Germany

BERLIN (Reuters) - Egypt, France, Germany and Jordan on Tuesday warned Israel against annexing parts of the Palestinian territories, saying that doing so could have consequences for bilateral relations.

In a statement distributed by the German Foreign Ministry, the countries, including Israel’s two leading partners in the Middle East, said their foreign ministers had discussed how to restart talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

BERLIN, July 4. /TASS/: There was a detailed discussion at the Berlin meeting of political advisers to the leaders of the Normandy Quartet countries (Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France), but there is hardly any reason to say a breakthrough was achieved, the deputy chief of the Russian presidential staff, Dmitry Kozak, told the media on Friday.

BERLIN (AP) — German lawmakers have finalized the country’s long-awaited phase-out of coal as an energy source, backing a plan that environmental groups say isn’t ambitious enough and free marketeers criticize as a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Bills approved by both houses of parliament Friday envision shutting down the last coal-fired power plant by 2038 and spending some 40 billion euros ($45 billion) to help affected regions cope with the transition.

03 July 2020; MEMO: The German parliament passed a resolution yesterday urging the government in Berlin to use its close ties with Israel to prevent Tel Aviv from annexing large swaths of the occupied West Bank.

BERLIN, July 1 (Xinhua) -- Germany took over the presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) from Croatia for the next six months in a "difficult time" determined by COVID-19, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a speech to the Bundestag (parliament) in Berlin on Wednesday.

"Of course, our presidency will be marked by the coronavirus pandemic, the efforts to contain it and to deal with its consequences," said Merkel, stressing that the European Council had agreed that "special solutions are needed."

BERLIN, July 1 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Chancellor Angela Merkel aims to strengthen a divided European Union and help its hard-hit economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic when Germany takes over the rotating presidency of the 27-member bloc on Wednesday (July 1).

Critics have in the last three months raised questions about the future of the bloc as national borders shut and each state resorted, at least initially, to national policies to tackle COVID-19, which has killed more than 100,000 people in the EU.

BERLIN, June 29 (Xinhua) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that Germany would spearhead efforts to ensure an effective post-pandemic EU recovery, after she held a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron.

"We are going to work together and make Europe fit for tackling this crisis," Merkel said following talks with Macron at the German government guesthouse in Meseberg, north of Berlin. It is the first face-to-face meeting between the chancellor and another state leader after the coronavirus outbreak.

BERLIN (AP) — The U.N. nuclear agency says slightly elevated levels of radioactivity that have been detected in northern Europe pose no risk to human health or to the environment but it’s still unclear what the cause was.

The Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish radiation and nuclear safety watchdogs said last week that they had spotted small amounts of radioactive isotopes in parts of Finland, southern Scandinavia and the Arctic.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank’s government bond purchases are necessary and the benefits far outweigh the side effects, ECB board member Isabel Schnabel said on Saturday, pushing back on a court challenge from her native Germany.

Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled last month that the ECB overstepped its mandate with 2 trillion euros worth of government bond buys over the past five years and ordered the Bundesbank to quit the programme, unless the ECB could prove within three month that the purchases were proportional.

26 June 2020; MEMO: A German court ruled in favour of Kuwait Airways, after an Israeli citizen filed a lawsuit against the company for cancelling his reservation as he was not allowed to enter the Gulf state.

Kuwait’s Al-Jarida reported yesterday that a Munich court ruled that the airline’s decision to cancel the reservation made by the Israeli national is legal, in support of a previous verdict issued by the Landshut court in Germany.