Author: staff

Instead, the country’s farmers have been demonstrating, sometimes violently, against a treaty that has crystallized their long-standing anger with European rules on food, environmental safety and animal welfare. They object, in particular, to the abolition or reduction of tariffs on 160,000 metric tons of Mercosur beef, which they say is produced by methods banned in the EU, such as the use of artificial growth hormones. Brussels, for its part, notes that the treaty specifically excludes hormone-enhanced beef, and that the annual beef quota for Mercosur is a small fraction of the EU market and less than Europe currently imports. However,…

If no party from the left agrees to work with the “civil war parties,” it would be due in part to the terrible outcomes that have befallen any small party to have done so in the past. Annihilation on the left Since Fianna Fáil’s half-century of political dominance ended in the 1980s and multi-party coalitions became the Irish norm, smaller parties that entered government have without exception been crushed by voters in the following election. This brutal pattern was just repeated. In 2020, when Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael needed a substantial third party to forge a majority, it persuaded…

Yet others are clearly less ready to use any wiggle-room. “What happens with individual government bonds is typically a reflection of what may be happening politically in the country at the time,” Bundesbank chief Joachim Nagel said Friday. Wider spreads that arise in such a context “wouldn’t be an issue that would justify us concluding that the transmission of the monetary policy impulse is disrupted.” Analysts don’t expect the ECB to pull the trigger immediately.   “If you look at the criteria that they listed, France doesn’t meet many of these,”  Bas van Geffen, senior macro strategist at Rabobank, told POLITICO.…

“The Georgian people should be able to stand up for their rights because their ruling party has been systematically lying to Georgians for a long time, and people have the right to express their feelings through protests. Violence against protesters is disproportionate and against human rights,” said Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna in a statement. New EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas said on Sunday that the country’s democratic backsliding “will have direct consequences from [the] EU side.” Thousands of protesters have been demonstrating in front of the Georgian parliament demanding the government resign after Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced…

The U.K. prime minister — who has been at pains to talk up a good-natured dinner with Trump before the U.S. Republican won in November — sought to put Britain’s ties with America in a historical context. He reeled off past prime ministers who had worked with both the U.S. and Europe in times of upheaval, and pointed to the “shared sacrifice” of two world wars. “[Clement] Attlee did not choose between allies,” Starmer said. “[Winston] Churchill did not choose. The national interest demands that we work with both.” Starmer added: “Our relationship with the United States has been the…

His more experienced coalition partner, Micheál Martin, appears best positioned to lead the next government — and insists he won’t turn left to Sinn Féin or right to anti-immigrant independents. Nov 29 9 mins read

So Macron will just appoint a new prime minister, right?  Yes, but it’s not that simple.  The French National Assembly is divided into three political blocs: Macron’s centrists, the far-right National Rally, and the left-wing coalition. The three groups are poles apart on politics and refuse to work together, meaning that any new government could be toppled in days.  “To appoint a new government, you need to find a political space to support it,” Morel said. “But the centrists can’t support even a soft center-left candidate such as [former PM] Bernard Cazeneuve because they hate the far-left France Unbowed party”…

Running as an independent, Georgescu is due to face liberal Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union (USR) on Sunday.  The court ordered a ballot recount Thursday over allegations that votes from one candidate, who dropped out a week before the election and threw his support behind Lasconi, were illegally transferred to her on election night.  Constitutional Court President Marian Enache said all nine justices on the court had agreed the allegation was unfounded and that the election results were thus valid. While the recount did lead to slightly different vote totals for some candidates, the variations were not due…

“Merz wants to issue an ultimatum to the nuclear power, Russia,” Scholz wrote. “All I can say is: When it comes to war and peace, you don’t need an unpredictable opposition leader, you need a cool head.” Merz, who is in pole position to become Germany’s next chancellor, has frequently criticized Scholz for refusing to deliver Germany’s long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Merz has said he would deliver the cruise missiles to Kyiv if the Kremlin refuses an ultimatum to stop bombing civilian targets in Ukraine. In Germany, Scholz’s surprise trip was widely seen as an attempt by the leader to…

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico criticized the European Union’s new foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, and Council President António Costa for expressing support for Ukraine on behalf of the bloc on Monday.He said had he conveyed those sentiments in a phone call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen earlier in the day.“Neither members of the Commission nor the president of the European Council can permit themselves to make statements, in the name of the European Union, on which the European Union and the European Council have never agreed,” Fico told reporters regarding the call. “They made statements that…