Category Archives: Europe

Tens of thousands protest in Budapest over sexual abuse case pardon

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Viktor Orbán under pressure as turmoil continues a week after the presidential pardon was revealed

Tens of thousands of people protested in Budapest on Friday at the biggest rally against Viktor Orbán’s government for years, after a sexual abuse case pardon by President Katalin Novák caused public uproar and led to her resignation.

The conservative Hungarian prime minister, who has been in power since 2010, has sought to defuse the week-long scandal that brought down two of his key political allies, the president and the former justice minister, Judit Varga, but it has continued to dominate domestic media.

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Europe: Kamala Harris blasts ‘dangerous’ isolationism at security conference – as it happened

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Vice-president tells Munich gathering that the US is committed to ‘defend democratic values at home and abroad’

Speaking in Munich today, the Nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, said that “if we want a lasting peace, we must continue to provide Ukraine with weapons and ammunition.”

He addressed Nato’s push to invest more in defence.

This requires expanding our transatlantic industrial base to increase deliveries to Ukraine and refill our own stocks. And shifting from slow peacetime to the high tempo of conflict – to produce more at a higher speed.

This will help Ukraine, it will make Nato stronger, and it will provide more highly–skilled manufacturing jobs, including here in Bavaria, where Patriot missiles will be built at a new facility.

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Yulia Navalnaya takes stage at Munich meeting after news of husband’s death

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Wife of Alexei Navalny addresses hushed crowd of politicians and vows Putin will be brought to justice

A geopolitical conference turned deeply personal on Friday as senior officials from around the globe heard first-hand from Alexei Navalny’s wife hours after news broke of his reported death.

Yulia Navalnaya was in Germany for the Munich security conference, which brings together national leaders, foreign ministers and experts, when Russia’s prison service announced that Navalny had died in jail.

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Long opposed to exile, Alexei Navalny dies a prisoner in a dark and dangerous Russia

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Perhaps he might have been able to coordinate from abroad a powerful anti-war movement. Instead he is silenced for ever

For years, Alexei Navalny remained clear on a key message: he was a Russian opposition politician and he was determined to stay in Russia. Exile, he believed, would lead to political irrelevance, and calling on Russians to oppose Vladimir Putin from the safety of the west would mark him as a hypocrite.

Navalny stuck to this belief as the political climate in Russia deteriorated and the space for dissent narrowed ever further, and even after he was poisoned with novichok in 2020, leading to his ill-fated decision to return early the next year.

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Greece becomes first Orthodox Christian country to legalise same-sex marriage

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Lawmakers in the 300-seat parliament voted for the bill drafted by centre-right government despite church officials’ objections

Greece has become the world’s first Christian Orthodox nation to legalise same-sex marriage after the Athens parliament passed the landmark reform amid scenes of both jubilation and fury in the country.

In a rare display of parliamentary consensus, 176 MPs from across the political spectrum voted in favour of the bill on Thursday. Another 76 rejected the reform while two abstained from the vote and 46 were not present.

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Ukraine’s war effort already affected by block on $60bn US aid, says Nato chief

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Jens Stoltenberg believes Congress will finally vote for package but meanwhile Russian forces are advancing near Avdiivka

The US failure to vote through a fresh military aid package for Ukraine is already having an impact on the battlefield, Nato’s secretary general has warned at the end of a defence ministers’ meeting.

Jens Stoltenberg said he still believed Congress would eventually approve the stalled $60bn (£50bn) package, but his cautious remarks came as Nato officials warned Russia was making “significant gains” near the frontline town of Avdiivka.

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Google stops notifying publishers of ‘right to be forgotten’ removals from search results

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Move comes after Swedish court rules that informing webmasters about delisted content is breach of privacy

Google has quietly stopped telling publishers when it has removed websites from its search results under European “right to be forgotten” rules after a ruling in a Swedish court which the search engine is applying globally.

Previously, when an individual applied to have records about them expunged under EU data protection laws, Google would notify the publisher of the original articles.

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Donald Trump again threatens to sacrifice Nato allies to Russia

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The ex-president said that ‘if they’re not going to pay, we’re not going to protect’ at rally in South Carolina

Donald Trump has doubled down on his threat to undermine Nato, repeating his threat not to protect countries he believes do not pay enough to maintain the alliance and claiming such nations “laugh at the stupidity” of the US.

On Wednesday night, at a rally in South Carolina, Trump said: “I’ve been saying, ‘Look, if they’re not going to pay, we’re not going to protect, OK?’ And [Joe] Biden who said, ‘Oh, this is so bad. This is so terrible that he would say that.’ No … nobody’s paying their bills.

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‘A lot higher than we expected’: Russian arms production worries Europe’s war planners

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Moscow has massively ramped up its industry, giving it advantages in Ukraine and leading to a redistribution of wealth

As Ukraine has scrambled to source ammunition, arms and equipment for its defence, Russia has presided over a massive ramping up of industrial production over the last two years that has outstripped what many western defence planners expected when Vladimir Putin launched his invasion.

Total defence spending has risen to an estimated 7.5% of Russia’s GDP, supply chains have been redesigned to secure many key inputs and evade sanctions, and factories producing ammunition, vehicles and equipment are running around the clock, often on mandatory 12-hour shifts with double overtime, in order to sustain the Russian war machine for the foreseeable future.

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Russia launches massive missile attack on Ukraine as Nato defence ministers meet in Brussels – Europe live

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Nato secretary general says ‘supporting Ukraine is not charity’ but ‘an investment in our own security’

France and Ukraine will sign a bilateral agreement on security commitments tomorrow, the Elysee has announced, Reuters reported.

The agreement was expected to be finalised in Ukraine, but the French president, Emmanuel Macron, had postponed his trip.

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End fossil-fuel era to address colonial injustices, urges prominent historian

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West should address ‘colonisation of the present’ and not focus on past, argues David Van Reybrouck

Cities in the global north that curb their carbon emissions are doing more to address colonial injustices than those who focus their efforts on taking down statues and changing street names, one of Europe’s leading historians has said.

David Van Reybrouck, the Belgian author of a bestselling history of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a new book on Indonesia’s independence from Dutch rule, has become one of the key drivers of a nascent and often fraught debate about Europe’s colonial legacies. Those who have lauded his work include the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the former UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

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Putin says he prefers Biden to Trump and mocks Tucker Carlson’s questions

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Russian president says Biden is ‘more predictable’, in remarks likely to be attempt to make mischief in US election

Vladimir Putin has said he would prefer a Joe Biden presidency to a Donald Trump one and mocked the former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson for a “lack of sharp questions” during their interview at the Kremlin last week.

Asked by a Russian state journalist on Wednesday to choose between Biden and Trump, Putin said without hesitation that the current US president was “more experienced, predictable, an old-school politician”, but added: “We will work with any US president who the American people have confidence in.”

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‘A brilliant start’: gay Greeks eager for MPs to legalise same-sex marriage

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Parliament is expected to pass bill on Thursday but the rancour it has caused shows country’s entrenched social conservatism

Viktoria Kalfaki can still vividly remember the moment she and her wife, Christina Leimoni, realised they would have to fight for their family’s right to exist. The couple, both senior tech company executives who had returned to Greece after years in London, were in hospital with their daughter.

“Niovi was two and sick with bronchitis,” said Kalfaki, who heads the public sector division of Google Cloud in Athens. “Naturally we both wanted to be with her but when the doctors asked ‘Who is the mother?’ and they heard ‘We both are’, their response was ‘That’s legally not possible’ and they refused to let Christina in. There was a terrible scene as she argued and implored but they were adamant. Only I, as Niovi’s birth mother, could be with her.”

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UK could contribute to nuclear shield if Trump wins, suggests German minister

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Comments draw Britain into debate about European security without US providing bulk of Nato’s nuclear deterrent

The UK could contribute to a new European nuclear shield if Donald Trump becomes US president again, a senior German minister has suggested, drawing British politicians into the debate about how Europe’s security could be bolstered in the event of the Republican frontrunner winning in November.

Questions over a European nuclear deterrence have intensified after Trump’s remarks on Saturday that he would not defend any Nato member that failed to spend 2% of its gross domestic product on defence – and would even encourage Russia to continue attacking.

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Japan loses crown as world’s third-largest economy after it slips into recession

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Fall in rank below Germany has been attributed to a weak yen and country’s ageing, shrinking population

Japan has been eclipsed by Germany as the world’s third-biggest economy and has slipped into recession, according to data released Thursday, as the country battles a weak yen and an ageing, shrinking population.

Japan’s economy, now the world’s fourth-biggest, grew 1.9% in 2023 in nominal terms – meaning it is not adjusted for inflation – but in dollar terms its gross domestic product (GDP) stood at $4.2tn compared with $4.5tn for Germany.

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Nato chief rebukes Donald Trump and announces record defence spending

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Jens Stoltenberg accuses Trump of undermining alliance and says 18 members are expected to invest at least 2% of GDP this year

Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary general, has accused Donald Trump of undermining the basis of the transatlantic alliance as he announced that 18 Nato members were expected to beat the target of spending more than 2% of GDP on defence.

It was the second rebuke by the Nato chief to the Republican frontrunner in less than a week, reinforced by a declaration that Germany was among the countries planning to spend over the threshold for the first time in a generation.

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Human rights court finds failings in Greece tourist rape inquiry

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Lawyer for complainant hails ‘moral victory’ after court says proceedings ‘fell short of required standards’

A woman who claimed Greek authorities failed to conduct an effective investigation into her allegation of rape has won a resounding victory at the European court of human rights.

Almost three years after lodging the case, the complainant, from West Yorkshire, was said to be delighted after learning that the Strasbourg-based tribunal had criticised Greece over criminal proceedings that it said had “fallen short of the required standards”.

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Nicolas Sarkozy’s jail term halved in illegal campaign funds case

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Appeal court sentence on hold after lawyer says former president will contest guilty verdict at France’s highest court

The former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has been given a six-month jail term on appeal, after being found guilty of illegal campaign financing for the vast, showman-style political rallies of his 2012 re-election attempt.

The Paris court of appeal confirmed a lower court’s guilty verdict for Sarkozy, who was convicted of hiding illegal overspending in the presidential election he lost to the Socialist candidate François Hollande.

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Ukrainian forces destroy large Russian landing ship off Crimea – as it happened

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Hit on Tsezar Kunikov, in waters off the occupied peninsula, hailed by Ukrainian military

The Netherlands is joining a military coalition with allies including Britain that will supply Ukraine with advanced drone technology and bolster its offensive capabilities in the war against Russia, the Dutch defence minister said.

The pledge from the Netherlands comes in addition to F-16 fighter jets, artillery, ammunition and air defence systems provided by the Dutch to Kyiv, Reuters reports.

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Atlantic drugs bust takes dramatic turn after alleged smuggler ‘kidnaps’ crew

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Spanish police find 2.3 tonnes of cocaine following negotiation with Serb allegedly holding crew hostage

It seemed it would be a routine police operation after a tipoff came in regarding a vessel ferrying 2.3 tonnes of cocaine from South America to Spain. But what came next could have been plucked out of a Hollywood blockbuster, as Spanish police found themselves negotiating for hours on the high seas with an alleged armed smuggler who claimed to have shot one of his compatriots, thrown him overboard and taken the rest hostage.

Spanish authorities said on Wednesday that nine people were arrested during the high-stakes operation, which took place in November but was kept under wraps until the investigation was completed.

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