Tag Archives: Europe

U.S. issues travel alert for Europe, citing threat of terrorist attacks

FILE PHOTO - Passengers make their way in a security checkpoint at the International JFK airport in New York October 11, 2014. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department issued a travel alert for Europe on Monday, saying U.S. citizens should be aware of a continued threat of terrorist attacks throughout the continent.

In the alert, the State Department cited recent incidents in France, Russia, Sweden and the United Kingdom and said Islamic State and al Qaeda “have the ability to plan and execute terrorist attacks in Europe.”

The State Department’s previous travel alert for Europe, issued ahead of the winter holiday season, expired in February. A State Department official said Monday’s alert was not prompted by a specific threat, but rather recognition of the continuing risk of attacks especially ahead of the summer holidays. The alert expires on Sept. 1.

Malls, government facilities, hotels, clubs, restaurants, places of worship, parks, airports and other locations are all possible targets for attacks, the State Department’s alert said.

(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; editing by Diane Craft)

Turkish opposition lawmaker appeals to European court over referendum

Supporters of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan wave national flags as they wait for his arrival at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, April 17, 2017. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

ANKARA (Reuters) – A lawmaker from Turkey’s main opposition CHP said on Friday he had submitted an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights demanding the annulment of a referendum that granted President Tayyip Erdogan sweeping executive powers.

Musa Cam, a lawmaker for the Republican People’s Party (CHP)from the coastal city of Izmir, told Reuters he submitted an individual appeal independently from the one the party is expected to make to the European Court.

In his application, seen by Reuters, Cam said the decision by Turkey’s High Electoral Board (YSK) to allow unstamped ballots in the referendum had caused the outcome to be “illegitimate and not representative of the people’s will”.

Final results released by the YSK on Thursday showed 51.4 percent support for the “Yes” vote to approve the biggest changes to Turkey’s political system in its modern history.

The results, which matched the preliminary figures released in the hours after polling closed on April 16, were released despite calls by the CHP to delay a final announcement while they appealed the vote. The YSK and a Turkish court, the council of state, have rejected or declined to hear the CHP appeals.

Erdogan and the “Yes” camp have said appeals were an attempt to undermine the results of the vote, adding only the YSK had jurisdiction on the matter.

The package of 18 amendments passed in the referendum gives the president the authority to draft the budget, declare a state of emergency and issue decrees overseeing ministries without parliamentary approval.

With the changes, Erdogan will also immediately be eligible to resume membership of a political party.

Erdogan told Reuters on Tuesday that he would rejoin Turkey’s ruling AK Party once the full results came out, and a senior official said he would be named as a candidate to lead it at an extraordinary congress on May 21.

(This version of the article corrects surname of lawmaker)

(Reporting by Gulsen Solaker and Tuvan Gumrukcu)

Cashless society getting closer, survey finds

FILE PHOTO: Samsung's new Samsung Pay mobile wallet system is demonstrated at its Australian launch in Sydney, June 15, 2016. REUTERS/Matt Siegel/File Photo

By Jeremy Gaunt

LONDON (Reuters) – More than a third of Europeans and Americans would be happy to go without cash and rely on electronic forms of payment if they could, and at least 20 percent already pretty much do so, a study showed on Wednesday.

The study, which was conducted in 13 European countries, the United States and Australia, also found that in many places where cash is most used, people are among the keenest to ditch it.

Overall, 34 percent of respondents in Europe and 38 percent in the United States said they would be willing to go cash-free, according to the survey conducted by Ipsos for the ING bank website eZonomics.

Twenty-one percent and 34 percent in Europe and the United States, respectively, said they already rarely use cash.

The trend was also clear. More than half of the European respondents said they had used less cash in the past 12 months than previously and 78 percent said they expected to use it even less over the coming 12 months.

Ian Bright, managing director of group research for ING wholesale banking, said he did not believe people would quit cash entirely, but the direction was obvious.

“More and more people will end up with a situation where they can quite comfortably get by for two days, three days, four days, even a week, without ever using cash,” he told Reuters Television.

Payment systems such as contactless cards and mobile-phone digital wallets have become so prevalent the issue has become political in some countries.

Cash-loving Germans, for example, have been concerned that a move by the European Central Bank to phase out the 500 euro note by the end of next year is the start of a slippery slope.

Germany is one of the countries that uses cash the most. The ING survey showed only 10 percent of Germans saying they rarely use cash, compared, for example, with 33 percent and 35 percent, respectively, in neighbors Poland and France.

The survey also showed that, in general, countries where cash is much in use were most likely to want to go cashless.

Only 19 percent of Italians said they rarely used cash but 41 percent said they would be willing to go cash. There was a similar trend in Turkey, Romania, the Czech Republic, Spain and even Germany.

(Editing by Catherine Evans)

Turkey says European rights court has no jurisdiction over referendum

Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, accompanied by his deputies Bulent Arinc (not pictured) and Bekir Bozdag (R), speaks during a news conference at Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul in this June 3, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Stringer/Files

ANKARA (Reuters) – Turkey’s justice minister said on Thursday that any opposition challenge to a referendum that expanded President Tayyip Erdogan’s powers would be rejected by the constitutional court, and Europe’s human rights court had no jurisdiction on the matter.

The main opposition CHP party said on Wednesday it was considering taking its appeal for the referendum to be annulled to Turkey’s Constitutional Court or the European Court of Human Rights after the country’s electoral authority rejected challenges by the CHP and two other parties.

“If the opposition takes the appeal to the Constitutional Court, the court has no other option than to reject it,” Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag told television news channel A Haber.

“It can also apply to the ECHR, but it cannot achieve a result there either, because the agreements Turkey signed do not give parties the right to apply.”

Bozdag also reiterated government criticism of a report by European election observers who said the referendum, carried out under emergency law, took place on an “unlevel playing field”.

The observers said a last-minute decision by election authorities to allow unstamped ballots to be counted “undermined an important safeguard and contradicted the law which explicitly states that such ballots should be considered invalid”.

Bozdag said the report lacked fairness and objectivity. “Those who prepared this report are partial,” he said.

Sunday’s referendum narrowly backed the largest overhaul of Turkey’s political system since the founding of the republic nearly a century ago, giving Erdogan sweeping authority over the NATO member-state.

But the tight result of a highly charged campaign laid bare divisions and triggered challenges from the opposition over its legitimacy.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Dominic Evans and Mark Trevelyan)

China to gather friends for biggest summit of year on New Silk Road

China's President Xi Jinping during the official welcoming ceremony in front of the Presidential Palace, in Helsinki, Finland April 5, 2017. Lehtikuva/Martti Kainulainen/via REUTERS

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will gather its friends and allies together for its biggest diplomatic event of the year in May, a summit on its New Silk Road plan, with most Asian leaders due to attend but only one from a G7 nation, the Italian prime minister.

President Xi Jinping has championed what China formally calls the “One Belt, One Road” or OBOR, initiative to build a new Silk Road linking Asia, Africa and Europe, a landmark program to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure projects including railways, ports and power grids.

China has dedicated $40 billion to a Silk Road Fund and the idea was the driving force behind the establishment of the $50 billion China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

Foreign Minister Wang Yi announced on Tuesday a list of those attending the conference, including some of China’s most reliable allies – Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak and Indonesian President Joko Widodo are coming too, all generally good partners of China.

“One Belt, One Road is to date the most important public good China has given to the world, first proposed by China but for all countries to enjoy,” Wang said.

“The culture and historical genes of One Belt, One Road come from the old Silk Road, so it takes Eurasia as its main region,” he said, adding that representatives of 110 countries would attend.

While China says the New Silk Road is not political, it has run into opposition from India due to a section of it in Pakistan, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, where some projects run through the disputed Kashmir region.

Wang dismissed those concerns, saying the Pakistan project had no direct connection to the dispute and India was welcome to participate in the New Silk Road.

“Indian friends have said to us that One Belt, One Road is a very good suggestion,” he said.

Nevertheless, India Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not on the list of leaders attending.

Wang also made no mention of any attendance of officials from Japan, South Korea or North Korea, all countries with which China has strained ties. Nor was there mention of Australia, a strong U.S. ally that has close trade links with China.

The list included only one leader from the Group of Seven (G7) industrialised nations, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.

Diplomatic sources in Beijing said China had hoped for at least some senior Western leaders to attend, including British Prime Minister Theresa May, to burnish the plan’s credentials and make it less China-centric.

British finance minister Philip Hammond will come as May’s representative, while Germany and France are having elections at the time and will send high-level representatives, Wang said.

Wang confirmed Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte as among 28 leaders coming, along with the Spanish, Greek, Hungarian, Serb and Polish prime ministers and Swiss and Czech presidents.

“This is a positive, cooperative agreement, and we don’t want to politicize it,” Wang told reporters when asked if China was upset at the absence of most major Western leaders.

“This is an economic cooperation forum, an international cooperation platform that everyone is paying attention to, supports and hopes to participate in,” he said.

GLOBAL FRIEND

China is sensitive to any suggestion that what it sees as its benign intentions do not have a receptive global audience, especially in Western capitals.

China was privately upset in 2015 after most Western leaders rebuffed invitations to attend a big military parade marking 70 years since the end of World War Two. Western leaders were unhappy that the guest list that included Putin and wary of the message China would send with the show of strength.

While China has portrayed the New Silk Road as a genuine effort to share the bounty of China’s economic development and to fund infrastructure gaps, many Western countries are concerned about a lack of detail and transparency in the project and are suspicious about China’s broader political intents.

Diplomatic sources said the presence of Putin and other leaders from countries with dubious human rights records, like the Philippines and Central Asian states, had contributed to a reluctance among Western leaders to attend.

Still, at a time of uncertainty about the U.S. place in the world following President Donald Trump’s pledges to put America first, China sees an opportunity to become more of a global leader and has found a receptive audience for its New Silk Road.

Leaders from countries that would appear to have little, if any, connection so far to the plan are coming to the summit, including Chile and Argentina.

“Everyone wants to be China’s friend now with Trump in office,” said a senior Asian diplomat in Beijing.

A senior Indonesian government official said China was aiming for a “spectacular” summit.

“The Chinese are gunning for … global leadership so I think this OBOR summit is going to be huge,” the official said.

(Additional reporting by John Chalmers in Jakarta; Editing by Robert Birsel)

British PM May calls for early election to strengthen Brexit hand

Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks to the media outside 10 Downing Street, in central London, Britain April 18, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville

By Elizabeth Piper, Kylie MacLellan and William James

LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Theresa May called on Tuesday for an early election on June 8, saying she needed to strengthen her hand in divorce talks with the European Union by shoring up support for her Brexit plan.

Standing outside her Downing Street office, May said she had been reluctant about asking parliament to back her move to bring forward the election from 2020, but decided it was necessary to win support for her ruling Conservative Party’s efforts to press ahead with Britain’s departure from the EU.

Some were surprised by her move – she has repeatedly said she does not want to be distracted by time-consuming campaigning – but opinion polls give her a strong lead, the economy is weathering the Brexit vote and she has faced opposition from her own party for some of her domestic reforms.

The pound rose to a two-and-a-half-month high against the U.S. dollar after the announcement, but Britain’s main share index fell to its lowest point in more than seven weeks.

“It was with reluctance that I decided the country needs this election, but it is with strong conviction that I say it is necessary to secure the strong and stable leadership the country needs to see us through Brexit and beyond,” May said.

“Every vote for the Conservatives will make it harder for opposition politicians who want to stop me from getting the job done.”

Britain joins a list of western European countries scheduled to hold elections this year. Votes in France in April and May and in Germany in September have the potential to reshape the political landscape around the two years of Brexit talks with the EU expected to start sometime in June.

May is capitalising on her runaway lead in the opinion polls. The Conservative Party is around 20 points ahead of the main opposition Labour Party, a large lead for an incumbent party two years after the last parliamentary election.

The prime minister’s own personal ratings also dwarf those of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, with 50 percent of those asked saying she would make the best prime minister. Corbyn wins only 14 percent, according to pollster YouGov.

CHALLENGE

Before holding the election, May must first win the support of two-thirds of the parliament in a vote on Wednesday. Labour said it will vote in favour of a new election, meaning she should be able to get it through.

“I welcome the prime minister’s decision to give the British people the chance to vote for a government that will put the interests of the majority first,” Corbyn said in an emailed statement.

Other members of his party were less enthusiastic and other parties criticised her decision. Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of the Scottish government, described it as “huge political miscalculation” that could help her efforts to hold a new independence referendum.

May, a former interior minister, was appointed prime minister after Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in June 2016 forced the resignation of her predecessor David Cameron. A new election will be a vote on her performance so far.

Her spokesman said she had the backing of her top team of ministers and had informed Queen Elizabeth of her plans.

If the opinion polls are right, she will win a new mandate for a series of reforms she wants to introduce in Britain and also a vote of confidence in a vision for Brexit which sees the country outside the EU’s single market.

“The decision facing the country will be all about leadership,” May said.

“It will be a choice between strong and stable leadership in the national interest with me as your prime minister, or weak and unstable coalition government, led by Jeremy Corbyn, propped up by the Liberal Democrats who want to reopen the division of the referendum.”

(Additional reporting by William James, Kate Holton and Andy Bruce, writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

Let’s minimize the damage of Brexit, Eurogroup chief says

BERLIN (Reuters) - Britain and the remaining 27 members of the European Union should stay away from the cliff edge of Britain falling back on World Trade Organization terms at the end of Brexit negotiations, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said. "Let's try to minimize the damage," he said of Brexit, speaking at a banking conference in Berlin on Thursday. Dijsselbloem, who said he would discuss Greece with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble while in Berlin, said the more he thought about Brexit, the more worried he became. He singled out financial stability as one area of particular risk. Asked about "passporting" rights for Britain-based institutions to sell financial services in the EU single market after Brexit, Dijsselbloem replied: "I think, also talking to financial players from the City, that passporting won't be the answer. There will be different regimes for different sub-sectors of the financial sector." "Equivalence will be part of the solution," he added of a system whereby Brussels grants access to non-EU firms that comply with rules similar to those in the bloc. "But here again, declaring the rules and regulations and the supervision of the UK equivalent to that of the EU at the outset is quite easy, but over time our standards and the way of supervision will start to diverge," Dijsselbloem said. "So if you want to maintain equivalence over time you will have to commit, also in the long-run, to staying close to the European standards," he added. "Looking to the future, we will have to find to ways to regularly assess whether we are still equivalent." (Writing by Paul Carrel Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

BERLIN (Reuters) – Britain and the remaining 27 members of the European Union should stay away from the cliff edge of Britain falling back on World Trade Organization terms at the end of Brexit negotiations, Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem said.

“Let’s try to minimize the damage,” he said of Brexit, speaking at a banking conference in Berlin on Thursday.

Dijsselbloem, who said he would discuss Greece with German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble while in Berlin, said the more he thought about Brexit, the more worried he became. He singled out financial stability as one area of particular risk.

Asked about “passporting” rights for Britain-based institutions to sell financial services in the EU single market after Brexit, Dijsselbloem replied: “I think, also talking to financial players from the City, that passporting won’t be the answer. There will be different regimes for different sub-sectors of the financial sector.”

“Equivalence will be part of the solution,” he added of a system whereby Brussels grants access to non-EU firms that comply with rules similar to those in the bloc.

“But here again, declaring the rules and regulations and the supervision of the UK equivalent to that of the EU at the outset is quite easy, but over time our standards and the way of supervision will start to diverge,” Dijsselbloem said.

“So if you want to maintain equivalence over time you will have to commit, also in the long-run, to staying close to the European standards,” he added. “Looking to the future, we will have to find to ways to regularly assess whether we are still equivalent.”

(Writing by Paul Carrel Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

EU lawmakers adopt Brexit resolution, reject pro-Gibraltar hint

The Union Jack (L), the Gibraltarian flag (C) and the European Union flag are seen flying, at the border of Gibraltar with Spain, in front of the Rock in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar, historically claimed by Spain April 3, 2017. REUTERS/Jon Nazca

By Francesco Guarascio

STRASBOURG (Reuters) – European Union lawmakers adopted a resolution on Wednesday setting their red lines for the two-year divorce talks with Britain and rejected attempts by British MEPs to recognize Gibraltar’s pro-EU stance in the Brexit referendum.

In a display of EU unity, the legislature’ text repeated the same priorities set by the EU summits’ chair Donald Tusk in his draft negotiating guidelines released last week.

The European Parliament wants talks on Britain’s future relations with the EU to start only after “substantial progress” is made on the bill for Brexit bill, on the Irish border, and on the rights of the 3 million EU citizens in Britain and the one million British residents in EU countries.

The text was backed by more than two-thirds of the deputies in the parliament, which will have to approve any deal with the United Kingdom.

Britain’s Under Secretary for Brexit Robin Walker said this was “a positive move” although Britain would prefer to start trade talks as soon as possible. He told reporters at the session in Strasbourg that Britain will also put citizens’ rights first in the Brexit process.

In a minor departure from Tusk’s text, the parliament’s resolution hinted at the possibility for Britain to reverse the Brexit process, stressing however that this would be possible only with the approval of all the remaining 27 member states.

“The door is open if Britain changes its mind,” Gianni Pittella, head of the center-left grouping, the second largest in the parliament, told reporters. The Greens expressed a similar wish.

The move was aimed at strengthening the hand of the 48 percent of Britons who voted against Brexit in last year’s referendum, but was opposed by the EU chief negotiator on Brexit, Michel Barnier, parliament officials said.

The conservative grouping, the largest in the legislature, tried to distance itself from such a statement, although they backed the resolution. “Leave means leave,” the conservatives’ leader Manfred Weber said.

The resolution also allowed transitional arrangements to smooth the UK’s departure, but they should not last more than three years. MEPs also insisted that at the end of the process Britain cannot expect better conditions than when it was an EU member.

GIBRALTAR

Lawmakers rejected two nearly identical amendments that would have added to the text a reference to Gibraltar’s pro-EU vote in last year’s Brexit referendum, a move meant to recall its residents back the EU but also prefer to remain in Britain.

The rocky British enclave on the southern Spain coast caused a harsh controversy after Tusk’s guidelines gave Madrid a say in the future relationship between Gibraltar and the EU after Britain leaves the bloc.

Gibraltar rejected the idea of Britain sharing sovereignty with Spain by 99 percent to 1 percent in a 2002 referendum, but voted overwhelmingly to remain part of the EU in last June’s Brexit vote.

The changes proposed by British Conservative lawmakers in the EU parliament and by a cross-party group of MEPs wanted to highlight that Gibraltar voted against Brexit.

They also wanted to add a reference to the enclave in a paragraph saying that a majority of electors in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to stay in the EU.

The main groupings in the parliament opposed this change because “we do not agree to give to the Gibraltar issue the same importance as Scotland’s and Northern Ireland’s”, a parliament official said.

Other amendments proposed by the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) euroskeptic grouping, deploring Tusk’s guidelines on Gibraltar, were also widely rejected.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

UK and Swedish watchdogs warn of international cyber attack

A magnifying glass is held in front of a computer screen in this picture illustration taken in Berlin May 21, 2013. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – A large-scale cyber attack from a group targeting organizations in Japan, the United States, Sweden and many other European countries through IT services providers has been uncovered, the Swedish computer security watchdog said on Wednesday.

The cyber attack, uncovered through a collaboration by Britain’s National Cyber Security Centre, PwC and cyber security firm BAE Systems, targeted managed service providers to gain access to their customers’ internal networks since at least May 2016 and potentially as early as 2014.

The exact scale of the attack, named Cloud Hopper from an organization called APT10, is not known but is believed to involve huge amounts of data, Sweden’s Civil Contingencies Agency said in a statement. The agency did not say whether the cyber attacks were still happening.

“The high level of digitalization in Sweden, along with the amount of services outsourced to managed service providers, means that there is great risk that several Swedish organizations are affected by the attacks,” the watchdog said.

The agency said those behind the attacks had used significant resources to identify their targets and sent sophisticated phishing e-mails to infect computers.

It also said Swedish IP addresses had been used to coordinate the incursions and retrieve stolen data and that APT10 specifically targeted IT, communications, healthcare, energy and research sectors.

(Reporting by Johan Ahlander; Editing by Niklas Pollard and Stephen Powell)

Germany balks at Tillerson demand for more European NATO spending

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson shakes hands with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. REUTERS/Yves Herman

By Lesley Wroughton and Gabriela Baczynska

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Germany said on Friday that NATO’s agreed target spend of two percent of members’ yearly economic output was neither “reachable nor desirable”, countering Washington’s demands that European partners comply and quickly.

The United States provides nearly 70 percent of NATO’s budget and is demanding that all allies make clear progress toward the agreed target this year. Only four European NATO members – Estonia, Greece, Poland and Britain – have done so.

“Two percent would mean military expenses of some 70 billion euros. I don’t know any German politician who would claim that is reachable nor desirable,” Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said at the first NATO meeting attended by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Tillerson, however, reiterated Washington’s demands and said the U.S. will push that agenda when NATO leaders meet on May 25 for the first top-level summit of the alliance. U.S. President Donald Trump will attend that meeting.

“Our goal should be to agree at the May Leaders meeting that by the end of the year all Allies will have either met the pledge guidelines or will have developed plans that clearly articulate how…the pledge will be fulfilled,” Tillerson said.

“Allies must demonstrate by their actions that they share U.S. governments commitment.”

In Berlin, German government spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said the government was committed to increasing defense spending and would continue to do so “because we know it is necessary and makes sense to further strengthen our armed forces”.

Members have until 2024 to comply with the spending target.

Tillerson did however offer assurances of Washington’s commitment to NATO, softening Trump’s stance.

Trump has criticized NATO as “obsolete” and suggested Washington’s security guarantees for European allies could be conditional on them spending more on their own defense. He has also said he wants NATO to do more to fight terrorism.

“The United States is committed to ensuring NATO has the capabilities to support our collective defense,” Tillerson said at the meeting in Brussels. “We will uphold the agreements we have made to defend our allies.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said ties between European NATO members and the United States were “rock solid”.

He said the ministers would discuss “fair burden sharing to keep the trans-atlantic bond strong” and “stepping up NATO efforts to project stability and fight terrorism”.

Stoltenberg confirmed ministers would discuss national defense spending plans on Friday as the bloc seeks to respond to the new, harsher tone from across the Atlantic, which has galvanized European NATO allies.

Though Washington has also offered reassurances, Tillerson’s initial decision to skip his first meeting with NATO foreign ministers reopened questions about the Trump administration’s commitment to the alliance.

The meeting was later rescheduled and Tillerson was attending on Friday, though has not scheduled meetings with individual countries as is customary by the secretary of state during such a meeting.

(Additional reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; Editing by Louise Ireland)