Belgium

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission on Thursday condemned Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa’s criticism of a reporter who wrote a piece suggesting that media freedom was under pressure in his country, a member of the European Union.

In a tweet, Jansa accused Politico reporter Lili Bayer of lying in her story entitled “Inside Slovenia’s war on the media”, in which she quoted journalists and watchdogs as saying Jansa was creating a climate of fear in the media.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Fortnite creator Epic Games has taken its fight against Apple to European Union antitrust regulators, ramping up it dispute with the iPhone maker over its App Store payment system and control over app downloads.

The two companies have been locked in a legal dispute since last August, when the game maker tried to avoid Apple’s 30% fee on some in-app purchases on the App Store by launching its own in-app payment system.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission on Wednesday pledged more funds to step up the EU’s capabilities to identify and tackle variants of the new coronavirus.

More contagious mutations are spreading fast across the world, and experts believe a British variant is likely to become prevalent on the European continent.

However, most European Union states have so far done little or nothing to spot new variants, as they lack the capabilities to sequence the genome of the virus on a large scale.

BRUSSELS, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) -- China became the main trade partner of the European Union (EU) in 2020, with exports and imports both increasing despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Eurostat said on Monday.

According to the EU's statistical service, the bloc's imports from China throughout the year 2020 grew by 5.6 percent year-on-year to 383.5 billion euros (465 billion U.S. dollars), and exports grew by 2.2 percent to 202.5 billion euros.

BRUSSELS, Feb 16 (NNN-AGENCIES) — North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance will not withdraw its troops from Afghanistan “before the time is right”, ahead of a discussion by defence ministers on the deployment.

The ministers of the 30 NATO member states will on Wednesday and Thursday hold their highest-level talks since United States President Joe Biden took office vowing to work closer with allies after four years of tensions under Donald Trump.

(Reuters) - The European Union called on China to reverse its ban on the BBC World News television, the Associated Press reported here on Saturday.

China barred Britain’s BBC World News from its television networks on Friday and Hong Kong’s public broadcaster said it would stop relaying BBC World Service radio, a week after Britain revoked Chinese state television’s broadcast licence.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The EU’s chief Brexit negotiator said on Thursday that the UK’s exit from the European Union is the reason for tensions between London and Brussels over Northern Ireland, not the protocol agreed between the two sides over their divorce.

“The difficulties on the island of Ireland are caused by Brexit, not by the protocol,” Michel Barnier told a European Business Summit event. “The protocol is the solution.

BRUSSELS, Feb 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The European Commission chief prepared to defend its stumbling vaccine rollout before the EU parliament on Wednesday as the pandemic’s grip on the continent forced Greece into tightening a lockdown around its capital.

Europe has logged a third of the more than 2.3 million lives lost globally to the virus, which is spreading rapidly despite the start of vaccinations in many nations and forcing the reimposition of unpopular and economically punishing restrictions.

BRUSSELS, Feb 4, 2021 (BSS/AFP) – EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell jets to Moscow on Thursday under pressure to confront the Kremlin over the jailing of Alexei Navalny and a crackdown on protesters.

The visit — the first to Russia by a top EU envoy since 2017 — has drawn criticism from some European capitals worried Moscow will spin it as evidence Brussels is keen to return to business as normal.

ANTWERP, Belgium (Reuters) - An Iranian diplomat accused of planning to bomb a meeting of an exiled opposition group was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday in the first trial of an Iranian official for suspected terrorism in Europe since Iran’s 1979 revolution.

Assadolah Assadi was found guilty of attempted terrorism after a foiled plot to bomb a rally of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) near Paris in June 2018, Belgian prosecution lawyers and civil parties to the prosecution said.