IT may just get a little cheaper to use your mobile phone across Europe, as an agreement has been reached to put an end to roaming charges.
Under the deal announced in the European Parliament no roaming charges, on top of what users pay at home, will be allowed after 15 June 2017.
However, to protect the industry against abuses such as permanent roaming, that is someone who uses a deal from one EU country for long periods of time in another EU country, the deal provides for a 'fair use' clause which is yet to be defined.
Prices for using a mobile phone while abroad in another EU country will in fact be reduced substantially as soon as 30 April 2016.
From that date, the maximum surcharge for voice calls made abroad will be 5 euro cents per minute (down from current 19 euro cents retail cap), whereas text messages (SMS) will cost only an additional 2 euro cents (down from 6 euro cents retail cap today) and 5 euro cents per megabyte (20 eurocents retail cap today).
These are ceilings, so operators are free to offer cheaper rates.
Paris city councillors have voted in favour of hotly-contested plans for a giant triangular tower that would be the capital’s first modern skyscraper in more than 40 years.
The building, 180 metres (600 feet) high and vying on the skyline with the Eiffel Tower, will house a 120-room hotel and 70,000 sq metres of office space.
A common sight in most major capitals, skyscrapers have faced deep opposition in Paris ever since the 300-metre high Eiffel Tower was built for the 1889 Universal Exposition.
Paris mayor, Anne Hidalgo, has said the skyscraper will bring a boost to Paris both on the international stage as well as for jobs and the local economy.
TRAVELLERS are facing major delays on cross-Channel services between the UK and France as striking workers block the Port of Calais and set fires on the Eurotunnel tracks.
Workers from MyFerryFrance have continued their strike action as they fear the loss of around 600 jobs with the sale of their ships to competitor DFDS.
Their protests have already caused major delays on ferry services between Dover and Calais, but their anger has spread to the Eurotunnel service which has announced the closure of services.
Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front, has set up a new far-right alliance in the European Parliament.
With 36 MEPs from seven member states, the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) group is the first far-right partnership to enter the European Parliament in eight years. The last attempt to create such a group was short lived – Identity, Tradition and Sovereignty (ITS) collapsed in chaos and disarray alliance imploded after only a few months when its MEPs bitterly fell out.
Le Pen tried to start a group in 2014 but has only now managed to garner enough support to do it.
European Parliament rules dictate that party groups must have at least 25 MEPs from at least seven member states. At the start of the parliamentary term, Le Pen and her main partner Geert Wilders, a MEP for the Dutch Party for Freedom, were assured of the backing of Belgium, Italy and Austria – member states with a long history of returning far-right MEPs to the parliament.
They struggled, though, to find support from another two member nations. This problem was finally solved by the inclusion of two MEPs from Poland’s Congress of the New Right and a last minute addition from the UK in the form of Janice Atkinson, who found herself newly independent following her expulsion from the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in an expenses scandal.
There has been widespread condemnation of the group across the parliament and a resolution among mainstream MEPs to unite against the far-right bloc.
The European Parliament has a long history of antagonism towards far-right ideology, which began in the 1980s when the French National Front first joined the parliament. There was concern that the rise of xenophobic views would threaten the protection of ethnic and migrant groups in Europe.
In 2015, at a time when a position of EU solidarity on immigration issues is once again under strain, there is great concern that a cohesive group of anti-EU MEPs, many of whom have long held views considered xenophobic and racist, could work to further destabilise the EU approach to immigration.
Wilders and Austria’s Heinz-Christian Strache speak at a meeting on the ‘Islamification’ of Europe.EPA/Helmut Fohringer
What’s more, giving a greater platform to parties that consistently campaign for their countries to withdraw from the EU is a dangerous game at the moment. With the threat of a Grexit and Brexit casting dark clouds over the horizon, the new group is likely to be eager to sow the seeds of disunity.
Being a member of a party group allows MEPs access to more funding, resources and speaking opportunities, which gives these once disparate MEPs more opportunity to make their presence felt.
Delicate union
Despite the dangers, the new group is hardly built on solid foundations.
Far-right MEPs have typically been spread across party groups or have chosen to remain non-attached.
They struggle to get other MEPs to cooperate with them and often even fail to cooperate between themselves, as the doomed ITS venture proved. Getting a bunch of ultra-nationalist MEPs to successfully join forces in a pan-European parliament is nigh on impossible.
With 20 MEPs, the French National Front makes up more than half the new group, which is not exactly a broad base of political affinity. And while the ENF is the only exclusively far-right group in the parliament, it is not the only cluster of Eurosceptics. The Europe for Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group, which is based on a spirit of antagonism towards the project of European integration, is larger than the ENF, with 45 members.
So, although the emergence of this new far-right group is no laughing matter, past experience suggests that it is not to be taken too seriously.
Rise of the right
What should be of more concern is the unabated popularity of Eurosceptic and far-right parties across Europe. Successive European Parliament elections have brought in an array of populist and far-right MEPs from the UK in the West to Romania in the East; Finland in the North to Greece in the South. Their popularity shows no sign of dissipating and, with economic uncertainty and issues relating to immigration dominating the EU agenda, it seems likely that support for these parties will continue.
At a time when the European project seems on shaky ground, the legitimisation of anti-EU ideology in the form of a directly elected far-right bloc in the parliament could further weaken the bonds of the union.
There are real concerns that the measures taken over decades by the EU to protect the rights of minority ethnic groups, to provide asylum to those in need, and to create a position of solidarity across the union will be undone by parties such as those led by Le Pen and Wilders.
Europe of Nations and Freedom might prove to be a flash in the pan, but its parties are not going anywhere.
THE Port of Calais is closed this afternoon after MyFerryLink workers blocked the port following the suspension of its own cross Channel service.
P&O Ferries is advising all non-essential travel be rebooked for a later date and has made available a telephone number for more information 01304 448877.
[DOVER - CALAIS] We advise that all non-essential travel booked for today should be rebooked for a later date by calling us on 01304 448877
— P&O Ferries Updates (@POferriesupdate) June 29, 2015
DFDS Seaways has also announced the suspension of its Dover to Calais services, asking people to proceed to Calais before being transferred to Dunkirk.
Dover-Calais: Services currently suspended due to the industrial action at the Port of Calais. Proceed to port to be transferred to Dunkirk.
— DFDS Seaways Updates (@DFDSUKUpdates) June 29, 2015
The Port of Dover has said that its own operations will be affected and is advising travellers to contact their ferry operator, and even when Calais reopens it expects crossings to take some time to be back to normal.
The protests come on the same day that MyFerryLink said it had suspended all services and could transfer to a Eurotunnel crossing, or receive a refund.
Similar strikes last week brought cross-Channel services to a halt as both ferries and the Eurotunnel service were stopped as MyFerryLink workers burnt tyres and blocked roads in protests.
A HEATWAVE weather warning has been issued by Météo France as temperatures head towards 40C in the south west of France, with Paris set to experience up to 35C.
The vigilance orange warning covers an area from the south west corner of France, up through the centre and Paris and across towards the east of France and the Côte-d'Or.
Migrants in Calais have been painted by the tabloid press as a menacing group who are breaking into lorries and causing traffic jams.
Meanwhile, the town’s mayor has said it can’t cope with the numbers. But who are they, where have they come from, and why did they leave their homelands? BuzzFeed News travelled to Calais to find out.
A LOOK over some of the news headlines from France.
French terror suspect sent macabre selfie to contact in Syria
French anti-terror police are continuing to question Yassin Salhi, the French lorry driver who decapitated his boss before ramming a vehicle into a chemical plant near Lyon, after it emerged that he sent a macabre selfie to a contact in Syria.
Salhi, 35, used the instant messaging service WhatsApp to send a picture of himself posing with the severed head of his victim to an account registered to a Canadian telephone number.
Just six months after the massacres at Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery shop, France finds itself struggling to comprehend another atrocity in its midst. The severed head of a businessman hung on a factory gate on Friday brought the horror of Isis-style beheadings in Syria, Libya and Iraq to a quiet corner of the Rhône-Alpes region.
Reaching the Michelin-starred tables of the finest eateries of London and Paris might seem par for the course for a top Bordeaux or Burgundy, but for a bottle of Bargylus it is little short of miraculous.
France needs an Iron Lady of its own
French politicians are slow to learn, but full marks to Robert Goodwill, a transport minister, for telling them they need a Margaret Thatcher to sort out their trade unions.
Mr Goodwill was speaking after ferry workers paralysed the port of Calais, making it far easier than usual for illegal immigrants to try to stow away in vehicles bound for pushover Britain.
CROSS-CHANNEL service, MyFerryLink, has announced all services have been cancelled, three days earlier than expected.
In a series of messages on Twitter the company said that industrial action meant the morning's services were cancelled, but a short time later it said all services were at an end.
The closure of the service had already been set for 2 July.
MyFerryLink was telling customers that they could transfer to a Eurotunnel crossing, or receive a refund, while also making available a telephone number for more information 0844 2482 100.
A long legal battle for Eurotunnel, the owners of three ships that are leased to a workers' cooperative that operates between Dover and Calais, has seen the company sell two of them to competitor DFDS.
The workers' cooperative were initially offered the chance to buy the two ferries but were unable to, and so for the past few weeks it has not been clear whether the 400 or so workers on both sides of the Channel had a future with DFDS.
Increasing frustration amongst the workers saw them bring to a halt last week services between the UK and France, both on ferries and via the Channel tunnel that caused travel chaos for thousands of people.
