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Madrid and Barcelona team up in effort to make Catalan an EU language

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:52 GMT

The EU’s General Affairs Council on Tuesday is set to decide whether to green-light Spain’s proposal to make Catalan, Galician and Basque official EU languages.In an unusually united stance, the national government in Madrid and the Catalan regional government in Barcelona are pushing the bid jointly. It is entirely linked to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s quest to remain in office after last July’s inconclusive national election.Socialist leader Sánchez needs the support of Catalan separatists to form a government and getting Catalan recognized as an EU language is one of the conditions. EU nationals have the right to use any of the bloc’s 24 official languages to communicate with the institutions and receive replies in that language. Moreover, all EU laws, proposals and decisions — past, present and future — must be translated into the languages given official recognition. However, winning recognition requires unanimous backing of all 27 m...

Poland’s ruling party publishes top secret plan as a campaign stunt

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:52 GMT

WARSAW — Poland’s ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party has set off a security storm by publishing parts of a top secret defense plan as part of a campaign spot aimed at discrediting the opposition ahead of the October 15 general election.“Attention! The Tusk government was ready to give up half of the country in the event of a war,” Defense Minister Mariusz Błaszczak said in a video published by PiS on social media on September 17 — the 84th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s attack on Poland in 1939.The minister was referring to a 2011 strategic defense plan prepared by the former government of then Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The former European Council President is now head of the Civic Coalition alliance that’s trying to prevent PiS from winning an unprecedented third straight term in power.“The plan assumed … that Poland could only defend itself for two weeks and the enemy will reach the right bank of the Vistula after seven days,” Błaszczak ...

Italy’s Meloni plans a geopolitical Queen’s Gambit

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:52 GMT

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and adviser at Gallos Technologies and a regular columnist for POLITICO.In the 17th century, the Italian chess player Gioachino Greco created the world’s first chess handbook. One of the moves he recorded was the Queen’s Gambit, an ingenious opening in three parts.  Almost exactly 300 years later, his compatriot Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is about to launch a Queen’s Gambit of her own — in foreign policy. And much like Greco’s move, it involves several interlinked steps that, if executed successfully, could yield great dividends.  When Greco began his pioneering manuscript detailing entire chess matches, he was already considered one of the world’s best players. By contrast, Meloni was hardly a household name outside of Italy before leading her party to victory in the country’s parliamentary elections last year.  The world didn’t really know what to expect — especially when it came to fo...

Don’t let Putin keep us out of the EU, Moldova implores

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:52 GMT

BRUSSELS — Moldova wants to become the EU’s newest member, pushing to be offered a clear path to accession when Brussels unveils its latest expansion plans next month despite fears that joining could drag the bloc into a decades-old frozen conflict with Russia.Moldova’s Foreign Minister Nicu Popescu insisted in an interview with POLITICO that his country’s EU aspirations shouldn’t be at the mercy of Moscow, which continues to support the breakaway region of Transnistria.“Everything would be easier if a country like ours didn’t have a separatist conflict — it affects our security, economy, border control capacity — it has massive negative effects,” he admitted. Backed by the Kremlin, Transnistria, a region lying along Moldova’s border with Ukraine, has functioned as an unrecognized state since the fall of the USSR, keeping its Soviet-era hammer and sickle flag and using Russian as its official language.However, Popescu insisted, it’s “not at all” true that the standoff will hur...

Revealed: Boris Johnson’s (unedited) resignation speech

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:52 GMT

LONDON — A defeated Boris Johnson planned to quit Downing Street last year with jokes about the Dignitas suicide clinic and the children’s nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty as part of a broadside aimed at Tory MPs.The first draft of the resignation speech Johnson delivered as he quit as U.K. prime minister in July 2022 was toned down after discussions with friends and advisers, removing some of the closer-to-the-bone remarks.Revealed for the first time in the new book The Right to Rule by journalist Ben Riley-Smith — and shared with POLITICO ahead of the book’s publication next week — the draft makes clear the depth of the betrayal Johnson felt at his ministers, who forced him from office by resigning en masse in protest at his handling of a sex scandal.Johnson’s first attempt included the line: “In the last 48 hours I have been struck by how many colleagues have asked me to resign with dignity, as though they represented some kind of euthanasia clinic.” Riley-Smith conf...

Why Scotland and Westminster are going to war over trans rights

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:52 GMT

LONDON — Welcome to the latest Scottish independence battlefield: transgender rights.Scotland’s government wants to make it easier for people to legally change their gender. The Conservative administration in Westminster says it’s massively overstepping its powers. Now the two sides are thrashing it out in the courtroom, with a three-day hearing getting underway Tuesday morning.It’s a row that unites two hot-button political issues: gender identity and Scotland’s right to pass its own laws. And the outcome could have major ramifications for the embattled Scottish National Party (SNP), which is reeling from a police probe into its finances. Here’s what you need to know.When did this all begin?It’s been a long road to the courtroom. At present, anyone in the U.K. over the age of 18 who wishes to legally change gender must apply to a gender recognition panel — a tribunal made up of legal or medical professionals — and present a difficult-to-obtain me...

Eva Kaili’s plot to blow up the Qatargate investigation

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:52 GMT

BRUSSELS — Nine months in, the blockbuster cash-for-influence Qatargate legal case could be about to collapse. Eva Kaili, the European Parliament’s former vice president who was arrested and charged with corruption in December, is now launching a daring legal challenge aimed at toppling the entire investigation, arguing the police and spy services acted illegally when they went after her. And she can already count on Andrea Cozzolino, another member of European Parliament who is charged in the case, to join in the effort.Months of planning by Kaili’s lawyers will come to a head at 9 a.m. on Tuesday in the Palace of Justice in Brussels, where the federal prosecutor has convened a meeting to consider the legal challenge.The first-of-its-kind gathering comes a year after Belgian authorities surreptitiously started probing whether lawmakers and officials at the European Parliament were taking bribes in exchange for political favors for Morocco and Qatar. Two stars of the...

Fury and infighting grip Brussels in clash over Ukrainian grain

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:52 GMT

When Ukraine’s trade representative, Taras Kachka, revealed to POLITICO that Kyiv was going to sue EU governments in a dispute over grain, it proved too much for one of the bloc’s diplomats to take. “Was that man drunk?” the exasperated envoy demanded, all thoughts of diplomacy vaporizing in the heat of his frustration. Ukraine made good on Kachka’s promise on Monday, formally filing lawsuits against Poland, Hungary and Slovakia at the World Trade Organization after the trio decided to defy Brussels and ban Ukrainian grain imports. The dispute has fractured European unity, leaving other EU diplomats privately furious with Poland, especially, for going rogue. And the clash is sorely testing relations between Kyiv and Brussels at a sensitive moment in Ukraine’s 18 month-old war against Russia’s invaders. The worst bit? It’s all just a taste of the fights to come. For his part, Kachka barely flinched at the “drunk” jibe. EU diplomats, he told POLITICO, were app...

Authorities investigating NH man’s death after incident at Gillette Stadium during Patriots game

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:52 GMT

Authorities are investigating after a man died following “an apparent medical event” at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro Sunday night, state police said. A Massachusetts State Police spokesperson in a statement said EMTs responded to the 308/309 section of Gillette Stadium near midfield shortly before 11 p.m., during the fourth quarter of Sunday’s Patriots game. The spokesperson said the man, 53, was taken to Sturdy Memorial Hospital in Attleboro, where he was pronounced dead.In addition to EMTs, the state police spokesperson said Foxboro police also responded to the incident. As of Monday afternoon, the spokesperson said state police detectives were “investigating the facts and circumstances of the man’s death, including the sequence of events prior to the medical incident.”The Norfolk County District Attorney’s office in a separate statement Monday identified the man who died as Dale Mooney of Newmarket, New Hampshire and said the incident remained under investigation. M...

Retaining wall topples in Brighton

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 15:24:52 GMT

Emergency crews were on scene Monday night after a 30-foot retaining wall gave way behind a building on Tremont Street in Brighton. The scene was active with Boston police and fire personnel responding around 10 p.m. in the area near Oak Square. No further information was immediately available.This is a developing story; stay with 7NEWS on-air and online for the latest updates.