European Union

Trains across Norway stopped for two hours on Thursday as employees walked out to protest against the implementation of the EU's 4th Railway Package, a set of legislative texts designed to complete the single market for rail services. Protestors said the rules would weaken train services in Norway and have announced more strikes for 31 October. Norway is bound to follow EU rules due to its EEA membership.

Written by Clare Ferguson and Katarzyna Sochacka,

© European Union 2019 – Source : EP

Highlights of the October I plenary session included statements and debates on the preparation of the European Council meeting of 17 and 18 October 2019, on greening the European Investment Bank (EIB), in the presence of the Bank’s president, and on how to prevent conflicts of interest in the EU. Parliament also debated statements made by the Vice-President of the Commission/High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HR/VP) on the situation in northern Syria and Ukraine. Debates took place on Council and Commission statements on the Multiannual Financial Framework 2021-2027 and own resources. Finally, Members discussed Commission statements on United States tariffs on European goods following the World Trade Organization’s Airbus dispute decision, on authorisation of genetically modified organisms, and on the fight against cancer.

Statements by the High Representative

Federica Mogherini, as HR/VP, made statements on northern Syria and on the situation in Ukraine. With the election in Ukraine this year for both a new President and Parliament, increased efforts have been made to relaunch talks on settling the Donbass conflict, under the Normandy format. President Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s room for manoeuvre remains limited, however, with little sign of follow-up on the Minsk Agreements commitments and the conflict in the country’s east continuing.

Post-2020 EU budget

Council and Commission outlined the progress made on narrowing the gaps between Member States’ positions on the post-2020 EU budget; nevertheless it is clear that the European Council is not yet close to finalising its position and thus the subject will remain on the agenda in the months ahead. In advance of EU leaders’ discussions next week, the Parliament adopted its position on both the MFF and the own resources system. The resolution adopted, on a motion tabled by four political groups (EPP, S&D, Renew and Greens/EFA), largely seeks to reiterate the positions adopted by Parliament during the last term.

Euro area employment and social policies

Members debated and adopted a report from the Employment & Social Affairs (EMPL) Committee on the employment and social policies of the euro area, a contribution to the annual European Semester process. Parliament’s position should feed into Council recommendations on euro-area policies, due to be adopted in November 2019. The committee’s report emphasises the need to strengthen social rights, ensure universal coverage, and to develop labour market and education policies to ensure adequate social protection and address skills mismatches more effectively.

Amending the EU budget for 2019

Parliament voted on a report on draft amending budget No 4 (DAB 4/2019), which amends the Council’s position, seeking to redeploy savings to other major EU programmes that currently lack funding. Parliament therefore calls on the Commission to present a new proposal along these lines.

Negotiations ahead of Council’s first reading

The President announced 43 decisions by the ECON, ITRE, TRAN, ENVI, LIBE, REGI, EMPL, CONT, IMCO, AFET and DEVE committees to enter into interinstitutional negotiations, in accordance with Rule 72. Parliament’s positions adopted earlier at first reading will provide the mandates for these negotiations.

Read this ‘at a glance’ on ‘Plenary round-up – Brussels, October I 2019‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday accused Russia of delaying a summit aimed at resolving the conflict between Kyiv and pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s east, but Moscow said Kiev needed to pull back its troops first.

EU diplomats stood alone against the US and Russia on Syria at the UN on Thursday, painting a bleak picture of transatlantic relations.

As Poland's combative Law and Justice party faces elections this Sunday, the commission once again sends a case on its domestic judiciary reforms to the European Court of Justice for breaking EU rules.

In reaction to the European Parliament's veto of France's European commission nominee Sylvie Goulard, French president Emmanuel Macron said he warned EU commission president-elect Ursula von der Leyen that Goulard might face difficulties as she is under investigation. He also said that von der Leyen told him she called the main EP group leaders, who promised their support. The S&D and EPP leadership deny receiving such a call.

France's finance minister Bruno Le Maire said on Thursday the EU is ready to impose sanctions on US products if an agreement is not reached over the EU's illegal state-aid for aircraft dispute. "The American administration should be aware that if there is no settlement, Europe will not have any other choice but to retaliate and to put [on] sanctions," Le Maire said after a meeting of EU finance ministers.

Over a dozen livestock stakeholders have been campaigning across metro stations in Brussels as well as online, in a bid to fight back against the narrative propagated by NGOs and environmentalists on animal farming. At stake is the very conception of modern animal farming practices in Europe.

EU officials said on Thursday that the EU is working on a new approach to fight financial crime and the flow of dirty money, Reuters reported. The European Central Bank and the EU parliament proposed establishing a new agency against money laundering that "should have an independent structure and decision-making [competence]," Finnish finance minister Mika Lintila said. A decision on this new framework is expected in December.

France opposes the start of EU membership talks with North Macedonia and Albania, saying the EU has too many other challenges to cope with for now, Reuters reported. More than half of the EU member states are in favour of the talks. If not, proponents say, the EU would leave a strategic vacuum that might be filled by Russia, Turkey and China.

The Capitals brings you the latest news from across Europe, through on-the-ground reporting by EURACTIV’s media network. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.

The European Union decided to impose 66.4 percent tariffs on Chinese steel road wheels in a sanction against dumping, according to Bloomberg. Chinese companies sold steel road wheels for cars, tractors and trailers under the real cost causing harm to European manufacturers. The market is worth €800m and employs around 3,600 people, mainly in Germany, France, Spain, the Czech Republic, Italy, Romania and Poland.

The EU approved on Thursday a proposal from the Greek government designed to tackle the stock of non-performing loans weighing on the balance sheets of Greek banks. EU commissioner in charge of competition policy, Margrethe Vestager, welcomed this solution as a "good example of how member states can help banks [to] clean up their balance sheets without granting [state] aid or distorting competition."

A warmer climate and Europe's ageing population create a favourable breeding ground for legionella bacteria, which cause a type of pneumonia known as Legionnaires' disease, Professor Martin Exner said in an interview.

The European Commission is one step away from taking Hungary to court if it does not offer a credible explanation for why it denied detained migrants food in its transit zones along the Serbian border.

While our politics is dominated by old and bullying alpha males and the negativity they have injected into our times, there is at least one day of hope - and it is through unleashing the power of young girls.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday (10 October) called on NATO to increase naval patrols in the Aegean Sea after a threat by Turkey to open Europe's doors to more than three million migrants.

Written by Naja Bentzen and Ionel Zamfir,

© paparazzza / Shutterstock.com

Thirty years since it was first awarded, the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought retains all its symbolic meaning, as human rights are continually under threat in many parts of the world. By awarding the 2018 Prize to the Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov, Parliament aimed to increase the pressure on the Russian government to release him. The award also drew attention to all Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia and the annexed Crimean peninsula. On 7 September 2019, Sentsov was released as part of a major prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine. He is due to receive the award in person in Strasbourg on 23 October 2019.

This is an updated edition of an ‘at a glance’ note published in December 2018.

Sakharov Prize laureate 2018

Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian film-director, convicted in Russia to 20 years in prison for his opposition to the annexation of Crimea, is the 2018 laureate of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize. Parliament’s Conference of Presidents selected Sentsov (initially proposed by the EPP) from three finalists shortlisted by the Parliament’s Foreign Affairs (AFET) and Development (DEVE) Committees. The two other finalists were Non-governmental organisations protecting human rights and saving migrant lives across the Mediterranean Sea (proposed by S&D and the Greens/EFA Groups), and Nasser Zefzafi, the leader of a mass protest movement in the Rif region of Morocco, sentenced to 20 years in prison (proposed by GUE/NGL Group). The prize was awarded in absentia at a ceremony in the European Parliament during the December 2018 plenary session in Strasbourg, at which Sentsov was represented by a relative and his lawyer. Other laureates of the prize have also been prevented from attending because of detention, most recently Raif Badawi in 2015. Sentsov is the first laureate from eastern Europe since 2009, when the Russian human rights centre, Memorial, received the prize.

Significance of the prize

The European Parliament awards the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought each year to individuals or organisations for their outstanding achievements in one of the following fields: defence of human rights and fundamental freedoms, particularly the right to free expression; safeguarding the rights of minorities; respect for international law; development of democracy and implementation of the rule of law. Created through a 13 December 1985 parliamentary resolution, the prize bears the name of prominent Soviet-era dissident, Andrei Sakharov, joint inventor of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winner and campaigner for human rights and nuclear disarmament in the Soviet Union. The name of the prize illustrates his courageous defence of human rights, including the freedom of thought and expression, to the detriment of his professional career and personal freedom. The prize was awarded for the first time, jointly, in 1988, to Nelson Mandela and (posthumously) to Soviet dissident Anatoli Marchenko. Both Mandela and Marchenko embodied the bravery of the individual who stands up to the discretionary power of an oppressive regime and pays for it with their personal freedom. Mandela’s story is widely known. Marchenko was one of the best-known dissidents in the Soviet Union. He died in 1986 after a three-month-long hunger strike for the release of all Soviet dissidents. The public outcry his death provoked pushed Mikhail Gorbachev to authorise the release of political prisoners from Soviet jails. His courageous action prefigures the similarly brave position of the 2018 laureate.

Oleg Sentsov: Ukrainian filmmaker and symbol for political prisoners

Born on 13 July 1976 in Simferopol (Crimea), Oleg Sentsov studied marketing at Kyiv State Economics University. He did not particularly enjoy these studies, which he said ‘disillusioned’ him. After managing a computer club in Simferopol and playing online video games professionally for years – eventually becoming the Ukrainian champion – Sentsov became the leader of the Crimean gaming movement. This experience of the gaming world served as inspiration for his first feature film Gamer, which was released in 2011 and later screened at a number of international film festivals.

Euromaidan as a turning point for Ukraine — and for Sentsov

Sentsov’s work on his film Rhino, about children of the 1990s, was interrupted in 2013, when he joined the Revolution of Dignity (‘Euromaidan’) that broke out in Ukraine after pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovich decided to suspend talks on an EU-Ukraine Association Agreement. In February 2014, the protests paved the way for a new pro-European government and for Yanukovich’s ousting. When Moscow responded by illegally annexing Crimea and launching a hybrid war against Ukraine, Sentsov helped bring food to Ukrainian soldiers and organised rallies for a united Ukraine in Simferopol. The Russian Federal Security Service arrested Sentsov in Crimea in May 2014, and deported him to Russia. In what Amnesty International called a ‘cynical show trial’, a Russian military court convicted Sentsov to 20 years imprisonment for plotting terrorist acts in August 2015. Sentsov denies the charges, which he and human rights groups call politically motivated. Sentsov said he was beaten for 24 hours in an attempt to force him to confess. Russian authorities refused to investigate the allegations of torture. In May 2018, Sentsov began a hunger strike, demanding the release of all Ukrainians held on political grounds in Russia and annexed Crimea. Sentsov ended the 145-day hunger strike on 6 October 2018. In a handwritten statement, he explained that he had no choice but to halt the hunger strike to avoid being force-fed due to the critical state of his health.

International support, including from the EU and the European Parliament

The European Union, the United States, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, human rights groups, filmmakers’ and writers’ associations and even Russian film-director Nikita Mikhalkov, who has close links to Russian President Vladimir Putin, had all requested Sentsov’s release. The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the Commission (HR/VP) repeatedly underlined that Sentsov’s detention breached international law, and urged Russia to return Sentsov and fellow activist Oleksandr Kolchenko to Ukraine. In a June 2018 resolution, Parliament requested the immediate release of Sentsov and the 70 other Ukrainian citizens illegally detained in Russia and Crimea. Announcing the Sakharov Prize laureate in Strasbourg on 25 October 2018, then European Parliament President Antonio Tajani stated that Sentsov’s ‘courage and determination’ has made him ‘a symbol of the struggle for the release of political prisoners held in Russia and around the world’. With the award of the Sakharov Prize, Parliament is ‘expressing its solidarity with him and his cause’, Tajani said: ‘We ask that he be released immediately’.

Responses to the 2018 Sakharov Prize

While Russia’s Foreign Ministry criticised Parliament’s award of the prize to Sentsov as ‘absolutely politicised’, others hailed the decision. PEN America called it ‘a powerful statement in defence of writers, artists, political prisoners, and all those … actively fighting for free thought and free expression in a time of creeping – and not so creeping – authoritarianism around the world’. Human Rights Watch said the award would help increase the pressure on Moscow to release Sentsov. European Council President Donald Tusk renewed his call on Moscow to ‘free Sentsov and all other political prisoners following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea’. Then Prime Minister of Ukraine, Volodymyr Groysman, expressed gratitude to Parliament for the award, which he called ‘a strong message highlighting the necessity of democracy protection in the world’.

Sentsov’s release in a landmark prisoner swap

Moscow rejected Kyiv’s calls to swap Sentsov and Ukrainian journalist Roman Suschenko, arrested in Moscow in 2016 on espionage charges, for Russian prisoners, until 7 September 2019, when Ukrainian prisoners in Russia were exchanged for 35 prisoners held in Ukraine. The other Ukrainian prisoners released include Suschenko, as well as 24 Ukrainian sailors who were detained in November 2018, when Russia seized three Ukrainian Navy vessels off Crimea. Although the prisoner swap – in line with the 2014-2015 Minsk Peace Agreements – sparked questions about some of the prisoners released by Ukraine, the move was generally hailed by European leaders, including by the HR/VP. The President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, expressed ‘relief and profound joy’ at the release, adding that he looked forward to meeting Sentsov in person in Parliament and handing him the Sakharov Prize.

Read this ‘at a glance’ on ‘Oleg Sentsov: The 2018 Sakharov Prize laureate‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

“China is coming with an offer nobody can refuse, while the EU is coming with an offer nobody can understand." For many in Central Asia, that phrase – although intended as a joke – best summarises the European way of doing business.

Turkey pounded Kurdish militia in northeast Syria for a second day on Thursday (10 October), forcing tens of thousands of people to flee and killing at least dozens of people in a cross-border assault on US allies that has turned the Washington establishment against President Donald Trump.