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LONDON -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday renewed British threats to break a Brexit agreement with the European Union, blaming it for a political crisis that's blocking the formation of a new government in Northern Ireland.

Johnson said there would be a necessity to act if the EU doesn't agree to overhaul post-Brexit trade rules that he says are destabilizing Northern Ireland's delicate political balance.

Johnson held private talks with the leaders of Northern Ireland's main political parties, urging them to get back to work. But his public message was aimed at the 27-nation EU, which he accused of refusing to give ground over post-Brexit border checks.

I hope the EUs position changes. If it does not, there will be a necessity to act, Johnson wrote in the Belfast Telegraph.

The government is expected Tuesday to outline planned legislation that would give Britain powers to override parts of its Brexit treaty with the EU.

EU member Ireland warned that a unilateral move by Britain could imperil the entire post-Brexit trade agreement that the U.K. and the bloc hammered out in months of rancorous negotiations before the U.K.'s exit from the bloc in 2020.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said Britain's stance "calls into question the functioning of the TCA the trade and cooperation agreement between the U.K. and the EU.

Northern Ireland elected a new Assembly earlier this month, in a vote that saw the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein win the most seats. It was the first time a party that seeks union with the Republic of Ireland has won an election in Northern Ireland, a bastion of Protestant unionist power.

The Democratic Unionist Party came second and is refusing to form a government, or even allow the assembly to sit, until Johnsons government scraps post-Brexit checks on goods entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.

Under power-sharing rules set up as part of Northern Irelands peace process, a government cant be formed without the cooperation of both nationalist and unionist parties.

Northern Ireland is the only part of the U.K. that shares a border with the EU. When Britain left the bloc and its borderless free-trade zone, a deal was agreed to keep the Irish land border free of customs posts and other checks, because an open border is a key pillar of the peace process that ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland. Instead, there are checks on some goods, such as meat and eggs, entering Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.

The arrangement is opposed by unionists in Northern Ireland, who say the new checks have put a burden on businesses and frayed the bonds between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K.

The British government agrees that the regulations, known as the Northern Ireland Protocol, are destabilizing a peace agreement that relies on support from both Protestant unionist and Catholic nationalist communities.

The DUP has a mandate to see the Protocol replaced with arrangements that restore our place within the U.K. internal market, party leader Jeffrey Donaldson said after meeting Monday with Johnson. "Our mandate will be respected.

But while the DUP wants the Protocol scrapped, most other parties in Northern Ireland want to keep it, with some tweaks.

The EU says the treaty cant be renegotiated, but it is willing to be flexible to ease the burden of checks.

Johnson, however, accused the EU of failing to recognize that the arrangements arent working.

We dont want to scrap it, but we think it can be fixed," Johnson said after his meetings with the parties at Hillsborough Castle near Belfast.

He said he would prefer to do that through talks with the EU, but to have the insurance, we need to proceed with a legislative solution as well.

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald accused the British government of cynical antics" and placating the DUP.

"It seems to us absolutely extraordinary that the British government would propose to legislate to break the law" by overriding the Brexit treaty, she said.

New legislation would take months to pass through Parliament, but the unilateral move would immediately anger the EU, which would hit back with legal action and potentially trade sanctions. Even after Brexit, bloc is Britains biggest economic partner.

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said he had spoken to EU Council chief Charles Michel and agreed that the only way to resolve this issue is through substantive talks between the European Union and the United Kingdom government.

Coveney said a U.K.-EU feud is the last thing Europe needs right now" as it seeks unity in response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

This is a time for calmness," Coveney said at an EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels. "Its a time for dialogue. Its a time for compromise and partnership between the EU and the U.K. to solve these outstanding issues.

Samuel Petrequin in Brussels contributed to this story.

More AP coverage of Brexit: https://apnews.com/hub/brexit

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Johnson: UK will act on Northern Ireland rules if EU won't - ABC News

BUDAPEST, May 16 (Reuters) - Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Monday raised the spectre of an "era of recession" in Europe as the continent grapples with surging energy costs and rising inflation due to the war in Ukraine.

Orban, taking his oath of office after being elected in April for a fourth consecutive term, took a typically bullish line towards Brussels, telling parliament it was "abusing its power day by day" by pushing back member states' sovereignty.

Nonetheless, he said Hungary's place was in the European Union for the next decade.

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He also said Hungary would not block European Union sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine as long as they posed no risk to Hungary's energy security.

Hungary, with a few other member states, has so far rejected the EU's proposed current sanctions on Russian oil. Budapest says it wants hundreds of millions of euros from the bloc to mitigate the cost of ditching Russian crude. The EU needs all 27 states to agree to the embargo for it to go ahead.

He said the most important task of his new government would be to steer Hungary's economy through a European economic crisis, defending the tax breaks and benefits granted to families and defending households' capped energy bills.

"The war and the European policy of sanctions given in response, has created an energy crisis," Orban said.

"The energy crisis, and the interest rate hikes in the United States have jointly brought about the era of high inflation. All this will bring about the era of recession, when a decline in economic output, stagnation and years of slight increases in output will follow each other in Europe."

Orban has repeatedly clashed with the EU over policies, most lately over LGBTQ rights and rule of law issues, but said the importance of Hungary being a member of NATO had never been as obvious as now.

He projected the war in neighbouring Ukraine would "last for a long time ... and will pose a permanent security threat to Hungary".

He said the National Bank of Hungary and the government would have to coordinate steps to curb inflation.

"We will sync these steps ... we will take cautious but firm measures to regulate prices," Orban said in a speech. His government has already capped fuel prices, basic foodstuffs and mortgage rates, as well as households' energy bills.

Earlier in the day, the European Commission published its fresh economic forecasts, in which it said Hungary's GDP growth would slow to 3.6% this year from 7.1% in 2021, while average inflation would come in at 9% this year.

"In 2022, the deficit is forecast to remain elevated at 6.0% of GDP, reflecting the introduction of several expansionary measures and additional spending related to high energy prices," it added.

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Reporting by Krisztina Than and Gergely Szakacs; Editing by Alison Williams

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Hungary PM Orban warns of "era of recession" in Europe - Reuters

In the first quarter of 2022, GDP in the Eurozone increased by 0.3 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. And in the European Union, it rose by 0.4 percent. The European Unions statistics office, Eurostat, reported this on Tuesday in Luxembourg. The number of employees also increased slightly.

In a preliminary estimate, economists expected eurozone GDP to rise by just 0.2%. Compared to the first quarter of 2021, the seasonally adjusted GDP in the eurozone increased by 5.1 percent. Economists expected growth of 5 percent. In the European Union, GDP growth was 5.2 percent year on year.

In comparison, the US GDP in the first quarter of 2022 decreased by 0.4 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. On an annual basis, GDP in the first quarter of 2022 increased by 3.6 percent.

Compared to the previous quarter, the number of employed people in the euro area increased by 0.5 percent, in the European Union by 0.4 percent. On an annual basis, the number of employed people in the Eurozone increased by 2.6 percent. In the European Union, the increase was 2.5 percent.

The eurozone comprises nineteen countries with Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Ireland, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, and Finland. In the European Union, those member states are joined by Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Sweden.

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The economy in the Eurozone and the European Union is improving again, and the number of workers is rising - Aviation Analysis Wing

This wont happen unless Europeans rapidly commit themselves to a concrete action plan that requires each NATO member to fulfill strong and specific military obligations on an annual basis. No less important, governments must place their troops under the control of a unified command structure. If each country sends its fighters into the field under its own national commander, their separate forces would be overwhelmed by coordinated Russian assaults, especially in an era of lightning-fast weapons.

This raises a very real institution-building challenge for the continents political leaders. Only the European Union is in a realistic position to organize a broad-based military effort. Its parliament is directly elected by the citizens of all the states in the Union. After each election, the majority of delegates choose an executive commission currently led by Ursula von der Leyen to make key policy decisions. This body has the precious democratic legitimacy required to embark on such an unprecedented military initiative.

At present, however, the treaties defining the powers of the EU dont grant the Union any war-making authority whatsoever. Before the commission can step into the breach, another key institution the Council of Ministers must propose revisions that empower the commission to move forward with its rigorous demands upon the member states.

The council consists of the chief executives of each country. But fortunately, its current leader is Emmanuel Macron who staked his presidential campaign against Marine Le Pen on an emphatically continental vision of Frances future. Many commentators have downplayed Macrons achievement by emphasizing Le Pens success in generating popular support for her hard-right nationalist program. Yet the fact remains that Macron is the first French president who has won a second term in office in the last 20 years and he did so by a decisive 59-41 margin.

The French president is the continental leader with the strongest democratic mandate to expand the EU treaties to authorize collaboration with NATO to confront the Russian military threat. Indeed, Macron has already stated that [i]n the coming weeks, we need to bring to being a European proposal to forge a new security and stability order. We need to build it between Europeans, then share it with our allies in the NATO framework.

Here is where Joe Biden can play a crucial role. He should not only publicly encourage Macron and von der Leyen to begin the hard bargaining required to enact the dramatic revisions to EU law required before a European army can become a reality. Since the reorganization of NATO also requires Americas consent to treaty revisions, Biden should immediately announce his strong support for the necessary changes.

Normally, of course, it is virtually impossible to win the two-thirds Senate majority needed for treaty revisions. The Ukraine bloodbath, however, has dramatically transformed the political situation. With Macron and von der Leyen embarking on their own intensive efforts to reconstruct NATO, Biden will be in a strong position to gain the bipartisan support of a supermajority especially since the Europeans are now prepared, at long last, to pay their fair share of the overall defense effort. It will take a lot of hard work to develop a concrete action program for the new continental army and assure its effective implementation in each of the states of the European Union. If serious efforts to lay the legal foundations dont start immediately, Europe wont have a realistic chance of putting a fighting force on the ground by 2030.

Even if Democrats lose control of the Senate in 2022, this will be one of the rare issues where Capitol Hill will likely stand behind the president. In the meantime, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his team can offer concrete help to Macron and von der Leyen in their ambitious campaign to gain broad-based political support for the reconstruction of NATO on their side of the Atlantic.

Even with Americas help, their success is by no means assured. At best, it will take a year or two of wheeling-and-dealing before EU leaders can gain the legal authority to develop a concrete action program and assure its effective enforcement in each of the states of the European Union. Nevertheless, there will never be a better time to make this effort and if it succeeds, Putin and his successors will confront a decisive deterrent.

In giving their strong support to the European effort, however, Biden and the Senate should also insist that the new NATO remain faithful to its founding principles. In particular, when the treaty was first signed in 1949, NATO members attached a fundamental condition to their pledge of mutual military assistance. They made it clear that they would come to a countrys defense only if its government was making a good-faith effort to strengthen their free institutions. Otherwise, it could not rely on its NATO allies to come to its defense against attack.

Seventy-five years later, it is painfully apparent that some NATO countries are working to destroy freedom rather than strengthen it. Turkey is the most obvious example. Over the past decade, it has been transformed into an authoritarian state by Recep Tayyip Erdoan. Worse yet, Erdoan sent his army to help Syrias despotic regime fight NATOs troops battling against the very alliance he and his predecessors had pledged to support. Since Turkey is neither a reliable ally nor a defender of free institutions, Biden and the Senate should refuse to sign a treaty that continues to recognize it as a NATO member.

Hungary is a tougher case. Like Erdoan, Viktor Orbn has used his time in office to create an illiberal democracy, which decisively undermines NATOs founding commitment to freedom. Moreover, when he was running for reelection during the early days of the Ukraine war, he condemned Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as an enemy of the Hungarian nation and campaigned on a platform that opposed any EU sanctions against Russia for its invasion. He then used his control of the mass media to deny his opponents a fair opportunity to challenge his celebration of Putins aggression. As a consequence, Orbns landslide victory at the polls only dramatizes his success in entrenching his illiberal principles into the nations constitution.

At the very least, Biden should insist that Hungary be suspended from NATO until it can credibly reestablish that it has dramatically changed course and is on the way to rebuilding its free institutions. There is every reason to believe that the leadership in Brussels and Paris would respond to this American initiative with enthusiasm. Indeed, von der Leyen is already leading the commission down a rarely invoked path that would strip Hungary of the billion-dollar EU subsidies its government receives which Orbn now uses as a slush fund to sustain his dictatorial ambitions.

The commission is also seriously considering similar steps against Poland in response to its continuing defiance of decisions by the European Court of Justice, which has declared that the current government is violating fundamental principles of constitutional democracy to which the European Union is committed. If von der Leyen gains the necessary support to suspend Polands voting privileges in parliament until it complies with the courts demands, Biden should support its suspension from the Alliance as well.

The challenges ahead are extraordinary. But the reconstruction of NATO not only represents the Wests best chance to prevent future Russian aggression. It also offers an opportunity for the United States and Europe to revitalize the great Enlightenment tradition of liberal democracy against the nationalist demagogues seeking to destroy it on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Opinion | How to Reinvigorate NATO and Deter Putin's Aggression - POLITICO

The fifth Steering Committee Meeting of the Joint Project on Strengthening the Institutional Capacity of Court of Cassation was held online on 28 April 2022. The focus of the meeting was the progress achieved since the last Steering Committee Meeting held in October 2021 and the activities planned to be carried out for the period May-November 2022.

Representatives from the Court of Cassation, Constitutional Court, Council of State, Ministry of Justice (Directorate General for Foreign Relations and European Union Affairs), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Directorate for EU Affairs), Union of Turkish Bar Associations, Justice Academy of Turkey, Delegation of the European Union to Turkey, Central Finance and Contracts Unit and Council of Europe attended the meeting.

During the meeting, Dr Mustafa Saldrm, Deputy Secretary General of the Court of Cassation, mentioned the role and importance of the Project in terms of the reform strategy of the Court of Cassation and provided information about the Court of Cassation Case Law Centre to be established within the Court. The representative from the EU Delegation expressed her satisfaction with the progress made in the Project especially since last November, emphasising the strenuous efforts of the project teams. In her presentation, Prof. nayet Aydn from the Faculty of Education Sciences of Ankara University focused on the training needs analysis, job description and job analysis activities under the training component of the Project.

The Joint Project on Strengthening the Institutional Capacity of Court of Cassation is co-funded by the European Union and the Council of Europe and the Court of Cassation of Turkey is the end beneficiary of the Project.

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5th Steering Committee Meeting of the European Union-Council of Europe Joint Project on 'Strengthening the Institutional Capacity of Court of...