Europe

France's new Prime Minister Michel Barnier is considering a temporary increase in corporate tax on the country's biggest companies as well as a tax on share buybacks as part of efforts to plug a gaping hole in public finances, Le Monde newspaper reported on Sunday.

Two countries agree to modifications beneath Matterhorn peak, one of Europe’s highest summits

Non-full membership in the Schengen area costs Bulgaria more than EUR 834 million per year. Romania loses EUR 2.32 billion in annual revenues from not participating fully in Europe’s border-free regime, with losses for its transport operators amounting to another 90 million annually due to delays at the country’s land borders.

The figures were presented at the conference The cost of non-membership of Schengen for the Single Market – impact on Bulgaria and Romania, which took place in Sofia, Bulgaria on 24 September. The event was jointly organised by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)and the Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA).

[...] For an increasing number of critics, Ireland being home to Chinese firms links the country to the human rights abuse allegations levelled against some such companies. These include Chinese clothing firm Shein, which since May 2023 has had its European headquarters in Dublin.

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In May, Ireland’s Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Dara Calleary, welcomed a report celebrating how Huawei was contributing €800m ($889m; £668m) per year to the Irish economy. The firm has three research and development centres in Ireland.

This is the same Huawei whose telecoms network equipment the US has banned since 2022 due to concerns over national security. The UK has moved in the same direction, ordering phone networks to remove Huawei components. And mobile phone networks in many Western nations, including Ireland, no longer offer Huawei handsets.

Meanwhile, WuXi has, since 2018, invested more than €1bn in a facility in Dundalk, near the border with Northern Ireland.

Earlier this month the US House of Representatives passed a bill to restrict US firms’ ability to work with WuXi, again citing national security concerns. The bill now has to go to the US Senate.

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Prominent critics of Ireland rolling out a “green carpet” to Chinse firms include Barry Andrews, one of Ireland's members of the European Parliament. “Human rights and environmental abuses should not be allowed in Irish shopping baskets,” says the Fianna Fáil MEP.

He points to a US Congress report from last year, which said there was “an extremely high risk that Temu’s supply chains are contaminated with forced labour”.

Temu had told the investigation that it had a “zero-tolerance policy” towards the practice.

“One person’s bargain is another’s back-breaking work for poverty wages,” adds Mr Andrews, whose party is part of the current Irish government coalition.

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Some leading economists question whether Ireland even needs the few thousand jobs that the Chinese firms provide.

“Ireland’s economy has been running at near full employment for the best part of a decade," says Dan O'Brien, chief economist at Ireland's Institute of International and European Affairs.

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Mr O’Brien says that Ireland’s level of FDI was already too high without the Chinese investment on top. “Given we are already overly dependent on FDI in a world that is at risk of deglobalisation, we don’t need another major source of FDI on top of that from the United States.”

He adds EU rules should be “actively used to discourage Chinese FDI” in Ireland.

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Estonia's Climate Minister Yoko Alender and Finland's Minister of the Environment and Climate Kai Mykkänen signed a memorandum of understanding on Friday to ensure the resilience and security of critical undersea infrastructure, including through enhancing surveillance capabilities.

The purpose of the memorandum of understanding is to outline the structures within which Finland and Estonia can develop their cooperation on the monitoring and repair of underwater energy connections.

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The Balticconnector gas pipeline damaged in October 2023 has been repaired. There are also two submarine power cables between the countries, Estlink 1 and Estlink 2, on the bottom of the Gulf of Finland. These transmission connections are an essential part of the energy markets and security of energy supply in Finland and Estonia. They also even out price fluctuations.

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Following the parliamentary election in Austria, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) will be the strongest faction in the parliament, beating the conservative ÖVP for the first time in history.

A senior government minister urged Moldovans on Sunday to shun "thieves, fugitives and bandits" after an exiled pro-Russian business magnate pledged to pay voters to vote "no" in a referendum on joining the European Union.

BRUSSELS (AP) — As the war in Ukraine enters a critical period, the European Union has decided it must take responsibility for what it sees as a security threat in its own neighborhood, and it’s preparing to tackle some of the financial burden, perhaps even without the United States.

PARIS (AP) — France’s new government is set to take a hardline approach to migration issues as key officials have pledged to significantly reduce the number of people entering and staying illegally in the country.

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis wrapped up a troubled visit to Belgium on Sunday by doubling down on his traditional views on women and abortion and demanding that Catholic bishops stop covering up for predator priests — a scandal that has devastated the church’s credibility around the globe.

Francis revisited the key thorny topics of his trip to Belgium during his in-flight press conference coming home, praising Belgium’s late King Baudouin as a “saint” for having abdicated for a day in 1990 rather than sign legislation legalizing abortion.

Things must be hard if the EU can't keep a single Mastodon server up.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/43507472

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Openly defending one’s decision not to have children will be prosecuted in Russia. The State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, is preparing a bill under which authorities will impose fines of up to €50,000 ($55,580) for supporting “the refusal to have children.” The measure affects all areas of life — from casual conversation to films and books — and is a serious threat to the Russian feminist movement.

The crackdown on what the Kremlin calls the “childfree” movement will result in fines of up to 400,000 rubles for individuals (around $4,300), 800,000 rubles for civil servants ($8,600), and up to five million rubles ($55,580) for companies or other legal entities. Foreigners will also be deported.

There are thousands of reasons why a person may decide not to have children, but the Cabinet of ministers has asked the State Duma to make only three exceptions to the law: religious reasons, medical reasons or in the case of rape. It also alleges that there is a mass-organized childfree movement, even though the websites on this subject are little more than a curiosity; Russian newspapers cite the existence of groups on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook, which barely have 5,000 members.

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Romania has once again scrambled fighter jets last night after Russian forces attacked several targets in Ukraine.

A drone reportedly briefly entered Romanian airspace near the Ukrainian border.

The attack last night targeted the town of Izmail in the southern Odesa region, where three people were killed and at least 11, including a child, were injured, according to Governor Oleh Kiper quoted by Kiev Independent.

The Ukrainian Air Forces confirm that a Russian drone "strayed" into Romanian territory. In total, 32 drones were launched last night, of which 24 were intercepted, according to the Ukrainians.

"For monitoring the situation, two F-16 aircraft of the Romanian Air Forces took off from the 86th Air Base in Borcea starting at 1:52 am and, later, starting at 3:22 am, two F-18 aircraft of the Spanish Air Forces from the Extended Air Policing Service at the 57th Air Base in Mihail Kogălniceanu."

[Edit typo.]

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Instead of spearheading China’s liberalisation, Western universities that benefit from Chinese money are increasingly vulnerable to pressure from its government.

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Through a combination of pressure tactics – including a global censorship regime, the weaponisation of informal Chinese networks, questionable party-state funding, and dependencies on “official China” – students and researchers are silenced, and higher education institutions are influenced.

Within many universities outside China, academic freedom has been compromised by Chinese funding. Dependent on the large funds that have been allocated to them, they are more inclined to do research in line with the CCP’s programme. More recently, the much publicised Hong Kong National Security Law allows anyone to be charged who challenges China’s national unity, regardless of nationality or territory. The Hong Kong National Security Law purports to have extraterritorial effect and therefore it is not limited to Chinese citizens or even those physically in Hong Kong. This inevitably contributes to a climate of self-censorship among academics.

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Unfortunately, rising authoritarianism, if not actual totalitarianism, in China has turned the tables on Western universities. Instead of spearheading the liberalisation of China, they have become vulnerable to Chinese pressure in the opposite direction. Their partnerships with Chinese universities have turned into potential liabilities as professors come under fire for not properly declaring Chinese funding, research grants are linked to human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and universities’ technology breakthroughs are being used to improve China’s system of mass surveillance.

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The Irish Centre for Human Rights and the University of Galway showed courage in accepting this gift of memory to [Chinese human rights activist] Liu. Statements of support by the university’s president and the director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights are significant. It is our hope that this example will encourage other universities to resist the pressure from Chinese money that might compromise their academic freedom.

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Dame Maggie Smith, star of the Harry Potter films and Downton Abbey, has died at the age of 89

A statement from Dame Maggie's sons says she died peacefully in hospital on Friday morning

Fellow Downton Abbey actor Hugh Bonneville says she was a "true legend of her generation" with a "sharp eye, sharp wit and formidable talent"

A legend of British stage and screen, Dame Maggie won two Oscars during her career - for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in 1970 and California Suite in 1979

The supermarket can’t pretend it’s offering a discount if it raises prices just to cut them back, the judges ruled in a case brought by consumer activists from Baden-Württemberg.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/43413713

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On Saturday [September 21], Tibetan activists convened outside the Musée Guimet in Paris to protest the museum’s decision to replace exhibition materials that identify certain artifacts as Tibetan by replacing it with the Chinese name for the region. Activists claim the change to the language is problematic for deferring to a Chinese political narrative that’s historically aimed to erase Tibetan cultural identity from public spaces.

The mass protest, which some sources estimate attracted 800 demonstrators, followed a report in the French newspaper Le Monde alleging that Musée Guimet and the Musée du quai Branly, two prominent Parisian museums that house collections of Asian art, altered their exhibition materials cataloging Tibetan artifacts as deriving instead from then Chinese term “Xizang Autonomous Region.” According to the same report, the Musée Guimet renamed its Tibetan art galleries as deriving from the “Himalayan world.”

A handful of Tibetan cultural advocacy groups based in France penned letters to both museums, requesting formal meetings to discuss the reasons behind and implications of the terminology changes, a request that activists say was accepted by Musée du quai Branly, but not it’s peer Musée Guimet.

A majority of EU Member States agreed to adopt the European Commission's proposal to downgrade the protection status of the wolf under the Bern Convention. This shift opens the door to wolf culling as a false solution to livestock depredation, which runs counter to Europe’s commitment to safeguard and restore biodiversity. The decision which cannot be scientifically justified went through after Germany changed its position from abstention to support.

With this decision, Member States have chosen to ignore the call of over 300 civil society organisations, among others EuroNatur, and more than 300,000 people urging them to follow scientific recommendations and step up efforts to foster coexistence with large carnivores through preventive measures.

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Wolves are strictly protected under both the Bern Convention and the EU Habitats Directive, serving as a keystone species vital for healthy ecosystems and biodiversity across Europe. Weakening their protection will hinder the ongoing recovery of wolf populations.

‘The EU's decision will not only destabilise the still fragile wolf populations in large parts of Europe, but also undermine the significant progress made towards a coexistence of humans and wolves,’ says Antje Henkelmann, project manager and wolf expert at EuroNatur. ‘Only efficient herd protection can prevent livestock kills. Instead, the EU is focussing on symbolic but inefficient culls. With her turnaround, the Federal Environment Minister is not only weakening wolf protection, but also giving in to populist demands that are of little use to livestock farmers,’’ says the biologist.

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A Chinese teacher-researcher has been prevented from taking up a post at the prestigious French engineering school, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) in Paris, where he had been due to give lectures and pursue his research work in a restricted access laboratory. The researcher, who already had a contract in Israel, applied for a long-stay "talent" visa of the kind normally granted to researchers at the French consulate general in Jerusalem.

His application was initially refused on 5 June. He appealed against the decision to the specialised visa appeals body in Nantes in western France, which has yet to give its decision, but also took his case to the Nantes administrative court, asking it to suspend the consulate's decision and order the French authorities to grant him the visa he had applied for.

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The nomination of Olivér Várhelyi, an ally of Hungary’s nationalist ruling party, to the health portfolio in the bloc’s new executive commission last week cast a harsh spotlight on the country’s own much-criticised public health system.

“If the goal is to help the member states of the European Union with ideas to destroy the health sector, to ransack it… then it was a great idea” to nominate Várhelyi, Zoltan Tarr, an EU lawmaker from Hungary’s opposition, told local media.

Hungary’s public health system has been under scrutiny since opposition leader Péter Magyar — a former ally turned critic of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — started touring hospitals this summer to denounce their “deplorable” conditions.

Magyar accuses Orbán of “systematically underfunding and dismantling public healthcare” by getting rid of the health ministry to save money shortly after he returned to power in 2010.

Hungary spent only 4.4% of its GDP on health in 2022, a smaller share than any other EU country, Eurostat figures show.

“Unfortunately… successive governments have not treated health as a priority,” the head of the country’s Hospital Association, Gyorgy Velkey, told AFP.

No water, no air con

Surveys show the quality of healthcare is one of the Hungarian public’s biggest concerns. Complaints from patients proliferate on social media.

From the lack of basic sanitary items to crumbling facilities, the list of complaints is almost as long as the notorious waiting lists for specialist care.

In one Facebook post from last month, a father deplored the state of the hospital in which his son, in his 30s, died of thrombosis.

“There was no air conditioning in the ICU. We had no light in the bathroom outside the ICU, and we were using our phone to get some light. There was no toilet seat and no water,” Laszlo, who asked not to be identified by his full name, told AFP.

Many patients say they turn to private providers to get better and faster medical care.

Szilvia, 32, who did not want to be identified by her full name, paid the equivalent of 3,000 euros ($3,350) to give birth to her second child in a private hospital after a “traumatic birth experience” with her first-born.

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