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The European Free Alliance sets out its key demands ahead of elections
These include protecting the rights of minorities and the right of a state to self-determination.
The European Free Alliance’s goal for the European elections in June 2024 is to ensure that minority rights are respected in the European Union and also the right to self-determination.
These are some of the main demands of its manifesto, which it presented on Friday after a two-day assembly in Brussels, Belgium.
The event was attended by its two main candidates or spitzenkandidaten, Maylis Rosberg and Raül Romeva, who were presented last October.
The party has called for the need for a European Commissioner to defend the rights of minorities.
“I consider national minorities to be one of the basic things in the European Union,” said Rosberg, who belongs to the Danish minority in Germany. He added that they are “the diversity of the EU”.
He calls for “protection and measures on how to develop their rights”. His party’s manifesto also calls for reform so that the European Committee of the Regions can “influence and amend” European legislation.
At the moment this European institution has only a consultative role.
The other main candidate or spitzenkandidat is former Catalan MEP Raül Romeva, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison for his participation in the Catalan referendum in 2017. Romeva was imprisoned for nearly three years and was subsequently pardoned, but is politically disqualified until 2030.
The pro-independence leader’s candidacy is mainly symbolic.
“It is basically a way of sending a message,” the Catalan politician explained. Romeva considers that the European Union has “important deficits in terms of representativeness, not only of representativeness in terms of nation but also of languages, of minorities, of options.”
This is not the first time that the EFA has had a leading candidate who has been condemned for the events related to the Catalan referendum. In the 2019 European elections, it fielded Oriol Junqueras, who at the time was imprisoned.
The leading candidate or spitzenkandidat is the person that each European party nominates as a possible president of the European Commission. After the European elections, the presidents and prime ministers of the EU countries must choose the next leader of the EU executive.
In 2014, Jean-Claude Juncker succeeded, after participating in an election campaign for the post. And in 2019 it was the then almost unknown Ursula von der Leyen who was chosen.
In these upcoming elections, Von der Leyen is standing for the European People’s Party.
She will run against, among others, the Social Democrat candidate and current European Commissioner for Social Rights Nicolas Schmit.
The European Free Alliance party is one of the least represented parties in the European Parliament, with a total of 10 MEPs. Most of them sit in the European Parliament in coalition with the Greens. The three members of the Flemish nationalist party sit with the far-right CRE group.
The report also identifies Vietnam as a priority country on the watchlist.
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North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has publicly praised soldiers who killed themselves rather than be captured while fighting Ukrainian forces in Kursk region, offering the clearest confirmation yet of what officials and intelligence agencies have long described as one of Pyongyang’s most extreme battlefield policies.
In remarks published Monday by North Korean state media KCNA and first reported by Reuters, Kim honored troops who “unhesitatingly chose the path of self-destruction and suicide” rather than surrender, as he addressed Russian officials and bereaved families during a memorial ceremony for North Korean soldiers killed in combat.
“It is not only the heroes who unhesitatingly chose the path of self-destruction and suicide to defend great honor, but also those who fell while charging at the forefront of assault battles,” Kim said.
The comments mark the first time Kim has directly acknowledged the lengths North Korean troops fighting for Russia have gone to in attempts to avoid capture by Ukrainian forces.
BATTERED IN UKRAINE, RUSSIA RACES TO REARM — BUT QUESTIONS LINGER OVER ITS MILITARY STRENGTH
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un attends a photo session with officers and soldiers who participated in the 90th founding anniversary of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army in North Korea on April 27, 2022. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service)
North Korea deployed an estimated 14,000 troops to Russia’s western Kursk region to support Moscow’s war effort, according to South Korean, Ukrainian and Western officials cited by Reuters. Those same officials say the forces suffered staggering losses, with more than 6,000 North Korean soldiers believed killed in some of the war’s most intense fighting.
For months, intelligence reports, battlefield evidence and defector testimony have pointed to a grim directive: North Korean troops were expected to detonate grenades or otherwise take their own lives rather than risk capture.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un pose for a photo during a signing ceremony following bilateral talks in Pyongyang, North Korea, June 19, 2024. (Sputnik/Kristina Kormilitsyna/Kremlin via REUTERS)
That policy appears to have extended even to the few who survived. According to The Guardian, two North Korean soldiers captured by Ukrainian forces and now held as prisoners of war in Kyiv both reportedly attempted to blow themselves up but were unable to do so because of severe injuries. One of the captured soldiers has reportedly expressed guilt over failing to carry out those orders.
NORTH KOREA VOWS ‘TOUGHEST’ US POLICY IN VAGUE ANNOUNCEMENT
North Korean troops train with Russian instructors to clear mines in the heavily contaminated Kursk region, according to Russian Defense Ministry footage. (East to West News Agency)
Kim’s latest speech appears to transform those reports from battlefield allegations into publicly praised state doctrine.
“Those who writhed in frustration at failing to fulfill their duty as soldiers rather than suffering the agony of their bodies being torn apart by bullets and shells — these too can be called the party’s loyal warriors and patriots,” Kim added.
The statement underscores the ideological intensity imposed on North Korean forces, whose loyalty to the regime appears to extend beyond combat to self-destruction.
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North Korean troops sweep minefields left behind in the Kursk region after months of fighting. (East to West News Agency)
The revelation also highlights the deepening military relationship between Pyongyang and Moscow.
According to South Korean intelligence assessments, North Korea has provided not only troops but also munitions to Russia, while receiving economic aid and military technology in return.
Reuters contributed to this report.
Published on
A 33-year-old man will appear in court next week after he was detained on suspicion of plotting an attack on two Dutch princesses, prosecutors said on Friday.
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According to details in a court scheduling order published on the website of The Hague Public Prosecutor’s Office, the man is suspected of preparing an attack on the 22-year-old heir to the Dutch throne, Princess Amalia, and her 20-year-old sister, Princess Alexia, in The Hague in February.
“The suspect was allegedly in possession of two axes in early February with the words ‘Alexia,’ ‘Mossad’ and ‘Sieg Heil’ carved into them, and he allegedly had a handwritten sheet with the words ‘Amalia,’ ‘Alexia’ and ‘Bloodbath,’” the scheduling order said.
A spokesman for The Hague public prosecutor’s office declined to provide further details on the case ahead of Monday’s procedural hearing.
It was not clear where or when the man was arrested. The suspect’s name was not released, in line with Dutch privacy regulations.
The Royal House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Princess Amalia has faced threats before. The heir to the Dutch throne was forced in 2022 to give up Amsterdam’s student life and live at her parents’ palace due to threats believed to come from the criminal underworld.
Queen Maxima said at the time that Amalia “can’t leave home” and that it has “enormous consequences for her life.”
The eldest of the three Dutch princesses subsequently spent several months living in Madrid and later honoured the Spanish capital and its citizens for their hospitality by opening a tulip garden there.
In 2020, a man was convicted of threatening the princess and of sending threats via Instagram to the then-16-year-old Amalia and one of her friends.
Additional sources • AP
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