Ursula von der Leyen Archives - Iran News Daily

EU Head Urges for ‘European Health Union’ amid Pandemic

reporter 1222 — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 11:53:02 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on Wednesday urged EU members to build a stronger health union, promising a biomedical research agency and a global summit.

In her first annual State of the European Union address, von der Leyen said the coronavirus pandemic had underlined the need for closer cooperation. “The people of Europe are still suffering,” she said, AFP reported.

“For me, it is crystal clear — we need to build a stronger European Health Union,” she said. “And we need to strengthen our crisis preparedness and management of cross-border health threats.”

Addressing MEPs in the European Parliament, von der Leyen said her commission would try to reinforce the European Medicines Agency and European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

And she announced the creation of a new agency for biomedical advanced research and development, dubbed BARDA.

Then next year, she will work with Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and the Italian G20 presidency to convene a global health summit to learn and share the lessons of the coronavirus crisis.

“This will show Europeans that our Union is there to protect all,” she said.

Health policy remains the responsibility of EU member states and, while Brussels has tried to coordinate the bloc’s response to the epidemic, national lockdowns and border rules have varied widely.

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European Commission urges peace in Middle East

reporter 1222 — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 12:37:12 +0000

TEHRAN (Iran News) – The European Commission called on Wednesday for an immediate end to the use of weapons in the Middle East conflict between Iran and the United States, urging efforts to restart dialogue.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told a news briefing before departing to London that she would discuss the situation in the Middle East with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, according to Reuters.

“The use of weapons must stop now to give space for dialogue,” she told reporters after a meeting of her commissioners.

“We are called upon to do everything possible to rekindle talks. There cannot be enough of that. We have established and time-tested relations with many actors in the region and beyond to de-escalate the situation,” she said.

In the first step of hard revenge on the US over the assassination of Lt. General Soleimani Iran’s IRGC force fired tens of ballistic missiles at Ain Al-Assad base in Iraq. Ain al-Assad is an Iraqi airbase that the US terrorist forces are stationed there.

Earlier this week, regarding Trump threats to attack Iran cultural sites, Minister of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) Ali-Asghar Moonesan said that the US attack of Iran’s cultural heritage is ‘unlikely’ and said, “attacking cultural centers contravenes international resolutions.”

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Will Ursula von der Leyen be the Commander of the Europian Commission?

reporter 1222 — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 06:50:20 +0000

Over this period, the rising tension between the United States and Russia, the withdrawal of U.S. from Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and Brexit, largely affected the world. These events influenced von der Leyen to devise the military and security strategies of Germany based on the new changes in international power balance and focus on improving Germany’s national defense by trying to develop the power of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and establishing new air and space-based forces.

Von der Leyen tried to change the national and international defense system of the country to the point that she even offered making changes in the constitution.

Von der Leyen altered Germany’s military and security strategies based on the new changes in the world and especially in the Middle East; Germany started playing a more active role in protecting its security and addressing international crises. In doing so, she tried to use German army as a backup for running the foreign policy and opened a new chapter of political militarism in German’s history after World War II.

To reach her goals, von der Leyen even suggested spying as an influential method for pre-emptive military actions and offered €200 billion for modernizing German military facilities.

In 2016, she presented the Parliament with a plan to invest €130 billion to upgrade the military forces by 2030.

Over her time, she tried to revive German army once again after the World War II. For achieving this, some sources claims, she went as far as acquiring nuclear weapons for her country.

German financial institutions denied claims of their $10 billion investment in nuclear infrastructures, but on March 6, 2017 German weekly magazine, Der Spiegel revealed that some German banks had made huge investments on producing nuclear weapons.

Von der Leyen also showed enormous support for NATO and made major shifts in its structure even though Donald Trump believed that NATO was an obsolete treaty. Over NATO’s annual meeting in 2017, the member states agreed that NATO opens its main ruling base in Germany.

The base is supposed to coordinate NATO forces in Europe. By this agreement, U.S. nuclear weapons will be kept in Germany and will be modernized over the new few years.

Over Von der Leyen’s administration, German army has assumed many important missions, including air protection of Baltic States, investigative operations in Syria and Iraq, military presence in Afghanistan as well as defense and supervision missions in the Mediterranean Sea and Africa.

Von der Leyen also received complete support from German Parliament who agreed to her plans, including operations against ISIS, areal and navy missions, technical help and investigative missions in the Mediterranean Sea. Parliament even agreed that German Army enhance its Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) from Syria and Iraq to the Persian Gulf region as well.

Over the last few years, the German air force has run more than 1500 investigative flights over Syria. The German tanker aircrafts have run about 800 sorties to refuel over 4000 fighters that belonged to western coalitions.

Von der Leyen also opened a military base in Azraq in Jordan where AWACS and Panavia Tornado aircrafts are located. In exchange for having military bases in Jordan, Germany paid about €1 billion to Jordan government under the name of funds for developments.

Over the last four years that von der Leyen was the defense minister, Germany became one of the biggest exporters of military equipment, sending weapons worth billions of dollars to Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and United Arab Emirates (UAE).

By Von der Leyen’s strategies, fighting terrorism and ISIS became a very serious matter to Germany and the country started a military coalition with European allies and the U.S., this coalition has been the most comprehensive and concentrated joint operation that Germany has ever launched after the World War II.

Over von der Leyen administration, Germany used fighting terrorism to justify its presence in the Middle East and the region was greatly affected by Germany’s security and geostrategic paradigms.

It seems that German officials are now adopting their policies toward Middle East solely based on “countering security threats” and “fighting terrorism”; rather than looking at the region as a real community with its own geo-economic parameters.

With becoming the president of European Commission, von der Leyen gains some great advantages; her military background will enhance Germany’s economic power in the European Commission and make it harder for London to leave the European Union.

Obviously, with von der Leyen as the president of the European Commission, Britain has only three options, the next Prime Minister may continue the polices of Theresa May and will be forced into resignation that leads into more frustration for Britain; second, it can leave the European Union without an agreement that is a lose-lose situation; third it can run a new referendum. In any of these three scenarios, London will have a very little chance of success if Germany rules over the European Commission. In conclusion, if von der Leyen becomes the president of European Commission, Britain will have to relive the nightmare of World War II.

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