Displaying items by tag: Europe

We can be thankful that trade between the UK and EU partially recovered in February, after a steep drop following Brexit. However, exports were still below last year's levels and imports from the EU had seen a weaker recovery. Figures show the UK economy grew by 0.4% in February, but the economy was still 7.8% smaller than a year earlier, before the impact of the pandemic. The Federation of Small Businesses said overall sales had dropped by £2.5bn, and its members needed more help. Chairman Mike Cherry said: ‘UK exports have tumbled since the end of the Brexit transition period. International sales are way down on where they were at this time last year. A fifth of small exporters have halted sales to the EU temporarily, and some have already given up on selling into the bloc on a permanent basis.’

ECM UK is an international, interdenominational mission agency whose ministry primarily focuses on planting churches in areas of Europe where there is little or no evangelical presence. They work in over twenty countries, planting churches, training people in leadership development and managing social care ministries. Nearly all ECM missionaries are volunteers, raising their own financial support and prayer cover. ECM also has partners in the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, France, Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands, all reaching out to unreached Europeans. See

Lava flowed from a volcano on the Reykjanes peninsula on 28 March, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of tourists. Then on 5 April a new 100- to 500-metre fissure opened half a mile north of the original crevice. Drone footage shows lava rivers feeding a larger lava flow pouring into a nearby valley. After weeks of seismic activity and over 50,000 tremors, the volcanic eruptions started near Fagradalsfjall mountain which has been dormant for 6,000 years. The current fissures are the first experienced on the peninsula in 800 years. In the first days a 600- to 700-metre-long fissure began ejecting lava. Now a cone with two open volcanic vents is ejecting lava at a constant rate of four to five metres every three seconds. The area is mostly uninhabited and 19 miles from Reykjavík, the capital and largest city of Iceland.

Brussels will not export AstraZeneca’s (AZ) vaccine manufactured in the EU to the UK until it meets its vaccine commitment to the EU. Its internal market commissioner, emphasised, ‘there is nothing to negotiate’ referring to EU’s ongoing talks over vaccine production. He said coronavirus vaccine production from Belgium and the Netherlands matches vaccine commitment made by AZ to the EU and thus must be reserved for them. ‘If AZ does more, we don’t have any issue, but as long as it doesn’t deliver its commitment to us, the doses stay in Europe - except for Covax (a vaccine programme delivering vaccines to poor countries).’ He said they are trying to ensure that AZ’s contract with the EU is delivered. In August AZ agreed to supply 300 million doses, with an option for another 100 million doses. Unfortunately, the supply has been slow, and they slashed their commitment to 30 million in the first quarter.

The EU’s environment commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevičius, said he was deeply concerned by the threats facing the Great Barrier Reef. ‘As long as we do not change our behaviours, things will not improve,’ he said. He hopes Australia will sign up to the 84-country Leaders’ Pledge for Nature - a document that calls for a ‘green and just’ recovery from the Covid-19 crisis and stronger political will to act against the ‘crises of biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and climate change’. The leaders’ pledge backs the objective of achieving net zero emissions by 2050. The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has said this is his preference, but he has resisted making a formal commitment amid divisions within his government over climate policy. Coral reefs are threatened because of human activity - unsustainable ways of living, producing, and consuming.

The UK has joined other European countries and donated €500,000 to a human rights project investigating the Lukashenko regime in Belarus. The longtime dictator denies human rights abuses in his country despite overwhelming evidence gathered by journalists and NGOs. The project will collect, store, and build evidence of human rights violations and torture against the people which may in future be used in independent criminal proceedings. The initiative is led by a coalition of expert NGOs and supported by the UK, Denmark, Germany, and other international partners to hold Lukashenko’s regime to account for violations following the rigged Presidential election in 2020. This independent initiative, free from political interference, will help defend democracy, media freedom and human rights. It will help the Belarusian people take a vital step further towards securing justice.

So far Moldova has only received 36,000 doses of the Covid vaccine, barely enough for 1% of its population of 2.6 million. This stock isn't even enough to cover the country’s primary target - its 60,000 medical staff. A coordinator from the National Vaccine Program said a three-stage rollout is ready, but the doses are not. He explains that to keep to their target of immunising 70% of their population, ‘we need to have more negotiations with manufacturers. But we are a small country, with a small population; we are not as interesting for manufacturers as other countries. The consequences of the lack of doses are dire, especially for the most fragile’. An NGO distributing lunch boxes to elderly and isolated populations in a poor neighbourhood said, ‘The week we went there, the death rate had almost doubled compared to the previous week. Yet despite this, there is still no sign of more vaccines.’

In recent years, Algeria, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, among others, have distributed hundreds of millions of euros to finance the spread of Islam in Europe. On March 9, the Danish Parliament voted 79 to 7 to approve a new law banning foreign governments from financing mosques in Denmark. The measure is aimed at preventing Muslim countries from promoting Islamic extremism in Danish mosques and prayer facilities. Denmark joins a growing list of European countries including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland - which have taken varying degrees of action to prevent foreign governments from financing the construction and upkeep of mosques on their territories. Denmark's legislation, sponsored by the ministry of foreign affairs, came into force on 15 March.

New research raises the alarm for ecosystems and agriculture. Samples from 2015 to 2018 showed that summer droughts were the most severe Europe has seen in 2,110 years as climate change stokes punishing heat waves. Using data from tree rings in living and dead European oaks going back to the time of the Romans, scientists identified a long-term drying trend that suddenly intensified in 2015 beyond anything seen in two millennia. The researchers said that this cluster of abnormally dry summers was likely caused by human-driven climate warming and changes to the circulation of the jet stream. ‘Climate change does not mean that it will get drier everywhere. Some places may get wetter or colder, but extreme conditions will become more frequent, which could be devastating for agriculture, ecosystems and societies as a whole,’ said lead author Ulf Buntgen, professor of environmental systems analysis of Cambridge University.

Concerns have been raised over new laws being proposed in Denmark to monitor all foreign- language sermons. Under the draft legislation, all sermons in languages other than Danish will have to be translated and submitted to the authorities for inspection. The Danish government says it wants to curb Islamic extremism, but a number of Christian denominations have warned that it poses a threat to religious freedom. Dr Albert Mohler, president of one of the largest evangelical Bible colleges in the USA, described the proposed law as something that was almost ‘unprecedented in modern church history’.