Sunday, December 22, 2019

European Union Digest: Italy, Greece, Russia and the United Kingdom


Italy and Greece
            The United Nations Secretary General praised Italy last week for its migrant rescues that have saved tens of thousands of lives, but said that the Italy and Greece have not been financially supported adequately for their efforts by the European Union.

Russia
            The European Parliament blamed the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact for contributing to the Second World War in a resolution last week.  Because of the pact, the Soviets conquered the Baltic States and, after the German invasion of Poland from the West, the Soviet Union invaded Russia from the East.  Russian Federation tyrant Vladimir Putin, an ex-Soviet intelligence officer, who reacted angrily to the resolution, has been trying to minimize the role of the Nazi-Soviet pact.  He regards the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 to have been a disaster and has been attempting to rehabilitate the Soviet image and to reconstitute the Soviet empire.

           Meanwhile, the United States has imposed economic sanctions on the Europeans because of their acceptance of natural gas through a new Russian pipeline.  Russia uses its supply of energy as political leverage.  Russias resources benefit its oligarchs, not its people.

United Kingdom
           The withdrawal bill for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union was approved preliminarily by the House of Commons last week.  It must also be approved by the House of Lords, the upper chamber of Parliament.  The deal commits the UK to leave the EU by the end of January and to conclude a free trade deal by the end of 2020, without any delays, meaning that the lack of a deal could leave the British without any trade relations with the EU.  The deal follows the elections that gave a majority to the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who was elected on a mandate to complete the withdrawal approved by voters in June of 2016 to leave the EU.

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