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European companies are expected to hunt for assets in China, mainly in insurance, healthcare and automobile sectors, after the world’s second-largest economy and the European Union agreed to an investment deal last month, lawyers and bankers say.

Europe must be an autonomous global actor and it would be “a terrible sign” if the EU blocked a recently concluded investment agreement with China in order to coordinate with Washington, Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa told EurActiv’s partner Lusa in an exclusive interview.The EU and China reached last Wednesday (30 December) an agreement in principle on investment, which has been under negotiation for seven years. However, the deal could cause tension with the new US administration weeks after President-elect Joe Biden proposed a transatlantic dialogue on “the strategic challenge posed by China’s growing international assertiveness”. […] According to the...

A Norwegian firm that was meant to have provided technical and safety certificates for Russia’s gas pipeline to Germany has abandoned the project due to US sanctions. “DNV GL will cease all verification activities for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline system in line with sanctions and while sanctions are in place,” it said in a statement sent to EUobserver on Monday (4 January). “We are implementing a plan to wind down our verification support to the project. As the situation currently stands, DNV GL cannot issue a certificate upon the completion of the pipeline,” it added. A spokesman for the...

HUNDREDS of birds found dead on a street in Rome on New Year's Eve were scared to death by fireworks, animal rights campaigners have claimed. It comes after a ban on fireworks in the city, introduced to protect people, animals, and heritage sites, went largely ignored.... ...The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds says that there is "little evidence to suggest that fireworks harm wild birds or affect their conservation status".

LondonAssembly members have blasted Sadiq Khan's £1.5million BBC-backed 'woke' pro-EU, NHS and BLM firework and drone display over the Thames. Viewers were quick to criticise the taxpayer-funded New Year's Eve event, claiming it was 'ruined by politics' after Thames bridges were turned blue and yellow in a tribute to the EU as the UK finally left the bloc. The display - which the London Mayor cooked up in secret with Scotland Yard to avoid crowds gathering in Greenwich - also saw 300 drones make the shape of a BLM fist and a turtle with Africa on its shell during a...

Under no scenario would a unified European Union aligned with China be in the interest of America. Indeed, a united EU might not be a friend but a foe.Joseph Borrell, a former Spanish socialist and current High Representative of the European Union, recently argued the EU needs to be strategically independent. “It is foreseen that in 20 years, we [the EU] will not represent more than 11 percent of world GNP, far behind China, which will represent double it, below 14 percent for the United States and at par with India,” Borrell wrote, adding the next two decades would be...

Across Europe’s media there was relief that a deal had finally been reached, Italy’s Corriere della Sera described it as “a Christmas present for everyone”. At a difficult moment, in a complicated world, there is no room for hatred between friends, wrote Beppe Severgnini.... France’s Le Monde saw the deal as a political victory for Johnson, who it described as an “unsinkable political machine”, if not the unqualified triumph for Britain that he claimed to have pulled off. “His hair is more chaotic than ever, he looks wild at every appearance and seems permanently overwhelmed by events,” the paper said....

Britain’s trade agreement with the European Union removes a 4-1/2-year old fear of crashing out of the bloc without trading arrangements in place, but it will take UK financial markets years to lose their Brexit-inflicted scars.

In a major win for the LGBTQ community, Switzerland lawmakers approved the legalization of same-sex marriage last week. At the same time, the law also allowed transgender people to alter their legal gender at civil registry offices in the country and allows lesbian couples to conceive children using donated sperm, Reuters reports. Despite passing parliament, the same-sex marriage law may have to pass a national referendum in the coming year. However, activists expect a potential referendum to succeed, after a recent survey found support for marriage exceeding 80% in Switzerland. Campaign group Marriage For All posted a statement on their...

The German chancellor has said stores, schools, and day care centers are to close in the run-up to Christmas until January 10. The new rules, agreed with Germany's 16 state leaders, will come into effect from Wednesday. On Sunday, Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that most stores would shut from Wednesday, along with schools and day care centers. The new restrictions will be in effect until at least January 10 to help tackle the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic, which threatens to overwhelm the country's health system. In a news conference that followed a meeting of federal and state leaders,...

China intends to “deepen” its partnership with Russia as a bulwark against the United States over the next year, according to a top diplomat in Beijing.

European Union leaders have a wish list and a message to pass along to Joe Biden — and in an apparent dig at President Trump, hijacked his best-known slogan in doing so: “We want to Make Multilateralism Great Again.” The 27-member bloc’s executive European Commission on Wednesday unveiled proposals aimed at strengthening the transatlantic partnership under a projected Biden administration, underlining its priorities including combating climate change and a U.S. return to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Iran nuclear deal. The proposals touch on the strains recent years have seen in the relationship, although without mentioning Trump by...

Johan van Zyl said Brexit and Covid were a "double whammy" for Toyota. The boss of Toyota's European business has warned that a no-deal Brexit could make its UK plants uncompetitive. Dr Johan van Zyl said such an outcome would create a "very negative investment environment" in Britain and be "very, very negative" for his business....But Mr van Zyl said no decisions on the future of its UK plants - a car factory at Burnaston in Derbyshire and an engine facility at Deeside in North Wales - could be taken until the outcome of trade talks was known. ...Now...

Paris (AFP) - Last month was the hottest November on record as Europe basked in its highest Autumn temperatures in history, the European Union's satellite monitoring service said Monday. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) analysis of surface and air temperatures found that November 2020 was 0.8C warmer than the 30-year average of 1981-2010 -- more than 0.1C hotter than the previous record. "These records are consistent with the long-term warming trend of the global climate," said C3S director Carlo Buontempo. "All policy-makers who prioritise mitigating climate risks should see these records as alarm bells and consider more seriously than...

NEW YORK, November 27 (C-Fam) The European Commission intends to unleash a barrage of policies to impose LGBT uniformity across the European Union, including through the threat of sanctions. The powerful European Commission announced that it wants to make “hate speech” and “hate crimes” EU crimes by 2021 and to impose mutual recognition of “rainbow families” across the European Union by 2022. The EU Commission made the announcement in its first-ever EU-wide strategy for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, non-binary, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) equality on November 12. Alongside the pledge to legislate “hate crimes” and “rainbow families” the strategy sets...

Berlin — Six former European diplomats are calling on European governments to coordinate efforts to urge an incoming Biden administration to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, from which President Trump withdrew in 2018, and to agree with the regime in Tehran on steps for mutual compliance. The call comes amid fears that Friday’s assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh could complicate attempts to restore the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). “In response to reimposed U.S. sanction [sic] since 2018, Iran has increased its nuclear activities and continues to step away from its commitments under the...

US President-elect Joe Biden’s first Cabinet appointments have been seen as welcome news for many leading politicians in Europe. The fact that so many Obama administration alumni, including Biden himself, are set to return to the White House indicates a departure from the often-fraught ties between the US and European Union during the era of Donald Trump. Portugal’s foreign minister, Augusto Santos Silva, told DW that it was important the EU rebuild what he called the “trans-Atlantic bond.” Brussels must “seize the momentum to restore the relationship between the Europeans and the Americans as a relationship of allies,” he said....

More than 120 Islamists in Germany pose a "high risk," according to the country's investigative police agency. A deadly attack in Dresden last month forced authorities to increase surveillance of dangerous Islamists. In response to a parliamentary question by the Green Party, Germany's BKA Federal Criminal Police Office revealed there are currently 124 "high risk" Islamists at large in the country. The agency also listed 151 people as posing a "moderate risk." The BKA's responses were published in Die Welt newspaper on Saturday, which reported that police believe the Islamists could carry out politically motivated crimes, including violent attacks. The...

"It is a very unusual day", said Social Democrat MP Helge Lindh as he approached the German Bundestag by foot Wednesday morning. He was referring to crowds of protesters gathering outside the parliament building. Their goal was to stop the new infection protection law, intended to make it easier for the government to swiftly introduce lockdown measures in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. Several hundred demonstrators defied bans to protest outside the parliament buildings and in the surrounding government district. Some protesters even tried to block access to the building, before the protests were dissolved by police. "It must...

BALLINA, Ireland - Some 3,000 miles east of Delaware, nestled inland from Ireland's wild Atlantic coast, lies the small town of Ballina, the ancestral home of President-elect Joe Biden. Since his projected win, the close-knit town of 10,000 people in County Mayo has erupted in joy over the success of the man they claim as their own. American flags fly on street corners, a large painted Biden mural overlooks the town square, while photographs of a beaming Biden hang proudly in shop windows, with slogans that read: "Our man in the White House." In 2016, he brought his children and...