EU leaders have been forced to fight a crisis on two fronts at their midyear summit that began yesterday, as soaring food and fuel prices threaten economic gloom and social unrest, even as Ireland’s rejection of a key treaty plunges the bloc’s political plans into turmoil.
Protesting Belgian farmers, taxi drivers and truckers besieged EU headquarters on the eve of the summit on Wednesday, shutting down much of Brussels in the latest wave of demonstrations from Germany to Portugal over record oil prices and the highest inflation in a decade.
“Everyone is feeling the pressure of price rises on food and fuel,” European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
“We need to take a dynamic and imaginative look at the tools at our disposal,” Barroso said.
However, the 27 EU leaders are unlikely to back a French call for cuts in fuel taxes to calm the protesters. The fear is that cuts in fuel taxes could push up oil consumption, leading to yet higher prices and undermining efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“It would be futile for governments to use public money to offset energy price rises that are here most likely to stay,” Barroso told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
EU leaders had been hoping to concentrate on the economy during the summit yesterday and today, including long-term ideas that would lessen their reliance on volatile oil imports, cut energy consumption and boost agricultural production to rein in food prices.
However, last week’s Irish referendum vote that rejected the Lisbon treaty means they must focus again on the EU’s institutional woes.
The treaty — the result of years of painstaking negotiations — was designed to overhaul the way the EU works and underpin plans to further expand the EU into the Balkans and perhaps beyond.
However, the only country to submit the text to a popular vote rejected it, derailing plans to create a potentially powerful new president and foreign chief by the end of this year.
Ireland’s “no” vote followed approvals of treaty by parliaments in 18 of the EU nations. Britain’s parliament gave its final backing to the treaty on Wednesday and the leaders are expected to agree that the remaining seven countries will press ahead with their own ratification to leave Ireland isolated — although the Czechs are having their own doubts.
Even if the others all ratify it, there is little clear vision on how to proceed beyond a common desire to avoid another prolonged bout of introspection.
“Issues such as climate change and energy security, migration and terrorism, won’t stand still while we wring our hands about the EU’s internal structures,” British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said ahead of the meeting.
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
RSS