Labour has also rejected European Commission’s proposal which would have allowed young people to live, work or study in the bloc

Rishi Sunak has rejected an EU offer to strike a post-Brexit deal to allow young Britons to live, study or work in the bloc for up to four years.

The prime minister declined the European Commission’s surprise proposal of a youth mobility scheme for those aged between 18 and 30 on Friday, after Labour had already knocked back the suggestion back on Thursday night – while noting it would “seek to improve the UK’s working relationship with the EU within our red lines”.

Continue reading...

The European Commission president is running for re-election. Yet a political cronyism scandal is dogging her path

Ursula von der Leyen became president of the European Commission in a backroom deal in 2019 without facing Europe’s voters. Now she is running for re-election almost without campaigning. The former German defence minister, 65, was chosen unopposed last month as lead candidate of the centre-right European People’s party for the European parliament elections on 6-9 June, although she does not plan to take a seat in the EU legislature. Since then, she has shunned media questioning as far as possible, and is refusing to commit to debating the other candidates in public.

She has not confirmed that she will show up for the high-profile Maastricht debate on 29 April, according to the organisers, and political sources say a major European newspaper had to drop plans to stage its own debate among the Spitzenkandidaten , or lead candidates, because von der Leyen would not pledge to attend.

Paul Taylor is a senior fellow of the Friends of Europe thinktank

Continue reading...

Markus Pieper resigns from €17k-a-month role hours before he was due to start amid claims of favouritism

• Europe live – latest updates

A row threatening to overshadow Ursula von der Leyen’s campaign for a second term as European Commission president has ended after a German colleague in her Christian Democratic Union party quit his new role as her special envoy for small businesses.

Markus Pieper resigned from the €17,000-a-month (£14,500) role hours before he was due to start on Tuesday after pressure from MEPs and European commissioners who had raised allegations of favouritism.

Continue reading...

European Commission defends appointing adviser Markus Pieper after selection process is questioned

Ursula von der Leyen’s bid for a second term in one of the most powerful jobs in Brussels, the presidency of the European Commission, has been dented after accusations of favouritism in the selection of a fellow party member to a lucrative new job.

Four of some of the highest ranking people in Brussels, including the EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrell, and the French commissioner Thierry Breton, have written to her to complain that the appointment of German MEP Markus Pieper as a special adviser “has triggered questions about the transparency and impartiality of the nomination process”.

Continue reading...

Brussels vote was cancelled after it became clear law would not pass final stage with majority vote

The EU’s nature restoration laws are hanging in the balance after a number of member states, including Hungary and Italy, withdrew support for the legislation.

Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, said it would be “enormously irresponsible” for countries to drop the laws, which have been two years in the making and are designed to reverse decades of damage to biodiversity on land and in waterways.

Continue reading...

Proposal aims to stop Kremlin flooding bloc with cheap wheat to destabilise European market

The EU is set to impose a tariff of up to 50% on Russia grain imports amid fears the Kremlin could flood the bloc with cheap wheat to destabilise the European market.

The proposal, unveiled by the European commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, follows a plea on Thursday to EU leaders by the Ukrainian president, Vlodomyr Zelenskiy, to do something about grain “stolen” by the Russians from occupied territories.

Continue reading...

European Commission will open office in the territory, made strategically important by rare resources and melting ice

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, is heading to Greenland as melting Arctic ice, demand for green-technology raw materials and competition from China increase the territory’s strategic importance.

While not in the EU, the autonomous Danish territory is of strong interest to Brussels, especially for highly sought after raw materials – it believes it has 25 of the 34 that it needs.

Continue reading...

Members of justice committee say €150m in EU funding went straight to country’s president, Kais Saied

The European Commission has been accused of “bankrolling dictators” by senior MEPs, who have claimed that the €150m it gave to Tunisia last year in a migration and development deal has ended up directly in the president’s hands.

A group of MEPs on the human rights, justice and foreign affairs committees at the European parliament launched a scathing attack on the executive in Brussels, expressing fears that the commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, was about to seal a similar deal with Egypt .

Continue reading...

European Commission chief makes rallying speech after being nominated by her EU grouping for new term as head of executive

Populists, nationalists and demagogues of the far right and left are challenging a peaceful and united Europe like never before, Ursula von der Leyen has declared, as she was endorsed as the sole candidate of the EU’s leading political group, the centre-right European People’s party, to head the the European Commission for another five years.

“They want to trample on our values, and they want to destroy our Europe. And we, the EPP, will never let that happen,” she said at the EPP conference in the Romanian capital, Bucharest.

Continue reading...