Section: European Voice (EU)
Greece backs new EU action against Russia
An extraordinary meeting of foreign ministers from the European Union – called because of a major intensification of fighting in Ukraine – ended with a small extension of the EU’s sanctions on Russia. Crucially, the new Greek government, which a day after taking office distanced itself from an EU statement that explicitly accused Russia of...
EU rocked by change in Greece
The European Union’s institutions are feeling the shockwaves of a change of government in Greece, which threatens to destabilise EU rules on eurozone membership, sanctions against Russia and plans to launch an energy union. The newly installed prime minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras, the leader of the far-left Syriza party, wasted no time...
Ministers pave the way for summit of EU leaders
Several high-level meetings are planned over the next two weeks to prepare for a European Union summit on 12 February that will try to agree a response to the growing threat of terrorism. Interior ministers are meeting in Riga, Latvia, today (29 January) to review policy options and lay the groundwork for a meeting of national leaders in Brussels...
Tsipras’s cabinet alarms markets
At its first meeting yesterday (28 January) the new Greek cabinet decided to freeze some privatisations and promised to reinstate sacked civil servants. The government of Alex Tsipras (pictured) was thereby halting or reversing measures introduced by the preceding government as part of a five-year-long bail-out programme that has channelled...
More sanctions planned as fighting flares up in Ukraine
The European Union’s foreign ministers are struggling to escalate sanctions against Russia in a way that might deter fighting by separatists in eastern Ukraine. The fighting has been intensifying for weeks, but a missile attack that killed 30 civilians on Friday (23 January) prompted Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief,...
Tarred thinking on Russia
Two mistaken ideas about Russia are drifting around Washington, DC, and other Western capitals. One is that the fall in the oil price has crippled the regime of Vladimir Putin, so we can relax. The other – contradictory – one is that the economic crisis has made Putin desperate and therefore dangerous, so we should offer him a face-saving...
EFDD ‘smear campaign’ used Russian help
An investigation by the European Parliament into the distribution to MEPs of a controversial book that accuses the president of Lithuania of having worked for the KGB has prompted accusations of a smear campaign by the Russian government. In December, copies of “Red Dalia”, a highly critical biography of Dalia Grybauskaite, were placed in the...
Fresh sanctions loom for Russia
The leaders of the European Union’s member states have warned Russia that it faces fresh economic sanctions unless it helps to bring peace to eastern Ukraine, where fighting has intensified this month. In the statement, released by Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, the EU’s leaders in particular condemned the killing...
EU boosts aid to Ukraine
The European Commission has increased its support for people displaced by the fighting in eastern Ukraine by €15 million, taking the total support it has provided in ten months of fighting to €32.5m. Christos Stylianides, the European commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis management, who is currently visiting Ukraine, said that “the...
EU calls crisis meeting on Ukraine
Foreign ministers from the European Union’s 28 member states are to come to Brussels for crisis talks on Thursday (29 January) after pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine opened a new front of fighting in south-eastern Ukraine, killing 30 civilians in the town of Mariupol. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, called the...
