Worldcrunch
With Putin’s war in Ukraine, people may need reminding that Belarusian leader and Putin ally Alexander Lukashenko is a dictator in Europe’s midst, write German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya in an article for Die Welt.
President Macky Sall’s decision to suspend the February 25 presidential election has plunged Senegal into chaos. It’s also grim news for those seeking institutional reform across Africa, where Dakar was long seen as a democratic model.
The far-right AfD party chief has threatened a “Dexit” referendum, where Germany (Deutschland) leaves the European Union. But just ask the British people what they think about how that turned out. Right wing leaders in Italy and France seem to have understood the message.
The leaders of key EU countries have been on the phone with Vladimir Putin since the war in Ukraine began. Weighing the costs, benefits…and morals…of leaving the door open to a man who brutally invaded a sovereign nation — and taking Munich 1938 as a starting point.
The West is a spent force, say China, Russia and their global clique, yet it retains plenty of decisive cards including a choice to back Ukraine to the hilt. The year may yet reveal the world’s rising, and ranking, powers.
The future of Ukraine may be at stake as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban plays hardball with his European counterparts. But the stakes go beyond aid to the war effort, it’s the very status of Europe that is on the line.
Three days since the truce ended, the Israeli army announced that it had launched 10,000 airstrikes on Gaza since the beginning of the war. Total war continues, with the invader’s fiercest fight waged against life itself.
After the start of the war in Ukraine, Russian oligarchs and other rich individuals turned to the real estate markets in Dubai and Turkey. Now Russian buyers are back in Europe. Three EU countries in particular are attracting buyers for their controversial “golden visa” program.
Diplomacy has failed to stave off a resumption of the war in Gaza. Yes, Israel made clear its goal of destroying Hamas is not complete. But the end of the truce is also one more sign that both the U.S. and Europe hold less sway in the region than they once did.
The victory of Geert Wilders’ far-right party in this week’s elections in the Netherlands shows that politics in Europe, at both the national and European Union level, has fundamentally failed to overcome its contradictions.
The state of the Ukraine War was growing fragile even before Oct. 7, but the conflict in the Middle East has changed the equation in Moscow’s favor. It’s not just a shift in attention and resources, but an undermining of the values and rationale behind Kyiv’s cause.
The war is far from over, but on the other side of the Atlantic, preparations are already underway to ensure American businesses access to this promising market. In Europe, no one is making such necessary preparations, worries Jacques Attali.
The recent Polish parliamentary elections have ushered in a significant shift in the country’s political landscape, which includes promising outlook for its neighbor Ukraine that could be essential in shoring up support across Europe as the war with Russia heads into its third winter. But Kyiv shouldn’t take the amity of Donald Tusk and his centrist coalition for granted.
The results from the landmark Polish election, which saw a surge by liberal and center-right parties, is long awaited good news for the European Union… and not-so-good news for Viktor Orban.
Europe’s foreign ministers traveled together to Kyiv yesterday to reaffirm their support for Ukraine. It is necessary after the first signs of “fatigue” in Western support, from a Polish about-face to the victory of a pro-Russian prime minister in Slovakia.
One man’s victory in Slovakia may move the tides of European support for Ukraine, and play into an “illiberal temptation” that is spreading across the continent, with Hungary’s prime minister set to cash in on his perennial clash with the EU.
The European migrant crisis is once again making headlines, this time from the small island of Lampedusa, Italy. It exposes not only the far right’s eagerness to exploit the issue of immigration, but also the delicate balance of power in electoral terms.
It’s undeniable that questions are being raised in the West about the cost of supporting Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion. But no time soon will Western powers turn their backs on Kyiv. And the U.S. in particular has one big extra reason to work against a Russian victory: China.
Moscow relies on international shipping companies to ship its oil, especially tankers flying the Greek flag. To protect its lucrative business, Athens is resisting tougher sanctions — and thus playing right into Vladimir Putin’s hands.
The French dairy group Danone and Denmark’s Carlsberg brewer were in talks with buyers to limit their financial losses in Russia. But the Kremlin’s sudden “temporary” takeover of the two companies Sunday night (involving the seizure of Danone by Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s “favorite” nephew) may in fact be a sign that business is over once and for all for Western subsidiaries that have pulled out since the war began.
Bologna is the first major Italian city to join the city30 initiative, taking on a model that limits the speed of cars in cities to 30 kilometers-per-hour (18.6 mph) and aims to return road space to pedestrians and cyclists.
After 60 years waiting for EU membership, Turkey seems no closer to being brought into the fold. The Cypriot question and the countries’ declining democracy are just a few of the points brought up in ongoing discussions.
The European Parliament voted on Wednesday to approve the EU’s first act regulating AI, which banned some potentially abusive AI tech but left the door open to others that could be used to track, control and deny people seeking refuge in Europe — instead of as a tool to save them.
What you have in your plate isn’t always what you think it is. As food counterfeiting increases in the food industry and in our daily lives, some products are more likely to be “fake”, and it’s up to consumers to be careful.
In 2021, Belarus strongman Lukashenko triggered a migration crisis when he actively drove asylum seekers to the EU. According to the German government, those numbers are on the rise again.
Tunis and Moscow have been increasingly close — at the cost of relations with the West, which had once looked to Tunisia as a model of democracy. The two countries are brought together by Kremlin’s efforts to woo African countries, but also a natural alliance of its strongman Presidents Putin and Saïed.
Rome has been strongly opposed to synthetic foods, insect-based flours and health warnings on alcohol, and aggressive lobbying by Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government against nutritional labeling has prompted accusations in Brussels of “gastronationalism.”
Ukraine has compiled a blacklist of companies it says are “sponsoring” war by still doing business with Russia. The list is causing a stir within the European Union, which is currently working on its 11th round of sanctions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky succeeded in securing massive stocks of weapons essential to Ukraine’s imminent counteroffensive — and, crucially, he laid the groundwork for Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna and her German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock have issued a strong and united call on Beijing to pressure Russia to end its war in Ukraine. It is a reminder of the potential of European power. But the “European Project” is as loaded as ever.
An opposition victory in the elections would be good news for the currently disastrous relations between Ankara and the European Union. But the 27 EU members may not yet be ready to consider Turkey’s integration into the EU.
President Erdogan and his allies have spent the final weeks of the campaign questioning the political legitimacy of their opponents’ eventual victory ahead of the May 14 election. When the vote does come, the risk of setting off a veritable civil war is real.
The result of Turkey’s May 14 election is still very uncertain, but President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s significant failures put his leadership under threat for the first time in 20 years.
“We are realists, and therefore we do not believe in the possibility of a compromise between freedom and slavery…” Poland’s foreign minister has outlined what the country’s foreign strategy will look like in the coming years, built on support of Ukraine and steadfast resistance to the Russian aggressors.
Poland’s unilateral decision to ban imports of Ukraine’s agricultural products, in violation of EU agreements, has caused shock among Ukrainians. Nazar Bobytsky, head of the Ukrainian office of the Polish Union of Entrepreneurs and Employers, says Brussels must show Kyiv it is serious about Ukraine joining the EU.
Translated in full from French, here is the exclusive interview French President Emmanuel Macron gave to three reporters on his way back from his trip to China, in which he insisted that Europe needed more autonomy from the United States.
From the UK to Italy to the U.S., the declarations by politicians that they only want to stop illegal immigration become meaningless if there are virtually no ways to request asylum before leaving home and arriving in a foreign country.
With a decisive deal with Putin out of the question, the only way to create a lasting peace is to recreate some fundamental dynamics of the Cold War.
The Mapping Diversity platform examined maps of 30 cities across 17 European countries, finding that women are severely underrepresented in the group of those who name streets and squares. The one (unsurprising) exception: The Virgin Mary.
With the right support, Ukrainians are ready to return, even to new parts of the country where they’ve never lived.