Europe

https://archive.ph/0AxFY

The EU will not rip up its tech rules in an attempt to reach a trade deal with Donald Trump, the bloc’s most senior official on digital policy has said.

Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission vice-president responsible for tech sovereignty, indicated the EU was not going to compromise on its digital rulebook to reach an agreement on trade with the US – a key demand of Trump administration officials.

“We are very committed to our rules when it comes to the digital world,” Virkkunen said in an interview with European newspapers, including the Guardian. “We want to make sure that our digital environment in the European Union … that it is fair and it’s safe and it’s also democratic.”

In the first week of January, I received a letter from the Berlin Immigration Office, informing me that I had lost my right of freedom of movement in Germany, due to allegations around my involvement in the pro-Palestine movement. Since I’m a Polish citizen living in Berlin, I knew that deporting an EU national from another EU country is practically impossible. I contacted a lawyer and, given the lack of substantial legal reasoning behind the order, we filed a lawsuit against it, after which I didn’t think much of it.

I later found out that three other people active in the Palestine movement in Berlin, Roberta Murray, Shane O’Brien and Cooper Longbottom, received the same letters. Murray and O’Brien are Irish nationals, Longbottom is American. We understood this as yet another intimidation tactic from the state, which has also violently suppressed protests and arrested activists, and expected a long and dreary but not at all urgent process of fighting our deportation orders.

Then, at the beginning of March, each of our lawyers received on our behalf another letter, declaring that we are to be given until 21 April to voluntarily leave the country or we will be forcibly removed. The letters cite charges arising from our involvement in protests against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. None of the charges have yet led to a court hearing, yet the deportation letters conclude that we are a threat to public order and national security.

From Gaza to the West Bank, from Palestinian homes to Israeli detention centres, Palestinians have shared horrifying testimonies of dog attacks by the Israeli military. These testimonies demonstrate the Israeli military’s systematic use of dogs to brutalise Palestinians, including children, elderly people, and medical staff – sometimes with fatal consequences.

Reportedly, the Netherlands is a key country from where police-trained dogs are exported to the Israeli army , but corporate confidentiality means that no public information is available about the suppliers or the number of dogs supplied to the Israeli army by Dutch companies.

SOMO discovered that police dog companies in the Netherlands obtained the required veterinary certificates for the export of at least 110 dogs to Israel between October 2023 and February 2025. One hundred of these certificates were granted to the company Four Winds K9, a police dog training centre in the southern Dutch village of Geffen.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/eu-china-start-talks-lifting-eu-tariffs-chinese-electric-vehicles-handelsblatt-2025-04-10

I would have never ever expected that ! One more proof that i don't understand much about the state of the world.

What a world 🤯, i'm still not fully believing that we're choosing friendship with the p.r.c., it'd be too good to be true.
(we also chose friendship with the islamist Syria b.t.w., and maintained it, so i.d.k. anymore)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán launched another attack on the rules-based world order. He invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under an arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court (ICC) for allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity, for a state visit to Budapest. On this occasion, Orbán announced Hungary’s withdrawal from the ICC, which he defined as “a politically biased” institution. With this move, Hungary undermines the EU’s long-standing and consolidated support for the ICC.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/60644394

Dutch informatics and intelligence expert Bert Hubert explains why European governments are urgently trying to get away from the American clouds and how they do it fastest. The article is in German. Here are few excerpts translated by me using Firefox Translation.

What is happening in the EU, is that the politicians are finally waking up. They should have done this five years ago.

The Dutch Cybersecurity Center NCSC has conducted an in-depth investigation of Microsoft. In an official evaluation, it has recorded mutatis mutandis: "The USA can at any time access the European data storage. But we don't think they will do that." Of course, that has always been pure wishful thinking. [...] It remains subject to American surveillance laws.

The data transfer agreement will be cancelled soon. Either the EU Commission is pulling back the adequacy decision, which presupposes that the US is a country with an adequate level of data protection [...] or the European Court of Justice will declare it invalid.

The whole of Europe should be alarmed. We have become a digital colony of Google, Amazon and Microsoft. [...] Our officials are putting European security and independence at risk just so that they can continue to use Microsoft Outlook! That sounds idiotic, but that's how I experience administrations.

We must finally redeem the many European open source programmers. [...] At some point we stopped believing that we can write good software. Now Europe only offers SAP software as an export hit, that's it. But if we invest billions somewhere, it's in European software development.

What’s the news?

• Czech billionaire and energy magnate Daniel Křetínský has made an unusual public intervention: calling on the EU to delay carbon emissions targets and rely on fossil fuels until green alternatives become cheaper.
• An investigation by Follow the Money reveals how Křetínský would gain from such a strategy, as he invests heavily in coal and gas, while taking hundreds of millions in subsidies from governments who say they want to transition to green energy.

Why does it matter?

• While Křetínský keeps a low public profile, his vast wealth – along with investments in retail and logistics – has made him an increasingly influential figure.
• His call for targets to be delayed comes at a pivotal moment for European policymakers, as Trump’s support for fossil fuels and roll-back of environmental protections send shockwaves around the world.

• A 15-month-long investigation has exposed the cracks in international conservation efforts around the hunting of Maltese falcons and other species in Egypt.
• Millions of euros have flowed from EU conservation funds to protect these species, only for them to be gunned down by Europeans in Egypt.
• With exclusive accounts from conservationists and hunting trip organizers, alongside public records of raids and arrests, this investigation highlights the urgent need for international cooperation to uphold global conservation commitments.

An espionage case in Poland shows a way forward for combating Russia’s network of paramilitaries and other proxies.

https://archive.ph/gMO0C

The European Union should defend the International Criminal Court (ICC) amid serious attacks on its mandate and mission, 58 nongovernmental groups said today. These attacks could undermine justice for victims of serious international crimes around the world, making urgent EU action to uphold the international rules-based order.