Europe

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10309509

Spanish former Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said on Thursday that €1.3 million ($1.5 million) of jewellery seized by police as part of ​an investigation was a personal gift he received years ago and ‌was never intended for financial gain.

Zapatero, who was prime minister from 2004 to 2011 and remains an influential figure in the governing Socialist Party, is under investigation ​over alleged influence-peddling, accusations he denies. The case is one of a ​series of corruption scandals affecting the party and piling political pressure ⁠on Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's government.

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The jewels were unrelated to his political ​activities and their origin and handling would be fully explained before ​a judge, he said. He rejected suggestions they reflected any attempt at personal enrichment.

Investigating Judge ‌Jose ⁠Luis Calama opened a separate probe into the jewellery, whose origin remains undocumented, according to investigators. An auction house provisionally valued them at about €1.3 million ($1.5 million), though Zapatero disputes that estimate.

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The jewellery is one strand of a wider investigation that also ​includes allegations that Zapatero profited from using his influence ​to secure ⁠the state-backed rescue of airline Plus Ultra. He also denies those allegations.

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https://archive.ph/RNaHk

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10298163

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Interpol rejected Serbia’s request to issue an international arrest warrant for six activists and students associated with the organization STAV and the Movement of Free Citizens (PSG), who, according to their legal defense, have been living in political exile for the past 16 months.

Veljko Milić, attorney for some of the defendants, [said] that Interpol determined the case to be political in nature and therefore would not act on Serbia’s requests.

According to him, the decision is consistent with Interpol’s rules, under which it does not intervene in cases it considers to have a political character.

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Six activists were arrested last March and spent months in prison. Another six were outside Serbia when the arrest warrants were issued and have not returned since. All of them deny they committed acts the prosecution accuses them of.

The group members who are currently living in exile, stated today that Interpol concluded in its reasoning that the matter is political, and therefore declined to act on Serbia’s request, FoNet news agency reports.

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Arrests and charges after a leaked conversation

On 13 March 2025, two days before the massive protest in Belgrade, the biggest pro-government television channels jointly broadcast a two-hour special dedicated to a leaked recording of the meeting of activists in Novi Sad.

The activists, who were not the organisers of the protests, discussed possible actions they could take depending on the course of events.

The discussion was described by the pro-government journalists as proof of pending bloodshed and civil war on 15 March. The protest on that day passed relatively peacefully, with accusations against the government that it had, at one point, used an unidentified acoustic device against the protesters.

A day before the protest, six activists were arrested in Novi Sad. Another six participants in the meeting were outside Serbia when the arrests happened and have not returned to the country since. An arrest warrant for them was subsequently issued.

The imprisoned activists were released and sent to house arrest several months later, following a hunger strike of one of the activists, high school professor Marija Vasić. This measure was also revoked later during the year.

On 12 May, after two months in prison, the Higher Public Prosecutor’s Office in Novi Sad officially charged the activists with preparing an attack on the constitutional order and calling for a violent overthrow of the constitutional order. The Prosecutor’s Office asked for a maximum sentence of five years in prison for preparing these acts.

Archived

This month, three high-level visits within the space of six days showed how the rivalry between Morocco and Algeria is increasingly shaping the policies of European governments in the Maghreb.

On July 15 and 16, French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu led a large ministerial delegation to Morocco, consolidating the rapid rapprochement between Paris and Rabat. At almost the same time, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune was in Berlin seeking to deepen Algeria’s partnership with Germany. Four days later, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez arrived in Algiers, continuing efforts to repair relations strained by Madrid’s shift towards Morocco.

The principal fault line in the rivalry is Western Sahara. Morocco controls most of the territory and has made support for its sovereignty claim, or its autonomy proposal, a central test of its foreign partnerships. Algiers backs the Polisario Front’s demand for independence and has responded sharply when European governments endorse Rabat’s position on the territory.

European governments cannot therefore manage the two relationships in isolation. Decisions that strengthen ties with one can reshape their diplomatic, economic and security cooperation with the other.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10295672

Hong Kong Watch is deeply concerned that Wu Chi-wai, former chairman of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party and one of the ‘Hong Kong 47’, has been officially refused entry to the UK, facing deportation back to Hong Kong within seven days. Wu, a political prisoner, was allowed to enter the United Kingdom on temporary admission, following a deeply alarming situation at Heathrow Airport, where he was told his passport would be confiscated and that he faced deportation back to Hong Kong within seven days.

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Wu holds British National (Overseas) (BN(O)) status, and after his release [from Chinese prison] he travelled to Britain to settle under the BN(O) visa route, which allows eligible Hong Kongers to apply for residence without going through the standard overseas asylum process. He was informed that he could apply for BN(O) status within the UK by the British Consulate in Hong Kong. Despite this, he was detained on arrival, his passport confiscated, and told he faced removal within a week. The Home Office described it as an administrative issue with his paperwork. Mr Wu has now entered the UK under temporary admission while officially refused, meaning the threat of deportation remains pending review.

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“Detention and threatened deportation of a pro-democracy advocate is the sort of belligerent behaviour I associate with the Chinese Communist Party rather than the UK," says Lord Alton of Liverpool, Patron of Hong Kong Watch and Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

"Shabana Mahmood [the UK Home Secretary] has had a long and honourable track record in calling out the many violations of human rights in China. I hope she will find out what happened at Heathrow and explain the difference between dictatorship and democracy to whoever threatened Mr Wu.”

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Wu Chi-wai, 63, spent eight years as a Legislative Councillor, Hong Kong’s equivalent of an MP, and became chairman of the Democratic Party in 2016. A former social worker who studied in the United States, he built his political career around the pro-democracy movement the party had championed since its founding ahead of the 1997 handover.

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In 2020, Wu helped organise an unofficial “primary election” ahead of Legislative Council elections, the first real test of Beijing’s newly imposed Hong Kong National Security Law. That law, introduced on 30 June 2020, criminalised secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign collusion.

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Wu was arrested in the security sweep that followed in November 2020, charged in 2021, and pleaded guilty the following year, as most of his co-defendants did, believing conviction was inevitable and that a plea would reduce his sentence. He received four years and five months in prison as part of the Hong Kong 47 case, in which 45 of the 47 defendants were jailed for between four and seven years. He was released on 30 June 2026 after serving his full term.

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Google has been fined a total of €890m (£760m) by the EU for breaches of online competition laws by its search and app store services.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Google had broken the Digital Markets Act by giving priority to its own services, such as shopping and hotel deals, in search results over those of its rivals.

It also infringed the DMA by preventing app developers from steering consumers towards cheaper offers, including for subscriptions, on websites or alternative app stores.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10270651

A Russian warship, shadowed by a Royal Navy vessel, carried out a live-fire artillery exercise just 46 miles (74km) south of Plymouth on Monday.

The Royal Navy monitored the exercise and is tracking "the vessel's activity closely", a Ministry of Defence spokesperson said.

The BBC has been told that, prior to opening fire, Russian frigate Neustrashimy (English: Dauntless) had informed the Royal Navy Offshore Patrol Vessel, HMS Tyne, of its intention to conduct gunnery activity.

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The live-fire exercise took place in international waters and lasted for 30 minutes.

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The Russian frigate was also being monitored by a French military aircraft which made radio contact with the warship asking it to clarify its intentions, the BBC has been told.

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The incident will be a reminder for the new prime minister of increased Russian naval activity near UK waters in recent months.

Last month, Royal Marine Commandos boarded a Russian "shadow fleet" oil tanker in the English Channel in a six-hour operation which was the first of its kind by UK armed forces.

Also in June, a British couple in international waters in the English Channel came across a Russian warship - Admiral Grigorovich - 23 miles off the Isle of Wight.

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Archived

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10291798

July 22 marks the European commercial launch of PRIMA, the first and only treatment shown in clinical trials to restore functional central vision to patients with geographic atrophy (GA) caused by age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a leading cause of blindness. PRIMA has received a CE (Conformité Européenne) mark under the European Union Medical Device Regulation from DEKRA, authorizing its commercial availability across 30 European countries.

Papers recently published by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) [original article, editorial] showed that PRIMA restored vision to patients suffering from GA due to AMD.

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In the United States, the company is working with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to bring PRIMA to the US market. PRIMA has received FDA Breakthrough Device designation and Humanitarian Use Device designation.

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The multi-center clinical trial published by the NEJM evaluated the PRIMA BCI implant system in 38 patients across 17 clinical sites in five countries. The study results include:

• Mean improvement of 25.5 letters (more than 5 lines) on ETDRS letter chart.
• 84% of patients reported the ability to read letters, numbers, and words, restoring functional central vision.
• 80% of patients achieved significant prosthetic visual acuity improvements of at least logMAR 0.2 (equivalent to 10 letters on ETDRS chart) at 12 months (p<0.001).
• The implant was placed under the atrophic macula without a decline in mean existing natural vision.

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Women working in the EU lose €358 billion a year due to the gender pay gap, amounting to almost €3,900 per person, as several European countries missed the bloc's Pay Transparency Directive deadline.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10297490

Péter Szijjártó, until April the EU’s longest-serving foreign minister, is joining the Chinese carmaker BYD, after helping it – as a minister – to get a firm foothold in Hungary and thus avoid EU’s tariff wall.

Szijjártó, 47, announced via Facebook on 15 July that he had received “an extremely honourable offer from one of the defining companies of the world economy”.

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Europe has been here before. The best-known precedent is former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the Russlandversteher who went from masterminding Germany’s Russia policy to sitting on the boards of Russian state energy companies Nord Stream and Rosneft. Schröder became synonymous with the politician who monetises relationships after leaving office. Other examples include Austria’s former chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, who accepted a seat on the board of Lukoil, and one-time Finnish prime minister Esko Aho, who became a senior adviser to Huawei as it sought to expand into Europe.

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Yet Szijjártó’s connection is more direct. Schröder, Schüssel and Aho joined companies whose interests they had once helped shape. As the face of Hungary’s “Eastern Opening”, Szijjártó personally spent years facilitating BYD’s expansion from the other side of the table; now he is on the carmaker’s payroll. He is also the man who supervised Hungary’s foreign intelligence service, with its files on the internal workings of the EU and NATO. There is no Hungarian precedent for a former minister joining a company with which he had such direct official dealings. During the election campaign, Szijjártó was exposed briefing Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov after EU meetings, which raises the question of why BYD has employed a man who is arguably more of a liability than an asset in the corridors of Brussels.

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The appointment is an advertisement, though not the one Budapest used to run. Hungary never extracted anything from Beijing: it paid for the privilege of hosting Chinese industry, in subsidies, cheap land, tax holidays and accommodating regulators, while the technology and the profits stayed with the parent companies. The publicly documented state support for BYD’s Hungarian projects alone exceeds 71 billion forints (EUR 200 million); Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar puts the full bill, indirect measures included, at around 300 billion. What Szijjártó’s new post demonstrates to every middle power hedging between Washington, Brussels and Beijing is that a minister who delivers all that will be taken care of.

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Fidesz [Hungary's former ruling party and Szijjártó's political home] loyalists mourned the departure of “the finest foreign minister the world has ever seen” [ while current Hungarian PM Peter] Magyar took a different view. Signing with BYD means entering the service of the Chinese Communist Party ... A former minister taking an executive role, months after leaving office, at a company he had supported with hundreds of billions of forints raised not only moral but serious legal concerns, he argued. A company of BYD’s size hiring such a man to repay services rendered would be called corruption of the most outrageous kind anywhere in Europe, he added.

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A prime minister cannot declare BYD an arm of the Chinese party-state and then preside indefinitely over its largest European investment. Beijing will have noted. Magyar knows it: within a day he was threatening to extend Hungary’s conflict-of-interest rules in ways that could block Szijjártó’s appointment outright – while adding, in the same breath, that if BYD pays its taxes and honours its commitments, his government is glad to have it. Local press are calling it the lex Szijjártó. The threat and the welcome, delivered together, measure the bind precisely. Washington, for its part, has already institutionalised a version of Magyar’s charge: in June, the US Department of War, added BYD to its list of companies it deems to be working with the Chinese military.

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At the Szijjártó foreign ministry, eventually around 80% of staff were his own appointees. Clientelism was a feature, not a bug. The Magyar government has already exposed how diplomatic passports became discretionary favours, to the point that border officials in several countries had stopped taking the documents seriously, according to the new foreign ministry. Beneficiaries ranged from the pop singer Magdolna Rúzsa to former national football captain Balázs Dzsudzsák, a close friend of Szijjártó, and Hilarion, the Russian bishop who was reassigned to Budapest months into the invasion of Ukraine and granted citizenship and a passport within three months of arrival, with no Hungarian ties and no explanation ever offered. The owner of the ‘nationalist’ craft-beer brand Csíki had earlier tried to use his to escape a speeding fine.

The scale takes a moment to parse: of the 10,219 diplomatic passports issued between 2019 and September 2023, nearly 1,500 were granted on Szijjártó’s personal authority by individual ministerial decision rather than entitlement, against the 100 to 200 that previous governments had kept in circulation.

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The longer Orbán remained in power, the less Hungary’s foreign policy was organised around any articulated conception of the national interest. It was opaque, personalised and transactional. Relationships accumulated where doctrine should have existed; investments replaced strategy. Success was measured in factories announced, meetings held and deals signed.

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[In mid-July] ... Orbán surfaced in the stands at the World Cup semi-final in the U.S. in the background of the livestream of the influencer IShowSpeed. As the architect of the Eastern Opening watched football in Texas, its biggest evangelist was a day from going to work for the Chinese company that embodied it. Schröder ended up on the payroll of the pipeline; Szijjártó is now on the payroll of the gigafactory.

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Archived

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10273609

Germany’s cities plan to largely exit natural gas use in the coming years and instead bet on district heating, heat pumps and other low-carbon solutions to heat homes. An analysis by consumer magazine Finanztip of the municipal heating plans of 16 German cities, including Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, showed that all of them expect a significant decrease in natural gas use in the near future.

“Our analysis clearly shows where we are headed: Away from fossil gas and towards more climate-friendly alternatives,” said Finanztip energy efficiency expert Sandra Duy. Germany’s larger cities were required to submit their municipal heating plans by the end of June, while smaller towns and villages have until mid-2028 to submit a decarbonisation plan for the sector.

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The recent adoption of new heating rules by Germany’s parliament, which allow the continued installation of fossil gas boilers as proposed by the government earlier this year, had not been reflected in municipal planning for future gas demand ... Instead, several city administrations warned that the controversial new heating rules in the Building Modernisation Act, which scrap a minimum renewable energy share for new installations, could lead to delays, higher costs and general uncertainty.

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Researcher Martin Ammon ... also said the government's law changes could slow the transition but added that a larger reversal of the plans remains unlikely.

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Archived

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10309834

The EU needs to use more “clout” against Beijing to rebalance its trade relationship, according to the former official who tried a decade ago to stop cheap Chinese exports flooding the bloc.

Ex-European trade commissioner Karel De Gucht said the EU should increasingly shut Chinese goods out of its market to convince Beijing to rein in its manufacturing boom.

De Gucht was nicknamed “the hammer” for his blunt style during his time in office between 2010 and 2014, when he vociferously attacked Chinese government subsidies that gave companies in certain sectors, including solar and telecoms, what he saw as an unfair advantage in global markets.

His tough stance was at the time seen by some as bordering on a crusade against China. But the EU’s trade deficit in goods with China has grown from €104bn in 2013 to almost €360bn last year.

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Individual member states should stop trying to deal with China on their own, he argued, as this exposes them to pressure from the world’s second-biggest economy.

Spanish premier Pedro Sánchez visited Beijing for the fourth time in as many years in April as he courted investment, with the two countries setting up a strategic dialogue.

China is “a big country . . . but they cannot live without exports”, De Gucht said, adding that the EU was the biggest market for Chinese goods. Reducing access to EU markets would pressure Beijing, added De Gucht, who now works as a trade defence lawyer.

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“If you say there should be European content of at least 70 per cent [in electric car imports], it would change,” he added.

De Gucht advocated for the EU to form an alliance of open trading nations as an alternative to the World Trade Organization, which he claimed was “dead”. The WTO dispute settlement mechanism that De Gucht used several times successfully against China during his tenure has been paralysed by a US boycott.

“I think, in the hands of the EU, there’s this string of pearls, to use a Chinese expression, and those pearls are the free trade agreements,” he said.

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The EU has clinched five new trade deals in two years and now has 45 agreements with 80 partners worldwide — more than any other trading bloc in the world.

De Gucht’s efforts to stop China from dominating key industries were often thwarted by divisions between EU member states.

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He said EU telecoms companies that feared being locked out of the Chinese market lobbied their national governments. Those companies are now largely excluded from the Chinese market anyway due to Beijing’s “buy China” policy, De Gucht argued. The European Commission needs a weighted majority of member states to vote for measures, usually at least 20 of the 27 depending on their size.

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Since his time in office, the EU has sharpened its trade instruments. But a powerful anti-coercion tool that would allow it to ditch some WTO commitments and put restrictions on services has never been used.

The Commission is now working on a new law to oblige companies to diversify their supply chains away from China, plus a “solidarity” tool that would support members suffering retaliation. It is unclear if there will be any extra money to help them.

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However, De Gucht said it would be “a mistake” to pause trade defence actions while Brussels was waiting for the new tools.

Despite his criticisms, the former top EU trade official did not believe it was too late to save European industry.

The Commission must, though, find a way to speed up trade investigations, which take at least a year. “These procedures are [still] far too long,” he said.

Most of all, De Gucht argued, Brussels needed to rediscover the kind of skill and resolve demonstrated by previous European politicians such as Jacques Delors who, as Commission president from 1985 to 1995, drove the creation of the single market.

“It is about political will. You need a guy of the stature of Jacques Delors,” he added.

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Archived

A discreet British foreign office event beginning on Wednesday is mired in controversy after it emerged that a representative of the Rapid Support Forces' (RSF) political wing will be attending, Middle East Eye can reveal.

Nasredeen Abdulbari, a leader in the Sudanese paramilitary's Tasis coalition, is attending a UK-run conference at Wilton Park alongside a delegation from the United Arab Emirates, according to multiple British and Sudanese sources.

Sudan's army-backed government was not invited to the conference, which runs from Wednesday to Friday and was described by multiple British government sources as a "discreet" event.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10278226

Chinese men in Germany used Telegram to share rape videos and drugging tips. The victims were mostly women of Chinese heritage.

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Last year, a Berlin court sentenced Tong Z to five years and nine months in prison for aggravated rape, dangerous bodily harm and violation of personal privacy. The case had echoes of the crimes of serial rapist Zhenhao Zou, 29, a Chinese student jailed in 2025 for life for drugging and raping 10 women in the UK and China.

But Tong Z was not acting alone. Further court rulings this year found he was one of eight members of a Telegram group called “German Driving School”. Within the group, members used coded terms to discuss drugging and raping women: “fuel” meant anaesthetic agents and sedatives, and “car” was the code name for their targets. The men – all but one of whom were Chinese nationals – also filmed their assaults, shared the footage and celebrated each other’s crimes.

Three of the men, including Tong Z, have now been convicted in connection with the Telegram group. Dapeng Z, a 44-year-old IT engineer and the group’s admin, was sentenced to 14 years in prison for aggravated rape and attempted murder. Zhongyi J, a 28-year-old Chinese student, received more than 11 years for similar charges. German courts ruled that the two men had knowingly administered life-threatening doses of drugs to their victims.

The revelations have sent shockwaves across China and the global Chinese diaspora, as most of the victims were also women of Chinese heritage living in Europe.

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Archived

Rima Hassan was born to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother in a refugee camp in Aleppo, Syria, leaving her stateless at birth. The granddaughter of Palestinians expelled from the Galilee village of Al-Birwa during the Nakba of 1948, she arrived in France as a child and has since built her political career around the conviction that the struggle for Palestinian liberation belongs as much in Europe as in Palestine.

Hassan belongs to a new generation of leaders in the Palestinian diaspora who are unwilling to soften their convictions to suit Western sensibilities. It is precisely because of this stance that the French state has deployed the full weight of its institutional machinery against her. Since entering office, 16 judicial proceedings have been filed against Hassan, the majority relating to charges of “apology for terrorism,” all concerning her remarks on Israel-Palestine.

The terrorism-related cases largely stem from Hassan’s public defense of the right of peoples under foreign occupation to resist, a principle recognized in UN resolutions. (The latest, for which she is currently standing trial, revolves around her sharing a post on X quoting Kōzō Okamoto, a Japanese militant who took part in an attack on Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport in 1972 that killed 26 people. The quote read: “As long as there is oppression, resistance will not only be a right, but a duty.”) At the same time, she has consistently described the killing of civilians on October 7 as a war crime and condemned the taking of hostages.

Thirteen of the cases against her have already been dismissed. Hassan has nevertheless been summoned by police six times, spending a total of more than 45 hours in custody or interrogation. She has attended each summons without invoking her parliamentary immunity, in solidarity with ordinary citizens facing similar prosecutions without the same protections. During her recent detention in April, false claims that she had been found in possession of drugs were leaked to the media, generating a flurry of news reports before toxicology results — already in the prosecutor’s possession — cleared her completely.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10234513

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10234333

The Metropolitan Police have launched an investigation into allegations that security personnel at the Chinese Embassy in London brandished high-voltage stun batons—classified as prohibited weapons under UK law—to threaten peaceful Tibetan demonstrators during a candlelight vigil. The incident has intensified concerns about alleged transnational repression and renewed scrutiny of China’s proposed mega-embassy in the British capital.

The investigation follows an unprecedented confrontation on the evening of July 3, when Chinese embassy security personnel were reportedly seen deploying live, sparking stun batons during a peaceful gathering on Portland Place in central London.

The vigil had been organised by Tibetan communities in the United Kingdom alongside human rights supporters to honour Lobga Rangzen, the Tibetan independence activist who died after self-immolating outside the United Nations Headquarters in New York on July 2, 2026.

In widely circulated video footage released by the London-based advocacy group Free Tibet on its social media platforms, Chinese embassy personnel can be seen allegedly pointing a live stun baton toward members of the crowd as an attempt to intimidate and threaten peaceful protesters. According to reports, Metropolitan Police officers attended the scene after the incident was reported. No injuries were recorded, and officers left once the demonstration dispersed peacefully.

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The confrontation drew immediate condemnation from Tibetan organisations and rights advocates, who described it as a troubling example of Beijing’s alleged efforts to silence dissent beyond its borders. Community leaders warned that the incident reflects an increasingly assertive pattern of intimidation targeting Tibetans and other critics of the Chinese government living overseas.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Tenzin Rabga, Campaigns Lead at Free Tibet, said the incident demonstrated that “China’s transnational repression reaches into the heart of Britain.” “Chinese embassy personnel threatening Tibetans with stun-batons during our candlelight vigil for Lobga Rangzen, the Tibetan activist who self-immolated in New York, is proof China’s transnational repression reaches into the heart of Britain.”

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The incident has also reignited political debate over the UK government’s decision to approve China’s proposed mega-embassy in London, a project that is currently moving forward. Critics argue that permitting the development could embolden further acts of intimidation against Tibetan, Uyghur, Hong Kong, and other dissident communities living in the United Kingdom.

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Archived