Government commitment to Horizon Europe fund averts immediate threat to science, say universities
The government has stepped in at the 11th hour with an additional £250m in funding to help pay for the UK’s association with Horizon Europe, the European Union’s funding programme for research and innovation.
Universities welcomed the move as “a significant affirmation of the government’s belief in research” which would avert the immediate threat to UK science.
Continue reading...European commission’s latest move in long-running dispute draws defiant response from Warsaw
The European commission has said it is taking Poland to the bloc’s highest court over a legal change it alleges undermines judges’ independence and prevents them applying EU law, drawing an instant and defiant response from Warsaw.
In the latest salvo in a longstanding dispute over respect for the rule of law, Brussels said on Wednesday it was also asking the European court of justice (ECJ) to make an interim order suspending Poland’s 2019 law until its final judgment is delivered.
Continue reading...Commission security proposal would restrict UK access to Horizon Europe quantum computing project
Britain will join China in being locked out of research with the EU on cutting-edge quantum technology, such as new breeds of supercomputers, due to security concerns under a European commission proposal opposed by academics and 19 member states.
At a meeting on Friday, commission officials said the EU needed to keep control of intellectual property on key projects and that working with even close allies such as the UK and Switzerland opened up an unacceptable risk.
Continue reading...EU rules post-Brexit limit UK nationals to maximum 90-day stay per 180 days
Spain has warned British tourists and second-home owners that they are not entitled to spend more than 90 days in the country at a time post-Brexit, but dismissed reports that offenders would be rounded up and deported if they overstay.
Rules applying across the EU – which now apply to Britons – limit visa-free visits to those from outside the bloc to six months with an additional restriction of a maximum 90-day stay per 180-day period.
Continue reading...Ylva Johansson’s visit Lesbos and Samos met with demonstrations from locals, as charities warn camps are ‘recipe for catastrophe’
The EU is to give Greece funding to build five new refuge camps on the Aegean islands.
Ylva Johansson, the EU home affairs commissioner, visited Lesbos and Samos on Monday to announce that the EU would provide €250m of funding (£213m) for five new structures on the islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Kos and Leros.
A large crowd of demonstrators gathered outside the town hall on the waterfront in Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos, to protest against her visit. Some wrapped themselves in Greek flags and others held signs calling for European solidarity. One sign read: “No to European Guantánamos. Shame on you, Europe.” Another said: “No structures on the island, Europe take responsibility.”
Leave campaigners behind project only won charitable status by vowing it would tell balanced story
Leave campaigners have begun raising funds to open a Museum of Brexit after the long-awaited project was granted charitable status.
The trustees are seeking to generate £400,000 to buy a home for the museum – possibly in a pro-Brexit town such as Dudley in the West Midlands – plus another £250,000 to set up the institution and a strategic financial reserve of £350,000.
Continue reading...European commission president accused of focusing too much on UK and domestic German image
Forging unity within the European Union is rarely easy for a president of the European commission but Ursula von der Leyen managed at least to bring together two strange bedfellows in recent days.
When Jean-Claude Juncker, her predecessor in the commission’s Berlaymont headquarters, took aim at the EU’s error-strewn vaccine strategy last week, it prompted a tweet of appreciation from Dominic Cummings, former chief adviser to Boris Johnson and key architect of Brexit.
Continue reading...Beijing wants to silence critics of its treatment of Uighurs. But the impact will be broader
China’s response to criticisms of horrifying human rights violations in Xinjiang is clear and calculated. Its aims are threefold. First, the sanctions imposed upon individuals and institutions in the EU and UK are direct retaliation for those imposed upon China over its treatment of Uighurs. That does not mean they are like-for-like: the EU and UK measures targeted officials responsible for human rights abuses, while these target non-state actors – elected politicians, thinktanks, lawyers and academics – simply for criticising those abuses.
Second, they seek more broadly to deter any criticism over Xinjiang, where Beijing denies any rights violations. Third, they appear to be intended to send a message to the EU, UK and others not to fall in line with the harsher US approach towards China generally. Beijing sees human rights concerns as a pretext for defending western hegemony, pointing to historic and current abuses committed by its critics. But mostly it believes it no longer needs to tolerate challenges.
Continue reading...EU will not be blackmailed over Oxford/AstraZeneca doses, says foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian
The war of words with the EU over vaccines has escalated as France’s foreign minister claimed Britain will struggle to source second Covid jabs but that Brussels would not be “blackmailed” into exporting doses to solve the problem.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, a close political ally of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, claimed that the UK’s success had been built on driving forward with first jabs without having secured the second doses necessary for full vaccination.
Continue reading...Tussles over supplies could last months despite commitment in public to work together
Tussles with the EU over vaccine supplies could continue for months, UK government insiders fear, despite a joint statement in which both sides committed to working together.
From Boris Johnson’s phone calls to EU leaders to the foreign secretary Dominic Raab’s discreet lobbying on the fringes of this week’s Nato meeting, a significant amount of senior government time and energy is being invested in trying to resolve the issue.
Continue reading...More sceptical member states hope ‘stick will never be used’ amid concerns over supply chain
EU leaders are likely to shy away from supporting the use of new powers to block Covid vaccine shipments to countries such as the UK with better jab coverage than the bloc, according to a draft statement ahead of a meeting of EU leaders today.
The European commission has increased its scope for blocking vaccine exports but disquiet among capitals is set to be reflected in a muted statement at the end of the virtual summit on Thursday evening.
Continue reading...Investigation is fresh sign of breakdown in relations between Brussels and Anglo-Swedish vaccine supplier
An AstraZeneca plant has come under investigation by the Italian police at the request of Brussels in a sign of the breakdown in relations between the Anglo-Swedish vaccine supplier and the EU.
Officers were sent into the facility in the town Anagni, east of Rome, on Saturday evening after the European commission contacted the Italian government with concerns.
Continue reading...Valdis Dombrovskis, a European commission vice-president, said the commission was revising its export authorisation mechanism in order to 'preserve security of supply chains'.
Under the revised regulation, countries with a high level of vaccination coverage or those that restrict exports through law or their contracts with suppliers now risk having shipments prohibited
Continue reading...European commission revising export authorisation mechanism ‘to ensure vaccination of EU’
Britain has been singled out for failing to export Covid vaccines to the EU as Brussels empowered officials to prohibit shipments of doses to countries with a better vaccination coverage than within the bloc.
Valdis Dombrovskis, a European commission vice-president, said the commission was revising its export authorisation mechanism in order to “ensure vaccination of our own population”.
Continue reading...Bloc expected to assess countries’ Covid vaccination coverage and record in facilitating exports to EU
The EU is expected to take into account the level of vaccination coverage in a country and its record in facilitating exports to the bloc when deciding on whether to prohibit individual vaccine shipments to the UK and elsewhere.
The revision of the export authorisation scheme, widening the criteria that will guide Brussels’ decisions on export requests, is due to be announced on Wednesday. EU leaders will then on Thursday discuss going further in controlling vaccine distribution when they meet by videoconference.
Continue reading...Alarming rates of violence have inspired a poster campaign that has spread beyond France to more than 15 countries
On a weekday evening, in between coronavirus lockdowns and curfews, Camille, Natacha and Cindy are out with a bright yellow plastic bucket of glue, two large brushes and a wad of A4 paper, each sheet covered with a single letter.
The women, all in their 20s, stop on the main road of this Paris suburb by the wall of what looks like a former bank.
Continue reading...This live blog is now closed. For more on this story, you read the news report here
The army’s increased deployability and technological advantage will mean that greater effect can be delivered by fewer people. I’ve therefore taken the decision to reduce the size of the army from today’s current strength of 76,500 trade trained personnel to 72,500 by 2025.
The army has not been at its established strength of 82,000 since the middle of last decade.
Douglas Ross, the Scottish Conservative leader, has said that Nicola Sturgeon is not “free and clear”, despite being exonerated by the independent adviser on the ministerial code, because the Scottish parliament’s committee has not yet published its report on her. In a statement he said:
The first minister has been given a pass because it has been judged her ‘failure of recollection’ was ‘not deliberate’.
I respect Mr Hamilton and his judgment but we cannot agree with that assessment. Nicola Sturgeon did not suddenly turn forgetful.
Continue reading...It is the first time for three decades UK or EU has punished China for human rights abuses
Britain and the EU have taken joint action with the US and Canada to impose parallel sanctions on a senior Chinese officials involved in the mass internment of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province in the first such western action against Beijing since Joe Biden took office.
The move also marked the first time for three decades the UK or the EU had punished China for human rights abuses, and both will now be working hard to contain the potential political and economic fallout. China hit back immediately, blacklisting MEPs, European diplomats and thinktanks.
Continue reading...HMRC figures reveal huge year-on-year falls in trade, with whisky, cheese and chocolate worst hit
Whisky, cheese and chocolate producers have suffered the biggest post-Brexit export losses in the food and drink sector, new figures from HMRC have shown.
Analysis of the figures by the Food and Drink Federation (FDF) shows that cheese exports in January plummeted from £45m to £7m year on year, while whisky exports nosedived from £105m to £40m. Chocolate exports went from £41.4m to just £13m, a decline of 68%.
Continue reading...Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Malta say burden has to be shared more justly with other EU partners
Europe’s southern states have stepped up calls for solidarity in managing mass migration to the bloc saying the burden has to be shared more justly with other EU partners.
Highlighting the deep divisions over the issue, politicians from countries along Europe’s Mediterranean rim said a proposed migration pact fell far short of resolving the crisis equitably.
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