Author: staff
Swedish security service members who shared details of their running and cycling routes on fitness app Strava have been accused of revealing details of the prime minister’s location, including his private address. According to Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, on at least 35 occasions bodyguards uploaded their workouts to the training app and revealed information linked to Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, including where he goes running, details of overnight trips abroad, and the location of his private home, which is supposed to be secret. Information uploaded to Strava was also linked to the Swedish royal family, former Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson,…
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance has called on Sweden, Portugal, Croatia and Latvia to take stronger action against hate speech, predominantly targeting migrants, Roma, LGBTQ+ and Black people. This call comes as an average medium level of online toxicity has been recorded since the beginning of 2025, according to the European Observatory of Online Hate (EOOH). Online toxicity encompasses rude, aggressive, and degrading attitudes and behaviour exhibited on online platforms. It can range from an excessive use of profanity to outright hate speech. The EOOH scores toxicity in four different categories from safe (score of 0) to high…
This included alleged inflated and fictitious contracts, violations of procurement procedures and donations for non-parliamentary activities to groups — including a non-profit in France that sterilizes cats — linked to politicians in the ID group. Philip Claeys, the group’s former secretary-general, denied any wrongdoing last week, saying that all the payments were “duly invoiced and justified.” The ID group in the previous European Parliament term featured far-right and nationalist parties such as France’s National Rally (RN) and the Alternative for Germany. Earlier this year, RN leader Marine Le Pen was found guilty of embezzling European Parliament funds in a…
By Eleonora Vasques & Video Editor: David Brodheim Published on 08/07/2025 – 14:03 GMT+2Europe must not scale back its engagement with Africa as the global geopolitical landscape shifts, the director of the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Africa Bureau has warned.“Africa has a great deal to offer, particularly in terms of its demographics,” she said. “With a very young population, the continent is projected to account for a quarter of the world’s population in the next century.”This youthful demographic is particularly relevant for Europe, which faces an ageing population and increasing demand for young talent to drive innovation and growth, she said.But the…
Published on 08/07/2025 – 16:25 GMT+2At least 13 people are believed to have killed themselves because of Britain’s Post Office scandal, in which almost 1,000 postal workers were wrongly prosecuted or convicted of criminal wrongdoing due to a faulty IT system, a public inquiry revealed on Tuesday.Another 59 people contemplated suicide over the scandal, one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history, according to the first findings from the inquiry.Between 1999 and 2015, hundreds of people who worked at Post Office branches were wrongly convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting because faulty software showed a shortfall. Some…
European Democracy Commissioner Michael McGrath said officials in Brussels are now drawing up plans to strengthen EU countries’ compliance by making it mandatory to uphold rule-of-law standards as a condition of receiving funding from the bloc’s €1.2 trillion budget. The Commission is due to set out its draft budget blueprint ― covering the seven years from 2028 ― on July 16. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, McGrath said “the most concerning” parts of the 800-page report were where countries had failed to make any progress at all against the Commission’s recommendations in the past 12 months. “When you look at…
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Tuesday scolded fellow EU leaders who have chosen to put aside the fight against the climate crisis for the sake of boosting competitiveness and cutting red tape.”It seems to me that because there are so many other things on the table and so many challenges that some colleagues are starting to forget that fighting climate change should be one of our top priorities,” Frederiksen said in Strasbourg.Her reproach comes as Denmark assumes the rotating presidency of the EU Council, giving the country an enlarged role in the bloc’s decision-making process, including the negotiations on…
Published on 08/07/2025 – 14:43 GMT+2•Updated 14:44Ministers in the UK tabled amendments to the Employment Rights Bill on Monday night to prohibit the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to cover up workplace misconduct.On Tuesday morning, the UK government posted an update on their website confirming the change to the bill, expected to become law later this year. This comes as part of the government’s Plan for Change in a bid to address workplace rights and equality, which it describes as “the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation”.NDAs, legal contracts that prevent certain pieces of information from being shared, were…
Published on 08/07/2025 – 14:47 GMT+2The European Commission will likely have to decide whether the European Union needs new laws to force video game companies to preserve discontinued online games, after a successful citizens’ petition.A European Citizens’ Initiative called Stop Killing Games surpassed one million signatures in at least seven member states, which is the threshold to force the Commission to consider issues raised by the public.The petition argues that when video game makers decide to sell or discontinue online games, they typically sever the server connection needed for the games to run, effectively “destroy[ing] all working copies of the…
“What has been mainstream among our populations for quite many years is now mainstream for many of us politicians as well, finally,” she said. “Maybe not in Parliament, but gladly, and I am really happy about that, in the European Council,” where several leaders of EU countries leaders are determined to address migration problems. In pushing for a tougher approach Frederiksen finds herself on the same side as right-wing Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and center-right Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The Parliament ― the bloc’s only directly elected body ― is more divided than Europe’s governments, however. With a…