European Parliament: Final Results EU Elections Watch LIVE

he last European elections had a turnout of just slightly over 43%. The results of the elections will be announced at 10pm GMT today Sunday May 25 when the rest of the EU countries will have voted on who all will take up the 751 seats of the European Parliament.
 
For live updates and material for the press on the European elections click here

EU-Digest

EU-US Trade: Did you know?

Did you know …

• EU and U.S.-based companies account for nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of the top R&D companies worldwide.  (Source: Transatlantic Economy 2014)

• EU-U.S. trade climbed to $787 billion in 2013, double the level of 2000. (Source: Transatlantic Economy 2014)

• The transatlantic economy generates close to $5 trillion in total commercial sales a year and employs up to 15 million workers in mutually “onshored” jobs on both sides of the Atlantic. (Source: Transatlantic Economy 2014)

• The transatlantic economy is the largest and wealthiest market in the world, accounting for over 50 percent of world GDP in terms of value and 40 percent in terms of purchasing power. (Source: Transatlantic Economy 2014)

• The U.S. and Europe are each other’s primary source and destination for foreign direct investment, together accounting for 56.7 percent of the inward stock of foreign direct investment (FDI), and a whopping 71 percent of outward stock of FDI. (Source: Transatlantic Economy 2014)

• U.S. investment in the Netherlands since 2000 was 14 times more than US investment in China during the same period. US investment in the UK was more than 10 times more, and in Ireland nearly six times more, than in China. (Source: Transatlantic Economy 2014)

• Eliminating or harmonizing just one-quarter of current non-tariff barriers in bilateral trade could boost a combined EU and US GDP by $106 billion. (Source: Transatlantic Economy 2014)

• According to a 2013 study, gains from a free trade agreement between the EU and U.S. could add up to a €210 billion (approximately $273 billion) boost to the two economies. (Source: Center for European Policy Research)

• The EU and US together contributed over $120 billion in official development assistance in 2012.  (Sources: OECD, USAID,EuropeAid)

• As of January 2011, nearly 1.7 million refugees from around the world call the US or an EU Member State home. (Source: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees)

• In 2011/12, more than 168,000 students from the US and EU studied abroad on the other side of the Atlantic. (Source:Institute of International Education)

• More than 11 million EU tourists traveled to the US in 2012. (Source: US Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration) ---------------------------------------------------
• EU-Digest

European parliamentary elections: better together

Divided we fall - United we win

This week's European parliament elections are the most important of their kind for years. Since the last vote in 2009, Europe has been buffeted by banking failures and sovereign debt crisis, while Europeans in and out of the eurozone have been compelled to undergo prolonged austerity programmes.

The social damage of these measures, however necessary some may argue they were in economic terms, has been profound, lowering living standards and calling into question the long-term sustainability of European welfare and employment models. Hostility to the European Union has increased to new levels in many nations, fuelled by tensions over migration, and often matched by a wider domestic disillusionment with the national political classes of the member states, whose authority has rarely seemed more compromised.

Meanwhile, the EU is confronted with a foreign policy crisis in Ukraine which exposes the limits of Europe's influence in its own near-abroad. This is resetting relations with Russia into a more confrontational form at the same time as a relatively weakened United States redirects its principal focus towards Asia, and hopes of greater stability in Turkey and the Arab world recede. Europe's defence response is in disarray, with a poll this week showing four Germans in five opposed to future military missions. In such circumstances, elections to a parliament which has just acquired new powers might logically seem a moment of importance, and the way we cast our votes this week a matter of consequence, not least because the parliament can shape the next European commission, which must wrestle with these issues, one of which may include Britain's future in the EU.

In some respects, Europe's politicians have tried to rise to the occasion, although their efforts have been ignored in Britain. Elsewhere, the main European parliamentary blocs have attempted a pan-European debate, in which differing approaches to austerity and its legacies have been clearcut. But the elites' worthy attempts to connect with the public in Europe founder on the reality that the elites are widely and in some ways rightly perceived (the ludicrous Strasbourg-Brussels shuttle, for instance) as part of the problem.

Most of the main party blocs favour shifting more authority to the centre, to the Brussels institutions, the parliament prominent among them. The problem is that the elite debate excludes growing numbers who want far less power at the centre (or none at all), and overlooks the 70% or so of the population in many countries, including Germany and France (where a poll this week found only 39% support for the EU), who do not want more power at the centre and who favour significant reform of the EU.

Read more: European parliament elections: better together | Editorial | Comment is free | The Guardian

Middle East Chaos: Egypt, Libya, Palestine, Syria, Israel - back to square one

Middle East Chaos

It has not been a pretty picture in the Middle East for some time now after the euphoria of the Arab Spring - better still it is a total mess and certainly not a feather on the cap of any EU, Russian or Chinese diplomat, especially not for the cap of the US's Mr.Kerry. 

In Libya when one might have thought the mess there could not have gotten worse, it has. The latest round in the multidimensional chaos that has prevailed since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi was initiated by an ex-general named Khalifa Hiftar, who was trained in the Soviet Union, participated as a junior officer in the coup that brought Gaddafi to power in 1969, later broke with the Libyan dictator, and lived for years in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC, where he apparently also became a U.S. citizen.

Hiftar returned to Libya after Gaddafi was ousted. Now he has put together a force he calls the “Libyan National Army” and aims at removing the interim parliament in Tripoli.

So probably also for Libya there is a new dictatorship in the making?

Israel and the Palestinians were back to square one in the peace process last Friday after the Jewish state torpedoed US-sponsored talks in response to a Fatah-Hamas reconciliation deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set the tone, telling the BBC that Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas could "have peace with Israel or a pact with Hamas (but) he can't have both".

"As long as I'm prime minister of Israel, I will never negotiate with a Palestinian government that is backed by Hamas terrorists that are calling for our liquidation," he added.

In Syria tyrant Bashar Assad may have to stay temporarily as Syrian president despite the death toll in the country’s civil war heading higher than the number killed in Iraq, Tony Blair said recently.

The former Prime Minister branded the situation in Syria an “unmitigated disaster” and insisted the West should intervene in such conflicts.

“We are now in a position where both Assad staying and the Opposition taking over seem bad options,” he said in a speech at Bloomberg HQ in central London.

“Repugnant though it may seem, the only way forward is to conclude the best agreement possible even if it means in the interim President Assad stays for a period.” 

Egypt : In a statement dripping with cynicism, the White House said that Obama was “deeply troubled” by the recent  mass death sentences in Egypt.

“While judicial independence is a vital part of democracy, this verdict cannot be reconciled with Egypt’s obligations under international human rights law,” the White House statement read. It appealed to Sisi and his fellow military rulers to “take a stand against this illogical action.”

Whom do they think they’re kidding? The niceties of “judicial independence” are hardly an issue in Egypt.

The hanging judge Youssef—popularly known as “the butcher”—was installed in a special court created by the junta to do precisely what he is doing. Moreover, the draconian sentences have a very clear logic: they are an act of state terror designed to intimidate the Egyptian masses.

The statement continued: “Since the January 25 Revolution, the Egyptian people have aspired to be represented by a government that rules justly, respects their dignity, and provides economic opportunities. The United States supports these aspirations and wants Egypt’s transition to succeed.”

It seems hardly a coincidence that these mass death sentence came only days after Washington approved the provision of 10 Apache attack helicopters on top of some $650 million in military aid already approved for the Egyptian junta this fiscal year.

This is half of what the administration wanted to supply to the country’s repressive forces, the other half being held up by laws restricting aid to regimes brought to power through military coups.

Obviously the helicopter deal was correctly interpreted by the Egyptian junta as a green light to escalate its brutal crackdown.

All this disaster unfortunately is only the top of the Iceberg when one looks at the total Middle East picture. Maybe only one word to describe this is: total chaos .

EU-Digest

Our EU Digest Poll in relation to this weeks EU Parliamentary Elections which was closed today showed the following results.

The Poll shows a potential strong showing by the so-called Eurosceptic parties while traditional pro-EU political  parties will remain in power.

Our new poll which runs through June 22 asks the question:  

"Do Corporations Have Too Much Influence On Global Governance?"

EU-Digest

European Parliamentary Elections - Eurosceptics: Netherlands' Geert Wilders cuts up EU flag in Bruxelles - by Nikolaj Nielsen

The Mouse which roared

Scissors in hand, anti-EU nationalist Geert Wilders of the Netherlands on Tuesday (20 May) vandalised the European Union flag in front of the European Parliament in Brussels.

In a publicity stunt amid the dozen or so cafes at Place Luxembourg, overlooked by the parliament’s tall glass structures, Wilders cut out a yellow star before unfolding the Dutch flag in its place.

The nationalist, who runs the Dutch Freedom Party, is convinced he will be able to form a new group of eurosceptic MEPs following the upcoming European Parliament elections. He wants the Netherlands to leave the Union, regain its sovereignty, and shut down its borders to asylum seekers.

His other goal - to pull apart the EU from within by forming the anti-EU faction in parliament - will require at least 25 MEPs from seven EU member states.Wilders says he will be meeting with other eurosceptic politicians next week in Brussels to work out a deal.

“It is our task to try to work together to overstep our differences, to not get into fights about our leadership, to overstep ‘our shadows’ as we say in the Netherlands,” he said.

He was short on details.

Note EU-Digest: Europe gets a taste of the type of politicians which represent the Eurosceptic group running in the elections for the European Parliament.

Read more: EUobserver / Netherlands' Geert Wilders cuts up EU flag

Banking Industry: EU - You won’t believe this, but some big banks may have broken the law again – by Jason Karaian

Just as markets were digesting the Euro 1.9 billion (US $2.6 b) penalty imposed on Credit Suisse for helping American clients avoid taxes, news from Brussels suggests that yet another big fine is looming for a few other banking giants. 

Today the European Commission accused JPMorgan, HSBC, and Crédit Agricole with rigging euro interest rates, alleging that they acted in a cartel to manipulate Euribor, a key interbank lending rate.

The three banks refused to settle the antitrust case in December last year, when the commission fined eight other banks and brokers a record €1.7 billion ($2.3 billion) for their roles in the rate-rigging cartel. Settling the case saved the accused 10% of the headline fine, on top of other discounts based on their degree of co-operation with regulators.

JPMorgan, HSBC, and Crédit Agricole must now answer the commission’s charges without the offer of leniency that comes from settling. 

That said, throughout the financial crisis European regulators have been seen as softer than their American counterparts, with Brussels wielding more limited powers and showing less of an appetite to impose big penalties. Even after settling with the EU in last year’s euro interest rate case, Société Générale is challenging its €446 million fine in court, alleging “a manifest error of assessment” in calculating it.

The three banks that were charged today will hope to benefit from the eurocrats’ presumed timidity. In theory, EU cartel fines carry a penalty of up to 10% of a company’s global revenue, which would imply a combined fine of more than $18 billion, according to the bank’s latest annual results.

But the commission is highly unlikely to ask for this much in damages, and the depressing regularity with which big banks land in legal trouble these days means that they are well prepared to pay the penalties. From interest rate-rigging to mortgage mis-selling, tax avoidance, foreign-exchange manipulation, money laundering and much else besides, banks now operate under the constant threat of large fines, and they’ve built up enormous litigation reserves to cope. 

Note EU-Digest: one can only hope the EU Commission will not act with their usual timidity in dealing with this serious fraudulent issues.

Read more: You won’t believe this, but some big banks may have broken the law again – Quartz