France

By Costas Iordanidis

World leaders urged Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to stop destabilising Ukraine or face further sanctions as they met without a Russian president for the first time since the 1990s.
      
Putin reached out a hand despite being banned from the Group of Seven summit following Russia's annexation of Crimea in March, saying that he was ready to meet Ukraine's president-elect.

The voters from the 28 member states of the European Union (EU) cast their ballots for the European Parliament for four days between May 22 and 25. The results were somewhat expected, but shocking for many nevertheless.

Brutal and diverse, coarse and noisy, the enemies of the European Union are inside the gates. Chauvinists and angry anti-capitalists, neo-Nazis and drunkards, charlatans and demagogues, they spit hatred, they flatter insecurities, they profit from indignation.

BELGRADE - Ivan Mrkic, the foreign policy advisor to the Serbian president, on Wednesday met with a group of ambassadors of Arab states to discuss the upcoming donor conference for aid for Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Turkey’s Labor and Social Security Ministry has proudly announced that the government has been elected to the governing body of the International Labor Organization (ILO) for the period between 2014 and 2017. 

President Barack Obama met Ukraine's president-elect Petro Poroshenko on June 4, in a show of U.S. support for Ukraine's right to chart its own future, before an encounter with Russia's Vladimir Putin.

Şişecam, Turkey’s biggest glassmaker, has said its Paşabahçe unit, which makes tableware and home furnishings, has started talks to acquire shares in Arc International, a French household goods maker.

In a filing to the Istanbul Stock Exchange, Şişecam stated that Paşabahçe had signed a non-disclosure agreement regarding the non-binding talks.

The US is planning a USD 1 B security fund to strengthen its military presence in Europe, the country's President Barack Obama said in Poland.

On Tuesday Obama started from Warsaw a visit to Europe which would later continue in Belgium and France.

French President François Hollande announced plans on June 2 to redraw the country’s map, by reducing the number of regions from 22 to 14.