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The UKs last judicial member of the European court of justice is suing the council of the European Union and the EU court over her removal from office because of Brexit.

Eleanor Sharpston QC, advocate general to the court in Luxembourg, has lodged two claims challenging her replacement by a Greek lawyer before her term in office was scheduled to end next year.

Her departure will not necessarily end direct British involvement with the ECJ. A claim has been submitted by a team of London-based lawyers arguing that even though the UK as a nation is leaving the EU, its citizens cannot be deprived of EU citizenship without their consent.

Sharpston, whose mandate was due to end in October 2021, has submitted two claims against the council of the European Union, which represents the remaining 27 EU states, and against the ECJ itself.

At the start of the year, Brussels issued a statement saying the mandates of all UK-related members of EU institutions would automatically end on 31 January. Sharpston was the exception to the rule and was told that she would stay on until a successor could take over.

A Greek replacement for her has now been found. The number of advocates general, who advise the courts judges, is fixed at 11.

A fellow of Kings College, Cambridge and a former joint head of chambers in London, Sharpston has been at the ECJ since 2006. Earlier this year, contemplating the possibility of legal action, she told the Law Gazette: It may be that the very last service I can render to my court is to see whether there is something I can do to push back against the member states intruding into the courts autonomy and independence.

She is understood to be arguing that she should be be allowed to stay in office until her current six-year term expires and that her removal undermines the judicial independence of the court. Court rules, it is said, ensure that judges and advocate generals can only be removed when they reach the end of their mandate or reach the obligatory retirement age.

The ECJ told the Guardian it could not confirm the identity of claimants in the two cases submitted. The courts last British judge, Christopher Vajda, lost his seat in February despite the UK remaining within the single market and customs union until the end of 2020. There are 27 judges sitting on the ECJ one for every member state.

A separate action legal action has been lodged at the ECJ this month by lawyers acting for Prof Joshua Silver, a physicist at Oxford University. The claim is being led by Prof Takis Tridimas of Matrix Chambers and lawyers from the London firm DAC Beachcroft.

They argue that while the withdrawal agreement between the UK government and the EU has resulted in the UK as a nation leaving the EU, the fundamental status and rights of the British citizens of the European Union cannot be removed without their consent.

Stephen Hocking, a partner at DAC Beachcroft, said: In the withdrawal agreement, the EU council purported to remove fundamental individual rights from a group of citizens of the European Union, namely UK nationals, without any due process and without any reference to them. In doing so it acted unlawfully.

EU citizenship is a citizenship like any other, and it confers individual rights on citizens that cannot be taken away by an agreement between governments.

If he is successful, UK citizens would retain their rights as EU citizens, for example the right to live and work in EU member states.

This week Guy Verhofstadt, the former Brexit coordinator for the European parliament, tweeted in support of the legal action: People received European citizenship with the treaty of Maastricht. Will be interesting to see, if a government decides to leave, its citizens automatically lose their European citizenship. They shouldnt do!

The case, for which more than 67,000 has already been raised, is being supported by crowdfunding through the website Crowdfunder.

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British lawyer sues EU over her removal from its court due to Brexit - The Guardian

Irish peoples trust in institutions during the Covid-19 crisis - most notably the healthcare system and the government - remains high when compared to the European average, new research shows.

However, European survey data also shows the employment impact of the crisis, with almost a third of Irish respondents saying they lost jobs or contracts, either temporarily or permanently, compared to an EU average of 28 per cent.

The statistics from Eurofound, the EU employment and working conditions agency, shows that trust in the Garda, the healthcare system, the government, the European Union and the news media is ahead of the EU27 average.

This is despite Europeans in general reporting dramatic fall in trust in the EU and their national governments, with low levels reported across many countries.

The data was gathered from 85,000 people during April. With 8,700 respondents, Ireland was the most responsive country to the EU-wide survey. The responses suggest that trust in the Irish government is among the highest in the EU, rated at 6.3 on a scale of 1-10, compared with a European average of 4.8.

Trust in the European Union itself remains strong, at 6.0 versus an average of 4.6. Only Finland had higher trust in the EU. Data from Irish responses also show trust in the Garda is very high, at 7.2, compared to a European average of 6.2. Trust in the news media was also higher than the average at 5.5 in Ireland versus 4.6 elsewhere in Europe.

The findings buck a series of trends evident elsewhere in the survey, according to Eurofound. The first results show a Europe grappling to respond to the crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, with many respondents reporting high levels of loneliness coupled with low levels of optimism about their future.

Some 59 per cent of Irish respondents expressed optimism about the future compared to an overall figure of 45 per cent for the EU. Nine per cent of Irish respondents reported feeling downhearted and depressed, versus a European average of 13 per cent. They also reported feeling lonely less often (12 per cent versus 16 per cent) than the European average.

Despite cocooning measures, people aged 50 or over had the highest mental wellbeing in the State, similar to trends in other countries. Students had the lowest mental wellbeing, even lower than unemployed people.

Younger people were also more likely to report feeling tense all or most of the time, with the figure for younger cohorts 20 per cent, significantly higher than the overall population at 13 per cent, and higher than the EU average of 18 per cent.

The impact of the crisis on employment is also reflected in the survey, with 32 per cent of Irish respondents saying they lost their jobs, or contracts in the case of self-employed people, either temporarily or permanently. Some 72 per cent of people who lost their jobs were self-employed.

Almost half reported that their working hours had decreased. Women were more likely to have had their working hours increase than men, while 15 per cent of those in work said it is either very likely or rather likely that they would lose their jobs. Work-life balance among Irish respondents was reported to be somewhat better than the EU average.

However, Irish women reported being too tired after work to do necessary household jobs at a higher rate than men, and also found it difficult to concentrate on their job or give it more time. Working from home with children present may account for at least some of the gender differences, with women on average continuing to do more housework and childcare, Eurofound suggested.

A higher level of teleworking was reported by Irish workers, at 43 per cent compared to an EU average of 37 per cent.

The impact of Covid-19 on personal finances is also becoming clear, with 16 per cent of respondents reporting difficulties in making ends meet. However, this is lower than the EU average of 23 per cent. Irish savings are in a worse state than the European average, with 22 per cent of Irish respondents stating they have no savings at all. Around one third (35 per cent) said their savings could keep the household going for up to three months, and 11 per cent stated they could afford to live off savings for a year or more, less than the EU average of 14 per cent.

People over 50 or over were most likely to have savings, while 30 per cent of people aged 35-49 had no savings at all. Accommodation insecurity and mortgage arrears in Ireland were similar to average EU levels in the survey.

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Irish publics trust in institutions during Covid-19 above EU average - The Irish Times

European Union supports to deal with coronavirus pandemic are not nearly enough for what is required, Fianna Fail leader Michel Martin has warned.

Other than the outbreak of a war there has never before been such a dramatic and rapid public health and economic shock, he said.

Like other EU countries Ireland does not yet really know the scale of the recovery challenge we face.

If the member states of the union continue to block measures to develop new direct funding mechanisms, then the unions contribution will continue to be economically marginal.

During a debate on the EU response to the pandemic, he warned that the European Central Bank, the one institution willing to act with true urgency and ambition, is under assault and its powers could be affected by a remarkable judgment from the German constitutional court.

Earlier Taoiseach Leo Varadkar praised EU agreement on an aid package of measures worth 500 billion for member states but warned these are all loans and guarantees and are not grants and that borrowed money must be paid back.

He said the Government favoured the use of shared managing of debt, the use of coronabonds but said it would have taken a long time to agree such a structure and might have required referendums in a number of countries, including Ireland.

He said the three measures in the half a trillion euro package were a historic-level deployment of resources to respond to an emergency of unprecedented levels.

They were a much greater and more appropriate response from the European Union that we saw during the financial crisis ten or 12 years ago when the European Union acted in a way that was too little and too late.

Mr Varadkar said the coronavirus crisis had resulted in deep, sharp economic and social impacts and in the early stages the EU response was poorly co-ordinated.

But the measures agreed included the easing of state aid rules but he warned that members states should not use this to give unfair advantage to their companies competing against companies in other EU member states. This would be closely monitored he said.

Sinn Fin leader Mary Lou McDonald warned against a return to austerity as she reminded the Dil that the EU was no great friend to Ireland or our people and there are huge concerns now among workers and families that there could be a re-run of that scenario.

Ms McDonald warned that following the pandemic we cannot perpetuate an economic system of winners and losers.

Green Party TD Roderic OGorman said Ireland would not be going it alone on a target of reducing carbon emissions by 7 per cent a year. It was part of an EU response to signing up to Paris Accord.

Labour TD Duncan Smith said the EU funds must include grants as well as loans. We need the fund to be financed at EU-level, not by piling on unsustainable debt onto member states already over-stretched national debts.

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EU aid of 500bn are loans and must be paid back, says Taoiseach - The Irish Times

Times of crisis can be formative. As the European Union grapples with how to respond to the worst pandemic and economic crisis in a century, it is fuelling debate about what the bloc should be, and even about the future of globalisation and capitalism itself.

Next Thursday, when the leaders of the 27 member states gather over video conference, they will be split according to whether they want a pared-back EU that is primarily an economic and trade arrangement, or a better-funded bloc that smooths economic inequalities between members and promotes European interests in the wider world.

We are at a moment of truth, which is to decide whether the European Union is a political project or just a market project. I think its a political project, French president Emmanuel Macron said in an interview with the Financial Times, in which he said agreeing jointly-backed debt was essential to prevent the rise of populists across the Mediterranean.

We need financial transfers and solidarity, if only so that Europe holds on, he said.

Ireland, Italy, Spain, France and four other countries have backed the appeal for shared debt, arguing it is a structural shift appropriate to the scale of the challenges posed by the pandemic. But a block of northern states have ruled out the idea.

Italy and the Netherlands represent the two poles of the debate. The gulf in views in each country shows how euroscepticism has taken on different forms across the EU, even as it grew in reaction to old standoffs and worked its way into the heart of domestic politics.

In the Netherlands, a storied euro-critical streak has long favoured a cheaper and less integrated EU where every state must strictly follow spending rules.

According to this view, Dutch taxpayers paid the price for the profligacy of Mediterranean states through the bailouts of the euro zone debt crisis of the 2010s, and granting any extra cent to the EU budget is a domestic political embarrassment.

In Italy, eurocritical sentiment demands an EU of greater largesse. Disillusionment with the bloc is driven by a sense of abandonment, a belief that EU help has been insufficient, and by old bitterness over years of austerity and stagnant growth due to a combination of domestic problems, old debt obligations, and EU spending restraints.

The campaign for joint debt received a boost on Friday when the European Parliament voted with a large majority in favour of recovery bonds in a motion backed by the chambers main political groups.

Another idea advocated by MEPs from Macrons Renew Europe group promotes a grand bargain in which the European Commission would borrow directly from markets, and be given the power to directly repay it by raising money by taxation of things like plastic.

But the debate provoked by the crisis goes beyond how to fund spending, extending to questioning the current model of capitalism itself. According to a manifesto published by 170 Dutch scientists, it is the way economic growth is measured that should be altered, to discount fossil fuel industries and incentivise spending on public transport, education, and health systems.

Macron declared the crisis will change the nature of globalisation.

Particularly in recent years it increased inequalities in developed countries. And it was clear that this kind of globalisation was reaching the end of its cycle, it was undermining democracy, he said.

How will the debate on the future of the EU be resolved?

All eyes are turned to the heavyweight who is often the last to lay her cards on the table: German chancellor Angela Merkel, a cautious political operator known for making bounds of leadership in the past. Many believe that if Merkel believes the European project is at stake, she will act.

The former Italian prime minister Enrico Letta has sounded the alarm. There is a mortal risk for the European Union and we have to act to avoid this mortal risk, Letta told a briefing of the Institute of International and European Affairs. I think the last chance is next Thursday, the European Council next week.

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EU at moment of truth after crisis divisions - The Irish Times

China and the European Union are pushing President TrumpDonald John TrumpMichael Cohen to be released early from prison amid coronavirus pandemic: report Biden assembling White House transition team Top Republicans call on Trump to fund WHO pending director-general's resignation MORE to restore funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) after he announced late Tuesday that financial support would be halted pending a review of its response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Chinese and European Union officials condemned the presidents decision tohalt U.S. funding, which supported about 15 percent of WHOs 2019 budget, amounting to more than $400 million, Reuters reported.

When asked whether China would fill the U.S.s gaps in funding, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijiansaid that Beijing will look into relevant issues according to the needs of the situation, according to the news service.

Zhao reportedly added that the pandemic was at a vital point and the U.S.s lack of fundingwould affect worldwide efforts to fight coronavirus.

The European Unions foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, joined the criticism, callingTrump's decisionunjustified.

Deeply regret U.S. decision to suspend funding to @WHO. There is no reason justifying this move at a moment when their efforts are needed more than ever, Borrell tweeted. Only by joining forces we can overcome this crisis that knows no borders.

Deeply regret US decision to suspend funding to @WHO. There is no reason justifying this move at a moment when their efforts are needed more than ever to help contain & mitigate the #coronavirus pandemic. Only by joining forces we can overcome this crisis that knows no borders.

Trump announced that the U.S. would stop funding WHO at his Tuesday press briefing until a review of the global health organizations management of the coronavirus pandemic is undertaken.

The reality is that the WHO failed to adequately obtain, vet and share information in a timely and transparent fashion, the president said.

Democrats and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterresalso blasted Trumps decision, saying it will hurt the worlds responseto the ongoing pandemic, in whichnearly 2 million peopleworldwide have been infected and at least 127,590 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

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China, EU push Trump to restore WHO funding | TheHill - The Hill