The European Union’s executive has urged the government in Hungary to allow a liberal-leaning radio station to continue broadcasting after it went off the air on Monday.

Klubrádió went off the airwaves on Sunday at midnight after a court upheld a decision by media authorities not to extend its broadcasting licence.

During an online press conference of the European Commission on Monday, spokesman Christian Wigand confirmed the executive had sent a letter to Hungary’s permanent representation in Brussels on Friday expressing its concerns over the move.

Wigand said the station’s loss of its broadcasting frequency had occurred “on the basis of highly questionable legal grounds”, and that Hungary “should respect the EU’s charter of fundamental rights, including the rights to freedom of expression, information and the freedom to conduct a business”.

The Commission has asked Hungary to take urgent action to ensure that Klubrádió, a commercial broadcaster in the capital of Budapest, can continue using its frequency until final decisions become legally binding, Wigand said, warning of “irreparable damage” to the station.

Hungary has not yet sent an answer to the Commission’s letter, the spokesman added.

But Balázs Hidvéghi, a Member of the European Parliament from the country’s ruling Fidesz party, explained that media organisations must respect the rules.

“Quite frankly Klubradio, as well as other radio stations or media outlets have to respect the law and have to operate according to the law in Hungary,” he explained to Euronews.

“The media authority has not renewed automatically the frequency for this radio station because they broke some of the regulations that they should have respected.”

The Communication sent by the Berlaymont comes after more than eighty MEPs sent their own communication to the Commission last Friday, asking for it to take action over media woes in both Hungary and Poland.

The main author of the letter, Laurence Farreng, told Euronews that: “We can’t let down this battle for rule of law. I think everything we can do has to be done. So, I follow very closely the media action plan that was proposed by the European Commission.

“In this media action plan, media pluralism, freedom of speech, media recovery is at the heart of the project. So, I think there is a point where we can act to ask for more freedom and more funding for the media,” the French MEP added.

The loss of Klubradio’s broadcasting licence reinvigorated a debate over freedom of the press and outsized political influence in Hungary’s media market.

The liberal-leaning commercial station was one of the only remaining opposition radio voices in Hungary and one of the last radio channels that regularly featured opposition politicians and other critical voices during its news and talk programmes.

The European Commission last Wednesday denounced the decision, saying the move “increases concerns” about “media freedom and pluralism” in Hungary.

Klubrádió’s president Andras Arato last week cited authorities as saying the station had “broken the rules” when the media lost its licence.

Arato denounced Tuesday’s decision as “a shameful decision”, which raises new concerns about press freedom in this European Union country.

He told Euronews that he planned to appeal to Hungary’s highest court, the Curia, promising that his media would continue online and that listeners were “keen”.

“We will not be silenced, and if they also want to support us, we will try to do our bit so we can live in a better world,” he said.

Nothing is as simple as it seems in relation to Covid and the Northern Ireland protocol. The Financial Times reported this week that anonymous EU sources were voicing annoyance with recent efforts by Micheál Martin and Simon Coveney to persuade Brussels and London to dial down the heat in relation to the practical problems that have arisen in implementing the customs aspect of the protocol as they affect British goods going into Northern Ireland.

                                                    <p class="no_name">Apparently there is some resentment in certain circles in Brussels that Ireland seems to be acting as an intermediary rather than as a fully-fledged cheerleader for the hardline rhetoric coming from the Berlaymont.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">The paper quoted one EU diplomat as saying: “There is a growing concern that Dublin is tempted to follow a policy of equidistance towards the EU and UK on Northern Ireland.”</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">The same source, recalling the EU’s steadfast support for Ireland in the Brexit process, added that “it would be rather risky if the Irish Government were to be seen as playing with European goodwill and solidarity”.</p>
                                                    <blockquote class="inline__content inline__content--pullquote">

It bears repetition that the attempted invocation of the protocol was utterly unlawful

These ominous noises come ill from the EU Commission. Exactly who played fast and loose with the protocol in the first place?

                                                    <p class="no_name">While Ursula Von Der Leyen sandbagged her commission with personal acceptance of responsibility for the shocking misuse of the protocol as stage furniture in its spat with the UK over vaccine exports, the sad fact remains that the episode went unexplained.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">Nor did she help by departing the EU parliament last week to hold another evasive press conference before MEPs could extract any explanation.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">It bears repetition that the attempted invocation of the protocol was utterly unlawful – even as a matter of EU law. The protocol simply never covered exports of vaccine at all.</p>

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                </aside>


                                                                <p class="no_name">Moreover, the terms of the protocol and its 7th annexe clearly prohibited its abrupt unilateral invocation in these circumstances even if it had any application to vaccine exports – which it didn’t.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">In addition, the protocol itself provides for consultation in respect of the entirely different issues in relation to customs documentation and grace periods.</p>
                                                    <h4 class="crosshead">Confrontation</h4><p class="no_name">Dublin has every right to seek to defuse confrontation when hard-line exchanges and position-taking play directly into the hands of DUP irredentism and would-be back-sliders in the Tory party at Westminster.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">And unexplained gross misuse of the protocol at senior level in the commission gave Dublin every reason to want to cool the temperature and ensure that the protocol’s customs arrangements in Northern Ireland bedded down smoothly and pragmatically.</p>
                                                    <figure class="inline__content inline__content--image"> 

No one in Europe, with the possible exception of those personally to blame for the debacle, could have any complaint with the response of the Irish Government which was uniquely passive compared to what any other member state – big or small – would have done in similar circumstances.

                                                    <p class="no_name">This makes anonymous EU warnings published in the Financial Times coverage all the more difficult to accept at face value.</p>
                                                    <blockquote class="inline__content inline__content--pullquote">

The reality is that the EU may end up with recovery delayed by at least half a year behind the UK and other countries

It raises the possibility that what we are witnessing is but a glimpse of a deeper bout of arm-wrestling between the commission and the UK in which the Irish issues are a mere sideshow.

                                                    <p class="no_name">The commission may be playing “hard cop” in a wider conflict over vaccine-sharing and other issues, including the UK’s persistent demands to have continued access to EU financial markets without acceptance of EU rule-making authority in that sphere.</p>

                                                    <p class="no_name">On the issue of vaccines, for all the rhetoric about caution and the community method the reality is that the EU may end up with recovery delayed by at least half a year behind the UK and other countries.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">The social and economic cost of such massive delay is enormous, and may well become politically unsustainable. The reputation of the commission and other EU institutions is very much in issue. The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control warnings about virus-mutation risks add to the pressure.</p>
                                                    <h4 class="crosshead">Social damage</h4><p class="no_name">Playing “hard cop” with the UK may be part of a wider process in which the commission hopes to radically cut the time-delay gap in order to minimise the economic and social damage of having lockdown restrictions carry over into the autumn.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">Sharing vaccine production and accelerating it may be a political imperative at EU level that puts concern for the Good Friday agreement in the halfpenny place.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">If EU’s diplomats now want to ratchet up the heat in pursuance of these agenda items, Irish calls to cool it may appear disloyal, much the same as Michael Corleone in the Godfather had to slap down his brother Fredo’s appeals for moderation in their dealings with rival families.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">High-minded concern for the Good Friday agreement and an open Irish Border matter far less now to an embattled commission which is looking exposed and vulnerable in relation to a great delay in mass vaccination right across the EU.</p>
                                                    <p class="no_name">This is, after all, what realpolitik actually means.</p>

Countries in the European Union recorded over 450,000 excess deaths between March and November 2020, compared to the same period in the past four years, according to data released on Tuesday.

The data “gives a general measure of the mortality impact of the COVID-19 pandemic because it includes all deaths independently of their causes” statistics agency Eurostat said.

“The data covered in this analysis include all deaths that have occurred from January to November 2020,” it said.

First wave

Eurostat used monthly data from all EU countries, except Ireland which didn’t provide data, to compare excess mortality in 2020 to a baseline of the average number of deaths recorded in the same period between 2016 to 2019.

“During the early rise of COVID-19, the excess mortality in the EU reached its first peak in April 2020, with an increase of 25% compared with the average of the same month over 2016 – 2019,” the agency said.

In April, when the first wave of the pandemic was at its peak, Spain saw close to 80% increase in the average deaths whereas Belgium saw deaths sitting at almost 74% above the average.

November peak

“Between May and July, a lower level of excess mortality was registered, while yet another surge in mortality started in August – September with the next wave of the pandemic,” Eurostat said.

“The excess mortality in the EU was 8% above the average in September, +17% in October and +40% in November, with the indicator rising in all EU Member States.”

The November peak was particularly deadly for Poland, Slovenia, and Bulgaria, with each of them recording an increase of 90 percent.

Belgium also saw a nearly 60% increase, while both Italy and Austria neared a 50% increase.

Eurostat, however, stressed that while the substantial increase coincided with the pandemic, “the indicator does not discriminate among the causes of death and does not catch differences across sex and age classes.”

DPA contributed to this report.

Ryanair on Wednesday lost a legal fight in the European Union’s second court against state aid being granted to pandemic-hit rivals Air France and Sweden ‘s SAS through national schemes.

Judges at the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg backed EU competition regulators who had allowed the support under loosened rules.

What was Ryanair’s complaint?

Thestate aid rules of the European Commission — the defendant in the case —were loosened at the start of the pandemic.

National governments offered more than 3 trillion euros ($3.65 trillion) in aid to companies across the 27-member bloc.

The General Court was asked to assess a French scheme allowing airlines to defer certain aeronautical taxes, and to rule on Sweden’s loan guarantee scheme for airlines.

Ryanair has pursued a legal campaign across Europe to stop the bailouts, arguing the state aid gives an unfair advantage to prestigious national flag carriers.

What did the court say?

“This aid scheme is appropriate to remedy the economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and does not constitute discrimination,” the court said, referring to the French scheme.

It also said the Swedish scheme was compatible with EU laws. The court said that the limitation of the loan guarantee scheme “is appropriate for achieving the objective of remedying the serious disturbance in Sweden’s economy.”

What can the Irish airline do now?

The losses for Ryanair were just a first round, and the cases could now moving to the higher European Court of Justice.

Ryanair — the biggest airline in Europe when it comes to passenger numbers — is also seeking to reverse Germany’s massive bailout of Lufthansa.

It also has lodged proceedings against the commission over the Netherlands’ KLM, Austrian Airlines and Portugal’s TAP, among others.

rc/rt (Reuters, AFP)

New car sales in the European Union fell steeply in January, hitting a record low for the month as coronavirus-related restrictions weighed, according to data published Wednesday.

Across the EU, new car registrations–a reflection of sales–fell 24% to 726,491 vehicles in January, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association, or ACEA. The figure is the lowest total for January on record, with pandemic-related restrictions continuing to affect sales. Most markets also had one less business day than the previous January.

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