European Union

In this week’s edition: Stalling EU military aid for Ukraine, next steps on EU accession talks and space jam.

More than 300,000 pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through central London on Saturday (11 November), with police arresting over 120 people as they sought to stop far-right counter-protesters from ambushing the main rally.

Russia on Saturday (11 November) launched a missile attack on Ukraine's capital Kyiv and the surrounding region for the first time in more than seven weeks and pounded the east and south of the country with drones, Ukrainian officials said.

Israel faced mounting international pressure, including from its main ally the United States, to do more to protect Palestinian civilians in Gaza as the death toll rose and fighting intensified near and around hospitals.

President Joe Biden will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping face-to-face for the first time in a year on Wednesday (15 November), the White House said, in high-stakes diplomacy aimed at curbing tensions between the world's two superpowers.

A European Union plan to spend up to €20 billion on military aid for Ukraine is meeting resistance from EU countries and may not survive in its current form, diplomats say.

Le président du Conseil européen Charles Michel est intervenu lors de la session "Des multicrises aux multiconflits: comment arrêter le cercle vicieux?" du Forum de Paris sur la paix. Il a mis l’accent sur la guerre en Ukraine, l’élargissement, le multilatéralisme et la réforme des Nations unies.

Main agenda items, approximate timing, public sessions and press opportunities.

Dans son discours prononcé lors de la session "Concrétiser le Pacte de Paris pour les peuples et la planète" du Forum de Paris sur la paix, le président du Conseil européen, Charles Michel, a insisté sur le fait qu'un financement mondial efficace était essentiel pour répondre aux défis mondiaux, y compris la lutte contre la pauvreté et la protection de notre planète.

Information about accreditation requirements for the one-year badge (2024)

A new NATO cyber forum aims to increase cooperation between NATO members as well as with the private sector to ramp up the Western military alliance's response to future cyber threats.

The European Socialist Party (PES) did not reach a common position on the current events in Israel and Palestine during its national congress occurring in Málaga, Spain, a source from the PES told Euractiv. 

Over seven weeks, the European Defence Agency (EDA) oversaw the ninth Helicopter Tactics Instructors Course (HTIC) at Sintra Airbase No1 in Portugal and Pápa Air Base in Hungary. It was the final course of its kind managed by EDA before being transferred to the Multinational Helicopter Training Centre (MHTC) in Portugal.

The course was structured in a two-week classroom phase, followed by a two-week simulator phase at Sintra Airbase No1. After a week of recovery and transfer of aircrafts, participants engaged in live flying exercises and demanding missions in a three-week deployment to the Pápa Air Base in Hungary. 

Supported by personnel from the Hungarian Defence Forces and Pápa Air Base, the flying phase included a complex operational scenario employing dissimilar formation flying, Evasion Training against a range of airborne threats, Electronic Warfare (EW) exercises against both ground-based and airborne systems and performing a variety of additional tasks, such as Helicopter Assault, Convoy Escort, and Vehicle Interdiction. The course was led by the EDA HTIC Chief Instructor Maj Christian Kappl with participating crews from Austria, Czechia, Germany, Hungary, Portugal, and Slovakia flying on five different types of helicopters: AH-101, UH-60, OH-58, H145M, and Mi-171.

Throughout the course, the staff instructors from Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, and Sweden received specialised support from Inzpire Ltd. Units of the Czech Alca Jets and the Hungarian Gripens provided fixed wing support, acting mainly as threats during the training. In addition, EW assets and ground troops were provided by Austria, Germany, Hungary, and Slovenia.

In total, 15 Bronze, six Silver, and four Gold qualifications were awarded during the graduation ceremony, ensuring an important contribution to the international cadre of Helicopter Tactics Instructors (HTI) and the improvement of the national capabilities.

This year’s HTIC was the final edition managed by EDA. Following the training’s successful delivery, it has reached a high state of maturity, international recognition and has developed a growing cadre of HTI, facilitating a seamless and secure transition to the MHTC by the end of 2023.

For more details on EDA's helicopter initiatives, please see here.

EU defence ministers are expected to issue a joint statement on Tuesday (14 November) calling on banks to grant the defence industry access to loans, in a bid to remove hurdles for greater investment into production capacities.

In the wise words of a wizarding great, Albus Dumbledore, “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

Vladimir Putin’s biggest – and wildest – project is to resuscitate the Soviet Union in some form during his lifetime. But he has a problem: No country wants to join the Russian Federation, not even Belarus, despite its vassal status.

Written by Laurence Amand-Eeckhout.

World Diabetes Day – marked every year on 14 November – was proclaimed by the United Nations in 2007, to raise awareness of diabetes and related complications, and to promote prevention and care, including through education.

Background

Diabetes is a chronic disease that occurs when the pancreas is no longer able to produce insulin, or when the body cannot make good use of the insulin it produces. There are three main types of diabetes: type 1, type 2 and gestational. Type 1 results from a lack of insulin production and is diagnosed mainly in childhood and in teenagers. Its causes are still unknown. Daily insulin injections are required to keep blood glucose levels under control. Type 2, which accounts for 90 % of all diabetes cases, results from the body being unable to use the insulin it produces effectively. Type 2 is diagnosed mainly in adults, although an increase in cases has recently been observed among children. Type 2 diabetes often results from excess body weight and physical inactivity. A healthy lifestyle, regular physical activity and maintaining a normal body weight can help prevent type 2 diabetes. However, those who have already contracted type 2 diabetes require oral drugs and/or insulin to maintain safe blood glucose levels. Gestational diabetes consists of high blood glucose during pregnancy. Women who are affected and their children are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life.

‘Know your risk, know your response‘ is the theme of the third year of the World Diabetes Days 2021-2023 campaign ‘Access to Diabetes Care’, underlining the importance of knowing the risk of type 2 diabetes to help delay or prevent the condition.

Facts and figures

According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF – an umbrella organisation of over 240 national diabetes associations in 160 countries) approximately 537 million adults (aged 20 to 79) around the world were living with diabetes in 2021. This number is expected to rise to 783 million by 2045. In addition, 541 million adults are at increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes. In the EU specifically, it is estimated that over 33 million people suffer from diabetes (without counting the undiagnosed).

EU action on diabetes

EU Member States are responsible for their own healthcare policies. However, according to Article 168 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, EU action should complement national policies. The EU focuses on prevention, research and information, while also fostering cooperation between Member States. The European Commission addresses diabetes in its work on non-communicable diseases (NCDs). It is supporting Member States as they work towards reaching the United Nations (UN) and World Health Organization’s nine targets on NCDs by 2025, as well as UN Sustainable Development Goal 3, which aims to reduce premature mortality from NCDs by one third by 2030. The Healthier Together EU non-communicable diseases initiative (which covers 2022 to 2027) aims to support EU countries in reducing the burden of NCDs, including diabetes, while improving citizens’ health, as part of efforts to build a European health union. The EU4Health programme and other EU programmes support the implementation of the initiative in the Member States. In the field of prevention, the Commission’s action focuses mainly on the key risk factors for type 2 diabetes, encouraging the promotion of healthy eating and physical activity and the reduction of obesity and the harmful use of tobacco and alcohol.

On 23 November 2022, 100 years after the discovery of insulin, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on prevention, management and better care of diabetes in the EU.

Read this ‘at a glance’ note on ‘World Diabetes Day 2023‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Since its independence, Kazakhstan has made great efforts to develop its transport and transit potential and modernise transport corridors, having allocated over the past 15 years over $35 billion for these purposes, writes Marat Karabayev.

A Greek administrative watchdog has launched an investigation in the Pylos shipwreck that likely killed hundreds of people off the Greek coast in mid-June.

A technical meeting on the EU’s AI regulation broke down on Friday (10 November) after large EU countries asked to retract the proposed approach for foundation models. Unless the deadlock is broken in the coming days, the whole legislation is at risk.