European Union

This weekend tens of thousands of people once again demonstrated in Moscow against the exclusion of opposition candidates from the Moscow City Duma elections at the start of September. This time, however, the rally was authorised. On the two previous weekends hundreds of demonstrators were arrested. Commentators discuss why the protests could mark a turning point in Russia.

"Both [US] president [Donald] Trump and I were leavers before there were leavers", White House national security advisor John Bolton told press in London Tuesday. The UK could do a "sector-by-sector" free-trade deal with the US "very quickly" after it left the EU, he added. The US would ask for "individual items" in return, he also said, amid US pressure for the UK to quit the Iran nuclear arms deal.

Hong Kong’s last British governor Chris Patten on Tuesday (13 August) cautioned that if China intervened in Hong Kong it would be a catastrophe and that Chinese President Xi Jinping should see the wisdom of trying to bring people together.

Italy's political crisis edged forward on Monday (12 August) after party leaders decided to recall the Senate to vote on a timetable that could include a no-confidence vote and spell the end of the populist coalition.

Poland's ruling nationalists appear on track to win October's parliamentary vote, three opinion polls show, despite a scandal over the private use of government aircraft by the party's speaker of parliament who was forced to resign.

Greece on Monday (12 August) called on the EU for a fairer sharing of the migrant burden amid deep concern over a sharp increase in arrivals on some islands in recent weeks.

Portugal's government ordered striking fuel-tanker workers back to work in some parts of the country on Monday (12 August) after fuel supplies ran low at locations including Lisbon airport despite measures to counter the impact of the walkout.

A UN investigator rebuked France on Monday (12 August) for its possible role in the transfer of seven suspected jihadists from Syria to Iraq, but Paris dismissed her concerns as speculation.

There have been no talks so far between political parties on the federal Belgian level, Bart De Wever, leader of the Flemish nationalist NVA, the biggest party of Belgium, revealed in a TV interview on Monday evening, in which he explained his draft note for a new Flemish government. The regional Brussels government has been in place since 18 July, following the Belgian elections held on 26 May 2019.

EU commission president Jean-Claude Juncker plans to stop being political active, when leaving his top-EU post. "I will not be politically active anymore. But I will stay active, write, take long walks", he told Tiroler Tageszeitung in an interview in relation to accepting the Grand Tiroler Adler Orden. Juncker admitted to some failures, including that his commission did not succeed in renewing the EU-Swiss framework agreement.

The US would support the UK in a no-deal Brexit, White House national security advisor John Bolton said in London Monday. "If that's the decision of the British government, we will support it enthusiastically," he told press after meeting senior MPs. "The fashion in the European Union: When people vote the wrong way from the way the elites want to go, it's to make the peasants vote again," he said.

Some 54 percent of Britons agreed with the statement "Boris [Johnson] needs to deliver Brexit by any means, including suspending parliament if necessary, in order to prevent MPs from stopping it" in a ComRes poll for The Telegraph newspaper on Monday. The same poll found support for Johnson's ruling Conservative party had risen by 6 points to 31 percent amid his pledge to leave on 31 October.

First-time asylum applications to the 28 EU countries, Norway, and Switzerland jumped 10 percent to 337,200 for the six months of this year compared to the same period in 2018, the European Asylum Support Office, an EU agency in Malta, has said. Most applications came from Afghanistan, Syria, and Venezuela. But EU states issued just 41,700 decisions in the first half of this year, their slowest rate in years.

The captain of a Spanish rescue boat, the Proactiva Open Arms, has asked Spain to grant asylum to 31 minors trapped on board after Italy and Malta refused to let them disembark. The boat, which has 151 people on board, has been stuck off the Italian island of Lampedusa for nine days after rescuing people off the coast of Libya, as southern EU states crack down on migrants.

France's gender equality minister, Marlene Schiappa, has called into an investigation into the potential sex trafficking activities of Jeffrey Epstein, the late US billionaire, in France. "The American investigation has highlighted ties with France. It therefore seems fundamental to us, and for the victims, that an investigation should be opened in France so that all the light is shed on this matter," she said in a statement on Monday.

The US wants to help the UK cushion the blow of Brexit with a bilateral trade deal, the White House has said, as knives come out for Johnson in London.

Two months and a half after the elections, the leading party in Flanders, the nationalist NVA, invited the Flemish Liberal party (Open Vld) and the Flemish Christian Democrats (CD&V) to start formal coalition talks. The negotiations will be lead by Jan Jambon (NVA), former deputy prime minister and interior minister of Belgium. NVA had first negotiated two months with the far-right Vlaams Belang, but together they had no majority.