We Shall Remember

Nine soldiers of the First World War have been reburied with full military honours at Ypres, the world’s largest CWGC cemetery, in the presence of its President, HRH The Duke of Kent. The men’s remains were first discovered in 2018 and seven of the nine were identified by the MOD’s Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre…

Vaccination Strongest Weapon Against Health Crisis

von der Leyen

The most effective response to the resurgence of COVID-19 is vaccination, say MEPs, addressing the main topic on the agenda of the European Council. In a debate with Commission President von der Leyen and the Slovenian Presidency, they insisted that vaccination remains the strongest and most promising weapon available against the pandemic. Additional efforts are…

Make Africa an Equal Partner of EU

EU Africa

During a visit to the European Parliament by the President of Ghana Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, the Co-Chairmen of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group, Polish Prof Ryszard Legutko and Italian Raffaele Fitto, asked the EU to help put African nations on equal footing with those of Europe. In a bilateral meeting after Akufo-Addo’s plenary…

ECR Group Prepares for Busy 2022

Legutko and Fitto

MEPs of the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR) have voted to extend the Co-Chairmanships of Prof Ryszard Legutko (Poland) and Raffaele Fitto (Italy). During an ECR Group meeting other positions were also voted on: Assita Kanko (Belgium), Peter Lundgren (Sweden), Robert Roos (the Netherlands), Beata Szydlo (Poland), Hermann Tertsch (Spain) and Roberts Zile (Latvia) have been elected…

Beijing’s Taiwan Territorial Claims Lack Justification

CCP military flights threaten Taiwan

There is no rational justification for a demand for the “reunification” of Taiwan with the PRC writes Aaron Rhodes. Xi Jinping and other Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders are ramping up rhetoric about the necessity of “unifying” China by bringing Taiwan under their control as a “sacrosanct mission of the entire Chinese people.” Since 1949,…

Beyrer Comments on EU Tax Proposals

Cut Taxes

The European Commission has presented its communication on own resources and directives on a minimum corporate tax and fighting shell entities. Reaction came from BusinessEurope Director General Markus J. Beyrer who said: “It is important that the EU has a stable funding source through its own resources. The best way to ensure we are able…

EU Funding Programmes Face Shortfall

José Fernandes MEP

EU funding programmes face significant cuts or Member States will have to increase their contributions to the EU to make up the shortfall, it has been warned. The warning comes from José Manuel Fernandes MEP. He said, “It is equally important that adequate money is generated from the new own resources. If sufficient, these new revenues…

EU Proposes New Sources of Revenue

Iohannes Hahn

The Commission has proposed to establish the next generation of own resources for the EU budget by putting forward three new sources of revenue: the first based on revenues from emissions trading (ETS), the second drawing on the resources generated by the proposed EU carbon border adjustment mechanism, and the third based on the share…

Ariane Launches James Webb Telescope Into Orbit

The Ariane 5 launcher, operated by Arianespace on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA), has successfully injected NASA’s Webb Space Telescope into its transfer orbit towards its final position at the second Lagrange point (L2). Carrying out its final mission of the year, the Ariane 5 rocket once again proved its exceptional reliability, this…

From the Baltic to the Straits of Formosa

In order to strengthen economic and cultural ties between Taiwan and Lithuania, TAITRA invited the Lithuanian Rural Business and Market Development Agency to set up a Lithuania pavilion at the 2021 Taipei International Food Show. The show ran from December 22 to 25, with the first three days open to commercial enterprises and the last…