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Her speech, weaving historical events with present crises, was replete with some subtle and other not so subtle hints that she believed Britain belonged in the European Union – her most public stance yet that she wished to avoid Britain voting to leave in a referendum.

The European Union’s president is warning Britain that he’s open to suggestions on how the bloc must change, but that “the fundamental values of the European Union are not for sale and so are non-negotiable.” […] British Prime Minister David Cameron said he’ll use the two-day event to explain to other heads of state and government that the 28-nation EU must reform or risk losing the backing of a majority of British voters. …

The European Union’s president called Thursday for a crackdown on migrants who are only looking for jobs as opposed to those fleeing war or persecution, as migrants keep arriving on Europe’s shores in ever-greater numbers. […] “We need to contain illegal migration and this should be our priority,” EU President Donald Tusk told reporters at a summit of the bloc’s leaders in Brussels. “All those who are not legitimate asylum-seekers will have no guarantee that they will stay in Europe.” …

Israel’s first Irish dancing competition (feis) is currently the subject of a major effort calling for the event to be canceled as part of the cultural boycott of Israel. The feis, set to take part this August in Tel Aviv, is organized by The Carey Academy Israel, a new branch of the highly successful Carey Academy in Birmingham, England. Performances of Riverdance in Israel led to an up-growth of interest in Irish dancing in Israel. The announcement of the feis has seen a major backlash, especially on social media, as supporters of Palestine protest Irish dance being performed in the...

Germans are more negative about the United States than the rest of Europe, but still largely support Americans’ efforts to fight ISIS, according to a new poll. More than half of Germans (53 percent) said they did not believe the United States government respects the personal freedoms of its people, according to a Pew Research Center report published on Tuesday. Forty-three percent of Germans said they thought the US government did respect citizens’ freedoms, while Americans themselves seemed on the fence. Though in the US most (51 percent) said their government respected personal freedoms, 47 percent disagreed. …

French President François Hollande says he spoke with President Barack Obama about revelations of U.S. eavesdropping on French leaders, and that Obama reiterated promises to stop spying tactics considered “unacceptable between allies.” Hollande said in a statement that the two spoke by telephone Wednesday after the release of WikiLeaks documents about NSA intercepts of conversations involving Hollande and his two predecessors between 2006 and 2012. Obama made a similar pledge after Edward Snowden revealed the extent of NSA surveillance powers in 2013. Obama and Hollande discussed “the principles that should govern relations between allies in the domain of intelligence,” the...

Judges have taken advantage of European and human rights laws to take power over democratically-elected politicians, one of the heads of the judiciary has said. A rebellious generation of lawyers who grew up in the “disrespectful” 1960s and 70s has exploited the weakness of politicians to build up its own influence, Lord Neuberger argued. In a speech made public yesterday, Lord Neuberger, president of the Supreme Court, highlighted the role of unelected judges in taking political decisions when elected politicians are too scared to act. In the speech, given to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, Lord Neuberger said...

ZAGREB, Croatia (AP) — It was one of the biggest nights in Croatia's sporting calendar: a European Championship soccer qualifying match with Italy. Seconds after kick-off in a game beamed around the world, a gigantic swastika materialized on the pitch under the shocked gaze of European soccer officials. The swastika, sprayed by an unknown vandal with a chemical that became visible only when floodlights went on to start the game, has become the most potent symbol of a rise in ultra-nationalist sentiment that appears to be bleeding into the mainstream population in the European Union's newest member state. But it's...

Parliament’s military commissioner Hans-Peter Bartels said on Monday that it is time for Germany to finally begin spending enough on its armed forces. “Quality and quantity of equipment is a central theme” of his work as the Bundestag (German parliament) expert on military issues, Bartels told Die Welt. He noted that German troops had recently taken part in the first exercises in Poland by a new NATO rapid-reaction force created in response to Russian interference in Ukraine, but “the equipment [for that exercise] had to be scraped together from across the whole army”. …

The Middle East and North Africa region is in turmoil from Iraq to Yemen and from Syria to Libya, but French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius warned Sunday of an “explosion” unless the deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is broken. Speaking in Ramallah, he said both Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah had expressed that view to him during talks with them over the weekend. Fabius was speaking after meeting with Palestinian Authority (P.A.) chairman Mahmoud Abbas during an intensive regional trip designed to push a French initiative to secure a U.N. Security Council resolution laying out the basis...

Germans throw away 18 million tonnes of perfectly good food every year, a report showed on Thursday. The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) study showed that “on average, we throw away 313 kilos of usable food every second,” WWF expert Tanja Dräger said in Berlin on Thursday. More than 2.6 million hectares of farmland are being used to produce food “for the bin”, the environmentalists say. …

A study published this month in the Journal of Medical Ethics examined the “deliberate” euthanasia of patients in Belgium without their explicit, voluntary consent as required by law. The study’s author, Raphael Cohen-Almagor, a professor of philosophy and ethics at the United Kingdom’s Hull University, found that life-ending drugs were used “with the intention to shorten life and without explicit request” in 1.7 percent of all deaths in Belgium in 2013. In 52.7 percent of these cases, the patients were 80 years of age or older. The decision to euthanize was not discussed with the patient in 77.9 percent of...

A senior U.S. Air Force officer says Russian bombers’ increasing probes of skies near Europe pose a risk to commercial air safety. Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson said Friday that Russian bombers are not following international norms when flying near Britain, the Baltics or Scandinavia. He said Russian bombers that have approached European airspace as tensions have risen in the last year are not filing flight plans, using their transponders or communicating with air traffic controllers. …

Just six month since Portugal’s parliament voted to recognize the Palestinian Authority as an independent “State of Palestine,” the Portuguese government is set to launch a new drive aimed at promoting “Palestine” as an independent tourism destination—despite it not being a legal state or having any defined borders. […] [Portuguese Tourism Minister Adolfo Mesquita] Nunes said he would be personally “recommending Portuguese people to visit Palestine,” including the thousands of Portuguese Christian pilgrims who visit Israel—including Christian sites in Bethlehem and elsewhere. …

Anti-Semitic propaganda had a life-long effect on German children schooled during the Nazi period, leaving them far more likely to harbor negative views of Jews than those born earlier and later, according to a study published Monday. The findings indicate that attempts to influence public attitudes are most effective when they target young people, particularly if the message confirms existing beliefs, the authors said. Researchers from the United States and Switzerland examined surveys conducted in 1996 and 2006 that asked respondents about a range of issues, including their opinions of Jews. The polls, known as the German General Social Survey,...

Elias Paz, the emissary for Bnei Akiva and the Jewish Agency in Germany, told Arutz Sheva about a report recently published by the German government, which details that last year there was a whopping 1,000% rise in anti-Israeli crimes and violent assaults, and a 25% rise in anti-Semitic crimes and attacks. The latter figure includes physical assaults on Jews, as well as vandalistic attacks on synagogues and Jewish cemeteries, in addition to incitement at protests. According to Paz, the German anti-Semites have found a way to cover their hatred of Jews in an increasingly internationally acceptable camouflage of antagonism against...

German industry groups called on Monday for the government to make it easier for asylum seekers to get jobs in Germany, days before a national conference on refugee policy. “Many people who come to us fleeing war and displacement will stay for a long time, maybe forever,” Ingo Kramer, president of the National Union of Employers’ Federations, said. “It’s in everyone’s interest to do everything so that these people can integrate quickly into the labor market.” He was joined in his call by Eric Schweitzer, president of the German Chambers of Commerce and Industry, who said that “asylum seekers with...

The District Governor of Ile De France has contacted the State Attorney’s Office on Monday, after the French newspaper Liberation reported that two prominent historical sites turned away a group of students from the Tel Aviv University (TAU) Art History program last month. According to the report, both the Louvre art museum and the Sainte-Chapelle church rejected tour requests from the group on the basis of their nationality. …

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls claimed on Monday that despite the overabundance of Islamist terror, there is no link between terrorist extremism and Islam, as he opened a conference aimed at improving ties with France’s large Muslim community. “We must say all of this is not Islam,” said Valls as quoted by AFP. “The hate speech, anti-Semitism that hides behind anti-Zionism and hate for Israel…the self-proclaimed imams in our neighborhoods and our prisons who are promoting violence and terrorism.” …

David Cameron is facing his first bloody nose in the House of Commons just five weeks after the general election with as many as 50 Conservative MPs set to try to force changes to the rules of the European Union referendum. The Prime Minister is hoping that the potential Tory rebels—which include former Tory Cabinet ministers Liam Fox and Owen Paterson—can be bought off with some “credible assurances” ahead of Tuesday’s crunch votes on backbench amendments to the EU Referendum Bill. However, Sir William Cash, who led the Tory rebels against Sir John Major’s Government over the Maastricht Treaty in...