European Union

Committee meetings, Brussels

Source : © European Union, 2019 - EP

The Council adopted a decision to further regionalise the work of the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions in the Sahel, namely EUCAP Sahel Mali, EUCAP Sahel Niger and EUTM Mali.

EURACTIV gives you a glimpse into the hot topics of this year’s Munich Security Conference and what is driving the conversation on foreign, defence and security policy. Day 3 in a nutshell with Iran, transatlantic relations and accession hopes.

Russia could be a Cold War-type "partner" for Europe, German leader Angela Merkel has said.

Czech prime minister Andrej Babis said Sunday at a party congress the upcoming European Parliament elections "are the most important ever", Bloomberg reported. He pressed for a larger role for smaller EU states. "We want member states to have significant influence on Europe's development, so that Europe isn't governed just by bigger states with a politically biased [European] Commission and European civil servants that cost us huge money," Babis said.

"History will judge us," UK prime minister Theresa May told Conservative MPs in a letter this weekend, referring to Brexit. She once again urged her fellow Tories to back the withdrawal agreement, writing that failure "will let down the people who sent us to represent them and risk the bright future that they all deserve". May will plan meetings with all 27 other EU leaders and the European Commission president.

Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed "profound failure of governance within Facebook", British MPs said, while blaming Zuckerberg for his contempt for democratic scrutiny.

Viktor Orban of Hungary and Poland's Jaroslaw Kaczynski seem to share the idea that the rights of some may come at the expense of the rights of others, and public institutions should serve the majority, and not all citizens.

Venezuela's government on Sunday (17 February) blocked five European lawmakers from entering the country, triggering an angry response by opposition leader Juan Guaidó who had invited the delegation.

The Capitals brings you the latest news from across Europe, through on-the-ground reporting by EURACTIV’s newsroom network.  

Theresa May plans to speak to every European Union leader and the European Commission chief to seek changes to her EU withdrawal agreement, days after another defeat from her own lawmakers and as businesses brace for a no-deal Brexit on 29 March.

US-backed fighters in Syria are poised to capture Islamic State’s last, tiny enclave on the Euphrates, the battle commander said on Saturday (16 February), bringing its self-declared caliphate to the brink of total defeat as US President Donald Trump spoke of “100 percent victory”.

Lawmakers in the European Parliament's environment committee have voted for a reduction in subsidies going to intensive farming under the common agricultural policy as of 2021. EURACTIV France reports.

Bringing a 1950s radioactive technology capable of wiping out cities into a high-tech environment is a recipe for suicide, says 2017 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Beatrice Fihn. She spoke to EURACTIV.com about nuclear deterrence, arms control ambitions and the current INF Treaty debate.

Low profitability and poor infrastructure quality make farming in Greece unattractive to young people, who are needed more than ever before to take the agricultural sector a step forward, stakeholders have told EURACTIV Greece.

Leaders of 5 parties from Italy, Poland, Croatia, Finland and Greece met in Rome last week to sign an electoral manifesto. Piotr Kaczyński has followed the event and offers his impressions and comments.

Poland’s prime minister has cancelled a trip to Israel in the wake of reported remarks made by his Israeli counterpart suggesting Polish complicity during the Holocaust, an aide in his office told Polish media on Sunday (17 February). A government...

Britain, France, Germany, and other EU states should take 800 radical Islamist fighters captured by US troops in Syria in recent years and put them on trial, US president Donald Trump has said. "The alternative is not a good one," he said on Twitter on Saturday. "We will be forced to release them. The US does not want to watch as these ... fighters permeate Europe," Trump said.

Venezuela has denied entry to five pro-opposition MEPs which its foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, accused of "provocation" and "conspiratorial aims". The group, which included one Dutch, one German, and three Spanish MEPs, said Sunday their passports had been "seized" and they were being "expelled". Most EU states have backed Venezuela's opposition leader Juan Guaido to take power and hold elections, in Europe's bid to end Venezuela's political and economic crisis.

Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki has cancelled his trip to a mini-EU summit in Israel after Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu said "Poles co-operated with the Germans" in the Holocaust. Warsaw is to send its foreign minister instead to join the Czech, Hungarian, and Slovak leaders in Israel on Tuesday. Netanyahu has cultivated closer ties with central European states to try to muffle EU criticism of Israel's occupation of Palestine.