European Union

At the press conference concluding the informal summit in Sibiu, President Tusk presented the outcome of the discussions of the 27 EU heads of state or government.

EU leaders, meeting in Sibiu, Romania on 9 May 2019, adopted the Sibiu Declaration.

Digital experts have advised Danish media to drop political online polls, after trolls fiddled an online vote in Ekstrabladet.dk, the country's largest online news medium, to show 24 percent support for a new anti-migrant party, Stram Kurs, lead by Rasmus Paludan. They manipulated the vote via the online forum 4chan. Digital advisor, Astrid Haug, told Danish Radio that the manipulation ought to be an "eye opener" for the media industry.

Partial resumption of EU trade should be enough to stop Iran from "escalating" a Middle East nuclear dispute, Europe has said, after the US threatened to make Iranians "eat grass".

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday said his country would "stubbornly" continue to push for European Union membership. Speaking in Ankara, he said that "Turkey proceeds on its way persistently despite those trying to exclude it from the European family". Erdogan accused the EU of leaving Turkey alone to shoulder the refugee burden. It is housing some 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Turkey first applied for EU membership in 1987.

Ireland's Fine Gael party, part of the EPP group in the European Parliament, is topping the polls ahead of the EU elections, according to an Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI opinion poll. Fianna Fail, linked to the conservative ECR group, polled second, while the leftist Sinn Fein stands to keep its three MEPs but see their vote decline. Ireland has 11 MEPs and votes in three constituencies on 24 May.

Austria's foreign minister Karin Kneissl has opposed a proposal from chancellor Sebastian Kurz to abolish the right of veto of every EU member state on foreign policy. Speaking in relation to the EU summit in Sibiu, Kneissl said that majority voting would lead to overlooking smaller European countries' interests and a "directorate" of the big countries, die Presse reported.

Eurosceptic parties are nothing new. They also had a large presence in the first directly elected European Parliament back in 1979, when the EU was known as the European Economic Community (EEC) and consisted of only nine member states.

Europe’s leaders on Thursday (9 May) agreed to attend an emergency summit immediately after the EU elections on 28 May, as European Council President Donald Tusk said he wanted to have the distribution of the bloc’s top jobs decided in June.

Jeremy Corbyn has insisted that Labour is the only one seeking to unite a divided UK as he launched the party’s European elections campaign on Thursday (9 May). But he again sat on the fence on a second referendum on Brexit.

Leaders gathered to discuss the EU's agenda and Brussels' most senior jobs after the election - and Brexit - to redefine the bloc's place in the world. And they will meet again on 28 May to assess the election results.

EU Council president Donald Tusk on Thursday called for a special EU summit of leaders on 28 May, two days after the European elections, to discuss the next top jobs in Brussels, including the presidency of the EU commission. EU leaders were keen to drive political events after the election. "If consensus proves difficult, I will not shy away from putting these decisions to a vote in June," Tusk said.

A 35-year political career will have given Guy Verhofstadt a thick skin. And he is going to need it.

Like for its fellow Baltic states Estonia and Lithuania, Latvia’s EU accession was a milestone for a country that used to be part of the Soviet Union until 1991.

As heads of state and government of the EU member states meet in Sibiu on Europe Day, Karl-Heinz Lambertz urges them to work towards a more cohesive, sustainable and democratic Europe.

The Kazakh Central Electoral Commission (CEC) closed nominations on 28 April for the presidential election due on 9 June. The field, which began with nine nominees, was reduced by one after a candidate withdrew. The candidates’ registration stage will continue until May 11.

Since 1 January 2018, 47 of the 53 countries in the European region have in total reported over 100,000 measles cases and over 90 measles-related deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Thursday. "This is unacceptable and we need to be bolder and scale up our response to the next level," said Dr Dorit Nitzan, acting regional emergency director at the WHO regional office for Europe.

Smaller French political parties such as the ‘yellow vests’, the Pirate Party, the Animalist Party and even the party calling for Esperanto to be adopted as an EU language, are flocking to the European elections. But they will have to dish out at least €300,000 to cover the costs of printing ballot papers. EURACTIV France reports.