The European Union and Young Entrepreneurs Palestine launched a new youth initiative "Yalla Shabab" that includes several activities in partnership with Palestinian youth in the West Bank and Gaza such as lectures at Palestinian universities about the current affairs, volunteer days, cultural activities, and a reporting competition on water issues for young Palestinian journalists, an EU press release said ...

The European Union (EU) should take resolute action in response to the latest constitutional changes adopted in the Hungarian parliament, Human Rights Watch said today. The changes adopted on March 11, 2013, respond directly to a series of critical rulings in 2012 by Hungary’s Constitutional Court, which struck down problematic laws introduced by the government. Instead of respecting those rulings, the gove ...

Pressenza is endorsing the European Initiative for Media Pluralism.  We call on all readers of Pressenza in the European Union to go to the website and sign the initiative.  The campaign requires 1 million signatures. On February 7th, a pan-European coalition of citizens and nearly one hundred media groups, professional bodies, Independent Journalists and Civil Society Organisations from across the continen ...

The European Union should urge President Vladimir Putin at the upcoming EU-Russia summit meeting to end the crackdown on Russia’s civil society, Human Rights Watch said today. The 30th summit meeting since two sides started meeting regularly will be on December 21, 2012, in Brussels. “The EU should convey a clear sense of alarm at the crackdown of the past six months on Russia’s vibrant civil society,” said ...

A general strike is underway across Europe today as millions are protesting spending cuts and tax hikes they say have deepened the region’s economic crisis. Spanish and Portuguese workers are coordinating their strike with work stoppages underway in Greece, Italy, France and Belgium. We go to Madrid for an update from independent journalist María Carrión. She notes the general strike comes after a 53-year-o ...

“For a peacemaking bloc, this is a highly militarized one” The IPB finds the award of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union surprising in that it awards a prize not to a head of state but to an entire bloc of states, thus making it difficult to identify the real recipient. Is the EU really a 'champion of peace’, as Nobel conceived it? Or is it a club of states with many contradictory impulses and ...

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2012 is to be awarded to the European Union (EU). The union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe. In the inter-war years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee made several awards to persons who were seeking reconciliation between Germany ...