Author: staff

Nicușor Dan, the mayor Nicușor Dan is an independent candidate who has been the mayor of Bucharest, Romania’s capital, since 2020.  A mathematician, he moved into activism and politics in the late 1990s upon his return from Paris, where he had completed his doctoral studies. His activism, he said, aimed to counter the “real estate mafia” in an effort to preserve green spaces and heritage sites in Bucharest. In 2015 he founded the Save Bucharest Union, a political party that later became the Save Romania Union (USR), shifting its focus from the local to the national arena.  Nicușor Dan is…

While the concept lost some of its relevance at the end of the Cold War, it is back in the spotlight with the return of Donald Trump and the war in Ukraine. Are spheres of influence making a comeback on the international stage?The concept lost relevance at the end of the Cold War but seems to be regaining interest with the return of Donald Trump to the White House and the war in Ukraine.”The prolonged crisis in Ukraine has really brought the concept back into global conversations about geopolitics and security. And more recently, the return of Donald Trump to…

“This war, particularly on tariffs, is like a boomerang being thrown,” he said. Those using tariffs are “forgetting that [the boomerang] is coming back.” The U.S. president sat down with national leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron. | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images His remarks come as cracks have started to appear in the bloc’s unity in how to respond to Trump’s erratic tariff threats. Faced with early criticism from France, Germany, Ireland and Italy, the European Commission was forced to broaden its consultations with EU capitals in the lead-up to imposing tariffs on €18 billion of U.S. exports, a move…

ANCOM oversees the Digital Services Act in Romania, the European Union’s social media rulebook that governs how platforms like TikTok and X moderate online speech. “We’ve never seen something like” what happened in the November 2024 presidential election, Popescu said. Unsurprisingly, Popescu has drawn the scorn of X owner Elon Musk, who on March 10 posted that “you can tell who the bad guys are by who is demanding censorship,” with a link to a post picturing Popescu. United States Vice President JD Vance also singled out Romania in a February speech in Munich in which he called EU regulators…

– Mehr Uneinigkeit bei den Verhandlungen als erwartet: wie jetzt “die da oben” den Zwist und Streit lösen müssen, der in den Arbeitsgruppen nicht ausgeräumt werden konnte.– Erneuter Angriff auf die Demokratie: Wie die EU mit der Türkei umgehen wird, nach der Verhaftung und Absetzung des Istanbuler Bürgermeisters und Erdoğan-Gegners Ekrem İmamoğlu. Hans von der Burchard berichtet.– Im 200-Sekunden-Interview dazu: der SPD-Außenexperte Nils Schmid.– Rede ohne Zeitbegrenzung: Wie lang wird Gregor Gysi als Alterspräsident wirklich sprechen? Eine Mutmaßung.  Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es morgens um 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team bringen euch jeden Morgen auf den…

“We are talking about many hundreds of millions in benefits to business, trade  and growth and at the time HMG had budgeted for this.” Costs rack up A Freedom of Information Request submitted by POLITICO shows that HM Revenue and Customs has spent at least £105.18 million on the plans to date. This includes £25.8 million in 2022-23, £44.81 million in 2023-24 and £34.54 million in 2024-25, not including February and March this year. In its response, HMRC noted that in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 financial years, the program was the responsibility of the Cabinet Office’s Future Borders Programme. It…

Musk, the largest political donor to U.S. President Donald Trump’s successful 2024 election campaign, has assumed a loosely defined government role in which he spearheads efforts within the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut the size of the American state. This role, along with the billionaire’s antagonistic posting on social media, his boosting of far-right propaganda and the Nazi-style salute he gave in public shortly after Trump’s election, has made him a lightning rod for anti-Trump sentiment and his products a target of protestors. “Things are so bad that a friend of mine who was trying to save the…

“[U.S. President Donald] Trump’s anti-democratic actions at home have fueled a global climate where autocrats elsewhere feel empowered to further crush dissent,” she said. Trump, who regularly calls for his political opponents to be locked up, is hardly likely to lecture Erdoğan, publicly or privately, over İmamoğlu’s incarceration. And in an interview with the MAGA-loyal Tucker Carlson last week, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff described a recent phone conversation between the two leaders as “great” and “transformational.” So, why move against him now and launch the arrests of 106 others, including officials from İmamoğlu’s CHP? | Yasin Akgul/Getty Images Admittedly,…

“What was done to President Tayyip Erdoğan and to me in the past should not be done to Ekrem İmamoğlu either … We must not lose the rule of law and justice. Otherwise, Türkiye will lose,” Gül said. In 1998, Erdoğan was convicted for inciting religious hatred and banned from politics after reciting a poem when he was mayor of Istanbul. What happens now? The Turkish constitution limits presidents to two terms and Erdoğan’s current term ends in 2028. If parliament calls for early elections, Erdoğan, 71, could legally run again before finishing his second term.  Several observers reckon Erdoğan’s…

But the participation of Beijing — an ally of Moscow — in the mission could boost the prospects of the peacekeeping effort, considering that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s support for Putin has only grown since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The peacekeeping mission being pushed by a “coalition of the willing” is an initiative of Britain and France aiming to unite allied European governments to protect Ukraine after any peace deal. Canada and Turkey could also join the group. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer told allies on Friday that three more days of military planning…