EU parliament approves trade deal with Canada

February 15, 2017 By administrator

The European Union parliament has voted in favour of a landmark trade deal with Canada.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is designed to unite the markets of 35 million Canadians with 500 million Europeans.

Ratification by the European Union parliament, with a 408-254 vote, now paves the way for the agreement to come into force on a provisional basis, meaning over 90 per cent of it could be put into practice within months, while the rest must be ratified by individual EU member countries.

Spain: Catalonia approves independence referendum

October 7, 2016 By administrator

catalonia-independence One of Spain’s richest regions, Catalonia has repeatedly fought Madrid over its right to secede. Regional president Puigdemont has vowed to proceed with the referendum even without Spain’s blessing.

Catalonia’s parliament approved an independence referendum vote on Thursday in spite of tensions with Madrid, which has argued that the prosperous region has no legal ground for full autonomy. The referendum it set to take place next September.

The move marks another setback for acting Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who has been engaged in a deepening standoff with Catalan separatists. His conservative People’s Party has repeatedly rejected requests from Barcelona to hold an independence vote, going so far as to ask the Constitutional Court to annul a July resolution from the Catalonian parliament to pursue independence.

After Thursday’s vote, the Constitutional Court said it was looking into whether it could file suit against the Catalonian parliament speaker for allowing the vote to take place.

Regional president Carles Puigdemont said last week that he was still up for negotiating whether the referendum would be legally binding or not, but that he would hold it with or without Madrid’s permission.

Puigdemont is riding a wave of support after a comfortably winning a parliamentary confidence vote last Thursday meant to shore up approval for the independence movement. According to recent polls, around 48 percent of Catalans support secession, though that number is down a few percentage points from a few years ago.

es/bw (AFP, Reuters)

German Bundestag set to approve Armenian Genocide resolution

May 31, 2016 By administrator

213591 Co-chairman of the German political party Alliance ’90/The Greens Cem Ozdemir –who is of Turkish descent – said that the Bundestag memberswill on June 2 approve a resolution on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide, Ermenihaber.am reports citing Zaman newspaper.

On June 2, the Bundestag intends to approve a resolution condemning the century-old Ottoman massacre of Armenians by describing it as genocide. The majority of foreign policy specialists from the relevant parties have given a clear signal that they will support the resolution.

Ozdmir slammed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s proposal of creating a panel of historians for studying the issue as pointless.

According to him, Turkey must clarify its prioroties in the framework of the Armenian Question, adding that the Muslim country made a mistake by first signing the Zurich Protocols and later backing from them.

The Zurich Protocols constituted an agreement signed in 2009 between Armenia and Turkey designed to allow the opening of borders and to set up formal diplomatic relations between the two countries.