Новости за 21.02.2017

The Romanian parliament voted on Tuesday to abandon a controversial ordinance that decriminalised official misconduct if the financial damage amounted to less than €44,100. The decree, seen as a way for politicians from the ruling Social-Democratic Party to avoid convictions, had triggered mass protests in January and early February. The government had revoked it but a vote in parliament was needed to repeal it.

Without a common European security policy, increased spending, as requried by the US, will have unintended consequences.

The Libyan Red Crescent aid organisation said it had recovered some 74 bodies on Monday that had washed ashore on the Libyan coast. The Red Crescent says the deceased had attempted to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Italy on a rubber boat. More are feared dead, with children said to be among those who had perished. Smugglers are known to overload the rubber boats with too many passengers.

EU finance ministers approved on Monday the Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive II, which aims at fighting tax avoidance by targeting loopholes, known as "hybrid mismatches", where companies exploit differences between tax systems of member states and non-EU countries. "The EU is at the forefront of the fight against tax avoidance," said Maltese minister Edward Scicluna, whose country holds the EU presidency. The directive will now be examined by the European Parliament.

VW has refused even a "gentleman's gesture" of non-financial compensation to its Dieselgate-hit customers, the EU's consumer affairs commissioner tells this website.

Poland's foreign ministry said on Monday in a formal reply to Brussels that changes to the country's constitutional court are in accordance with European standards. The European Commission is worried that the reforms undermine judicial independence of the court. If it deems Poland’s answers as unsatisfactory it has the right to resort to Article 7 of the EU treaty, allowing sanctions and suspension of voting rights in the EU council.

Germany's nationalist AfD party leader, Frauke Petry, met with senior Russian politicians in Moscow on Monday following an invite from the Russian government. Accompanied by a delegation of party members, Petry discussed collaboration between Russian and German lawmakers, parties and youth organisations, the State Duma said in a statement. Petry also met the head of the Duma‘s international affairs committee, Leonid Slutsky, and right-wing LDPR party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

German real estate is overvalued by up to 30 percent, Germany's central bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, said on Monday. Its monthly report for February singled out seven cities which were particularly affected by overheated markets - Berlin, Cologne, Duesseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart. Investors have turned to real estate as low interest rates erode benefits from saving.

French president Francois Hollande announced after a meeting with Spanish PM Rajoy in Malaga on Monday that there will be a summit in Versailles with the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Spain on 6 March in preparation of the EU summit in Brussels on 9-10 March and the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome on 25 March.

Officers raid the National Front headquarters near Paris over allegations that leader Marine Le Pen used fake EU parliament contracts to pay her personal staff.

The lynching of a woman in the Soviet Union in 1988 gives insight into why reconciliation remains so hard in the 30-year long war on Europe's eastern fringe.

Athens agreed on budget cuts worth up to €3.6 billion and extracted some concessions from creditors, but the IMF warned the package might not be enough.