Free Republic

Xi Jinping has offered Europe new trade partnerships and promised to uphold the “values” of the United Nations. The move is an apparent attempt to capitalise on the continent’s growing rift with the United States. On Tuesday, Sir Keir Starmer became the latest leader to travel to Beijing after Mark Carney and Petteri Orpo, the prime ministers of Canada and Finland. In a meeting with Mr Orpo on Tuesday, the Chinese president said China and Europe were “partners, not adversaries” and invited Finnish companies to “swim in the vast ocean of the Chinese market”. He also appeared to snub Donald...

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre replied Monday to President Donald Trump’s highly controversial letter linking his desire to acquire Greenland to being snubbed for the Nobel Peace Prize, which is given out by a committee of five chosen by the Norwegian parliament. “I can confirm that this is a text message that I received yesterday afternoon from President Trump. It came in response to a short text message from me to President Trump sent earlier on the same day, on behalf of myself and the President of Finland Alexander Stubb,” Støre replied, adding: "In our message to Trump we...

A permanent seat on US President Donald Trump's "Board of Peace" aimed at resolving conflicts will cost countries $1 billion each, according to its charter. Invited world leaders include Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hungarian premier Viktor Orban and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. US President Donald Trump's government has asked countries to pay $1 billion for a permanent spot on his "Board of Peace" aimed at resolving conflicts, according to its charter, seen Monday by AFP. The White House has asked various world leaders to sit on the board, chaired by Trump himself, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Hungarian premier...

Donald Tusk’s government has replaced the words “woman” and “man” in key official documents with gender-neutral terms so that same-sex marriages conducted elsewhere can be recognised in Poland. This follows the European Court of Justice’s November ruling that Poland must recognise a gay couple’s foreign marriage despite the country itself forbidding same-sex marriage. But a host of politicians and legal experts have argued that Warsaw was not obliged to introduce this change of language. Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski, however, appeared to concede that the move was voluntary, saying his team “wanted to” recognise same-sex marriages. In a statement released...

Summary Industry calls on EU to consider never-before-used 'Anti-Coercion Instrument' Current tariff regime already costing German companies billions U.S. is Germany's top export destination BERLIN, Jan 18 (Reuters) - German industry reacted with anger on Sunday to U.S. President Donald Trump's planned use of tariffs to crank up the pressure on Denmark to sell Greenland, calling on Europe not to cave in to his demands.Trump's threat to implement a wave of increasing tariffs on European allies until the U.S. is allowed to buy the strategically important island derails a period of relative calm for businesses after Brussels and Washington agreed...

The return of hard-power politics is no longer a theoretical debate for Europe. From U.S. military action in Venezuela to President Donald Trump’s renewed pressure over Greenland, long-standing assumptions about a rules-based international order are being openly tested as geopolitical competition sharpens. Sir Robin Niblett, Distinguished Fellow at Chatham House, told TVP World’s On the Record that the Trump administration represents a fundamental break with decades of U.S. alliance policy. “This is a U.S. administration that believes in ‘might is right,’” Niblett said. “The view of President Trump himself is that alliances are sources of leverage, not sources of solidarity.”...

Davos (Switzerland) (AFP) – The collective wealth of the planet's billionaires soared to a record level in 2025, charity Oxfam reported Monday, warning of "highly dangerous" political consequences as the global elite gathers for the World Economic Forum. US President Donald Trump's policies in particular spurred the fortunes of the ultra-rich, which jumped 16.2 percent in the first year of his second term to $18.3 trillion, the NGO said in a report released each year ahead of the Davos forum. "Actions of the Trump presidency including the championing of deregulation and undermining agreements to increase corporate taxation have benefited the...

On Jan. 1, Bulgaria became the eurozone’s 21st member when it gave up its 145-year-old currency, the lev, for the euro. In Sofia and Brussels, this development was roundly celebrated as another step in the European Union’s economic and political integration. What went largely unnoticed, however, is the extent to which Bulgaria’s adoption of the euro represents a strategic blow for the Kremlin. After years of sustained effort to block Sofia from joining the eurozone, Moscow failed to prevent a decision that anchors Bulgaria more deeply and irreversibly within the European project. The currency switch not only exposed the limits...

US President Donald Trump has renewed his threat to use military force to bring the Arctic island under American control Denmark has begun sending military personnel to Greenland, and allied reinforcements are expected to follow, Danish media reported on Wednesday.Greenlandic and Danish authorities announced that Danish military forces will expand their presence on the island and continue conducting exercises with allies throughout 2026.Greenlanders should expect to see more military planes, troops and ships in Greenland “including from NATO allies,” the statement reads.Danish Minister Defence Troels Lund Poulsen said on Wednesday afternoon that more countries were inbound for Greenland. Sweden...

Longtime Greenlanders have told the Daily Mail they are furious with President Donald Trump for once again floating the possibility of taking over their country. Trump revived talk about the United States asserting formal control over Greenland on Sunday, one day after US soldiers captured Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and brought the deposed leader back to New York to face a litany of criminal charges. 'It's so strategic,' Trump told reporters on Air Force One. 'We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it. Jørgen Bay-Kastrup is the CEO...

“Civil death” was a punishment under ancient French law—abolished in 1854—that extinguished the legal personality of the convicted individual: loss of property, family rights, and civil existence, while leaving the person physically alive. Civil death—cruel, total, annihilating—was believed to belong to a bygone era. The European Union has just reinvented it—and made it worse. The case of Swiss Colonel Jacques Baud, who has been struck with civil death by the EU, first caught my attention. By a sovereign decision dated December 15, 2024, the EU banned Mr. Baud from its territory and “froze” all his assets. However hard I searched,...

Spain is ready to send troops to Palestine for peacekeeping “when the opportunity presents itself,” just as it is willing to deploy forces to Ukraine, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Thursday. “I will propose to parliament, when the opportunity presents itself, that we send peacekeeping troops to Palestine, once we can see how to advance this task of pacification,” he told a gathering of Spanish ambassadors in Madrid. “Of course, we have not forgotten Palestine and the Gaza Strip… Spain must actively participate in rebuilding hope in Palestine. The situation there remains intolerable.” …

But who wants to die for Big Brother’s woke State? Oliver JJ Lane, a writer and editor for Breitbart London, writes frequently about the growing censorship regime in the U.K., the public’s distrust of both institutional government and Establishment politicians of all labels, the official cover-up of Muslim “grooming” gangs that target and rape British children, and the increasing backlash of native Britons against a ruling class that prioritizes “multiculturalism” and “diversity” over everything else. A running theme of his articles is that the U.K. is headed for civil war. Last summer, Lane wrote a piece with this provocative headline:...

The State Department announced Tuesday it was barring five Europeans it accused of leading efforts to pressure US tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints. The Europeans, described by Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “radical” activists and “weaponized” nongovernmental organizations, fell afoul of a new visa policy announced in May that restricts the entry of foreigners deemed responsible for the censorship of protected speech in the United States. “For far too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose,” Rubio posted on X. “The Trump administration will no...

As the Euro-Globalist failing leaders try to whip their countries into an anti-Russia Frenzy, Germany is trying to come out of this process as the country with the largest military and – it appears – the meanest intelligence services. (snip) “Spies will also be allowed to install spyware on computers belonging to enemy suspects and secretly enter their homes. When operating overseas, spies will be allowed to install tracking devices on enemy technology or weaponry – or destroy it altogether.”

Police, who held a line at the very gate of the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium on Thursday were pelted with potatoes by angry farmers worried a new free trade deal will see their livelihoods and industry destroyed. A government-authorized protest for 50 tractors in Brussels turned into a demonstration with “around 1,000” tractors present and over 7,000 farmers on Thursday. While the protest largely passed off without incident, there were clashes at the European Parliament building, where farmers threw potatoes and eggs and received tear gas and water cannon in return. […] The farmers are protesting the forthcoming EU-Mercosur...

What is now unfolding in France may soon drag the entire Eurozone into deep turmoil. The country is staggering through a fiscal crisis while locked in a political stalemate that seems impossible to break. In the bond market, the clock is ticking loudly as France’s public debt spirals out of control. This week, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu celebrated a textbook Pyrrhic victory. On Tuesday, the National Assembly narrowly approved his draft for next year’s social budget. But the win came at a steep price: sweeping concessions that will only worsen an already explosive fiscal situation. Strange coalitionsWith 247 votes in...

A Swiss wind instrument repairman is serving a ten-day jail sentence after refusing to pay a fine imposed for a comment he made on Facebook about biological sex. Emanuel Brünisholz, from Burgdorf in the canton of Bern, responded to a December 2022 post by Swiss National Councillor Andreas Glarner, writing: “If you excavate LGBTQI people after 200 years, you will only find men and women among the skeletons; everything else is a mental illness that was fostered by the curriculum!” As we reported, the comment, which stressed the immutability of biological sex, triggered complaints from activists who accused him of...

The European Union on Thursday handed Ukraine a long list of reforms needed to join the bloc, determined to push the process forward despite the ongoing war and objections from EU member Hungary. Top EU officials and diplomats meeting in Lviv, in western Ukraine, said a list of demands covering roughly half of the required reforms would allow progress while formal negotiations remain blocked by Budapest. EU membership has become the central goal for Ukraine’s effort to anchor itself to the West as NATO prospects stall. Here’s a look at the main challenges on Ukraine’s road to the European Union....

Ursula von der Leyen also said she has always had "a very good working relationship" with US presidentsBRUSSELS, December 12. /TASS/. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the US president should not interfere into democratic processes in the EU member countries. "It is not on us, when it comes to elections, to decide who the leader of the country will be, but on the people of this country <…> That’s the sovereignty of the voters, and this must be protected," the European Commission president told Politico in an interview. "Nobody else is supposed to interfere, without any question."...