Swiss News

Former Arsenal midfielder Thomas Partey has been named in Ghana's preliminary squad for the World Cup.

La ligne de chemin de fer à grande vitesse entre Belgrade et Budapest, qui devait entrer en opération en février, n'est toujours pas opérationnelle pour les passagers. Une avarie de plus pour ce projet sous pavillon chinois au coût exorbitant.

- Articles / Serbie, Courrier des Balkans, Relations régionales, Economie

Written by Clare Ferguson with Áine Feeney.

Parliament has been engaging in preparatory work on the 28th regime, debating and adopting a legislative-initiative report from the Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) during the January 2026 plenary session. The JURI report recommended allowing national limited liability companies to register as ‘Societas Europaea Unificata (S.EU) to allow automatic recognition in all Member States. However, the report also recommended implementing safeguards to ensure that the regime does not undermine labour and social laws.

The Commission’s March 2026 proposal for a regulation establishing the 28th regime corporate legal framework would allow for quick, digital registration that is automatically valid across the EU. It would also provide for a single tax treatment of employee remuneration and a framework for winding up companies. While Parliament’s resolution supports the approach, it remains cautious about the proposal’s chances of success.

Overall, the objectives of the 28th regime as defined by the Commission and the Parliament are well aligned, as both institutions believe the regime should support the EU’s competitiveness, harmonise the single market and modernise the business environment. However, there are some key differences; EPRS conducted a comparative assessment of the Commission’s proposal for a 28th regime corporate legal framework and Parliament’s legislative-initiative resolution, identifying limitations in six areas of the Commission’s proposal, which include:

• Harmonised legal form;
• Registration and exit;
• Closure of companies;
• Attracting talent;
• Governance and safeguards;
• Dispute resolution.

The EPRS assessment found that the Commission proposal could have an impact on the generation of European added value, with particular reference to three of the identified shortcomings. Firstly, the scope of eligible companies is broad, without ensuring a clear and consistent definition. Secondly, the proposed ‘dual-track’ system could vary across Member States, reducing legal certainty for investors and restricting possibilities for cross-border scale-up of innovative companies. Finally, there is a lack of measures to establish a specialised dispute resolution mechanism.

Ultimately, the Commission proposal focuses on company law and operations while Parliament takes a broader view, considering the need to support the entire ecosystem around innovative companies, including labour law, investment, and cross-border scale up.

The 28th regime is a key measure in the European Commission’s 2025 competitiveness compass; an economic framework which aims to close the innovation gap, decarbonise the economy and reduce foreign dependencies. The need for such a comprehensive legal framework was highlighted by the 2024 Letta and Draghi reports. Its objective is to create a uniform set of rules for companies applicable across the EU, simplifying the legal framework to facilitate the competitiveness of businesses and start-ups operating in the single market.

The Commission envisages that it should be possible to establish a company under the 28th regime within 48 hours, which EPRS predicts could lead to an increase in venture capital invested in European companies of about €445 billion, thus supporting the potential of European start-ups to grow and scale-up in Europe.

Links to EPRS publications:

• The 28th regime
• A competitiveness compass for the EU
• Scaling up European Innovation
• The 28th regime: A new legal framework for innovative companies
• Deepening the single market in the light of the Letta and Draghi reports
• The 28th regime corporate legal framework
• Comparing EU institutions’ positions on a new legal framework for innovative companies

ÄNDERUNGSANTRÄGE 1 - 309 - Entwurf eines Berichts Einrichtung des Programms für agile, schnelle Innovation im Verteidigungsbereich (AGILE)
Ausschuss für Industrie, Forschung und Energie
Ausschuss für Sicherheit und Verteidigung
Tonino Picula, Ivars Ijabs

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2026 - EP

Le cinéaste Meji Alabi réalise un documentaire historique de BBC Africa Eye consacré à la guerre civile au Nigeria.

Quelle : © Europäische Union, 2026 - EP

From 25 to 27 May, a delegation of the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) of six MEPs led by the Committee Chair David McAllister (EPP, Germany) visited Cape Town, Pretoria, and Johannesburg, South Africa.
The delegation met South African political leaders and partners to discuss deepening EU-South Africa cooperation. Key topics included international relations in a changing geopolitical landscape, security, political ties, and the Global Gateway, the EU's strategy for global infrastructure investment.
Press release
Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Netsanet Sori is bringing a flavour of the farm where she grew up to her new home 4,000 miles away.

Samedi 30 mai 2026 à partir de 14h15, au Centre culturel irlandais de Paris
(5, rue des Irlandais 75005 Paris)

- Agenda / Région parisienne

Le règlement de la FIFA pour la Coupe du Monde autorise chaque sélection à convoquer entre 23 et 26 joueurs maximum. La liste inclut obligatoirement trois gardiens de but et doit être officialisée auprès de l'instance internationale le mardi 2 juin 2026. Nous mettrons à jour la liste des joueurs sélectionnés au fur et à mesure de leurs annonces.

Abula, a Nigerian sport inspired by the Yoruba concept of a balanced meal, aims to grow from a local pastime into an internationally recognised game.

Women’s meaningful participation in UN peacekeeping operations has advanced since 2020, but progress remains uneven and fragile. While dedicated training initiatives, peer-support structures, and women’s visibility in leadership roles have expanded, women peacekeepers continue to face structural barriers that limit their operational participation, safety, and career advancement.

This policy paper draws on interviews with eighty-five women military peacekeepers from forty-three troop-contributing countries, along with consultations with UN officials, force commanders, and mission personnel. The paper examines the gap between the UN’s commitments on women’s meaningful participation and the realities women encounter in mission environments. It highlights persistent challenges including role misalignment, harassment, exclusion from operational decision making, inadequate equipment, and weak accountability systems.

The paper argues that leadership is the decisive variable shaping women’s deployment experiences. It calls for linking training nominations to deployment commitments, tracking participation in substantive tasks rather than headcounts, embedding gender-responsive indicators in leadership evaluations, establishing confidential reporting channels outside national chains of command, and auditing equipment standards before deployment.

Download

The post The Glass Blue Helmet: Progress and Persistent Challenges for Women Military Peacekeepers appeared first on International Peace Institute.

On 3 June, SEDE Members will have an exchange of views with the European Commission on the selection of projects under the European Defence Fund’s 2025 call for proposals. On 4 June, following the EP resolution, SEDE will also discuss the follow-up with the European Commission on drones and new systems of warfare and EU’s need to adapt to be fit for today’s security challenges. ...

Debriefs will be held on the SEDE mission to Canada on the growing importance of the EU-Canada Security and Defence Partnership as well as on the participation of the Delegation for relations with the NATO Parliamentary Assembly at Spring Session in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Gender-responsive peacekeeping operations are designed and implemented in ways that recognize gendered differences and inequalities and advance gender equality and the rights, protection, and participation of all genders as a core part of mandate delivery. Yet while normative commitments on women, peace, and security (WPS) have expanded considerably over the past two decades, these commitments have been unevenly translated into practice.

This policy paper examines how gender-responsive peacekeeping has been operationalized in the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) and the African Union missions in Somalia (AMISOM and ATMIS), with a focus on mandates, institutional design, force composition, leadership, and community engagement. It finds that gender responsiveness depends less on formal commitments than on whether missions embed gender analysis into the operational systems that shape planning, protection, and decision making.

The paper highlights how institutional placement of gender advisers, leadership support, deployment of women peacekeepers, and sustained community engagement can strengthen both mission effectiveness and legitimacy. At the same time, it underscores the persistent gap between procedural responsiveness to meet institutional requirements and transformative responsiveness that changes how missions operate and protect civilians in practice.

Download

The post Are Missions Delivering on Gender-Responsive Peace Operations? Lessons from South Sudan and Somalia appeared first on International Peace Institute.

The next meeting of the Committee on Security and Defence (SEDE) is scheduled to take place on Wednesday, 3 June 2026 from 9.00-12.30 and 14.30 - 18.30 and on Thursday, 4 June 2026 from 9.00-12.30 in Brussels (room SPINELLI 3E2).

Further information about the SEDE meetings can be found here.
_______________________
SEDE missions 2026:

• Taiwan - 30 March - 2 April 2026
• Poland and Czechia - 16-18 February 2026
• Ukraine - 5-6 February 2026

SEDE missions 2025:

• Djibouti - 27-29 October 2025
  
• Greenland - 15-19 September 2025
  
• Norway - 27-30 May 2025
• Moldova and Ukraine - 14-17 April 2025
  
• Bosnia and Herzegovina - 24-27 February 2025
• Israel and Palestine - 5-8 February 2025

SEDE missions 2024:

• United Kingdom - 28-30 October 2024
• Ukraine - 25-26 October 2024

SEDE Committee meetings' calendar 2026
SEDE Committee meetings' calendar 2025
EP calendar 2026
Source : © European Union, 2026 - EP

Le quotidien The New York Times a rapporté que les États-Unis et Israël considéraient l'ancien président Mahmoud Ahmadinejad comme un leader potentiel pour l'après-guerre.

Written by Ionel Zamfir

Over a thousand women are killed in the EU each year in circumstances that often point to a gender-related motive, and the perpetrators are most commonly intimate partners or family members. Data collected by a number of EU Member States on female homicides show no consistent downward trend, despite a range of measures aimed at combating gender-based violence.

Widely publicised cases of femicide have highlighted systemic failures in prevention and victim protection, and have driven legislative reforms in several Member States. These include the introduction of femicide as an aggravating circumstance alongside measures on prevention, victim support and data collection.

Experts recommend avoiding an exclusive focus on harsher criminal penalties and instead implementing a comprehensive approach that addresses the root causes of femicide, strengthening prevention efforts, improving victim protection, enhancing data collection and raising public awareness.

At the EU level, existing legislative and non-legislative measures address gender-based violence more broadly but do not specifically recognise femicide as a distinct crime. The European Parliament has therefore urged for its formal recognition at EU level, arguing that this would improve legal clarity, data comparability and the effectiveness of prevention and protection measures.

Read the complete briefing on ‘Recognition of femicide in the EU‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.

Photos

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IPI and the Stimson Center, in partnership with the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the UN and the Permanent Mission of Denmark to the UN, co-organized a workshop on “UNMISS in the Context of Changing Security and Regional Dynamics” on May 26th. This event is part of a series of workshops, “Missions and Mandates: Toward Adaptable, Nimble, and Effective Responses,” that aim to support the sustained engagement of UN member states on how to make peace operations mandates more adaptable.

The workshop reflected on the mandate of UNMISS, which is set for renewal on April 30, in the context of heightened political and security tensions in South Sudan, while also assessing how broader regional insecurities are shaping dynamics within the country, including the ramifications of the war in Sudan. The situation in South Sudan requires urgent action: escalating violence across multiple states, political detentions in breach of the peace agreement, and a humanitarian crisis worsened by the war in Sudan. More than 1.3 million people have crossed into South Sudan from Sudan since 2023. Over half the country’s population faces food insecurity.

Under the Chatham House Rule, today’s conversation brought together UN and AU representatives as well as, Member States, and independent experts to address critical questions concerning the practical implications of the renewed mandate and the ways in which regional dynamics shape the prospects for stability in South Sudan.

The post United Nations Mission in South Sudan in the Context of Changing Security and Regional Dynamics appeared first on International Peace Institute.

Les supporters de la RD Congo qui souhaitent assister au retour de leur équipe à la Coupe du monde sont confrontés à un obstacle majeur alors que les États-Unis imposent des restrictions de voyage suite à la dernière épidémie d'Ebola.

Written by Monika Kiss

Multimodal digital mobility services (MDMS) are digital platforms that integrate transport modes such as rail, buses, bikes, taxis and car-sharing into a single interface for planning, booking and payment. MDMS aim to improve convenience, journey choice and cost efficiency, while supporting more sustainable and integrated mobility across Europe.

The EU considers MDMS to be a strategic component of the Green Deal and the sustainable and smart mobility strategy to reduce emissions and strengthen the transport Single Market. Key policy tools include the Directive on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), the European mobility data space, and initiatives promoting interoperable data and seamless multimodal travel. Major policy debates focus on data sharing, interoperability, integrated ticketing, passenger rights, liability for disruptions, and platform governance. The Multimodal Passenger Mobility Forum highlighted challenges around FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) principles, self-preferencing, enforcement, data protection and data quality requirements. A Eurobarometer survey shows that many users still find multimodal booking difficult due to fragmented systems, poor connections, higher costs and uncertainty about transfers.

Stakeholders are divided, with transport operators resisting mandatory data and ticketing access, while digital platforms support stronger interoperability and openness. Consumer and environmental groups generally support MDMS for improving transparency, competition, and shifting demand towards low-emission transport. Researchers consider MDMS promising but not fully mature, pointing to persistent issues in interoperability, technical standards, cybersecurity, and governance. Overall, effective MDMS deployment requires balanced regulation, harmonised standards, investment in infrastructure, and strong public-private coordination.

Read the complete briefing on ‘Multimodal digital mobility services‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.