Deputy Frans Timmermans accuses Tory Brexiters of a ‘cavalier’ approach to peace
Jean-Claude Juncker has told Theresa May in a private phone call that shifting her red lines in favour of a permanent customs union is the price she will need to pay for the EU revising the Irish backstop.
Without a major shift in the prime minister’s position, the European commission president told May that the current terms of the withdrawal agreement were non-negotiable.
Continue reading...Darkness falls on the small town of Sambuca di Sicilia, where the council offices on Corso Umberto have been closed for more than three hours. And yet the phones keep ringing, hour after hour.
“They’re calling from Sydney, London, New York,” says the exhausted deputy mayor, Giuseppe Cacioppo. A week after the town announced it was putting up abandoned homes for sale at a euro each, he has fielded requests for information from all over the globe. By Wednesday last week the council had received more than 300 calls and 94,000 emails. Many prospective buyers, not wanting to miss out, grabbed the first available flight to Palermo.
Continue reading...BBC’s John Humphrys criticised for putting ‘Brexit solution’ to Irish minister
Ireland has dismissed the suggestion that the best solution to the Brexit impasse might be for the country to quit the EU and join the UK.
Related: Leo Varadkar: Brexit has undermined Good Friday agreement
Continue reading...European Medicines Agency heads for Amsterdam 63 days before Brexit
The European Medicines Agency, one of the biggest EU regulators and one of the first casualties of Brexit, has closed its doors in the UK for the last time with the loss of 900 jobs.
Staff lowered and folded up the 28 national flags that adorned the lobby in London’s Canary Wharf headquarters on Friday night and bid farewell before moving to their new offices in Amsterdam.
Continue reading...Two-year-old Julen Rosseló fell down 100-metre borehole near Málaga 13 days ago
Specialist teams have found the body of the two-year-old boy whose fall down a 100-metre borehole in southern Spain 13 days ago prompted a major rescue operation that has transfixed the country.
Julen Rosseló was having lunch with his family in the countryside on 13 January when he fell down the 25cm-wide hole in Totalán, near Málaga.
Continue reading...French composer won three Academy Awards, including for The Windmills of Your Mind
The French composer Michel Legrand, who won three Oscars during a career spanning more than half a century, has died aged 86, his spokesman said.
Related: Soundtrack legend Michel Legrand: 'I've been an adventurer!'
Continue reading...Italian doctoral student’s family seek truth about his torture and murder in early 2016
Three years after the disappearance, torture and murder of Italian doctoral student Giulio Regeni in Cairo, Egypt is stonewalling Italy’s efforts to investigate.
In November, Italian prosecutors officially named five members of Egypt’s security services as subject to investigation in the case of Regeni, who went missing on 25 January 2016 aged 28. But two months on, Egypt has barely acknowledged the development.
Continue reading...Far-right extremist, 65, received life terms for shootings of immigrants and a Holocaust survivor in the 1990s
Germany has extradited to Sweden John Ausonius, the convicted killer known as the “the laser man” for using a precision-scope rifle to target immigrants.
“He was extradited on Thursday,” said Frankfurt state prosecutor Nadja Niesen.
Continue reading...Majority back move amid angry cries of ‘traitors’ from nationalists who oppose deal
MPs in Greece have ratified a historic accord that allows the country’s northern neighbour Macedonia to change its name.
In a roll-call vote, punctuated by angry cries of “traitors” from nationalists opposed to the deal, 153 MPs voted in favour of the pact.
Continue reading...Group of historians and writers publish manifesto warning against rise of populism
Liberal values in Europe face a challenge “not seen since the 1930s”, leading intellectuals from 21 countries have said, as the UK lurches towards Brexit and nationalists look set to make sweeping gains in EU parliamentary elections.
The group of 30 writers, historians and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto published in several newspapers, including the Guardian, that Europe as an idea was “coming apart before our eyes”.
Continue reading...Jean d’Orléans, descendant of Louis XIV’s brother, inherits a place in a theoretical tussle
The pretender to be French king is dead. Long live the other pretenders, all three.
France might have thought it had done with monarchs, first in 1793 when it sent Louis XVI to the guillotine during the French Revolution, and again when it exiled Napoleon III in 1870.
Continue reading...Romina Sala says she believes he is still alive after plane vanished over Channel Islands
The family of the footballer Emiliano Sala have pleaded for rescuers to continue searching for the player and a pilot after their light aircraft went missing over the Channel Islands.
Sala’s sister, Romina Sala, speaking after the search was called off, said she believed the Argentinian striker and the pilot Dave Ibbotson, from Lincolnshire, were still alive and in the Channel three days after their plane vanished.
Continue reading...Leader of far-right party under investigation after preventing 177 migrants from disembarking in Italy
Italy’s deputy prime minister and interior minister, Matteo Salvini, is one step away from facing trial after a surprise court ruling determined that he be tried for kidnapping.
In August, prosecutors in Agrigento, Sicily, placed Salvini, who is leader of the far-right party the League, under investigation for the alleged kidnapping and detention of 177 migrants whom he prevented from disembarking the Italian coastguard ship Ubaldo Diciotti.
Continue reading...Protest group in France says it wants to ‘transform the anger into a human political project’
The gilets jaunes (yellow vests) have named 10 candidates for the European parliament elections in May and called for more of their fellow demonstrators to put their names forward.
The French protest movement that, until now, has had no official leaders or formal organisation, announced on Wednesday that it would take part in the vote on 26 May after 10 weeks of occasionally violent demonstrations across the country.
Continue reading...As ice melts and shipping lanes open up, geopolitical tensions are growing and old cold war bases are being reopened
The climate crisis is intensifying a new military buildup in the Arctic, diplomats and analysts said this week, as regional powers attempt to secure northern borders that were until recently reinforced by a continental-sized division of ice.
That so-called unpaid sentry is now literally melting away, opening up shipping lanes and geo-security challenges, said delegates at the Arctic Frontiers conference, the polar circle’s biggest talking shop, who debated a series of recent escalations.
Continue reading...American wants conviction of malicious accusation over Meredith Kercher’s murder overturned
The European court of human rights has ordered Italy to pay Amanda Knox €18,400 for police failures to provide her access to a lawyer and a translator during questioning over the 2007 killing of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in Perugia.
The ruling opens the way for Knox’s lawyers to challenge her last remaining conviction, for malicious accusation, in the Italian courts.
Continue reading...Carolyn Fairbairn warns bosses at Davos that damage caused by disorderly exit could spread far beyond the UK
Fears are growing internationally that a no-deal Brexit poses a threat to the stability of the global economy, the head of Britain’s leading business body has warned.
Carolyn Fairbairn, director-general of the CBI, said the failure to sort out Britain’s departure from the European Union was damaging Britain’s brand abroad and had joined a list of systemic risks to the world economy.
Continue reading...Voicemail message revealed as police say chances of finding footballer alive are ‘slim’
The search for the plane carrying the Cardiff City footballer Emiliano Sala that went missing over the English Channel has resumed, amid only “slim” hopes he survived.
The aircraft, carrying Sala and the pilot, disappeared off Alderney in the Channel Islands on Monday night.
Continue reading...Macron and Merkel sign update to 1963 Élysée treaty in effort to mitigate populist party gains
France and Germany have renewed their vows of postwar friendship, aiming to show that the traditional engine powering the EU project is still strong but drawing fierce criticism from the nationalist and populist parties advancing across the continent.
President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor Angela Merkel signed the 16-page update to the 1963 Elysée treaty on Tuesday in the German border city of Aachen, residence of Charlemagne, the “father of Europe” who managed to unite much of western the continent in the ninth century.
Continue reading...European commission is expected to sound alarm on their use to attract wealthy
Brussels is to warn EU member states that the “golden visa” schemes used by Britain and others to attract the wealthy have exposed the continent to corruption and organised crime.
A report from the the European commission, expected to be published on Wednesday, claims the schemes designed to encourage the super-rich to invest in return for residency rights or citizenship pose a danger to the continent’s security.
Continue reading...