Moldovan PM Vlad Filat says he lost a no-confidence vote last week because he asked the prosecutor general to resign after he tried to cover up an accidental killing on a hunting trip. "There was a direct link [with the ...

The EU has ended a mini-Cold-War with Ukraine by welcoming back its President in Brussels. The meeting with Viktor Yanukovych on Monday (25 February) comes after EU leaders last year boycotted a regional summit in Yalta ...

Moldova is in the throes of renewed political crisis. It has had a reputation for crisis since it took 917 days to elect a President between 2009 and 2012, but this one is different. Tempting though it may be to see it ...

Germany and Poland, as well as the Czech republic and Sweden, have put forward joint ideas on how to handle post-Soviet countries, in what some diplomats are calling a "new axis" in EU foreign policy. The four nations ...

EU countries have said Zimbabwe can start selling diamonds and gold in Europe if it holds democratic elections. The deal - between Belgium, the home of the world's largest diamond exchange, and the UK, the former ...

Germany, France and four other EU countries want to reintroduce visa requirements for people from the Western Balkans, saying that the measure is needed to combat a spike in asylum claims from the region. Ahead of next ...

EU officials weary of being sniped at for their handling of the crisis or their big salaries got a morale boost on Friday (12 October) when the five people on the Nobel Peace Prize committee in Norway gave the world's ...

Srebrenica was not genocide and Serbia will not bow to demands for Kosovo recognition, Serbia's leader has said on the eve of a key EU report. The Balkan country's head of state, Tomislav Nikolic, a former confidante of ...

Greece is temporarily blocking an EU gas embargo on Iran. But the big question is: are EU sanctions hurting or helping Iranian leader Ali Khamenei? The gas ban is to be agreed by foreign ministers on Monday (15 October ...

EU countries have a protocol for sharing official "secrets." But people's motives for classifying EU files are not always pure and the number of really hush hush papers in Brussels is tiny. The EU Council - where member ...

EU leaders in December signed Croatia's accession treaty, trumpeting the move as a sign the EU's enlargement programme is alive and well despite the euro crisis. But now Slovenia is threatening to block it over a €172 ...

A brainstorming group of 11 foreign ministers has called for a more powerful EU foreign policy chief and less power in general for EU countries. The group - containing ministers from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, ...

A mere two weeks ago the name Ramil Safarov was meaningless to most people. Today he is the cause of a diplomatic storm between Azerbaijan, Armenia and Hungary which has sucked in the US, Russia and the EU and deepened ...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told Italy's foreign minister the EU should designate Hezbollah as a terrorist entity. But EU diplomats are wary of the move. "There is one ... effort that I think Europe ...

Eight days after the EU pledged €19.5 million to reform Azerbaijan's justice and migration systems, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has signed a decree pardoning Ramil Safarov, sentenced in 2006 by the court of an EU ...

EU countries have criticised "strategic partner" Azerbaijan for making a national hero out of an axe-murderer. On 19 February 2004 during a Nato seminar at a military school in Budapest, he walked into the bedroom of a ...

Israel has complained about the EU's inclusion of parts of the town of Modi'in-Maccabim-Reut on a blacklist of "settlements." The European Commission on 3 August added three postal codes in the town to a register of ...

A prominent MEP has said Ukraine's decision to exclude Yulia Tymoshenko from parliamentary elections means a priori they will be unfair. But the European Commission disagrees. The Central Election Commission on 8 August ...

Belarus has kicked out Sweden's ambassador to Minsk in a rerun of events six months ago. Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt tweeted on Friday (3 August) that the diplomat, Stefan Eriksson, was expelled "for being too ...

The European Commission has said in a written note that respect for gay rights is a legal criterion for EU accession. It cited the 1993 so-called Copenhagen criteria for EU eligibility and article 2 of the EU Treaty, ...

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso has pledged support for a future Palestinian state on his first official trip to the region. Speaking alongside Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Ramallah on Sunday ...

European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso goes on his first official visit to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories next week, in a three-day-long peregrination from Sunday (8 July) to Tuesday. His ...

Russia's EU ambassador has said ties would suffer if member states follow the US in putting sanctions on suspected Russian killers and fraudsters. "It would poison relations, definitely," Vladimir Chizhov told ...

Russia's ambassador to the EU has said "technical differerences" remain on how to handle Syria ahead of an international meeting in Geneva. Vladimir Chizhov told EUobserver on Thursday (28 June) that Russia, the EU and ...

Turkey has invoked the softer article four of the Nato treaty after Syria shot down one of its warplanes on Friday (22 June). Its decision will see the 28 Nato countries' ambassadors hold emergency talks in the North ...

Ukraine's President Viktor Yanukovych has no intention of releasing imprisoned opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko. Despite mounting international pressure and boycotts of Euro2012 matches in Ukraine by Western ...

EU diplomats disagree with the US and Israel on whether Iran should join a Contact Group on Syria. UN emissary Kofi Annan last week called for the formation of a body akin to the one which steered events in the Balkans ...

Leaked letters show that EU mediation on Iran's nuclear programme is being bedevilled by time-wasting. EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton is trying to organise a new round of talks on Iran in Moscow in her role ...

Top EU officials Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso have told Russia that the euro is a safe bet. The two men spoke alongside Russian leader Vladimir Putin in a press briefing after the 29th regular EU-Russia ...

History repeats itself in the Balkans. Right? The cliche has just been proved wrong again. Last Sunday (19 May) we witnessed a contest pitting the incumbent Boris Tadic, seen as the EU's best bet, against Tomislav ...

Nato is holding its 25th Summit on 20 and 21 May in Chicago, where President Barack Obama will host colleagues from 27 Nato allies. There is a lot to discuss but Nato secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen chose wisely ...

EU foreign ministers have "warned" Israel they will take a tougher approach to exports originating in illegal settlements on Palestinian land. The ministers in a statement on Monday (14 May) detailing Israel's long-term ...

If or when a full-blown conflict erupts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, it will probably begin like this. According to a senior source in the Armenian defence ministry, on 27 April Azerbaijani troops sneaked over the ...

NGOs have highlighted Israel's ongoing campaign to ethnically cleanse occupied territories as EU ministers meet in Brussels to discuss the problem. Data compiled by the European Commission, the UN and local activists ...

EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy - the Union's highest official in protocol terms - has told Ukraine's prime minister, Mykola Azaraov, he is not welcome in the EU capital. "Ukraine's prime minister announced that ...

The European External Action Service (EEAS) has awarded a juicy contract to British security firm G4S in Libya despite the fact it has no permission to work there. The €10 million contract covers bodyguards and building ...

Ukraine's EU ambassador has told justice commissioner Vivianne Reding that she should be less "emotional" in a riposte to her Euro2012 boycott. The diplomat, Konstiantin Yelisieiev, in a letter dated 2 May - and seen by ...

The President of Poland - which is co-hosting Euro2012 with Ukraine - has accused EU politicians planning to boycott Ukrainian matches of ulterior motives. Speaking on national TV on Wednesday (2 May), Bronislaw ...

Before the furore over Yulia Tymoshenko's bruises and Euro2012 Ukraine and the European Union initialed their Association Agreement on 30 March. It seemed like progress, albeit of a technical nature, with the hardest ...

Ukraine's ruling Party of Regions (PoR) has hired Burson-Marsteller - a top PR company in Brussels - amid a smear campaign against former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Robert Mack, a senior manager at Burson- ...

The EU's joint police body, Europol has noted there were no succesful Islamist attacks in Europe last year, while warning about future Toulouse-type 'lone wolves.' Its report, out on Wednesday (25April), highlighted ...

Staff numbers at embassies highlight EU interest in Turkey, China, the Western Balkans and in multilateral bodies, as well as member states' ongoing reliance on bilateral diplomacy. The EU's top 10 delegations in terms ...

As the EU stops sales of perfume and truffles to Syria, one officer in the Free Syrian Army (FSA) wonders why it is doing so little to really help. EU ministers imposed the ban on luxury goods at a meeting in Luxembourg ...

Belgium has asked EU countries to investigate whether Syrian diplomats are making threats against opposition members inside Europe. Michel Malherbe, a spokesman for Belgian foreign minister Didier Reynders, told this ...

Wives of the British and German ambassadors to the UN have launched a graphic and personal appeal to Syria's first lady to stop the killing of children. Huberta von Voss Wittig and Sheila Lyall Grant published a video ...

EU countries are keen for a UN monitoring mission to go to Syria as fast as possible amid reports that fighting stopped at dawn on Thursday (12 April). French foreign minister Alain Juppe told press at a meeting of G8 ...

The European Parliament has signed off a trade deal with Morocco which poses questions about the status of Western Sahara. The pact, agreed Thursday (16 February), liberalises EU-Morocco trade in agriculture and ...

New sanctions on Iran could prove hard to enforce after EU countries peppered them with derogations to help Greece find alternate suppliers, to protect trade in non-oil sectors and to give Tehran-based embassies access ...

The EU recently extended its sanctions on Syria but with the crackdown against protesters continuing, MEPs have been asking Syrian opposition groups what more can be done to pressurise President Bashar Al Assad. ...