The Dutch government has collapsed after the far-right leader Geert Wilders pulled his party out of the ruling coalition in a row over immigration and asylum policy.

The prime minister, Dick Schoof, on Tuesday handed in his resignation and that of his 11-month-old cabinet to King Willem-Alexander. Remaining ministers will stay on in a caretaker capacity until new elections, most likely in October.

“We have decided that there is now insufficient support for this government,” Schoof told reporters in The Hague after an emergency cabinet meeting, adding that he considered Wilders’s decision “irresponsible and unnecessary”.

Public support for Israel in European countries has fallen to its lowest recorded level, according to a recent survey by YouGov.

Fewer than a fifth of respondents in six countries held a favourable view of Israel in a poll carried out last month. The survey was conducted between 12 and 26 May in Britain, France, Germany, Denmark, Spain and Italy.

Asked which side they sympathised with in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 14 percent of Brits said they sided with Israel, while 32 percent sided with Palestinians. Twenty-one percent said both sides equally, and 32 percent were unsure.

Spain has canceled another arms deal with "Israel" while Madrid is calling for international sanctions on the zionist entity as Spain doubles down on its boycott of "Israel" for its genocide in Gaza.

The Spanish Defense Ministry has decided against proceeding with its planned $325 million (NIS 1.15 billion) purchase of Spike anti-tank missiles from Rafael, marking another escalation in the diplomatic tensions between Spain and "Israel", according to a report by the Ara daily newspaper.

Rafael responded to the reports by stating that it had not been officially notified of any cancellation regarding the deal. Spain has been an outspoken supporter of Palestine in light of the genocidal Israeli war on Gaza, calling for action and the recognition of a Palestinian state, while boycotting "Israel".

Sweden should ban international adoption and apologise after thousands of children were illegally and unethically taken from their home countries including South Korea, Colombia, China and Sri Lanka over several decades, a government inquiry has found.

Presenting the damning findings of the almost four-year investigation, the head of the inquiry, Anna Singer, accused the Swedish state of “violations of human rights”, citing child-trafficking cases spanning from the 1970s to the 2000s.

Some children were adopted without voluntary and informed consent while thousands of others were taken to Sweden with false documents. Often, authorities did not have signed documentation showing consent from the biological parents, even if their identities were known.

International adoptions to Sweden started in the 1950s and continue today. Overall, more than 60,000 children have been adopted from countries around the world. Other affected countries included Chile, Thailand, Vietnam, Poland, Ethiopia and Russia.

Right-wing opposition presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki has won Poland’s presidential election, official results show. With 100% of districts having reported results, Nawrocki won 50.89% of the vote against 49.11% for his centrist, government-aligned rival, Rafał Trzaskowski.

Turnout stood at 71.63%, which is a record for a Polish presidential election, beating the 68.23% seen in 1995. It is also the second-highest turnout among all post-1989 Polish elections, behind only the 74.38% at the 2023 parliamentary election.

The outcome represents a remarkable victory for Nawrocki, a political novice who had never previously stood for elected office and trailed Trzaskowski in the polls for virtually the entire campaign. It will also have a huge influence on how Poland is governed during his five-year term.

Trzaskowski, who is deputy leader of Poland’s main ruling party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), would have worked closely with the ruling coalition of PO Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

However, Nawrocki, technically an independent but whose candidacy was supported by the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, is likely to wield his veto and other presidential powers to stymie the government’s agenda, just as the current PiS-aligned incumbent Andrzej Duda has done.

Trzaskowski, a multilingual former minister for European affairs and member of the European Parliament, would also have favoured closer relations with Brussels while Nawrocki – who was endorsed by the Trump administration during the campaign – is a eurosceptic who favours strong ties with Washington.

Sunday’s run-off vote came two weeks after Trzaskowski and Nawrocki had emerged as the top two candidates among 13 who stood in the first round two weeks earlier.

The initial exit poll, published immediately as voting ended at 9 p.m., placed Trzaskowski narrowly ahead, on 50.3%. However, with a margin of error of around 2 percentage points, that poll made the result too close to call.

Updated versions of the exit poll published later on Sunday and in the early hours of Monday – which also included the first official results as they began to filter through – showed a reversal of the situation, with Nawrocki now leading on 50.7%. That led many analysts to call the win for Nawrocki.

Among the first to congratulate Nawrocki on Monday morning was Duda, whose second and final term in office ends in August this year.

“It was a difficult, sometimes painful, but incredibly courageous fight for Poland, for how the affairs of our homeland are to be conducted,” wrote Duda, who endorsed Nawrocki during the campaign. “Thank you for this heroic fight until the last minute…Thank you…for the victory! Bravo!”

Duda, who himself defeated Trzaskowski at the 2020 presidential election, also thanked the losing candidate for his “determination in the fight for the presidency…[and] willingness to take responsibility for Poland”.

Neither Nawrocki nor Trzaskowski have yet commented on the result, but the first foreign leader to issue congratulations to Nawrocki was Petr Pavel, president of the neighbouring Czech Republic.

“I believe that, under his leadership, Poland will continue to develop its democratic and pro-Western direction and that our countries will continue their mutually beneficial cooperation,” wrote Pavel.

The final election results must also be confirmed by the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs.

However, that process is shrouded in controversy because the chamber – which was created as part of the PiS party’s judicial reforms when it was in power – is regarded as illegitimate by Tusk’s government.

An attempt by the ruling coalition to change the way that the presidential election results are validated by the Supreme Court was vetoed in March this year by Duda

Sunday’s run-off vote comes at the end of a months-long campaign that has seen the interrelated issues of security and migration at the forefront.

The war in neighbouring Ukraine has seen both candidates pledge to continue efforts to bolster Poland’s defence capabilities through expansion and modernisation of the armed forces.

Nawrocki, however, has taken a much tougher line regarding Ukraine itself, including signing a pledge not to ratify its accession to NATO if he becomes president. Tusk, as well as Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, criticised that decision, saying that it echoed Russian demands.

Both candidates have also pledged to clamp down on immigration and on the support given to immigrants already in Poland, though again Nawrocki has taken tougher positions.

Trzaskowski, meanwhile, has pledged that, if he were to become president, he would seek to sign bills liberalising the abortion law, introducing same-sex civil partnerships and undoing PiS’s judicial reforms.

Nawrocki, by contrast, holds deeply conservative views on social issues and has pledged not to sign any bills ending the current near-total ban on abortion.

During the final stages of the campaign, Nawrocki was hit by a series of scandals. It came to light that he had lied about only having one apartment. Not only did he own a second, but various questions came to light over how he had come to possess it and how he treated the elderly, disabled man living there.

Subsequently, a leading news website, Onet, reported that Nawrocki had helped procure prostitutes for guests at a luxury hotel where he worked as a security guard. Nawrocki denied the claims – based on testimony by anonymous former colleagues – and pledged to sue Onet.

Meanwhile, Trzaskowski faced questions after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of zloty had been spent on Facebook adverts supporting him and attacking Nawrocki.

The provenance of that money remains unclear, but there is a chance it came from abroad, which would be illegal under Polish election law. Trzaskowski has insisted that he and his staff had no involvement in or knowledge of the campaign.

This is a breaking news story and may be updated as further information becomes available.

As voting closed in Poland’s pivotal presidential election, the exit poll suggests that the final result – expected to be confirmed on Monday – is too close to call. It also indicates that turnout today, at almost 73%, was an all-time record for a presidential election in Poland.

According to the poll, conducted by Ipsos, Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s main ruling party, took 50.3% of the vote. That put him fractionally ahead of Karol Nawrocki, who is supported by the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS), on 49.7%.

A separate exit poll by the OGB agency for conservative broadcaster Republika showed the two even closer, with Trzaskowski on 50.2% and Nawrocki on 49.8%.

Whoever is confirmed as the winner will have a huge say in how Poland is governed during their five-year term. Trzaskowski is closely aligned with Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition, and would work closely with it, whereas Nawrocki is likely to wield the presidential veto to stymie the government’s agenda.

Meanwhile, if Ipsos’s estimate of voter turnout, 72.8, is correct, then today’s election will have beaten the record for a Polish presidential election, 68.23%, set in 1995, when Lech Wałęsa was narrowly defeated by Aleksander Kwaśniewski.

It would also be the second-highest turnout among all post-1989 Polish elections, with only the 2023 parliamentary election that brought Tusk’s coalition to power recording a higher figure of 74.38%

The Ipsos exit poll, which was today conducted at almost 1,000 randomly selected polling stations, has in previous elections closely matched the final count. But it does have a margin of error.

In the first round of the current election two weeks ago, Ipsos’s exit poll very accurately predicted the final results for both Trzaskowski and Nawrocki. As the two most popular among the 13 candidates – but with neither winning over 50% of the vote – they proceeded to today’s second-round run-off.

All eyes will now be on the official count, with results rolling in overnight. The head of the National Electoral Commission (PKW), Sylwester Marciniak, said on Friday that they hope to publish final, official results on Monday morning or early afternoon.

The results must also be confirmed by the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs.

However, that process is shrouded in controversy because the chamber – which was created as part of the PiS party’s judicial reforms when it was in power – is regarded as illegitimate by Tusk’s ruling coalition.

An attempt to change the way that the presidential election results are validated by the Supreme Court was vetoed in March this year by the current president, Andrzej Duda, who is a PiS ally. His second and final term in office ends in August.

If either Trzaskowski or Nawrocki decides to challenge today’s result due to any alleged transgressions in vote counting or other aspects of the electoral process, such claims would be considered by the same, contested chamber of the court.

Whatever the final result, the fact that it is so close represents a remarkable performance for Nawrocki, a political novice who has never previously stood for public office. He currently serves as head of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a state historical body.

Trzaskowski, meanwhile, is a seasoned political operator who finished a close second to Duda in the 2020 presidential election and currently serves as mayor of Poland’s capital, Warsaw. He is also deputy leader of Tusk’s PO party.

Today’s vote comes at the end of a months-long campaign that has seen the interrelated issues of security and migration at the forefront, and has also seen both candidates – but in particular Nawrocki – hit by scandals and controversy.

The war in neighbouring Ukraine has seen both candidates pledge to continue efforts to bolster Poland’s defence capabilities through expansion and modernisation of the armed forces.

Nawrocki, however, has taken a much tougher line regarding Ukraine itself, including signing a pledge not to ratify its accession to NATO if he becomes president. Tusk, as well as Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, criticised that decision, saying that it echoed Russian demands.

Both candidates have also pledged to clamp down on immigration and on the support given to immigrants already in Poland, though again Nawrocki has taken tougher positions.

Trzaskowski, meanwhile, has pledged that, if he becomes president, he will seek to sign bills liberalising the abortion law, introducing same-sex civil partnerships and undoing PiS’s judicial reforms.

During the final stages of the campaign, Nawrocki was hit by a series of scandals. It came to light that he had lied about only having one apartment. Not only did he own a second, but various questions came to light over how he had come to possess it and how he treated the elderly, disabled man living there.

Subsequently, a leading news website, Onet, reported that Nawrocki had helped procure prostitutes for guests at a luxury hotel where he worked as a security guard. Nawrocki denied the claims – based on testimony by anonymous former colleagues – and pledged to sue Onet.

Meanwhile, Trzaskowski faced questions after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of zloty had been spent on Facebook adverts supporting him and attacking Nawrocki.

The provenance of that money remains unclear, but there is a chance it came from abroad, which would be illegal under Polish election law. Trzaskowski has insisted that he and his staff had no involvement in or knowledge of the campaign.

Poland holds a knife-edge second round of the presidential election on Sunday as the country chooses between a centrist liberal and a right-wing nationalist.

Turnout holds the key to the contest between Rafal Trzaskowski of ruling centrists Civic Coalition (KO) and Karol Nawrocki, backed by nationalists Law and Justice (PiS).

Parliament holds most power in Poland but the president can veto legislation so the vote is being watched closely in neighbouring Ukraine, as well as in Russia, the U.S. and across the EU.

Voting began at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT) and is due to end at 9 p.m., with exit polls published soon afterwards. The electoral commission says it hopes final results will be announced on Monday morning or early afternoon.

Almost 29 million Poles are eligible to vote. Over 32,000 district electoral commissions were established in the country and 511 abroad.

Opinion polls show that the difference between the candidates is within the margin of error.

#Election silence

Poland observes strict election silence laws (otherwise known as an election blackout), which ban political agitation and canvassing, as well as the publication of poll results. The election silence period went into effect at midnight at the turn of Friday and Saturday, and will conclude at the moment the polling stations close.

The only data regarding the vote that can be expected to be released during the day by the National Electoral Commission (PKW), a permanent body tasked with overseeing the organization and validity of the electoral process, are the results regarding the turnout at noon and 5 p.m.

Exit poll results can therefore be expected at 9 p.m., unless PKW extends the election silence period.

This is a rare occurrence, however, usually connected to the electoral process being in some way hampered, for example, in cases when a polling station had to be closed due to unforeseen circumstances, preventing the voters from casting their ballots.

#Results

PKW will subsequently release official partial results as the individual polling stations submit their tallies, with the final outcome of the vote most likely to be expected sometime on Monday.

Hundreds of millions in European Union funds have been used in projects that violate the rights of marginalised communities, a report alleges, citing initiatives such as segregated housing for Roma, residential institutions for children with disabilities and holding centres for asylum seekers.

The report, based on information compiled by eight NGOs from across Europe, looks at 63 projects in six countries. Together these projects are believed to have received more than €1bn in funding from the European Union, laying bare a seemingly “low understanding” of fundamental rights across the bloc, according to one of the authors of the EU-funded report.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/30862067

Germany has been one of the worst Western countries for whitewashing Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Now it wants to do it with AI.

Becker was consulted by the Tagesspiegel because of his affiliation with the Decoding Antisemitism project at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University Berlin, which he led from 2019 until 2025. With the help of a large language computing model, the project aims to create “an [AI] algorithm that will automatically recognize antisemitic statements in web comments . . . so that antisemitic posts can be removed more efficiently and accurately” by online platforms.

The dataset is divided into labels of differing forms of supposed antisemitisms such as “analogies with Nazism,” fascism, apartheid, or colonialism; calling Israel a racist or terrorist state; accusing it of genocide; referencing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS); giving Israel the sole blame for the plight of the Palestinians; applying double standards; and denying Israel’s right to exist.

On the topic of Palestine and Israel, the glossary seems to operate within a logic that sees emotional responses to a live-streamed genocide not as a human reaction but as an indicator of antisemitic beliefs.

In an interview with Israeli news outlet Mako, Becker suggests that social media providers are opening their doors and hearing concerns like his. This strongly suggests hopes to commercialize and implement its findings with online platforms. Five years after its inception, it appears that its conceptual framework and glossary have been overtaken by reality.

Three doctors have been charged over the death of a pregnant woman, named only as Dorota, while she was in hospital under their care. Prosecutors found that “there was a failure to undertake appropriate diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, which led to the patient’s death”.

Dorota’s death in 2023 prompted mass protests against Poland’s near-total abortion ban, which activists blamed for the doctors’ decision not to terminate the pregnancy despite it threatening the woman’s life. It also led the then government to take action to ensure pregnant women receive appropriate medical care.

Dorota, who was aged 33, was admitted to John Paul II Hospital in the city of Nowy Targ in May 2023 while five months pregnant after her waters had broken prematurely. She died a few days later as a result of septic shock.

According to the findings of prosecutors, a few hours before her death, an ultrasound scan showed that the foetus had already died, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

The state commissioner for patients’ rights concluded that Dorota’s rights had been violated both in terms of not receiving appropriate medical care and not being provided with correct information about her health condition.

On Friday, prosecutors announced that they had filed charges against three gynaecology and obstetrics doctors involved in Dorota’s care, one of whom was at the time head of the hospital department.

All were charged with exposing the patient to immediate danger of loss of life and one was additionally charged with unintentionally causing her death. Both of those crimes are punishable by up to five years in prison.

A lawyer representing Dorota’s family, Jolanta Budzowska, welcomed the charges but added that the “liability of medical personnel is only one dimension of this tragedy”.

“The source of medical errors is often unclear law, which requires change,” said Budzowska. “The arbitrary interpretation of the applicable regulations creates a risk for both doctors and patients.”

Budzowska is also representing the family of another woman, Izabela, whose death in hospital in 2021 while pregnant also prompted mass protests against the abortion law.

“After Izabela’s death, recommendations were issued by the health minister,” noted the lawyer. “But these did not prevent Dorota’s death, and subsequent positions and standards issued by medical associations do not solve the problem of the lack of safety for women.”

Earlier this year, a medical court suspended three doctors from practising medicine after finding negligence in their treatment of Izabela, including their decision not to terminate her pregnancy despite signs of the development of sepsis.

Supporters of Poland’s strict abortion law argue that it is not to blame for such incidents because it stillincreas allows pregnancies to be terminated if they threaten the mother’s life or health. They say the tragedies are the result of medical malpractice.

However, protests against the law, which was toughened in 2021 after a constitutional court ruling, argue that it has created an atmosphere in which doctors are fearful of legal consequences for performing abortions.

In 2021, only 107 legal abortions were carried out in Poland (and most of them before the new law went into force in late January) compared to over 1,000 in 2020, when the previous law was in place. Since then, the number of terminations has increased, though remains well below the previous level.

The current government, which came to power in December 2023, has pledged to liberalise the abortion law. However, it has so far failed to do so, as it has been unable to find agreement between more conservative and liberal elements of the ruling camp on what form the new law should take.

cross-posted from: https://szmer.info/post/7674611

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has announced his support for conservative opposition Polish presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki ahead of Sunday’s run-off election, in which Nawrocki is competing against government-aligned centrist Rafał Trzaskowski.

His endorsement comes two days after Donald Trump’s homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, also called on Poles to vote for Nawrocki and described Trzaskowski as “an absolute train wreck of a leader”.

Noem’s declaration of support came during CPAC Poland, the first time that the prominent US conservative conference has been held in the country. Orbán’s remarks came today at the Hungarian offshoot of CPAC.

“On Sunday, presidential elections will be held in Poland,” said Orbán, quoted by Polsat News. “Long live Nawrocki!”

The Hungarian leader then pointed to Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s former conservative prime minister, and said: “If you want to know what true liberal democracy looks like, ask him. Unheard-of things are happening in Poland. All European rules and principles are being trampled. And Brussels supports it.”

Morawiecki and his national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party have accused Poland’s current government, led by former European Council President Donald Tusk, of violating democracy and the rule of law.

Elsewhere in his speech, Orbán announced a “patriotic plan” to “transform” the European Union. “We want to take Europe back from migrants. We want a Christian culture, schools based on national principles,” he declared.

Orbán’s Fidesz party has long been closely aligned with PiS, which ruled Poland from 2015 to 2023 but is now in opposition. Though Nawrocki is technically an independent, PiS is supporting his presidential bid.

PiS’s relationship with Orbán has, however, faced some criticism in Poland, in particular due to the Hungarian leader’s close relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. That led relations between PiS and Fidesz to cool after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, though they have subsequently warmed again.

After Orbán’s endorsement of Nawrocki today, a number of figures from Poland’s ruling coalition, which contains pro-EU parties ranging from left to centre-right, posted pictures on social media of Orbán and Putin together.

“Congratulations on the support from Prime Minister Viktor Orban,” foreign minister Radosław Sikorski wrote to Nawrocki, before asking: “Will you pursue a similar policy towards Putin and the European Union?”

Last week, Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland accused Nawrocki of “playing into Russia’s hands” by declaring his opposition to Ukrainian membership of NATO.

Nawrocki has also called for measures to ensure that Poles receive preferential access to public services ahead of immigrants, the majority of whom are Ukrainians.

Polls suggest that Sunday’s presidential election run-off will be an extremely tight race between Trzaskowski and Nawrocki. The winner will succeed current President Duda when his second and final five-year term in office ends in August.

cross-posted from: https://szmer.info/post/7675907

Poland’s government has announced 230 million zloty (€54 million) in state support for the construction of what it says will be the world’s largest factory producing towers for offshore wind turbines.

The facility will be built by a Polish subsidiary of Spanish renewable energy company Windar Renovables and located on the northern Baltic Sea coast, where Poland is planning to develop its first offshore wind farms in the coming years.

“The Baltic Sea will be an example in the not-too-distant future of how clean, efficient and inexpensive green energy can be generated for Poland and for the whole of Europe,” said development minister Krzysztof Paszyk during yesterday’s signing of a financing agreement with Windar Polska.

The plant will be built on a 17-hectare site on the island of Ostrów Grabowski, in Szczecin harbour. The ministry says the location was chosen to allow direct sea transport of the massive steel towers, which can measure up to 10 metres in diameter, 50 metres in height, and weigh 450 tonnes.

“Such enormous dimensions make it impossible to transport these elements overland,” Paszyk told the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

The factory is expected to produce up to 500 tower sections annually, equivalent to around 100 complete towers, depending on the model, each designed for turbines with a capacity of 14 megawatts. Total investment is expected to reach 880 million zloty, with Windar contributing 653 million zloty and the rest coming from state aid.

Construction of the plant will be carried out by a Polish subsidiary of the Australian PORR group. According to PORR’s statement, the facility will comprise four production lines housed in a 47,000-square-metre building, as well as a raw materials warehouse.

Yesterday, a symbolic foundation stone was laid for the factory, which is due to be completed in 2026 and reach full production capacity in early 2027, reports local newspaper Głos Szczeciński. It is expected to create nearly 500 jobs.

The development marks the latest in a series of investments by foreign firms in Poland’s growing wind turbine manufacturing sector. In early 2022, two Spanish companies, including Windar, announced plans to build wind turbine component factories.

Later that year, a Danish firm revealed it would construct a factory near Szczecin to assemble parts for wind turbines. That facility is scheduled to begin operations this year and to create 700 direct jobs.

Paszyk noted the 230 million zloty in public funding being granted to the new Windar facility is part of a broader 5 billion zloty package earmarked by the ministry for green investments, aimed at reducing Poland’s reliance on conventional energy sources.

The minister cited Baltic Towers, a Polish firm building another offshore wind tower production facility in Gdańsk, which has received more than 376 million zloty in aid.

Other government-backed ventures include SK Nexilis’s copper foil production plant in Stalowa Wola, which received over 545 million zloty in support, and IONWAY Poland’s cathode material factory for electric vehicle batteries near Nysa, supported with nearly 1.5 billion zloty.

“Increasing the share of cheap renewable energy in our energy mix will make it possible to reduce electricity prices,” Paszyk said, quoted by PAP.

Poland remains one of the most coal-dependent countries in the European Union. Although it has accelerated the development of renewables, coal still accounted for 56.7% of electricity generation in 2024. However, in April this year, coal’s share fell below 50% in a single month for the first time.

While Poland does not yet have an operational offshore wind farm, three projects are currently in development, including one that began to be constructed in February and another announced earlier this month.

The European Union has banned three journalists — two Germans, Alina Lipp and Thomas Röper, and a Turkish national living in Germany, Hüseyin Doğru — from entering the EU, and frozen their bank accounts. The EU accuses them of “spreading pro-Russian propaganda”, “undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine”, and “destabilising” EU countries through their reporting.

In fact, they are being punished solely for engaging in critical reporting about Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza.

The fact that challenging the EU-NATO narrative on the war in Ukraine or on the genocide in Gaza is now effectively treated as a quasi-criminal, de facto act of treason justifying extra-judicial punishment in the form of travel bans and asset freezes is nothing short of terrifying.

The ethical and legal implications are staggering: two EU citizens have effectively been stripped of their basic civil liberties — exiled from virtually the entire European continent and subjected to financial strangulation — through a simple act of bureaucratic fiat, without trial or court ruling. This is punishment without process, imposed by an unaccountable, out-of-control elite, in defiance of the most basic principles of the rule of law.

Making the ruling even more chilling is the fact that the decision is legally binding on all member states. That means that anyone who provides funds or resources to the accused journalists would also be in violation of the sanctions and could themselves be sanctioned as a result.

With the snap of a finger, EU officials have swept aside centuries of legal development. Core principles such as the separation of powers (whereby punishment should be the exclusive domain of independent courts), proportionality and the foundational concept of nulla poena sine lege — no punishment without law — have effectively been discarded.

In effect, EU elites have discovered a way to bypass all legal and constitutional safeguards against the repression of dissent, by weaponising a mechanism originally designed to target foreign entities, not domestic citizens.

The geographic scope of the ruling is also entirely without precedent: while in the past there have been isolated cases of individual states denying re-entry to their own nationals for political reasons, typically by revoking their citizenship, a practice broadly condemned under international law, there is no historical precedent for a supranational body imposing a travel ban on a citizen of a member state across almost thirty countries simultaneously.

This exposes the dangerous flipside of the EU’s supranational legal framework: rights that apply uniformly across all member states can just as easily be revoked across the entire bloc through mere bureaucratic fiat.

In the past, individuals facing political persecution in one European country could seek refuge or political asylum in another. That is no longer possible, especially when the persecution is orchestrated by the supranational and international authorities of the Union itself.

All Europeans who believe in democracy and the rule of law — whether on the left, the right or anywhere in between — must push back against this monstrosity, regardless of what they think of Röper, Lipp, or Doğru’s views. If we don’t stand up for them now, any one of us could be next.

https://xcancel.com/battleforeurope/status/1927693899868303855

Francois Burgat, a renowned French specialist on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and political Islam, was acquitted on Wednesday by the criminal court of Aix-en-Provence, in southeastern France, where he was prosecuted on charges of “apology for terrorism” for messages posted on social media.

The case began with a post the scholar published on X (formerly Twitter) on 2 January 2024, where he shared a statement by Hamas following the publication of a New York Times investigation into sexual violence allegedly committed by the Palestinian group during its 7 October attacks in Israel.

In the statement, Hamas rejected the accusations and denounced a "Zionist attempt to demonise the [Palestinian] resistance".

"Our fighters are fighters for freedom and dignity and cannot commit such shameful acts," Hamas said in the statement shared by Burgat.

In response to internet users who condemned his post, the former academic wrote that he had "infinitely more respect and consideration for the leaders of Hamas than for those of the state of Israel".

A new trend has recently emerged among European leaders in which they began to loudly condemn the Israeli crimes and livestream genocide have been going on against civilians in the Gaza Strip for 600 days. This trend gave some hope for the Palestinians and those who side with humanity that it would lead to deterring the Israeli occupation.

Many European and world leaders have also started to speak out loudly against the Israeli genocide in Gaza, giving some hope for Gaza’s residents that this would lead to real action on the ground and push the Israeli occupation to stop its killing machine.

However, a few days later, it became clear that the European calls were no more than a propaganda ruse aimed at pushing their opposition to tone down their protests against the Israeli occupation, its leaders and soldiers who are now scared of visiting several European countries, fearing investigation orders and detention.

Despite all that was said, no country has taken tangible steps on the ground except Spain, which has been speaking out against the genocide since it started. All of the leaders of the other countries are calling for the Israeli occupation to stop its genocide, while at the same time, they are sending arms for it to continue the genocide.

The worst and most hypocritical stance was that of the UK which declared that it stopped trade talks with the Israeli occupation state while Lord Ian Austin, the UK government’s trade envoy to Israel, said earlier this week he is visiting the occupation state “to meet businessmen and officials to promote trade with the UK.”

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.