Europe

Muslims across Europe are grappling with a “worrying surge” of racism that is being fuelled in part by “dehumanising anti-Muslim rhetoric”, the EU’s leading rights agency has said, as it published a survey in which nearly half of the Muslim respondents said they had recently experienced discrimination.

Published on Thursday by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the survey of 9,600 Muslims across 13 member states found that racism and discrimination threads through most aspects of their lives.

People reported children being bullied in school, inequalities in accessing job opportunities and prejudice when it comes to renting or buying homes.

https://archive.is/haF5d

Northvolt has been plagued by problems from incompetent management and poor safety standards to over-reliance on Chinese machinery, according to current and former workers at the cash-strapped Swedish battery maker.

Northvolt grew so fast in terms of employees and projects that processes were chaotic and management often incompetent, most of the workers said.

Since 2021 Northvolt has been involved in 47 workplace accidents involving chemicals classified as particularly dangerous by Sweden’s work environment authority, according to public broadcaster SVT.

As Big Tech’s market power grew, so did its political clout. Now, as the EU tries to rein in the most problematic aspects of Big Tech – from disinformation, targeted advertising to unfair competition practices – the digital giants are lobbying hard to shape new regulations.

Read the full report.

In 'The Lobby Network', Corporate Europe Observatory and Lobbycontrol offer an overview of the tech industry's EU lobbying firepower. For the first time, we map the 'universe' of actors lobbying the EU’s digital economy, from Silicon Valley giants to Shenzhen’s contenders; from firms created online to those making the infrastructure that keeps the internet running; tech giants and newcomers.

We found a wide yet deeply imbalanced ‘universe’:

• with 612 companies, groups and business associations lobbying the EU’s digital economy policies. Together, they spend over €97 million annually lobbying the EU institutions. This makes tech the biggest lobby sector in the EU by spending, ahead of pharma, fossil fuels, finance, and chemicals.
• in spite of the varied number of players, this universe is dominated by a handful of firms. Just ten companies are responsible for almost a third of the total tech lobby spend: Vodafone, Qualcomm, Intel, IBM, Amazon, Huawei, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google spend more than €32 million making their voices heard in the EU.
• out of all the companies lobbying the EU on digital policy, 20 per cent are US based, though this number is likely even higher. Less than 1 per cent have head offices in China or Hong Kong. This implies Chinese firms have so far not invested in EU lobbying quite as heavily as their US counterparts.
• digital industry companies are not just lobbying individually. They are also collectively organised into business and trade associations which are themselves important lobby actors. The business associations lobbying on behalf of Big Tech alone have a lobbying budget that far surpasses that of the bottom 75 per cent of the companies in the digital industry.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/21375406

The yearly rule of law reports were launched five years ago and are presented by the commission as a key weapon in its armoury against democratic backsliding, including corruption and attacks on independent media and judiciary, across the union.

But Liberties, an EU-wide network of civil liberties organisations, pointed on Monday to several “significant deficiencies” and said “swift and decisive action” was now essential if the commission was to be able to uphold the rule of law in the bloc.

“The commission’s annual rule of law report is certainly useful for detecting violations – it’s effective as a monitoring exercise,” said Viktor Kazai, Liberties’ rule of law expert. “It has country-specific recommendations; that’s great.”

Issued in July, this year’s report – which was particularly critical of declining media freedoms in Italy – was reportedly delayed by Ursula von der Leyen as she sought support from Rome for re-election as president of the bloc’s executive.

https://archive.is/7OQh3

In a landmark legal action, a coalition of Palestinian and Dutch civil society organisations has filed a lawsuit against the government of the Netherlands, accusing it of failing to prevent genocide in Gaza and other Israeli violations of international law. The case, brought before a Dutch civil court today, seeks to compel the Netherlands to take decisive action against Israel’s ongoing military operations and the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

At the heart of the legal case are two primary demands: a ban on the export and transit of weapons, weapon parts and dual-use items to Israel, and a prohibition on all Dutch trade and investment relations that support Israel’s unlawful occupation of Palestinian territory.

The lawsuit comes in the wake of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) January 2024 ruling, which found that Israel is committing plausible genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Despite this ruling and numerous international warnings, the Dutch government has failed to take substantive action to prevent further atrocities.

An international summit on Ukraine where Volodymyr Zelenskyy was going to present a “victory plan” to western leaders has been formally postponed – though the Ukrainian president will try to organise a tour of European capitals instead.

Organisers said that the Saturday meeting of about 20 world leaders at the US Ramstein airbase in Germany would be rescheduled, a day after Biden had said he had to stay at home to respond to Hurricane Milton’s landfall in Florida.

Ukrainian sources said that Zelenskyy would travel to meet the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, in Berlin on Friday – and potentially go on to visit other leaders as part of what sources described as a “European tour”.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/44012689

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/43972292

When men go to pee in a public toilet they spend a minute gazing at the wall in front of them, in what many advertisers have seized upon as an opportunity to display posters of their products above the stinking urinals.

But in terms of framing, you'd better ask yourself: Is this really what I want my brand to be associated with?

You might well think twice if you were selling ice cream or toothpaste, so what if your poster was Ursula von der Leyen's face selling EU values?

Because that's the kind of environment in which the European Commission president, other top EU officials, and national EU leaders are posting their images and comments every day when they use X to communicate with press and the EU public.

Even the toilet analogy is too kind.

UK Labour Party managers blocked the words "genocide" and "apartheid" in reference to Israel's conduct against Palestinians from being used in brochures at a side event during its annual conference in Liverpool.

The conference's start was marked by pro-Palestine protests as over 15,000 people marched through the city on Saturday to express their opposition to Britain selling arms to Israel amid its ongoing siege and bombardment of Gaza.

Labour MP Kim Johnson addressed the crowd but was heckled by some protesters who urged her to "get out of the Labour Party".

Meanwhile, another event due to be held on Monday entitled "A new era of defence" is being sponsored by Northrop Grumman, a company that supplies the Israeli military with weapons and missile systems reportedly used on Palestinian civilians.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20503641

Detailed post about FSFE's goals and main topics in 2024.

Table of contents:

• Device Neutrality: the Free Software community “shows its teeth”
• Next Generation Internet and the lack of long-term sustainable funding for Free Software
• Reaching Generation Alpha: Youth Hacking 4 Freedom and Ada & Zangemann
• Policy work: Advocating for Free Sotware
• Legal Support: giving advise to projects and individuals Our work on public awareness
• Join the movement