Europe

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"Not in my backyard" is a term normally used in conversations about proposed new housing or rail lines, but a version of it could soon be heard about one of the most dangerous materials on the planet.

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Sellafield, in Cumbria, is the "temporary home to the vast majority of the UK's radioactive nuclear waste", said the BBC, "as well as the world's largest stockpile of plutonium". It's stuck there because no long-term, high-level waste facilities have been created to deal with it.

The "highly radioactive material" releases energy that can infiltrate and damage the cells in our bodies, Claire Corkhill, professor of radioactive waste management at the University of Bristol, said, and "it remains hazardous for 100,000 years".

The permanent plan to handle the waste currently at Sellafield is to first build a designated 650ft-deep pit to store it. Although the contentious matter of its location has yet to be agreed, the facility will hold some of the 5 million tonnes of waste generated by nuclear power stations over the past seven decades. Then, in the second half of the century, a much deeper geological disposal site will be dug, which will hold the UK's "most dangerous waste", such as plutonium.

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The far-right government of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has proposed a new security decree that would criminalize non-violent protests that block roads and resisting a police offer in prison or in a migrant reception center. The opposition has dubbed the legislation “anti-Gandhi” for targeting the forms of peaceful resistance advocated by the Indian civil rights leader.

The law approved by Congress on September 18, and just needs to be passed by the Senate, where the government wants it to be on the top of the agenda. The security decree creates up to 20 new criminal offenses or aggravating circumstances and increases prison time for offenders.

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Participating in road or railway blockades can lead to a month in prison, but if it is done in a collective mobilization, a person could face between six months and two years. What’s more, the security decree introduces an aggravating factor, which increases the penalties by up to a third. In view of the recent protests against the Messina Strait bridge and high-speed trains, a defendant will receive a longer prison time if their actions were aimed at preventing “a public work or a strategic infrastructure from being completed.”

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The League [the right-wing political party that forms part of Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s government] also proposed for chemical castration for rapists and pedophiles. Matteo Salvini’s populist party has managed to get at a technical commission approved to study the possibility of chemical castration for convicted sex offenders, provided they voluntarily accept the procedure. Under the plan, they could receive suspended sentences in exchange for hormone-blocking treatment. It is a measure that is applied in Russia, Poland and some Scandinavian countries, but there is debate about its effectiveness.

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Meloni’s security decree has been met with unusually strong opposition from the country’s judiciary. Fabrizio Vanorio, a public prosecutor from Naples, warned: “It provides for technically fascist rules. If approved, it would return Italy to an authoritarian criminal law similar to that of the Mussolini years or, to give a more modern example, yo that of Orbán’s Hungary.”

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The experts unanimously agree: RT is managing to circumvent Europe’s sanctions because of failings in their application by the national authorities - including Arcom in France. The lack of coordination between European institutions is also an important factor, Reporters Without Borders writes.

RT’s presence in France is the most blatant. Yet the non-implementation of European sanctions by internet service providers and search engine companies, such as Google, is a larger problem. According to analyses by the Comité Diderot – a network of academics, experts and media professionnals — that were sent to Arcom and the French Treasury last January, versions of RT (in English, German, Spanish and Arabic) are accessible in France, without a VPN, on over 50 sites and social media accounts. Surveys carried out by the Comité Diderot show the RT situation is similar, if not worse, in countries such as Germany and Portugal.

In the meantime, RT continues the exact activity the EU was trying to sanction, namely, “a systematic, international campaign of disinformation, information manipulation and distortion of facts in order to enhance its strategy of destabilisation of its neighbouring countries, the EU and its member states.”

Here is the document (pdf): Second renewable hydrogen auction: European Commission publishes Terms and Conditions (pdf)

The European Commission published the final Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) for its second auction for the production of renewable hydrogen (IF24 Auction), via the Innovation Fund. This auction, which is a key pillar of the European Hydrogen Bank (EHB), provides financial support to producers of hydrogen categorised as Renewable Fuel of Non-Biological Origin (RFNBO).

The new criteria include safety of operation and cybersecurity, citing the risk that Europe's green hydrogen sector could become dependent on a single country outisde the EU for equipment, which would threaten the bloc's security.

“Having regard to the current and projected global and EU supply and demand trends for electrolysers, including the fact that Chinese production capacity is already more than 50% of global production and the projected hydrogen production in China surpasses by far its domestic 2025 target and foreseeable global demand, it is assessed that there is a significant risk of increased and irreversible dependency of the EU on imports of electrolysers originating in China, which may threaten the EU’s security of supply. Thus special measures are justified in this nascent industry, contributing to the objectives of the Net Zero Industry Act. As a result, projects have to limit the sourcing of electrolyser stacks which include surface treatment, cell unit production and stack assembly from China to not more than 25% (in MWe) to fulfil this criterion,” the document reads.

The auction will open on 3 December 2024 and will award up to €1.2 billion support to renewable hydrogen producers located in the European Economic Area (EEA). Building upon the success of last year’s pilot auction (IF23 Auction), the second auction will further contribute to the creation of a European market for renewable hydrogen by de-risking investments with public support.

When Russia launched its invasion in 2022, Ukraine banned foreigners from adopting Ukrainian children. Yet even for Ukrainians, adoptions proved difficult as the war made it harder for courts and state agencies to do their work. However, these problems were solved a few months later, said Daria Kasyanova of SOS Children's Villages Ukraine, an NGO that looks after orphans.

Because of the war, entire orphanages were relocated to safer regions of Ukraine. Some children were taken abroad where they could not be adopted by Ukrainians. This changed, however, in June 2024.

"Foster parents asked for matters to be simplified," said Kasyanova. Her organization provides financial support to families who want to adopt an orphaned child evacuated abroad. To do this, families must get to know the child online and then visit them abroad.

"Almost 60 families have already contacted us, for whom we have paid for trips to various countries, including Poland, Germany, Turkey, Austria and Switzerland," said Kasyanova.

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The fear of what the future held for Zhang (not his real name) and his children propelled the 39-year-old Chinese citizen from Shandong province on a journey so difficult and dangerous that many struggle to understand why someone from China would embark on it. Most of Zhang’s new neighbours in the European Balkans come from war-torn countries in the Middle East. Until recently, Zhang had a stable job working for a private company in the world’s second-biggest economy, earning an above average salary. But the political environment in China left him feeling that he had no choice other than to leave.

Zhang is one of a small but growing number of Chinese people who are travelling to the Balkans with the hope of getting into the EU by whatever means necessary.

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David Stroup, a lecturer of Chinese politics at the University of Manchester, says that the rapid expansion of China’s surveillance state during the pandemic combined with a gloomy economic outlook were some of the driving forces for this new wave of Chinese migrants.

“The lockdowns created a sense that ordinary people who were just living their lives could somehow find themselves under heavy observation of the state or subjected to long arbitrary periods of lockdown and confinement,” Stroup said.

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Part of the reason that Bosnia is an attractive staging post for Chinese migrants, is that like its neighbour Serbia, it offers visa-free travel. Aleksandra Kovačević, spokesperson for Bosnia’s Service for Foreigner’s Affairs, a government department, said that Chinese people were “gaining statistical significance as persons who increasingly violate migration regulations of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. She said that along with Turkish citizens, Chinese people were trying to use legal entry into Bosnia as a way to “illegally continue their journey to the countries of western Europe”.

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Many ordinary Chinese occasionally feel the rough end of the government’s tight control over public speech. Most learn to keep their head down and, begrudgingly or not, quietly navigate the invisible red lines that dictate what can be freely talked about. But Zhang couldn’t bear it.

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“China’s control over speech is getting tighter and tighter. They don’t allow people to talk about political parties, and no matter if the government is doing a good or bad job, they don’t allow people to talk about it. It is limiting people’s freedom of speech tremendously, and that’s the most important thing I can’t accept,” Zhang says. “The economy is secondary”.

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Chinese woman has been arrested in the German city of Leipzig on suspicion of foreign agent activities and allegedly passing on information regarding arms deliveries, the prosecutor general said in a statement on Tuesday.

The suspect, named only as Yaqi X, is accused of passing on information she obtained while working for a logistics company at Leipzig/Halle airport to a member of the Chinese secret service, who is being prosecuted separately, the statement said.

The information passed along in 2023 and 2024 included flight, cargo and passenger data as well as details on the transportation of military equipment and people with ties to a German arms company, it added.

The Chinese Embassy in Berlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

Tensions have been simmering between Berlin and Beijing over the past year after Chancellor Olaf Scholz unveiled a strategy towards de-risking Germany's economic relationship with China, calling Beijing a "partner, competitor and systemic rival".

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/23729107

Jean-Marie Le Pen was serenaded by a group known to have ties to an international far-right organisation.

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Laying out key priorities for the EU's upcoming Clean Industrial Deal, German Economy State Secretary Sven Giegold said on Monday (30 September) he wants the Commission to prioritise renewable energy, taking a tough line on nuclear power and France’s renewable targets.

Alongside a quicker roll-out of renewable energy facilitated by “further exemptions from [environmental impact] assessments,” Giegold outlined several other German priorities for the EU’s upcoming strategy.

Based on the 2030 renewable energy targets, the EU should also set up a 2040 framework, complemented by new, more ambitious targets for energy efficiency, he said.

“It should include new heating standards, a heat pump action plan and a renovation initiative,” he explained, noting a heat pump action plan was last shelved in 2023.

Hydrogen, made from renewables, should be governed by a “a pragmatic framework,” the German politician stressed, reiterating calls from his boss, Economy Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), to delay strict production rules into the late 2030s.

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Estonia's Climate Minister Yoko Alender and Finland's Minister of the Environment and Climate Kai Mykkänen signed a memorandum of understanding on Friday to ensure the resilience and security of critical undersea infrastructure, including through enhancing surveillance capabilities.

The purpose of the memorandum of understanding is to outline the structures within which Finland and Estonia can develop their cooperation on the monitoring and repair of underwater energy connections.

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The Balticconnector gas pipeline damaged in October 2023 has been repaired. There are also two submarine power cables between the countries, Estlink 1 and Estlink 2, on the bottom of the Gulf of Finland. These transmission connections are an essential part of the energy markets and security of energy supply in Finland and Estonia. They also even out price fluctuations.

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[...] For an increasing number of critics, Ireland being home to Chinese firms links the country to the human rights abuse allegations levelled against some such companies. These include Chinese clothing firm Shein, which since May 2023 has had its European headquarters in Dublin.

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In May, Ireland’s Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Dara Calleary, welcomed a report celebrating how Huawei was contributing €800m ($889m; £668m) per year to the Irish economy. The firm has three research and development centres in Ireland.

This is the same Huawei whose telecoms network equipment the US has banned since 2022 due to concerns over national security. The UK has moved in the same direction, ordering phone networks to remove Huawei components. And mobile phone networks in many Western nations, including Ireland, no longer offer Huawei handsets.

Meanwhile, WuXi has, since 2018, invested more than €1bn in a facility in Dundalk, near the border with Northern Ireland.

Earlier this month the US House of Representatives passed a bill to restrict US firms’ ability to work with WuXi, again citing national security concerns. The bill now has to go to the US Senate.

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Prominent critics of Ireland rolling out a “green carpet” to Chinse firms include Barry Andrews, one of Ireland's members of the European Parliament. “Human rights and environmental abuses should not be allowed in Irish shopping baskets,” says the Fianna Fáil MEP.

He points to a US Congress report from last year, which said there was “an extremely high risk that Temu’s supply chains are contaminated with forced labour”.

Temu had told the investigation that it had a “zero-tolerance policy” towards the practice.

“One person’s bargain is another’s back-breaking work for poverty wages,” adds Mr Andrews, whose party is part of the current Irish government coalition.

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Some leading economists question whether Ireland even needs the few thousand jobs that the Chinese firms provide.

“Ireland’s economy has been running at near full employment for the best part of a decade," says Dan O'Brien, chief economist at Ireland's Institute of International and European Affairs.

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Mr O’Brien says that Ireland’s level of FDI was already too high without the Chinese investment on top. “Given we are already overly dependent on FDI in a world that is at risk of deglobalisation, we don’t need another major source of FDI on top of that from the United States.”

He adds EU rules should be “actively used to discourage Chinese FDI” in Ireland.

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Non-full membership in the Schengen area costs Bulgaria more than EUR 834 million per year. Romania loses EUR 2.32 billion in annual revenues from not participating fully in Europe’s border-free regime, with losses for its transport operators amounting to another 90 million annually due to delays at the country’s land borders.

The figures were presented at the conference The cost of non-membership of Schengen for the Single Market – impact on Bulgaria and Romania, which took place in Sofia, Bulgaria on 24 September. The event was jointly organised by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC)and the Bulgarian Industrial Association (BIA).

France's new Prime Minister Michel Barnier is considering a temporary increase in corporate tax on the country's biggest companies as well as a tax on share buybacks as part of efforts to plug a gaping hole in public finances, Le Monde newspaper reported on Sunday.

Two countries agree to modifications beneath Matterhorn peak, one of Europe’s highest summits

A senior government minister urged Moldovans on Sunday to shun "thieves, fugitives and bandits" after an exiled pro-Russian business magnate pledged to pay voters to vote "no" in a referendum on joining the European Union.

Following the parliamentary election in Austria, the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) will be the strongest faction in the parliament, beating the conservative ÖVP for the first time in history.

PARIS (AP) — France’s new government is set to take a hardline approach to migration issues as key officials have pledged to significantly reduce the number of people entering and staying illegally in the country.

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis wrapped up a troubled visit to Belgium on Sunday by doubling down on his traditional views on women and abortion and demanding that Catholic bishops stop covering up for predator priests — a scandal that has devastated the church’s credibility around the globe.

Francis revisited the key thorny topics of his trip to Belgium during his in-flight press conference coming home, praising Belgium’s late King Baudouin as a “saint” for having abdicated for a day in 1990 rather than sign legislation legalizing abortion.

BRUSSELS (AP) — As the war in Ukraine enters a critical period, the European Union has decided it must take responsibility for what it sees as a security threat in its own neighborhood, and it’s preparing to tackle some of the financial burden, perhaps even without the United States.