Belgium

08 June 2023; MEMO: Italy sought last-minute changes on Thursday to a tentative EU agreement on sharing out responsibility for looking after migrants and refugees, pushing for a cut in the number of people each country would take on Reuters reports.

Home affairs ministers from across the 27-member bloc are meeting to try seal a deal to end years of damaging feuds dating back to 2015, when more than a million people – mostly fleeing the war in Syria – reached the EU across the Mediterranean.

BRUSSELS, June 8. /TASS/: Greece and Hungary have moved to block the latest draft of Brussels’ 11th package of sanctions against Russia at a meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives of the EU, Belgium’s RTBF TV reported.

Budapest and Athens are demanding that a number of companies be removed from the list of those supporting Russia's efforts to bypass Western sanctions.

However, according to the TV channel, the EU countries have no systemic objections to the latest round of sanctions put forward by the European Commission (EC).

06 June 2023; MEMO: Some European lawmakers have condemned the European Commission's silence on Greece's illegal pushback of migrants and refugees, accusing it of complicity and lack of action to rectify the situation.

BRUSSELS, June 5 (Reuters) - Reinforcements for NATO's peacekeeping force have begun to arrive in Kosovo following last week's unrest in the north of the country, the alliance said on Monday.

Violence flared after Kosovo authorities installed ethnic Albanian mayors in offices in northern municipalities after being elected on a turnout of just 3.5% after Serbs who form a majority in the region boycotted local polls.

The clashes injured 30 members of the NATO peacekeeping force known as KFOR as well as 52 Serb protesters.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said yesterday that Sweden has met all of Turkiye's demands to join the military alliance, urging Ankara not to veto Stockholm's bid in a meeting scheduled next month in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

"Membership will make Sweden safer but also make NATO and Turkey stronger," Stoltenberg told journalists in Istanbul yesterday after meeting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his newly appointed Foreign Minister, Hakan Fidan.

01 June 2023; MEMO: NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenberg, said on Thursday he would soon travel to Turkiye to discuss Sweden's NATO membership, in a bid to close a process that has been delayed due to objections from member countries, Turkiye and Hungary, Reuters reports.

Speaking during a two-day meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Oslo, Stoltenberg said he had spoken earlier this week to Tayyip Erdogan, who was re-elected as Turkiye's President on Sunday.

02 June 2023; MEMO: A confidential European Union report warned of what it described as "drastic acceleration" of Israeli pressure on the Palestinian population in Jerusalem in the past year, the Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.

The report, which was seen by El Pais, was delivered to the EU's External Action service (EUAA) by the diplomatic representatives in Jerusalem and Ramallah of nearly all EU member states in addition to the EU delegate.

01 June 2023; MEMO: International reports revealed that the European Union (EU) would use former German Chancellor Angela Merkel as a mediator between it and Turkiye to facilitate the transfer of natural gas discovered on the Greek Cypriot side, taking advantage of her good relations with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

BRUSSELS, May 26 (Reuters) - The race to be the next NATO boss is heating up. But it is a race run largely in the dark, with no sign of a winner yet.

Jens Stoltenberg, the transatlantic military alliance's Norwegian secretary-general, is due to step down at the end of September after nine years in post.

Many alliance members would like his succession settled at, or even before, a NATO summit in Lithuania in mid-July.

26 May 2023; MEMO: The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), which represents over 45 million European workers and their trade unions, decided today to boycott products made in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The organisation also stressed the importance of regulatory measures to prevent EU legal entities from importing or exporting products manufactured in illegal Israeli settlements in accordance with EU treaties and international law.