European Union

Country of 51,000 would "go bankrupt tomorrow" if it joined EU sanctions on Russia and lost fish exports in return, Faroese foreign minister, Poul Michelsen, says.

Budget Commissioner Günther Oettinger flew to Rome on Thursday (13 September),  as part of a series of official visits he is doing to present the long-term EU budget (MFF) proposal. But he only talked to Italian deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio, leader of the Five Star Movement.

Delegations

Source : © European Union, 2018 - EP

The two men accused by Britain of carrying out the Skripal poisoning have given an interview to the pro-Kremlin TV station Russia Today. They were in Salisbury as tourists, they claimed, and had nothing to with the poison attack. For some commentators the interview was just a bad joke. Others empathise with the accused.

In the lira crisis the Turkish central bank in Ankara raised the interest rate from 17.75 percent to 24 percent on Thursday - a more drastic increase than experts had expected. Shortly before this Erdoğan had once again called for interest rates to be lowered and criticised the central bank. Commentators ask how independent the bank really is, and whether it will be able to continue defying the Turkish president in the long term.

French President Emmanuel Macron has presented a plan on fighting poverty in France. The plan includes expenditures to the tune of eight billion euros and shifts the focus from financial aid to social support. Macron is pulling all the right levers, some commentators write approvingly. For others the president has started to zigzag.

A victorious post-bailout Alexis Tsipras, a defiant Viktor Orbán backed by far-right colleagues and an exhausted Jean-Claude Juncker. This week’s EP plenary showed, even more than Juncker’s tired annual address, what the actual state of the Union is and the contradictions Europe is facing.

Die zwei Männer, die Großbritannien für den Skripal-Anschlag verantwortlich macht, haben dem kremltreuen Sender Russia Today ein Interview gegeben. Sie hätten sich nur als Touristen in Salisbury aufgehalten und nichts mit der Vergiftung zu tun. Für einige Kommentatoren ist das Interview nichts weiter als ein schlechter Scherz. Andere können sich in die Situation der Beschuldigten hineinfühlen.