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The EU is pushing ahead with sweeping legislation to fight terrorism that could limit rights and be abused by unscrupulous state authorities. Negotiators from the EU institutions wrapped up their talks, last week, in an effort to reach a formal agreement ...

Mayors of some of Europe’s largest cities have committed themselves to good relations with British cities after Brexit. “Despite the Brexit vote, we see a future for UK cities in [the European project]. Like other European cities, they are economic drivers ...

I consider myself lucky to have survived one of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s detention centres. Since the start of the Syrian revolution in March 2011, hundreds of thousands of innocent people have been arrested and unlawfully detained for: seeking ...

The Slovak presidency of the EU is producing "tangible results" in a challenging time when the European Union should better define its interests, the country's Europe minister has said. With over a month left of its six-month stewardship of the EU council ...

Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders Nicos Anastasiades and Mustafa Akinci hope to reach an agreement on Monday on criteria to draw the map for a federal reunited island, in order to clear the way for a peace settlement later this year. They started a two-day ...

Estonia’s Centre Party and two other centre-left parties, the social democrats and the conservative IRL, have agreed to form a three-party coalition after the previous government collapsed over the Baltic country’s economy policies. Centre Party leader ...

Denmark's liberal prime minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen announced over the weekend that he would expand his government with two smaller parties, the Liberal Alliance and the Conservatives, to strengthen support for the government. Talks between party ...

EU leaders have pledged to uphold sanctions on Russia in the run-up to the Ukraine summit this week, but the declaration comes amid multiplying uncertainties over the future of Ukraine ties. The German, French, Italian and Spanish leaders, at a meeting ...

Souring relations with Turkey come to a head as MEPs vote on a motion proposing to end accession talks at the plenary session in Strasbourg this week. The vote on Thursday (24 November) to stop Turkey's EU membership bid is not binding but sends a powerful ...

Just after the United States voted Donald Trump in as its president elect, I had lunch and a somber conversation with a successful businesswoman friend of mine. She insisted on paying the bill. Signing the credit card slip in a downtown Budapest restaurant ...

Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel has said she will seek a fourth term in office in next year's election to defend democratic values in the face of growing threats globally and at home. "We are facing struggles in Europe and internationally for our values ...

Support for the EU is on the rise in five of the six largest EU countries, according to a survey, published in Spiegel. Highest support is found in Poland, where 77 percent would vote remain if a referendum on EU membership was held. In Germany 69 percent ...

Brussels has announced it will name a public space after Jo Cox, a Labour MP, who was stabbed and shot to death in June shortly before the Brexit referendum. She worked in Brussels for six years before becoming an MP. The municipal government is naming ...

Former prime minister Francois Fillon has become the new favourite for next year's French presidential election after a primaries vote for the centre-right Republicans on Sunday (20 November) that saw former president Nicolas Sarkozy eliminated, possibly ...

Questions of why some projects are funded, others not, and whether value for money is being had, linger over plans to extend the Juncker investment plan. The European Parliament and EU member states are starting to examine a European Commission proposal ...

The world was still recovering from the turbulent presidential elections in the US when Germany, another key Western power, picked its next head of state. In an improvised and rushed ceremony this week, the leaders of the governing Christian and Social ...

The House of Commons’ new Exiting the European Union Committee held its first hearing on Wednesday (16 November) in a nearly deserted room in Westminster. The lack of interest was a slight surprise. Granted, most parliamentary committees are toothless ...

There is no feigning ignorance for car drivers entering the Dutch city of Rotterdam via the highway from the northeast. The sign announcing a “low emission zone” that bans dirty cars is spelt out in Dutch, French, Polish, English, and German. Since the ...

World governments have declared in Morocco, during a climate summit, that 2016 has seen "extraordinary momentum on climate change worldwide". They say, in what seems like an indirect message to climate-sceptic US president-elect Donald Trump, that momentum ...

The winners of last month's parliamentary election in Lithuania are a party without traditional party discipline, or organisation, or even a clear leader. Yet the Peasants and Greens won 54 seats in the 141-seat chamber, up from the single seat that they ...

The Slovak EU presidency has circulated a paper among EU states that calls for "effective solidarity" on migration issues. The document, seen by this website, was discussed at an informal dinner on Thursday evening among migration ministers ahead of a ...

The European Parliament (EP) is preparing to seek repayment of allegedly misspent funds from a eurosceptic political group that includes Ukip, in a move that could cause the group's bankruptcy. The Guardian, a British newspaper, reported on Thursday (17 ...

Voters who rejected the EU-Ukraine treaty in a Dutch referendum last April did not do so because of an anti-EU sentiment, according to an academic study published on Friday. Only 7.5% of No voters cast an anti-EU vote. The biggest motivation for No voters ...

EU states, on Thursday, gave conditional backing to allowing Ukrainians to travel visa-free to the bloc for short visits. First, however, a mechanism to suspend the scheme in an emergency must be agreed upon, possibly at the EU-Ukraine summit, to be held ...

The European Commission failed on Thursday (17 November) to fulfil industry commissioner Elzbieta Bienkowska's promise, that legal action against member states for failing to make car manufacturers follow EU rules on emissions was imminent. Bienkowska had ...

Hungary will cut its corporate income tax to the lowest in the European Union, using a single rate of 9 percent next year, according to a government statement. The move will push the tax rate below Cyprus's and Ireland's 12.5 percent. Prime minister Viktor ...

German car-maker Volkswagen plans to cut 30,000 job by 2021 as part of a turnaround plan agreed with labour unions, German media reports. The long-term strategy would shift the dieselgate scandal-plagued company to electric and self-driving cars. Meanwhile ...

"What we must understand is that globalisation needs to be regulated. And that is one of the great failures of the European Union,” Portugal's prime minister Antonio Costa told Euronews. Analysing Trump's victory and Brexit, he added: "Obviously ...

Slovenia's parliament, on Thursday, passed an amendment to the Constitution making access to drinking water a fundamental right, protecting water sources against privatisation. With 64 votes in favour and none against, the 90-seat parliament added an ...

Germany has received 4,437 asylum applications from Turkish citizens, 2.5 times the amount of applications received from Turkish citizens in all of 2015, between January and October, according to a report by the Funke Mediengruppe papers. Turkey has ...