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.
Continue reading...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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– 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
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Analysis: can the west confront Beijing on trade and human rights and cooperate on the climate crisis?
• G7 summit: latest news and reaction
In an extra-secure, 90-minute session, with the phones and wifi cut off, all designed to block any eavesdropping by a prying foreign state, leaders of the G7, with glorious St Ives sunshine outside, wrestled with an issue that will probably dominate the rest of their political lives – China and the right balance between extreme competition and necessary cooperative coexistence.
Kurt Campbell, Joe Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy director, describes the dilemma as presenting “complex coexistence paradigms”, something of which he says the US has had little previous experience.
Continue reading...European leaders made their feelings about the Northern Ireland protocol known to a PM desperate to score a PR victory
The setting is a small English village on the Cornish coast, but the message that Boris Johnson wants projected from the beachside summit in Carbis Bay is one of big British influence across the globe.
The three-day G7 meeting of world leaders, which ends on Sunday, was identified months ago by the prime minister as the moment to launch his vision of a confident post-Brexit “global Britain”.
Continue reading...Northern Ireland border row hits summit in Cornwall as prime minister tells other leaders UK is ‘a single country’
Boris Johnson was embroiled in an extraordinary public spat with EU leaders over Northern Ireland on Saturday as tensions over Brexit boiled over at the G7 summit in Cornwall.
After a series of tense bilateral meetings at which the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel and the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, told their summit host the UK must implement the Brexit deal in full, an unrepentant Johnson said he had urged his EU colleagues to “get it into their heads” that the UK is “a single country”.
Continue reading...The Brexit sausage war is nothing new: it follows an inglorious lineage that stretches all the way back to Hogarth’s Gin Lane
It’s summer at last! Time to gather a few neighbours round, start a fire, and throw another sausage war on to the flames. This one is about the complicated triangulation between the EU, Northern Ireland and Westminster over frictionless trade. Still awake? Let’s put it in terms “the public” can understand and, as former Brexit chief negotiator David Frost did, thunder about the right of “the shopper in Strabane” to get their favourite sausages or chicken nuggets. In fact, from Hogarth’s Gin Lane, right through to the pasty tax, politicians have scored political points around food, as a distraction from more important matters, such as whether children get fed.
If you were of telly-watching age in 1984, there might be a familiar whiff to Frost’s words. In Yes, Minister the not overly competent but endlessly fortunate minister, Jim Hacker, grappled with a rumoured proposal from Brussels to have the British sausage renamed the “emulsified high-fat offal tube”. Westminster is traditionally reluctant to get involved in our personal relationship with our shopping baskets and arteries. It still feels the pain of burnt fingers from the “hot pasty tax”; or Edwina Currie’s throwaway 1988 remark about the prevalence of salmonella in British egg production, which crashed consumer confidence overnight (it was reported that the industry had to slaughter four million hens). The knotty issues around processed meat products are delegated to food and health campaigners who would like Britons to eat a lot fewer, for the sake of our health, our waistlines and the welfare of the animals who end up in them.
Continue reading...Gil Arias Fernández says EU border agency, which is under investigation for illegal migrant pushbacks, cannot stop far-right infiltrating its ranks
The former deputy head of Europe’s border and coastguard agency has said the state of the beleaguered force “pains” him and that it is vulnerable to the “alarming” rise of populism across the continent.
In his first interview since leaving office, Gil Arias Fernández, former deputy director at Frontex and once tipped for the top post, said he was deeply worried about the agency’s damaged reputation, its decision to arm officers, and its inability to stop the far-right infiltrating its ranks, amid anti-migrant movements across Europe.
Continue reading...Police issue warnings as loyalists march along Shankill Road on eve of G7 summit
Warnings have been issued by police after thousands of people gathered in west Belfast to protest over the Northern Ireland protocol.
Loyalists gathered in Woodvale on Thursday evening to stage a demonstration and a parade then took place along the Shankill Road.
Continue reading...Analysis: Northern Ireland row dashes Johnson’s hopes of greeting world leaders as PM of a newly emboldened and nimble UK
When Boris Johnson selected Cornwall as the venue for this weekend’s G7 summit, he must have imagined greeting the world’s leaders against the backdrop of a blazing blue sky on the English riviera, while getting to grips with the great global challenges of climate breakdown and Covid.
Instead, his first face-to-face meeting with Joe Biden on Thursday had to be moved from the picturesque St Michael’s Mount to the conference hotel in Carbis Bay, because of the Cornish mizzle – and Brexit was frustratingly high on the agenda.
Continue reading...Bloc leaders say UK must fully implement post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland
Boris Johnson must respect the “rule of law” by fully implementing the post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland, EU leaders have said ahead of the G7 summit in Cornwall.
Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, said the behaviour of the prime minister was of increasing concern to EU member states. “It’s paramount to implement what we have decided – this is a question of rule of law,” he said.
Continue reading...‘Patience wearing very thin,’ says EU negotiator, while Joe Biden expected to raise ‘deep concerns’ about issue at summit
Talks between the EU and the UK over Northern Ireland appear on the brink of collapse as London indicated it was still considering unilateral action to keep unhindered supplies flowing from Great Britain into the region.
The European commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, said patience was “wearing very, very thin” and described the relationship with the UK as “at a crossroads”.
Continue reading...The US president has become convinced that Beijing is the main adversary in a global battle of governance systems
The unifying theme behind Joe Biden’s European tour this week is a country which will not be at any of the meetings and may not even be mentioned in the final communiques: China.
Before setting out on his first foreign trip as president, Biden has made clear that the competition between the world’s democracies and its authoritarian regimes – mostly importantly Beijing – is the defining global challenge of the age, with victory anything but guaranteed for the US and its allies.
Continue reading...Brussels says German court ruling contradicting ECJ sets ‘dangerous precedent’ for integrity of EU law
Brussels has launched a legal case against Germany over an alleged breach of “the principle of the primacy of EU law” by the country’s constitutional court.
The “infringement proceeding” is the result of a ruling last year by the German federal constitutional court in Karlsruhe which it is claimed undermined the pre-eminence of the European court of justice (ECJ).
Continue reading...More than 40 government-funded charities write to PM to call for lifting of ‘arbitrary’ 30 June cut-off date
More than 40 government-funded charities have written to Boris Johnson urging him to lift the 30 June deadline for EU citizens to apply to retain their rights to remain in the UK following Brexit.
The charities are all funded by the Home Office to provide support to vulnerable EU citizens including children and elderly people in care, victims of domestic abuse and trafficking, Roma communities and homeless people.
Continue reading...UK considering unilaterally extending grace periods under Northern Ireland protocol
The row between the UK and the EU over checks on sausages and other chilled foods sent from Britain to Northern Ireland has deepened, with the Brexit minister telling Brussels that trade war threats will not wash with voters.
As a major meeting on Wednesday approached, Lord Frost said: “Further threats of legal action and trade retaliation from the EU won’t make life any easier for the shopper in Strabane who can’t buy their favourite product. Nor will it benefit the small business in Ballymena struggling to source produce from their supplier in Birmingham.”
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