European Union

Italy's prime minister Giuseppe Conte warned on Monday in a dramatic press conference that the two parties governing Italy must put internal differences to rest, or face early elections. The Five Star Movement and the League are at odds over a range of issues, including migration policy, taxes and infrastructure projects. The situation has intensified since the League won 34 percent in the European elections last month.

"The Commission president doesn't have a residence," Jean-Claude Juncker told Bild Zeitung, confirming that he lives in a hotel apartment measuring 50 square metres. Juncker also said he wanted to save money by having fewer commissioners. "There is simply not enough work to keep 28 commissioners busy all day," he said. "I become a eurosceptic at least once a day", he added.

Marking the 30th anniversary of China's Tiananmen Square democracy protests, EU foreign chief Federica Mogherini has urged Beijing to "immediate[ly] release" the human rights defenders and lawyers still detained and convicted. "We expect the legal safeguards and due process rights of those detained in connection with the 1989 events," she said, naming six individuals: Huang Qi, Gao Zhisheng, Ge Jueping, Pastor Wang Yi, Xu Lin, and Chen Jiahong.

French president Emmanuel Macron wants the 31 October to be a "final" deadline for Brexit, to avoid the new EU commission, which is sworn in by November 2019, dealing with the UK's departure from the EU. "We now have to implement the British people's decision. Except if the British people themselves decide something else," Macron told a conference on Monday in the Elysee Palace.

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 HAGUE Tirana trouble. A request by the government of the Netherlands to suspend visa-free travel...

The US president's gambit to make the Paris Agreement collapse failed. Now China and Russia are taking advantage of the power vacuum left by the US to shape the accord's rules - and show no signs of wavering on commitments.

A new strategy for the capital markets union, fintech, financial stability, sustainable economy and Brexit are the priorities listed for the next financial services commissioner, according to the memo drafted by European Commission officials and seen by EURACTIV.com.

The EU should be "ready to act" should social values such as "privacy, freedom and fairness" be under threat from expanding digital monopolies, the bloc's Competition Chief Margrethe Vestager said on Monday (3 April).

US President Donald Trump meets outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May on Tuesday (4 June) for trade-centred talks during his state visit to Britain, with protesters set to gather outside the gates.

The European Commission said on Monday (3 June) it would assess a request by the Netherlands to suspend visa-free travel for Albanians, adding that such a decision should not be taken lightly.

Ahead of Wednesday's (5 June) general election in Denmark, one thing is certain: immigration policy will remain tough.

For example, Germany's primetime TV news reported that 47 percent of political social media discussions were related to the extreme-right AfD party, when in fact this was the case only for Twitter - used by only four percent of Germans.

The European Commission defended on Monday (3 June) its track record of saving lives in the Mediterranean, faced with accusations of "“crimes against humanity” substantiated in a 245-page report by international lawyers, brought before the International Criminal Court.

It would be wise to accept that the Spitzenkandidaten system is broken and to look for a democratic replacement, writes Dick Roche, bringing up as arguments nuggets of vintage EU politics.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Monday (3 June) that he fully accepted his "bad guy" role in insisting on a shorter extension to Britain's tortuous exit from the EU, while insisting that 31 October is the "final, final deadline."

The International Monetary Fund on Monday (3 June) warned France that its public debt is "too high for comfort", calling on the nation to tackle the issue by stepping up spending reforms.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Monday (3 June) he was ready to resign unless the two parties in the governing populist coalition -- the League and the Five Star Movement -- stopped squabbling.

CITA, under the patronage of Romanian Presidency, hosted an event on the future of transport and the challenge of new technologies for road safety.

The race to succeed Theresa May as the UK’s Prime Minister will be appropriately chaotic, light-years from the coronation that saw her replace David Cameron in June 2016.

© peshkov / Fotolia

The very first stated goal of the European Union is to promote peace. What began as a project seeking peaceful relations between its members, has become one of the principal global actors in favour of peace and security. On the eve of the commemorations to mark the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings, the European Parliament is participating in the Normandy Global Peace Forum, held in Caen, Normandy on 4 and 5 June 2019. The European Parliamentary Research Service is contributing to the Forum with several studies on peace and security in the world, and the role of the European Union, including: an overview of EU action in favour of peace and security in 2019 and the outlook for the future; a study on the peace and reconciliation process in Colombia; and a new mapping of threats to peace and democracy worldwide, as an introduction to the ‘Normandy Index’.

Presented for the first time at the 2019 Normandy Global Peace Forum, the ‘Normandy Index’ was developed in cooperation with the Institute for Economics and Peace, and as a result of a formal agreement with the region of Normandy, and aims to provide a better analysis of the risks to peace worldwide. This paper sets out the initial findings of the 2019 exercise, complemented by 25 individual country case studies, derived from the Index. It explains how the index can be used to compare peace – defined on the basis of a given country’s performance against a range of predetermined threats – across countries and regions.

Rather than being limited to a simple measure of the lack of conflict on the territory concerned, which could merely give an illusion of stability, the index measures the risks to peace. These threats include climate change, economic crisis, energy dependence, state fragility, the homicide rate, press freedom, and the quality of the democratic process, as well as the incidence of terrorism, armed conflict and the presence of weapons of mass destruction. To illustrate the method, 25 specific case studies focus on countries that have seen both a rise and a fall in the threat to peace. The examples highlight the EU contribution in terms of development, democracy support, economic cooperation, and peacekeeping operations. Through the measurement of each threat, the index identifies those countries where peace is most fragile, and consequently vulnerable to threat. It is in these regions that EU foreign policy could prioritise diplomatic means of reinforcing resilience to prevent the outbreak of conflict. In contributing to current thinking regarding the situation in 136 countries, the ‘Normandy Index’ measurement of this wider range of threats enables Members of the European Parliament, experts and the wider public to obtain a more nuanced view of the state of peace in the world.

To analyse and explain the European Union contribution to the promotion of peace and security internationally, through its various external policies, a second edition of the EU Peace and Security Outlook provides an overview of the issues and current state of play. It looks first at the concept of peace and the changing nature of the geopolitical environment. It then focuses on the centrality of the promotion of peace and security in the EU’s external action and proceeds to an analysis of the practical pursuit of these principles in the main areas of EU policy: development, democracy support, and security and defence, as well as in the increasingly relevant area of disinformation and foreign influence. The study concludes with an outlook for the future.

A parallel study focuses specifically on EU peacebuilding efforts in Colombia. The study evaluates EU engagement during the 50-year conflict in Colombia, and focuses on peacebuilding since the historic 2016 final agreement between the government and the main armed group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP). This is a country where the EU has mobilised a large spectrum of civilian instruments: bilateral and multilateral diplomacy; humanitarian and development aid; and trade relations. After placing the conflict in its geopolitical context, this evaluation analyses the EU approach to and implementation of support to peace in Colombia, the European Parliament’s contribution, risks since the signature of the peace agreement, and ways to mitigate them.

 

Mapping threats to peace and democracy worldwide: Introduction to the Normandy Index

Threats to peace and security in the current global environment