Category Archives: Europe

Von der Leyen’s EU group plans Rwanda-style asylum schemes

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Centre-right European People’s party says it wants to create deportation deals with non-EU countries to head off rise of far right

The European Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, has given her support to controversial migration reforms that would involve deporting people to third countries for asylum processing and the imposition of a quota system for those receiving protection in EU countries.

Manfred Weber, the leader of the European People’s party (EPP), said the policies – similar to the UK’s Rwanda scheme – had been worked out with all the parties in the EPP political group, which includes von der Leyen’s Christian Democrat Union in Germany.

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Head of France’s cinema body to face trial over alleged sexual assault of his godson

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Activists call for Dominique Boutonnat to step down saying allegations undermine his ability to lead change

Dominique Boutonnat, the head of France’s top cinema institution, is to be tried in June on charges of sexually assaulting his godson, prosecutors have said.

The announcement came as French cinema reels from a renewed #MeToo reckoning in which several big names, including the actor Gérard Depardieu, have been accused of sexual abuse.

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Portugal election campaign heats up as voters prepare to go to the polls on Sunday – Europe live

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Portugal’s prime minister António Costa resigned last November amid investigation into handling of green investment projects

We’ve received a note from Miguel Barreira, a member of the Liberal Initiative party, which has polling at around 5%.

More than Chega (or, as I call it, Ventura’s one-person Party), who it seems to be losing steam and radicalising its campaign in these last few days, my party will probably be key to allow PSD to form a working majority, without accepting any kind of talks or negotiating with the far-right Chega.

Well, time to get back to the campaign trail.

We continue to believe that the most likely scenario is a right-wing coalition with the support of the far-right populist Chega. If the AD wins the most votes, there is a possibility that the PS will refrain from bringing down a centre-right minority government so as to keep Chega out of government.

This arrangement would in any case be likely to last only until the 2025 budget comes to a vote towards the end of this year. Another snap election in 2024 or early 2025 is therefore a risk.

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Russia-Ukraine war live: Britain ‘prepared to loan Ukraine all frozen Russian central bank assets’ – as it happened

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UK prepared to loan money on basis Russia will be forced to pay reparations to Ukraine at end of war, says foreign secretary David Cameron

International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi said that he would discuss the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday, and that talks with other Russian authorities had been “tense”, Russian news agencies reported.

State news agency RIA cited Grossi has saying that he had been able to assess the situation around the Zaporizhzhia plant in southern Ukraine, which has been under Russian control since March 2022, Reuters reports.

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Yulia Navalnaya asks Russians to join anti-Putin polling station protest

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Alexei Navalny’s widow urges supporters to arrive en masse at midday for presidential election to overwhelm polling stations

The widow of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has called for people to protest against Vladimir Putin at polling booths in the forthcoming presidential election.

Yulia Navalnaya urged her supporters to protest against Putin by voting en masse at noon local time in the 17 March election, forming large crowds and overwhelming polling stations.

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‘Hypervaccinated’ man reportedly received 217 Covid jabs without side effects

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German man, who said he had vaccines for ‘private reasons’, suspected of selling certificates to people who didn’t want jab

A German man who voluntarily received 217 coronavirus jabs over 29 months showed “no signs” of having been infected with the virus that causes Covid-19 and had not suffered from any vaccine-related side effects, according to a study published in the medical journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The 62-year-old, from Magdeburg, Germany, whom doctors described as “hypervaccinated”, said he had had the large number of vaccines for “private reasons”, according to the researchers from University of Erlangen-Nuremberg who examined him.

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Nicolas Ghesquière marks Louis Vuitton with powerhouse show in Paris

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In a vast futuristic greenhouse at the Louvre, 4,000 guests were shown why the brand is the biggest of them all

Ten years to the day after his first show for Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquière celebrated a remarkable anniversary in the same Paris landmark where he made his debut. In the ruthless spit-em-out churn of fashion, and in the eye of that storm as the designer of the biggest brand of all, Ghesquière’s is quite the run.

A vast futuristic greenhouse lit from within with 13 vast globe-shaped chandeliers – Louis Vuitton, travel, get it? – filled an entire quadrangle of the Louvre, rising almost to the mansard roof of the museum.

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More than 400,000 songbirds killed by organised crime in Cyprus

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Report links rise in birds trapped for human consumption to cuts in anti-poaching resources in area of British military base

More than 400,000 songbirds were trapped and killed in Cyprus last autumn as part of a recent increase in wildlife crime, according to a new report.

Organised crime networks use decoys and speakers playing birdsong to lure these small birds – including garden favourites such as robins and sparrows – to land in bushes or orchards, where they catch them with “mist” nets or branches covered in glue. They are then sold via the hidden market to restaurants to be eaten as a local dish called “ambelopoulia”, which consists of pickled or boiled songbirds.

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Roman Polanski tried in France for alleged defamation of British actor

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Film-maker held to account for dismissing claim of 1983 sexual assault against Charlotte Lewis as ‘heinous lie’

The film director Roman Polanski has gone on trial for libel in Paris after accusing a British actor who claimed he abused her of “a heinous lie”.

Charlotte Lewis, who was in court in Tuesday at the opening of the hearing, said she had been the victim of a “smear campaign” after she accused the film-maker of sexually abusing her as a teenager.

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Ukraine claims to have sunk Russian warship in occupied Crimea

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Sinking of warship near Kerch strait would deal further blow to Moscow’s naval power and its control over Black Sea

Ukraine has sunk a Russian warship near the Kerch strait in occupied Crimea in a further blow to Moscow’s naval power and its control over the Black Sea, as The Hague accused two senior Russian commanders of carrying out war crimes.

Kyiv’s military intelligence agency said it attacked the Sergei Kotov early on Tuesday using naval drones. The vessel, which was on patrol, suffered damage to the stern, right and left sides, then sank, claimed the agency, known as the HUR.

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Swedish police call for ban on civilians wearing bulletproof vests

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Growing numbers buying protective gear as gangs recruit young people amid surge in violence across country

Police in southern Sweden have called for a ban on civilians wearing bulletproof vests, which they say do not have a place outside war zones because they cause fear in communities.

Increasing numbers of children and young people, including those under 15, are wearing protective vests in towns and cities, they said, as gang crime continues to pull in the younger generation in Sweden.

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Spain’s late-night eating culture poses mental health risk, says minister

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Labour minister says it’s madness that people are still working in restaurants at 1am but opposition and tourism groups defend country’s nightlife

Working past 10pm can pose a risk to mental health, Spain’s leftwing labour minister, Yolanda Díaz, has warned, as she fended off criticisms for describing the country’s custom of keeping restaurants open until late into the night as “madness”.

The debate over Spain’s vibrant nightlife – and the long working hours needed to sustain it – was thrust into the spotlight on Monday after Díaz characterised the country’s late-night restaurant culture as out of step with the rest of Europe.

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Hungary will oppose Mark Rutte’s Nato candidacy, foreign minister says – as it happened

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Mark Rutte fails to secure Hungary backing after Netherlands previously voiced concerns about democracy in the country. This live blog is closed

Along with the new strategy, the Commission has proposed a European Defence Industry Programme to “bridge from short-term emergency measures, adopted in 2023 and ending in 2025, to a more structural and longer-term approach to achieve defence industrial readiness,” the Commission said in a statement.

The programme will mobilise €1.5 billion of the EU budget for 2025-2027.

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Chanel brings Hollywood and seaside chic to Paris fashion week

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Penélope Cruz and Brad Pitt star in a remake of a French classic as designer Virginie Viard turns the catwalk into a coastal boardwalk

The lights dimmed, and the Chanel show opened with Penélope Cruz and Brad Pitt on the catwalk. Cruz smouldered in a chic black polo neck and discreet diamonds, Pitt twinkly eyed in an open-necked white shirt. They gazed into each other’s eyes, flirted a little, and then – how could either of them resist? – embarked on a clandestine affair.

Well, almost. Cruz was, in fact, sitting demurely in the front row in a leather skirt suit, and Pitt was not in attendance. The rendezvous was on a short film, made for the show and screened above the catwalk, a remake of a seminal scene in Claude Lelouch’s Un Homme et Une Femme, a classic Gallic romance about a widow and widower falling in love that won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes festival in 1966. Lelouch, now 86, was also a guest of honour at Chanel’s show.

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‘Extraordinary’: Islamic and Jewish science merge in 11th-century astrolabe

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Instrument was adapted, translated and corrected by Muslim and Jewish users in Spain, north Africa and Italy

Almost exactly a year ago, Federica Gigante was preparing a lecture and searching the internet for a portrait of the 17th-century Italian nobleman and collector Ludovico Moscardo when an altogether different image caught her eye.

The historian’s gaze soon snagged on a photo of a metal disc with a ring at the top that was kept in the same Verona museum as Moscardo’s picture.

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UK spends least among major European economies on low-carbon energy policy, study shows

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Britain spent about £26bn in three years on low-carbon measures, less than Italy, Germany, France and Spain, Greenpeace finds

The UK spends less on low-carbon energy policy than any other major European economy, analysis has shown, despite evidence that such spending could lower household bills and increase economic growth more than the tax cuts the government has planned.

Spending on low-carbon measures for the three years from April 2020 to the end of April 2023 was about $33.3bn (£26.2bn) in total for the UK, the lowest out of the top five European economies, according to an analysis by Greenpeace of data from the International Energy Agency.

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UK urges Germany to give long-range missiles to Kyiv despite Luftwaffe leak

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Chancellor Olaf Scholz says he will not give missiles that could strike at strategic Crimea bridge, as Russia seeks to exploit leak

Britain has urged a reluctant Berlin to supply long-range Taurus missiles to Kyiv despite an embarrassing leak to Russian television of a top-secret call involving German air force officers who said UK troops were “on the ground” in Ukraine.

The Kremlin sought to exploit what it saw as a propaganda coup and pressure the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who in turn insisted on Monday he would not donate missiles that could strike at the strategic Kerch bridge linking Russia and occupied Crimea.

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France makes abortion a constitutional right in historic Versailles vote

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Eiffel Tower lit up to mark change, seen as way of protecting law that decriminalised abortion in 1975

The French parliament has enshrined abortion as a constitutional right at a historic joint session at the Palace of Versailles.

Out of 925 MPs and senators eligible to vote, 780 supported the amendment, which will give women the “guaranteed freedom” to choose an abortion.

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German prosecutors urge Red Army Faction suspects to surrender

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Officials say ‘pressure is rising’ on two fugitives after arrest of a third last week and raids at weekend

Authorities in Germany have called on two suspected leftwing terrorists to turn themselves in and said they were close on their tails.

After the arrest a week ago of Daniela Klette, the last remaining female member of the Red Army Faction at large, officials said the net was closing in on her two alleged accomplices, Burkhard Garweg, 55, and Ernst-Volker Staub, 69.

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Greenlandic women sue Danish state for contraceptive ‘violation’

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Group of 143 allege they were fitted with coils without consent or knowledge between 1966 and 1970, when some were children

Nearly 150 Greenlandic women have sued the Danish state, alleging that they were fitted with the contraceptive coil without their consent or knowledge.

A group of 143 women took legal action on Monday, demanding a collective payment of close to 43m Danish kroner (£4.9m) for what they describe as a violation of their human rights.

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