#eu council

[vyorei]

[head-post]

Macron to skip EU Council meeting to visit cyclone-hit Mayotte

French President Emmanuel Macron is set to miss Thursday’s meeting of EU leaders as he heads to the cyclone-hit island of Mayotte, according to Euractiv.

Macron tasked German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to represent France’s interests in the European Council in a move enshrined in a bilateral agreement at Aix-la-Chapelle in 2019.

However, the president will attend the EU-Balkans Summit later on Wednesday, 18 December, in Brussels, where he will hold a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He is also scheduled to conduct a telephone conversation with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the afternoon.

Cyclone Chido hit the French oversea region of Mayotte last weekend, killing 22 people and injuring more than 1,000, according to official figures. However, French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau estimated “hundreds, if not thousands dead.”

Much of the immigrant population from the rest of the Comoros follows Muslim rites that require the dead to be buried within 24 hours. This makes it almost impossible to make any accurate estimate of casualties.

Newly appointed Prime Minister François Bayrou confirmed on Tuesday that France would take action on the EU Regional Emergency Support to Reconstruction (RESTORE) fund. Macron also announced that nationwide mourning would take place.

French politician and member of the European Parliament François-Xavier Bellamy called on the French people to unite and help Mayotte.

What Mayotte is experiencing is a national tragedy. Would this crisis be treated in the same way if it were happening in another French department? The whole country must unite to act in the face of the emergency – to provide the people of Mayotte with aid, water, food, energy, etc.

Read more HERE

[nationnow]

Putin faces new nightmare as Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ of ships targeted

Vladimir Putin is grappling with a new wave of economic sanctions targeting Russia. The EU’s Council, the institution responsible for defining the bloc’s “general political direction and priorities” announced yesterday that it had greenlit its fifteenth package of measures intended to hinder Putin’s ability to wage war in Ukraine. Officials claim the sanctions are designed to address evasion…

[thewordenreport]

n requiring EU states to approve the new trade deal with countries in South America, the EU is unnecessarily hamstringing itself because the state governments sit in the European Council and the EU Council. Why the duplication: Ideology!

[ardri-na-bpiteog]

Just a reminder to my European followers that the European Parliament elections are coming up and they are very important! The far-right parties are projected to win a lot of seats and many of the left/environmentalist parties are expected to do poorly.

This could have serious implications for major issues like climate action in the EU. It is very important that young people turn out to vote, EU elections typically have relatively low turnout but the composition of the EU Parliament does impact the lives of people in the European Union in a lot of ways.

[days-of-storm]

I'm honestly not okay

And when I say this I mean, I, personally, will be okay. I am a white woman with a middle class, stable job. I have savings. I have health insurance.

What I am not okay with is how fucking awful roughly 20% of the population of Germany are to vote for a party that is certified fascist, is quite literally a cult for its members (including social isolation, gaslighting, and making it almost impossible to leave without repercussions), have opportunistic leaders and have one of the worst party programs that I have ever seen (I mean, the Republican Party is currently winning that stupid competition, but I digress).

People are voting against their own interest, and all for the sake of racism, fear, lies and the notion that they are victims somehow and it's boggling my mind because that means that literally everyone who is working class, poor, out of a job, not white or not a German citizen, or both, not cis or straight, not Christian or atheist, will have a really fucking hard time in the future. People have lost the plot and are enjoying being hateful bigots and it's really fucking terrifying.

[unrenderedfuture]

In honor of TikTok getting banned here is my recent fave Timelord TikTok I made

[tearsofrefugees]

[longtimespentinagalaxyfaraway]

Jedi Council Forums Help

This is probably a shout into an empty void, but might as well try.

I used to have an account on the Jedi Council/The Force dot net forums, but wasn't active since like 2018 or something. Recently I logged in for the first time in several years, and seeing that my old email was the email associated with my account, changed it in account settings.

This was apparently a huge mistake.

It said I'd have to reconfirm my new email, so I had it send it. Waited. Waited some more. Waited over 24 hours. Checked spam. Checked to make sure the email it comes from was whitelisted. Nothing. Had the forum resend the confirmation email. Rinse and repeat above steps. Nothing.

I'm not able to contact any of the forum mods/admins/staff because my account is frozen while it waits for me to reconfirm the email. I reached out via the "contact us" function explaining the issue, but it's been over a month and haven't heard back. Social media for the boards haven't been posted on since 2017/2018, and I see on an announcement banner on the forum that the main tech admin has passed away. Are the boards dead-dead now? I can see there are users still active on the bits of the forum it will let me view, but I can't contact anyone. I just wanted to poke around and maybe make some new Star Wars friends because I miss forums x'D

Is there anyone here who might hear this desperate plea into the void that has a still active account that might be able to message an admin on my behalf and see if we can figure this out? x'D

edit to add: My username there is Jade Kenobi as that is perhaps helpful information lol

[passingthetime]

Voting is really fun because you stand there staring at the list thinking "I want none of these fuckers to represent me"

[famosoentrescalles]

👍 i voted

[xtruss]

The EU Doesn’t Know How to Not Be a Vassal of the US Anymore

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has tried to show Americans how Washington has exploited Western Europe

— Bradley Blankenship | RT | August 22, 2023

(From L to R) US President Joe Biden, Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the G7 Leaders' Summit in Hiroshima on May 19, 2023 © Kenny Holston/POOL/AFP

Tucker Carlson, of Fox News fame, recently met with Serbia’s President Aleksandar Vucic in Budapest, Hungary. The journalist pointed out that the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline has put a serious strain on the European Union’s economy and mentioned that the world was “resetting” in reaction to the conflict in Ukraine and the West’s pledged support for Kiev.

Carlson raises some good issues, and an important one to expand upon is the fact that the EU economy is lagging significantly since the outbreak of the war last year. A June piece by the Financial Times titled ‘Europe has fallen behind America and the gap is growing’ details how the EU is now considerably dependent on the US for its technological, security, and economic needs.

In terms of hard numbers, Jeremy Shapiro and Jana Puglierin of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) think tank have stated: “In 2008, the EU’s economy was somewhat larger than America’s: $16.2tn versus $14.7tn. By 2022, the US economy had grown to $25tn, whereas the EU and the UK together had only reached $19.8tn. America’s economy is now nearly one-third bigger. It is more than 50 per cent larger than the EU without the UK.”

The article goes on to describe a European Union that is dragging far behind the US and China in terms of quality universities, a less-than-pristine start-up environment, and lacking key benefits from its transatlantic peer – namely cheap energy. The Ukraine conflict has impacted the latter to the point that EU companies are paying three or four times what their American competitors are, with Washington being energy-independent and enjoying great domestic supplies. Meanwhile, energy from Russia is waning, European factories are closing in droves, and industry leaders are worried about the region’s future competitiveness.

The ECFR issued its own report on the matter in April, which is far blunter in describing the situation as a kind of “vassalization.” The summary of that report notes that the Ukraine war has exposed the EU’s key dependencies on the US, that over the course of a decade, the bloc has fallen behind the US in virtually every key metric, that it is deadlocked in disagreement and is looking to Washington for leadership.

The ECFR noted two causes for this situation. Firstly, despite the widely understood decline of the US compared to the rise of China, the transatlantic relationship has been unbalanced in Washington’s favor over the last 15 years since the 2008 financial crisis. The Biden administration is keen to exploit this and assert itself in the face of a disjointed Europe. Secondly, no one in the EU knows what greater strategic autonomy could look like – let alone agree on it if they did. There exists no process to decide the EU’s future in an autonomous way given the current status quo, which means US leadership is necessary.

This paints quite an interesting picture. Many commentators, including myself, have long documented the decline of the US and attributed it to a number of factors: less of an attractive environment for foreign direct investment (FDI), financial instability, corruption, and internal political turmoil. This is, of course, relativized to China, which has seen immense economic growth since the founding of the People’s Republic and particularly over the past four decades. But under the smoke screen of a fumbling America and a growing China, the EU has likewise fallen in stature.

The Western Establishment just gave itself a ‘World Peace and Liberty’ Award! Ursula von der Leyen received the ‘Judicial Equivalent’. The Western Establishment just gave itself a ‘World Peace and Liberty’ Award. Ursula von der Leyen received the ‘Judicial Equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize’ from Justin Trudeau in a perfect self-congratulatory orgy

As for the two causes noted by the ECFR, they seem to be intertwined. Many of the key issues that have faced the EU, from migration to the banking crisis to Covid-19, have stemmed directly from the non-federal nature of the EU. And the current political crises are a result of Euroskepticism, i.e. a backlash against what is perceived as an overreach from Brussels by some political organizations within the bloc. The EU is a complicated and sometimes cumbersome bureaucracy that is cherished by some, reviled by others, and, under these assumptions, is an impediment to strategic autonomy.

The ECFR essentially argues for the EU and Western European capitals to lean into the transatlantic partnership, but on terms favorable to themselves. This includes creating an independent security architecture within and complimentary to NATO, creating an economic NATO of sorts and even pursuing a European nuclear weapons program. At least the former two are acceptable, as abandoning the US outright would be politically foolish for the EU at this juncture. It certainly needs to develop a transatlantic free-trade agreement that puts an end to American trade protectionism.

However, the obvious point to help diversify the Western European economic portfolio, reduce genuinely problematic dependencies, and fuel growth is for the EU to develop peer-to-peer relations with the Global South. For one, the EU Parliament could right now ratify the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) to help their companies gain market access in China and tap into one of the world’s largest consumer bases. I would also argue, as I’ve done in the past, that the EU and China could cooperate – rather than compete – on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the Global South because of Europe’s historical connections, due to its colonialist past.

What is clear is that the EU needs to diversify and back off from the transatlantic relationship. With much talk about ‘de-risking’, or even ‘de-coupling’, from China, Western Europe has actually gotten into the position where it is strategically dependent on Washington to the point of being outright vassalized. This is a bleak situation for the EU’s growth model and its hopes for strategic autonomy.

— Bradley Blankenship is an American Journalist, Columnist and Political Commentator. He has a syndicated column at CGTN and is a freelance reporter for international news agencies.

[unhonestlymirror]

People dying of thrombosis because of covid vaccine; confirming studies about covid vaccination developing neuronal cells degeneration as well:

Internet: i sleep

A one case of a girl who developed early dementia after getting covid for 3 times (the last one after the vaccine):

Internet: - REAL SHIT!!!

[latestnews-now]

Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán’s ceasefire proposal for Ukraine has sparked sharp criticism from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. This move, involving talks with Russia’s Putin and Turkey’s Erdoğan, raises questions about global peace efforts. Dive into the details in this video, where we explore Orbán’s plan, Ukraine’s response, and the potential impact of US politics under Trump. Stay informed on global affairs and subscribe for more

[impossibleperfectionnerd]

[head-post]

Luxembourg holds Presidency of Council of Europe

It is the Grand Duchy’s turn to lead the Council of Europe for the next six months, as Lithuania has handed over the chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the European human rights organisation to Luxembourg, according to Luxembourg Times.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis will hand over the baton to his Luxembourg counterpart Xavier Bettel on Wednesday.

The Council of Europe consists of 46 countries on the European continent and aims to uphold human rights and the rule of law.

As Bettel noted during Council Secretary General Alain Berset’s working visit to Luxembourg on October 24, the Grand Duchy will focus its efforts in particular on protecting the rule of law. The Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement at the time:

“The presidency will actively support work within the Council of Europe to finalise a Convention on the protection of lawyers and will organise conferences on journalists’ safety, bringing together national and international experts.” 

The country will also focus on enhancing social cohesion and inclusion “in a context marked by rising intolerance” and will use culture as a means of promoting the values underpinning the Council of Europe.

Read more HERE