British PM Boris Johnson arrived today in Luxembourg for talks with EC President Jean-Claude Juncker hoping for a breakthrough in a stalled Brexit talks, news wires reported. With less than seven weeks until Britain is due to leave the EU, Johnson has yet to reach an agreement with Brussels on how to manage the exit in a non-hurting way.
What is most concerning is that the Brexit date is looming once again and we still do not know if the rights of EU citizens will be guaranteed. Against this backdrop, France has come out and said it would veto another Brexit delay if the UK government did not provide a sound reason for it, thus pouring kerosene on the already blazing fire, said Ilhan Kyuchyuk, MEP (MRF/RE) and ALDE Party Vice-President, in an interview to Europost.
The European Commission has opened separate in-depth investigations to assess whether “excess profit” tax rulings granted by Belgium to 39 multinational companies gave those companies an unfair advantage over their competitors, in breach of EU State aid rules. Today's opening decisions follow the General Court's February 2019 annulment of the Commission's January 2016 decision concluding that the same tax rulings formed part of a Belgian aid scheme that was illegal under EU State aid rules.
The EU affairs ministers, meeting in Brussels on Monday, started a first formal hearing over alleged breaches of the bloc's values and the rule of law in Hungary. Hungarian PM Viktor Orban's moves to restrict free media, judges, academics, minorities and rights groups rose concerns of eroding the democracy in the ex-communist country. Orban, in power since 2010, also angered the EU with his harsh anti-immigration stance.
A political solution is necessary to end the crisis in Syria, the leaders of Turkey, Russia and Iran said on Monday, meeting in Ankara, despite many disagreements especially over the threat from Islamic State, news wires reported. “We are in a period when we need to take more responsibility for peace in Syria, when we (three countries) need to carry more weight,” Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan said after talks with Vladimir Putin and Hassan Rouhani. Russia and Iran are key allies of Syrian President Bashar Assad while Turkey backs Syrian rebels seeking to oust him.
The next generation of Wi-Fi has been trickling out over the past year, but since Monday, its official launch is going to accelerate. This comes after the Wi-Fi Alliance, the organisation that oversees implementation of the Wi-Fi standard, informally kicked off the widescale adoption of the new Wi-Fi 6 standard.
Christine Lagarde got on Tuesday European Parliament’s approval to be the ECB’s next President. In the secret ballot in the plenary, MEPs voted 394 in favour, 206 against and 49 abstentions to recommend Lagarde to head up the bank.
Spain’s acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez rejected conditions set out by center-right leader Albert Rivera to back him in a vote to form a government, a Socialist party source said on Monday.
The European Union is urging the United States to hold off trade sanctions and seek an agreement on aircraft industry subsidies, but Washington has shown no desire to negotiate, EU trade chief Cecilia Malmstrom said on Monday.
China and the United States are currently deadlocked over an UN resolution to extend a mission in Afghanistan, with Beijing signaling it will cast a veto because there is no reference to its Belt and Road project, diplomats told Reuters on Monday.
Iliyan Vassilev, aka Agent Sasho of the former State Security, has once again demonstrated why he is among the most vociferous town criers of the oligarchic propaganda. Yet again, he resorted to his favourite “instrument of democracy” – a Facebook post that is then obligingly copy-pasted by Frognews, the website of his colleague Agent Academician (Ognyan Stefanov).
Oil prices made their biggest jump since the Gulf War on Monday after President Donald Trump warned that the United States was "locked and loaded" to respond to attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure that Washington blamed on Iran. It is the first time the president has hinted at a potential American military response to the drone attacks, which slashed Saudi oil production by half and led both the kingdom and the US to announce they may tap their strategic reserves.
Apple challenged a €13bn tax charge from the European Commission in the EU’s second-highest court on Tuesday, escalating the landmark tax fight between the iPhone maker and EU regulator. According to a company's statement, the bloc's order obliging it to pay €13bn in back taxes to Ireland "defies reality and common sense."
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