Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar hopes that a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, scheduled for Friday morning in Brussels, will "open a new chapter" in their relations.
Showing posts with label European Union. Show all posts
Showing posts with label European Union. Show all posts
Thursday, October 15, 2026
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
The EU anticipates a "very, very difficult" winter due to the energy crisis
The European Commission anticipates a "very, very difficult" winter due to rising energy costs, Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, the EU executive's energy spokesperson, stated on Wednesday.
Monday, October 12, 2026
Trump accuses the "fake news media" of criticizing him over the diesel deal with Russia
Trump accuses the "fake news media" of criticizing him over the diesel deal with Russia while turning a blind eye to European purchases of Russian energy.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
EU promises Kiev more funds for drones, missiles amid statements from US
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has promised that the European Union will next week allocate more funds to buy missiles and drones for Ukraine.
Thursday, October 01, 2026
"If Russia attacks our factories on European territory, the attack would be covered by Article 5" - EC
European Commissioner for Defence Andrius Kubilius stated that "if Russia attacks our factories on European soil," the attack would fall under NATO's Article 5 on collective defense and trigger a military response.
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Lavrov warns Armenia against trusting EU promises , Turkey and Serbia waiting in line for many decades
European Union authorities will likely drag out Armenia’s European integration, if they let it in at all, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at the International Youth Festival as TASS reported.
Thursday, September 10, 2026
Hungary has demanded compensation from the European Union for abandoning Russian oil and gas
The country's Prime Minister, Péter Magyar, made this demand at the Visegrád Group (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic) summit in Bratislava.
Brussels is considering freezing EU funding for Saxony-Anhalt if an AfD-led government breaches “fundamental rights or rule-of-law standards”
The state is set to receive €2.95bn from the EU’s 2021-27 budget, more per resident than any other German state.
Monday, August 14, 2017
Libyan National Army Head: EU Desire to Keep Migrants in Libya 'Not Acceptable'
Tuesday, August 08, 2017
Britain denies agreeing to multi-billion under Brexit divorce bill
Monday, August 07, 2017
Former UK diplomat says Brexit negotiations not going well
Saturday, August 05, 2017
Russia reserves right to retaliate against new EU sanctions: FM
Friday, February 13, 2015
EU failed to discuss Russia’s gas turn to Turkey in place of South Stream (Juncker)
Juncker said, however, that although the issue of the Russian natural gas deliveries via the abandoned South Stream pipeline project was raised at the summit, the participants failed to discuss subject.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced on December 1, 2014 that the project to build the South Stream gas pipeline was closed due to the European Union’s unconstructive approach to cooperation in that sphere, including Bulgaria’s decision to stop the construction of the pipeline’s stretch on its territory.
Instead, Russia will build a gas pipeline to Turkey where a gas hub on the border with Europe will be created, Putin said.................http://tass.ru/en/economy/777375
13/2/15
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Thursday, February 05, 2015
EU launches work on bloc energy union
The EC considered it "a fundamental step towards the completion of single energy market", and hoped this helps reform how Europe produces, transports and consumes energy.
The Energy Union with a Forward-looking Climate Change Policy is one of the key political priorities of the Juncker Commission, said the EC.
It also pointed out that the work for Energy Union is timely in that the EU imports 55 percent of its energy and 90 percent of the housing stock in Europe is energy inefficient.
"The Energy Union will be an ambitious project that will set a new direction and a clear long term vision for European energy and climate policy.... Effective implementation will be crucial, as will full and proper enforcement of existing legislation," said Miguel Arias Canete, EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy.
The Energy Union framework strategy is scheduled for adoption on February 25.
Xinhua - china.org.cn
5/2/15
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Sunday, February 01, 2015
Greece offers olive branch as search for allies begins
Just hours before Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis headed to Paris to seek support for a renegotiation Greece's massive loans, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said he believed a deal could be reached with the European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
"No side is seeking conflict and it has never been our intention to act unilaterally on Greek debt," Tsipras said in a statement issued to the Bloomberg news agency.
In its first meeting with creditors since it took office, the Greek government clashed with the head of the Eurozone finance ministers on Friday over its plans to rethink its rescue package and to halve Greece's debt.
Tsipras, who will himself visit Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and French President Francois Hollande next week, said Greece had no intention of reneging on its commitments to the European Union and International Monetary Fund.
"My obligation to respect the clear mandate of the Greek people with respect to ending the policies of austerity and returning to a growth agenda, in no way entails that we will not fulfil our loan obligations to the ECB (European Central Bank) or the IMF," he said. "On the contrary, it means that we need time to breathe and create our own medium-term recovery programme."
This includes aiming to balance the budget - excluding debt repayments - and clamping down on tax evasion, corruption and policies which favour only a wealthy few, he said.
"I am absolutely confident that we will soon manage to reach a mutually beneficial agreement, both for Greece and for Europe as a whole," Tsipras said.
GERMANY HOLDS FIRM
Varoufakis was to leave for Paris on Saturday night with talks scheduled with French finance minister Michel Sapin and economy minister Emmanuel Macron on Sunday. Neither he nor Tsipras are intending to visit Germany, which has shouldered the bulk of Greece's loans and which strongly objects to Athens' plans.
Merkel on Saturday ruled out fresh debt relief for Greece, telling the Hamburger Abendblatt daily: "There has already been voluntary debt forgiveness by private creditors, banks have already slashed billions from Greece's debt."
"I do not envisage fresh debt cancellation," she said, as a new poll for broadcaster ZDF found 76 per cent of Germans oppose any reduction in debt.
Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho also opposes any renegotiation of Greece's debt, saying it would "go against the interests of Portugal and the Portugese people".
Despite a restructuring in 2012, Greece is still lumbered with a debt pile of more than 315 billion euros, upwards of 175 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) - an EU record.
But in its first week in power, the government scrapped the privatisation of Greece's two main ports and the state power company and announced a major raise in the minimum wage.
Varoufakis also raised the stakes by saying that Greece wanted direct access to its EU-IMF creditors and would no longer work with their widely hated fiscal audit staff team, known as the "troika".
Martin Schulz, the German head of the European Parliament, told the Frankfurter Allgemeine on Saturday that this position was "irresponsible".
GREEK BANK FEARS
Varoufakis's comments followed a strained meeting on Friday with Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who represents finance ministers from the 19-nation Eurozone. Dijsselbloem warned Athens that "taking unilateral steps or ignoring previous arrangements is not the way forward".
Greece has been promised another 7.2 billion euros (US$8.1 billion, S$10.9 billion) in funds from the EU, IMF and European Central Bank (ECB), but this is dependent on the completion of a review of reforms at the end of February.
- Varoufakis has said his government does not want the loans, but there are concerns Greece cannot survive without them. These concerns are focused on Greece's banks, which are helping the state stay afloat by purchasing its treasury bills - and which are being supported by the ECB.
- "If the ECB turns the tap off, it's over," Alexandre Delaigue, economics professor at the elite French military academy Saint-Cyr, told AFP.
Tens of thousands of people, meanwhile, took to the streets of Madrid on Saturday in support of the Spanish party Podemos, which has been surging in polls ahead of elections later this year. Like Syriza, Podemos has found popular support by targeting corruption and rejecting austerity programmes aimed at lifting the countries out of deep economic crisis.
- AFP/fl
[channelnewsasia.com]
31/1/15 --1/2/15
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Friday, January 30, 2015
EU to consider lifting fish import ban on Sri Lanka
The External Affairs Ministry said the decision was made following talks held between Sri Lanka and the European Commission.
Sri Lanka's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mangala Samaraweera, was in Brussels this week in an attempt to have the ban on Sri Lankan fish imports lifted.
Foreign Minister Samaraweera met Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders and members of the European Parliament.
He also held talks with the European commissioner for environment, maritime affairs and fisheries and the European commissioner for international cooperation and development.
Discussions focused on strengthening Sri Lanka's relations with the European Union and Belgium, the steps Sri Lanka has taken and will take to comply with international fishing regulations and the process of requalifying for tariff concessions, the External Affairs Ministry said.
"During the fruitful meetings the European Commission offered Sri Lanka assistance in meeting the regulatory requirements that would enable an early lifting of the ban on fish exports to the EU and displayed strong interest in expanding socio-economic ties and development programmes," the Ministry said.
The EU had imposed the ban after Sri Lanka continued to violate international regulations on deep sea fishing.
Sri Lanka, under the previous government, was given time to remedy the situation before the ban took effect this month, but the government had failed to meet the requirements.
Source: Xinhua - globaltimes.cn
29-30/1/15
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Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Greek PM Tsipras pledges radical change, markets tumble
A swift series of announcements signaled the newly installed government would stand by its anti-austerity pledges, setting it on course for a clash with European partners, led by Germany, which has said it will not renegotiate the aid package needed to help Greece pay its debts.
Tsipras told the first meeting of his cabinet members that they could not afford to disappoint the voters who gave them a mandate in Sunday's election, which his Syriza party won decisively.
After announcing a halt to the privatisation of the port of Piraeus yesterday, for which China's Cosco Group and four other suitors had been shortlisted, the government said on Wednesday it would block the sale of a stake in the Public Power Corporation of Greece (PPC).
It also plans to reinstate public sector employees judged to have been laid off without proper justification and announced rises in pension payments for retired people on low incomes.
Uncertainty over the new government's relations with the European Union went beyond economic policy. A day before the EU is expected to extend sanctions against Russia for six months, it was unclear if Athens would back its European partners on this move, after dissenting over a joint statement from the bloc on Ukraine yesterday.
Tsipras, who met Russia's ambassador to Athens on Monday and the Chinese envoy the next day, told ministers that the government would not seek "a mutually destructive clash" with creditors. But he warned Greece would not back down from demanding a renegotiation of debt.
"We are coming in to radically change the way that policies and administration are conducted in this country," he said.
Financial markets have taken fright. Greek bank stocks plunged more than 22 percent today, taking their cumulative losses since the election to 40 percent.
The overall Athens stock market fell almost 8 percent , while Greek five-year government bond yields hit around 13.5 percent. This marked their highest level since a 2012 restructuring which wrote off a large proportion of Greek debt held by private investors.
Newly-appointed Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, who meets Jeroen Dijsselbloem, head of the euro zone finance ministers' group on Friday, said negotiations would not be easy but he expected they would find common ground.
"There won't be a duel between Greece and Europe," he said, in his first meeting with reporters since taking office.
Varoufakis said he would meet the finance ministers of France and Italy - both countries which have pressed for a change of course in Europe from rigid budget orthodoxy - in the coming days.
France has ruled out straight cancellation of Greece's debt, about 80 percent of which is held by other euro zone governments and multinational organisations such as the IMF. However, Paris has said it would be open to talks on making Greece's debt burden more sustainable and Tsipras is expected to meet President Francois Hollande before an EU summit on Feb. 12.
The response from Germany was frosty. Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel said Athens should have discussed the halt to privatisations with its partners before making an announcement.
"Citizens of other euro states have a right to see that the deals linked to their acts of solidarity are upheld," he said, adding that it would be the "wrong solution" for Greece to quit the euro but that it was up to Athens to decide.
Fears that talks between the new government and its creditors would break down, with unforeseeable consequences for Greece's future in Europe, fuelled the third successive day of f turmoil on the markets.
Tsipras said the government would pursue balanced budgets but would not seek to build up "unrealistic surpluses" to service Greece's massive public debt of more than 175 percent of gross domestic product.
Priorities would be helping the weakest sections of society, with policies to attack endemic cronyism and corruption in the economy, reduce waste and cut Greece's record unemployment.
The new government also confirmed it would stop the planned sale of state assets, in line with its election pledges.
Shares in PPC, which is 51 percent owned by the state and controls almost all of Greece's retail electricity market, were down nearly 13 percent, while Piraeus Port stock fell nearly 8 percent.
"We will halt immediately any privatisation of PPC," Energy Minister Panagiotis Lafazanis told Greek television a few hours before officially taking over his portfolio. "There will be a new PPC which will help considerably the restoration of the country's productive activities," he said.
The previous government of conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras passed legislation last year to spin off part of PPC to liberalise the energy market under a privatisation plan agreed under the EU/IMF bailout.
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/article/180606/greek-pm-tsipras-pledges-radical-change-markets-tumble
28/1/15
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Russia’s Gazprom cancels plans to expand Nord Stream (Sources)
“The political situation is currently complicated. We were not allowed access to OPAL (gas pipeline in Germany). Why build two more arms? We are not building them,” one source told Reuters.
Gazprom said last year it could increase the pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea to Germany with a line that would go to Britain, but a second source confirmed Gazprom currently had no plans to extend the pipeline to Britain.
Nord Stream consists of two pipes with an annual capacity of 55 billion cubic meters, enough to supply around 10 percent of the European Union’s annual gas needs.
The construction of two more pipes would have doubled Nord Stream capacity.
- Currently Nord Stream is running at around half its capacity because Gazprom is allowed only limited access to the Opal pipeline which runs through Germany to the Czech Republic and connects to Nord Stream.
The Russian company has so far failed to secure greater access, with talks complicated by tensions between the EU and Russia over the Ukraine crisis. In November, the EU pushed back a deadline for deciding on Russian access to Opal until the end of January.
Last year, Russia also scrapped its South Stream pipeline project over disagreements with the EU.
Instead, Gazprom said it planned to build a pipeline across the Black Sea towards Turkey, bypassing Ukraine as a transit route to Europe.
Gazprom was not available for immediate comment.
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/russias-gazprom-cancels-plans-to-expand-nord-stream-sources.aspx?pageID=238&nID=77584&NewsCatID=348
28/1/15
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Monday, January 19, 2015
EU to work closer with Turkey,Egypt and Gulf countries to combat terrorism
The decision was made during EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels that discussed ways to combat terrorism in Europe and other parts of the world. The meeting comes in the aftermath of the deadly attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and anti-terrorism raids in Belgium.
After the meeting, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told reporters about measures to curb terrorism. "We are looking at specific projects to launch in the coming weeks with some specific countries to increase the level of cooperation on counter-terrorism, and I would name Turkey, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria and the Gulf countries.''
Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said ''everyone thinks it’s important to engage with Turkey.''
''Turkey is central in so many ways and can play a constructive role if they use their position and setting in the right way,'' Wallstrom added.
Passenger name records
EU leaders also decided to call on the European Parliament to work on implementation of the Passenger Name Record system, which would require EU member states to share information of airline passengers with other countries.
Currently, up to 16 EU countries use the record system without an EU framework.
The legislation was proposed by European regulators in 2011, but later rejected by EU Parliament’s Civil Liberties committee in April 2013. Critics argue that the record system interferes with the right to privacy and protection of personal data.
Improving communication with Arabs
Mogherini said another strategy on developing cooperation on security issues would be to improve communication with the Arab-speaking population in EU and other parts of the world.
''We need to improve our capacity to read Arabic, speak Arabic and listen to messages coming from the Arab world,'' Mogherini said. ''This is basic communication strategy we need to implement.''
Her comments came after calling for a stronger alliance with Arab countries amid deadly terror attacks and arrests across Europe. Mogherini also met Arab League Secretary-General Nabil el-Araby on Monday.
''The threat is not only the one we faced in Paris, but spreading in other parts of the world starting from Muslim countries,'' Mogherini said. ''We need to strengthen our way of cooperating, first of all, with Arab countries.''
"Good cooperation"
Mogherini said an alliance between Europe and Arab countries was needed because Muslims were mostly affected by terrorist attacks.
Mogherini said ''I've always said it is not an issue between Europe or the West and Islam."
"Terrorism and terrorist attacks are targeting most Muslims in the world, so we need an alliance, we need a dialogue there to face the issue together.''
''What we need to do is face terrorism while respecting Islam," she added.
U.K. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond told reporters ahead of the meeting: ''We have very good cooperation with our partners across the Arab world in counter-terrorism."
"The Muslim countries of the world are the ones who have suffered the greatest burden of terrorism. They will continue to be in the front line and we have to work closely with them to protect both those countries and European Union countries," Hammond added.
http://www.aa.com.tr/en/headline/452668--eu-to-work-closer-with-turkey-to-combat-terrorism
19/1/15
Russian gas deliveries to Ukraine and EU uninterrupted (Ukraine's Naftogaz)
"The information circulating in the media that Russian gas has stopped going to the EU through Ukraine dates back to 2009 and has nothing to do with the current situation. As of 2015, there were no breaks in Russian gas deliveries to the Ukraine GTS," the statement said.
The CEO of Russia's Gazprom gas giant said in mid-January that risks persist for gas supplies to Europe via Ukraine as the latter falied to import the necessary ammounts of natural gas in November and December due to financial difficulties.
Earlier reports said Ukraine imported 572.2 million cubic meters of Russian gas in the first two weeks of January. Besides direct supplies from Russia, Ukraine gets reverse gas supplies from Slovakia and Hungary.................http://itar-tass.com/en/economy/77188319/1/15
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EUΠως παραβιάσθηκε η Συμφωνία των Πρεσπών και τα παιχνίδια παραπλάνησης
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