Author: staff

Candidates must be European nationals, show “important academic qualities” and have management experience, as well as speaking English and French. “In executing their responsibilities, the Rector will live up to the high ethical standards and values of the College of Europe,” the notice said. The elite training ground for future EU civil servants may be hoping for a quieter selection process than last time around, when Mogherini, the EU’s former top diplomat, won the job even though she applied after the deadline and despite accusations of cronyism and not being qualified for the role. Mogherini resigned in early December after…

Published on 12/12/2025 – 14:19 GMT+1 •Updated 15/12/2025 – 10:20 GMT+1 Hello Friday! While you start your weekend, Brussels is sweating over a deadline that has been 25 years in the making. Next Tuesday, the European Parliament votes on “safeguards” — basically, to ensure no disruption of our market and to keep the unfair competition in check. If that passes, it clears the path. Then, on Saturday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio fly to Brazil to sign the deal. Even if signed, the European Parliament must ratify it. With the hard right and…

Published on 15/12/2025 – 13:31 GMT+1 Hours after 15 people were killed around a Jewish Hanukkah festival at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, more and more information about the two gunmen has emerged. According to police, the shooters were 50-year old fruit shop owner Sajid Akram, who died in a shootout with law enforcement, and his 24-year old son Naveed, an umemployed bricklayer, who was severely injured and taken to a hospital where he remained in critical but stable condition under police guard. The older Akram had arrived in Australia in 1998 on a student visa, then became a permanent resident in…

Meanwhile, staffers from Belgium, Italy, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and France are considered “appropriately represented.” The document does not spell out which nationalities are overrepresented. A separate internal document, dating from early November, sets out a plan to address and correct these imbalances, which a Commission official — granted anonymity to speak freely — attributed to the fact that the institution’s salary and benefits package may be highly attractive in some countries and less so in others. These benefits include ironclad job security, flexible working arrangements, free access to European schools, and tax-free income. In the short term, starting in 2026, people recruiting staff…

Donald Trump has unleashed a fresh barrage of criticism against various European countries, particularly regarding the way they are handling immigration. The US president took aim at the cities of Paris and London, as well as Germany and Sweden, in a 9 December interview with Politico. He accused Europe of being “weak” and in “decay” because countries are too focused on being “politically correct”. “If you look at Sweden, Sweden was known as the safest country in Europe, one of the safest countries in the world,” Trump said. “Now it’s known as a very unsafe, well, quite unsafe country. It’s…

Updated: 15/12/2025 – 12:00 GMT+1 Catch up with the most important stories from around Europe and beyond this December 15th, 2025 – latest news, breaking news, World, Business, Entertainment, Politics, Culture, Travel. … More

Europe prides itself on being a world leader in animal protection, with legal frameworks requiring member states to pay regard to animal welfare standards when designing and implementing policies. However, under REACH — Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) — the EU’s cornerstone regulation on chemical safety, hundreds of thousands of animals are subjected to painful tests every year, despite the legal requirement that animal testing should be used only as a ‘last resort’. With REACH’s first major revamp in almost 20 years forthcoming, lawmakers now face a once-in-a-generation opportunity to drive a genuine transformation of chemical regulation. …

Published on 15/12/2025 – 10:24 GMT+1 They called Europe “weak”. Well, Brussels just locked down €210 billion of Russian Central Bank cash. Most of it sits right here in Belgium, in Euroclear. Think of it as the world’s most nervous piggy bank. Until now, keeping it frozen required a unanimous vote every six months. That made the cash a hostage to vetoes, especially Hungary’s. So, last week, the EU pulled a legal trick: an “emergency clause”. In times of crisis, it allows for majority voting to bypass unanimity so that no single country can veto. Now, the assets are frozen…

Published on 15/12/2025 – 10:39 GMT+1 The Word of the Year reflects the preoccupations of the time… And in an age of post-truth, deepfakes and creepy online content courtesy of generative AI, Merriam-Webster has crowned the word “slop” as its 2025 Word of the Year. The dictionary defines “slop” as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence.” “The flood of slop in 2025 included absurd videos, off-kilter advertising images, cheesy propaganda, fake news that looks pretty real, junky AI-written books, “workslop” reports that waste coworkers’ time… and lots of talking cats.…

Decarbonization is not a single pathway but a spectrum of viable ones chosen daily by operators facing real-world conditions. But scaling electrification faces structural bottlenecks. Grid capacity is constrained across the EU, and upgrades routinely take years. As most heavy-duty vehicle charging will occur at depots, operators cannot simply move around to look for grid opportunities. They are bound to the location of their facilities.  The recently published grid package tries, albeit timidly, to address some of these challenges, but it neither resolves the core capacity deficiencies nor fixes the fundamental conditions that determine a positive TCO: the predictability of…