Europe
Brussels bureau chief for Reuters. Previously chief Lead Writer and editor for political and general news across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In 25 years with Reuters, has reported widely on conflict, elections, society, economics, culture and sport from previous postings in Paris, Moscow, Berlin, London, Baghdad and Jerusalem.
BRUSSELS These are key sections of the deal struck by European Union leaders with David Cameron, on which the prime minister announced he will campaign to maintain British membership of the bloc in a referendum on June 23. INTERNATIONAL TREATY "The Heads of State or Government of the 28 Member States ...
BRUSSELS The European Union took a step on Friday towards suspending its cherished free-travel Schengen zone for two years by setting a deadline for Greece to stem the chaotic influx of migrants into the bloc. EU ministers give Greece three months to fulfil 50 recommendations to put its house in order - a target that officials and diplomats acknowledged few expect Athens to meet.
BRUSSELS Angela Merkel nipped out of a tense EU summit on Friday to grab a cone of chips at one of Brussels' best known "frites" kiosks. The German chancellor and her aides slipped out of the European Council building on foot to enjoy Belgium's national snack at the famous Maison Antoine "fritkot" around the corner.
BRUSSELS Call it the surrealist summit. How very Brussels. As Europe's leaders bargained through the night on a deal to help Prime Minister David Cameron keep Britain in the EU, a "war room" of lawyers wrangled over how to reconcile diametrically opposite meanings of the same three words - "ever closer union".
BRUSSELS European Union governments haggled over reform proposals on Wednesday, with pressure mounting on leaders to close remaining gaps and produce a summit deal on Friday that can help keep Britain in the EU. Prime Minister David Cameron will discuss a final draft -- expected from summit chairman Donald Tusk late on Wednesday -- when he meets the other 27 EU leaders on Thursday evening.
BRUSSELS David Cameron fended off changes on Tuesday to a draft deal he has cut to help keep Britain in the EU, as other states demanded adjustments and the European Parliament said it could not guarantee to pass the reforms. After talks on Monday with President Francois Hollande, who argued the draft text may give British banks unfair advantages, the British prime minister visited Brussels to meet EU executive chief Jean-Claude Juncker and leaders of the EU legislature.
BRUSSELS The European Union took a step on Friday towards suspending its cherished free-travel Schengen zone for two years by setting a deadline for Greece to stem the chaotic influx of migrants into the bloc. EU ministers give Greece three months to fulfil 50 recommendations to put its house in order - a target that officials and diplomats acknowledged few expect Athens to meet.
PARIS/LONDON French President Francois Hollande reckons there is work still to be done to secure a deal at a European Union summit this week to help keep Britain in the EU, a presidency source said after a visit by British Prime Minister David Cameron.
BRUSSELS A draft accord to help keep Britain in the European Union is "very fragile", a top EU official warned on Wednesday as France and eastern states pushed for changes before leaders meet to try and seal the deal next week.
Russian troops pounded Chechen rebels with Grad rockets after abandoning hope of freeing any more hostages they were holding in a southern village. But there was no indication whether the troops had taken control.
BRUSSELS/BERLIN Is this how "Europe" ends? The Germans, founders and funders of the postwar union, shut their borders to refugees in a bid for political survival by the chancellor who let in a million migrants. And then -- why not? -- they decide to revive the Deutschmark while they're at it.
The European Union began an unprecedented inquiry on Wednesday into whether Poland's new conservative, Eurosceptic government has breached the EU's democratic standards by taking more control of the judiciary and public media.
BRUSSELS Christmas came early for Brussels lawyers and policy wonks who relish nothing better than a brain-teasing multidimensional constitutional puzzle to while away the dark days of winter.
Here are the key points of the deal. CASH FOR REFUGEES The EU will provide "an initial" 3 billion euros ($3.2 billion) for Turkey to improve conditions for the 2.2 million or so Syrian refugees in the country. A key element is to provide Arabic-speaking schools and other services to encourage refugees not to head to Europe.
Leaders of the European Union met Turkish premier Ahmet Davutoglu in Brussels on Sunday to finalize an agreement hammered out by diplomats over the past month, as Europeans struggle to limit the strain on their 28-nation bloc from taking in hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.
BRUSSELS/ANKARA European and Turkish officials are working to smooth out their remaining differences on an agreement to help stem flows of migrants to Europe, which they hope will be signed on Sunday by European Union leaders and Turkey's prime minister.
The United Nations Security Council issued a statement condemning "barbaric and cowardly terrorist attacks" involving assailants using guns and bombs on several venues, including the national sports stadium and a major music venue. Divided on many issues, including on the war in Syria that has fuelled Islamist violence, the United States and Russia both voiced their support in messages to French President Francois Hollande.
BRUSSELS Belgium extended a maximum security alert in Brussels for a week on Monday as a manhunt went on for Islamic State suspects in the Paris attacks, but the usually bustling city's metro and schools could reopen from Wednesday.
BRUSSELS Belgian police arrested 16 more people in late-night raids searching for those behind the deadly Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, but failed to find a prime suspect as the government locked down the capital for a third day on Monday.
Donald Tusk, the European Council president who chaired the emergency meeting of EU leaders on Malta, warned that they must win a "race against time" to slow arrivals via Greece if Europe is to save the Schengen zone of passport-free travel inside the bloc from being throttled by new national barriers and controls.
BRUSSELS British Prime Minister David Cameron expects a "substantive discussion" with fellow EU leaders next month on his demands for reforms of the bloc, officials said after talks on Sunday with the EU's chief negotiator.
BRUSSELS The head of Europol said the European Union's police agency was feeding information to French and Belgian detectives on the trail of the Islamic State militants who killed 130 people in Paris a week ago. "Europol is supporting it in many, many different ways," said Rob Wainwright, the British police chief who has run The Hague-based agency for the past six years.
"It is moving," Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson told Reuters. "It would be great if we could make progress now, especially at this time of crisis on the refugee front."
Last Friday, the owner blew himself up at another laid-back corner cafe, this time in Paris, on a mission of retribution from Islamic State. Brahim Abdeslam's journey from barkeeper to suicide bomber remains a mystery, along with the whereabouts of his younger brother Salah, now on the run as Europe's most wanted man but until recently the manager of Brahim's bar, Les Beguines.
BRUSSELS Belgium extended a maximum security alert in Brussels for a week on Monday as a manhunt went on for Islamic State suspects in the Paris attacks, but the usually bustling city's metro and schools could reopen from Wednesday.
"Alarmed by the widening divisions, the threat for many more lives and a deep regional crisis, we pledged to work closely together and to mobilize all our means and instruments to prevent a further deterioration of the situation," senior officials of the three bodies said in a joint statement. U.N.
"It's a signal we want to give. Molenbeek gives much more than that," organizer Yannick Bochem told Reuters Television as more than 2,000 people crowded the square in front of the local town hall. "We want to show our respects because we're also shocked by the events, and we're also shocked that it's linked with Molenbeek.
BRUSSELS The head of Europol said the European Union's police agency was feeding information to French and Belgian detectives on the trail of the Islamic State militants who killed 130 people in Paris a week ago. "Europol is supporting it in many, many different ways," said Rob Wainwright, the British police chief who has run The Hague-based agency for the past six years.
BRUSSELS France wants the EU to tighten rules on passport checks on EU citizens entering and leaving the Schengen free-travel zone in the wake of the attacks in Paris, to make it harder for European jihadists to return from Syria unnoticed.
The fund, unveiled at a summit with African leaders in Malta, currently consists largely of 1.8 billion euros ($1.93 billion) put up by the European Commission, the EU executive, from the bloc's central budget. The Commission wants member states to match that, but few have pledged much so far.
As the manhunt continued for Salah Abdeslam, 26, a lawyer for a friend accused of being his accomplice, and who admits driving Abdeslam home from Paris, told Belgian broadcaster RTBF that a previously reported police check on them as they neared the Belgian border about 9 a.m.
As police piece together how militants mounted Friday's assaults, evidence that some involved had fought in Syria and were on wanted lists, yet slipped back to kill 129 people, will raise a host of questions on how Europe tracks local Islamists and controls the borders it has opened to half a million Syrian refugees.
Alleged planner of last week's Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud was confirmed dead on Thursday after police stormed an apartment in the Paris suburb of St. Denis. A petty criminal who went to fight in Syria in 2013, he is believed to have recruited similar young men from immigrant families in his native Brussels district of Molenbeek and elsewhere in Belgium and France.
At government level, a blame game between Brussels and Paris after the killing of 130 people on Nov. 13 by French and Belgian radicals has been played out in a language of diplomacy; not so this week in the press. Leading editorialists have declared war.
Troops and armored vehicles outside reopened underground stations -- about half of the network remains closed -- and police outside schools provided a reminder of the threat the government said was so imminent that it raised its alert level on Saturday in Brussels to the maximum, where it remains.
Reprising a historic appearance by earlier German and French leaders, Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterrand, in the days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, both said more cooperation was needed to handle the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees, as well as sluggish economic growth, a shaken single currency, and confrontations with Russia and Islamic State.
"It's about as poisonous as it could be," said one veteran EU diplomat. The atmosphere in Brussels was "fetid", he said, when leaders agreed on Thursday to hold an emergency summit next week to stem a spiral of recrimination. That discord threatens not just the wellbeing of refugees but many hopes for the Union itself.
Dimitris Avramopoulos told Reuters that new EU systems for processing asylum claims in Italy, Greece and possibly Hungary could involve detaining those rejected until they return home, as European governments strain to balance obligations to provide refuge with hostility among the public to mass immigration.
EU ministers failed on Monday to break a deadlock over sharing out responsibility for sheltering some of the hundreds of thousands of people who have sought asylum in Europe this year, leaving the shape of a final deal in doubt.
The failure is evident. Of millions fleeing war, oppression and misery, hundreds of thousands have been desperate enough to brave the sea to reach Europe; thousands have died but their numbers still multiply despite a mostly stony welcome: razor wire, hunger, filth and hosts more intent on blaming each other than on their common duty to help.
A call for EU cash to tide Athens over until a euro zone bailout angered London, three weeks after Prime Minister David Cameron made a formal demand to reform Britain's relationship with the EU. It became an early test of Brussels' determination to avoid provoking Britain before it holds a referendum on whether to remain in the EU.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called finding a common EU solution to the hundreds of thousands fleeing by sea and land from Africa and the Middle East the "biggest challenge" Europe had faced in her decade in power - greater than the Greek and wider euro zone debt crises and Russian action against Ukraine.
"A 'Yes' ... would have a significance ... well beyond Europe," he tells voters. "We can show we're getting moving again, that the process of European unification goes on." Only, the EU chief executive isn't addressing Greeks before Sunday's vote. This was 2005 and Juncker was addressing his fellow Luxemburgers.
The latest in a run of sleep-defying meetings in recent weeks was partly political theater, as all involved try to show their commitment to a deal - and avoid any blame for failing to avert a crunch that could unsettle the euro and the world economy.
BRUSSELS France wants the EU to tighten rules on passport checks on EU citizens entering and leaving the Schengen free-travel zone in the wake of the attacks in Paris, to make it harder for European jihadists to return from Syria unnoticed.
Prime Minister Charles Michel said at least one of those held from the inner Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek was believed to have spent the previous evening in Paris, where two cars registered in Belgium were impounded close to scenes of some of the violence, including the Bataclan music hall.
But as the Brussels district on the wrong side of the city's post-industrial canal becomes a focus for police pursuing those behind Friday's mass attacks in Paris, Belgian authorities are asking what makes the narrow, terraced streets of Molenbeek different from a thousand similar neighborhoods across Europe.
The threat of Paris-style attacks on crowds and gatherings remained imminent, Prime Minister Charles Michel told a news conference after a near four-hour meeting with security advisers. But he also wanted the city, home to the European Union and NATO, to get back to normal.
Explaining that it lacked modern lightweight armor for all the troops patrolling outside metro stations and other key sites in the capital, the Belgian armed forces said in a statement on Thursday that they had borrowed an unspecified number of bullet-proof vests from U.S. military installations in Belgium.
"We remain on guard," Charles Michel told a news conference. "The situation is serious, but according to indications from the security services, not as imminent as previously assessed." Police and troops would remain on the streets, albeit possibly in lesser numbers; the metro, partially reopened along with schools on Wednesday after a four-day lockdown, would run normally on Friday.
A veteran of the Yugoslav wars, talking to Reuters at a drab truckstop outside the Serbian capital, Nemac doesn't smuggle guns himself, he says. But he knows people who can ship assault rifles of the kind used in the Nov 13 Paris attacks.
Underlining the havoc brought by chaotic mass treks across Europe's open borders over recent months, the German state of Bavaria threatened to break ranks with Berlin and send back to Austria migrants who cross its Alpine frontier. Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose welcome for refugees has taken a toll on her ratings, insists she will not shut the door.
Diplomats say interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg should agree, among other things, to back the detention of those who may abscond before expulsion and exert more pressure on African and other poor states, including via aid budgets, to make them accept the return of citizens refused entry to Europe.
Nazi swastikas billowing under the triumphal arch that overlooks Brussels' European Union district drew the odd gasp from guests of Berlin's EU mission at an evening to celebrate 25 years since German reunification.
"Wanted: world-class soprano - must look good in bikini; dashing baritone to sing aria while taking off trousers." La Monnaie opera may have worded their casting call for "L'Elisir d'Amore" rather differently but their version of Donizetti's evergreen comedy of love, lust and money brings an steamy extension of summer at the beach to autumnal Brussels.
Schengen, on the vine-flanked Moselle where old enemies France and Germany meet, gave its name 30 years ago to the code which removed border controls between most European states. Now, feuding over who should shelter hundreds of thousands of people on the move seeking asylum has put "Schengen" under threat.
Orban, who also insisted Hungary did not want to accept Muslim refugees, was asked on a visit to Brussels about an image of a drowned Syrian child on a Turkish beach which has grabbed world attention this week and said that it was not a moral argument for opening Europe's doors.
As he spoke, disarray across the continent was driven home when police in Hungary, Austria and Denmark closed major highways as groups of migrants, hundreds strong, marched north. Defying Hungary's new border fence and EU asylum rules, tens of thousands are crossing frontiers to reach Germany and Sweden.
The Luxembourg village on the Moselle where old enemies France and Germany meet gave its name 30 years ago to the code which removed border checks between most European states. But hundreds of thousands of people arriving on the bloc's external borders claiming asylum, and discord among governments over where to put them, has exposed weaknesses in the Schengen ideal.
"When you have up to 40 percent of migrants coming from a third country not granted refugee status and if nothing happens, if they are not returned, what message does the EU convey to potential migrants?"
Concerned about security threats and illegal migration, some European governments are considering amending the Schengen border code, which eliminated systematic frontier controls across much of Europe.
This year again the Mediterranean is the stage for two seasonal dramas: the one, the annual vacations that give many their main chance to meet fellow Europeans from other countries; the other, the washing ashore of desperate refugees from wars and poverty in the Middle East and Africa, some already dead.
Greece's new finance minister clearly wanted to avoid alienating his European colleagues as had his fast-talking predecessor. He took a note to their first meeting that read: "No triumphalism."
Revelations of U.S. spying in Europe have soured transatlantic relations, prompting a White House apology and, as leak followed leak over the past two years, have fostered feelings of moral superiority among Europeans. Yet EU governments are stepping up surveillance of their own citizens: last month France, smarting from Islamist attacks in January, passed intrusive laws on the very day it learned U.S.
As a feeble sun came up out of a grey Brussels dawn on Monday, for a time it looked like it might be about to set on Greek hopes of clinging on to the euro.
Caught between the rock of throwing good taxpayers' money after bad in Greece and the hard place of opening a dangerous crack in their common currency, tempers frayed among euro zone ministers meeting at the weekend.
European Union leaders meeting in Brussels have a daunting list of long-running crises on their plates -- notably migrants crowding in at their southern borders, Russia growling in the east, Britain's threat to quit and a desperate need to create jobs.
In a report issued in cooperation with the European Central Bank and other EU bodies, the European Commission president proposed more help for states in distress, combined with tougher discipline for countries that miss fiscal targets.
Move comes days before EU summit due to address migrant crisis * Italy says ships rescued 3,700 in just two days * Libyan government threatens strikes against EU naval mission By Alastair Macdonald and Krisztina Than BRUSSELS/BUDAPEST, June 23 (Reuters) - In a challenge to European leaders before a summit that aims to tackle a refugee crisis, Hungary unilaterally suspended an EU asylum programme on Tuesday, saying it was overburdened by illegal migrants.
In a sign of the European Commission gearing up to negotiate with London ahead of a British referendum on whether to leave the bloc, Juncker named veteran EU administrator Jonathan Faull to the role on Wednesday as part of a shake-up of top posts that saw the Irish head of the civil service, Catherine Day, retire.
Accusing leftist Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his ministers of playing "liar's poker" with the future of Europe, the European Commission president said if Greeks rejected what he called a final, fair offer from creditors to save them from bankruptcy, it would be taken as a signal that they wanted to quit the euro, and the Union.
Days of official ceremony, a music-and-fireworks spectacular and re-enactments of the bloody summer day that finally ended Napoleon's French domination of the continent have been heralded by a flurry of academic reassessment of the conflict and renewed debate, and discomfort, over its meaning for Europe today.
BRUSSELS The European Union executive agreed a plan on Tuesday to streamline how EU law is made and make the process more transparent, in a bid to defuse growing hostility from voters and complaints from business about red tape.
Delivered with a mischievous smile and a warm handshake at a summit in Riga, the European Commission president's remark seemed to mix mild admonishment with heavy humor to try to defuse tension after a particularly rough week in relations between Brussels and the right-wing prime minister in Budapest.
"The European Union stays the course despite the intimidation, the aggression, even the war, of the last year," said summit chair Donald Tusk. He dismissed Moscow's fear the EU was wooing away its former vassals but accused it of "bullying" them to make up for Russia's lack of attractions as an ally.
At an EU summit in Riga, Cameron repeated his intention to seek reforms in the Union before giving British voters a choice. [ID:nL5N0YD12D] Fellow leaders say they are willing to cooperate.
"You are not alone!" it yelled in Russian. It might have been the mantra recited by the Europeans to six ex-Soviet neighbors at the so-called Eastern Partnership Summit, who went away with EU pledges of aid and trade.
It was a throwaway line in an hour-long press conference in Brussels as Vestager moved dramatically against Google a day ahead of her first big working visit to the United States. The EU accused Google of abusing its dominance of Internet searches to push its own products.
When Jean-Claude Juncker was voted out after two decades running Luxembourg, his victorious rivals were eager not to alienate tax gurus who had helped him make their tiny state rich. Indeed, so close are some to the new government that Ernst & Young's local boss helped negotiate the coalition deal that saw Xavier Bettel succeed Juncker as prime minister a year ago. Recent uproar over leaked documents showing how Luxembourg helped global companies avoid tax has clouded Juncker's first weeks as...
Interior and justice ministers, who met in Brussels at the request of France following the Islamic State attacks that killed 130 people, also agreed to share more intelligence, especially on suspects like the Belgians and Frenchmen believed to have come back from Syria to strike at Parisians last Friday.
Divided by a scoreline as wide as the Atlantic, Germans and Brazilians united after the World Cup hosts' 7-1 humiliation in writing the game into the history of both nations, well beyond the realm of soccer.
A 17-page action plan to be agreed by EU and African leaders at a summit on Malta on Thursday, seen by Reuters, sets out dozens of initiatives, many long established, others fresh, for what leaders say should be a partnership to combat the poverty and insecurity driving Africans north and ensure that migration which does take place is safe and beneficial to all involved.
"We have halved the bill, we have delayed the bill, we will pay no interest on the bill," Britain's finance minister, George Osborne, said as he left a meeting with his EU peers.
The European Union has offered African states a range of aid as well as easier visa access and lower costs for migrants sending cash home in return for help to curb migration into the EU, including by taking back illegal immigrants.
KIEV/DONETSK, (Reuters) - Ukrainians are widely expected to give a resounding endorsement to the overthrow of their last elected leader by voting on Sunday for presidential candidates promising close ties with the West, in defiance of Russia's Vladimir Putin.
The European Union wants to stem a flow of mainly economic migrants from the continent and is offering a mixture of carrots and sticks around development aid, seeking cooperation from the African Union, notably in signing agreements to accept back citizens who are expelled from Europe.
Ukrainian intelligence released a tapped telephone conversation on Thursday that it said showed a pro-Russian rebel leader agreeing to dump the body of a local councilor whose murder triggered a security offensive in the east. "Slava, please sort out this stiff ...
Leaders of the European Union meet African counterparts on Malta on Wednesday, hoping pledges of cash and other aid can slow the flow of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from the world's poorest continent to wealthy Europe.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry condemned as "grotesque" on Thursday the distribution of leaflets in eastern Ukraine that appeared to call on Jews to register with separatist, pro-Russian authorities.
BRUSSELSThe European Union's executive divided British Prime Minister David Cameron's written demands on Tuesday for reform of the bloc into three categories: the feasible, the difficult and the "highly problematic". The last refers particularly to curbing benefits for workers from other EU states.
The European Union is considering setting up facilities in non-EU Balkan states to screen asylum claims by some of the tens of thousands of migrants heading north from Greece, ministers said on Monday.
If Scots vote for independence, it will be in part because they believe assurances that their small Atlantic peninsula can quit the United Kingdom without ever leaving the secure embrace of the European Union. That, however, is not how the EU's top executive sees it.
Pledging to act fast on agreements by Balkan leaders on Sunday to slow and control the flow of Syrians and others making their way to Germany from Turkey, officials acknowledged people would keep coming and said persuading them to accept orderly relocation arrangements would be vital.
Napoleon's instantly recognizable black felt bicorn has returned on a bicentennial loan to a museum near the battlefield outside Brussels, where it was presented on Friday alongside the Duke of Wellington's equally memorable version -- its points at front and back rather than the French emperor's left and right.
Meeting in Brussels as another woman and two children died at sea off Turkey, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras met leaders of nine countries on the route from the Aegean to Germany taken this year by half a million people, defying EU borders and unfurling razor wire.
France's Socialist president Francois Hollande invited the triumphant Conservative to Paris once he has formed a government in which, confounding opinion polls, he will no longer have to rely on coalition partners like the arch-europhile Liberal Democrats.
Antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager said all firms must pay a "fair share" and ordered the Netherlands to recover 20 million to 30 million euros ($23 million to $34 million) in back taxes from the U.S. coffee shop chain. Luxembourg must recover a similar amount from Italian-U.S. carmaker Fiat.
Adding to the complexity and uncertainty of what the prime minister told his party this month would be "bloody hard work" is that he is effectively running two parallel poker games. One is with his 27 peers in the EU, the other with the British people, including Eurosceptic rivals in his own party.
KIEV/DONETSK (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin promised that Russia would work with the new Ukrainian administration formed after a presidential election on Sunday that the Kiev government said on Saturday would anchor the ex-Soviet state to the West.
Officials in Brussels, where EU leaders agreed overnight to offer Ankara cash, easier visa terms and a "re-energized" consideration of its EU membership bid, voiced cautious optimism that Turkey would do its part to encourage Syrian refugees not to head to Europe and to deter economic migrants from Asia.
EU leaders at a summit in Brussels said they agreed on an "action plan" with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan to cooperate on improving the lives of two million Syrian refugees in Turkey and encouraging them to stay put. They also agreed to coordinate border controls to slow the influx of migrants crossing Turkey from Asia.
BRUSSELS EU leaders meeting in Brussels must deliver on promises of cash and immigration officers to tackle the refugee crisis, the European Union's executive said on Wednesday as it stepped up negotiations with Turkey. "Promises are not enough.
The European Commission president, who will meet the British prime minister over lunch on Thursday ahead of a summit of EU national leaders, repeated in a speech to the European Parliament that he wanted "a fair deal with Britain".
Ukrainian museum caretaker Valentin knows what it's like when Moscow sends in troops to occupy a reluctant ally - he was there, in Red Army uniform, when Soviet tanks rolled in to crush the Prague Spring in 1968. "We were the occupiers then. Now we are the ones who are being occupied by the Russians," he said, shaking his head at the irony of history which sees Ukraine, long Moscow's closest partner, losing Crimea after Sunday's Kremlin-backed referendum there and fearing further invasion...
In a letter to EU leaders setting the agenda for a summit he will chair in Brussels on Thursday, Tusk noted the start this month of negotiations on the migrant crisis with Turkey, which EU officials say wants more visa waivers, more EU funding and progress on its longstanding application to join the bloc.
Don't mention the coup.Certainly not on Tahrir Square, or pretty much anywhere in polite, liberal society in Egypt.
Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission vice president for energy, told Reuters that a deal agreed in Brussels on Sept. 26 set a formula that would give Ukraine Russian gas at a price similar to others in the region, and notably Poland.
Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire chocolate manufacturer, claimed the Ukrainian presidency with an emphatic election victory on Sunday, taking on a fraught mission to quell pro-Russian rebels and steer his fragile nation closer to the West.
While finance ministers of the other 18 euro zone states chorused their insistence that Greece would remain inside the bloc, exasperation with the leftist government's decision to reject creditors' final offer and instead call a referendum was manifest and some officials spoke privately of expelling Athens.
The centenary of the Christmas Truce in World War One is being celebrated as a triumph of shared humanity over the butchery that engulfed Europe, a day when troops along the Flanders front met after four months killing each other to sing carols, exchange gifts and play football in No Man's Land. Less well known is that some British soldiers would later face punishment for an hour of friendship with their enemy.
The consciously Wagnerian vision of "Troika", a first ever staging of the late-Romantic Russian symphonist's only three operatic works as a single evening's performance, has stretched creativity, in design as well as musically, in the restrictive modern confines of the Belgian capital's Theatre National. And audiences responded with delight to young St.
BRUSSELS David Cameron will have an expectant but not especially patient, or even attentive, audience when he meets fellow European Union leaders at a summit in Brussels at the end of this week.
Three weeks before an election in which Cameron has tried to fend off Eurosceptics by promising a referendum on leaving the EU if voters return him to power, Jonathan Hill, EU financial services commissioner, said he had been struck since arriving in Brussels how much common ground there was with London.
Cameron given the floor to calm discussion -sources * UK will settle for promise of treaty change - sources * Cameron says delighted EU renegotiation has begun (Adds details on meeting, Cameron quotes, changes date) By Guy Faulconbridge and Alastair Macdonald BRUSSELS, June 26 (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron told European Union leaders on Thursday he needed a new deal to keep Britain as a member, opening a struggle over the bloc's future at a summit preoccupied with keeping Greece...
European Union leaders warned Moscow they are ready to flex their combined muscle and "stay the course" in a long confrontation with Russia if President Vladimir Putin refuses to pull back from Ukraine. "We must go beyond being reactive and defensive. As Europeans we must regain our self-confidence and realize our own strengths," said Donald Tusk, the former Polish premier who chaired a brief EU summit in Brussels.
The British government won backing at the EU's top court on Tuesday in two cases that touch political nerves as Prime Minister David Cameron prepares for a referendum on whether to stay in the European Union.
It is fitting tribute to the role the Belgian coalfield around Mons played in Van Gogh's emergence as an artist that the city has made a rare show of his early works a focus of its year as European Capital of Culture.
Senior EU officials, including Juncker's deputy, confirmed various details on Friday of proposals the European Commission president plans to make next week in an annual State of the Union address to the European Parliament.
On a day when a Ukrainian soldier became the first fatal casualty in the confrontation on the Black Sea peninsula, at the southernmost crossing between the two countries, where Ukraine dug anti-tank ditches this week, Kiev's frontier guards were keen to play down the Russian threat and hope for the best.
Assuming approval by the German and other parliaments, 13 billion euros should be in Athens next Thursday to pay pressing bills and a further 10 billion will be set aside at the European Stability Mechanism, earmarked to bolster Greek banks' capital.
The Kremlin appeared to take a conciliatory tone, saying it hoped for compromise and an impartial stance from EU regulators. The EU's new antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, who a week ago announced a similar market abuse prosecution against U.S.
As German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande gave backing on Thursday to the kind of scheme that EU leaders rejected in June, officials said the EU executive may propose expanding its plan by a factor of four to oblige states to take in 160,000 from Italy, Greece and Hungary.
As Osborne was in Luxembourg on Saturday securing goodwill from euro zone finance ministers for his call for fair play for sterling, his Labor opponents in London were electing a new left-wing leader, Corbyn, who warns his support for continued EU membership is no "blank cheque".
On the eve of a Brussels summit looking for ways to spread the load of receiving hundreds of thousands fleeing poverty and war in Africa and the Middle East, the frontier rows across the 28-nation bloc were a reminder that the stakes are high. "Migration ...
Ukraine accused "Kremlin agents" on Saturday of fomenting deadly violence in Russian-speaking cities and urged people not to rise to provocations its new leaders fear Moscow may use to justify a further invasion after its takeover of Crimea.
The conflict is driving the European Union into legal limbo and no one has a clear answer as to what could happen next.
Jean-Claude Juncker and other EU executives poked fun at their own generation in an online video posted on Twitter on Wednesday to try and convince younger Europeans that they can. The advert for a new Digital Single Market reflects a push by Juncker, president of the European Commission since November, to convince an ever more euroskeptic public that the EU is politically legitimate and listens to their concerns.
Judges at the General Court of the European Union in Luxembourg upheld a complaint that the British broadcaster lodged a decade ago with the EU trademark authority in which it said the Skype name and logo risked being confused by consumers because they sounded and looked too similar to "Sky".
2014
A senior mediator from Europe's OSCE security body is due to start negotiating the surrender of pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine on Sunday, although hopes for a rapid end to the crisis are limited.
KIEV (Reuters) - A billionaire regional governor in eastern Ukraine put a $10,000 bounty on the head of any Russian "saboteur" on Thursday and pledged a reward for the Ukrainian troops who shot protesters at their base overnight.
After overnight crisis talks on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels, new Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the bloc's main paymaster, offered somewhat divergent understandings of how much Athens must do and how quickly.
Lenin looks out on Donetsk, unmoved, anthracite grey and steely eyed. But a century after his revolution, this Ukrainian industrial city of Porsches and poverty seethes around him. It is torn between its Soviet past, a corrupt and unhappy present and a future somewhere between Russia and the West.
Shocked by thousands of deaths among people trying to reach Europe from North Africa across the Mediterranean, the European Union is trying to put in place a fairer way to resettle asylum-seekers at a time when anti-immigration parties are on the rise. Italy and other southern European countries are clamoring for help to relieve the influx.
The "rock star" took on the rock. And the rock won. Germany's Wolfgang Schaeuble, the "immovable object" in the words of one economist, stopped Greece's charismatic new finance minister Yanis Varoufakis in his tracks, forcing Athens to extend a bailout programme on Friday on terms its government was just elected to get out of.
2011
DONETSK/SLAVIANSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - The United States imposed new sanctions on allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, prompting Moscow to denounce "Cold War" tactics amid more violence in eastern Ukraine.
As Russians and Ukrainians celebrated Easter on Sunday with their nations locked in conflict, the head of Ukraine's Orthodox Church condemned Russian "aggression" and said "evil" would be defeated.
Critics called it a face-saving operation that did not go far enough to emulate an Italian rescue mission abandoned six months ago for want of EU support. And divisions remained over longer-term proposals, ranging from dealing with people smugglers and African migrant camps to how to redistribute asylum-seekers around 28 nations where anti-immigrant parties are on the rise.
They will come from presidents and fellow prime ministers across the 28-nation European Union and its institutions, none of whom wants to lose the economic, geopolitical and military clout Britain brings to the bloc, however exasperating many find its traditional resistance to closer EU integration.
Companies had until Thursday to update public entries in the European Union's newly revamped Transparency Register following a tightening of rules in January that obliges firms to register if they want to meet EU commissioners and senior staff.
KIEV/DONETSK, Ukraine (Reuters) - If armies march on their stomachs, then Ukraine's rival protest camps could be in for a long campaign, judging by the cooks hard at work behind the barricades in Kiev and Donetsk on Friday.
About
A Ukrainian rabbi whose congregation was the target of an anti-Semitic leaflet that drew global media interest and condemnation from the U.S. government believes it was a hoax and wants to put the matter to rest.
Ian Paisley, the firebrand preacher-politician who for decades brayed "No Surrender!" across Northern Ireland's sectarian divide, died on Friday aged 88, in the province to which he, belatedly, helped bring peace.
The incoming head of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, unveiled an EU executive team on Wednesday that handed key economic responsibilities to French and British politicians but overseen by others in a new-look hierarchy.
Recent Rewrites
The man given the job of preventing Ukraine's industrial heartland following Crimea into the arms of Russia sounds a little hoarse and confesses to lacking sleep but reckons things are not as bad as last week.
Ukrainian forces said they had killed several pro-Russian militants in clashes as they closed in on the separatist-held city of Slaviansk on Thursday, seizing rebel checkpoints and setting up roadblocks as helicopters circled overhead.
Even as a new alarm sounds about it massing troops on the Ukrainian border, Russia may have missed its chance to exploit unrest in the Russian-speaking east to seize Ukraine's industrial heartland in the way it took Crimea.
The Ukrainian town councilor whose apparent torture and murder helped to prompt a threatened new government offensive in the east was mobbed by a hostile, pro-Russian crowd before he disappeared, a video of the incident shows.
In a show of U.S. support for Ukraine's embattled government, Vice President Joe Biden delivered an aid package on Tuesday and demanded Russia back off but also warned Kiev it must tackle the "cancer of corruption".
European Union leaders on Saturday chose Poland Prime Minister Donald Tusk to chair their Council and named Italian Federica Mogherini to run the bloc's foreign relations, as the EU prepared to threaten Russia with new sanctions over Ukraine.
Petro Poroshenko does a fair impression of a man with all the time in the world, bantering with reporters in a fluent medley of languages on his first morning as Ukraine's president-elect. But the chunky, billionaire-issue wristwatch flashing from his well-tailored cuff marks out a man in a hurry; his smooth patter on creating wealth, fighting corruption and embracing European values cracked when pressed on how he can recover Crimea from Russia or defeat pro-Moscow rebels in the east.
Ukrainian paratroopers with armoured vehicles were digging in on Thursday near the Russian border as the military demonstrated its presence in the east following Kiev's loss of Crimea to Moscow's forces.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk accused Russia on Friday of wanting to start World War Three by occupying Ukraine "militarily and politically". "The world has not yet forgotten World War Two, but Russia already wants to start World War Three," Yatseniuk told the interim cabinet in remarks broadcast live.
The European Union threatened Russia with new trade sanctions if Moscow fails to start reversing its action in Ukraine, but sharp divisions among leaders at a summit in Brussels left the timing of any measures uncertain.
Yet hours after European Union leaders agreed in Brussels on Thursday to treble funding for EU maritime missions and pledged more ships and aircraft, 14 clandestine migrants were killed when a train ploughed into dozens of Somalis and Afghans making their way in darkness along a rail track in a Macedonian gorge.
TV
2012
The outrage Europe's leaders face over the deaths of hundreds of refugees trying to reach its shores may force a shift in a policy critics decry as letting people drown to deter others in desperate need.
2013
Egyptian Election 2012
Seeing its gold-spangled blue flag flown on the barricades of Kiev thrilled the European Union, reviving its self-image as a beacon of democracy at a time of growing doubt and economic gloom. But nearly a year on from the first "EuroMaidan" protests that would topple the pro-Moscow president who had spurned an EU trade deal, some in Brussels are disillusioned by the experience of helping Ukraine. EU generosity in waiving import duties and funding gas supplies from Russia may be being abused,...
Libya 2011
European Union leaders meeting in Brussels this weekend, amid world war anniversaries, did not want for reminders of the continental conflicts that the bloc's founders meant to consign to history.
One is a dapper former croupier and promoter of Ponzi scams run by "Russia's Bernie Madoff"; the other is a burly Soviet Navy veteran turned soap factory boss, with a shifting gaze and a glint of gold teeth.
Egypt June/July 2013
Crimea's Tatar community assembly accused Russia on Tuesday of barring its leading political figure from returning to the peninsula following its annexation by Moscow. However, Russian officials declined comment and it was unclear whether Moscow had taken issued the banning order.
The 24-year-old defender had been in a coma since going into cardiac arrest early in a reserve team game on Monday. Club spokesman Herman Van De Putte told Reuters that his condition continued to worsen and the player's family had agreed with doctors to switch off the life support system.
Nobel Prizes 2011
KIEV/DONETSK - A mediator from Europe's OSCE security body headed to eastern Ukraine on Saturday seeking the surrender of pro-Russian separatists as the Kiev government declared an Easter truce following a peace accord with Moscow.
Ancient History