European Union

Police in Istanbul used water canons and tear gas against a group of protesters known as the Saturday Mothers to break up their 700th demonstration. Apart from one major break, the women have been meeting every Saturday since 1995 to remember relatives who were arrested and disappeared in the 1980s and 1990s. What can the AKP do to resolve the situation?

The Croatian shipyards Uljanik in Pula and 3 Maj in Rijeka are fighting to survive. They have been in financial difficulties for years and have already been saved from bankruptcy by state money. But this time the government is refusing to bail them out. 4,500 workers at the two locations are currently on strike because their salaries for July haven't been paid. Should Croatia save its shipyards?

Top officials from Italy's ruling Five Star Movement have said EU funds to Hungary should be suspended because it was unwilling to take in migrants.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel held what she called "intensive" discussions with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in talks that addressed energy cooperation, human rights, and the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

With the informal meeting of the defense minister and then the foreign minister in the last week of August, the Austrian Presidency enters crunch mode. EURACTIV Germany reports from Vienna.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke against setting more ambitious EU climate targets on Sunday (26 August) but supported the idea of a transition towards a decarbonised transport sector. 

Emmerson Mnangagwa was officially sworn in as president of Zimbabwe on Sunday (26 August) after winning a bitterly-contested election which was the country's first since the ousting of strongman Robert Mugabe.

German chancellor Angela Merkel has reportedly told broadcast ARD she is unhappy about the European Commission's proposal to adopt stricter climate targets for 2030. "This constant setting of new targets, I don't think it makes sense," she was quoted as having said by Bloomberg. "I'm not so happy about these new proposals, since many EU member countries are already behind in meeting their pledges."

French leader Emmanuel Macron is to renew his 2017 appeal for deeper EU integration in a speech to French ambassadors in Paris Monday. He is to call for a single eurozone budget, an EU defence force, and a new migration policy despite the rise of anti-EU populist powers in Austria, Italy, Hungary, Poland and further afield. Macron will also visit Denmark and Finland this week on a mini EU tour.

Britain has set aside €111m to research its own satellite positioning system after Brexit the Sunday Telegraph, a British newspaper, reported. The move comes amid concern it will be locked out of the EU's €10bn Galileo satellite project after the UK leaves the EU. Galileo, which rivals US systems, is to be operational in 2020. A UK-only system could cost up to €3.3bn, one expert said.

The EU commission has endorsed the idea of a Kosovo-Serbia border change, going against Germany and breaking a former taboo.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leading MP in the hard-Brexit camp in Britain's ruling Conservative party, has caused controversy after endorsing post-Brexit border checks in Ireland. "There would be our ability, as we had during the Troubles, to have people inspected," he said in a video of a public meeting from earlier this year which surfaced on Saturday. The Troubles, or Northern Ireland conflict, claimed some 3,500 lives.

With European elections coming up in May 2019, you probably want to know how the European Union impacts your daily life, before you think about voting. In the latest in a series of posts on what Europe does for you, your family, your business and your wellbeing, we look at what Europe does for people interested in Massive Open Online Courses.

Are you thinking of upgrading your skills? Online learning is a good way to go back to school without giving up your other activities. Some 23 million new students signed up for their first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in 2017, taking the global number of learners to 81 million. If you are in the process of selecting a higher education institution, you may want to choose one of the over 1 700 MOOCs offered by various platforms and universities in the EU.

Twitter Hashtag #EUandME

OpenupEd, launched by the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities and supported by Erasmus+ is a pan-European MOOC initiative. Learners can choose from over 200 MOOCs in the 8 languages of its EU partners plus Russian, Hebrew, Turkish and Arabic.

© bnenin / Fotolia

Over 1 million people have enrolled with the EU-supported German platform iversity, one of the few platforms offering online courses that award the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS), which aims to make it easier for students to move between countries. If you want to learn how to ‘Make the most of EU resources for your region or city‘, then the iversity MOOC is the one for you!

Other big MOOC providers in the EU include the British platform FutureLearn, led by the Open University, with 145 partners worldwide and boasting nearly 8 million learners. The Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia has a substantial share of MOOCs in Spain. France Université Numérique, the first French digital learning portal, broadcasts 269 MOOCs in 2017 to over 900 000 users worldwide. Are you ready to give it a go?

Further information

• EPRS publication on New global interactive strategies for teaching and learning, 2014, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/EPRS/New-global-interactive-strategies-for-teaching-and-learning.pdf
• OpenupEd website, http://www.openuped.eu/openuped-temp/59-about-openuped

Washington is pressing the European Union to speed up trade negotiations launched after last month’s meeting between US President Donald Trump and EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, two German and a US official said on Saturday (25 August).

Although the 150 migrants stranded on the Diciotti rescue ship were able to disembark on Sunday (26 August), Italy’s firebrand Interior Minister Matteo Salvini engaged in another vilification of the EU, calling it “filth” and reiterating threats to stop EU funding.