Category Archives: Europe

Trump may yet impose a Ukraine deal – but it threatens to be a disaster for Kyiv

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Ukraine could be forced into an agreement but plan as it stands seems too bizarre for Zelenskyy to sell to his public

We’ve been here before: the Trump administration announces a roadmap towards peace in Ukraine that seems to be dramatically skewed towards Moscow’s demands; Volodymyr Zelenskyy gets on the phone to alarmed European allies; they quickly call Trump to message him that the whole idea is unworkable; the plan quietly dies. Rinse and repeat.

This time it feels a bit different, however. Reports on Friday suggested the US has threatened that if Ukraine does not sign a hastily concocted peace plan, Washington could withdraw intelligence-sharing and other support critical to the Ukrainian war effort.

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Nicolas Sarkozy to write prison memoir on his 20 days in jail

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Former French president complains about noise in extract from A Prisoner’s Diary, to be released next month

Nicolas Sarkozy is to publish a book next month called A Prisoner’s Diary detailing his 20 days in jail.

The book was announced 11 days after the former French president was released from prison while he appeals against his conviction for criminal conspiracy over a scheme to obtain election campaign funds from the regime of the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

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Europe’s economy is geared towards a disappearing world, says ECB’s Lagarde

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Central bank chief warns that the bloc’s dependence on third countries for trade and security has left it vulnerable

Europe’s economy is “geared towards a world that is gradually disappearing”, according to a warning from Christine Lagarde that the EU needs reforms to spur growth.

The president of the European Central Bank (ECB) said the EU’s dependence on international trade had left it vulnerable, as major partners had turned away from the trade that made the bloc’s exporters wealthy.

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Reform UK’s former Wales leader jailed for taking bribes for pro-Russia speeches

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Police say Nathan Gill received at least £40,000 while he was an MEP from Oleg Voloshyn, an alleged Russian asset

Reform UK’s former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, has been jailed at the Old Bailey for 10 and a half years for taking bribes to make statements in favour of Russia when he was an MEP.

Gill, a member of the Ukip and Brexit party blocs led by Nigel Farage in the European parliament, had pleaded guilty to eight counts of bribery between 6 December 2018 and 18 July 2019.

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Wetherspoon’s to open first pub in Spain – offering garlic prawns and beer from 6am

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Opening in Alicante airport is the chain’s first move into mainland Europe, and will offer outdoor drinking

Wetherspoon’s is to open its first pub outside the UK and Ireland, serving alcohol from 6am every day to sun-seeking Britons waiting for their plane in the departure lounge at Alicante airport.

The opening in Spain, scheduled for January, will be the first foray on to continental European soil for the pub chain, which said it expects to pursue more footholds on the continent in the coming years.

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Europe calls for role in Ukraine talks amid reported US-Russian peace deal

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Foreign ministers express misgivings about draft US-Russian peace plan favourable to Putin

Europeans must be involved in any attempt to broker peace between Ukraine and Russia, the continent’s top diplomats said after reports of a US-Russia plan favourable to Kremlin interests emerged.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, welcomed any “meaningful efforts” to end the war, but said Ukrainian and European input was needed for any plan to work.

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Spanish PM calls for nation to heed past lessons on anniversary of Franco’s death

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Pedro Sánchez says his country must defend the democratic freedom ‘wrenched from us for so many years’

Spain has marked the 50th anniversary of Francisco Franco’s death with an absence of official events but a call from the prime minister to heed the lessons of the dictatorship and defend the democratic freedom “wrenched from us for so many years”.

Franco, whose military coup against the elected republican government in 1936 triggered a civil war and brought about four decades of dictatorship, died in Madrid on 20 November 1975.

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Any Ukraine peace plan needs Kyiv and Europe ‘on board’, says EU – Europe live

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EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas leads reaction as reports circulate about a secret plan between Moscow and Washington to end the war

Meanwhile over in Poland, the Belarusian charge d’affaires in Warsaw received a note requesting the extradition of two Ukrainian citizens suspected of sabotage on rail on behalf of Russia, a foreign ministry spokesperson told state news agency PAP.

Czech president Petr Pavel said he was following the news of the train collision “with great concern,” as he expressed his sympathy with all injured in the crash (10:21).

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Angoulême comics festival in crisis as creators and publishers declare boycott

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French government withdraws funding after claims of toxic management and dismissal of staff member who lodged rape complaint

One of the world’s most prestigious comic book festivals is under threat of cancellation after leading graphic novelists and publishers announced they would boycott the event and the French government withdrew a tranche of its funding.

In the biggest crisis in its illustrious history, the Angoulême festival of la bande dessinée (comic strip) may not take place in 2026 after claims of toxic management and the dismissal of a member of staff who had lodged a rape complaint.

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Wes Streeting defends asylum system shake-up despite his unease

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Health secretary says he is not comfortable with some elements of policy but that it is the right thing to do for the country

Wes Streeting has admitted he is not comfortable with forcibly deporting families under the home secretary’s migration plans, while maintaining it is still the right thing to do.

The health secretary said he thought the number of forced removals would be low under the proposed model, which is similar to Denmark’s, because there would be an increased financial incentive for people entering the UK illegally to return to their country of origin.

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Social Democrats in Denmark suffer sweeping election losses

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PM Mette Frederiksen’s centre-left party loses control of Copenhagen for first time in more than 100 years

Mette Frederiksen has admitted that a fall in support for the Social Democrats was “greater than we had expected” after her party suffered sweeping defeats across Denmark and lost control of Copenhagen for the first time in more than 100 years.

While the Social Democrats remain the largest municipal party in Denmark, the prime minister’s centre-left party lost more than five percentage points across the country in Tuesday night’s municipal and regional elections, dropping from 28.4% in 2021 to 23.2%. Support for the far-right Danish People’s party, meanwhile, rose slightly from 4.09% to 5.9%.

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Moscow passes laws to boost defences against Ukrainian strikes

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Vladimir Putin authorises the guarding of fuel sites by reservists, internet blackouts and tighter sentencing for acts of sabotage

Russia has passed sweeping laws to bolster its defences at home against Ukrainian drone strikes and sabotage operations, reflecting the Kremlin’s expectation of a protracted war with Ukraine.

Almost four years into Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine – a full-scale invasion he expected to last only weeks – Moscow is being targeted almost daily by Ukrainian drones striking energy facilities, while Ukrainian operatives have assassinated a number of high-profile Russian military figures deep inside the country.

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Pension changes row threatens Germany’s coalition government

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Youth wing of conservatives say younger people will be left carrying can for older generation

A row over pension changes is threatening the future of the German coalition government, with a youth wing of the conservatives of the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, gaining support for an attempt to block legislation which they argue will leave younger Germans carrying the can for the older generation.

An 18-strong group of young MPs, the Junge Union, has been accused of holding Merz’s coalition government to ransom over its demands to revise proposed pension changes, which would guarantee pension increases for the next six years.

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The Kessler Twins sisters Alice and Ellen die together aged 89

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German pop duo who last year said their wish was ‘to leave together’ had joint assisted death at their home in Grünwald

Alice and Ellen Kessler, the pop singing sisters who were famous in Europe in the 1960s, especially in Italy where they were credited for bringing glamour to the country’s TV network, have died aged 89.

The identical twins had chosen to have a joint assisted death at their home in Grünwald, close to Munich, on Monday, said Wega Wetzel, a spokesperson for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Humanes Sterben (DGHS), a Berlin-based assisted dying association.

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Families of IRA victims in England told new Troubles bill could revive path to justice

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Security minister Dan Jarvis says scrapping immunity scheme would give relatives a renewed chance for answers

The families of more than 70 people killed by the IRA and other paramilitaries in unsolved attacks on English soil can once again hope for justice under the new Northern Ireland Troubles bill, the UK government has claimed.

As MPs in the House of Commons prepared to debate the bill for the first time on Tuesday, the Home Office said there remained 77 unsolved killings, including 39 British armed forces personnel in English towns and cities, from the time of the Troubles. It said more than 1,000 people were injured in the attacks.

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Two long-lost organ pieces by JS Bach performed for first time in 300 years

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Archive director in Germany says ‘missing piece of puzzle’ now in place to verify authorship after decades of research

Two long-lost organ pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach have been performed in Germany, roughly 320 years after the composer wrote them as a teenage music teacher.

Entitled Chaconne in D minor BWV 1178 and Chaconne in G minor BWV 1179, the pieces were added to the official catalogue of Bach’s works on Monday and played in public for the first time in three centuries inside Leipzig’s St Thomas Church, where Bach is buried.

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New blow for Louvre as structural problem forces gallery closure

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Campana Gallery is temporarily shut due to weaknesses in beams supporting floor above

The Louvre has temporarily closed one of its galleries as a precaution after an audit revealed structural weaknesses in some of the beams in the building.

The Campana Gallery, which houses nine rooms dedicated to ancient Greek ceramics, will be shut while investigations are conducted into “certain beams supporting the floors of the second floor” above it, a statement issued on Monday said.

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Incredible story of Irish labourer buried alive in coffin for 61 days told in new documentary

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Mick Meaney made global headlines when he beat world record in 1968, but returned to Ireland penniless

They were known as burial artists – people who had themselves buried alive in macabre feats of endurance – and Mick Meaney resolved to be the best there ever was.

It was 1968 and the Irish labourer had barely a pound to his name but he believed that if he stayed underground in a coffin longer than anyone else the world would remember his name.

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With neonicotinoid pesticide ban, France’s birds make a tentative recovery – study

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Analysis shows small hike in populations of insect-eating species after 2018 ruling, but full recovery may take decades

Insect-eating bird populations in France appear to be making a tentative recovery after a ban on bee-harming pesticides, according to the first study to examine how wildlife is returning in Europe.

Neonicotinoids are the world’s most common class of insecticides, widely used in agriculture and for flea control in pets. By 2022, four years after the European Union banned neonicotinoid use in fields, researchers observed that France’s population of insect-eating birds had increased by 2%-3%. These included blackbirds, blackcaps and chaffinches, which feed on insects as adults and as chicks.

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Roman Abramovich makes claim of ‘conspiracy’ against Jersey government

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Move threatens to throw open parts of secretive legal battle on Channel island about ex-Chelsea owner’s wealth

The former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich is making a claim of “conspiracy” against the government of Jersey after the crown dependency launched a criminal investigation into allegations of corruption and money laundering in connection with the original source of the oligarch’s wealth.

The latest move threatens to throw open parts of a secretive legal battle on the Channel island about the tycoon’s rise to become one of the world’s richest people, which emerged in September after a Switzerland federal criminal court ordered the release of a cache of Swiss banking records requested by the Jersey attorney general.

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