Category Archives: Europe

Nearly 17 child migrants a day vanished in Europe since 2018

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Investigation finds one in six were solo and under 15, as experts say cross-border cooperation ‘nonexistent’

At least 18,000 unaccompanied child migrants have disappeared after arriving in European countries including Greece, Italy and Germany.

An investigation by the Guardian and the cross-border journalism collective Lost in Europe found that 18,292 unaccompanied child migrants went missing in Europe between January 2018 and December 2020 – equivalent to nearly 17 children a day.

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European Super League will pour €400m into grassroots football, says new chief

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Anas Laghari claims elite competition will reignite love of game and end ‘madness’ of big money transfers

The Spanish banker who created the controversial new European Super League has promised the new JP Morgan-backed competition will pump €400m (£350m) into the national leagues that the elite clubs plan to leave behind.

Anas Laghari, a partner at the Madrid bank Key Capital and the newly appointed general secretary of the Super League, said the new league would reignite younger people’s love of football and end the “madness” of big money transfers.

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Unfair Verona: plans to limit tourists at Juliet’s balcony are blocked

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Decade-long feud continues over popular selfie spot linked to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

Plans to curtail the number of tourists who flock to Verona for a selfie beneath the balcony where Romeo is said to have wooed Juliet have been blocked amid a feud over the site that has lasted more than a decade.

Tourists can enter the tiny courtyard – free-of-charge – simply to take a photo of the balcony or to rub their hand on the right breast of a bronze statue of Juliet as part of a ritual that is said to bring luck in love.

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US ambassador to leave Moscow as tensions rise

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John Sullivan’s departure will leave both countries’ embassies without their top diplomats at key moment

Washington’s ambassador to Moscow has announced that he will return to the US for consultations, days after the Russian government recommended he leave the country during what it said was an “extremely tense situation”.

John Sullivan’s departure will leave both countries’ embassies without their top diplomats at a crucial moment, with Washington and Moscow recently announcing new sanctions, a Russian military buildup near Ukraine, and concerns about the opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s health while in detention.

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‘I was alone, I had nothing’: from child refugee to student nurse in Athens

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Ahtisham Khan arrived in Greece, aged 16, after leaving Pakistan. A new initiative is helping children like him find a safe home where they can start to rebuild their lives

At some point in his journey to a freer place, Ahtisham Khan came to a fork in the road. Fifty days of travel from his native Pakistan to the plains of northern Greece had been unexpectedly frightening and exhausting.

“We had a lot of dreams,” he says, recalling why he and his brother, Zeeshan, left their village close to the city of Haripur in Pakistan. “We were teenagers … we didn’t know what we were embarking on. We did what we had to do to survive.”

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Armin Laschet to run as CDU/CSU candidate in German election

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Rival Markus Söder concedes in race to succeed Angela Merkel but vote reveals deep rift in conservative alliance

Armin Laschet will run as the conservative candidate to succeed chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany’s elections in September, after the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won the support of senior party figures and his rival Markus Söder dropped out of the race.

Related: Armin Laschet: is the conservative alliance pick ‘too nice’ to be Germany’s next chancellor?

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France ‘did nothing to stop’ Rwanda genocide, report claims

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Report by US law firm commissioned by Kigali says France bears ‘significant responsibility’ for deaths

France “bears significant responsibility” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in the Rwandan genocide of 1994 because it remained “unwavering in its support” of its allies even though officials knew the slaughter was being prepared, a report commissioned by Kigali claims.

The accusation is the latest in the continuing dispute between Paris and the small east-African country over the role played there by France before and during the mass killings.

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Germany’s Greens name Annalena Baerbock as chancellor candidate

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Robert Habeck tells party co-chair ‘the stage is all yours’ as CDU/CSU rivals squabble over candidate choice

Germany’s Green party has named its co-chair Annalena Baerbock as candidate for chancellor in autumn’s federal election, as the party rides high in the polls and the ruling conservative bloc squabbles over its own choice to succeed Angela Merkel.

Baerbock, 40, viewed as a tenacious, down-to earth centrist with an eye for detail, and an expert on climate change and how to tackle it, told a small party gathering she aimed to “make politics for society at large”. She described her candidacy as “an offer, an invitation to lead our diverse, prosperous, strong country into a good future”.

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Huawei ‘may have eavesdropped on Dutch mobile network’s calls’

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Chinese firm could have been monitoring calls of KPN’s 6.5m users without its knowledge, report claims

The Chinese telecoms equipment supplier Huawei was able to monitor all calls made on one of the Netherlands’ largest mobile phone networks, according to a confidential report seen by the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant.

The report, made for KPN by the Capgemini consultancy firm in 2010, concluded that the Chinese company could have been monitoring the calls of the provider’s 6.5m users without the Dutch company’s knowledge, according to the newspaper.

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Alexei Navalny moved to hospital as fears grow for life of Putin critic

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Doctors say opposition leader, who is on hunger strike, is in danger of a heart attack or kidney failure

Alexei Navalny has been transferred to a prison hospital as concerns have grown among supporters that the opposition leader is dangerously ill and could die “at any minute”.

Navalny’s transfer came after his doctors released paperwork showing that the Kremlin critic, who has been on hunger strike for nearly three weeks, said he was in danger of a heart attack or kidney failure.

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Russia expels 20 Czech diplomats in tit-for-tat response

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Czechs expelled 18 Russians over Skripal suspects’ alleged role in deadly warehouse blast in 2014

Moscow has expelled 20 Czech diplomats in a tit-for-tat response after Prague accused Russian military intelligence of setting off a deadly blast at an ammunition warehouse in 2014.

Video from Moscow showed the Czech ambassador being summoned to the foreign affairs ministry where he was informed that four-fifths of his diplomatic envoys would be given 24 hours to depart the country.

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German NGO files legal case against Chechen officials over anti-gay purges

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Exclusive: five Ramzan Kadyrov allies subject of criminal complaint for crimes against humanity

Five officials from the inner circle of Chechnya’s autocratic leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, are the subject of a criminal complaint in Germany for crimes against humanity, in a legal attempt to seek justice over the semi-autonomous Russian republic’s anti-gay purges.

The 97-page charge sheet, extracts of which have been seen by the Guardian, accuses the Chechen military and state apparatus of persecution, unlawful arrests, torture, sexual violence and incitement to murder at least 150 individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation since February 2017.

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Alexei Navalny allies call for mass protests in Russia to save his life

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Kremlin critic’s team want showdown as Vladimir Putin delivers state of the nation address

Allies of Alexei Navalny have called on his supporters to stage mass protests on Wednesday in towns and cities all across Russia, amid a dire warning that the jailed Kremlin critic and opposition leader is now dangerously ill and could die “at any minute”.

Navalny’s team said the situation had got so desperate that there was no time to delay. They had previously said street protests would resume once they reached 500,000 signatures in support – with the current tally about 50,000 short.

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Germany’s surging Greens step up election race to succeed Merkel

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Robert Habeck or Annalena Baerbock will be named as party’s candidate for chancellorship

Five months before national elections, a Green party that once styled itself as the rebel of German politics is finding itself in an unusually respectable position.

The party’s standing in the polls – in second place at 21-23% of the vote – means it will on Monday, for the first time in its 41-year history, nominate a candidate for chancellor. Furthermore, that candidate will have a realistic chance of filling the top job in German politics by the end of the year.

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Dominic Raab: UK fully supports Czech hunt for Skripal suspects

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Foreign secretary hints he believes same Russian cell behind Salisbury poisoning and Czech explosion

The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, said the UK stood in “full support” of the Czech Republic after the country’s police announced they were hunting two Russians, suspected of carrying out the Salisbury poisonings, in relation to an explosion at an arms depot.

The Czech authorities said on Saturday they were seeking Alexander Petrov, 41, and Ruslan Boshirov, 43, in connection with a previously unexplained 2014 explosion at a munitions dump in Vrbětice, which left two dead.

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British families took bigger hit to income during Covid pandemic than Europeans

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UK’s greater inequality levels made impact worse for the less well off, study suggests

British households were plunged into the Covid pandemic with lower savings, more debt and weaker welfare support than their French and German counterparts, according to analysis revealing how inequality increased the impact of the UK crisis.

High levels of income inequality also weakened the financial resilience of poorer households as the pandemic hit. The greater exposure of British households, revealed in an analysis by the Resolution Foundation thinktank to be published in full this week, comes despite similar levels of average income with our European neighbours.

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Could Marine Le Pen finally triumph with her third tilt at French presidency?

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Next year’s Élysée race looks like a battle between a fading Emmanuel Macron and the far-right leader. And some believe she might win this time

In Paris’s symbolic Place de la République, under the watchful gaze of France’s allegorical figurehead Marianne, the skateboarders are not in the mood to discuss politics.

For the young here, as everywhere, life has been paused during a pandemic that has halted studies, jobs, socialising and parties. What they want is their lives back, not to talk about an election.

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Revealed: Lord Byron’s £4,000 cheque that helped create modern Greece

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The poet’s generosity 200 years ago helped to pave the way to independence, and he is still seen as a hero

Racked by fever, prone to fits of delirium, consumed by his last great passion – the liberation of Greece – Lord Byron lay on his sickbed. It was 18 April 1824. The great Romantic poet would be dead the next day.

“I have given her [Greece] my time, my means, my health,” he is recorded as saying in a moment of lucidity. “And now I give her my life! What could I do more?”

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Russia to expel Ukrainian diplomat, prompting vow of retaliation from Kyiv

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Disagreement over Alexander Sosonyuk, who was allegedly caught trying to obtain sensitive information, escalates tensions after troop buildup

Russia on Saturday said it would expel a Ukrainian diplomat, prompting an immediate pledge of retaliation from Kyiv, further escalating tensions after Moscow’s troop buildup on Ukraine’s eastern flank.

The detention of a Ukrainian consul in the second city, St Petersburg, comes at a time of global concern over a possible repeat of Moscow’s 2014 aggression, when Russia annexed the peninsula of Crimea and backed separatists in Ukraine’s east. Moscow claimed that the diplomat had been caught “red-handed” trying to obtain sensitive information.

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Matteo Salvini to face trial over standoff with migrant rescue ship

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Italy’s former interior minister says he was doing his job by refusing to allow ship with 147 people on board to dock

A judge in Sicily has ordered the former Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini to stand trial for refusing to let a Spanish migrant rescue ship dock in an Italian port in 2019, keeping the people at sea for days.

Judge Lorenzo Iannelli set 15 September as the trial date during a court hearing in Palermo, LaPresse news agency reported.

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