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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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?
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Expected shortfall of 90m doses could hit the EU’s ability to meet its target of vaccinating 70% of adults by summer
AstraZeneca has told the European Union it expects to deliver less than half the Covid-19 vaccines it was contracted to supply in the second quarter, an EU official told Reuters on Tuesday.
Contacted by Reuters, AstraZeneca did not deny what the official said, but a statement late in the day said the company was striving to increase productivity to deliver the promised 180m doses.
Continue reading...Universities say they have received inadequate guidance on red tape and costs for academic years abroad
Thousands of UK students hoping to spend the year abroad are caught in limbo after facing major disruption to their travel plans due to post-Brexit red tape and costs, in respect of which universities say they received inadequate guidance from the government.
Coordinators of academic years abroad who spoke to the Guardian said there had been limited information from the Foreign Office ahead of Brexit on the onerous requirements that the shift in their status would incur in EU countries.
Continue reading...The old world order is ending. The challenge for Australia is that the driving force behind the change is China, a country so crucial to our future in Asia
In June 1987, a group of world leaders met in Venice to plan global economic policy for the 21st century. The leaders represented seven of the eight wealthiest countries in the world; the Soviet Union was excluded.
Addressing the summit, US president Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an example of “how not to run a country”. But he was less hostile towards China, which was then the world’s ninth-largest economy, just ahead of Spain.
Continue reading...In Holyhead, traffic has fallen 50% as hauliers stymied by Brexit find their way from Ireland to France without entering the UK
Perched on the shores of Anglesey, the island linked by road bridges to the north-west coast of Wales, Holyhead’s geography has given it a leading role in British-Irish trade since the early 19th century.
About 50 miles directly across the Irish Sea from Dublin, a journey of just three-and-a-quarter hours by ferry, Holyhead was until December the second busiest roll-on roll-off port in the UK after Dover. About 450,000 trucks rumbled through each year on their way to Dublin, with cargoes of meat and agricultural produce, secondhand cars and items destined for the shelves of Irish supermarkets.
Continue reading...Business leaders buoyed by meeting with Michael Gove and EU counterpart on protocol glitches
Business leaders in Northern Ireland are optimistic that Brexit barriers preventing parcels, pets, potatoes and plants getting to the region from Britain will be eased after a meeting between Michael Gove and his EU counterpart, Maroš Šefčovič, on Thursday.
They said the UK and the EU had a legitimate reason to remove or ease the barriers because they were having an impact on daily lives, in breach of a pledge in the Northern Ireland protocol that states the “application of this protocol should impact as little as possible on the everyday life of communities in both Ireland and Northern Ireland”.
Continue reading...Health experts call for regular testing of staff and animals after coronavirus found at 400 breeding units across Europe
All mink farms are at risk of becoming infected with Covid-19 and spreading the virus, and staff and animals should be regularly tested, EU disease and food safety experts said on Thursday.
Mink are highly susceptible to coronavirus, which spreads rapidly in intensive farms that often breed thousands of animals in open housing caged systems (outdoor wire cages covered with a roof). Humans are the most likely initial source of infection.
Denmark, the world’s largest exporter of mink fur, announced that it would cull up to 15 million mink in November, after discovering a mutated variant of the virus that scientists feared might have jeopardised the effectiveness of future vaccines.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Ban on plants being moved across Irish Sea is major setback for tree-planting programmes in region
Orders for almost 100,000 trees have been cancelled by Northern Ireland buyers because of a post-Brexit ban on the plants being moved from Britain, the Guardian can reveal.
Leaders in the business say it is a major setback for tree-planting programmes in Belfast and elsewhere in the region.
Continue reading...The problems Europe faces will not be solved by a return to the status quo – complete overhaul of a bankrupt system is needed
“Would it not be simpler for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?” Bertolt Brecht’s line is often quoted after dubious upsets in the democratic process – such as the imposition of Mario Monti’s austerity administration in Italy in 2011, or the crushing of Syriza’s aspirations in Greece in 2015. And yet, Mario Draghi’s top-down appointment as Italy’s new prime minister tells a different story, one that doubles as a cautionary tale for the rest of Europe.
A recent survey shows that 85% of Italians approve of the former European Central Bank chief and establishment prodigy running the government following the collapse of Giuseppe Conte’s administration. This is an astonishing result for a country where combined support for populist parties represented an absolute majority at the last elections. How can such a glaring contradiction be explained?
Continue reading...Maroš Šefčovič tells Dáil in Ireland he wants new committee to find solutions to trade problems
The EU is seeking to “de-escalate” Brexit tensions in Northern Ireland with the establishment of a new “clearing house” committee to work out solutions to issues caused by new trade barriers including controls on supermarket and chilled meat supplies.
The European commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič said the introduction of the Northern Ireland protocol had been “administratively extremely challenging” but the EU was doing as much as possible to “calm down” and stabilise the backlash over checks and controls on goods entering the region from Great Britain.
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