Europe

Source: https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/how-it-works_en

In other news the petition should reach 900k signatures any minute now:

https://stopkillinggamestracker.pages.dev/

Serbia getting their own Proud Bois to do their authoritarian regime's bidding

Poland plans to introduce temporary controls at its borders with Germany and Lithuania starting next week. Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the move was in response to German border controls and pointed out that he had already warned the German side in March that such action would be taken. Borders within the Schengen Area are supposed to be open. Commentators assess the motives and ramifications.

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The EU's top foreign policy official, Kaja Kallas, issued a sharp warning to Beijing not to undermine Europe's security.

“China is not our adversary, but our relations are under growing strain in the security field,” Kallas said before meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

“Chinese companies are Moscow's lifeline, supporting the war against Ukraine. Beijing is conducting cyberattacks, interfering in our democracies, and trading unfairly. These actions harm European security and jobs,” she added.

Wang's visit to Brussels — after which he will travel to Berlin and Paris — comes about three weeks before the summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and leading EU representatives in Beijing.

[...]

Trade tensions between Brussels and Beijing have deepened over allegations of unfair trade practices.

The 27-member bloc continues to condemn the flow of vital technologies that reach the Russian military via China.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/37845691

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The Philippines and Lithuania signed an agreement to build a security alliance resulting from their mutual alarm over what they perceive as growing aggression threatening their regions by countries such as China.

The memorandum of understanding signed Monday in Manila by Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. and his Lithuanian counterpart, Dovilė Šakalienė, would foster defense cooperation particularly in cyber security, defense industries, munitions production, addressing threats and maritime security, the Department of National Defense in Manila said.

Šakalienė described Lithuania’s alarm over an emerging “authoritarian axis” of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, which she raised in an international defense forum in Singapore last month. The emerging alliance needed to be confronted by a unified response from pro-democracy countries, she said.

“What we see now is that authoritarian states are really cooperating very efficiently,” Šakalienė said at a news conference with Teodoro. “One of the worst results is the cooperation on Ukraine.”

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Šakalienė cited China’s actions toward Taiwan and Filipino fishermen in the disputed South China Sea, which Beijing has claimed virtually in its entirety. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have been involved in prolonged territorial standoffs but confrontations between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval forces have particularly spiked in recent years.

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The Philippines has adopted a strategy of shaming China by documenting Beijing’s assertive actions in the disputed waters, a key global trade route, to rally international support.

“We see these horrifying materials, videos of how they are threatening Filipino fishermen, how they are treating people who are simply making their living in their own waters, in their own territory,” Šakalienė said. “If they work together to threaten us, then we must work together to defend ourselves.”

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Šakalienė expressed support to former Filipino senator Francis Tolentino while in the capital for talks aimed at deepening defense ties between the two countries.

Tolentino was sanctioned by China on Tuesday for his strong criticisms of Beijing’s acts of aggression and for his work on two new laws, which demarcated Philippine territorial zones, including in parts of the South China Sea that Beijing claims.

Šakalienė said she and her family had also been sanctioned by China and banned from entering the country for her strong criticisms of China’s aggression and human rights record.

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Šakalienė said that in the Baltic Sea, Chinese ships and crew members have helped suspected Russian fleets damage undersea oil pipelines, and data and electricity cables belonging to rival European nations like Lithuania by dragging steel anchors on the seafloor. She warned that such acts of sabotage could also be carried out in Asia by China and Russia.

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Archived version

As the V4 states continue to attract Chinese electric vehicle and battery investments, differences are emerging between the interests of national elites and local communities chosen to host these manufacturing (and recycling) facilities. This can be seen in the case of local opposition in the small Slovak town of Šurany – selected to host a major battery production facility as part of a broader industrial park complex. With the opposition group’s environmental and social concerns echoing patterns seen in similar protests in Hungary, it is important to understand these “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) sentiments, which highlight the complex task of balancing economic growth and the green transition while upholding democratic principles such as public consultations.

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The NIMBY sentiments underscore notable discrepancies between EU and Chinese regulatory standards. These could be further leveraged – especially given the ongoing dilution of the EU’s Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) framework – against both national and EU-wide interests. At the same time, it is important to differentiate between various forms of these investments (including the nature and scope of activities involved) and their associated risks.

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While InoBat’s joint venture with Chinese battery producer Gotion High-Tech is seen as a form of Chinese investment that could facilitate (some level of) industrial upgrading, it has also sparked local protests ... battery manufacturing involves unfamiliar and potentially hazardous chemical processes, with the activists in Šurany citing concerns over substances like N-methylpyrrolidone solvents, which can affect fertility and cause vision, respiratory and other health problems, as well as worries about potential water contamination, soil erosion, high energy use, and pollution – all of which raise broader questions about environmental justice.

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The activists in Šurany have also drawn comparisons with other regional battery projects, notably CATL’s €7.3 billion plant in Debrecen, Hungary, which has attracted even larger opposition. These protests, however, were influenced not only by Chinese involvement but also by prior controversies surrounding South Korean battery investments, indicating broader concerns over lax ESG [Environmental, Social and Governance] practices facilitated by a government that prioritizes economic development and profit maximization over local concerns and corporate sustainability – regardless of investor origin.

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With Slovakia having the EU’s third-highest trade exposure to China and the highest final demand exposure among the V4, the country remains deeply exposed to potential Chinese economic coercion in both direct and indirect terms. On top of this, concerns about regulatory arbitrage – where investors exploit laxer national regulations – are rising, particularly around ESG enforcement,

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24142922

archived (Wayback Machine)

Carbon credits have often been based on non-existent contracts with local people, or used for land-grabbing, or reforestation projects in which trees were not maintained and were soon cut down or eaten by cows, or otherwise fraudulent. In any case, letting humans take credit for photosynthesis is flawed emissions accounting, and the price of each credit is much lower than the social and environmental cost of the emissions that it offsets.

Archived (archive.org)

Paywall? https://archive.is/QclJX

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/15078902

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

Stop Killing Games is an European Citizens Initiative aiming to keep games playable even after their developers and publishers have stopped supporting it.

To get the initiative onto the EUs agenda so it has the chance to become EU law, it has to both reach 1 million signatures total and minimum thresholds in at least 7 countries. Those national thresholds have been thresholds have been reached. Now it's all about getting to 1 million signatures total.

Even if you are from a country that already reached the threshold you can still sign. Your signature counts to the 1 million goal.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/37781918

Archived

Russia has decided to classify data on the state of the economy and foreign trade as a state secret. From now on, only individual indicators that are favorable to the authorities will be disclosed in order to calm the public, UNIAN reported.

According to data from the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, serious crisis processes are observed in the coal mining, oil refining, construction, automotive and logistics industries of the Russian Federation, which in general provide about 17% of revenues to the federal budget.

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The EU extended sanctions against Russia for another six months.

Due to Moscow's continued actions destabilizing the situation in Ukraine.

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The report comes as defense drives Russia’s industrial growth while civilian production contracts.

Russia’s industrial sector, fueled by the defense sector, grew by 1.6% in May and 1.8% over the last year after accounting for seasonal factors, state statistics service Rosstat has reported.

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Civilian industries have reported widespread contractions, leading analysts to warn that Russia’s economy has become disproportionately driven by the military-industrial complex in the fourth year of its invasion of Ukraine.

Tverdye Tsifr (“Hard Numbers”), a Telegram channel that reports on financial data, noted a 42% surge in the output of “miscellaneous transport equipment” and a 14% increase in finished metal products over the last month, compensating for weaker performance in March and April.

Clothing production increased by 12%, and production of electronic and optical products, computers and pharmaceuticals rose by 9%.

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Analysts from Russia’s largest private bank Alfa-Bank described the May results as evidence of a highly segmented economy.

Previously, “when civilian growth was weak and defense growth was robust, all sectors expanded to some degree,” wrote MMI, a Telegram channel that analyzes Russian and global microstatistics, of the new divergence between military and civilian industry.

“Now, all civilian industries have recorded declines, while defense output has accelerated. There are not enough resources to go around for everyone, so someone has to cut back,” it said.

[...]

Rosstat reported that the producer price index for industrial goods shrank by 1.3% in May and by 2.8% since the start of the year.

A sustained decline in industrial prices, Promsvyazbank warned, “signals the real economy’s diminished resilience to high interest rates.”

[...]

According to the government-affiliated CMACP analytical center, industrial growth has been mostly concentrated in the defense sector, with civilian industries remaining stagnant since mid-2023.

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Archived version

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Dramatic cases involving Russian spies, like the group recently sentenced in Britain for plotting to kill investigative journalist Christo Grozev, or the occasional high-profile spy swap, often make headlines. But much of Russia’s intelligence work abroad is, by nature, less visible ... [Russian spies and collaborators] attend public events, gather contacts, and quietly assess potential recruits. Many are not trained agents, but rather trusted intermediaries, opportunists, or individuals who have been pressured, paid, or manipulated into cooperating.

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[In 2023, for example, at an event in] New York City ... prominent journalists spoke about Russia’s slide into authoritarianism. Several attendees - ordinary Americans by their appearance and accent - interrupted the speakers at different intervals, shouting identical lines about the United States being no better than Russia and invoking Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower who fled to Russia and now also has a Russian passport. The hecklers were eventually escorted out, but it was clear they were acting on behalf of the Kremlin.

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Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s intelligence services - especially the GRU, its military intelligence agency - have carried out an increasingly aggressive campaign of sabotage and subversion across Europe. A February 2024 report from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in the United Kingdom warned of a mounting threat from the GRU, stating that it was building a covert network of operatives to conduct espionage and sabotage missions across the continent. ‘The GRU is restructuring how it manages the recruitment and training of special forces troops,’ the report noted, ‘and is rebuilding the support apparatus to be able to infiltrate them into European countries.’ Experts and officials say the recent wave of sabotage incidents exemplifies Russia’s strategy of ‘hybrid warfare’, which blends psychological, economic, and political tactics with covert or conventional military force to destabilize its adversaries.

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Recent attacks underscore this shift. In May 2024, a shopping center in Warsaw that housed around 1,400 shops and service points was almost completely burned down. Polish authorities later stated they had clear evidence linking the attack to Moscow ... Other arson attacks have targeted a warehouse in England, a paint factory in Poland, homes in Latvia, and an Ikea store in Lithuania. While these incidents may seem random, European security officials say they are part of a coordinated Russian effort to disrupt arms transfers to Kyiv.

In many of these cases, Russia uses local recruits to carry out attacks.

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Russia’s sabotage efforts extend to critical infrastructure across Europe, including transportation networks, railways, and energy systems. One specific tactic has involved sending incendiary devices disguised as commercial parcels via cargo services like DHL. These self-igniting packages are intended to catch fire during transit to targets in the EU and the U.K. Notably, such attacks have not occurred in countries seen as friendly to Moscow, such as Serbia and Hungary, raising the likelihood that they are being intentionally spared.

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Inside Ukraine, Russia has recruited locals, including teenagers, to carry out acts of sabotage. Among them is a 15-year-old boy from Kharkiv, identified to the press as V., who faces years in prison for planting a homemade explosive device near the city’s police department.

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Ukrainian investigators say Russia has recruited hundreds of minors for sabotage and terrorist acts since the full-scale invasion began, using platforms like TikTok, Telegram, and Discord to reach them. In response, Ukrainian authorities have launched a nationwide high school program to teach students how to avoid falling victim to such recruitment.

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Since 2022, suspected sabotage of undersea infrastructure in the Baltic Sea has targeted telecom, power, and gas lines connecting countries like Sweden, Finland, Germany, Latvia, and Estonia. At least six such incidents have been reported, and 11 undersea cables have been severed since 2023. These attacks take advantage of the vulnerability of shallow waters in the Baltic and Gulf of Finland, where cables can be damaged with something as simple as a ship’s anchor. In one case, a vessel dragged its anchor for 100 kilometers, cutting multiple lines.

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In addition to physical sabotage, Russia has intensified its cyber operations against Western companies supporting Ukraine. The state-linked hacking group known as Fancy Bear has expanded its focus to include logistics firms and technology companies involved in delivering aid, according to a cyber threat advisory released recently by the U.S. and ten allied countries. The advisory reports that a wide range of targets have come under attack, including defense contractors, transportation hubs, maritime companies, air traffic control systems, and IT service providers.

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Russia’s use of low-level operatives and hard-to-trace tactics makes its network difficult to detect but still highly disruptive. Most of this activity happens out of public view, but it puts pressure on security agencies and highlights deeper weaknesses in the system. In response, Western governments are starting to look past isolated incidents to better understand and counter the larger strategy behind them.

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About 80% of the components Russia uses for weapons production come through China, posing the biggest challenge to the EU’s sanctions policy.

This was stated by David O'Sullivan, the EU Special Envoy for Sanctions Implementation related to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, during the “Fair Play: Honest Game” conference on additional sanctions against Russia held Friday in Kyiv, reports Ukrinform.

“About 80% of these goods enter Russia via China or Hong Kong and China. It’s a very difficult conversation. When President von der Leyen, or President Costa speak about this at summits, or our member states, President Macron, Chancellor Scholz when he was in Beijing — the Chinese usually respond: ‘We don’t understand what you mean. We don’t supply anything with military use for Russia.’ So we keep pressing, but the response is lukewarm. You see this in many products made in China. These are Chinese copies of Western brands,” explained O’Sullivan.

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He added that similar difficult negotiations happen in Malaysia, Southeast Asia, Thailand, and Singapore, where he plans to go again next month, as many local companies are subsidiaries of European firms.

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According to the special envoy, companies have introduced clauses banning resale to Russia and conduct client checks, but at some point their components disappear into a “wild field,” making supply chain control impossible.

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“I try to explain to manufacturers in third countries that these components — especially a list of 50 joint priority categories we prepared closely with Ukrainians — may seem harmless. These include optical readers, integrated circuits, microchips, flash memory cards, which are found in our phones and computers. But when they get to Russia, it becomes weapons of war,” O’Sullivan detailed.

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Three years [ago], the governor of St. Petersburg signed a sister-city agreement with the occupying authorities of Mariupol, the Ukrainian port city that was razed to the ground in a devastating Russian siege just weeks beforehand.

“Since then, St. Petersburg has hosted children from Mariupol for every camp session — both in summer and winter,” said Governor Alexander Beglov.

This summer, Russian authorities are organizing five three-week camp sessions for children from the occupied city. Each session is led by child psychologists, St. Petersburg schoolteachers and camp counselors who recently graduated from teacher training college.

More than 2,000 schoolchildren from Mariupol in total are expected to attend camps in St. Petersburg this year.

Initially, Russian authorities billed these summer programs as health and wellness retreats for children who had lived under Russian shelling.

But from the very first sessions, children were also taught to develop respect and love for the country that seized their home city.

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Today Ukraine has confirmed the deportation of 19,546 children from occupied Ukrainian territories to Russia, though experts say the real number is likely much higher.

In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin and his children’s rights commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova in connection with these deportations.

Ukrainian experts say Russia is deliberately stripping these children of their Ukrainian identity and raising them to become Russians, turning minors into a new generation loyal to the Kremlin.

The educational program at Camp Druzhnykh lists goals that include fostering a national — that is, Russian — identity among the children.

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The camp also organizes a career fair where children can learn about the job market in Russia. In June, it featured a police college that accepts students as early as ninth grade. Students from the college spoke to the children about the ceremonial police oath and showed them how to take fingerprints.

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Now in high school, Masha [a girl form Mariupol, not her real name] quietly dreams of moving to St. Petersburg for university. But when she talks about the future, there is a sadness in her voice [...] “I used to think living in Russia was easy. But then my mom tried to get a job at Pyaterochka [a discount supermarket chain], and the salary was under 20,000 rubles (less than $253) — while the country’s minimum subsistence level is 17,000 ($215). That’s when I realized life in Russia is hard. You don’t live — you survive.”

Paywall? https://archive.is/dZK6P

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2025/06/10/the-political-gap-in-americans-news-sources/

Archived

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China's top diplomat Wang Yi heads to Europe on Monday seeking a closer relationship that can provide an "anchor of stability" in the world and act as a counterweight to the United States [...] but deep frictions remain over both the economy – including a yawning trade deficit of $357.1 billion between China and the EU – and Beijing's continuing close ties with Russia despite Moscow's war in Ukraine.

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The war in Ukraine will likely be high on the agenda, with European leaders having been forthright in condemning what they see as Beijing's support of Moscow.

China has portrayed itself as a neutral party in Russia's more than three-year war with Ukraine.

But Western governments say Beijing's close ties have given Moscow crucial economic and diplomatic support, and they have urged China to do more to press Russia to end the war.

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Ties between Europe and China have also strained in recent years as the EU seeks to get tougher on what it says are unfair economic practices by Beijing.

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Tensions flared this month after the EU banned Chinese firms from government medical device purchases worth more than €5 million ($5.8 million) in retaliation for limits Beijing places on access to its own market.

The latest salvo in trade tensions between the 27-nation bloc and China covered a wide range of healthcare supplies, from surgical masks to X-ray machines, that represent a market worth €150 billion in the EU.

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