Europe

Europe has a legal cap (0.9%) on the fee the credit card companies charge to the merchants. In the US there is no limit, so merchants get hammered with fees of ~3—5%. US credit cards often offer a 1% kickback to cardholders for using their card. Some credit cards offer as much as 5% as a kickback on certain categories of purchases, like groceries. Some credit cards also charge a zero percent markup on foreign currency exchange.

So if you use a forex-free card with rewards in Europe on a purchase that has a rebate that exceeds 1%, the merchant only absorbs 0.9% of the cost. The bank loses 4.1% on a 5% rebate.

Or am I missing something? The bank obviously still profits from purchases in categories with a lower rebate, and late fees and interest.. but of course only if you make that happen.

Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal (TK) has ruled that European Union energy and climate regulations are incompatible with the Polish constitution and breach national sovereignty in determining energy policy.

The Tribunal found that EU institutions, including the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), had exceeded their competences by interpreting EU treaties in a way that significantly impacts Poland’s ability to choose its energy sources independently.

Interpretations of EU law “cannot mean that Poland loses control over the scope of its delegated competences, and thus that there are areas in which its sovereignty (here: energy) is not protected”, the court said in a statement announcing its decision.

However, the ruling is unlikely to have any real effect for now given that the current government, a coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, does not recognise the TK’s legitimacy due to it containing judges unlawfully appointed by the former Law and Justice (PiS) administration.

The case was brought by a group of opposition lawmakers led by Sebastian Kaleta, a PiS MP and former deputy justice minister. The motion challenged the compatibility of EU climate rules – including Directive 2003/87/EC, which created the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) – with the Polish constitution.

The MPs argued that, although Poland had transferred some powers to Brussels, it should retain sovereignty over critical energy decisions. They claimed that mandatory participation in the EU ETS restricts economic freedom and undermines the state’s ability to ensure energy security.

They also warned that EU decision-making processes, which do not require unanimity in the European Council on issues affecting Poland’s energy mix, might breach the limits of competence conferred on the EU and undermine the primacy of the Polish constitution.

In its ruling, the TK agreed with the motion’s core arguments. It held that the CJEU had extended the interpretation of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union beyond the conferred competences, infringing on national sovereignty.

“Competences not conferred on the European Union belong to the member states themselves, and the EU can only act on the basis of the principle of subsidiarity, subject to the scrutiny of national parliaments at all times,” the court said.

Consequently, the TK found this interpretation of EU law to be incompatible with the Polish constitution, emphasising that Poland cannot lose control over the scope of delegated powers, especially in such a key area as energy sovereignty.

The TK, however, discontinued proceedings relating specifically to the ETS “due to the incomplete, from a formal point of view, definition of the object under verification”.

The TK concluded its statement by stating that it was now up to the Polish legislature and executive to take “appropriate public law measures” to implement the decision, which enters into force upon its publication.

However, it is the government that is responsible for publishing TK rulings, and it refuses to do so due to given that some of the tribunal’s judges were illegitimately appointed under PiS.

The ruling could still reverberate in Polish politics, however. The PiS-aligned president-elect, Karol Nawrocki, who takes office in August, said last month that the TK’s decision on this case could be a way to lower the electricity prices by 33% – one of his campaign promises.

He also pledged to hold a referendum on withdrawing from the EU’s Green Deal – a set of policies aimed at reaching climate neutrality by 2050 – and reaffirmed his support for coal, which remains Poland’s main source of electricity generation and is also widely used for heating homes.

PiS politicians welcomed the verdict, insisting that it means that Poland does not have to implement the Green Deal.

“The EU has not been given the competence to decide without the consent of Poland which energy sources we can use and what fiscal burdens may be imposed on individual sources,” Kaleta wrote on X. “This opens the path for a radical reduction in electricity and heating prices now.”

The former justice minister in the PiS government, Zbigniew Ziobro, meanwhile, challenged Tusk, asking if he would “break the law again and hide the verdict to drive Poles into poverty” or “will you behave as you should?”

The government has so far not commented on the TK’s ruling.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/13846275

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/31536291

MADRID (AP) — Spain has canceled a deal for anti-tank missile systems that were to be manufactured in Madrid by a subsidiary of an Israeli company, in a bid to move away from Israeli military technology, the Defense Ministry said Tuesday.

I was startled to find this gem in EU directive 2019/1024 Art.9 ¶1:

Where possible, Member States shall facilitate the cross-linguistic search for documents, in particular by enabling metadata aggregation at Union level.

Even if you neglect the “cross-linguistic” specification, merely making public documents searchable is a huge leap of progress in the EU. And I think all member states are currently breaking that law for the most part, as we are generally forced to rely on private sector ad surveillance garbage from Google and Bing to find most public sector docs.

Sure there are a few scattered search tools for some very specific collections of documents. But most public documents are not at all indexed in any publicly administered search tool.

Of course the “cross-linguistic” specification is quite interesting because document translations are sometimes performed but the result is often not shared and even more often not searchable. E.g., for some reason a university or institution in Belgium (possibly public sector) went to the effort of creating a good English version of a big piece of the Belgian Economic Code. I was lucky to stumble into it out in the wild. Per the directive (which is hopefully transposed into national law), someone who searches for that section of Belgian economic code should get a reference to the unofficial English version along with the French and Dutch versions. But they certainly do not because the national legal statutes search site is hard-coded for just French and Dutch.

This touches on a recent question I asked. If the EU were to obtain an English version of transposed directives, in principle they should be furnishing that to the public. There’s one snag here though: the open data directive seems to exclude the EU itself from Art.9.

Right-wing opposition presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki has won Poland’s presidential election, official results show. With 100% of districts having reported results, Nawrocki won 50.89% of the vote against 49.11% for his centrist, government-aligned rival, Rafał Trzaskowski.

Turnout stood at 71.63%, which is a record for a Polish presidential election, beating the 68.23% seen in 1995. It is also the second-highest turnout among all post-1989 Polish elections, behind only the 74.38% at the 2023 parliamentary election.

The outcome represents a remarkable victory for Nawrocki, a political novice who had never previously stood for elected office and trailed Trzaskowski in the polls for virtually the entire campaign. It will also have a huge influence on how Poland is governed during his five-year term.

Trzaskowski, who is deputy leader of Poland’s main ruling party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), would have worked closely with the ruling coalition of PO Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

However, Nawrocki, technically an independent but whose candidacy was supported by the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, is likely to wield his veto and other presidential powers to stymie the government’s agenda, just as the current PiS-aligned incumbent Andrzej Duda has done.

Trzaskowski, a multilingual former minister for European affairs and member of the European Parliament, would also have favoured closer relations with Brussels while Nawrocki – who was endorsed by the Trump administration during the campaign – is a eurosceptic who favours strong ties with Washington.

Sunday’s run-off vote came two weeks after Trzaskowski and Nawrocki had emerged as the top two candidates among 13 who stood in the first round two weeks earlier.

The initial exit poll, published immediately as voting ended at 9 p.m., placed Trzaskowski narrowly ahead, on 50.3%. However, with a margin of error of around 2 percentage points, that poll made the result too close to call.

Updated versions of the exit poll published later on Sunday and in the early hours of Monday – which also included the first official results as they began to filter through – showed a reversal of the situation, with Nawrocki now leading on 50.7%. That led many analysts to call the win for Nawrocki.

Among the first to congratulate Nawrocki on Monday morning was Duda, whose second and final term in office ends in August this year.

“It was a difficult, sometimes painful, but incredibly courageous fight for Poland, for how the affairs of our homeland are to be conducted,” wrote Duda, who endorsed Nawrocki during the campaign. “Thank you for this heroic fight until the last minute…Thank you…for the victory! Bravo!”

Duda, who himself defeated Trzaskowski at the 2020 presidential election, also thanked the losing candidate for his “determination in the fight for the presidency…[and] willingness to take responsibility for Poland”.

Neither Nawrocki nor Trzaskowski have yet commented on the result, but the first foreign leader to issue congratulations to Nawrocki was Petr Pavel, president of the neighbouring Czech Republic.

“I believe that, under his leadership, Poland will continue to develop its democratic and pro-Western direction and that our countries will continue their mutually beneficial cooperation,” wrote Pavel.

The final election results must also be confirmed by the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs.

However, that process is shrouded in controversy because the chamber – which was created as part of the PiS party’s judicial reforms when it was in power – is regarded as illegitimate by Tusk’s government.

An attempt by the ruling coalition to change the way that the presidential election results are validated by the Supreme Court was vetoed in March this year by Duda

Sunday’s run-off vote comes at the end of a months-long campaign that has seen the interrelated issues of security and migration at the forefront.

The war in neighbouring Ukraine has seen both candidates pledge to continue efforts to bolster Poland’s defence capabilities through expansion and modernisation of the armed forces.

Nawrocki, however, has taken a much tougher line regarding Ukraine itself, including signing a pledge not to ratify its accession to NATO if he becomes president. Tusk, as well as Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, criticised that decision, saying that it echoed Russian demands.

Both candidates have also pledged to clamp down on immigration and on the support given to immigrants already in Poland, though again Nawrocki has taken tougher positions.

Trzaskowski, meanwhile, has pledged that, if he were to become president, he would seek to sign bills liberalising the abortion law, introducing same-sex civil partnerships and undoing PiS’s judicial reforms.

Nawrocki, by contrast, holds deeply conservative views on social issues and has pledged not to sign any bills ending the current near-total ban on abortion.

During the final stages of the campaign, Nawrocki was hit by a series of scandals. It came to light that he had lied about only having one apartment. Not only did he own a second, but various questions came to light over how he had come to possess it and how he treated the elderly, disabled man living there.

Subsequently, a leading news website, Onet, reported that Nawrocki had helped procure prostitutes for guests at a luxury hotel where he worked as a security guard. Nawrocki denied the claims – based on testimony by anonymous former colleagues – and pledged to sue Onet.

Meanwhile, Trzaskowski faced questions after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of zloty had been spent on Facebook adverts supporting him and attacking Nawrocki.

The provenance of that money remains unclear, but there is a chance it came from abroad, which would be illegal under Polish election law. Trzaskowski has insisted that he and his staff had no involvement in or knowledge of the campaign.

Right-wing opposition presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki has won Poland’s presidential election, official results show. With 100% of districts having reported results, Nawrocki won 50.89% of the vote against 49.11% for his centrist, government-aligned rival, Rafał Trzaskowski.

Turnout stood at 71.63%, which is a record for a Polish presidential election, beating the 68.23% seen in 1995. It is also the second-highest turnout among all post-1989 Polish elections, behind only the 74.38% at the 2023 parliamentary election.

The outcome represents a remarkable victory for Nawrocki, a political novice who had never previously stood for elected office and trailed Trzaskowski in the polls for virtually the entire campaign. It will also have a huge influence on how Poland is governed during his five-year term.

Trzaskowski, who is deputy leader of Poland’s main ruling party, the centrist Civic Platform (PO), would have worked closely with the ruling coalition of PO Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

However, Nawrocki, technically an independent but whose candidacy was supported by the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, is likely to wield his veto and other presidential powers to stymie the government’s agenda, just as the current PiS-aligned incumbent Andrzej Duda has done.

Trzaskowski, a multilingual former minister for European affairs and member of the European Parliament, would also have favoured closer relations with Brussels while Nawrocki – who was endorsed by the Trump administration during the campaign – is a eurosceptic who favours strong ties with Washington.

Sunday’s run-off vote came two weeks after Trzaskowski and Nawrocki had emerged as the top two candidates among 13 who stood in the first round two weeks earlier.

The initial exit poll, published immediately as voting ended at 9 p.m., placed Trzaskowski narrowly ahead, on 50.3%. However, with a margin of error of around 2 percentage points, that poll made the result too close to call.

Updated versions of the exit poll published later on Sunday and in the early hours of Monday – which also included the first official results as they began to filter through – showed a reversal of the situation, with Nawrocki now leading on 50.7%. That led many analysts to call the win for Nawrocki.

Among the first to congratulate Nawrocki on Monday morning was Duda, whose second and final term in office ends in August this year.

“It was a difficult, sometimes painful, but incredibly courageous fight for Poland, for how the affairs of our homeland are to be conducted,” wrote Duda, who endorsed Nawrocki during the campaign. “Thank you for this heroic fight until the last minute…Thank you…for the victory! Bravo!”

Duda, who himself defeated Trzaskowski at the 2020 presidential election, also thanked the losing candidate for his “determination in the fight for the presidency…[and] willingness to take responsibility for Poland”.

Neither Nawrocki nor Trzaskowski have yet commented on the result, but the first foreign leader to issue congratulations to Nawrocki was Petr Pavel, president of the neighbouring Czech Republic.

“I believe that, under his leadership, Poland will continue to develop its democratic and pro-Western direction and that our countries will continue their mutually beneficial cooperation,” wrote Pavel.

The final election results must also be confirmed by the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs.

However, that process is shrouded in controversy because the chamber – which was created as part of the PiS party’s judicial reforms when it was in power – is regarded as illegitimate by Tusk’s government.

An attempt by the ruling coalition to change the way that the presidential election results are validated by the Supreme Court was vetoed in March this year by Duda

Sunday’s run-off vote comes at the end of a months-long campaign that has seen the interrelated issues of security and migration at the forefront.

The war in neighbouring Ukraine has seen both candidates pledge to continue efforts to bolster Poland’s defence capabilities through expansion and modernisation of the armed forces.

Nawrocki, however, has taken a much tougher line regarding Ukraine itself, including signing a pledge not to ratify its accession to NATO if he becomes president. Tusk, as well as Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, criticised that decision, saying that it echoed Russian demands.

Both candidates have also pledged to clamp down on immigration and on the support given to immigrants already in Poland, though again Nawrocki has taken tougher positions.

Trzaskowski, meanwhile, has pledged that, if he were to become president, he would seek to sign bills liberalising the abortion law, introducing same-sex civil partnerships and undoing PiS’s judicial reforms.

Nawrocki, by contrast, holds deeply conservative views on social issues and has pledged not to sign any bills ending the current near-total ban on abortion.

During the final stages of the campaign, Nawrocki was hit by a series of scandals. It came to light that he had lied about only having one apartment. Not only did he own a second, but various questions came to light over how he had come to possess it and how he treated the elderly, disabled man living there.

Subsequently, a leading news website, Onet, reported that Nawrocki had helped procure prostitutes for guests at a luxury hotel where he worked as a security guard. Nawrocki denied the claims – based on testimony by anonymous former colleagues – and pledged to sue Onet.

Meanwhile, Trzaskowski faced questions after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of zloty had been spent on Facebook adverts supporting him and attacking Nawrocki.

The provenance of that money remains unclear, but there is a chance it came from abroad, which would be illegal under Polish election law. Trzaskowski has insisted that he and his staff had no involvement in or knowledge of the campaign.

Nawrocki, aka the "nationalist" candidate, just won the election in Poland with a very narrow margin.

Nawrocki is formally independent, but is aligned with the PiS party of current president Duda, who were responsible for undermining Polish democracy by among other things stacking the courts with illegitimate judges. As the president has the power to block all judidcal appointments, it does not look like Poland will have their democracy back for the next five years: Duda has simply blocked all judicial appointments rendering the Polish state a lame duck, and in all likelihood Nawrocki will keep up the same obstructionist strategy.

Then again, that's what they voted for.

This is a breaking news story and may be updated as further information becomes available.

As voting closed in Poland’s pivotal presidential election, the exit poll suggests that the final result – expected to be confirmed on Monday – is too close to call. It also indicates that turnout today, at almost 73%, was an all-time record for a presidential election in Poland.

According to the poll, conducted by Ipsos, Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate of the centrist Civic Platform (PO), Poland’s main ruling party, took 50.3% of the vote. That put him fractionally ahead of Karol Nawrocki, who is supported by the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS), on 49.7%.

A separate exit poll by the OGB agency for conservative broadcaster Republika showed the two even closer, with Trzaskowski on 50.2% and Nawrocki on 49.8%.

Whoever is confirmed as the winner will have a huge say in how Poland is governed during their five-year term. Trzaskowski is closely aligned with Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s ruling coalition, and would work closely with it, whereas Nawrocki is likely to wield the presidential veto to stymie the government’s agenda.

Meanwhile, if Ipsos’s estimate of voter turnout, 72.8, is correct, then today’s election will have beaten the record for a Polish presidential election, 68.23%, set in 1995, when Lech Wałęsa was narrowly defeated by Aleksander Kwaśniewski.

It would also be the second-highest turnout among all post-1989 Polish elections, with only the 2023 parliamentary election that brought Tusk’s coalition to power recording a higher figure of 74.38%

The Ipsos exit poll, which was today conducted at almost 1,000 randomly selected polling stations, has in previous elections closely matched the final count. But it does have a margin of error.

In the first round of the current election two weeks ago, Ipsos’s exit poll very accurately predicted the final results for both Trzaskowski and Nawrocki. As the two most popular among the 13 candidates – but with neither winning over 50% of the vote – they proceeded to today’s second-round run-off.

All eyes will now be on the official count, with results rolling in overnight. The head of the National Electoral Commission (PKW), Sylwester Marciniak, said on Friday that they hope to publish final, official results on Monday morning or early afternoon.

The results must also be confirmed by the Supreme Court’s chamber of extraordinary review and public affairs.

However, that process is shrouded in controversy because the chamber – which was created as part of the PiS party’s judicial reforms when it was in power – is regarded as illegitimate by Tusk’s ruling coalition.

An attempt to change the way that the presidential election results are validated by the Supreme Court was vetoed in March this year by the current president, Andrzej Duda, who is a PiS ally. His second and final term in office ends in August.

If either Trzaskowski or Nawrocki decides to challenge today’s result due to any alleged transgressions in vote counting or other aspects of the electoral process, such claims would be considered by the same, contested chamber of the court.

Whatever the final result, the fact that it is so close represents a remarkable performance for Nawrocki, a political novice who has never previously stood for public office. He currently serves as head of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), a state historical body.

Trzaskowski, meanwhile, is a seasoned political operator who finished a close second to Duda in the 2020 presidential election and currently serves as mayor of Poland’s capital, Warsaw. He is also deputy leader of Tusk’s PO party.

Today’s vote comes at the end of a months-long campaign that has seen the interrelated issues of security and migration at the forefront, and has also seen both candidates – but in particular Nawrocki – hit by scandals and controversy.

The war in neighbouring Ukraine has seen both candidates pledge to continue efforts to bolster Poland’s defence capabilities through expansion and modernisation of the armed forces.

Nawrocki, however, has taken a much tougher line regarding Ukraine itself, including signing a pledge not to ratify its accession to NATO if he becomes president. Tusk, as well as Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, criticised that decision, saying that it echoed Russian demands.

Both candidates have also pledged to clamp down on immigration and on the support given to immigrants already in Poland, though again Nawrocki has taken tougher positions.

Trzaskowski, meanwhile, has pledged that, if he becomes president, he will seek to sign bills liberalising the abortion law, introducing same-sex civil partnerships and undoing PiS’s judicial reforms.

During the final stages of the campaign, Nawrocki was hit by a series of scandals. It came to light that he had lied about only having one apartment. Not only did he own a second, but various questions came to light over how he had come to possess it and how he treated the elderly, disabled man living there.

Subsequently, a leading news website, Onet, reported that Nawrocki had helped procure prostitutes for guests at a luxury hotel where he worked as a security guard. Nawrocki denied the claims – based on testimony by anonymous former colleagues – and pledged to sue Onet.

Meanwhile, Trzaskowski faced questions after it emerged that hundreds of thousands of zloty had been spent on Facebook adverts supporting him and attacking Nawrocki.

The provenance of that money remains unclear, but there is a chance it came from abroad, which would be illegal under Polish election law. Trzaskowski has insisted that he and his staff had no involvement in or knowledge of the campaign.

Poland holds a knife-edge second round of the presidential election on Sunday as the country chooses between a centrist liberal and a right-wing nationalist.

Turnout holds the key to the contest between Rafal Trzaskowski of ruling centrists Civic Coalition (KO) and Karol Nawrocki, backed by nationalists Law and Justice (PiS).

Parliament holds most power in Poland but the president can veto legislation so the vote is being watched closely in neighbouring Ukraine, as well as in Russia, the U.S. and across the EU.

Voting began at 7 a.m. (0500 GMT) and is due to end at 9 p.m., with exit polls published soon afterwards. The electoral commission says it hopes final results will be announced on Monday morning or early afternoon.

Almost 29 million Poles are eligible to vote. Over 32,000 district electoral commissions were established in the country and 511 abroad.

Opinion polls show that the difference between the candidates is within the margin of error.

#Election silence

Poland observes strict election silence laws (otherwise known as an election blackout), which ban political agitation and canvassing, as well as the publication of poll results. The election silence period went into effect at midnight at the turn of Friday and Saturday, and will conclude at the moment the polling stations close.

The only data regarding the vote that can be expected to be released during the day by the National Electoral Commission (PKW), a permanent body tasked with overseeing the organization and validity of the electoral process, are the results regarding the turnout at noon and 5 p.m.

Exit poll results can therefore be expected at 9 p.m., unless PKW extends the election silence period.

This is a rare occurrence, however, usually connected to the electoral process being in some way hampered, for example, in cases when a polling station had to be closed due to unforeseen circumstances, preventing the voters from casting their ballots.

#Results

PKW will subsequently release official partial results as the individual polling stations submit their tallies, with the final outcome of the vote most likely to be expected sometime on Monday.

Three doctors have been charged over the death of a pregnant woman, named only as Dorota, while she was in hospital under their care. Prosecutors found that “there was a failure to undertake appropriate diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, which led to the patient’s death”.

Dorota’s death in 2023 prompted mass protests against Poland’s near-total abortion ban, which activists blamed for the doctors’ decision not to terminate the pregnancy despite it threatening the woman’s life. It also led the then government to take action to ensure pregnant women receive appropriate medical care.

Dorota, who was aged 33, was admitted to John Paul II Hospital in the city of Nowy Targ in May 2023 while five months pregnant after her waters had broken prematurely. She died a few days later as a result of septic shock.

According to the findings of prosecutors, a few hours before her death, an ultrasound scan showed that the foetus had already died, reports the Polish Press Agency (PAP).

The state commissioner for patients’ rights concluded that Dorota’s rights had been violated both in terms of not receiving appropriate medical care and not being provided with correct information about her health condition.

On Friday, prosecutors announced that they had filed charges against three gynaecology and obstetrics doctors involved in Dorota’s care, one of whom was at the time head of the hospital department.

All were charged with exposing the patient to immediate danger of loss of life and one was additionally charged with unintentionally causing her death. Both of those crimes are punishable by up to five years in prison.

A lawyer representing Dorota’s family, Jolanta Budzowska, welcomed the charges but added that the “liability of medical personnel is only one dimension of this tragedy”.

“The source of medical errors is often unclear law, which requires change,” said Budzowska. “The arbitrary interpretation of the applicable regulations creates a risk for both doctors and patients.”

Budzowska is also representing the family of another woman, Izabela, whose death in hospital in 2021 while pregnant also prompted mass protests against the abortion law.

“After Izabela’s death, recommendations were issued by the health minister,” noted the lawyer. “But these did not prevent Dorota’s death, and subsequent positions and standards issued by medical associations do not solve the problem of the lack of safety for women.”

Earlier this year, a medical court suspended three doctors from practising medicine after finding negligence in their treatment of Izabela, including their decision not to terminate her pregnancy despite signs of the development of sepsis.

Supporters of Poland’s strict abortion law argue that it is not to blame for such incidents because it stillincreas allows pregnancies to be terminated if they threaten the mother’s life or health. They say the tragedies are the result of medical malpractice.

However, protests against the law, which was toughened in 2021 after a constitutional court ruling, argue that it has created an atmosphere in which doctors are fearful of legal consequences for performing abortions.

In 2021, only 107 legal abortions were carried out in Poland (and most of them before the new law went into force in late January) compared to over 1,000 in 2020, when the previous law was in place. Since then, the number of terminations has increased, though remains well below the previous level.

The current government, which came to power in December 2023, has pledged to liberalise the abortion law. However, it has so far failed to do so, as it has been unable to find agreement between more conservative and liberal elements of the ruling camp on what form the new law should take.

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/2902507

Archived

Great Britain, France, Germany and the United States have lifted restrictions on the types of weapons that can be supplied to Ukraine, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced on May 26. (video)

The move clears the way for the EU to send its most powerful and long-range missiles to Kyiv that can strike targets deep inside Russian territory, something the allies have been reluctant to do for fears of escalating tensions with the Kremlin and possibly provoking a direct clash between Russia and Nato countries in Europe.

"There are no longer any range restrictions on weapons supplied to Ukraine, not from the British, not from the French, not from us, not from the Americans either. This means that Ukraine can now also defend itself by attacking military positions in Russia, for example,” Merz said during an interview on German television. “It couldn't do that until some time ago, and with very few exceptions, it didn't do that until some time ago. Now it can. In jargon, we call this long-range fire, i.e., equipping Ukraine with weapons that attack military targets in the rear.”

The decision comes the day after Russia launched a devastating missile and drone barrage on Ukraine over the weekend of May 23-25 that largely targeted civilian targets in Kyiv and many other urban centres in Ukraine – amongst the largest attacks since the war started over three years ago.

...

The decision also clears the way for Germany to deliver its powerful Taurus cruise missiles that Kyiv had been asking for, but Berlin had so far been reluctant to supply. Merz didn’t mention the Taurus missiles by name during his interview, but has suggested that unlike former German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he was not against supplying Kyiv with the missile, which can hit Russian targets deep in the rear or could destroy the Kerch bridge connecting Russia to the Crimean peninsula.

Take the anti-spam directive, for example:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32002L0058&qid=1747912567106

The website gives us the directive but makes no references to the member state’s implementations of that. It seems a bit sloppy that visitors have to try manually searching using some private-sector surveillance advertising search tool to find a member state’s version. In Belgium it’s especially a mess because many of the official websites that “publish” laws are access restricted (e.g. Tor users often denied access). Only some segments of the public can reach some websites. We have Moniteur Belge but that involves digging a law out of a large PDF that globs together many unrelated laws and publications.

According to the EC website, the EC has a duty to verify whether the member state’s version was implemented timely and correctly. Is that done in English, or does the EU have native speakers of all languages on staff doing the verification?

I ask because if there is a translation step, then the EU would perhaps have a good quality English translation of member states laws

which I would like access to. To date, I do machine translations which is tedious. And if the source language is Dutch, the translation tends to be quite poor.

Update: perhaps the biggest shit show is this site:

https://www.stradalex.com/

Visiting from a tor exit node with uMatrix installed, that site is in some kind of endless loop. No idea what kind of shitty JavaScript causes this, but it reloads itself non-stop and never renders. Opening the uMatrix UI shows 3rd party js rows popping up and disappearing faster than you can click to give perms. These people should not be allowed to do web service for legal information.

update 2

This page gives some general links to member state’s law pubs, but you are still left with having to dig around for the implementation that corresponds to the EU directive -- if you can get access.

update 3

Found something useful.. this page is openly accessible and has a “National Transposition” link. From there we can do an /advanced search/ and limit the collection to national transposition and search on 32002L0058, for example.

Then it finds no results, which seems a bit broken. But if I simply do a quick search on 32002L0058 then use the “national transposition” link on the left bar, that seems to work. But then in this test case I followed it all the way to a page that said “ Text is not available.”

In fact, “Text is not available” is what I got on 3 of 3 samples. So it’s a crapshoot. Hopefully the EC folks who verify national implementations are not relying on this same mechanism.

A Cypriot cargo ship ran ashore immediately next to a Norwegian household today, and they are currently doing their best to get the ship unstuck. It's a surprisingly soothening live stream.

Via @DreadShips@mastodon.me.uk on Mastodon.

Many member states a daft when it comes to GDPR enforcement. But there are an exceptional few member states that have a Data Protection Authority that actually does their job. E.g., in principle, I might want to file all Article 77 complaints in Norway. Of course, without living there and having no transaction there, it’s outside of the jurisdiction. OTOH, what happens when a company like Microsoft or Google abuses your data and violates the GDPR? I think MS has headquarters in multiple countries: France, Finland, Spain, Norway, Germany, etc. If I have zero confidence in the DPA for the country I am in, can it be effective to direct the GDPR to a another country if MS has a headquarters there? Is there a heirchy of headquarters whereby an ultimate top level headquarters where a corporation is most relevant?

Extremely low river levels in the UK recently have experts concerned about an impending drought.

The UK is also experiencing its driest spring since 1961, as BBC News reported.

According to data from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH), the UK received just 43% of the average rainfall in March, and some rivers — including Mourne, Eden, English Tyne, Conwy and Welsh Dee — have hit their lowest levels ever recorded for the month of March this year.

River levels are expected to continue to remain low through May. Dry conditions and warm weather are also predicted for the next few months, according to UKCEH, prompting more concerns over a summer drought and how that will affect water supply.

“The dry start to May increases the likelihood that low to exceptionally low flows in some areas persist into the summer,” UKCEH reported.

In the UK, low river levels coupled with a lack of reservoir infrastructure puts water supply at risk. As The Guardian reported, there have been no new water reservoirs built in England for at least 30 years, so farmers and companies turn to rivers to draw water when reservoirs run low. When both run low, the demand will outpace supply.

In response, officials are considering water use restrictions, as The Guardian reported.

“This crisis was avoidable. But thanks to corporate greed and regulatory complacency, our reservoirs are running dry and our rivers are polluted with sewage,” James Wallace, CEO of the charity River Action UK, told The Guardian. “Rather than punish the culprits, customers have been told by government they will be fined £1,000 if they break a hosepipe ban. Yet again, the public will bear the costs of a failing water industry.”

A drought map by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre reveals that much of the UK and Ireland is already under a drought watch or warning. While officials have not formally announced a drought or water rationing, some farmers are already feeling the impacts.

“We are having a drought now from an agricultural point of view,” Nick Deane, a farmer based in Norfolk, told BBC News. “We have to ration our water and decide which areas we are going to put that water on in order to keep the crops growing.”

According to the European Commission, the drought risk applies to much of Europe following months of lower-than-average rainfall and higher-than-average temperatures, with northern and western Europe likely to experience continued dry conditions in June. The commission noted that the lower-than-usual river levels across Europe are already having a negative impact on agriculture, energy generation and transport.

Vegetation in some areas is already showing signs of stress, too, meaning the lack of rainfall is harming ecosystems. In the UK, wildfire events in the first four months of 2025 have already surpassed the amount of land burned more than any other year in over 10 years due to extended dry conditions.

archived (Wayback Machine)

cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/5823642

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/ukrainianconflict by /u/rezwenn on 2025-05-14 12:21:07+00:00.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/29751773

I'm not European, so I can't sign (I think), sharing this is the most I can do; but if you and/or someone you know is from Europe and hasn't signed yet Please do!

EDIT: THE THRESHOLD HAS BEEN REACHED!!! LETS FUCKING GOOOOO!!!

cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/post/6024990

Despite progress in several EU member states, conversion practices remain legal in some countries, and even promoted, like in Poland or Hungary, putting thousands of people at risk of psychological trauma, social rejection, and physical abuse.