Hints and tips:
...His efforts to raise the alarm included joining a trade mission from the Netherlands in 2014 to enlist the help of Dutch diplomats....
...But it is not renewable,” said one diplomat. “They want to change everything to low carbon. It’s war from the French side.” Another diplomat said....
...The “real venom”, according to one EU diplomat, was that countries no longer felt comfortable negotiating compromise agreements with the Germans for fear they would U-turn at the last minute....
...Diplomats also aired concerns about nature restoration in a meeting last week, with some saying it could clash with carbon reduction goals....
...Without a breakthrough, diplomats in Brussels say it is now unlikely to be passed until after EU-wide parliamentary elections in June....
...“She was a formidable diplomat but she was also accessible and had a great sense of humour....
...As Jerzewska says: “It would be a huge U-turn. We would lose our credibility as a serious international player.” However hard Labour tries, the Brexit clock cannot be turned back....
...Laszlóczki, trained as a diplomat in Moscow in the 1980s and spent his entire career in the Hungarian foreign service, most recently as a co-ordinator for eastern relations, until joining the IIB....
...“Normally it’s only Hungary that does that,” said the European diplomat....
...Ukrainian grain has provoked an embarrassing U-turn for Poland, one of the staunchest western supporters of Kyiv’s war against Russia....
...Its unpredictability was to the fore this summer at the Nato summit when it did a U-turn in allowing Sweden to join the alliance....
...“Germany used to buy this nuclear power and now it is polluting us all the way here with coal,” says Dominique Schelcher, chief executive of the Système U supermarket chain and owner of Fessenheim’s store...
...“In the old days, you would go . . . to receptions attended by Chinese diplomats and PLA officers....
...But the variety of documents and the relative ease with which such forums can be accessed online make it seem “like you are [seeing] the tip of an iceberg”, according to one US diplomat....
...China, observed one EU diplomat, was the “undercurrent to the summit”. It came up in “every discussion”, added another....
...“Nuclear power is not renewable nor sustainable and should not be the focus of investment for climate neutrality,” said one diplomat. Others will be delighted that nuclear made the list....
...Resistance from Antwerp, the centre of the world diamond trade through which 86 per cent of the world’s rough stones pass, has been perceived as the key reason for the EU’s U-turn....
...“There is zero trust between the two sides and neither can easily make the concessions that rapprochement would realistically require,” said a retired Turkish diplomat....
...They really are so powerful there and so much more sophisticated than, say, the Russians, who are only really able to spoil things,” said a senior European diplomat....
...I’ll start by taking you through a marmalade-dropper of a U-turn in the latest draft of an initiative designed to use EU taxpayer money to turbo-charge Europe’s defence industry....
...And that is something that will, you know, impress investors and business after all the chaos and the U-turns of the Sunak government, isn’t it?...
...Bulgaria’s move was made possible after the opposition GERB party, which vetoed the talks when in power in 2019, on Wednesday U-turned and agreed to lift the blockage....
...As Richard Haass, a former US diplomat, explains, if America wants to hold its own in a world that could sleepwalk again into great power conflict, it needs to fix its democracy....
...The visit marked a remarkable U-turn for Biden, who during his election campaign promised to treat the kingdom as a pariah and not to engage with Prince Mohammed, the day-to-day ruler of the nation....
...Budapest’s eleventh-hour U-turn, after supporting the deal previously, left Paris fuming....
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