Author: staff
Access to effective and affordable contraception remains highly unequal across Europe — but most countries are heading in the right direction. The latest Contraception Policy Atlas by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF) shows that 22 out of 47 countries now include contraceptives in their national health systems. Counselling services are also covered in all of them except Austria. The report also notes that nearly a quarter of European countries provide high-quality, government-run websites offering clear information about contraception. In 17% of countries, emergency contraception is available free of charge at pharmacies or public health centres.…
In a series of interviews with French and American media, Macron praised Trump’s decision to, in the U.S. president’s words, provide Ukraine with a “very good security guarantee.” “The big change in recent days is that he has acknowledged the need to guarantee Ukraine’s security,” Macron told Paris Match. What that security guarantee entails is not yet clear, though Macron told LCI that “the British, French, Germans, Turks and others are ready to carry out operations, not at the frontline, not provocatively, but reassurance operations in the air, at sea and on land.” Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer…
The company then filed a complaint with the Investigatory Powers Tribunal challenging the Home Secretary’s powers to issue such a notice. The dispute has been a sticking point in negotiations for a tech cooperation pact between London and Washington. The Financial Times reported last month that senior Washington officials, including Vice President JD Vance, were pressuring the U.K. to drop its fight with Apple. The U.S. State Department’s annual assessment of countries’ human rights records published last month raised concerns about U.K. “government regulation to reduce or eliminate effective encryption (and therefore user privacy) on platforms,” though appeared to confuse…
Zelenskyy also presented Trump with a letter written by his wife Olena Zelenska to the U.S. first lady, expressing gratitude for Melania Trump’s efforts to appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to return 20,000 kidnapped Ukrainian children to their relatives. “Let me thank your wife. Because she sent a letter concerning our children, and my wife, the first lady of Ukraine, gave her the letter,” Zelensky said as he handed the letter to Trump on Monday. Zelenskyy, for his part, didn’t leave empty-handed: Trump recorded a video thanking Kartavtsev for the golf club, and gave Zelenskyy a symbolic set of…
Asked about NATO membership and security guarantees for Ukraine, Trump took the question, firmly stating nothing had yet been decided and indicating that was something to be discussed with the European leaders, who were no doubt tuning in nervously. The two nodded at each other and Zelenskyy was careful not to be drawn into publicly pressing for NATO membership during the session with journalists. Security breakthrough And why would he? He’d just heard Trump offering what many observers see as a game-changer by publicly floating a seemingly major U.S. security guarantee for Ukraine as part of any peace agreement with…
By Emma De Ruiter with AP Published on 19/08/2025 – 7:36 GMT+2 •Updated 8:28 As they emerged from talks in the White House, European leaders expressed guarded optimism that US President Donald Trump could be finding momentum in his quest to fulfil his campaign promise of ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The leaders of France, Germany, Finland, Italy and the UK, as well as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO chief Mark Rutte showed a united front in the talks with Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said after the meeting that there was “real…
Meanwhile, the Dutch central bank did manage to stick to its €320 million refurbishment budget, in stark contrast to developments in The Hague, where a similar project for the Binnenhof Parliament buildings ended up coming in at more than four times the initial estimate. And the Central Bank of Ireland’s new HQ also cost a relatively modest €323 million — although it got its hands on the property for a knockdown price because its original owner, Anglo-Irish Bank, collapsed in 2009, taking the entire Irish economy with it. Building projects and monetary policy are of course two entirely unrelated disciplines,…
Published on 19/08/2025 – 7:45 GMT+2 Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has intensified a specific kind of propaganda campaign, which consists of digitally altering and faking news reports from mainstream news outlets. For instance, a news segment which was aired on the Euronews programme Good Morning Romania in February recently surfaced on pro-Russian social media accounts and Telegram channels. They took a statement made by Cristian Diaconescu, head of Romania’s presidential chancellery, out of context, to make it seem like he supported the idea of Romania leaving NATO and joining Russia. “Romania must join Russia. We don’t…
Ahead of negotiations that start in earnest this fall with the Council of the EU, which represents the bloc’s 27 member countries, we crunched the numbers on which countries may be most affected by the proposed changes to the CAP in the bloc’s next seven-year fiscal term. Big picture In the 2023 financial year, 20 percent of the EU’s farms received 80 percent of direct payments. The majority of these payments are decoupled area-based payments, meaning that farmers are paid per hectare regardless of what they produce. This means large-scale farms can benefit from huge payouts. In order to limit…
They say that inspiration comes from the most unexpected places. But who would have thought that a public office setting could inspire romantic – and oftentimes dark and even forbidden- erotic fantasies? Those politicians from Spain, France, Austria or the UK used their own experience and put on paper their romantic or sexual life. Here are their stories. Think of this not as a reading list, but as a peek into a rather unexpected literary niche. Thomas Oberreiter, Austrian Ambassador to the European Union (2023-2025) At the end of July, a story made jaws drop in Brussels: Austria’s representative to…