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Christmas season fights: Man vs. Frog (and pigeons and geese)

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly humor column.It’s time for that most festive of traditions: Having a go at the French!More specifically, having a go at the French for what they eat at Christmas. The Great Foie Gras Battle has long raged, of course. Back in 2000, when France held the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, Jacques Chirac had his counterparts served foie gras and asked the room: “So, who doesn’t like it?” He then pulled back the heads of his fellow leaders and one by one force-fed them so that their livers became hyperfattened (probably).Anyway, something else that the French hold dear is now under attack — and no, we don’t mean the European Parliament’s monthly trips to Strasbourg! It’s cuisses de grenouilles (frog legs).Consumption of the delicacy peaks during Christmas season in France, with around 100 million frogs killed each year to feed demand, according to activists who have launched a campaign pointing to...

The second coming of Donald Tusk

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

BRUSSELS — Welcome back, Donald Tusk! In all likelihood, it will be a very familiar, newly anointed Polish prime minister, who will return to his old office building at the European Council in Brussels next week, for what is set to be a bruising summit of EU leaders. For many Europeans, Tusk’s return to the EU’s top table promises to bring back the good old days before 2015, when Poland’s nationalist, conservative administration under the Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power and spent eight years throwing spanners into the EU’s machinery. But the new Tusk could be quite different from the old one. Rather than ruling a confident country coming into its own as a fast-rising European power, he’ll be nursing a deeply divided nation after eight years of populist rule that turned Poland into the bad boy of European politics.There’s palpable nostalgia for Tusk’s previous premiership — from 2007 to 2014 — when France, Germany and Poland co...

Spooked by Nigel Farage, Rishi Sunak goes hard on immigration

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

LONDON — Conservative MPs fear another season of their Nigel Farage nightmare is looming. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is trying — and failing — to calm their nerves.Farage — once dubbed Mr. Brexit — is back in the British headlines as the star of primetime reality TV show “I’m a Celebrity Get me Out of Here.” But as the former MEP gallivants in the Australian jungle, dodging snakes and drinking blended goat testicles, the latest upstart political party he founded is fast gaining support. A recent BMG Research poll put Reform UK in third place behind Labour and the Tories, on 11 per cent — its best-ever performance in surveys by that company. Speculation is now growing that Farage will use his TV platform as a springboard for a triumphant return to the political scene next year, leading Reform UK into a general election expected by November 2024.Such a specter looms large in Conservative minds as Sunak battles through a nightmare spell in which the U.K. recorded the h...

Against antisemitism: Belgian and European Jews need your solidarity

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Ariel Muzicant is the president of the European Jewish CongressWe are witnessing a period of intense animosity toward Jewish communities in Belgium, as we are across all of Europe.Threats — often violent — addressed to Jewish children are now a regular occurrence both online and on the streets of Antwerp and Brussels. And since the October 7 attacks in Israel, antisemitic incidents are now 10 times greater than the average recorded levels for equivalent periods.Students at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, a couple walking along the street in Antwerp, and a cemetery in Charleroi have all been targeted over the last few weeks for one reason, and one reason alone.All the targets were Jewish. Young Jews, old Jews — even dead Jews.This isn’t the first time that a mass antisemitic attack — in this case, a pogrom perpetrated by Hamas in Israel, resulting in more Jews murdered than in any single 24-hour period since the Shoah — has brought not reflection and solidarity, but more hate and ...

Qatargate: Where do we stand a year after the corruption scandal erupted?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Listen on Spotify Apple Music Google Play EN_Google_Podcasts_Badge Created with Sketch. Acast Amazon Music In this episode, we revisit the huge corruption scandal which shook the European Parliament and the EU bubble exactly one year ago.Host Sarah Wheaton talks to POLITICO colleagues Elisa Braun and Eddy Wax, who sifted through a massive trove of leaked police documents and, along ...

Will Israel defy Washington and target Hezbollah?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe. The message coming from Israel’s leaders remains unwavering and uncompromising. Come what may, they’re determined to smash Hamas for good, so it can never again carry out a pogrom like it did on October 7.And for all the mounting pressure from Western allies to curtail its military operation that’s so far led to the elimination of about half of Hamas’ midlevel commanders in Gaza, Israel is bent on pressing forward, searching the suspected hiding places of the militant group’s upper echelon.According to three officials in Tel Aviv who spoke to POLITICO on condition of anonymity, the administration of United States President Joe Biden has now given Israel until the end of the year to wrap up its war on Hamas — a deadline that was underlined by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a visit to Israel this week. But Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer told a security forum on Thursday that the administration is not impos...

Eva Kaili tried to invite EU Parliament chief Roberta Metsola to Qatar World Cup

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

It was November 2022 and the Qatar football World Cup was about to begin. The Gulf state was facing intense scrutiny from around the globe over its handling of the tournament, especially in light of criticism over its record on human rights. In Brussels, the vice president of the European Parliament, Eva Kaili, was trying hard to help Qatar win friends in the West. A matter of days later, on December 9, she was among the suspects arrested and later handed preliminary charges in connection with the biggest corruption scandal to hit the EU institutions in decades. Kaili denies the allegations that she was part of a plot to take money and gifts in exchange for doing the bidding of Qatar and other foreign governments, and is fighting to clear her name. Leaked documents from the so-called Qatargate investigation, seen by POLITICO, shed new light on her activities. She told police after her arrest that she had merely wanted to “open a dialogue” between the EU and ...

Finance ministers fail to strike EU spending rules deal after hours of talks

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

BRUSSELS ― EU finance ministers failed to agree on a reform of the bloc’s national spending rules as a meeting in Brussels broke up at about 3 a.m. without finding a compromise.Ministers disagreed on several technical details around the pace at which countries have to reduce spending despite months of negotiations on the overhaul of the Stability and Growth Pact, which in its current version had been considered too strict and barely enforceable.“Tonight we have made essential progress on the reform of European budgetary rules, thanks in particular to the Spanish presidency [of the EU],” French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said at the end of the meeting. “An agreement in the Council should be possible before the end of the year. We continue!”Another EU diplomat was less positive, saying earlier in the night that “each of the 27 countries expressed a different opinion and different demands” and raising questions about the way in which discus...

UK’s next government targets defense ‘pact’ with the EU

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

BRUSSELS — The U.K. Labour Party wants a much closer relationship with the EU, France and Germany on defense, if it takes power after a general election in 2024.Shadow Defense Secretary John Healey told POLITICO that Labour will upend the Tories’ defense and security policy, by aiming to deepen military cooperation around the EU.“We would look to put in place systematic cooperation and a defense and security pact with the European Union,” Healey said following a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels on Thursday. “We would begin work directly after the election.” A year out from a general election, with his opposition Labour Party 19 percentage points ahead of the ruling Conservatives in the polls, Healey is on a mission to make it clear that a Labour government will want the United Kingdom back at the table when it comes to EU defense cooperation. “If we win the election … we must rebuild relationships with key allies and with the European Union,...

Tributes continue as community mourns police officer, utility worker killed in Waltham crash

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Tributes poured in throughout the day Thursday as community members continued to mourn a police officer and a utility worker killed in a crash in Waltham Wednesday afternoon. Among several salutes, law enforcement personnel escorted the body of officer Paul Tracey from the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Boston to a funeral home in Waltham, passing Waltham police headquarters to the sound of bagpipes near 9 p.m. Elsewhere, a makeshift memorial grew throughout the day at the site of the deadly crash on Totten Pond Road. Family members and friends also spoke out after the driver accused of fatally striking Tracey and National Grid worker Roderick Jackson appeared in court. “We just want to thank the Waltham community for the tremendous outpouring for our brother, Paul,” said Jim Tracey, Paul’s brother. “He was a tremendous husband, father, uncle and brother and loved by everybody in the community.”“They took something treasureous from us – you can never re...