European Union

Australian-Finnish mining company Latitude 66 Cobalt announced on Wednesday that it has found the fourth-largest cobalt deposit in Europe, with the highest cobalt density in the EU, in the eastern part of Lapland in Finland. The new discovery strengthens the...

A group of MEPs has called on Brussels to take action to tackle the issue of the chemical and conventional weapons laying dormant on the Baltic seabed. “We express our deep concern about the threat that is still posed by...

The Irish Travel Agents Association (ITAA) has shown its support for the COVID-19 green travel certificates, calling it a welcome move towards safe travel. It is a “first step towards a common path to a safe and sustained re-opening of...

The NHS has warned of a “significant reduction in the weekly supply” of coronavirus vaccines next month in a letter to local health organisations, a move set to slow down the UK’s vaccination programme. Although the UK has already given...

Germany’s governing coalition has approved the introduction of a transparency register that will require Bundestag members to declare any interests they represent in a public directory and state whether their lobbying work is carried out regularly, is long-term, or is...

Belgium has asked AstraZeneca for the surplus vaccine doses from European countries that have temporarily put the jabs on hold over concerns about possible side effects. “I contacted AstraZeneca and asked if it is possible to use the extras, if...

The European Commission spent more than €462 million between 2016 and 2019 in contracts with the ‘Big Four’ consultancy firms, according to estimates made by EURACTIV based on official documents.

Tanzania's President John Magufuli has died aged 61, the country's vice-president announced on Wednesday (16 March) following several weeks of growing speculation and conspiracy theories about his health and whereabouts.

The Spanish government will allocate about €10 billion of the total EU ‘post-COVID-19’ recovery funds approved for the Iberian country, to combat rural depopulation. EURACTIV's partner EuroEFE reports.

More than 90 energy companies, equipment manufacturers and gas network operators have called on the European Commission to consider hydrogen blending into natural gas for parts of Europe that cannot yet afford a dedicated hydrogen network.

The EU will extend for two years its military mission in the Mediterranean policing the UN arms embargo on conflict-wracked Libya, senior EU officials said Wednesday (17 March). The bloc’s member states are set to “adopt a decision next week...

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) are promoted by the European Union as a way to  increase road safety and tackle Europe's growing emission and congestion problems. In this event report, EURACTIV looks at where the EU stands with ITS deployment, and identifies the roadblocks still lying ahead.

EU funding is supporting member states to integrate digital technology into European highways, making travelling by road smarter. Intelligent Transport Systems have the potential to increase road safety and efficiency, cutting emissions and potentially saving lives, says Pieropaolo Tona.

Denmark is to limit the number of "non-Western" residents in poor neighbourhoods to 30 percent by 2031 under new legislation by its centre-left government. Concentrations of "non-Westerners" increased "the risk of an emergence of religious and cultural parallel societies", interior minister Kaare Dybvad Bek said. The original bill had used the controversial word "ghetto", but that risked "eclipsing the large amount of [social] work" poor areas needed, he added.

US president Joe Biden said Wednesday Russia will "pay a price" for interfering in America's 2020 election in light of his new intelligence. When asked in a TV interview if Russian president Vladimir Putin was "a killer" who tried to assassinate opponents, Biden also said: "I do". Russia recalled its US ambassador in response, to prevent "irreversible deterioration in relations", which, its foreign ministry said, had reached "a blind alley".

In a ruling on Wednesday (17 March) the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg banned the traditional French bird-hunting practice that consists of using so-called glue traps because it was "likely to cause other than negligible damage to non-target species caught". EURACTIV France reports.

Former diplomat Sigrid Kaag, who heads the largest left-leaning party in the Netherlands, booked major gains at a national election after campaigning on a cosmopolitan pro-Europe platform that stands in contrast with Prime Minister Mark Rutte's euroscepticism.

I know my IR colleagues like nothing better than a strategic review document, since it gives them hours of enjoyment coding for stuff and generally feeling like there’s some interest in their field. And the arrival of the UK’s much-delayed Integrated Review this week has given me some sense of that, even as it almost instantaneously reminded me of why I so heartily dislike such documents. For the benefit of those with more sense than to be into such things, this was the culmination of a rather protracted process of trying to conceptualise the new foreign policy and security environment for the UK. A central part of the delay was the getting-out of the EU, so it’d be not unreasonable to think that EU relations might be an important part of the general picture. Plus, as I’ve endlessly argued, it might also give us some clues about what the broader context for those EU relations might be, given that a central problem has been that the UK doesn’t seem very clear about what it wants to be in the world. You’ll be possibly unsurprised to find that this document does not really provide the answers to such questions. I’ve covered references to the EU in this thread, so I’ll spare you the finer detail:

So how does #IntegratedReview see the EU?

Mainly as a problem that's been solved, and then as base from which to build wider international action by UK

Neither part of this looks that robust

1/https://t.co/S8pg4wKOHJ

— Simon Usherwood (@Usherwood) March 16, 2021 However, the core is worth restating here: the Review treats the EU as a firm ally and one with whom there is much scope to build further collaborations on points of mutual interest. What’s missing is any sense of a problematic relationship that will take – even in the most ludicrously positive scenario – many years to find a mutually-trusting stability. This matters both for itself and more generally. There’s much talk about the value of multilateralism, of regulatory power and of free trade, with no sign of how a closer relationship with the EU might advance those agendas. While it is perfectly understandable to consider that withdrawal is a done deal, and the Trade & Cooperation Agreement with it, that should not mean there has to be a rose-tinted view of how things stand. Instead, a strategic document like this needs to take a much more hard-nosed approach, to allow for the planning of responses to threats and opportunities. If nothing else, some plan to work towards rebuilding trust with EU partners might have been in order. All of which brings us back to the paradox of the EU in British politics. This might not be another example of the deliberate antagonism that seems to colour so much of Johnson’s actions, but it will be an important contributory factor to an unnecessarily fractious environment. As I’ve noted in another thread, the UK’s going to continue to struggle with its European policy as long as it fails to be seen as having credible alternatives:

Thinking again about the UK's European policy and why it doesn't work

tl;dr EU doesn't think UK has a credible alternative to making things work in long-run

1/

— Simon Usherwood (@Usherwood) March 15, 2021 That doesn’t have to mean a closer relationship to the EU, or any programme of working to rejoin the organisation, just a sense of some things being beyond the UK’s power to control or influence, which in turn require finding ways to get along. As the Integrated Review notes, there’s a lot going on out there, so we have to engage with, and work with, others if the international system is to persist. Working out some ideas on how to do that with our neighbours might be a good place to start.

The post Um. Hello? [waves] appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

The new EU trade strategy unveiled by the European Commission contains much to be welcomed, but not much that is new, writes Isabelle Brachet.

"The US administration is not looking to take sides in this disagreement", a senior aide to US president Joe Biden said Wednesday, on the UK and EU's dispute on Northern Ireland customs law, Reuters reports. The "trade issue" was for Europe to solve by discussing "implementation of the agreement", the official said. Irish taoiseach Micheál Martin held virtual meetings with Biden and others in view of St. Patrick's Day Wednesday.