Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, Europe’s longest-serving leader, tendered his resignation yesterday in a scandal involving the tiny nation’s secret services, alleged to have indulged in misconduct on his watch.
“I am calling a Cabinet meeting at 10am local tomorrow and I will hand in the government’s resignation,” Juncker told the Luxembourg parliament on Wednesday evening after a seven-hour debate.
Juncker said he would step down after his junior coalition partner, the Socialists, introduced a motion calling for the dissolution of parliament and early elections.
“There was no other choice than to hand in the government’s resignation,” Juncker said. “I note that a majority favors early elections.”
He said he would likely run for a new political mandate, but did not say whether he would try for a new term as head of government in elections that might be held in October.
Though aged only 58, Juncker has been in office for 18 years and in government for 30. He is best known in Europe for his recent tumultuous eight-year stint as head of the eurozone finance ministers group, which ended in January.
In a rare political drama in tiny uneventful Luxembourg, the parliament examined a report alleging that the country’s SREL secret service, which the premier is supposed to oversee, had indulged in a series of misdemeanors from 2003 to 2009 that included illegal phone-taps, corruption and even a dodgy car dealership.
“The intelligence service was not my top priority,” Juncker told parliament earlier on Wednesday. “Moreover I hope Luxembourg will never have a prime minister who sees SREL as [his or her] priority.”
Leader of his Socialist junior partner, Alex Bodry, said the prime minister “must assume his responsibilities, not because he was dishonest or incompetent, but because he made the wrong choices. There were serious dysfunctions. The prime minister’s responsibility is at stake.”
The report was put together by a parliamentary committee after a Luxembourg weekly last year published verbatim a secretly taped conversation in 2007 between Juncker and the then-head of SREL, Marco Mille.
In the recorded conversation, Mille revealed that his staff had secretly taped a conversation with Luxembourg’s Grand Duke and that the sovereign was in regular contact with Britain’s MI6.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS