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they urged the European Union commissioner responsible for taxation, Algirdas Semeta, to work to get all 27 members of the European Union to sign up.

Mr. Cahuzac was fired and expelled from the party, but that the minister in charge of fighting tax fraud had committed it himself has been deeply damaging.

The journalist consortium, a project of the Center for Public Integrity, disclosed confidential information on more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts and nearly 130,000 individuals and agents, including 4,000 Americans. But the consortium has refused requests by governments for access to the files, saying that it is not an arm of law enforcement.

In addition to creating the prosecutor position, he ordered cabinet ministers to disclose their finances and asked legislators to do the same. He also promised to create an independent authority to monitor the assets and possible conflicts of interest of senior officials and legislators.

the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists announced that it had obtained confidential information relating to tens of thousands of offshore bank accounts and shell companies. The leaked data, which centered on the Caribbean and especially the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, embarrassed European governments, including Luxembourg, by showing how wealthy citizens routinely hide assets, sometimes illegally, and avoid paying taxes by setting up offshore companies.

France’s resilience to external shocks is “diminishing” and its medium-term growth prospects are “increasingly hampered by long-standing imbalances,” the report said, noting that France’s share of European Union exports declined by 11.2 percent from 2006 to 2011, while rising labor costs have damaged competitiveness.

The move by Luxembourg toward disclosure leaves Austria as the lone holdout in the European Union. It pays a 35 percent withholding tax on the interest income of accounts held by foreigners in Austrian banks to their country of residence, but refuses to disclose the account holders’ identities.

Antoine Deltour, a former auditor at PwC, is accused of passing information on clients to French journalist Edouard Perrin, who first broke the story on French TV in 2012, in collaboration with the BBC's Panorama.

Raphael Halet, the other former PwC employee, is suspected of a separate leak and faces the same charges. Mr Perrin is accused of being an accomplice.

While Luxembourg has laws protecting whistleblowers, they are confined to exposing illegal practices. Civil rights groups have attacked the case.

"Deltour should be protected and commended, not prosecuted. The information he disclosed was in the public interest," said Cobus de Swardt, the Managing Director of Transparency International.

"becoming impatient, it is not my personal approach to show a member state the door".

The EU could not tolerate "such inappropriate behaviour", he said, and any state that violated such basic values "should be excluded temporarily, or if necessary for ever, from the EU''. It was "the only possibility to protect the cohesion and values of the European Union,'' he said.

"could not be taken seriously".

The head of Hungarian diplomacy described his Luxembourg counterpart as a "classic nihilist" who worked tirelessly to destroy Europe's security and culture. By way of contrast, Hungary was defending not only its own territory, but that of the EU as well, the foreign minister insisted.

"Only Hungarians have the right to decide who they wish to live with."

All in all, it is a race to the bottom on the part of revenue-starved governments eager to attract even a relatively small number of new jobs.

As a consequence, the effective corporate tax rate in the United States fell to 17.8 percent in 2012 from 42.5 percent in 1960,

That’s just not fair at a time of soaring corporate profits and stagnant family incomes.

Business groups, naturally, say the best way to bring jobs and cash home is for Washington to stop taxing profits earned overseas by American companies altogether. But that idea makes little sense. While changing to this “territorial system” would allow some of the estimated $1.7 trillion of cash “trapped” overseas to come home free of tax, it would both cost the Treasury an estimated $130 billion in revenue over the next 10 years and provide greater incentives for American companies to continue to move jobs and production overseas.

the gaming of the tax system is becoming a global concern, with an action plan coming from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in July. The O.E.C.D. should work toward taxing business profits where they actually occur, not where they’ve been shifted by some tax adviser.

we should consider taxing a greater share of the profits made by companies not at the corporate level, where they are subject to oh-so-much gaming, but rather at the shareholder level.

As corporate taxes have declined, corporate profits have increased. That has pushed up stock prices and been a boon to shareholders. It hardly seems unfair to ask those who already benefit from bargain tax rates on capital gains and dividends to share some of those gains with the government.

said Russia withdrew the request after the ministry had asked the Russian Embassy in Madrid to clarify reports the flotilla might participate in military operations against the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo.

On Wednesday, Russia withdrew a request for a flotilla of warships, including its flagship aircraft carrier the Admiral Kuznetsov, to refuel in the Spanish port of Ceuta as the ships head toward Syria.

The UK has deployed hundreds of troops to Eastern Europe as NATO continues to bolster its presence in the face of perceived Russian provocation.

"Russia has tripled defense spending," Stoltenberg told reporters.

NATO defense ministers met Wednesday in Brussels, Belgium, to discuss the situation as well as the fight against ISIS.

Poland's paramilitary defense has grown rapidly, with more than 35,000 people signing up and undergoing military training. They range from high school students to lawyers and doctors.

n July, the UK said it would deliver one of four battalions to NATO's enhanced forward presence in the Baltic states and Poland.

Belgium, Croatia, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway will join a German-led battalion in Lithuania, while Denmark and France will contribute to the UK-led battalion in Estonia.

In February, the US Department of Defense announced it was spending $3.4 billion for the European Reassurance Initiative to deter Russian aggression against NATO allies.

A limited rotational force of 330 Marines are set to be located at the Vaernes military base in Norway, according to a statement from the Norwegian Defense Ministry.

For the PP, the verdict was devastating: the party itself was convicted as a direct beneficiary of the Gürtel scheme. The court found that ever since the party was founded, it had maintained a parallel accounting system to collect money from kickbacks that could be used to fund the party. The court said the testimony of Rajoy and other PP figures who denied knowing about the existence of the slush fund were “not credible”

In court, Correa provided details of his working relationship with the PP. He would take suitcases full of cash to party headquarters, he said, never passing through reception but entering with a special access card that allowed him to come and go discreetly. “[The PP HQ] was my home,” he said. “I spent more time there than I did in my own office.”

Before the crisis, satisfaction with the political system in Spain was among the highest in Europe, behind only Denmark, Luxembourg and Finland. After 2010, in the wake of austerity and endless corruption scandals, trust in institutions such as political parties and banks crumbled. Gürtel, like Watergate, has convinced many voters to take a conspiratorial view of politics

Corruption has also shaped political debate. Catalan separatists have cited PP corruption as one justification for their proposed split from Spain, although critics point out that the former party of former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has also been involved in its own major corruption scandal.

Most worryingly, the far right has begun to use corruption to rally voters.

Vox, many polls suggest, now stand to become a major force on the national level, potentially overtaking Podemos as Spain’s fourth largest party.

The French Revolution acted as a brush which swept away a mass of local differences in France, including many of the powers who had been against codifying the laws. The result was a country in a position to (in theory) create a universal code, and a place which really needed one.

he knew that a state had to be built to support both him and a renewed France, and chief among that was to be a law code which bore his name. Attempts to write and enforce a code during the revolution had failed, and Napoleon’s achievement in forcing it through was massive. It also reflected glory back onto him: he was desperate to be seen as more than a general who took charge, but as the man who brought a peaceful end to the revolution, and establishing a legal code was a massive boost to his reputation, ego, and ability to rule. 

The Civil Code of the French People was enacted in 1804 across all the regions France then controlled: France, Belgium, Luxembourg, chunks of Germany and Italy, and was later spread further across Europe.

was supposed to be written fresh, and based on the idea that a law based on common sense and equality should replace one based on custom, societal division, and the rule of kings.

The moral justification for its existence was not that it came from God or a monarch (or in this case an emperor), but because it was rational and just.

The Napoleonic Code has been modified, but essentially remains in place in France, two centuries after Napoleon was defeated and his empire dismantled. It is one of his most lasting achievements in a country in thrall to his rule for a turbulent generation. However, it was only in the latter half of the twentieth century that laws regarding women were altered to reflect an equitable situation.

Most interestingly, Americans still don’t care that much. Sure, two-thirds say they are dissatisfied with the way income and wealth are distributed, according to Gallup. Still, more than three out of five — compared with just over half six years ago — are satisfied with “the opportunity for a person in this nation to get ahead by working hard.”

As my column has aimed to highlight, too many Americans are, well, sinking. Seventeen percent of Americans are poor by international standards — living on less than half the nationwide median income. That’s more than twice the share of poor people in France, Iceland or the Netherlands.

Unequipped to cope with the demands of a labor market in furious transformation, they will give “social mobility” a new, all-American meaning: the tendency to move in and out of prison. It’s hard to believe any country could waste so many resources and prosper.

Forget about income, though. It’s hard to square Americans’ belief in their society’s greatness with the life expectancy of its newborn girls and boys. It is shorter than in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and probably a few other countries I missed.

The impact of the nation’s fundamental paradox mostly fails the nonwhite and the poor. Black males born in the United States today will probably live shorter lives than boys born in Mexico, China or Turkey.

The children of poverty who survive will most likely hobble through life with mediocre educations — lagging their more affluent peers even before their first day in school and then falling farther behind, deprived of the resources that disadvantaged children in other advanced nations routinely enjoy.

Or let’s measure our progress in terms of infant deaths. Scientists in the United States invented many of the technologies used around the world to keep vulnerable babies alive. So how come our infant mortality rate is higher than that of every nation in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development with the exceptions of Mexico, Chile and Turkey?

America is doubling down on its exceptionalism. The rich got a tax break. Bankers got a break from the pesky rules written in the shadow of the financial crisis to protect the little guy. The poor and near poor were freed from their ability to afford health insurance.

populism — understood as a political movement shaped around giving the working class a “fair shake” — is pretty much dead.

Overall, the 2019 European elections were a disappointment for the leaders of the populist right

the far right collectively recorded a net gain of only 13 members in the 751-seat European Parliament.

Young Europeans may worry about the environment, but for four out of five under-25s, it is not their No. 1 or even their No. 2 priority.

a rising proportion of Millennials and Gen Zers identify themselves as left-leaning or centrist.

Millennials and Gen Zers value public services; they worry about racial and other forms of discrimination, as well as about climate change. They are more pro-European than previous generations and more willing to hand over new governing powers to Brussels.

A third of Millennial and Gen Z voters in Europe consider themselves centrists, compared with about a fifth who are on the center left and fewer than a 10th who are far left

Recent national elections point to the same leftward trend among younger voters.

As in urban areas of the United States, rising costs for housing further squeeze the young’s spending power

In Europe, by contrast, the under-30s are more disposed than their parents to view poverty as a result of an individual’s choice. Even as they still support the social contract typical for Europe, whereby the welfare state limits inequality and provides generous public services, they are also less in favor than older generations of fiscal redistribution to reduce inequality

All of this has contributed to a growing generational economic divide

Before the crisis, the under-25s were not much more at risk of poverty than the over-64s. Now they are more than a third as likely to be poor.

The short-run trend is therefore that the old will dominate in European politics. In 2017, for the first time, more than half of the voters in the elections for the German Bundestag were over 50

most of them believe that the private sector is better at creating jobs than the state is, that work contracts should become more flexible, and that competition is good. Indeed, under-25s have a more positive view of globalization than do older cohorts.

in Europe, Millennials and Gen Zers are not fundamentally different from the population as a whole when it comes to immigration. Survey data show that they have a more positive view of immigration (from inside and outside the EU) than do older generations. Almost as much as their parents, however, they want national governments and the EU to take additional measures to fight illegal immigration.

it is worth taking a closer look at the Danish parliamentary elections held in June. The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party plummeted to 8.7 percent from 21.1 percent in 2015. But that was not because voters were frightened by anti-immigration policies. It was because the big center-left and center-right parties co-opted the far right’s agenda

In the 1990s, it was Denmark’s Social Democrats who adopted “Third Way” social and economic policies, sometime before Britain’s Tony Blair and Germany’s Gerhard Schröder. The Danes may once again be taking the lead. Sweden’s governing center-left party has already followed the Danish example by toughening its migration stance.

Postelection surveys show that the CDU is now losing nearly four times as many voters to the Greens as to the AfD. Significantly, the Greens take pride in being the only party to have consistently defended Angela Merkel’s 2015 refugee policy without ifs or buts.

generalizations about European politics are hard to mak

In the U.S., the GDP per capita of the highest-income state (Massachusetts) is roughly twice that of the poorest (Mississippi). In the EU, by contrast, citizens of Luxembourg are more than nine times as rich as Romanians.

There is also much less common history. Growing up in the Soviet Union has left older Estonians, for example, with very different views from older Spaniards, who grew up under Francisco Franco

For many Central and eastern Europeans, the collapse of the Soviet Union was as much about restoring national independence as it was about restoring liberty and democracy. They have little appetite for ceding sovereignty to Brussels

the younger groups on both sides of the former Iron Curtain seem to be converging on some issues, such as their support for democracy and EU integration. Yet this convergence is not visible on all issues.

For younger voters in the EU’s original member states, ethnic and religious variables are much less important in defining citizenship than for their parents. For Central and eastern Europeans, however, where your forebears came from still matters. Indeed, young Hungarians and Croatians tend to associate ancestry with nationality even more than older generations do.

A reverse dynamic is visible in Austria. In 2017, 30 percent of those ages 29 and under voted for the nationalist-right Freedom Party in the parliamentary elections. In May, having been hit by a scandal, the party came in third with the same age group (17 percent), far behind the Greens (28 percent) and the Social Democrats (22 percent).

So why aren’t European young people as receptive to tax-and-redistribute ideas as their American counterparts? Perhaps because they know, from experience, that those policies can’t immediately fix what ails their countries.

he politics of the future in Europe seems unlikely to resemble the politics of generational division in America. The continent is divided in many respects, but it does not face a “generation war.” The gap between the generations seems narrower, the political opportunity to mobilize younger voters less enticing.

The German Greens started out in the 1980s as part of the antinuclear and pacifist movements. They were clearly to the left of the SPD. But in recent years they have moved decidedly to the center ground. Last year Winfried Kretschmann, the Green prime minister of Baden-Württemberg, and conceivably a future German chancellor, published a book with the surprising subtitle For a New Definition of Conservatism. Kretschmann cites Edmund Burke as an inspiration, arguing that the father of conservative thought favored gradual change over revolution.

“I can say we will see more cases, and things will get worse than they are right now,” Fauci told the House Oversight and Reform Committee. He said it is “10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu”.

Trump’s speech comes on a tumultuous day as cases in the US topped 1,000 and the number of deaths rose to 37, while fluctuations in the financial markets continued and Washington strained to respond. Testifying on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned that the outbreak in the US is going to get worse.

The president also said he would take “emergency action” to provide relief to workers who are affected. He said he was asking Congress for $50bn for small business loans, and he also called for “immediate” payroll tax cuts.

In a statement, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the affected countries include: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland”.

The Trump administrators has faced a raft of criticism over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak, from the shortage of testing kits available in the US to Trump’s own lack of urgency and downplaying the severity of the situation

Daniel Drezner, a professor of International politics at Tufts University, told the Guardian that limiting travel from Europe would “be a drop in the bucket” compared with the number of cases that are already in the US.

Democrats also called out Trump for failing to address the shortage of testing kits that has hampered containment efforts across the country. “We have a public health crisis in this country and the best way to help keep the American people safe and ensure their economic security is for the president to focus on fighting the spread of the coronavirus itself,” said Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leaders of the Senate and House, in a joint statement. “Alarmingly, the president did not say how the administration will address the lack of coronavirus testing kits throughout the United States.”

The foreign minister of Luxembourg openly called Trump a "pyromaniac," ​while diplomats are privately saying they "blame Trump squarely for the chaos in America since the election, including the Capitol riot," as one did to CNN, reflecting the sentiments of others in the same role.

"Europeans have considered the last four years extremely distasteful. They've been bemused by Trump's envoys, like Richard Grenell in Germany, who have turned up and started behaving like Fox News anchors and insulting the country they were supposed to be building relations with," Barker said.

While the assumption is that the transatlantic relationship will improve under Biden, four years of carnage has spooked the European political scene.

"The European relationship has changed and will now be shrouded in skepticism," said Cathryn Cluver Ashbrook, executive director of the Project on Europe and the Transatlantic Relationship at the Harvard Kennedy School.

"From our perspective, Trump saw Europe as an enemy," a senior European diplomat told CNN. "The lasting impact of 'America First' is the US having fewer friends in Europe."

Barker agreed, saying it would be "important to see how the new administration acknowledges the damage that has been done by Trump to America's reputation." And on top of the big picture issues like Iran and China, Barker said, "how can [Biden] send State Department officials to Ukraine to warn about corruption with any immediate credibility?"

Despite optimism that Biden will restore a more collaborative approach to shared priorities, European diplomats and officials are adamant that moves towards an independent defense policy and international "strategic autonomy" will not slow down.

"In some respects, it was a good thing Trump forced us to think more about diplomatic initiatives, NATO and withdrawal of US troops," said the German diplomat. "It might come as a shock to Biden, but the prospect of the US underpinning European security is not as attractive as it was when he and Obama left office."

"We cannot afford to be naive. If you look at the number of votes that Trump got, he wields an influence on American voters. This anti-global, 'America First' undercurrent in American politics is still very much alive and we have to hedge our bets," said the EU diplomat.

Regardless, the Trump era has left Europeans with little choice but to wait and see how much of a priority Biden places on reclaiming America's place on the world stage. 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Participation did not only involve a long sea journey for the Europeans; the clubs would have to renounce their best players for two months. Consequently, more and more associations broke their promise to participate and it took much manoeuvring by Rimet to ensure at least four European teams

The first FIFA World Cup opened at the brand-new Estadio Centenario in Montevideo on 18 July 1930. It was the beginning of a new era in world football and the inaugural event proved a remarkable success, both in a sporting and a financial sense.

FIFA chose Italy ahead of rival candidates Sweden to host the second FIFA World Cup and this time it took qualifying matches to arrive at the 16 finalists. Unlike in 1930 there were no groups and only knockout rounds

The FIFA World Cup should have taken place for the fourth time in 1942 but the outbreak of World War Two meant otherwise. Although FIFA maintained its Zurich offices throughout the conflict, it was not until 1 July 1946 in Luxembourg that the Congress met again.

As the only candidate, Brazil was chosen unanimously to host the next FIFA World Cup, to be staged in 1949 (and postponed to 1950 for time reasons). At the same time, Switzerland was given the option for 1954.

On each of these lists, the top performers were heavily concentrated in Northern Europe, Australia and Canada with strong showings in East Asian countries from Japan to Singapore. It is no accident that there is a heavy overlap between the top performing countries and those that also outperform the United States in terms of educational performance

When Newsweek ranked the “world’s best countries” based on measures of health, education and politics, the United States ranked 11th. In the 2011 Quality of Life Index by Nation Ranking, the United States was 31st. Similarly, in recent rankings of the world’s most livable cities, the Economist Intelligence Unit has the top American entry at No. 29, Mercer’s Quality of Living Survey has the first United States entry at No. 31 and Monocle magazine showed only 3 United States cities in the top 25.

providing the basics to ensure a high quality of life is not a formula for excess or the kind of economic calamities befalling parts of Europe today. For example, many of the countries that top quality-of-life lists, like Sweden, Luxembourg, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway, all rank high in lists of fiscally responsible nations — well ahead of the United States, which ranks 28th on the Sovereign Fiscal Responsibility Index.

Nearly all the world’s quality-of-life leaders are also countries that spend more on infrastructure than the United States does. In addition, almost all are more environmentally conscious and offer more comprehensive social safety nets and national health care to their citizens.

at the same time, countries that could hardly hope to outperform the world in any category are far ahead of us when it comes to things that matter more to people

some of the metrics we rate as most important, like G.D.P., stock indices or trade data, are so deeply flawed as to be irrelevant or worse, dangerous distractions

As a country we have consistently relied on indicators that keep us focused on the interests of business, financial institutions or the defense industry whereas equity, quality of life and even social mobility metrics are played down.

in the midst of the Great Depression, Congress, showing a great deal more intellectual curiosity than it does today, commissioned a group of economists led by a future Nobel Prize winner named Simon Kuznets to better measure economic activity.

Not only were they aware that the statistic they devised ignored many types of economic activity — from the work of housewives to illegal enterprises — they also knew their number did not assess the social benefits of what they were tracking.

Kuznets warned of this: “The welfare of a nation can, therefore, scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income” like the one they created. That hasn’t stopped us from making this misleading number perhaps the most influential statistic in the world.

Americans use G.D.P. in discussions about how well we are doing. It’s at the heart of discussions of whether we are in a recession or not, ahead or falling behind.

Yet, when China “passes” us, it will remain for the most part a very poor country racked with social problems.

A country, for example, that overemphasizes G.D.P. growth and market performance is likely to focus policies on the big drivers of those — corporations and financial institutions — even when, as during the recent past, there has been little correlation between the performance of big businesses or elites and that of most people.

Even John Locke, who famously enumerated our fundamental rights as being to life, liberty and property, qualified this by asserting that people should appropriate only what they could use, leaving “enough and as good” for others.

Thomas Jefferson later consciously replaced the right to property with a right to “the pursuit of happiness.” And happiness has become the watchword for those seeking different measures that might better guide governments.

maturing societies can offer many benefits to their citizens that are unavailable to most in the rapidly growing world — the products of rich educational and cultural resources, capable institutions, stability and prosperity.

We, as a developed nation, are unlikely to grow at the rapid pace of emerging powers (the United States is currently ranked 127th in real G.D.P. growth rate)

Furthermore, Russia has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal and fifth largest army.  Therefore, Russia is usually considered one of the world’s top four military powers.

Based on how happy the citizens of 156 countries perceived themselves to be, the report concluded that, when it came to happiness, the United States ranked 18th, Russia 73rd, China 94th, and India 144th among nations

between 2012 and 2020 its happiness ranking dropped from 11th to 18th place among the nations of the world

great military and economic power does not guarantee a country’s happiness.  Indeed, it might even undermine happiness

spending on military ventures diverts resources away from civilian needs, while wars create death and destruction.

Economic inequality has certainly caused significant discontent within these nations, and the rise of “the billionaire class” has exacerbated it.  

these countries’ emphasis on consumerism and materialism has created desires that cannot always be satisfied by the acquisition of products or wealth.

nations that placed in the top ten on the 2020 happiness scale.  Ranked in order, they are Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, Austria, and Luxembourg.

None is a major military or economic power, and none is today fighting a war. 

What they also have in common, the World Happiness Report observes, is a “well-functioning democracy, generous and effective social welfare benefits, low levels of crime and corruption, and satisfied citizens who feel free and trust each other and governmental institutions.”

"We remain deeply concerned by the continued detention of at least five women's right activists in Saudi Arabia. We regret that the cases of Loujain Al-Hathloul and Samar Badawi have now been referred to the Special Criminal Court for terrorism and national security cases," human rights ambassadors for the UK, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Estonia, Luxembourg and Finland said in a statement.

"We join the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Special Rapporteurs and Treaty Bodies in reiterating our call for the release of all political detainees, including the women's rights activists."CNN has reached out to the Saudi government for a response. 

The court she appeared in on Wednesday said it would investigate Hathloul's allegations of torture in prison, according to the family's statement

Hathloul, 31, was jailed in May 2018 during a sweep that targeted prominent opponents of the kingdom's former law barring women from driving.

"Peaceful activism, and advocating for women's rights is not a crime. Human rights defenders can be a strong partner for governments in addressing concerns within society," the ambassadors said.

"This is yet another sign that Saudi Arabia's claims of reform on human rights are a farce," Maalouf said. 

Chairman of US House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff called on Saturday for Hathloul's immediate release, saying on Twitter she had "endured torture and abuse for over 2 years while detained." 

the US Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs said it was "concerned" by reports that the cases of Hathloul and Badawi had been transferred to the terrorism court. 

"Activism on behalf of (women's) rights is not a crime. Also troubled by allegations of abuse against them & a lack of transparency/access to the trials," the bureau's press office wrote on Twitter. 

his speech raised the temperature on an inflammatory issue.

An alternative theory is that it is designed to provoke a full-scale crisis that could lead to Mr. Johnson suspending part of the protocol, blaming the European Union and stoking pro-Brexit sentiment at home.

Removing the court, Mr. Ferrie said, “would effectively mean cutting Northern Ireland off from the E.U.’s single market and related opportunities.”

trying to wrangle the last bits of sovereignty from the E.U.

he protocol is being implemented in an unnecessarily heavy handed way

t particularly opposes the removal of the Court of Justice of the European Union, based in Luxembourg and the bloc’s highest court, as the final arbiter of disputes.

Mr. Johnson has the ability to suspend parts of the protocol under Article 16 of the Brexit agreement, but he is considered unlikely to do so before the climate summit, COP26, Britain is hosting in Glasgow from Oct. 31 through Nov. 12.

But Mr. Frost’s intervention suggests that such concessions will hardly be sufficient, setting the scene for several weeks of tense negotiation.