Emmanuel Macron and Viktor Orbán among leaders Xi is meeting, with several key issues on the table
China’s president, Xi Jinping, has begun a three-country tour of Europe – his first state visit to the continent in five years – at a time when China-EU ties are under strain from trade disputes and Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Continue reading...Researchers say more bodies of Herero and Nama people from early 20th century concentration camp could be in waters around port
The Namibian authorities are being urged to halt plans to extend a port on the Shark Island peninsula after the discovery of unmarked graves and artefacts relating to the Herero and Nama genocide.
Forensic Architecture, a non-profit research agency, said it had located sites of executions, forced labour, imprisonment and sexual violence that occurred when the island was used by the German empire as a concentration camp between 1905 and 1907.
Continue reading...British ambassador is summoned and told that installations and equipment in Ukraine and elsewhere could be targeted
The British ambassador to Moscow, Nigel Casey, was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry, Russian state agency RIA reported on Monday. Reuters said the ministry did not give the reason but there is speculation that it is linked to statements made last week by the foreign secretary, David Cameron, saying he had no issue with British-supplied weapons being used by Ukraine to strike inside Russia.
It comes as Russia has cited statements by the west as justification for upcoming nuclear weapons drills.
Continue reading...Philosopher being sued by Giorgia Meloni’s brother-in-law says such trials are part of a political strategy
The government of Giorgia Meloni is making strategic use of defamation suits to silence public intellectuals, a philosopher who is being sued by the Italian prime minister’s brother-in-law has claimed.
In the latest of a series of lawsuits drawing on Italy’s comparatively harsh defamation laws, Donatella Di Cesare of Sapienza University in Rome will appear at a criminal court in the Italian capital on 15 May, after a complaint by the agriculture minister, Francesco Lollobrigida, over comments she made comparing one of his speeches to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Continue reading...On his first visit to Europe since 2019, Xi is set to meet with Emmanuel Macron before heading to Serbia and Hungary
Xi Jinping has lauded China’s ties with France as a model for the international community as he arrived in Paris amid threats of a trade war over Chinese electric cars and French cognac.
On his first visit to the EU in five years, China’s president will meet his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, who will urge him to reduce trade imbalances and use his influence with Russia over the war in Ukraine.
Continue reading...Seven out of 10 have outside work with six earning more with work than as parliamentary representatives, analysis shows
Half a dozen members of the European parliament earn more from second jobs than as EU lawmakers, according to analysis that raises questions about potential conflicts of interest.
The campaign group Transparency International EU found that 70% of the European parliament’s 705 members have side jobs. Just over a quarter (26%) of side jobs were paid, with six lawmakers earning more than their €120,900 (£103,000) annual gross MEP salary.
Continue reading...Unaffordable rents and property prices risk becoming a key political battleground across the continent
Spiralling rents and sky-high property prices risk becoming a key battleground of European politics as far-right and populist parties start to exploit growing public anger over the continent’s housing crisis, experts have said.
Weeks before European parliament elections in which far-right parties are forecast to finish first in nine EU member states and second or third in another nine, housing has the potential to become as potent a driver of far-right support as immigration.
Continue reading...Affording a home has become a political issue as rents and prices soar and supply plummets
Decades in the making, Europe’s housing crisis is being felt from the Netherlands to Portugal, Greece to Germany, and in Britain. Prices and rents have soared, availability and affordability have plunged and housing has become a political issue.
Between 2010 and 2022, property prices across the 27-member bloc surged by 47%, according to a 2023 Eurostat report. In some countries they almost trebled: Estonia recorded a 192% rise. Only in two member states, Italy and Cyprus, did they decline.
Continue reading...Péter Magyar, who is running in European elections, has shot to prominence by pledging to end corruption
A rising challenger to the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has held what he has called the largest countryside political demonstration in the country’s recent history on the latest stop of his campaign tour that has mobilised thousands across Hungary’s rural heartland.
About 10,000 people gathered in Debrecen, Hungary’s second-largest city, in support of Péter Magyar, a political newcomer who has shot to prominence in less than three months by pledging to end official corruption and reverse the declining quality of life in the country.
Supporters endured a brief but unexpected rain shower before the afternoon demonstration, turning the city’s central square into a sea of umbrellas. They waved Hungarian flags bearing the names of towns and villages across the country from which they had come.
“Today, the vast majority of the Hungarian people are tired of the ruling elite, of the hatred, apathy, propaganda and artificial divides,” Magyar told the crowd. “Hungarians today want cooperation, love, unity and peace.”
Magyar, a former insider in Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, has since February denounced the nationalist Orbán since February as running an entrenched “mafia state” and declared war on what he calls the government’s propaganda machine.
His party, Tisza, which stands for Respect and Freedom, has announced it will run 12 candidates in the European elections on 9 June, with Magyar appearing first on the party list. It has also announced it will run four candidates in local council elections in Budapest.
Matthias Ecke, a European parliamentarian for Olaf Scholz’s SPD, was set upon while putting up EU election posters in Dresden
A 17-year-old has turned himself in to police in Germany after an attack on a lawmaker that the country’s leaders decried as a threat to democracy.
The teenager reported to police in the eastern city of Dresden early on Sunday morning and said he was “the perpetrator who had knocked down the SPD politician”, police said in a statement.
Continue reading...Parisian bakers have claimed victory over rivals in Italy who created a baguette almost 133 metres long in 2019
For the past five years, bragging rights over the world’s longest baguette have belonged not to the residents of a small village or a city in France, but rather to a clutch of bakers 500 miles away in Como, Italy.
On Sunday a crop of 12 bakers from France set out to rectify this, spending hours kneading, shaping and baking their way back to victory.
Continue reading...Prof Ghassan Abu-Sitta says Schengen-wide ban imposed by Germany appears to be attempt to silence witness testimony
A London surgeon who provided testimony on Israel’s war in Gaza after operating during the conflict has said he feels criminalised after being denied entry to France over the weekend.
Prof Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon was due to speak about the war to the French parliament’s upper house on Saturday. However, after arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris on a morning flight from London, he was informed by French authorities that Germany had enforced a Schengen-wide ban on his entry to Europe.
Continue reading...Russian president attends service led by one of his staunchest backers while Zelenskiy asserts God is on Kyiv’s side
Orthodox Easter services in Ukraine and Russia have taken on a political tone, as Volodymyr Zelenskiy asserted that God had a “Ukrainian flag on his shoulder” and Vladimir Putin attended a church service led by a staunch supporter of Moscow’s invasion.
Noting that Ukraine had now been fighting Russia for 802 days, Zelenskiy called on Ukrainians to pray for each other and the soldiers on the frontline. “And we believe: God has a chevron with the Ukrainian flag on his shoulder,” said the president, dressed in a traditional embroidered Ukrainian vyshyvanka shirt and khaki trousers. “So with such an ally, life will definitely win over death.”
Continue reading...Charities say FoI disclosure that 369 such children were held over 21-month period is ‘hugely concerning’
More than 350 lone children were held in UK-run detention facilities in northern France over a 21-month period, according to documents disclosed under freedom of information laws.
The Home Office has admitted that it failed to keep data on how many properly trained staff looked after the children held in four short-term holding facilities near Calais and Dunkirk in 2022 and 2023.
Continue reading...Organisers of this year’s environmental conference hope cooperation on green issues could help ease global tensions
This year’s Cop29 UN climate summit will be the first “Cop of peace”, focusing on the prevention of future climate-fuelled conflicts and using international cooperation on green issues to help heal existing tensions, according to plans being drawn up by organisers.
Nations may be asked to observe a “Cop truce”, suspending hostilities for the fortnight-long duration of the conference, modelled on the Olympic truce, which is observed by most governments during the summer and winter Olympic Games.
Continue reading...Centre-right politicians must resist urge to copy or work with far right, Spain’s environment minister says
The future of the EU is being jeopardised by people stirring up social tensions for short-term political gain, Spain’s environment minister has said ahead of next month’s European parliamentary elections.
Teresa Ribera, who is heading the list for the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers’ party in June’s poll, said the European project is at risk of “an implosion”.
Continue reading...The Georgian government’s bid to pass Russia-style law has met spirited opposition, mostly from young people keen to lean towards Europe
The finale of Beethoven’s “revolutionary” fifth symphony was met with deafening applause at the National Opera and Ballet Theatre in Tbilisi last Thursday night. The cheers grew into a powerful expression of solidarity with the protests outside on Rustaveli Avenue.
People hung EU flags from the theatre’s balconies and shouted, “No to the Russian Law! Europe! Georgia [Sa-kar-tve-lo]!”
Continue reading...Interior minister Nancy Faeser promises ‘tough action’ to protect democracy as political assaults rise
The German interior minister Nancy Faeser has vowed to fight a surge in violence against politicians after a German member of the European parliament had to be taken to hospital following an attack while he was campaigning for re-election.
Matthias Ecke, 41, a member of Faeser’s Social Democrats (SPD), was hit and kicked by a group of four people while putting up posters in Dresden, capital of the eastern state of Saxony, police said. An SPD source said his injuries would require an operation.
Continue reading...Kyiv says Moscow forces have gained ‘foothold’ in area north of Donetsk city after pounding depleted defenders
The Ukrainian village of Ocheretyne has been battered by fighting, drone footage obtained by the Associated Press shows. The village has been a target for Russian forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
Russian troops have been advancing in the area, pounding Kyiv’s depleted, ammunition-deprived forces with artillery, drones and bombs. Ukraine’s military has acknowledged that Russia has gained a “foothold” in Ocheretyne, which had a population of about 3,000 before the war, but says the fighting there is continuing.
Continue reading...Ghassan Abu-Sitta, who was due to speak in French senate, is told Germany has enforced Schengen-wide entry ban
A London surgeon who has provided testimony over the current war in Gaza after operating during the conflict has been denied entry to France, where he was due to speak in the French senate later on Saturday.
After arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris on Saturday morning on a flight from London, Prof Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, was informed by French authorities that Germany had enforced a Schengen-wide ban on his entry to Europe.
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