Europe

4846 readers
88 users here now

Europe

Rules:

  1. All sources allowed. Voting decides what is reliable unless
  2. Articles which have been proven false beyond any doubt may be removed
  3. No personal attacks
  4. Posts in English, translations allowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
1
 
 

The page seems to be not working at the moment but keep on signing https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home

2
3
4
 
 

A Spanish member of the European Parliament said Wednesday he wants the European Commission to ban Israeli military companies from accessing EU funds, citing their potential use in the war in the Gaza Strip, Anadolu reports.

Nacho Sanchez Amor, a socialist MEP and member of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, said the EU must avoid “double standards” in addressing human rights violations.

“The EU cannot fall under double standards when it comes to HumanRightsViolations & it cannot be accessory to Netanyahu genocidal actions,” Amor wrote on X, referencing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has pursued a war of genocide against the Palestinian population in Gaza since late 2023.

5
6
7
 
 

An 18-year-old French man who claimed affiliation with the misogynist “incel” movement has been arrested and placed under formal investigation on suspicion of planning attacks targeting women, France’s national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office (PNAT) has said.

The arrest on Wednesday was part of PNAT’s first case linked to the “incel” (involuntary celibate) movement, an online network of men motivated to engage in violence against women whom they believe unjustly reject their sexual or romantic advances.

PNAT confirmed on Tuesday that it had opened a judicial investigation “against a young man, aged 18, claiming to be a member of the incel movement”, adding that he was being investigated for allegedly “associating with terrorist criminals to prepare one or more crimes against people”.

8
9
10
 
 

GENEVA – UN experts* today urged the United Kingdom not to ban the “direct action” group Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation under the Terrorism Act 2000.

“We are concerned at the unjustified labelling of a political protest movement as ‘terrorist’,” the experts said. “According to international standards, acts of protest that damage property, but are not intended to kill or injure people, should not be treated as terrorism.”

The Government asserts that the group is “terrorist” because some members have allegedly caused criminal damage to property, including at military bases and arms companies, with the aim of progressing its political cause and influencing the Government. Proscription would trigger a range of criminal offences relating to support for the group.

11
12
13
 
 

Outdoor working has been banned during the hottest parts of the day in more than half of Italy’s regions as an extreme heatwave that has smashed June temperature records in Spain and Portugal continues to grip large swathes of Europe.

The savage temperatures are believed to have claimed at least three lives, including that of a small boy who is thought to have died from heatstroke while in a car in Catalonia’s Tarragona province on Tuesday afternoon.

In Palermo, Sicily, a 53-year-old woman died on Monday after fainting while walking along a street. She had reportedly suffered from a heart condition.

14
 
 

A group of MPs have been accused of a “crystal clear breach of the rules” after taking money from a weapons firm owned by the Israeli government.

RUK Advanced Systems Ltd – which makes missiles for urban warfare – is part of Israel’s state-owned defence giant, Rafael.

Records showed that the company paid at least £1,499 to partner with the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Defence Technology, which provides “opportunities to network with MPs”. The money was paid directly to the group’s secretariat.

RUK describes itself as a “UK company”. But official records show it was controlled by the Israeli government’s Ministry of Finance,** which is led by far-right politician Bezalel Smotrich** who is sanctioned by Britain for inciting “extremist violence” against Palestinians.

15
16
 
 

'Israeli' farmers and food exporters are reporting a sharp rise in boycott efforts against their agricultural products across Europe, according to a report published Wednesday by the Hebrew outlet Ynet.

The growing backlash, triggered by ongoing public opposition to 'Israel’s' war in Gaza, has led to both formal and informal actions by major retailers, with some suppliers even noting hesitations from markets as far as Japan.

The Ynet report cites exporters saying that European countries like Belgium and Ireland have effectively begun boycotting 'Israeli' produce. In recent weeks, Italy’s and the UK’s Co-op chains announced they would stop selling 'Israeli' products, and now other retailers—such as the UK’s Waitrose and Germany’s Aldi—are reportedly following suit, even without public declarations.

17
 
 

Norway’s largest pension company says it has divested from two firms selling weapons to the Israeli regime, which uses them in the Gaza war.

KLP said on Monday it will no longer do business with the US-based Oshkosh Corporation and the German-based ThyssenKrupp due to their sale of products to “entities” that use them in “systematic breaches of international law.”

Oshkosh Corporation mostly produces trucks and military vehicles, while ThyssenKrupp makes a broad selection of products, ranging from elevators and industrial machinery to warships.

18
19
20
21
22
 
 

Germany is aiming to establish a joint German-Israeli cyber research centre and deepen collaboration between the two countries' intelligence and security agencies, German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has said.

According to Bild, Dobrindt outlined a five-point plan aimed at establishing what he called a "Cyber Dome", as part of Germany's cyber defence strategy.

Earlier on Sunday, Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Soeder called for the acquisition of 2,000 interceptor missiles to equip Germany with an "Iron Dome" system similar to Israel's short-range missile defence technology.

23
 
 

In 2017, we did exactly what Palestine Action did last week: we broke into an airbase. Our actions were extremely similar to theirs, and so were our aims.

Most of the Royal Saudi Air Force is manufactured right here in the UK by Britain’s merchants of death, BAE Systems. Carrying flags bearing the words of Yemenis whose lives have been destroyed by UK-made weapons, we cut through fences at BAE Warton. We were caught by security just meters from Saudi-bound fighter jets.

In our case, these jets were being sent to Saudi Arabia to be used to create what the UN called “the world’s biggest humanitarian catastrophe” in Yemen. In Palestine Action’s case, British planes are being sent to Cyprus and then mysteriously disappearing over the Mediterranean sea – linked, many suspect, to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

There are a few key differences between our actions and theirs. Unlike Palestine Action, we were not attacked by the Israel lobby. We were not the victims of an obsessive Islamophobic police crackdown. We are both white. Woody is a Methodist reverend: shortly after security caught us, Woody loosened the scarf from his Cambridge theological college to reveal his dog collar. The security guards that had caught us literally went, “Oh shit!”

As a result of our social position and less politicised target, we have been treated completely differently to the members of Palestine Action. We were arrested carrying a list of the serial codes of fighter jets worth over £1bn and a prepared statement explaining our intent to disarm them. Our lawyers were worried it might be the highest-value case of intent to cause criminal damage in British legal history. Their fears were short-lived: the police couldn’t wait to rush Woody out of the station, and charged us with only low-level criminal damage. A court found us not guilty.

24
 
 

The pressure is mounting on European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. On Wednesday, a group of right-wing MEPs announced that they had secured enough support to table a no-confidence against von der Leyen over concerns about her leadership style, lack of transparency and growing accusations of bypassing democratic norms within the EU’s institutional framework.

The initiative, launched by Romanian MEP Gheorghe Piperea, stems from the ongoing “Pfizergate” scandal, which escalated in May when the EU General Court issued a landmark ruling against the Commission for failing to disclose text messages exchanged between von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla during negotiations in 2021 for the purchase of up to 1.8 billion doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at a mind-boggling cost of €35 billion.

The motion was supported by 74 MEPs from various cross-party groups — 32 from the conservative ECR group, 23 from the sovereigntist ESN group (formed on the initiative of the AfD), 4 from the Patriots for Europe Groups, 14 independents and even 1 from the EPP, von der Leyen’s own group. The vote is expected to take place in July 2025, though an exact date has not been set.

While the motion has little chance of succeeding due to the high bar of a two-thirds majority —the EPP has the relative majority in the Parliament — this nonetheless represents a serious political hurdle for von der Leyen: for the first time the European Parliament will be forced to have a public and official discussion about a scandal that for years has been confined to newspaper reports and courtrooms. “The initiative is fundamentally about upholding transparency and ensuring a fair and genuine democratic process”, Piperea said. He acknowledged that the chances for it to succeed were slim, but said it offered a “crucial opportunity for constructive and substantiated criticism towards von der Leyen.

This is about more than just Pfizergate. Since her re-election in 2024, von der Leyen has been fiercely criticised from various quarters for her authoritarian approach and systematic sidelining of the Parliament. Last month, for example, the Commission proposed using an emergency clause in the EU treaty to shut Parliament out of approving a €150 billion loan scheme to boost joint procurement of weapons by EU countries, known as SAFE.

In response to European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, who threatened legal action against the European Commission, von der Leyen defended the move, arguing that the emergency clause is “fully justified” as SAFE is “an exceptional and temporary response to an urgent and existential challenge”.

In this sense, Pfizergate symbolises a broader process of supranationalisation, centralisation and “Commissionisation” of the bloc’s politics, where the Commission has progressively increased its influence over areas of competence that have previously been considered the preserve of national governments — from financial budgets and health policy to foreign affairs and defence. Piperea’s motion also mentions this alleged “procedural abuse”. He “calls on the European Commission to resign due to repeated failures to ensure transparency, persistent disregard for democratic oversight and the rule of law within the Union”.

Thus, while the motion is largely driven by right-wing and conservative factions, it exposes growing dissatisfaction across ideological and party lines. Socialists, liberals and even some Greens — who backed von der Leyen’s re-election — have become increasingly vocal in their criticism over von der Leyen’s leadership style, particularly regarding transparency issues and her withdrawal of a greenwashing law without parliamentary consultation. However, these groups explicitly stated they would not support a “far-right”-led motion.

Ultimately, the no-confidence motion will not topple von der Leyen, but its symbolic force is undeniable. Long-standing concerns over the concentration of power within the Commission can no longer be dismissed as fringe or conspiratorial. By compelling a public debate in the European Parliament, the initiative may begin to tear open the institutional façade of unity and consensus, revealing a growing unease even among mainstream parties with the EU’s escalating techno-authoritarian regime. Whether or not the motion passes, it signals that the age of unquestioned executive authority in Brussels may be nearing its limits — and that a reckoning over the future of EU governance may be fast approaching.

25
 
 

Slovenia has announced that it will take joint action with like-minded countries if the European Union does not take concrete steps within the next two weeks to address the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, which has been under a deadly Israeli assault for the past 21 months.

Speaking to journalists on the side-lines of an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday, Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob criticised some EU member states for prioritising their own interests over the protection of Palestinian human rights.

Golob stressed the importance of the EU taking meaningful action against Israel. He stated: “Unless the EU takes concrete action today or within two weeks, each member state, including Slovenia and some countries that share our views, will be forced to take the next steps on their own.”

view more: next ›