Section: European Voice (EU)
Trump confirms Europe’s worst fears
BRATISLAVA — If “hope dies last,†as a favorite German aphorism goes, Europe needs to find a Plan B for dealing with Donald Trump. For months, Europe’s leaders quietly hoped the American president’s bark wasn’t as bad as his bite, that his cartoonish public persona was...
Juncker: Trump wasn’t aggressive in saying Germany was ‘very bad’
TAORMINA, Italy — Jean-Claude Juncker appeared to confirm reports that Donald Trump had complained in private about Germany being “very bad†for selling so many cars to the United States. The European Commission president described a “very frankly constructed meeting†with the U.S. president...
Manafort advised Trump team on Russia scandal
Months after the FBI began examining Paul Manafort as part of a probe into ties between President Donald Trump’s team and Russia, Manafort called Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to push back against the mounting controversy, according to four people familiar with the call. It was about a week before...
Trump meets top EU officials on his first Brussels trip
Donald Trump, whose “American First†instincts and Euroskeptic campaign rhetoric rattled his European allies, made his first official visit to Brussels Thursday to meet top EU officials ahead of a summit at NATO — an alliance he once described as “obsolete.” While EU leaders are pleased he decided to visit them...
Russia looms over Trump’s meetings with European leaders
When German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited President Donald Trump at the White House in March, she brought a visual aid to help Trump understand the menace posed by his would-be friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin. Merkel brought out a 1980s map of the former Soviet Union and noted the way its borders stretched for hundreds of miles to the...
NATO cheers Trump’s military budget
Analysts of U.S. President Donald Trump’s initial budget plan are slamming it as built on fuzzy math. But if Trump’s numbers are fuzzy, his proposal on military spending has NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg feeling all warm and cuddly toward the White House. Trump’s fiscal blueprint, released in Washington just as...
Tedros overcomes attacks on record to win WHO race
GENEVA — Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus overcame late attacks on his record in Ethiopia to become Africa’s first director general of the World Health Organization. A charismatic former health minister and diplomat, Tedros, 52, pointed to his track record of developing a vast network of health centers in his country and...
Ukrainian MPs back law limiting Russian language on TV
The Ukrainian parliament on Tuesday backed a law that requires major TV channels to broadcast three-quarters of their programs in Ukrainian, AFP reported. “Once again, the Verkhovna Rada [parliament] has demonstrated that it is a Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, one eliminating the remnants of the Soviet imperialist past,” Andriy Parubiy, the speaker of...
Indictment tells murky Montenegrin coup tale
PODGORICA, Montenegro — It has the plot of a thriller, even if it doesn’t read like one. In long, tangled sentences, an indictment filed by the chief prosecutor in Montenegro lays out a story of Russian agents recruiting mercenaries to storm parliament on election day and stop the small Balkan state from joining NATO....
Why Poland doesn’t want refugees
WARSAW — The right-wing Polish government is under fierce pressure from the EU to finally begin accepting asylum seekers. But it’s the country’s leading opposition party that’s paying the political price. Poland, along with Hungary, has flatly refused to take in any refugees under a 2015 deal that...
