European Union

The Labour party’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer is the early front-runner in the party’s leadership race, securing 89 nominations, more than twice as many as any other candidate, as the deadline for nominations passed on Monday (13 January).

More than 2,500 children have disappeared from refugee centres in the Netherlands over the past decade, the NRC newspaper reported on Monday. Most of those came from Afghanistan, Morocco, Algeria, Albania, Eritrea, Syria and Vietnam. According to the refugee agency COA, a proportion of these children may end up in the hands of human traffickers or in prostitution.

President Sassoli led a minute of silence to remember the victims of the Ukrainian passenger jet crash, at the opening of the session in Strasbourg.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

President Sassoli led a minute of silence to remember the victims of the Ukrainian passenger jet crash, at the opening of the session in Strasbourg.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

On Tuesday at 09.00, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković will present the priorities of the rotating Council presidency for the next six months.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

On Tuesday at 09.00, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković will present the priorities of the rotating Council presidency for the next six months.

Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

Ireland’s Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has had a busy January so far, and it’s only likely to get more hectic, with the Brexit deadline coming up, as well as a national election.

In four days, Abkhazia, the breakaway region of Georgia, has seen government buildings smashed, protests to depose the de facto president come to fruition, a court decision that annulled previous elections published and new snap-elections called, a caretaker president appointed and opposition candidacy declared. 

The UK government has introduced new legislation which ensures that farming subsidies will continue to be paid to UK farmers for 2020, during the transition period that will follow the country's departure from the EU on 31 January.

The Northern Ireland Assembly in Belfast has sat for the first time in three years. The body, designed to split power between the Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland, collapsed after a 'cash-for-ash' recycling scandal in 2017, which saw hundreds of millions of pounds wasted. Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, visited the assembly on Monday, along with Ireland's taoiseach Leo Vardakar, after its first sitting at the weekend.

The President and Members of the European Commission give a solemn undertaking before the Court of Justice of the European Union

Catalan former leader Carles Puigdemont on Monday took up his seat as an MEP at the European Parliament, despite objections from Spain who wants him jailed given his role in the 2017 secession bid by the Catalan government. Self-exiled in Belgium, Puigdemont struck a defiant tone, demanding Spain release the jailed former Catalonia vice president Oriol Junqueras. "He should be here with us. He has the same rights," Puigdemont said.

President Michel met President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Cairo to discuss the situation in Middle-East and in Libya. They also exchanged on the state of bilateral relations.

Despite France's campaign against glyphosate and a plan to ban it in a majority of agricultural practices by the end of 2020, the world's most commonly used weedkiller saw its sales volumes soar by 10% in the country in 2018.

Malta's new prime minister has pledged to "strengthen rule of law" amid EU mistrust in the government over the murder of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Iran has admitted that it unintentionally shot down the Ukrainian passenger jet that crashed last Wednesday in Tehran. The regime said the plane was downed as a result of a communication error that led it to believe it was being attacked by the US. Angered by the fact that the regime had initially spread false information, thousands of Iranians took to the streets in protest. Commentators discuss what Tehran's admission means for Europe.