EU plans tougher asylum rules
Asylum seekers' applications to be rejected if they move around within the EU, under new asylum rules proposed by the EU Commission.
Asylum seekers' applications to be rejected if they move around within the EU, under new asylum rules proposed by the EU Commission.
The European Parliament has said the Commission is not doing its legal duty on Canadian and US visas, but member states are willing to give it more time.
European donors should encourage Lebanon to revise policies keeping children out of school and to increase resettlement of Syrian refugees from Lebanon.
French minister for European Affairs, Harlem Desir, "solemnly" called on former European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso to renounce his new position as advisor and non-executive chairman of US investment bank, Goldman Sachs. In a letter to a French MP, he said Barroso's decision to join the bank that contributed to falsifying Greece's public accounts was "morally, politically and ethically a mistake."
During his last appearance in parliament as British prime minister, Cameron said it would be good for the UK and for Scotland to keep close relations with the EU.
French president Francois Hollande, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi will hold "a summit or a meeting" at the end of August, Hollande announced on Wednesday during a cabinet meeting. The three leaders, who already met in Berlin after the Brexit vote at the end of June, intend to make proposals for the future of the EU-27 after the UK exit.
Dusan Mramor said he quit for personal reasons. He had criticised the police for raiding the central bank last week in an inquiry into an alleged huge scam perpetrated during a 2013 bank bailout.
The European Commission has declined to suspend visa-free travel for Canadian and US travellers, despite being told by the European Parliament and by member states that it has a legal obligation to do so. It had earlier set itself a deadline of 12 July to act, but it said on Wednesday it would file a report on the state of play "before the end of the year".
Ride-sharing service Uber will suspend operations on 24 July in Hungary due to government legislation that makes it impossible for it to operate, the company said Wednesday. In June, Hungary's parliament passed a law aimed at blocking internet access to "illegal dispatcher services", following months of protests by taxi drivers. Uber said more than 160,000 people used its services in Budapest and 1,200 drivers will be put out of work.
EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said Wednesday that the Hungarian referendum on EU competencies on migration policy set for 2 October is a "domestic political issue", adding that the ballot is to do with "what we have decided altogether in Europe, and Hungary is part of our decisions." He said the Commission will take a position on the vote "if we judge we have to do it."
The EU's new data protection deal with the US fails to guarantee privacy or security, says Max Schrems, the activist who brought down the scheme's predecessor.
Human Rights Watch, a leading NGO, has accused Hungary of violating international asylum laws and of beating refugee women and children who tried to enter the country. It said it was "summarily dismissing" the asylum claims of most young men who end up in its special transit zone. "People who cross into Hungary without permission, including women and children, have been viciously beaten and forced back", it added.
Employment commissioner Marianne Thyssen remains committed to treat local and posted workers the same way, despite opposition from eastern EU states.
EU commissioners are on Wednesday to discuss visa-free travel to Europe for Canadian and US citizens. The European Commission was legally obliged to suspend the waivers because Canada and the US impose visas on some member states. The Commission instead asked MEPs and the EU Council for informal guidance, but the two institutions refused because they said such consultations had no basis in law.
The European Parliament's inquiry committee into the Dieselgate scandal on Wednesday unanimously adopted its interim report when 41 MEPs voted in favour of it. There were no votes against or abstentions. Chairwoman Kathleen Van Brempt said the report was "purely methodological" and "non-substantial". The committee decided not to draw any intermediate conclusions, but save those for the report at the end of its mandate.
Fabrice Leggeri, the head of the EU’s Frontex border agency, said Tuesday on French radio that Italy is the “new front line” in the migration crisis. He said 750 people a day are coming to Italy, compared to 50 in Greece. He said there were 360,000 irregular crossings in the first six months of this year, a figure higher than last year, but that numbers were falling since April.
Italian finance minister Pier Carlo Padoan told press Tuesday that the country's "banking system is solid and has only a very few specific critical situations". Italian banks are struggling with a €360 billion pile of bad loans, prompting a debate on wether creditors or taxpayers should fund a potential rescue package. The "perception of the Italian banking system ... is completely distorted in terms of figures", Padoan said.
The UK parliament’s petitions committee is to hold a debate on 5 September on a second referendum on leaving the EU after a petition to that effect attained more than 4 million signatures. The petition and the debate are non-binding, with Britain’s newly installed prime minister Teresa May having already ruled out a second vote.
The European Commission has said that Israel’s so called “transparency law”, passed by the Knesset on Monday by a slim majority, risked “undermining” its status as a “vibrant democracy” with “freedom of speech and a diverse civil society”. It said the bill, which imposes administrative burdens on government-critical NGOs funded by the EU or other foreign donors, “seems aimed at constraining the activities of these civil society organisations”.
The European Commission has give US tech giant Google another six weeks, until September, to respond to objections that it forces mobile phone makers to use its Internet browser software, squeezing out competitors. Google is also fighting a separate EU accusation that it unfairly plugs its own shopping services on its search engines. Each case could result in huge fines of up to €6.7 billion.
The European Commission risks “undermining public trust in the EU” by sticking to technical rules on top officials taking jobs in the private sector while violating the “spirit of the law”, EU Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly said on Tuesday. “Former commissioners should behave with integrity and discretion,” she said, after former Commission head Jose Manuel Barroso took a controversial post at US bank Goldman Sachs.
The International Monetary Fund warned that the two economies could be hit by the consequences of the Brexit vote.
The EU and China will set up a working group to "monitor" and "verify" China's steel export and import data. EU Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said after the EU-China summit in Beijing that the group will establish if Chinese government decisions taken "can be verified in reality". "We want to check figures," he said. The EU accuses China of dumping cheap steel on European markets, accusations denied by China.