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Russian Prez Putin to visit Serbia

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Within a couple of hours, Russian president Vladimir Putin is set to reach Serbia –the Balkan country which is one of those countries whose request for the membership in the European Union is still pending, along with some of his senior minsters and the heads of his country’s nuclear and space organisations.

Ahead of the visit, Serbia has beefed up its internal security in the regions where the Russian president is likely to pass through and in and around the places where he is supposed to visit. As many as 7,000 police personals have been deployed for this task alone.

Russia president is likely to meet his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic and several other senior minsters and prominent business personals. Russia is expected to sign as many as 21 deals with Serbia. Most probably, the focus area of the discussions is going to be defence and security, energy and science and technology.

The Russian president’s visit comes at a time when the Serbian president suffers his greatest ever existential crisis. Serbia has been witnessing serious protest across the country for last few months against its president’s intolerance towards the opposition and disrespect towards the concept of press freedom.

It is debatable what message Serbia wants to give to the European Union with its latest move. An International relations expert opines that it might be some kind of pressure tactics.

Vignesh. S. G
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British PM Theresa May Wins Confidence Vote

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After Brexit Humiliation, British PM Theresa May survives the Confidence Vote. MPs voted 325 to 306 that they had confidence in May’s Government. The Brexit deal proposed by Theresa May, regarding Britain’s exit from European Union was not a success.

This situation lead to a lack of confidence in continuing May’s government. She must now return to Parliament on Monday to present lawmakers with some sort of “Plan B” for exiting the 28-member union.

The decision regarding Britain’s exit from European Union has to be made within 29th of March. Britain has to give a huge amount to EU as per the agreement. Britain claims for the exit from EU without the agreement, and this is would lead to great complications. It is expected that Theresa May would be leaving to Brasil for discussions regarding this.S

Sunaya Paison
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EU Commission plans to end the individual states’ veto power on taxes

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The European Commission pushed back plans to end individual member states’ veto power on the introduction of a proposed tax on digital revenues by five years to 2025. The EU executive suggested that the EU states should take an immediate decision on ending the veto or not, particularly in some sectors such as environment levies.

The progress of the digital tax is blocked by some EU states, and for them, the decision to end the veto could be taken by the end of 2025, it said, pushing back the deadline from 2020.

Pierre Moscovici, the EU Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner said that unanimous decisions don’t protect the national sovereignty of members states, going after an argument often used by critics.

In an important step back from initial plans, the EU Executive led by former Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, decided to dismiss a legal procedure that could make tax reforms easier to agree. This leads to encourage the lawmakers to dub the move as a “smokescreen”.

The veto power has blocked many important tax reforms. This includes the energy issues, where the EU still allows subsidies to diesel.

The EU document said that the cost of the vetoes on tax reforms overall are in the hundreds of billions of euros a year.


Sunaya Paison
Photo Courtesy: Google/ images are subject to copyright