Author: staff

This accounting trick was repeatedly mentioned in last year’s audits, and this year the Parliament’s administration urged organizations in several meetings “to discontinue the practice,” the report says. “There could have been an attempt to fraudulently use public money,” said Louis Drouneau, founder of the European Democracy Consulting, an organization that tracks political party donations and expenditure. “And since there is so little transparency regarding the expenses of European parties … this decreases the ability of civil society and the press to keep a watchful eye on party expenses,” he said. “This is noticeably different from the level of transparency enacted in…

Romania’s pro-European coalition government collapsed on Tuesday after lawmakers voted in favour of a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan, triggering a fresh period of turmoil in the less than a year after the coalition was sworn in. The joint effort was launched last week when the leftist Social Democratic Party (PSD), which withdrew from the coalition in late April, and the hard-right opposition Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), submitted the motion to Parliament. After a parliamentary debate, 281 lawmakers voted in favour of the motion and four against. Lawmakers from Bolojan’s centre-right National Liberal Party (PNL)…

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday rebuffed U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to hike tariffs on European cars, warning Washington to stick to the terms of its trade deal with Brussels. Speaking out for the first time since Trump’s Friday announcement that he would impose 25 percent tariffs on EU-made automobiles, von der Leyen flatly stated that “a deal is a deal.” “We have a deal, and the essence of this deal is prosperity, common rules and reliability,” she said during a press conference at the EU-Armenia summit in Yerevan. While the EU is in the “final…

Published on 05/05/2026 – 13:52 GMT+2 Sweden’s government said on Tuesday it would push forward with a plan to form a new spy agency targeting overseas threats, part of a wider rethink prompted by Russia’s war in Ukraine. The new agency would be called Sweden’s foreign intelligence service (UND) and would start operations in January 2027, Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said at a press conference. “During the ongoing war in Ukraine, it has become very clear that an information advantage and the ability to rapidly and continuously adapt various technical systems are just as crucial as advanced weapons systems,”…

Singapore Airlines, which is frequently named among the world’s best, has just announced it will be rolling out Starlink-powered WiFi from next year. The Singaporean flag carrier will offer the service for free to all customers, including economy class, provided you are a KrisFlyer member. The loyalty programme is free to join. The roll out will begin in the first quarter of 2027, and will be added to the airline’s Airbus A350-900 long‑haul, A350-900 ultra‑long‑range and A380 aircraft. It is expected that the fleet will be fully connected by the end of 2029. Singapore Airlines already offers complimentary WiFi to…

The British PM said additional security measures alone will not prevent attacks. “We must also deal with the forces that drive this hatred in the first place, so we’re confronting them directly,” he said. “One of the lines of inquiry is whether a foreign state has been behind some of these incidents. We’re investigating, of course, all the possibilities and we’re clear that these actions will have consequences if that proves to be the case,” Starmer added. Counterterrorism officers were investigating a suspected arson at a former synagogue in east London Tuesday morning, the Met police said in a statement.…

Published on 05/05/2026 – 12:51 GMT+2 NATO is still assessing the broader implications of the US decision to cut at least 5000 US troops from NATO territory, senior military spokesperson Col. Martin O’Donnell told the Europe Today show. The 32-member alliance currently hosts around 80,000 US forces across European territory, and O’Donnell says it’s ‘business as usual’ until more details emerge on which operations will be affected. “All those things are still under consideration,” Colonel Martin O’Donnell told Euronews. The Pentagon has abruptly announced that the troop withdrawal will take place within the next 6 to 9 months and will…

European political parties are misspending their cash, while the public is left in the dark about what’s going on. The European Parliament’s department of finance found political parties and foundations had misspent €1.5 million during the 2024 EU election campaign. Zoya and Ian discuss which parties are the biggest offenders. They also explain how the European Parliament — with the help of complex bureaucratic processes — helps these parties avoid broader scrutiny. Also on the pod, EU finance ministers are meeting today to discuss getting financial support for Ukraine from countries outside the bloc. While we’re on the topic of geopolitics, Zoya and Ian have some breaking news…

Dutch social media users and activists claim that the country’s Senate has rejected a law that would have made residing in the Netherlands irregularly “illegal”. The Senate did recently throw out a bill, designed by the far-right populist PVV party, to take a harder line on illegal immigration. The controversial bill, dubbed the Asylum Emergency Measures Act, was devised during the previous government in a bid to tighten Dutch asylum policy before the broader EU Migration Pact fully comes into force in June. But online narratives suggest that striking down the bill would entail a major legal reversal that would…

In the first visit to Azerbaijan by an Italian premier in 13 years, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni said on Monday that the two countries needed to hold tight to reliable partnerships as instability spread across the Middle East. “The more instability grows around us, the more important it is to strengthen the certainties we have — and the relationship between Italy and Azerbaijan is certainly one of those certainties,” Meloni said at a joint press conference with President Ilham Aliyev in Baku. The visit comes as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed Rome to secure alternative energy supplies…