The 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly is drawing to a close. Tackling the effects of climate change and resolving military conflicts in Europe and beyond have emerged as bottlenecks. On a positive note, EU countries have shown that they’re making progress towards achieving the UN’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
On September 19, 2019, the European Parliament adopted a resolution condemning manifestations of “totalitarian ideologies, such as Nazism and Stalinism” in the European Union. Since then, social media posts have cited the text to suggest Spain had been required to remove communist symbols and tributes from public spaces. The claim has been published more than 500 times since August 21, 2023. Yet, the European Parliament’s press service told AFP that the resolution was not “binding”. Instead, it is a “political declaration”. The social media claim is thus false.
The European Commission proposes that EU countries extend the licence for the herbicide ingredient glyphosate by ten years. Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, is named as a 2028 European Capital of Culture. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier calls for a European solution to migration problems.
The temporary import ban on Ukrainian grain for the country’s five EU neighbours ended on September 15. Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland – parliamentary elections are due in the latter two in the upcoming weeks – unilaterally extended their bans to the dismay of the EU. Ukraine consequently filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited the Italian Island of Lampedusa and proposed an emergency plan to help Rome manage migratory flows. A list for Spain’s proposal to make Catalan, Basque and Galician official EU languages inadvertently omitted Croatian. Twenty young European ambassadors from the Western Balkans clean the beaches of Lake Prespa in North Macedonia as part of the EU-funded “EUBeachCleanup” initiative.