Author: staff

With Canada, the European Union has opened the door to a new way for the European project to affiliate with third countries that aren’t even on its own continent. The rest of the world will be watching closely. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney spearheaded the idea of an alliance of middle powers in his seminal speech in Davos earlier this year. A few months later, Canada might provide the blueprint for how the EU integrates third countries. On Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen invited Canada to become “the first associate member of the European Union,” proposing an…

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Published on 18/09/2026 – 7:14 GMT+2 The Bank of Japan has been trying to normalise monetary policy after decades of keeping interest rates near or below zero to try to encourage more borrowing and spending to counter deflation and pull Japan’s economy out of the doldrums. Inflationary pressures are rising because of the war in Iran, which has sent oil prices soaring in recent months. That is a big negative for resource-poor Japan, which virtually imports all its oil. The rate increase, coming at the end of the two-day monetary policy board meeting, was expected, widely figured into recent global…

Every new football season also brings back one of the most aggressive digital filtering mechanisms in Europe. Backed by court rulings, LaLiga, the league body headed by Javier Tebas, orders Spanish operators to block in real time hundreds of IP addresses supposedly linked to the illegal broadcasting of matches. The original aim is to curb piracy, but the real effect is another: the internet does not work with dedicated servers for each website, so when an IP is cut off, a whole series of services that have nothing to do with football are dragged down with it. In other words,…

While a suspension would be in line with EU rules on the shipment of waste, it would also jeopardize the bloc’s most important market for trash. Last year, Turkey received a third of the EU’s exported plastic waste. The Commission assessment, dated Sept. 1 and obtained by POLITICO, reported a long list of concerns over Turkey’s treatment of EU waste, including the fact that only around 10% of plastic waste is recycled in the country, while the majority goes to landfills, is mismanaged or leaks into the environment. The Commission official said the report pointed to “several instances” of plastic…

Civil defence teams are still searching the rubble for survivors, while rescuers use heavy machinery to clear the debris. The bodies of children and other victims have been recovered, but dozens of people remain missing. The building, in the Tal al-Hawa area of western Gaza City, was damaged in strikes early in the war and was already cracked when displaced families moved in. Civil defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said crews received a report of the collapse at around 2:15 to 3 am local time and immediately began rescuing people trapped inside. He said residents were aware of the danger but…

They are pressuring Ireland, in its position at the helm of the six-month rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, which is steering the talks, to cut hundreds of billions of euros in their next negotiating document due in October. Officials involved in the negotiations who spoke to POLITICO and were granted anonymity because the discussions are confidential see more moderate cuts as the most likely outcome. Debt time bomb The EU’s seven-year budget, the multiannual financial framework, which governs EU spending from farmers’ subsidies to student exchange programs, is the subject of some of the fiercest negotiations in…

The internationally backed Kosovo court’s verdict sentencing former President Hashim Thaçi to 25 years in prison for war crimes sparked shock and anger among most Kosovars on Wednesday. Judges of the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague found Thaçi and three other former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) leaders guilty of illegal arrests, torture, murder and cruel treatment during the 1998-1999 war for independence from Serbia. But among many Kosovo Albanians, Thaçi and his co-defendants are still widely lauded as heroes of the independence movement — and their simmering anger threatened to escalate into wholesale riots. In Prishtina, a crowd of…

The old global order is breaking down. Ursula von der Leyen thinks Europe may have to start building something new around it. In her State of the European Union speech, she floated closer ties with Canada — even “associate membership” — and a new European Security Council, as Europe looks for new ways to work with like-minded powers in an increasingly chaotic world. But both ideas immediately raised questions about whether von der Leyen was getting ahead of her own allies. Host Sarah Wheaton is joined by POLITICO Executive Editor Carrie Budoff Brown, senior EU climate reporter Zia Weise and…

Published on 17/09/2026 – 11:43 GMT+2•Updated 12:07 The Palestinian Authority on Thursday sharply criticised a decision by the United States to deny visas to its officials ahead of next week’s UN General Assembly in New York, a measure that also affects its president Mahmoud Abbas. In a statement, the Palestinian foreign ministry called it “an unjustified measure that runs counter to efforts to rebuild trust, develop Palestinian–US relations, and create the necessary political climate for implementing the two-state solution and achieving peace and stability”. The decision marks the second consecutive year in which Abbas has been prevented from traveling to…