Five Stories from Europe You May Have Missed

[rpannier]

1. Bulgaria Schedules Third Parliamentary Elections Of 2021

SOFIA -- Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has announced that he is scheduling the country's third parliamentary election of 2021 to coincide with the next presidential election on November 14.

"In this way we will save both the treasury's money and people's time in particular Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has announced that he is scheduling the country's third parliamentary election of 2021 to coincide with the next presidential election on November 14.," Radev said during a visit to the Bulgarian town of Pleven on September 11.

"It is obvious that the two campaigns for the National Assembly and for president and vice president will run simultaneously and merge."

Bulgaria held parliamentary elections on April 4 and July 11. But no party in the divided legislature managed to put together a majority coalition needed to form a cabinet after either vote.

https://www.rferl.org/a/31455343.html

2. France’s former health minister charged over handling of Covid crisis

France’s former health minister Agnès Buzyn has been charged over her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic after investigators at a special court in Paris concluded there were grounds to prosecute her.

Buzyn has been charged with “endangering the lives of others”, according to the prosecutor in a special court that deals with ministerial accountability. A second possible offence of “failure to stop a disaster” was not brought.

The former doctor, who will be able to appeal against the charge, attended a hearing at the court on Friday, saying she welcomed “an excellent opportunity for me to explain myself and to establish the truth”.

She said she would not “let the action of the government be discredited, or my action as a minister, when we did so much to prepare our country for a global health crisis that is still ongoing”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/frances-former-health-minister-charged-over-handling-of-covid-crisis

3. State Pollster Predicts Five Parties To Enter Duma, Headed By United Russia

State polling agency VTsIOM has published survey results suggesting the ruling United Russia party would receive 35.3 percent of the ballots cast by voters who say they are likely to go to the polls in the September 17-19 State Duma elections.

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Polling has been severely limited during the current election campaign, in part because the respected, independent polling outfit Levada Center has been labeled a "foreign agent" organization. The numbers from VTsIOM could not be verified, and their release may serve as a way to create expectations of election results that will roughly correspond to the poll results.

The VTsIOM results track closely with information recently revealed in leaked audio of an official in the Moscow suburb of Korolyov purportedly coaching election workers on how to falsify the vote. The official said "we are interested in seeing a certain figure and a certain party -- 42 to 45 percent on the party-list voting," an apparent reference to the expected result for United Russia.

The VTsIOM poll found 20.5 percent of likely voters will cast ballots for the Communist Party, while 8.5 percent prefer the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), and 6.9 percent will vote for the A Just Russia party. The New People party -- which was created in 2020 and has been accused of being a Kremlin-sponsored project aimed at attracting supporters of imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei Navalny -- was polling 4.6 percent.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-duma-survey-voting/31454132.html

4. Moscow Court Arrests Suspected Owner Of Dark-Net Site For Hiring Assassins

MOSCOW -- A court in Moscow has ordered the arrest of a man suspected of being behind a website that offered a marketplace for hiring hitmen.

The Basmanny district court on September 9 ruled that Sergei Magdanov, a 38-year-old resident of Izhevsk, a city located 1,200 kilometers east of Moscow, must stay in pretrial detention for at least two months.

The Investigative Committee said in a statement on September 9 that Magdanov was detained amid an ongoing investigation into the murder of a married couple in the Vladimir region, which borders the Moscow region.

The unidentified couple was assassinated by a hitman allegedly hired via Magdanov's website, which operated on the dark net.

https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-hitmen-for-hire-darknet/31454299.html


5. Romania lurches into another political crisis as Florin Citu clings to power

It has been just nine months since the elections that saw the National Liberal Party (PNL) narrowly cling to power in Romania by forging a coalition with political newcomers and kingmakers, USR-Plus.

That election saw the end of the tenure as prime minister of Ludovic Orban and his replacement by his finance minister, Florin Citu. The PNL won 41 seats to the Socialist Party’s 47, but the 25 seats won by USR-Plus and its willingness to support Citu made the difference.

Now Citu’s government is on the verge of collapse after his decision to fire his justice minister. The dismissal of Stelian Ion, a member of the USR-Plus, led to the withdrawal of the smaller party from his coalition.

It not only cost Citu his slim majority but a strong rebuke from his predecessor, Orban, whose supporters want him to make a political comeback and take back the parliamentary reins of the PNL.

https://www.euronews.com/2021/09/10/romania-lurches-into-another-political-crisis-as-florin-citu-clings-to-power

[Sherman A1]

1. Thank You

Something beyond the drone of 9/11 posts and coverage.

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Thanks for providing these posts.

[2naSalit]

3. Thank you!

[empedocles]

4. TY