Category Archives: European Union

Covid: EU unveils ‘digital green certificate’ to allow citizens to travel

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Plan will also allow states most reliant on tourism to make bilateral arrangements with non-EU members – including UK

The European commission has unveiled a “digital green certificate” that could allow EU citizens who have been vaccinated, tested negative or recovered from Covid-19 to travel more freely within the bloc this summer.

The plan would also allow southern states such as Spain, Greece and Portugal, whose economies are most reliant on tourism, to make bilateral arrangements with non-EU members – including Britain – providing the deals are approved by the commission.

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Biden urges UK and EU to preserve Northern Irish peace amid Brexit row

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Remarks follow EU formally launching legal action over protocol arrangements in the region

The White House has urged London and Brussels to work together to preserve the peace in Northern Ireland, after the EU formally launched legal action against the UK over Brexit arrangements in the region.

Joe Biden’s spokesperson said: “We continue to encourage both the EU and the UK government to prioritise pragmatic solutions to safeguard and advance the hard-won peace in Northern Ireland.”

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Why Britain is tilting to the Indo-Pacific region

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Critics warn of imperial fantasy but the economic and political forces pulling the UK back to the region are real

Some will call it a tilt, others a rebalancing and yet others a pivot but, either way, the new big idea due to emerge from the government’s foreign and defence policy review on Tuesday will be the importance of the Indo-Pacific region – a British return east of Suez more than 50 years after the then defence secretary Denis Healey announced the UK’s cash-strapped retreat in 1968.

Boris Johnson and his admirals are billing the focus on a zone stretching through some of the world’s most vital seaways east from India to Japan and south from China to Australia as Britain stepping out in the world after 47 years locked in the EU’s protectionist cupboard. Others warn Johnson is indulging a hubristic and militarily dangerous imperial fantasy.

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Brexit: trade survey finds 74% of British firms hit by delays with EU markets

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Brexit red tape and disruption to global trade from pandemic leaves businesses ‘severely strained’

Three-quarters of British manufacturers are struggling to cope with delays in moving goods in and out of the EU amid continuing disruption caused by Brexit and the Covid pandemic, industry figures said.

Two months after the UK left the EU on trade terms agreed by Boris Johnson’s government, research from the manufacturing trade group Make UK has shown that 74% of firms in a survey of more than 200 leading industrial companies are facing delays with EU imports and exports.

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Vaccine row: EU has exported 34m doses – including 9m to the UK

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Internal figures leaked amid tit-for-tat with Boris Johnson over claims UK had export ban in place

A total of 34m doses of coronavirus vaccine have been exported from the EU despite shortages for people living in the bloc, including 9m sent to the UK and 1m to the US, which has a ban on sales abroad.

The internal figures were leaked as the EU was embroiled in a tit-for-tat with Boris Johnson over claims that the UK had an export ban in place.

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Russia’s Sputnik V Covid vaccine gaining acceptance in Europe

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Jab has already been ordered or used in some EU countries, and Italy could start producing vaccine in July

Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine appears to be gaining acceptance in the European Union, as the head of Germany’s regulatory authority publicly praised the Covid-19 jab and Italy could become the first European country to produce the vaccine from the summer.

Thomas Mertens, the head of Germany’s standing commission on vaccination, described Sputnik V in an interview on Wednesday as “a good vaccine that will presumably also be approved in the EU at some point”.

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EU parliament strips Carles Puigdemont and two other Catalans of immunity

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Spain seeking extradition related to separatists’ role in organising 2017 independence referendum

The European parliament has voted to lift the immunity of the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and two of his ministers, taking them a step closer to extradition and prosecution in Spain.

MEPs voted by 400 to 248 with 45 abstentions in the case of Puigdemont and 404 to 247 with 42 abstentions regarding Antoni Comín and Clara Ponsatí, respectively the former health and education ministers in Puigdemont’s government.

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Food scarcity fears prompt plan to ease post-Brexit checks on EU imports

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Ministers considering ‘lighter touch’ regime to avoid disruption to supplies from bloc

Ministers are preparing to relax post-Brexit plans for border checks on food and other imports from the European Union because of fears that they will further damage trade and could lead to severe shortages in UK supermarkets.

The Observer has been told by multiple industry sources that Boris Johnson’s new Brexit minister, Lord Frost, is considering allowing “lighter touch” controls on imports from 1 April than are currently planned, and scaling back plans for full customs checks, including physical inspections, which are due to begin on 1 July.

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Covid could endanger progress on gender equality, says Merkel

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In a video statement for International Women’s Day, the German chancellor said women were disproportionately affected

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has warned that the Covid-19 pandemic could endanger progress made on gender equality, as women take on the lion’s share of childcare in lockdown and are more likely to work in at-risk jobs.

“We have to make sure that the pandemic does not lead us to fall back into old gender patterns we thought we had overcome,” Merkel said in a video message ahead of International Women’s Day on Monday.

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Brexit: EU to launch legal proceedings against UK ‘very soon’

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Threat of action follows UK moves to unilaterally delay implementation of part of deal relating to Northern Ireland

Brussels has warned it will launch legal action “very soon” following a move by the UK to unilaterally delay implementation of part of the Brexit deal relating to Northern Ireland.

The European commission vice-president, Maroš Šefčovič, said the announcement by the government on Wednesday had come as a “very negative surprise”.

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Refugee rescuers charged in Italy with complicity in people smuggling

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Staff of charities including Save the Children and MSF among dozens facing sentences of up to 20 years over humanitarian work

After an investigation lasting almost four years, Italian prosecutors have charged dozens of rescuers, from charities including Save the Children and Médecins Sans Frontières, who were accused of collaborating with people smugglers after saving thousands of people from drowning in the Mediterranean.

Investigators in Trapani, Sicily, formally closed the inquiry on Monday and charged more than 20 people, including boat captains, heads of mission and legal representatives, with crimes carrying sentences of up to 20 years.

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Brexit: Northern Ireland loyalist groups renounce Good Friday agreement

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Loyalist Communities Council warns of ‘strength of feeling’ over border checks but says protests should stay peaceful

A body that claims to represent loyalist paramilitary organisations has told Boris Johnson the outlawed groups are withdrawing support for Northern Ireland’s historic peace agreement.

The Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) said the groups were temporarily withdrawing their backing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement amid mounting concerns about the contentious Northern Ireland Protocol governing Irish Sea trade post-Brexit.

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Hungary’s Fidesz party to leave European parliament centre-right group

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Rightwing party’s move comes after European People’s party changed its internal rules on excluding members

Hungary’s ruling rightwing Fidesz party has said it will leave the main centre-right political grouping in the European parliament after the European People’s party (EPP) voted to change its internal laws on excluding members.

The EPP’s 180 members, many of whom have campaigned for the expulsion of Fidesz, which they accuse of weakening Hungary’s democracy and curbing media and other freedoms, voted by 148 to 28 in favour of the new rules, with four abstentions.

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UK failed to inform EU countries about almost 200 killers and rapists

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Exclusive: total of 112,490 criminal convictions not sent to relevant EU capitals over eight-year period

The conviction of 109 killers, 81 rapists and a man found guilty of both crimes in UK courts was not passed on to the criminals’ home EU countries due to a massive computer failure and subsequent cover-up, the Guardian can reveal.

The most serious cases are among a total of 112,490 criminal convictions not sent to the relevant EU capitals over an eight-year period due to a catastrophic computer error, which some fear has put lives at risk.

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City firms made plans in Brexit run-up to move assets worth £100bn to EU – survey

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Data from EY highlights last-minute transfers in order to hold on to European business

City firms revealed in the final months of 2020 that they planned to shift nearly £100bn in assets to the EU, taking the total value of assets lost to the bloc since the Brexit vote to £1.3 trillion, according to a new survey.

The data from consulting group EY pointed to a last-minute push by firms before 31 December after the UK-EU trade deal did not offer concessions for the UK’s dominant financial services sector. It forced companies to move staff and assets to the continent in order to continue serving EU customers.

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‘Help and you are a criminal’: the fight to defend refugee rights at Europe’s borders

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As illegal, and often violent, pushbacks of asylum seekers continue – human rights groups also report growing hostility

At the offices of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group in Budapest, András Léderer and his colleagues have a map on which they track every asylum seeker – man, woman or child – who has been physically pushed back by police from the Hungarian border and into the forests of Serbia.

The pushbacks are illegal under international law. Yet it is Léderer and his fellow human rights activists who could face arrest and a jail sentence if they went to the border to witness what is happening there.

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‘Lying is no longer a sin’: former French ambassador on Brexit and Boris Johnson

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Exclusive: Sylvie Bermann, who has written book in attempt to understand Brexit, says question of Britain’s identity was key

When Sylvie Bermann arrived in August 2014 as France’s new ambassador, London was, she says, a city of “extraordinary dynamism and optimism”.

French cabinet ministers were queuing up to visit, she said, one after the other, all searching for “Britain’s recipe for success. It was an an astonishing place.”

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Ursula von der Leyen issues Covid vaccine export warning at EU summit

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Commission head reassures leaders she will ban vaccines leaving EU if suppliers fail to deliver again

Ursula von der Leyen has reassured EU leaders she will ban coronavirus vaccines from leaving the EU if suppliers such as AstraZeneca fail to deliver again, as she faced questions over her handling of shortages.

The European commission president’s pledge at a virtual summit came as leaders issued a statement promising to “accelerate the provision of vaccines”, with just 8% of the adult population having received a jab compared with 27% in the UK.

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Lloyds and HSBC are shedding office space … did they have too much to begin with?

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Why there may be more to the announcement of Covid-inspired cuts than meets the eye

Here comes another bank that has decided, apparently definitively, that working practices will not return to their pre-pandemic norms. Lloyds Banking Group says it plans to shed 20% of its office space. Earlier this week, HSBC said it would get rid of 40%.

These figures are so dramatic that they invite suspicion. Have managements really come to the firm view that working from home is so popular that employees’ demands for flexibility must be granted? Or did these banks have too much office space in the first place and now wish to save a few quid?

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Boris Johnson ‘a liar’ who will blame Brexit costs on Covid, says diplomat

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Sylvie Bermann, former French ambassador, puts PM’s handling of pandemic alongside Donald Trump’s

Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.

She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.

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