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For the next six months, France will be running the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, giving President Emmanuel Macron a key role in shaping the future of the bloc in a year that looks set to be yet another highly turbulent and fractious one for the EU.

Macron takes the helm of the EU as French presidential elections loom, and some critics are already accusing him of weaponizing France’s six-month stint presiding over the council to try to boost his reelection hopes.  

Other European leaders are bracing themselves for Macron to be hyperactive as he presides over the council, which brings together the heads of state and government of the member states and their ministers, and arguably is the most powerful of the bloc’s institutions and are worried

Macron’s French electoral opponents have denounced him for using the upcoming council role for unfair electioneering, pointing to a recent tour of EU member states during which he pushed not only his plans to reset the course of the whole European bloc but also to burnish his self-appointed role as the champion of democracy against populism, French or otherwise.

French domestic politics was never far from Macron’s mood during his tour, which concluded last month. 

While calling on the EU’s 27 member states to aim for “strategic sovereignty” and defense autonomy, critics say he has been advertising his ambitions for the bloc to project himself as a statesman, one who is putting France front and center of the European continent.

Macron declared “the year 2022 must be a turning point for Europe” in his New Year’s Eve address to the French nation, praised the EU’s role during the pandemic and outlined a highly ambitious reform agenda for the bloc. And he vowed that he would use the council’s presidency for the benefit of France. “You can count on my complete commitment to ensure that this period, which comes around every 13 years [for France], is a time of progress for you,” he said.

Unease in Brussels 

His unabashed mixing of French electoral politics with his role as the EU Council president is prompting some unease in Brussels and among some the bloc’s national leaders, who worry his campaigning for reelection as French president, and the counter-campaigning by his electoral rivals, could spill over and end up impacting wider EU issues.

“It risks getting very messy and triggering some unintended consequences,” a senior EU official told VOA. “There’s a danger his domestic campaign needs will shape how he behaves as Council president and the EU could suffer collateral damage.” he added.

The EU has a full agenda ahead. Divisive talks over Europe’s debt rules, which limit the public spending of member states, are already underway and are proving explosive with southern members like Italy and Greece wanting the rules to be less restrictive and several frugal northern national governments fiercely opposed.

Arguments over the rule of law already have Brussels and the former communist states of Central Europe at each other’s throats.

And there is a continuing rift over how far the bloc should go toward political integration with Macron championing turning the EU into a United States of Europe and already clearly eager to use the council’s presidency to push hard for much greater integration of the EU, from economic policies to defense arrangements. 

Macron and his electoral opponents are already skirmishing over the issue of Europe and French identity.

His opponents say he should have delayed France taking on the Council’s presidency until after the elections. “It’s a mistake. He’s doing it for his own interests, not those of France,” his Conservative rival Valérie Pécresse from Les Républicains party said recently. 

Last week, there was a foretaste of how the EU risks being dragged into the French electoral battle with both Macron and far-right presidential candidates Marine Le Pen and Éric Zemmour battling over the hoisting of the EU flag under the Arc de Triomphe, a monument that honors those who fought and died for France during the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars.

The hanging of the EU flag, instead of the French tricolor, was meant to mark the start of the French presidency of the Council of the EU but it triggered a domestic political fight. Le Pen denounced Macron for what she said was a “provocation that offends those who fought for France.” Zemmour dubbed it an “outrage.”

Conservative presidential candidate Valerie Pécresse questioned why Macron did not choose to fly France’s national flag next to the EU’s as happened the last time France held the EU presidency in 2008, when Nicolas Sarkozy was French president. Others noted the hoisting of the flag broke a French law stipulating “flying the colors of Europe on monuments is possible as long as it is done alongside French colors.” 
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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to create what he described as “a pious generation” of young Turkish nationalists that would be loyal to traditional Islamic values. But political analysts say winning the votes of young people could be his biggest challenge ahead of elections in 2023. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
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As the world continues to struggle with the rapid spread of the omicron variant of the coronavirus and the still-lingering delta variant, scientists in France said they have discovered a new variant that contains multiple mutations.

Experts at the IHU Mediterranee Infection in Marseille say they discovered the new variant back in December in 12 patients living near Marseille, with the first patient testing positive after traveling to the central African nation of Cameroon. 

The French scientists said they have identified 46 mutations in the new variant, dubbed B.1.640.2, that could make it more resistant to vaccines and more infectious than the original virus.  

The results were posted on the online health sciences outlet medRxiv, which publishes studies that have not been peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal. B.1.640.2 has not been detected in other countries or been labeled a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization.

Meanwhile, a new study out of Denmark reveals omicron is better at avoiding a person’s immunity even if they are vaccinated against COVID-19. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen studied 12,000 households and discovered that omicron was between 2.7 to 3.7 times more infectious than delta among vaccinated Danes.  

The study, which has not been peer-reviewed, also found that unvaccinated individuals are more likely to transmit the coronavirus than those who had been fully vaccinated and received a booster shot. Vaccine effectiveness against symptoms was reduced to around 40% against symptoms and to 80% against severe disease when dealing with omicron, while booster shots improved those numbers to 86% against symptoms and 98% against severe disease.

“Our findings confirm that the rapid spread of the Omicron variant primarily can be ascribed to the immune evasiveness rather than an inherent increase in the basic transmissibility,” the researchers wrote.  

The omicron outbreak continues to wreak havoc on cities and countries around the world, pushing enormous strains on health care systems.

Authorities in Australia’s most populous state of New South Wales reported more than 23,000 new COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, breaking the previous record of 22,577 new cases set just on New Year’s Day, with 1,344 hospitalizations, breaking the record of 1,268 hospitalizations seen back in September at the height of the delta outbreak.  Neighboring Victoria state posted 14,020 new cases Tuesday, breaking Monday’s record of 8,577 new cases.

The states of Queensland, South Australia and the island of Tasmania also reported record numbers of new infections Tuesday, pushing Australia’s total number of COVID-19 infections past the milestone 500,000 mark.

The surge has led to a critical shortage of staffers at hospitals across Australia, with healthcare workers furloughed after contracting the virus. Testing centers have also been forced to shut down either because of staffing shortages or a backlog of tests. But Prime Minister Scott Morrison has rejected calls for the federal government in Canberra to provide free rapid antigen tests to all Australians.

Another Chinese city has entered into a full lockdown after three people tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days. Authorities have ordered all 1.2 million residents of the central city of Yuzhou to remain in their homes, and have closed nearly all public facilities including schools, transportation and shopping malls.  

The strict lockdown measures in Yuzhou are similar to those imposed in the northwestern city of Xi’an, where 13 million residents have been confined to their homes since December 23 due to an outbreak of the delta variant that has now sickened more than 1,600 residents. The lockdowns are part of Beijing’s “zero-COVID” strategy that includes mass testing, lengthy quarantine periods and snap lockdowns.

In Hong Kong, chief executive Carrie Lam announced Tuesday that the semi-autonomous city is extending its vaccine requirements for public venues. Lam said that all Hong Kongers will have to show proof of vaccination to enter museums, public libraries and schools effective February 24. The expanded vaccination mandate, which already covers entertainment venues, was imposed in the wake of Hong Kong confirming its first omicron infection cluster.

And the United States posted 1,082,549 new COVID-19 infections Monday, setting a new global one-day record, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.  The numbers are nearly double that of the previous record of about 590,000 set just last week, driven mostly by the omicron variant.  

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and  Agence France-Presse. 
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NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has scheduled a special meeting of allied ambassadors and top Russian officials for next week as both sides seek dialog to prevent open conflict over Ukraine, a NATO official said on Tuesday. 

Worried about Russia’s military build-up along Ukraine’s border, the Western military alliance has been seeking a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council for months but the forum seemed in jeopardy after an espionage dispute in October. 

The meeting of the council, a format used for dialog since 2002, will take place in Brussels on Jan. 12 after U.S. and Russian officials hold security talks on Jan. 10 in Geneva. 

The European Union’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, flew to Ukraine on Tuesday for a two-day trip to show support for Kyiv, which aspires to join the bloc and NATO. 

Moscow wants guarantees that NATO will halt its eastward expansion and end military cooperation with Ukraine and Georgia, which have territorial disputes with Russia. 

Moscow also denies U.S. assertions that it is planning an invasion of Ukraine and accuses Kyiv of building up its own forces in the east of the country. 

“Any dialog with Russia would have to proceed on the basis of reciprocity, address NATO’s concerns about Russia’s actions… and take place in consultation with NATO’s European partners,” the NATO official said. 

Maria Zakharova, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, confirmed that Russian officials will attend the NATO meeting in Brussels. 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and other senior Russian officials are expected to attend the Brussels talks, after meeting U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman in Geneva. 

On Jan. 13, talks will continue in the broader format of the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which includes the United States and its NATO allies, as well as Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet states. 

The EU’s Borrell, who was central to the bloc’s strategy of increased sanctions on top Russian officials in 2021, believes “the EU cannot be a neutral spectator in the negotiations if Russia really wants to discuss Europe’s security architecture,” according to an EU spokesperson. 

The European Union sees Ukraine as a “strategic partner,” the spokesperson said. 

Borrell, accompanied by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, will visit Ukraine’s contact line with Russian-backed separatist rebels during his visit. EU foreign ministers are expected to discuss their next steps later in January. 
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with eastern NATO allies Monday about Russia’s military buildup along Ukraine’s border, calling for a “united” NATO stance.

In a phone call Monday with his counterparts in nine eastern NATO countries, known as the Bucharest Nine, Blinken said the United States was committed to “close consultation and coordination with all of our Transatlantic Allies and partners as we work toward de-escalation through deterrence, defense and dialogue,” according to State Department spokesperson Ned Price. 

Blinken called for “a united, ready and resolute NATO stance for the collective defense of Allies” according to Price.

In addition, Blinken “underscored the United States’ unwavering commitment” to NATO’s Article 5, which calls for the joint defense of any member of the seven-decade-old military alliance, which formed after World War II. 

Ukraine is not a member of NATO but has petitioned to join the alliance for more than a decade, a stance that has angered Russia. 

Russia has been demanding that NATO deny membership to Ukraine and reduce its deployments in central and eastern Europe. 

In a Sunday phone call, U.S. President Joe Biden told Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that the United States and its allies would “respond decisively” should Russia further invade Ukraine.

Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, with the West protesting and imposing sanctions.

Biden has made little progress with Russian President Vladimir Putin in getting him to withdraw about 100,000 troops stationed along Russia’s border with the former Soviet republic, although U.S. officials have said they do not believe Putin has decided to invade Ukraine.

The U.S. and Russian leaders held a 50-minute phone call last Thursday, with Biden again warning Putin that the United States and its Western allies would impose significant economic sanctions against Moscow if Putin were to carry out a Ukraine invasion. Biden said last month that he is not considering sending U.S. troops to Ukraine. 

The United States has been dispatching small arms and ammunition to Ukraine, along with Javelin missiles it says should be used only in defense.

The Kremlin said last week that Putin warned Biden that new U.S. sanctions on Russia could lead to a complete rupture in Washington-Moscow relations.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
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Five world powers have agreed to work together to stop the further spread of nuclear arms and to avoid nuclear conflict, according to a joint statement.

“We believe strongly that the further spread of such weapons must be prevented,” said the five permanent U.N. Security Council members China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States, collectively known as the P5.

“We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the countries added.

The statement Monday from the P5 countries comes as tensions escalate between Western nations and Moscow over Russia’s troop buildup at its border with Ukraine. Relations between the U.S. and China are also strained over disagreements such as alleged human rights abuses by Beijing, disputes over the South China Sea and Chinese military flights near Taiwan.

Despite the tensions, the five nuclear powers said they saw “the avoidance of war between nuclear-weapon states and the reduction of strategic risks” as their “foremost responsibilities.”

The statement came after a scheduled review on Tuesday of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons was postponed to later in the year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The five world powers said they were committed to a key article in the treaty, which calls for countries to work toward full disarmament of nuclear weapons in the future.

The Russian Foreign Ministry welcomed the declaration.

“We hope that, in the current difficult conditions of international security, the approval of such a political statement will help reduce the level of international tensions,” it said in a statement. 

Monday’s declaration also comes as diplomats resume talks aimed at reviving Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

The administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump quit the nuclear deal in 2018, saying it was not tough enough on Iran, and reimposed U.S. sanctions. Iran retaliated a year later by publicly exceeding nuclear activity limits agreed on as part of the 2015 deal. President Joe Biden has said he wants to honor the deal again if Iran does the same.

The U.S. has repeatedly warned that time is running out for Iran to agree to a new deal.

Some information in this report came from Reuters and Agence-France Presse. 
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday endorsed Hungary’s Viktor Orban, who is seeking reelection. The right-wing prime minister is often at odds with other Western leaders. 

Orban, in power since 2010, is preparing for parliamentary elections in April or May, with his ruling Fidesz party facing six opposition parties. 

Trump said in a statement that Orban “truly loves his country and wants safety for his people. He has done a powerful and wonderful job in protecting Hungary, stopping illegal immigration, creating jobs, trade, and should be allowed to continue to do so in the upcoming election.” 

Trump characterized Orban as “a strong leader and respected by all. He has my complete support and endorsement for re-election as prime minister!” 

Orban endorsed Trump in both his presidential campaigns, in 2016 and 2020, and Trump granted him an Oval Office visit at the White House in 2019. 

At the time, Trump said the Hungarian leader had “done a tremendous job in so many different ways,” while acknowledging that he was “probably like me, a little bit controversial. But that’s OK.” 

Unlike Trump, U.S. President Joe Biden has kept Orban at arm’s length. At Biden’s virtual Summit for Democracy last month, Hungary was the only European Union member state that was not extended an invitation. 

Trump’s endorsement of Orban marks the second time the former U.S. president has backed a populist foreign leader whom critics accuse of undermining democratic principles.

Last year, Trump voiced his support for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s reelection bid. 

Trump is contemplating another run for the White House in 2024. 

Throughout his presidency, Trump often boasted of his rapport with authoritarian and strongman leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. 

Last month, Trump reflected on his relations with other national leaders, saying, “The ones I did the best with were the tyrants.” 

Orban has boasted of turning his country into an “illiberal state.” He has weakened Hungary’s democratic and independent institutions, limited press freedoms and changed the composition of the judiciary. 

While some European leaders have expressed their concerns about Orban’s rule, American conservatives have shown their support. 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson broadcast his evening show from Budapest for a week, calling Hungary a nation “with a lot of lessons for the rest of us.” Former Vice President Mike Pence attended a Hungarian conference on conservative values and the American Conservative Union has been promoting plans for a 2022 conference there. 
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The websites of one of Portugal’s biggest newspapers and of a major broadcaster, both owned by the country’s largest media conglomerate Impresa, were down on Monday after being hit by a hacker attack over the weekend.

Expresso newspaper and SIC TV station both said they reported the incident to the criminal investigation police agency PJ and the National Cybersecurity Center (CNCS) and would file a complaint.

The alleged hackers, calling themselves Lapsus$ Group, published a message on the websites saying internal data would be leaked if the media group failed to pay a ransom. The message included email and Telegram contact info.

The group did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.

Lapsus$, which claims that it gained access to Impresa’s Amazon Web Services account, also sent a phishing email to Expresso subscribers and tweeted from the newspaper’s verified Twitter account.

The same group allegedly hacked Brazil’s Health Ministry website last month, taking several systems down, including one with information about the national immunization program and another used to issue digital vaccination certificates.

CNCS’s coordinator, Lino Santos, told the online newspaper Observador it was the first time the group launched an attack in the country.

Websites of Expresso and SIC have been offline since Sunday, with the pages showing a message saying they are “temporarily unavailable” following the attack and would return “as soon as possible.”

In the meantime, both media organizations are publishing news stories on their social media channels. They described it as an “unprecedented attack on press freedom in the digital age.”
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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz wants to reset relations with Moscow and is planning a face-to-face meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin later this month.

Senior German officials were already scheduled to get together with Russian counterparts in January in a bid to ease geopolitical tensions amid rising alarm that the Kremlin is planning a further military incursion into Ukraine.

According to a report Monday by Germany’s Bild newspaper, foreign policy adviser Jens Plotner has been discussing with the Kremlin a meeting between the German leader and Putin for more than two weeks. The paper, which has a reputation of breaking domestic German political stories well ahead of media rivals, reported that Scholz is seeking “a new start” in relations with Moscow and wants to focus on energy politics and Ukraine.

US-Russia talks

Senior U.S. and Russian officials are to meet in Geneva for talks set for January 9 and 10 to discuss Russia’s military build-up on its border with Ukraine, where it has deployed around 100,000 troops, according to Western and Ukrainian intelligence officials.

Western leaders and officials have already rejected as nonstarters Russian demands, including a halt to further NATO enlargement and a rollback of any alliance military presence in the former Soviet satellite states of Central Europe.

The Geneva talks, which are to be led on the American side by senior State Department officials, are slated to be followed by Russia-NATO council talks and a meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

Western leaders have warned of severe consequences if the Kremlin decides to mount another attack on Ukraine in a repeat of 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and used armed proxies to seize a large part of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, bordering Russia.

U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters Friday that he advised Putin when they spoke by phone a day earlier that the upcoming talks could only work if the Russian leader “de-escalated, not escalated, the situation” going forward. Biden said he also sought to make plain to Russia’s leader in his second conversation in a month with Putin that U.S. and European allies are ready to punish Russia with tough economic sanctions.

“I made it clear to President Putin that if he makes any more moves into Ukraine, we will have severe sanctions,” Biden said. “We will increase our presence in Europe with NATO allies.”

Kremlin officials, though, have doubled down on warnings to the West about making a “colossal mistake” that could have enormous ramifications for an already fraught U.S.-Russian relationship.

Unease among some European nations

But despite the tough talk from Washington, there is unease among smaller European nations who fear bigger Western powers may try to cut a deal with Moscow without their buy-in.

Finnish President Sauli Niinistö is demanding that all European nations, formal Western alliance members or not, be included in the security negotiations between Russia, the United States and NATO.

Niinistö has reiterated his country’s right to join NATO if it wants, a flat rejection of the Russian demand that NATO admits no new members.

“Finland’s room to maneuver and freedom of choice also include the possibility of military alignment and of applying for NATO membership, should we ourselves so decide,” Niinistö said in a strong New Year’s address.

He said Russia’s ultimatums “are in conflict with the European security order,” and he wants a significant role for the European Union in any negotiations to help express the security needs and views of smaller nations.

“In this situation, Europe cannot just listen in,” Niinistö said. “The sovereignty of several member states, also Sweden and Finland, has been challenged from outside the union. This makes the EU an involved party. The EU must not settle merely with the role of a technical coordinator of sanctions.”

Germany’s concerns

Scholz’s New Year’s address to Germans was milder, and while warning of a punishing Western response to any further Russian aggression toward Ukraine, he emphasized the importance of “constructive dialogue” with Russia.

The German chancellor has come under pressure from allies and members of his coalition government, including Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, leader of the country’s Green Party, to withhold any formal approval for Russian natural gas to be transported through the just-completed Nord Stream 2, an undersea pipeline linking Russia and Germany.

Central and eastern European countries criticized former Chancellor Angela Merkel for her support of the Nord Stream 2 project. They say the pipeline risks deepening European dependence on Russian gas. Last month, Poland’s prime minister publicly called on Scholz to oppose the startup of Nord Stream 2, warning that the pipeline could be used as a coercive economic weapon by Russia.

Aside from what tactics to employ, splits persist also among Western powers over assessments of Putin’s intentions. Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has downplayed the risk of Russian military action, saying the Kremlin wants to explore diplomacy and is not preparing “for action.”

Some Italian officials say they fear talk of impending war could take on a life of its own, impacting and shaping the behavior of Russia and the United States. They also point to the draft security treaties Russia presented to the U.S. last week as indicating a willingness for further talks. 
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U.S. President Joe Biden was planning to talk Sunday with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to discuss ways to defuse tensions over Russia’s massive troop buildup along Ukraine’s eastern flank.

Biden has made little progress with Russian President Vladimir Putin to get him to withdraw about 100,000 troops stationed along Russia’s border with the former Soviet republic, although U.S. officials do not believe Putin has decided whether to invade Ukraine.

The U.S. and Russian leaders held a 50-minute phone call last Thursday, with Biden again warning Putin that the United States and its Western allies would impose significant economic sanctions against Moscow were Putin to carry out a Ukraine invasion, although Biden has ruled out a military response.

Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, with the West protesting and imposing weaker sanctions.

The Kremlin in turn said last week that Putin told Biden in their call that new, tougher sanctions could lead to a complete rupture In Washington-Moscow relations.

The U.S. has been dispatching small arms and ammunition to Kyiv, along with Javelin missiles it says should only be used in defense.

The White House says that Russian and American officials will participate in three separate rounds of talks this month: first through bilateral talks scheduled to start January 10, and then through multiparty talks with the NATO-Russia Council, and with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

“President Biden reiterated (in his call with Putin) that substantive progress in these dialogues can occur only in an environment of de-escalation rather than escalation,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.  

In the talks ahead, Russia is demanding that NATO, the seven-decade-old military alliance formed after World War II, deny membership to Ukraine and reduce its deployments in central and eastern Europe. White House officials have declined to discuss details of private talks. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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The German operator of a cruise ship that has been stuck in Lisbon’s port due to an outbreak of the coronavirus among its crew pulled the plug on the voyage on Sunday after some passengers tested positive, port authorities said.

The AIDAnova, with 2,844 passengers and 1,353 crew on board, docked in Lisbon on Dec. 29 while en route to the island of Madeira for New Year’s Eve celebrations but was unable to continue the journey after 52 cases of COVID-19 were detected among the fully vaccinated crew.

It had been allowed to leave port and head to the Spanish island of Lanzarote on Sunday, but now another 12 people have tested positive, including four passengers, captain of the port Diogo Vieira Branco told TSF radio.

“The company’s protocol was immediately actioned, with those infected, who are asymptomatic or displaying light symptoms, immediately isolated on the ship … and the company decided to end the cruise and disembark the passengers,” he said.

The passengers would be transported home by air, he added, without specifying when.

The company, AIDA Cruises, which is a subsidiary of Carnival Corp., did not reply to a Reuters request for comment.

Reuters footage showed passengers still enjoying afternoon sun on decks with their drinks, and local media said the disembarking would begin after 6 a.m. on Monday.

The crew who had tested positive between Wednesday and Friday were transferred to Lisbon hotels and were in isolation there.

On Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised people to avoid traveling on cruise ships regardless of their vaccination status.

The move delivered another blow to the industry that only returned to the seas in June after a months-long suspension of voyages caused by the pandemic.
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