Tag: human rights

Europe and its global partners that are being asked to help finance a €4-billion development programme in Mali should be pressuring the government to address the executions, torture other abuses occurring in the divided country, human rights advocates say.

France urged the European Union to look again at lifting an arms embargo on Syria to help rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad, putting it at odds with Germany which said such a step could spread conflict in the region.

The EU-Russia summit ended today (21 December) with no major decisions, but Russian President Vladimir Putin staged a show for the press, telling Commission President José Manuel Barroso that he was “not right” in his interpretation of energy liberalisation rules.

EXCLUSIVE / Tonio Borg, the replacement candidate for John Dalli as Malta's EU commissioner in Brussels, has denounced attacks against him as "gross calumny and lies" ahead of a European Parliament confirmation hearing next Tuesday. German lawyers and politicians have piled pressure on Borg ahead of the hearing. EurActiv Germany reports.

Pussy Riot, whose three female musicians were sentenced to two years in prison after staging an anti-Vladimir Putin protest in a Moscow cathedral, are among the three candidates shortlisted for the 2012 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. 

Prison sentences for members of the Pussy Riot punk band are unacceptable, but so was their performance in a Moscow cathedral, says MEP Jacek Sayusz-Wolski, who advocates that the European Parliament's 2012 Sakharov Prize be given to a Belarussian opposition activist. 

France and Romania have signed a deal on the voluntary repatriation of Roma to Romania, with both sides saying that “time” and “patience” were needed to solve Roma migration problems.

Human rights organisations have asked the EU's new Special Representative for Human Rights, Stavros Lambrinidis, to raise Tibet with China’s prime minister on the margins of the next EU-China Summit, due to take place in Brussels on 20 September.

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko has sacked his foreign minister following after a diplomatic row with Sweden and the European Union over a pro-democracy stunt in which hundreds of teddy bears were airdropped over the country.

François Hollande will play his hand carefully and those who expect him to precipitate a crisis in the eurozone are wrong, MEP Richard Howitt (S&D, UK), European Parliament Rapporteur on Corporate Social Responsibility, told EurActiv in an interview.

The European Parliament voted overwhelmingly yesterday (18 April) to change the future direction of the EU's human rights policy and pave the way for a new position of "human rights czar".  

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said yesterday (5 April) that he will "screen" EU ambassadors individually before allowing them to return the country, the AFP reported. They had withdrawn from the country to punish Minsk's human rights record.

Ukraine initialled today (30 March) a landmark Association Agreement with the EU and a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. Although this is only a technical step before the official signature, the Commission said the move was important for "keeping the momentum" in relations with Kyiv.

The eurozone crisis and China’s willingness to help debt-ridden European countries will be at the core of a key EU-China summit starting today (14 February) in Beijing, even though officials in Brussels have little hope that precise figures will come out of the meeting.

The reported killing of 23 Honduran farmers in a dispute with the owners of UN-accredited palm oil plantations in Honduras is forcing the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) executive board to reconsider its stakeholder consultation processes.

The Turkish government will reportedly return properties confiscated from religious minorities since 1936, in a step that seemingly addresses European concerns about the treatment of minorities in the EU candidate member.

The Council of Europe, the oldest European institution which specialises in human rights, today (20 July) strongly criticised recent French and Belgian legislation targeting the burqa, a veil that covers entirely women's faces.

A law banning the burqa, the veil that entirely covering a woman's face except for the eyes, will become effective in Belgium as of 23 July, after it was published in the country's official journal.

Russia understands the present difficulties holding up the process of EU integration, just like EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy has never publicly criticised Moscow over the human rights situation in Russia "because he understands it," Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's ambassdor to the EU, told EurActiv in an exclusive interview.

If it continues to consider immigrants as "totally unwanted," Europe will have very little credibility to talk about human rights in international fora, warns Thomas Hammarberg, human rights commissioner at the Council of Europe.

Speaking in Strasbourg yesterday (13 April), Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused France of violating freedom of religion, after Paris began to enforce a law barring Muslim women from wearing full face veils in public.

A group of Algerian opposition supporters trying to hold a banned protest clashed with police in the country's capital on Saturday (22 January) with several people injured, protest organisers and official media said.

A visit to Spain by a Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier Li Keqiang during which agreements worth 5.7 billion euros were signed yesterday (5 January) helped calm markets and provided some relief for the country's recession-hit economy. EurActiv Spain reports.

EU candidate country Serbia and four other nations on the Union's periphery – Ukraine, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco – have disappointed the European Commission by deciding to boycott a ceremony awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.