EU lawmakers reject attempt to curb far right's sway on climate talks
The far-right Patriots of Europe group, which rejects EU policies to curb climate change, on Tuesday took on the role of lead negotiators for the 2040 climate target, seeking to steer talks on the goal, which the group said it firmly opposed.
Lawmakers rebuffed a proposal on Wednesday to fast-track the negotiations, which would have skipped stages where the Patriots could exert most influence, and limited their ability to set the timings for negotiations.
A total of 379 lawmakers rejected the plan to accelerate the talks, versus 300 in favour and eight abstentions.
The vote puts the Patriots firmly in the lead for the parliament as it negotiates the final 2040 climate target with EU member countries. The Patriots will now draft an initial negotiating proposal for the parliament.
A Patriots spokesperson said the group would not prioritise trying to meet a September deadline for countries to submit new climate targets to the United Nations.
"What truly matters is achieving a deal that delivers real benefits for our citizens. Patriots have never negotiated under pressure like traders in a marketplace," the spokesperson said.
The Patriots are the third-biggest lawmaker group in the EU Parliament and the group includes the political parties of France's far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
The Patriots secured the lead negotiating role in a closed-door meeting on Tuesday by outbidding the parliament's biggest group, the centre-right European People's Party, EU officials told Reuters.
Green lawmakers said they feared the target would now be watered down or face long delays. "There is an acute danger that the European Union's climate target will be buried," said German EU lawmaker Michael Bloss.
The attempt to fast-track the talks failed because it was not supported by the EPP - the party of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Dutch EPP EU lawmaker Jeroen Lenaers said the group did not deem the fast-track procedure necessary, and wanted to "improve" the Commission's proposed target to cut emissions 90% by 2040, without specifying further.
Some EPP lawmakers have said a 90% target is too ambitious. Governments from Italy to Poland have pushed back this year on ambitious emissions-cutting goals, citing concerns over the costs for industries.
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The Guardian
6 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Border Force chief who ‘suggested game of Naked Attraction' with colleagues was able to leave civil service with unblemished record
A Home Office investigation has found one of its most senior officials harassed and behaved inappropriately towards a female colleague, before being able to leave the civil service with an unblemished record after a 'shambolic' disciplinary process. The case has caused such alarm in the department that the new permanent secretary, Antonia Romeo, has ordered an immediate review of complaints, conduct and disciplinary procedures to 'ensure confidence in the integrity of the system'. Steve Dann, the former chief operating officer (COO) of Border Force, was effectively banned from visiting the organisation's offices in Paris in 2023 after he suggested to female officers that regional directors could play a game of Naked Attraction, the Channel 4 dating show in which contestants stand in front of each other fully nude. He told investigators he did not recall the incident. Dann, who was in the £120,000-a-year post for four years, faced other allegations of misogynistic name-calling and making comments to women with sexual connotations, according to Home Office sources. He denied the allegations, suggesting comments had been taken out of context and that selective evidence had been used during the investigation by the Home Office's professional standards unit (PSU). He acknowledged during the process that some of his comments may have been careless, but said he had never intended to upset or offend. After a chaotic HR process, which one source said was littered with 'procedural errors and delays', the original grievance was eventually upheld on appeal. However, Dann was not informed about the process until the initial stage was completed. He was also subject to a parallel misconduct investigation into the claims which was not upheld. Dann decided to leave the Home Office in December last year, standing down as the COO of Border Force, a role that placed him at the centre of the organisation's key responsibilities, including securing the UK's borders by enforcing immigration regulations and patrolling coastlines during the small-boats crisis. He has since entered the private sector in the field of security and law enforcement operations, and public safety. The complainant first reported Dann in February 2024, after working with him for 18 months. An initial internal grievance inquiry was launched two months later, with the final PSU report quoting named Home Office officials who appeared to confirm a series of sexist and misogynistic comments, according to sources. While the complaint was not initially upheld, it was later upheld on appeal in October 2024. Dann was not involved in this process and was not given the opportunity to respond. At the same time a separate misconduct process was launched, also based on evidence in the PSU report. This was not upheld, no formal disciplinary sanction was imposed, and there was no record of it on Dann's file, although Home Office sources said he was asked to undergo training in response. The claims being investigated included the colleague being told in a voice note that she was 'very pretty', which the PSU report concluded was 'reasonable' for her to have interpreted as harassment. Other comments were described by the report as 'inappropriate and offensive' and 'unprofessional topics with a sexual connotation'. According to sources, the report said he messaged about one person who attended a meeting suggesting that she had a 'porn star name', which he told the inquiry was meant in a 'lighthearted' way. On a separate occasion, he was said to have misnamed a female colleague 'kinky', although he later admitted this had been a 'careless' thing to say. During a discussion on the diversity of his office, Dann allegedly said: 'Don't forget the sweaty woman in the corner', referring to a colleague going through menopause. In the report, he denied making this comment. In another meeting, in December 2022, he asked junior colleagues if they knew what a 'fluffer' was, and then explained it was 'someone whose job was to keep a porn star's penis erect', sources said. He denied to investigators that he had made the remarks. On the official visit to Border Force in Paris in April 2023, he brought up the Channel 4 naked dating show Naked Attraction to two female officers working in intelligence. In remarks corroborated by witnesses, he added: 'We were thinking it could be all the regional directors and, you know, people had to look at it and guess whose penis it was.' The officers were 'very shocked' by the conversation and felt 'incredibly uncomfortable', a senior official told investigators, but when they were asked if they wanted to make a complaint they said they would prefer that Dann not return to the Paris office. This was reported to Border Force chiefs. Dann told them he did not recall the incident. One senior official who witnessed the exchange said they were 'disappointed' by Dann's conduct, which they felt was 'inappropriate'. Several others said they considered that he was 'prone to oversharing' about his private life at work, sources with knowledge of the report said. The appeal, which was based on the same evidence in the PSU report, was finally concluded eight months after the initial complaint. It was after the Labour government entered office, and six weeks later Dann left his role, declaring that after nine years at the Home Office it was time to 'embrace new challenges'. In a letter to the complainant in October 2024, the Home Office upheld the grievance, acknowledging that Dann's conduct had fallen below the standards expected from a senior official and was in breach of the department's policies on appropriate behaviour, sources said. However, Dann – who was previously a 'people champion' and diversity lead in the civil service, roles that focused on improving the workplace environment, as well as representing the organisation in parliament and in the media – avoided any formal consequences because the separate earlier disciplinary process had already concluded and the rules meant it could not be reopened. According to sources, Dann told the initial investigation he had worked incredibly hard in a stressful frontline environment. Much of his time running Border Force operations was when the Tory government was struggling to get control of irregular migration, including small-boat crossings. Several of the witnesses said they had not been offended by his behaviour. However others, including senior civil servants and junior frontline operational staff, found his conduct inappropriate and unprofessional, according to sources who have seen the final PSU report and with knowledge of the final outcome. During the PSU investigation, Dann denied some of his conduct and said other incidents had been taken out of context, and that selected evidence had been used. But sources said he added that 'on reflection' there had been times when some of his comments had been 'careless', although they were not meant in a malicious way. When approached by the Guardian, he declined to comment. Yvette Cooper, who was home secretary throughout the latter part of the grievance process, has repeatedly and vocally called out workplace discrimination, misogyny and harassment. The case was flagged with her office although she is understood not to have been personally aware. A Home Office spokesperson said: 'While we do not comment on individual HR cases, where there are allegations of inappropriate behaviour or sexual harassment the Home Office will investigate and take appropriate action. 'The Home Office expects the highest standard from all members of staff and does not tolerate anyone displaying or taking part in unacceptable behaviour. 'The new permanent secretary has already commissioned a review of complaints, conduct and disciplinary procedures, to ensure absolute confidence in the integrity of the system.'
Telegraph
6 minutes ago
- Telegraph
France is ditching bank holidays and so should we
Our Gallic neighbours have instructed us in the ways of many things. I'm thinking particularly of white Burgundy, champagne, béchamel sauce, mistresses and surrendering. More recently the UK's political leadership has taken on President Macron's habit of hugging everyone. Thus Sir Keir Starmer can't see the likes of President Zelensky across a crowded room without clambering over a sea of suits to give the guy a hug. And last week Sir Keir was with Europe's great hugger-in-chief and thus enveloping 47-year-old Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric in his arms. But here's another thing: as bold as Dijon mustard, as sensible as the line judges at Roland-Garros and as perky as garlic, it has just been announced by the French Prime Minister François Bayrou. He's ditching two bank holidays. 'The entire nation has to work more,' he said this week, adding, 'so that the activity of the country as a whole increases and so that France's situation improves.' Bayrou's plan comes as he attempts to lower the country's spiralling public deficit and debt and, in next year's budget, save €43.8 billion. His plan is, he says, the 'last stop before the cliff edge'. And sounding more like Idi Amin, the Ugandan president of the 1970s, than a centrist European politician of the 2020s, he is insistent that, 'everyone will have to contribute to the effort'. The immediate practical problem, aside from the cacophony that is the sound of 68 million grumbling frogs, is which days to scrap. France has 11 national holidays and Bayrou has suggested scrapping Easter Monday (fair enough in a nation of croissant-munching atheists – only 5 per cent attend Mass on Sundays) and May 8, which is Victory Day. The latter should logically be renamed Surrender Day, occurs on June 22 (the date in 1940 of the Armistice) and on which the nation should definitely be put to work. The plan may sound harsh, particularly for a people famed for their love of leisure – most people take a month off in summer, they must work a maximum of 35 hours a week, lunch for a minimum of an hour and can dwell over a coffee long after it has gone cold. And indeed politicians, left and right, were spitting out their vins de table in rages this week. '[It's] a direct attack on our history, our roots and on working France,' said Jordan Bardella of the far-Right National Rally. Fabien Roussel of the French Communist party described it as 'an organised hold-up'. But hang on, it's actually a fabulous idea. And one that we should embrace as firmly as a Starmer/Macron hug. The UK has eight bank holidays. There's Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday and then a load of early summer ones that charge at you out of the blue normally when a heatwave has come and gone and it starts to rain and a random one at the end of August that enables people at the tail end of the Notting Hill Carnival to smoke cannabis in the street without impunity before a few stabbings at dusk. And they are now – in concept and practice – out of date and a contributor to national decline. And, before you squeal about the idea of my tearing apart a cornerstone of Britain's cultural history, they are relatively new. It was 1871 that an Act of Parliament was passed officially designating a number of days that workers should have off and on which banks would be closed. The man behind the Bank Holidays Act was the liberal reforming MP Sir John Lubbock who believed that religious holidays should be formalised. There was otherwise no way to ensure that a factory worker wasn't forced to toil, in gruelling conditions, for six days a week. The 'St Lubbock's Days', as they were called for a while, reflected the shift in Victorian England to more formalised leisure. But that was then. More than 150 years later and Britain dwells in a state of lugubrious idleness at which Lubbock himself would raise an eyebrow. Indeed post-Covid, most of the UK enjoys a four-day jolly every weekend. Offices are lucky if workers deign to join them Tuesday to Thursday and they can only tempt them in by offering free cereal, table tennis, comfy sofas in so many break-out areas, a drinks trolley on a Thursday afternoon (non-alcs catered for so as not to offend the Gen Zs) and a promise not to send the poor lambs too many emails on a Monday or Friday. Because the end of the week is firmly the beginning of the weekend and Monday is a recovery day and who wants to get on a horrid train when you can Zoom from home in your jim-jams. Our work patterns are also considerably less Victorian. Almost 7.5 million people now freelance – full- or part-time – and bank holidays lurk around the corner for them as pestilent days of childcare and lost revenue. Each bank holiday costs the nation some £2.4 billion in economic output so while politicians publicly support occasional additions such as that for King Charles's coronation in 2023, privately they shudder at the damage it does to the nation's books. And they are patently not 'bank' holidays of course, because nowadays you can bank online 24 hours a day. Furthermore, most high street banks are now upscale bars and people only wander into the remaining banks by mistake when they're drunk. Bank holidays are no longer precious, quiet days, and they are conspicuously not religious. The only notable religion featuring being that of unabashed consumerism. That France is enacting this policy while, according to the Office for National Statistics, actually being more productive than us should shame us into working more. So let's scrap two of them, the random May one and the August one, the extra days worked can merit a proportionate pay rise and hospitality need not grumble because, with more money in one's pocket, we can all afford to nip to the pub after work.
Reuters
36 minutes ago
- Reuters
Moscow mayor says air defence systems downed two drones en route to Moscow
MOSCOW, July 19 (Reuters) - Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Saturday that air defence systems had downed two drones en route to Russia's capital. "Another drone attack on Moscow has been repelled. Emergency services specialists are working at the site where the debris fell," he said on Telegram. Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said on Saturday that two Moscow airports - Vnukovo and Domodedovo - had suspended arrivals and departures to ensure air safety.
