Europe

Georgia has reduced the duration of visa-free stay for Ukrainian nationals from three years to one, according to a decree signed by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze that was published online on Wednesday.

Research by CORRECTIV shows: The often underage young footballers, some of whom now play professional football, are said to have been treated naked in the counsellor's offices under the pretext of sports medicine treatment.

European leaders have condemned Donald Trump’s tariffs as “fundamentally wrong” and creating an “immense difficulty for Europe”, while appealing for last-ditch negotiations to avert an all-out trade war.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said Trump’s decision to impose tariffs was “brutal and unfounded” and appeared to call for a suspension of French investment in the US until the tariffs were clarified.

“Future investments, investments announced in the last weeks, should be suspended for a time for as long as the situation with the United States is not clarified,” Macron told a meeting of French companies.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/28090979

Russia’s disinformation machine didn’t just meddle in Germany’s 2025 elections — it built an entire fake media ecosystem to do it. Through a network of over 100 bogus news sites and psychological operations like Storm-1516, the Kremlin sowed chaos, amplified far-right narratives, and targeted key political figures with fabricated scandals. This article explains the different online campaigns and their methods.

The EU is mobilizing up to €850 billion for so-called defense and armament, missing out on building true security through investment into health

In 2023, Tunisia, the pivotal migration crossroads between Africa and Europe, emerged as the primary route to Italy, surpassing Libya. As Tunisia deepens its cooperation with the European Union, leaked confidential documents shed light on the scale of the migration crisis, its key figures, and its profound consequences for migrants.

French.

On 15 March, the largest anti-government demonstration in the country’s history took place in Belgrade. President Vučić wants early elections – but in today’s Serbia these can not be free elections. For some, the only acceptable solution is a transitional caretaker government.

Glenn Diesen interview.

Micheal Hudson is a renowned economist, addresses why Europe has set itself on a path to economic crisis and collapse
https://michael-hudson.com/

With Washington's loyalties in flux and Europe feeling abandoned, the unthinkable is being discussed: will the continent's nuclear arsenal expand beyond its current custodians?

On March 18, 2025, the Hungarian Parliament passed legislation aimed at protecting children from assemblies that promote homosexuality. Although the amendment imposes general limitations on freedom of assembly, it is commonly understood as a ban on the LGBTQ+ Pride march, just ahead of the 30th anniversary in 2025. The new law amends the act of freedom of assembly (Act LX of 15), the act on misdemeanours (Act II of 2012), and the act on the use of facial recognition (Act CLXXXVIII of 2015). The new law also criminalizes attempts to circumvent this ban, making it a misdemeanour to organize, lead, or participate in such assemblies. Facial recognition may be used to prevent, thwart, investigate, interrupt, or sanction gatherings that fall within the scope of the prohibition.

The new law purposefully violates European human rights standards on freedom of assembly and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as fundamental values of the European Union, such as the rule of law and democracy (Article 2 TEU). From the outset, the Hungarian government made it clear that the measures mean to defy European standards (labelled as Brussels’ demands) in order to protect children from “aggressive LGBTQ propaganda.” In doing so, the Hungarian government presented an open invitation to European constitutional actors (including the European Commission) to address these new restrictions on freedom of assembly and LGBTQ+ rights in terms of a violation of democracy and the key commitment to the basic terms of Union membership as set out in Article 2 TEU.

The subject of these restrictions on political participation, the manner in which they were enacted, and their regressive impact call for a robust legal response grounded in the defense of democracy as a European value. The legal and institutional foundations for such a response already exist. It is now incumbent upon European constitutional actors to activate the mechanisms that protect democracy as a founding value of the Union in the face of a clear, frontal attack by a recalcitrant member state.

The European Chips Act has set ambitious goals and its implementation is a significant pan-european effort. From an academic perspective, last year we published an open letter emphasizing the critical importance of open-source EDA for academia in Europe. We were excited and grateful to see that this initiative triggered the definition of a European roadmap in this area, and a matching Chips JU call for project funding. We believe that the projects funded by this call will have a significant impact. Moreover, we already see rising interest from many EU stakeholders, with increasing investments into open-source chip design, especially in open source IP development (e.g. RISC-V cores), and open source EDA tools.

One additional critical barrier remains toward the end-goal of building real open-source chips, especially for prototyping and education: namely, streamlining the access to open source chip production facilities (foundries) is essential. Programs like ChipIgnite, Tiny Tapeout and IHP’s open source program have become “guiding stars” that demonstrate that everyone with a computer can build chips. We believe that having low-cost, regular and easy access to chip production is critical to create excitement and build up expertise, widening the pool of chip designers with tape-out experience: a true silicon democratization and a further de-mystification of chip design.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/government-approval

A US think tank that recently opened a Brussels office to lobby for aggressively lower taxes is received with open arms by the Commission. But who is behind the organisation, and who funds it? The Transparency Register fails to reveal dark money flows – in the Tax Foundation’s case from US right-wing libertarian sources – and as such clearly needs a make-over.

"With the mud it’s a losing battle. It wins. It always wins. It becomes like cement and it’s impossible to remove it". This is Francesca Placci, a young woman from Faenza, speaking about the floods that devastated the Romagna region. The same words could come from the mouth of any other flood victim, because most of the time the fight is with the mud, a mud that never seems to completely go away.