Faroe Islands profile

21 November 2012 Last updated at 11:02 GMT The Faroes, an archipelago of 18 islands in the North Atlantic, constitute an autonomous region of Denmark.

While the islands' rugged coastlines and extensive bird life are a draw for some, the Faroes also offer the prospect of major offshore reserves of oil and gas.

These potential resources have given extra weight to the argument for full independence from Denmark.

But a planned referendum on the issue was shelved in 2001 after Denmark said it would halt aid within four years if voters favoured the independence proposals.

Farming and fishing are the main economic activities on the Faroe Islands

A local parliament - the Loegting - looks after the islands' affairs, although Copenhagen is responsible for defence and foreign relations.

The Faroes were first settled by Irish monks in the 6th century AD. The first Norse settlers were farmers.

The islands became part of the Kingdom of Norway in the 11th century and came under Danish control in the 14th century when Norway joined the Kingdom of Denmark. Under the 1948 Home Rule Act the islands became self-governing.

The islanders' traditional hunt for pilot whales has attracted international attention. Supporters of the hunt say whale meat is an important source of food over the winter. Animal rights activists have called for the cull to be banned.

Fishing is the main economic activity on the islands, and Danish subsidies remain an important source of income. Copenhagen has said it will review the subsidy agreement should the Faroes profit from offshore energy reserves.

The Faroes - literally Sheep Islands - are barren and often spectacular

Russian President Vladimir Putin says relations with the US outweigh intelligence "squabbles", in his latest comments on the Edward Snowden case.

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Estonia country profile

5 February 2013 Last updated at 16:59 GMT A small and heavily forested country, Estonia is the most northerly of the three former Soviet Baltic republics.

Not much more than a decade after it regained its independence following the collapse of the USSR, the republic was welcomed as an EU member in May 2004. The move came just weeks after it joined Nato.

These historic developments would have been extremely hard to imagine in not-so-distant Soviet times.

Estonia was part of the Russian empire until 1918 when it proclaimed its independence. Russia recognised it as an independent state under the 1920 Treaty of Tartu.

During the two decades that followed it tried to assert its identity as a nation squeezed between the rise of Nazism in Germany and the dominion of Stalin in the USSR.

Tallinn: The capital's long history is evident in its old town Continue reading the main story Politics: PM Andrus Ansip heads a centre-right coalition which was re-elected in 2011Economy: Estonia has experienced rapid growth. Key sectors include manufacturing and IT. Estonia joined the eurozone in 2011International: Estonia joined Nato and the EU in 2004. It has a troop contingent in Afghanistan

Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring

After a pact between Hitler and Stalin, Soviet troops arrived in 1940 and Estonia was absorbed into the Soviet Union. Nazi forces pushed the Soviets out in 1941 but the Red Army returned in 1944 and remained for half a century.

The rapidly expanding Soviet planned economy brought hundreds of thousands of Soviet immigrants to Estonia, causing widespread fear among Estonians that their national identity would eventually vanish.

Russians account for up to a third of the population.

The legacy of the Soviet years has left a mark which the country carries with it into its EU era: Many Russian-speakers complain of discrimination, saying strict language laws make it hard to get jobs or citizenship without proficiency in Estonian. Some Russian-speakers who were born in Estonia are either unable or unwilling to become citizens because of the language requirements.

After a decade of negotiations, Estonia and Russia signed a treaty defining the border between the two countries in May 2005. The Estonian parliament ratified it soon afterwards but only after it had introduced reference to Soviet occupation. Moscow reacted by pulling out. It took until 2012 for talks to start afresh.

The Estonian language is closely related to Finnish but not to the languages of either of the other Baltic republics, Latvia and Lithuania, or to Russian. The country has unique traditions in folk song and verse, traditions which have had to be strong to survive the many centuries of domination by foreign countries.

Estonia enjoyed an investment boom following EU accession, but in 2008 its economy was badly hit by the global financial crisis.

The government adopted tough austerity measures and won plaudits for getting the economy back into shape ahead of entry to the European single currency in January 2011.

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Lobbyists puff and blow over new EU tobacco rules

17 July 2013 Last updated at 01:06 GMT By Jane Deith File on 4, Brussels Olivier Hoedeman criticises the tobacco industry's lobbying tactics in Brussels Olivier Hoedeman takes people on unusual tours of Brussels - he opens their eyes to the billions of euros that multinationals, unions and campaign groups spend trying to shape - even rewrite - the European laws made there.

The research and campaign coordinator of Corporate Europe Observatory - which monitors lobbying - pauses outside a smart office block, a few streets away from the European Parliament.

He points to the second floor and the offices of British American Tobacco. It has seven full-time lobbyists here and Mr Hoedeman says the tobacco industry as a whole employs around 100 in Brussels, spending more than 5m euros (£4.3m; $6.6m) a year.

Those numbers have grown as the industry fights proposed new regulation.

The European Commission is beefing up the Tobacco Products Directive, to try to dissuade young people from smoking.

So, for example, there would be a ban on menthol cigarettes and some other flavourings and bigger pictorial health warnings on packets.

Lobbying battlefield

Tobacco firms "directly lobby MEPs, trying to meet with him or her to talk them into tabling amendments, but also [organise] social events, like dinner parties for MEPs' assistants," Mr Hoedeman says.

"We have already seen in several of the votes of committees of parliament that the Commission's proposals are being weakened. It shows they're gaining ground and achieving that goal."

The lobbying appears to be having an impact. Almost 1,500 amendments to the tobacco directive have been tabled.

The EU's health ministers, for example, voted to drop a ban on slim cigarettes, and reduce the size of the graphic health warnings, from the 75% the European Commission wanted, to 65%.

But last week the parliament's public health committee voted to keep that ban, as well as a ban on cigarette flavourings, and backed the 75% target. So more hard bargaining lies ahead, and the full parliament will vote on 10 September.

The EU has an online database of lobbyists called the Transparency Register. But it does not tell the whole story: the register is voluntary and hundreds of lobbyists simply choose not to reveal themselves. There is no information about whom they have lobbied.

Special rules are supposed to apply to the tobacco industry. The EU has signed up to a World Health Organization treaty which says politicians should avoid meeting tobacco companies; if they must, the meeting has to be transparent.

But the British MEP piloting the tobacco legislation through parliament, Linda McAvan, says that away from the main lobbying battlefield the tobacco companies have been firing salvoes below the radar.

She accuses one of ringing her constituency office, posing as a representative of small retailers to demand an urgent meeting.

'Legal company' Tonio Borg from Malta is now negotiating for the EU Commission on the revised directive

Other tobacco lobbyists, she said, have been handing out anonymous amendments to MEPs, in the hope they will be put forward.

"If they think it's legitimate, why are doing it like that? Why don't they just operate like every other company that lobbies the European Parliament and just send it out in a normal email? I think they know that if people know they're from the tobacco industry, they'll be suspicious of the arguments they make," said Ms McAvan.

Ronan Barry describes himself as a corporate affairs professional for British American Tobacco and heads their Brussels lobbying operation, which cost nearly 1m euros to run last year.

He says his company is always open and honest, and he does not recognise the tactics described by the MEP.

He believes tobacco companies have as much right to meet MEPs as any other business and says the scale of the tobacco lobby is often exaggerated.

"We sell a legal product and are a legal company and therefore have a role to play in communicating our point of view to people who make decisions that impact upon us.

There are certainly at least as many lobbyists arguing against our positions as there are arguing for them, so it's not true to say there are armies of us here lobbying," said Mr Barry.

A British Conservative MEP, Martin Callanan, echoed that view. "This idea they put across that it's a sort of David and Goliath - these industrial giants with thousands of well-paid, suited lobbyists and only one or two little NGOs representing the oppressed common man is very, very far from the truth - it's the other way round if anything."

On average, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Brussels get 43% of their funding from EU institutions.

'Billions of euros'

In the past year the lobbying debate on both sides has been overshadowed by a scandal involving the former commissioner who was supposed to be driving the tobacco directive, John Dalli.

At the centre of so-called "Dalligate" is an allegation that a friend of Mr Dalli asked for 60m euros to overturn a ban on snus - a moist chewing tobacco which you put under your lip.

Mr Dalli and his friend both strenuously deny the allegation.

An investigation by Europe's anti-fraud office Olaf says that although it has circumstantial evidence linking Mr Dalli to the bribe request, that evidence is not conclusive.

Speaking from his home in Malta, Mr Dalli claims he is the victim of a conspiracy: "I was considered as a person who was very hard on the tobacco industry and they didn't want that during their campaign.

"I'm already hearing about a lot of dilution that is being made to the directive because of the tobacco lobbies that have been very active.

"I'm afraid that what's going to go through, if it goes through, is not as effective as one would like and what is the gain? The gain is billions of euros."

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Regions and territories: Ajaria

A mountainous semi-autonomous region of Georgia, Ajaria is situated on the Black Sea coast on Georgia's southwestern border with Turkey.

Its narrow band of coastal lowland has a lush sub-tropical climate while high in the mountains there can be snow for six months of the year.

The port in the capital, Batumi, is used for the shipment of oil from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. Its oil refinery handles Caspian oil from Azerbaijan which arrives by pipeline to Supsa port and is transported from there to Batumi by rail.

Batumi is also an important gateway for the shipment of goods heading into Georgia, Azerbaijan and landlocked Armenia. The Ajarian capital is a centre for shipbuilding and manufacturing. Ajaria has good land for growing tea, citrus fruits and tobacco.

History

The people of Ajaria are overwhelmingly Georgians. Under Ottoman rule from the 17th until the 19th century Islam predominated. The word Ajarian came to mean a Georgian Muslim.

Tensions erupt on the internal border between Georgia and Ajaria

In 1878 Ajaria was annexed by Russia and, following the Bolshevik revolution, incorporated into Georgia as an autonomous republic within the USSR. Under Stalin, Islam, like Christianity, was ruthlessly repressed. Nowadays over 60% of the population are Georgian Orthodox Christians, and about 30% continue to profess Islam.

Unlike the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Ajaria has been spared major violence and ethnic unrest since Georgia became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The region was led between 1991 and May 2004 by Aslan Abashidze, who maintained close ties with Moscow. Election results gave him at least 90% of the vote every time and he ruled in an autocratic style.

Aslan Abashidze ousted

Former Ajarian leader Aslan Abashidze stepped down and fled

After Eduard Shevardnadze was overthrown as Georgian president and the results of the November 2003 Georgian parliamentary elections were annulled, a state of emergency was declared in Ajaria. Its leadership refused to recognise the full authority of Mikhail Saakashvili as Georgian president.

In May 2004, Mr Abashidze claimed that Georgian forces were preparing to invade. His own forces blew up bridges connecting the region with the rest of Georgia. Mr Saakashvili ordered the Ajarian leader to comply with the Georgian constitution and start disarming or face removal.

Large numbers of demonstrators took to the streets of Batumi. In an echo of events in Tbilisi the previous autumn, Mr Abashidze resigned. Levan Varshalomidze, a close ally of President Saakashvili, took over as head of government.

Russia then agreed to close its military base at Batumi in 2007. The base was a source of great tension between Moscow and Georgia.

As a sign of Ajaria's reconnection with the central Georgian government the Constitutional Court was moved from Tbilisi to Batumi the same year.

Territory: AjariaStatus: Autonomous region within GeorgiaPopulation: 400,000 Capital: Batumi Major languages: Georgian, Russian Major religions: Christianity, Islam Natural resources: Citrus fruit, tobacco, tea Industry: Oil refining, shipping, manufacturing, wine-making

When former autocratic leader Aslan Abashidze left the country following a showdown with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, his post was abolished.

In subsequent elections to the Ajarian assembly Mr Saakashvili's party won 28 of the 30 seats. Their campaign promises included working to improve living standards and stamp out corruption. There were allegations of vote-rigging from Mr Saakashvili's former allies, the Republican Party, after they won less than 15 per cent of the vote.

Legislation passed by the Georgian parliament after the elections gives the assembly powers over local affairs. It states that the head of the region's government is nominated by the Georgian president, who also has powers to dissolve the assembly and government and to overrule the local authorities in the event of contravention of the Georgian constitution.

Since 2004 an ally of President Saakashvili, Levan Varshalomidze, has been chairman of the regional council of ministers.

The Ajarian authorities operate TV and radio networks in the region.

Television

Adjara TV - operated by Ajarian authorities Channel 25 - private

Radio

Radio Adjara - operated by Ajarian authorities

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Italy country profile

25 June 2013 Last updated at 15:10 GMT Take the art works of Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Tintoretto and Caravaggio, the operas of Verdi and Puccini, the cinema of Federico Fellini, add the architecture of Venice, Florence and Rome and you have just a fraction of Italy's treasures from over the centuries.

While the country is renowned for these and other delights, it is also notorious for its precarious political life and has had several dozen governments since the end of World War II.

The Italian political landscape underwent a seismic shift in the early 1990s when the "mani pulite" ("clean hands") operation exposed corruption at the highest levels of politics and big business. Several former prime ministers were implicated and thousands of businessmen and politicians were investigated.

Millions of tourists visit Italy to see its antiquities, such as Michelangelo's David

There were high hopes at the time that the "mani pulite" scandal would give rise to a radical reform of Italian political culture, but these hopes were dashed when the old structures were replaced by a new political landscape dominated by the multi-millionaire businessman Silvio Berlusconi, who himself became increasingly mired in scandals and corruption affairs.

Continue reading the main story Politics: Enrico Letta leads a grand coalition formed two months after the 2013 elections left a stalemated parliament Economy: Italy has the eurozone's third largest economy and a huge public debt - second only to Greece'sInternational: Italian forces have been active in peacekeeping in the Balkans, Africa and Middle East, and are present in Afghanistan

Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring

The growing popularity since 2009 of a protest movement led by the comedian and activist Beppe Grillo reflects the level of discontent with all the mainstream parties, which many Italians see as being irredeemably self-serving and out of touch with the concerns of ordinary citizens.

Italy was one of the six countries that signed the 1951 Paris Treaty setting Europe off on the path to integration. It has been staunchly at the heart of Europe ever since, although the government led by Mr Berlusconi in the early 2000s adopted a more Eurosceptic stance.

Mr Berlusconi sought to align Italy more closely to the US, breaking ranks with the country's traditional allies, France and Germany, in his support for the US-led campaign in Iraq.

Italy is the fourth largest European economy and for long enjoyed one of the highest per capita incomes in Europe, despite the decline in traditional industries such as textiles and car manufacturing as a result of globalisation.

But it became one of the first eurozone victims of the global financial crisis of 2008. By mid-2012, Italy had the second-highest level of public debt - a towering 123% of GDP (annual economic output) - in the eurozone.

There is concern over Italy's birth rate - one of the lowest in Europe - and the economic implications of an ageing population.

Italy is renowned for its treasures, such as Venice, a city surrounded by water

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Latvia country profile

13 June 2013 Last updated at 15:14 GMT Situated in north-eastern Europe with a coastline along the Baltic Sea, Latvia has borders with Estonia, Russia, Belarus and Lithuania. It has linguistic links with Lithuania to the south and historical and religious ties with Estonia to the north.

Not much more than a decade after it declared independence following the collapse of the USSR, Latvia was welcomed as an EU member in May 2004. The move came just weeks after it joined Nato. These developments would have been extremely hard to imagine in the 51 years when Latvia - like Estonia and Lithuania - was occupied by the Soviet Union.

For centuries Latvia was primarily an agricultural country, with seafaring, fishing and forestry as other important factors in its economy.

Continue reading the main story Politics: Latvia regained its independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Presence of a large ethnic Russian minority is a sensitive issueEconomy: Latvia made a rapid transformation to a market economy after independenceInternational: Latvia is a member of the European Union and Nato

Country profiles compiled by BBC Monitoring

Latvia was under foreign rule from the 13th until the 20th century, but managed to keep its unique language and rich cultural and especially musical traditions alive. After the First World War it declared independence from Russia, which recognised it in 1920.

Two decades later, following a pact between Stalin and Hitler, Soviet troops invaded in 1940 and Latvia was absorbed into the Soviet Union. Nazi forces pushed the Soviets back in 1941 but the Red Army returned in 1944 and remained for half a century.

During the Soviet period Latvia underwent heavy industrialisation, and experienced a big influx of immigrants from other parts of the USSR, mainly Russia.

About a quarter of the population is Russian-speaking and the rights of this section of society have been a thorny issue since independence. Government reforms introduced in 2004 to restrict the use of the Russian language in schools remain controversial.

Legislation on citizenship was toughened up in 2006. Candidates who fail a Latvian language test three times will be denied citizenship. People without citizenship are entitled neither to vote nor to obtain an EU passport.

Like its Baltic neighbours, in the decade after independence Latvia made a rapid transformation to embrace the free market.

Latvia's economy grew by 50% between 2004 and 2007 but the global financial crisis of 2008-9 hit the country hard, and the former Baltic tiger endured one of the worst recessions in the EU.

The social turmoil triggered by the financial crisis led to the fall of the Godmanis government in February 2009. By January 2010, unemployment had soared to 20%, prompting fears of further political instability.

Deep public spending cuts introduced by the subsequent Dombrovskis government led to discontent at home, but impressed international lenders enough to earn Latvia an IMF/European Union 7.5bn euro ($10bn) bailout.

This has helped Latvia's economic recovery, and it returned to growth in 2011. By late 2012, its economic revival was the EU's strongest. Unemployment, while falling, nonetheless remains high. The country is set to join the euro at the start of 2014, despite popular uncertainty about the move.

Despite a relatively successful economic transition, Latvia has been struggling with a steep population decline since independence, as young Latvians in particular seek opportunities abroad. Between 2000 and 2011, the population fell by about 13%.

Latvia was annexed by the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1991.

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European car sales fell 5.6% in June

16 July 2013 Last updated at 07:30 GMT European carmakers have been cutting prices and manufacturing capacity New car sales in Europe suffered their worst June since 1996 with demand falling to 1.134 million vehicles, down 5.6% from the same month last year.

It brought sales for the first half of the year to 6.205 million cars, a 6.6% fall, the carmakers' body ACEA said.

The UK was the only major car market to expand, with sales up 13.4% in June and 10% for the six months.

European car sales have seen an almost uninterrupted fall for two years, due mainly to recession in the eurozone.

They saw a small rise in April, but that was followed by a big fall in May.

The figures relate to the 27 countries in the European Union plus those in the European Free Trade Association.

Between January and June, sales in Germany fell 8.1% from a year earlier and in France they were down 11.2%. Spanish sales fell 4.9%, while Italy suffered a 10.3% decline.

Unemployment and austerity measures have curbed consumer spending. With car sales falling to a 17-year low in 2012, European carmakers cut both prices and manufacturing capacity but they have largely failed to arrest the decline.

France's Peugeot, which is cutting 8,000 jobs and closing a factory in the country, was one of the biggest sales casualties last month among the main carmakers. Its sales fell 9.3% in June.

Winners in June included Seat, with sales up 12.2%, and Renault-owned Dacia, up 17%.

Among luxury carmakers, Mercedes sales bucked the market decline again with a 2% monthly gain. BMW fell 7.7%, and VW's Audi dropped 8.9%.

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