The Spanish parliament decided Tuesday to accelerate the passage of an arms embargo bill against Israel, according to media reports, Anadolu Agency said.

The Sumar, Podemos, Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), Basque EH Bildu and the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG) parties submitted a petition to the Congressional Bureau demanding the urgent procession of the bill, said the El Mundo newspaper.

The request, also supported by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party, was approved, halving the timeline and accelerating the process.

It came after parliament passed a non-binding motion on May 20 that urged the government to impose an arms embargo on Israel in response to its military operations in the Gaza Strip.

France’s parliament has voted in favour of a bill to legalise assisted dying, paving the way for euthanasia and assisted dying under what campaigners say would still be some of the strictest conditions in Europe.

After a sometimes emotional session, deputies passed the first reading of the bill by a vote of 305 to 199. They also unanimously backed a less contentious law establishing a right to palliative care in specialist end-of-life institutions.

Both votes are the start of a long parliamentary process that will require the bills to move on to the Senate – the upper house – and then back to the lower house – the National Assembly – for a second reading, meaning they are unlikely to become law before next year.

Sweden’s Foreign Ministry has summoned Israel’s ambassador to Stockholm in protest against the lack of humanitarian aid being allowed into Gaza, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said yesterday according to Reuters.

Last week, under growing international pressure, Israeli occupation authorities allowed a trickle of aid into the Palestinian enclave. However, the few hundred trucks carried only a tiny fraction of the food needed by a population of 2.3 million at risk of famine after nearly three months of blockade.

Kristersson told Swedish news agency TT that the European Union should impose sanctions and exert diplomatic pressure on Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Emmanuel Macron has denied he and his wife, Brigitte, had an altercation after a viral video promoted by Russian state media and French far-right accounts appeared to show her pushing him in the face as they prepared to get off a plane in Vietnam.

The video, shot by an Associated Press camera operator, shows the French president appearing in the doorway of the plane at the start of a visit to Hanoi. His wife’s hand appears to shove him, causing him to step back before recovering and waving.

Brigitte Macron’s body is not visible and her husband told reporters afterwards the gesture was playful. But the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, seized on the footage, writing on Telegram that the president had received “a right hook”.

A 19-year-old Syrian refugee in Germany has been hailed as a hero after he pinned down an assailant at Hamburg’s main railway station, helping to halt an attack in which 18 people were injured.

Police on Friday said a 39-year-old German woman had been arrested at the scene of the attack and that she was believed to be in a state of psychological distress. The 18 people injured were later reported to all be in stable condition, while the woman was placed in psychiatric care.

He watched as people began running away from the woman. “I decided to run in the other direction and stop the woman,” he told the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

As he made his way, he saw another man, whom he described as Chechen, kick the woman in the knee, causing her to fall to the ground. “I held her [down] and pressed her hands against her rucksack so she couldn’t get up,” he said. “The woman didn’t scream, she didn’t resist.”

Police arrived a few moments later. As they pointed their weapons towards them, Muhammad moved away from the woman slowly, his hands raised in the air.

Much of Merz’s public reputation, particularly on the broad liberal and left-wing space, stems from this time out of the political spotlight. In particular, his role as chairman of the German division of BlackRock, the American asset management behemoth, is seen with a critical eye by most Germans. His close personal ties to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, as reported in a recent biography by Volker Resing, only add to the perception that Merz represents the financial elite more than the electorate.

Still, his advocates seek to reframe this association not as a liability but as a strength. His corporate entanglements are portrayed as proof of worldly competence, a business-minded sensibility absent from the typical career politician. “Through his many board positions,” write Jutta Falke-Ischinger and Daniel Goffart in their biography of Merz, “he gained a deep and novel insight into the economy.” Between 2007 and 2018, Merz served on at least nineteen corporate boards, from Commerzbank to BASF and the recycling giant Interseroh. Just as he was plotting his political comeback, his connections earned him millions and embedded him within Europe’s financial elite.

His proponents have tried to downplay the potential for conflicts of interest. Resing cites a corporate attorney familiar with Merz’s legal work who insists that “the substantive work was always done by others.” Merz, the implication goes, was more of a figurehead than an operative.

A German regional court on Monday convicted four former Volkswagen executives of fraud in connection with the long-running Dieselgate emissions scandal.

The court sentenced two of the former executives to prison for several years, while the remaining two received suspended sentences. The ruling concludes a major trial that spanned nearly four years.

The scandal known as Dieselgate first came to light in September 2015, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency discovered that many diesel vehicles produced by German carmaker Volkswagen were equipped with illegal so-called defeat devices.

A high school science teacher in France has been suspended since late March for holding a minute's silence for the victims of Israel's war on Gaza.

Le Parisien reported on Thursday, citing education authorities, that the physics and chemistry teacher at Janot Curie high school in Sens, Yonne, was suspended on 31 March. Five days earlier, a minute's silence was held just at the end of her class to pay tribute to the victims of the war, just as Israeli forces unilaterally broke a ceasefire in Gaza and killed more than 700 Palestinians.

The decision marks the latest episode of French authorities taking punitive action over protests and remarks related to Israel’s war on Gaza. Jean-Paul Delescaut, leader of the General Confederation of Labour union, was handed a suspended one-year jail sentence for writing in response to the 7 October Hamas attacks: “The horrors of illegal occupations… are receiving the responses they provoked.”

Donald Trump has said he will impose a 50% tariff on all EU imports to the US from 1 June after claiming trade talks between the two trading blocs were “going nowhere”.

In a surprise announcement, the US president posted on his Truth Social platform that his long-running battle to secure concessions from the EU had stalled.

He accused the EU of taking advantage of the US on trade, saying: “Our discussions with them are going nowhere! Therefore I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025.”

Benjamin Netanyahu was accused of slander and pursuing a war without end after he claimed the leaders of France, Canada and the UK were stoking antisemitism and siding with Hamas by demanding he end the two-month blockade of food and aid into Gaza.

In what has become an extraordinary standoff with some of Israel’s closest allies, Netanyahu appeared to deliberately raise the stakes on Thursday night by accusing his western critics of abandoning Israel in a war for its very existence.

Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, also sought to link the killing of two Israeli embassy staff members in Washington to the recent criticism mounted by European leaders.

PARIS, May 23 (Reuters) - European luxury shares tanked on Friday as U.S. President Donald Trump said he is recommending a straight 50% tariff on goods from the European Union starting on June 1.

Europe's luxury industry, producing handbags, shoes, fashion items and champagne among other prized goods, is highly exposed to the U.S. market, which was seen as the sector's best hope for growth this year as Chinese demand lags.

Full article

German authorities arrested a Yemeni national suspected of joining the Houthi movement and taking part in combat operations in Yemen, federal prosecutors announced on Thursday.

The man, identified as Hussein H. due to Germany’s strict privacy laws, was apprehended in the town of Dachau, near Munich. According to prosecutors, the suspect is believed to have become involved with the Houthis as a teenager.

Officials allege that Hussein H. joined the group in October 2022, undergoing "ideological indoctrination" followed by military training that lasted approximately three months. He is then said to have participated in combat briefly in the Marib region of Yemen in early 2023.

The German chancellor has visited Lithuania to mark Berlin’s first permanent foreign troop deployment since the second world war, as he called on allies to dramatically expand their efforts to bolster European defences against a hostile Russia.

As a crowd waved Lithuanian, German and Ukrainian flags, Friedrich Merz and his defence minister, Boris Pistorius, attended a ceremony launching the official formation of an armoured brigade aimed at protecting Nato’s eastern flank.

Four Israeli arms manufacturers that have long supplied the Israeli army with the means to carry out such attacks – including weapons, drones and parts for fighter jets, armoured vehicles and naval vessels – are Elbit Systems , Rafael Advanced Defense Systems , Israel Aerospace Industries, (state-owned), and its subsidiary Elta Systems

Drawing on hundreds of pages of export records and company disclosures from India and the Netherlands, this long-read reveals how three Dutch businessmen– Tom Krieckaert, Paul Krieckaert, and Vincent van Campen – play a key role in supplying electronic components to these four arms manufacturers. Operating through an India-based electrical engineering company, SASMOS HET Technologies (SASMOS), they provide components which are vital for the operation of military planes and vehicles.

SOMO discovered the links between the Dutch businessmen and the Israeli weapons industry in the summer of 2024 while investigating Israeli arms supply chains. In this research, SASMOS – based in the city of Bangalore in India – emerged as a steady supplier of electronic components to Israel’s largest arms companies.

Between October 2023 and early April 2025, SASMOS sent components worth an estimated US$ 25 million to the four arms manufacturers listed above.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/speech_25_1284

Hello,

Sorry in advance if this is the wrong community to ask in, new here (and if so please direct me to the correct one)

I am looking to register a company in the EU to carry out business activities there. I am not currently a tax resident or citizen of an EU country, although I hold Greek permanent residency. I am a freelance in the creative industries and will be the sole shareholder and paying myself through dividends not a salary and paying taxes in my current country.

Greece is as far as I understand a bureaucratic nightmare. I am looking at Estonia’s ‘e-residency’ program although there doesn’t really seem to he honest opinions of it online as well as Cyprus due to almost no taxes on IP which would benefit me.

Important factors are ease of dealing with bureaucracy, less registration and accounting fees and ability to open a Euro-denominated bank account. Less taxes are also obviously positive but that’s not a main concern.

Unidentified gunmen have shot and killed a former Ukrainian politician, Andriy Portnov, outside a school in an upmarket suburb of Madrid.

The killing of Portnov, who had worked as a senior aide to Ukraine’s pro-Russia former president, Viktor Yanukovych, took place on Wednesday morning outside the American School of Madrid in Pozuelo de Alarcón.

Authorities said he had been targeted when he was getting into his car, a black Mercedes-Benz. “Several persons shot him in the back and the head and then fled towards a forested area,” said a source at Spain’s interior ministry. Local media said Portnov had been dropping off his children at the school, where classes had begun 30 minutes before the shooting.