Photo by Nati Melnychuk on Unsplash The EU-New Zealand trade agreement has taken a big step towards ratification, with the Commission sending it to Council for signature. Sending the draft decisions to the Council on the signature and conclusion of the agreement is a major step. Once the Council gives its green light, the EU and New Zealand…
Photo by Max Bender on Unsplash In the aftermath of the earthquakes that rocked both Syria and Türkiye, the humanitarian needs on the ground continue to increase. The EU says it has been responding to the disaster since day one and is now scaling up its assistance to the people affected. 18 EU Member States (Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, Germany,…
Photo by Kenrick Mills on Unsplash It is exactly ten years since the death of nine-year old Ella Kissi-Debrah. She was the first person in the world to have the cause of death defined as air pollution. It happened in London, writes Philip Bushill-Matthews. The European Environment Agency in its 2021 report claimed that overall in 2018 air…
Photo by Nick Bolton on Unsplash New data shows that the number of bankruptcy declarations among businesses in the EU increased substantially in the fourth quarter of 2022. They were up by a huge 26.8% compared with the previous quarter and reached the highest levels since the start of the data collection in 2015. The number of bankruptcy declarations…
Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash MEPs from across the political divide insist that the European Union should ratify the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women, in line with a 2021 Court of Justice opinion. The EU signed the Istanbul Convention in 2017 and signalled its commitment to eradicating gender-based violence. However, the EU ratification process has been stuck…
Photo by Nati Melnychuk on Unsplash One year into the war in Ukraine, 61% of Europeans believe that the country will prevail, says a new survey. Published on Thursday, it says Germans, however, are not quite so optimistic, although a 55% majority believes in a Ukrainian victory. These are the main findings of the EU-wide survey conducted by…
Photo by moein rezaalizade on Unsplash MEPs will this week debate the EU’s response so far to the devastating earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria on 6 February. The death toll in the two countries had exceeded 33,000 by Monday. The World Health Organisation has now warned of a secondary disaster, with tens of thousands of people displaced and in need…
Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash Margaret Thatcher was a great believer in privatisation. She said it was crucial for ‘reversing the corrosive and corrupting effects of socialism…. ensuring the power of the people is enhanced….and reclaiming the territory for freedom’, writes Philip Bushill-Matthews. She was equally clear that Governments were inherently inefficient at running businesses, and few…
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash Kazakhstan is totally committed to the goals and objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement. This was stressed by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan Alikhan Smailov at the Summit of World Leaders of the Global Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt last November. Smailov has highlighted that Kazakhstan has set…
Photo by ekrem osmanoglu on Unsplash Special elections to the Majilis, the lower house of the Kazakhstan Parliament, will be held on March 19. The country’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, is determined to modernise Kazakhstan’s political system, and these elections form part of that process Tokayev is trying to create a balanced system of government, which is intended to…
