to settle standoff over Northern Ireland Brexit checks

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Brexit minister and EU Commission official to meet this week as tensions remain high

The Brexit minister Lord Frost and the European Commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, are expected to meet virtually this week to try to break the deadlock over Brexit checks in Northern Ireland.

But as the countdown begins to a 30 June ban on the sale of chilled meats, including sausages, from Great Britain in Northern Irish supermarkets, tensions between the EU and Boris Johnson’s government remain heightened.

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Boris Johnson doesn’t quite get his big moment in the Cornish sunshine

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Analysis: an unseemly spat over Brexit derailed the UK prime minister’s chance to impress on the global stage

Delivering his closing press conference in the Carbis Bay hotel on Sunday, pale golden sand and azure sea visible behind him, Boris Johnson sought to play down the unseemly diplomatic spat that had marred his moment on the world stage.

“Actually, what happened at this summit was that there was a colossal amount of work on subjects that had absolutely nothing to do with Brexit,” he insisted.

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