Category: EU Reporter

International donors are playing hide and seek. Instead of stepping up their assistance programmes, richer nations are cutting overseas aid, or reallocating funds from other parts of the world towards the Ukraine crisis.

A new idea, besides a windfall tax on polluting Big Energy giants, is to make them invest their profits in their own sustainable futures. After all, these companies have a large ‘sustainability debt’ and extraordinary transition costs awaiting them.

Pope Francis could meet Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church in Kazakhstan in September at a meeting of religious leaders, Reuters reports. Kirill has been accused by the EU of supporting the war in Ukraine, and only evaded personal sanctions because Hungary blocked it. The meeting would be only the second time […]

Applications to study at Irish universities from EU students has more than tripled since the Brexit referendum, the Irish Independent reported. After the 2016 UK referendum, there were 1,934 applications from EU states in 2017. That had reached 6,383 in 2022, with the upward trend accelerating since 2020/21 — the year the UK formally left […]

Russia has introduced an entry ban against 39 UK politicians, officials, business people and journalists for supporting the “demonisation” of the country, Reuters reports. The ban includes Labour party leader Keir Starmer, former prime minister David Cameron, and TV personality Piers Morgan. More than 200 other Britons have already banned by Moscow. The sanctions are […]

Nuclear stockpiles have been reduced since the Cold War — but the risk of using nuclear weapons remains high, amid conflicts and tensions between nuclear powers in Ukraine, Korean peninsula and Middle East.

Ports in Italy cannot impound NGO migrant-rescue ships on grounds they take on board too many people to be safe, the EU court has ruled.

Bulgarian president Rumen Radev has set 2 October as the date for the country’s fourth parliamentary election in less than two years. Anti-corruption and reformist prime minister Kiril Petkov’s coalition government collapsed in June, and efforts to secure a new majority failed, Reuters reports. Radev appointed former labour minister Galab Donev to lead a caretaker […]

France, Italy and Spain are urging the EU Commission to introduce legislation that Big Tech firms partly finance telecoms infrastructure in the EU, Reuters revealed Monday. EU regulators said in May they were analysing whether tech giants Alphabet (Google), Meta and Netflix should also pay costs of upgrading telecoms networks. The three governments said in […]

Germany should stop using gas to produce electricity, finance minister Christian Lindner said on Sunday, news agency DPA reported. “We have to work on avoiding an electricity crisis on top of the gas crisis,” Lindner said. Germany could continue using “safe and climate-friendly nuclear plants” to produce energy until 2024 if necessary, he argued. Nevertheless, economy […]