Новости за 04.04.2018

Austria's right-wing government said on Wednesday it plans to ban girls from wearing headscarves in primary schools to combat what it sees as a threat to Austrian mainstream culture from Muslims. The planned law would apply to girls above the age of 10. "Our goal is to confront any development of parallel societies in Austria," prime minister Sebastian Kurz told ORF radio.

A problem with issuing residency cards for EU citizens living in France has worsened since Brexit, according to a new report from the European Citizen Action Service on Wednesday. Although the cards are not mandatory, they are often required to access benefits. Since the 2016 referendum, UK citizens have often been told to await the outcome of the Brexit negotiations before applying for residence documents, the report says.

Austria, Denmark, and Germany have not yet formally informed the European Commission of wanting to extend their 'temporary' border controls brought in after the 2015 migration crisis, a commission spokeswoman said Wednesday. The temporary exemptions under the Schengen passport-free regime expire in May. "We will limit ourselves to reacting to specific notifications rather than announcements thereof," a commission spokeswoman said.

The Friends of the Earth Netherlands environmental group threatened on Wednesday to sue Royal Dutch Shell unless the energy company substantially alters its investment decisions with regard to fossil fuels. "Shell has to date taken insufficient action to help prevent dangerous climate damage," the group said in a letter to Shell. It has contracted a Dutch lawyer who previously won a climate case against the Dutch state.

Eurostat said Wednesday the unemployment rate in the eurozone dropped to 8.5 percent in February. The EU-28 rate was 7.1 percent. "These are the lowest unemployment rates that we have seen in the last ten years," said EU commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein. He acknowledged that the level of youth unemployment in some EU countries was still "unacceptably high", but added it was mostly national governments that had to act.

Formal consultations lead by Italy's president Sergio Mattarella will start on Wednesday in order to form a new government one month after elections on 4 March produced a fragmented parliament. The Five Star movement is the largest single grouping with 32 percent of the vote. The rightwing League is the other big winner but neither of them are able to form a government without wider support.

While Bulgaria aims to have all 28 EU countries in Sofia in May to give a boost to EU accession of the Western Balkans, some EU countries want to make sure their reservations about Kosovo are noted.

The lobby group for European car manufacturers has said that if UK sales data is not counted when calculating CO2 emissions, the target should be reviewed. The commission has refused to comment.

Ahead of an EU summit in Sofia in May, two different viewpoints look at Kosovo's future accession to the EU - one from Pristina and one from Brussels.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has no plans to extend new European Union laws on data privacy to users of its social network around the globe. In an interview with Reuters, Zuckerberg said that Facebook would like to make such privacy guarantees "in spirit," but stopped short of committing to it as the standard for the social network across the world. The European Data Protection Regulation is applicable from 25 May.

The UK government has delayed a final decision on who should produce the country's post-Brexit 'blue' passports by two weeks, following a public row over awarding the contract to Franco-Dutch company, Gemalto, which would see British passports manufactured in France after the UK leaves the EU. A UK-based company, De La Rue, holder of the current passport contract, had threatened to appeal the government's decision.

"Getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing", US president Donald Trump said after meeting the three Baltic state presidents in Washington on Tuesday. Trump praised the Baltic countries for "meeting their defence spending obligations this year for Nato, unlike some of the other countries", criticising Germany for not paying its share to Nato while "paying billions of dollars for energy into Russia".

"Frontex needs 100,000 men to properly protect the border," Jens Spahn, the newly-appointed German health minister and a key Merkel critic among her Christian Democrats (CDU) has said. "I would also be open to partial surrender of sovereignty, if this would make the borders safer", he told Neue Zuercher Zeitung in an interview published Wednesday. Spahn backed Hungary's Viktor Orban, saying that despite all critics he "secures Europe's border".