UK shoe maker and retailer Jimmy Choo has been bought from TowerBrook Capital Partners by luxury goods group Labelux.

The size of the deal, which should be completed in June, has not been disclosed.
Jimmy Choo was founded in 1996 in London by current chief creative officer Tamara Mellon, a former Vogue editor, and shoemaker Jimmy Choo, who sold his interest in 2001.
Labelux was founded by Germany's billionaire Reimann family in 2007.
It is based in Vienna, Austria, and its other investments include shoemaker Bally.
Ms Mellon and chief executive Joshua Schulman will stay on in their current jobs as part of the deal.
TowerBrook Capital Partners bought Jimmy Choo in 2007 for Â£185m.
It has developed the company into a global brand, which last year reported net sales of Â£150m.


Edinburgh Zoo has confirmed its female giant panda Tian Tian will not give birth to a cub this year.

Keepers said the animal's hormone levels and behaviours show she has reached the end of her breeding cycle.
Two giant pandas arrived at the zoo five years ago but have so far failed to produce a cub.
Tian Tian, which means Sweetie, and male Yang Guang (Sunshine) were the first giant pandas to live in the UK for 17 years.
The last pandas in the UK, Ming Ming and Bao Bao, left a zoo in London in 1994 after failing to mate.
Iain Valentine, director of giant pandas at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (RZSS), said: "It now appears clear that Tian Tian, our resident female giant panda, will not give birth to cubs this year.
"Tian Tian's hormone levels are returning to normal and her behaviours signal the end of her breeding cycle for this year.
"Over the next few weeks we will conduct a thorough review of the scientific data and our processes to ensure we learn from this year's breeding season.


Briton Jake Wightman knocked over a second off his personal best as he beat a high-quality field to win the 1500m at the Oslo Diamond League meeting.

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The 22-year-old Scot finished in three minutes 34.17 seconds - his previous best was 3:35.49.
"In utter shock. Cannot believe I've just won a Diamond League," he tweeted.
In a bizarre women's 200m, Dutch world champion Dafne Schippers was reinstated as winner having initially been disqualified after finishing first.
The 24-year-old crossed the line in 22.33 after she was allowed to race despite appearing to make a false start. Schippers suggested crowd noise was the reason for her error.
Moments later, Ivory Coast sprinter Muriel Ahoure was announced as the winner with Schippers disqualified. However, following an appeal, the Rio 2016 silver medallist was reinstated.
In the 1500m, Wightman finished ahead of Kenya's 2015 world silver medallist Elijah Manangoi (3:34:30) and European silver medallist Marcin Lewandowski of Poland (3:34.60).
Home favourite and current European champion Filip Ingebrigsten was fourth, and Briton Charlie Grice, who reached the Rio 2016 final, was sixth.
Find out how to get into athletics with our inclusive guide.
And in the men's 100m Briton Chijindu Ujah equalled his season's best in the 100m, but was pipped to victory by Canada's Andre De Grasse.
Ujah came home in 10.02 seconds - the same time he posted at the Rome meeting last week - just 0.01 behind De Grasse. Another Briton, Adam Gemili, was fourth in 10.13.
Highlights of the Oslo meeting will be shown on Saturday at 13:20 BST on BBC One.


Winger George North will not want to be treated with extra care despite his latest head injury, says Northampton Saints director of rugby Jim Mallinder.

North, 24, landed on his head after a high tackle from Adam Thompstone in his side's 19-11 defeat against Leicester Tigers on Saturday, 3 December.
"I read some reports he must finish and stop playing. He doesn't want to be treated like that," Mallinder said.
"All George wants to do is get back and play rugby."
The Wales international previously had a six-month spell out of the game after suffering a series of blows to the head during matches, including a serious concussion when scoring a try against Wasps in March 2015.
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The former Scarlets winger will sit out Northampton's game against Sale Sharks on Boxing Day because of the incident, despite saying he was not knocked out.
"He said he can remember going up in the air, he remembers landing on the floor, he remembers his head striking the floor and he said he wasn't unconscious," Mallinder told BBC Look East.
"That's not saying that he was not knocked unconscious briefly. If he thought he had been concussed, then George is sensible enough to put his hand up and say 'I'm concussed and I need some time out of the game'.
"He went to see the specialist on Tuesday, who backed up that he hasn't got any symptoms. But because he may have been knocked unconscious, we must treat it as a concussive episode and therefore we will not play him for a couple of weeks."
A concussion review group was formed to investigate how North's case was handled and whether the club have a case to answer, but Mallinder is not worried.
"I want it [the report] to be favourable towards the medics and the rugby club, because I know that they haven't intentionally done anything wrong," he continued.
"I hope it's honest and accurate."


The Archbishop of Canterbury has spoken of the struggle to do "what is right and just to all" over the issue of gay marriage within the Church of England.

The Most Rev Justin Welby told the Daily Telegraph that Christians in some parts of the world find the issue "almost impossible" to deal with.
But he accepted the Church had caused "great harm" to gay and lesbian groups.
Same-sex marriage became legal in England and Wales last month but is not supported by the Church.
In the interview, Archbishop Welby said: "We are struggling with the reality that there are different groups around the place that the Church can do - or has done - great harm to.
"You look at some of the gay, lesbian, LGBT groups in this country and around the world - Africa included, actually - and their experience of abuse, hatred, all kinds of things.
"We must both respond to what we've done in the past and listen to those voices extremely carefully.
"Listen with love and compassion and sorrow. And do what is possible to be done, which is not always a huge amount."
He added: "At the same time, there are other groups in many parts of the world who are the victims of oppression and poverty, who we also have to listen to, and who find that issue an almost impossible one to deal with.
"How do you hold those two things (in balance) and do what is right and just by all?"
The law prohibits the Church of England from performing same-sex weddings.
Archbishop Welby added that discussions were to take place shortly about how the Church should respond to the new legislation - and that he did not want to "pre-empt" them.
Earlier this month, Archbishop Welby said that accepting same-sex marriage could be "catastrophic" for Christians elsewhere, telling LBC Radio that hundreds of Christians in Africa had been killed by those who associate the religion with homosexuality.
In a live phone-in, he told of religious figures in South Sudan pleading with him not to change the Church's policy on same-sex marriage because it would mean they could no longer accept help from England.
Archbishop Welby, who made a five-day visit to Africa earlier this year, said: "What I said is that I have been in places where that has been the reason given for attacking people.
"Now, as I said then - and this is where there was misinterpretation - that doesn't mean that you don't do certain things.
"That would just be giving in to that kind of terror."


Eight miners are missing after a flood at Russia's largest diamond mine.

Water leaked into an underground shaft on Friday morning when more than 100 workers were inside.
Most have been rescued from Mir mine in eastern Siberia, according to diamond company Alrosa, which runs it.
However, the company said reports that those still missing had been located were not true and the search continues. Divers have reportedly arrived at the scene.
The town of Mirny in Yakutia has declared a state of emergency.
One man was rescued on Saturday morning.
He is in intensive care at a nearby hospital with a bruised lung, but his life is not in danger, Alrosa said.
Chief Executive Sergey Ivanov said every effort was being made to find the other workers.
The company said 142 people had been brought safely back to the surface so far.
The adjacent open-pit mine, one of the world's largest excavated holes, is no longer operational, as mining has moved underground.
However, flooding of the exhausted quarry may have caused the problem, according to local emergency services, as water leaked into one of the active mine's pumping stations.
The crater contained some 300,000 cubic meters of water, the equivalent of 120 Olympic-size swimming pools, the emergencies ministry said.


Police hunting a gunman suspected of killing seven people in southern France are laying siege to a flat in Toulouse.

The man, named as Mohammed Merah, 23, a Frenchman of Algerian origin, has said he belongs to al-Qaeda and acted to "avenge Palestinian children".
Police are negotiating with the man, who is still said to be armed but says he may give himself up this afternoon.
French Interior Minister Claude Gueant said the man had been tracked by French intelligence for "several years".
The brother of the suspect has been arrested in another part of Toulouse, with several other relatives also reported detained.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made a televised address, paying tribute to the security forces who are carrying out the operation and saying that terrorism "will never be able to fracture our national community".
Mr Gueant, who is at the siege scene, says the suspect has a Kalashnikov, a mini-Uzi 9mm machine pistol and several handguns. He earlier threw one gun, a Colt 45, from a window in exchange for a phone. A .45 calibre pistol was used at all three murder scenes. More weapons were found in a car near the flat.
Mr Gueant said the suspect had no particular demands and that, after initially talking to the authorities, Merah broke off discussions. Negotiations have now resumed, Agence France-Presse reports.
Surrounding buildings have been evacuated.
The suspect's mother, who is Algerian, had been brought to the scene, but Mr Gueant said she had refused to become involved as "she had little influence on him".
The man shot at the door after police arrived, Mr Gueant said, injuring one officer in the knee and "lightly injuring" another.
The minister said: "Our main concern is to catch him and to catch him under such conditions that he can be brought to justice."
The flat in Toulouse is in a five-storey building and Merah is on the ground or first floor, correspondents say.
Police wearing helmets and flak jackets have cordoned off the area. Prosecutors say other operations are under way to track down possible accomplices.
Mr Gueant said the suspect had made one visit to Afghanistan and one to Pakistan.
"He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al-Qaeda," Mr Gueant said.
"He wanted revenge for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions."
French media have linked Merah to a group called Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride) that was banned by Mr Gueant in January.
The prison director in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, Gulam Farooq, told the BBC that Merah was arrested in 2007 and jailed for three years for planting bombs, before escaping in a mass Taliban-led break-out in 2008.
The BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris says investigators report that Merah was identified because of an email message sent to his first victim about buying a scooter.
The message, sent from the suspect's brother's account, set up an appointment at which the soldier was killed, sources told AFP.
The man had also sought out a garage in Toulouse to have his Yamaha scooter repainted after the first two attacks. A scooter was used in all the attacks.
An editor of the France 24 network said a man had called it overnight saying he was responsible for the shootings and that he wanted to published on the internet films he had made of all of the killings.
Although there is no confirmation it was Merah, France 24 said he had made the same comments as later reported by Mr Gueant, gave the same age and recounted very specific details of the killings.
Merah's lawyer said his client was in court two weeks ago for driving without a licence and was "courteous and civilised".
A huge manhunt had been launched after Monday's shooting at a Jewish school that left four people dead, and the killing of three soldiers in two incidents last week.
The funerals of the rabbi and three children killed on Monday have been held in Jerusalem.
At least 2,000 mourners gathered at the Givat Shaul cemetery on the western outskirts of Jerusalem.
The attacker gunned down Jonathan Sandler, a 30-year-old rabbi and teacher of religion, his two young sons Arieh and Gabriel and then - at point blank range - the head teacher's daughter, seven-year-old Myriam Monsonego, in Monday's attack at the Jewish school.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has accompanied the relatives of the dead to the funerals in Jerusalem.
In his eulogy to clearly distraught relatives at the service, Israeli speaker of parliament Reuben Rivlin said: "The entire house of Israel weeps over these murders."
In his televised address, Mr Sarkozy said that he had had a meeting with Jewish and Muslim leaders.
"I told them and I tell the nation that we should be united. We cannot give in to discrimination or vengeance. We owe this to the victims who have been killed in cold blood and to our country."
Mr Sarkozy will later attend a memorial service for the three soldiers killed in the two attacks last week.
All three were of North African descent. Another soldier from the French overseas region of Guadeloupe was left critically injured.
Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National, will attend the memorial service in Montauban.
After Wednesday's raid took place, Ms Le Pen said the "fundamentalist threat has been underestimated" in France.


The Football Association has paid its respects to the victims of the Brussels bombings by lighting up Wembley Stadium's arch in the colours of the Belgium flag.

Tuesday's attacks at Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro resulted in 31 deaths and 300 injured.
The country is observing three days of national mourning.
Belgium's friendly against Portugal next week has been moved from Brussels to the Portuguese city of Leiria.
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Romantics rejoice - the cast of Love Actually is reuniting for a short sequel to raise money for Comic Relief.

Red Nose Day Actually will be written by Richard Curtis and star Hugh Grant, Keira Knightley and Colin Firth.
Liam Neeson, Bill Nighy and Rowan Atkinson will also appear in the film, which sets out to discover what the original characters are doing in 2017.
The 10-minute sequel will be shown on 24 March on BBC One as part of the Red Nose Day appeal.
It comes 14 years after Love Actually was released.
Love Actually scriptwriter Emma Freud, Curtis's partner, has asked for ideas for the plot, saying the follow-up is still being written.
Many have suggested a tribute to the late Alan Rickman, who starred in the original.
Another suggestion tweeted to Freud involved Atkinson's character, who was seen in the original as a shop assistant.
But Freud's reply? "Not gonna happen...".
And one fan wanted a happy ending for Emma Thompson's character, after the hard time she had in the first film.
Curtis said: "I would never have dreamt of writing a sequel to Love Actually, but I thought it might be fun to do 10 minutes to see what everyone is now up to.
"We hope to make something that'll be fun - very much in the spirit of the original film and of Red Nose Day."
The writer said he was "delighted" that so many of the original cast could take part, adding: "It'll certainly be a nostalgic moment getting back together."
Martine McCutcheon, Andrew Lincoln, Lucia Moniz, Thomas Brodie-Sangster and Olivia Olson will also reprise their original roles.
The original film, set at Christmas time, followed an extensive cast of characters, whose lives intertwined in various ways.
Among them was Hugh Grant's character, David - the prime minister at the time - who was seen getting together with Natalie, played by McCutcheon, at the end of the original film.
Sam (played by Game of Thrones star Brodie-Sangster, who was 13 at the time), was seen chasing Joanna, played by Olivia Olson, through the airport at the end of the last film to declare his love.
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A lorry driver has been charged with causing the death of another motorist in East Sussex.

Steven Copping, 49, from Hildenborough in Kent, died after his car was crushed by a lorry that overturned on the A27 between Polegate and Lewes in March.
The driver of the lorry, David Hare, 53, has been charged with causing death by dangerous driving.
Mr Hare, of Ford, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, is due to appear at Hastings Magistrates' Court on 2 September.


A wave of toxic mud travelling down the Rio Doce river in Brazil from a collapsed dam has reached the Atlantic Ocean, amid concerns it will cause severe pollution.

The waste has travelled more than 500km (310 miles) since the dam at an iron mine collapsed two weeks ago.
Samarco, the mine owner, has tried to protect plants and animals by building barriers along the banks of the river.
Workers have dredged the river mouth to help the mud flow out to sea fast.
The contaminated mud, tested by the water management authorities, was found to contain toxic substances like mercury, arsenic, chromium and manganese at levels exceeding human consumption levels.
Samarco has insisted the sludge is harmless.
In an interview with the BBC, Andres Ruchi, director of the Marine Biology school in Santa Cruz in Espirito Santo state, said that mud could have a devastating impact on marine life when it reaches the sea.
He said the area of sea near the mouth of the Rio Doce is a feeding ground and a breeding location for many species of marine life including the threatened leatherback turtle, dolphins and whales.
"The flow of nutrients in the whole food chain in a third of the south-eastern region of Brazil and half of the Southern Atlantic will be compromised for a minimum of a 100 years," he said.
The magazine Chemistry World quotes Aloysio da Silva Ferrao Filho, a researcher at the respected Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, as saying that the impact  has been severe in the river itself.
"The biodiversity of the river is completely lost, several species including endemic ones must be extinct."
Samarco has erected 9km of temporary floating barriers similar to those used at sea during oil spills in the river to try to hold back the mud from river banks and to protect flora and fauna from the mud.
One concern is that because the mud is high in iron ore and silica it will set hard as concrete when it dries out.
At the mouth of the river, the company has been using heavy equipment to remove sand banks and dredge so that the mud, when it reaches the sea, can flow out as fast as possible and be diluted quickly.
It is the fish and turtle breeding season at this time of year.  Local people have been helping get fish into tanks and have been collecting turtle eggs to incubate.
In the meantime, Samarco says it is doing repairs on two other dams it uses to hold waste water which is says are at risk of collapsing.
Eleven people were killed and 12 are missing - presumed dead - in the disaster.
Samarco is owned by mining giants, Vale, from Brazil, and the Anglo-Australian company, BHP Billiton.
It has agreed to pay the Brazilian government 1bn (Â£170m; $260m) compensation.
The money will be used to cover the initial clean-up and to offer compensation to families.


EDF Energy "betrayed the public" after safety fears led to the closure of both reactors at Dungeness B nuclear power station in Kent, campaigners have said.

They were taken offline for two months last May while extra sea defences were installed after a review into Japan's Fukushima disaster highlighted risks.
Barrie Botley, of Kent Against a Radioactive Environment, said not enough details were given at the time.
EDF said it had ensured that everyone knew about what was happening.
A massive earthquake and tsunami which led to the nuclear meltdown at Japan's Fukushima reactor in 2011 prompted new research into the flood risk at Dungeness.
The review concluded that there was "a theoretical but plausible scenario in an extremely rare case where water could have got on to the site, potentially up to waist height", the BBC understands.
EDF issued a statement last May saying Unit 21 was offline for "planned refuelling" and Unit 22 for "improvements to flood defences for extreme events".
It said both units were expected to be returned to service that month.
Mr Botley said that did not make clear that both reactors were completely out of action,
"They betrayed us all and I think it's absolutely disgusting. They're supposed to be very open nowadays and they're not," he said.
But Martin Pearson, station director at Dungeness B, said: "The language we've used is language we've used for 30 years.
"If there's more of an interest from the public, and that is seen as a very positive move, then we'll need to review some of the language that we use."
EDF stressed the site was never unsafe and was now protected against the kind of extreme weather expected to happen "only once in 10,000 years".
A flood defence wall between 5ft 2in (1.6m) and 6ft 6in (2m) high has been constructed all the way around the plant at a cost of Â£2.3m.
It is part of a Â£5m investment in flood protection including work inside the station, such as sealing trenches, installing dam boards and raising equipment height.
Both Dungeness B reactors automatically shut down during the St Jude's Day storm on 28 October, when electricity to the site was cut off.
EDF said that during the recent floods and storms it had operated normally.


Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers will play at the 2017 Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod to celebrate its 70th anniversary.

The trio from Blackwood, in Caerphilly county, will play the final day of the annual festival on Sunday, 9 July.
"It's always really special to play in Wales," said a Manics statement.
"Particularly when we are playing an event for the first time. And to play on the festival's 70th anniversary will make it even better."
The band, whose hits include A Design For Life, Motorcycle Emptiness and If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next, have just finished the 20th anniversary tour of their platinum album Everything Must Go.
Tickets for the show at the Royal International Pavilion, which is expected sell out the 5,200 capacity, go on sale on Thursday.
"This is set to be Llanfest's biggest ever show and to say we are excited about the prospect would be an understatement," said festival's musical director Eilir Owen Griffiths.
"The Manics are one of the most important bands to ever emerge from Wales.
"They have an extensive back catalogue of politically charged songs, which resonate as much now as when first released, as well as their powerful newer works."


1918 - End of the Hapsburg empire.
Vienna bears many traces of its imperial past
1919 - Treaty of St Germain defines Austria's boundaries.
1920 - New constitution creates Republic of Austria.
1932 - Engelbert Dollfuss, a Christian Socialist, becomes chancellor.
1934 - Government crushes Socialist uprising, backed by the army and the Heimwehr (Home Defence Force). All political parties abolished except the Fatherland Front.
1934 April - Chancellor Dollfuss dismisses parliament.
1934 July - Imprisonment of Nazi conspirators leads to attempted Nazi coup. Dollfuss assassinated, succeeded by Kurt von Schuschnigg.
1936 - Austria acknowledges itself "a German state".
1938 - The Anschluss (union): Austria incorporated into Germany by Hitler. Schuschnigg imprisoned. Austria now called the Ostmark (Eastern March).
World War II - Austria's armed forces, under German control, used on Eastern Front.
1945 - Soviet troops liberate Vienna. Austria occupied by Soviet, British, US and French forces.
Elections result in People's Party and Socialist Party coalition; Karl Renner elected president, Leopold Figl becomes chancellor.
1946-47 - Denazification laws passed. Reconstruction begins.
1949 - Former Nazis allowed to participate in general election.
1955 - Treaty signed by UK, France, US and USSR establishes an independent but neutral Austria - a convenient buffer between the West and the Soviet bloc. Austria joins the United Nations.
1970 - Government formed under Chancellor Bruno Kreisky who dominates political scene for more than a decade.
1983 - Socialists and the Freedom Party form a coalition government under Fred Sinowatz.
1986 - Ex-UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim elected president, despite controversy over role in German army in World War II.
Franz Vranitzky replaces Sinowatz as federal chancellor.
1992 - Thomas Klestil, former ambassador to the US, replaces Waldheim as president.
Kurt Waldheim was at the centre of a storm over his wartime record in a Nazi militia
1995 - Austria joins EU. Coalition collapses over budget disagreements and strict convergence criteria for European monetary union.
1996 - Social Democrats form new coalition with People's Party.
1997 - Vranitzky resigns as chancellor and leader of Social Democrats. Finance Minister Viktor Klima takes over both positions.
1998 - Klestil re-elected president.
1999 October - Far-right Freedom Party led by Joerg Haider wins 27% of vote in national elections, equal second with centre right People's Party. Social Democrats remain largest party.
2000 January - Coalition talks between Social Democrats and People's Party break down. People's Party opens talks with Freedom Party.
2000 February/March - International outcry as Freedom Party enters government for first time following protracted coalition talks between main parties.
People's Party head Wolfgang Schuessel becomes chancellor with Susanne Riess-Passer of the Freedom Party as his deputy. EU imposes diplomatic sanctions.
Haider hands over as Freedom Party leader to Riess-Passer, seen as less extreme.
2000 August - State-owned companies agree to pay $65m into compensation fund for survivors of Holocaust.
2000 September - EU ends seven months of diplomatic isolation after report concludes that it is counterproductive.
2000 October - Austrian environmentalists blockade border with Czech Republic in protest against the launch of a new Czech nuclear power station at Temelin.
2001 January - Deal signed on compensating Jews whose assets were seized by Nazis. Government and companies to pay $360m into settlement fund.
2001 November - Chancellor Schuessel and Czech government move to settle dispute over Temelin nuclear power plant by agreeing tough measures to improve safety and monitor impact on environment.
Right-wing party leader won notoriety for comments on Nazi past
Obituary: Joerg Haider
2002 August - Devastating floods as Danube bursts banks following torrential rain.
2002 - September - Coalition collapses. Vice Chancellor and Freedom Party leader Riess-Passer and two Freedom Party ministers resign in row with Joerg Haider, widely seen as part of power struggle within party.
2002 November - Schuessel's People's Party makes sweeping gains in general election, largely at expense of far-right Freedom Party. Coalition talks start.
2003 February - Coalition talks with Social Democrats and Greens fail; People's Party again agrees to form government with Freedom Party.
2003 May - Pension reform plans spark first nationwide strike action in several decades.
2003 October - Package of asylum laws introduced, widely seen as among the most restrictive in Europe.
2004 April - Heinz Fischer elected president.
2005 April - Freedom Party splits as Joerg Haider announces he is leaving to set up Alliance for the Future of Austria.
2005 May - Parliament ratifies the EU constitution.
2005 August - Floods cause devastation as the Danube river bursts its banks.
2006 February - A Vienna court finds British historian David Irving guilty of Holocaust denial and sentences him to three years in prison. He is released in December 2006. The case sparks a national debate about the denial legislation.
2006 April - Rising water levels in the Danube again cause severe flooding.
2006 October - The Social Democrats led by Alfred Gusenbauer narrowly defeat the ruling conservative People's Party in elections. After weeks of bargaining, the two parties agree on a coalition. The government is inaugurated in January 2007.
Memorial commemorates Austrian Jews killed in Holocaust
Jewish Vienna's difficult rebirth
Austria and Nazism: Owning Up to the Past
2007 September - Pope Benedict XVI makes 'pilgrimage' to Austria where he had spent time in his youth.
2008 April - National outrage and soul-searching at case of Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter in a cellar for 24 years and fathered children with her. Tougher law on sexual abuse planned.
2008 July - The centre-right People's Party withdraws from grand coalition with Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer's Social Democrats, forcing a snap general election.
2008 September - The Social Democrats again emerge as largest party in the general election, but both it and the People's Party suffer heavy losses while resurgent far-right parties take 29%.
2008 October - The leader of the far-right Alliance for the Future of Austria, Joerg Haider, is killed in a car crash.
2008 December - New coalition government made up of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPO) and the conservative People's Party is sworn in, two months after snap elections. SPO leader Werner Faymann becomes chancellor.
2010 April - President Fischer is re-elected.
2010 October - Far-right Freedom Party wins 26% of vote in municipal elections in Vienna, putting it in second place to Social Democrats.
2011 July - Otto von Habsburg - eldest son of the last Austrian emperor - is buried in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna amid much of the pomp associated with the days of the empire.
2013 January - Referendum. Austrians vote to keep compulsory military service.
2013 June - Austria withdraws troops from the Golan Heights after nearly 40 years of monitoring a UN buffer zone between Israel and Syria, as violence from Syria's civil war spreads.
2013 September - Parliamentary elections. The governing coalition parties win enough votes to form a new government.
2014 June - A deal is signed to complete the Austrian section of the South Stream gas pipeline for transporting Russian gas to Europe - bypassing the long-standing transit route through Ukraine -  despite calls by the EU for its member states to unite against the project.
2014 December - Russia scraps the South Stream gas pipeline construction project following the imposition of European sanctions in response to its annexation of Crimea.
2015 February - Parliament approves controversial reform to 1912 law which made Islam an official religion in Austria. The revised law gives Muslims more legal security but bans foreign funding for mosques and imams.
2015 October - Austria says it plans to erect barriers at a border crossing with Slovenia after tens of thousands of migrants are estimated to have entered the country - mainly en route for Germany.
2016 February - Austria imposes a cap on the number of migrants and refugees allowed to enter the country, after receiving 90,000 asylum applications in 2015.
2016 May - In a surprise move, Werner Faymann steps down as Chancellor and SPO leader, acknowledging that he has lost the support of many of his party colleagues.
Green Party member Alexander Van der Bellen, standing as an independent, narrowly beats fear-right Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer in the presidential election.


Six police officers have been injured after collisions with a suspected stolen car.

Police had been investigating a burglary in Newtownabbey, County Antrim, when two of their vehicles were rammed by the car on Wednesday morning.
Another police vehicle was struck by the stolen car in Belfast.
Four teenagers have been arrested on suspicion of attempted burglary, with two of them also suspected of motoring offences.
The first two arrests were made after police received a report of people acting suspiciously in Lynda Meadows in Newtownabbey at about 11:45 GMT on Tuesday.
Two people, a boy, 17, and a 19-year-old man, made off from officers but were detained in the Circular Road area a short time later.
At 01:45 GMT, the stolen car rammed two police vehicles in Lynda Meadows.
The car was the pursued to Cullingtree Walk in west Belfast, where it struck a third police vehicle.
Two boys, aged 15 and 16, were arrested.
All four suspects remain in custody.


A popular brand of pink wafer is under threat after a company went into administration following a "sharp fall" in the value of sterling after Brexit.

Administrator FRP Advisory said a "sustained deterioration" since the EU vote had exacerbated Rivington Biscuits in Wigan's financial difficulties.
The company, which makes Pink Panther wafers, will cut 99 of its 123 staff, keeping 24 while it seeks a buyer.
The administrators said the firm would "fulfil orders into the New Year".
Rivington Biscuits, which trades from Ormside Close in Hindley Green, Wigan, is owned by Dutch company Van Delft.
A FRP Advisory spokeswoman said over the past year, the biscuit makers had "experienced particularly challenging trading conditions" and been "left with no viable alternative other than to seek the protection of administration".
"The problems were compounded by the sharp decline in the value of the pound against the euro," she said.
Russell Cash, partner at FRP Advisory, said the business was left "facing unsustainable cash-flow pressure" after "a sustained deterioration in trading conditions and significant additional pricing costs since the summer".
"As administrators, given the financial situation, we have had to take the difficult decision of making a large number of redundancies and our immediate priority is to assist those staff who have lost their job to make timely claims," he added.


Liverpool have made an approach to sign Shakhtar Donetsk's Brazilian attacker Alex Teixeira as Jurgen Klopp attempts to secure his first major signing since becoming manager at Anfield.

The Reds are willing to pay about £24.5m for the 26-year-old.
However, the Ukrainian club value Teixeira, who has also been linked with Chelsea, at closer to £39m.
Klopp is looking to boost his striking options, with Danny Ings, Divock Origi and Daniel Sturridge injured.
With £32.5m summer signing Christian Benteke out of sorts, Liverpool have only scored 25 goals in 22 Premier League games this season.
Shakhtar, who are at a winter training camp in Florida, value Teixeira highly. He has scored 22 goals in 15 league games and four goals in 10 Champions League appearances this season.
He began his career at Vasco da Gama in Brazil before moving to Shakhtar in 2010.
Klopp has brought in defender Steven Caulker on loan from QPR and completed a £5.1m deal for Red Star Belgrade's 19-year-old midfielder Marko Grujic, who has returned to the Serb club on loan until the summer.
But signing Teixeira would represent his first significant move in the transfer market.
If he signs, he would be the fourth Brazilian in Liverpool's senior ranks, joining Lucas Leiva, Roberto Firmino and Philippe Coutinho.
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page.


YouTube has said it has paid the music industry $1bn (Â£794m) in royalties this year - but record companies have responded by claiming it is not enough.

The spat began on Tuesday, when YouTube's chief business officer Robert Kyncl posted a blog highlighting the site's contribution to the industry.
He said YouTube had distributed $1bn in advertising royalties alone, arguing that "free" streaming was as important as subscription sites like Spotify.
But record labels were not impressed.
"Google has issued more unexplained numbers on what it claims YouTube pays the music industry," said a spokesperson for the global music body, the IFPI.
"The announcement gives little reason to celebrate, however.  With 800 million music users worldwide, YouTube is generating revenues of just over $1 per user for the entire year.
"This pales in comparison to the revenue generated by other services, ranging from Apple to Deezer to Spotify. For example, in 2015 Spotify alone paid record labels some $2bn, equivalent to an estimated $18 per user."
In his blog post, Mr Kyncl conceded that the current model was not perfect, arguing: "There is a lot of work that must be done by YouTube and the industry as a whole.
"But we are excited to see the momentum," he added.
The music industry has targeted YouTube - and other free streaming sites - as their villains du jour.
They say YouTube does not pay a fair rate to musicians and record labels, and is slow to police illegal and pirated material uploaded by its users - a claim which YouTube disputes.
The rhetoric intensified this year as YouTube's licensing agreements with the three major record labels - Sony, Warner and Universal - came up for renewal.
The industry has also pushed for reforms to the "safe harbour" laws, which mean YouTube and other similar sites cannot be penalised when users upload copyrighted material - including full albums - provided they remove it on request.
Artists like Lady Gaga, Sir Paul McCartney, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay and Abba have all written to the US Congress asking for the law to be changed.
YouTube recently hired former Warner Music executive Lyor Cohen as its head of music, a move which was widely interpreted as an attempt to smooth relations with the music industry.
He took up his post on Monday, 24 hours before Kyncl's blog post was published.
However, the IFPI has maintained its position, saying in a statement that YouTube is still "not paying artists and producers anything like a fair rate for music".
It continued: "This highlights more than ever the need for legislative action to address the 'value gap' that is denying music rights holders a fair return for their work."
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They were designed as a way to safeguard minority rights in Stormont's fledgling power-sharing assembly, but now petitions of concern are themselves becoming a matter of concern.

Former SDLP leader Mark Durkan claims they are now being "played like a joker".
It is one of the kinder descriptions applied to the DUP's decision to use the petition to block an assembly motion this week that, among other things, accused the Social Development Minister Nelson McCausland of misleading the institutions.
An "abuse"; "political chicanery" and "farce" are among the charges made by the DUP's political opponents.
But they are not the only party to have used the mechanism.
Sinn FÃ©in tried, and narrowly failed, to use a petition of concern to block Jim Allister's special adviser (Spad) bill in the assembly.
The legislation stops former prisoners with serious convictions becoming a special political adviser at Stormont.
The SDLP's decision not to sign the petition meant Sinn FÃ©in had only the signatures of its 29 MLAs - one short of the 30 required.
The DUP, however, with 38 MLAs, have no such worries and have been using the measure liberally recently to defeat anything from a vote calling for the introduction of gay marriage in Northern Ireland to amendments to the Planning Bill.
Any vote taken by the assembly can be made dependent on cross-community support if a petition of concern is presented to the assembly speaker.
In such cases, a vote on proposed legislation will only pass if supported by a weighted majority (60%) of members voting, including at least 40% of each of the nationalist and unionist designations present and voting.
Effectively this means that, provided enough MLAs from a given community agree, that community can exercise a veto over the assembly's decisions.
Since the restoration of devolution in 1998, the device has been used a total of 63 times - more than half of those were in the past two years.
Unionists, mainly the DUP, have accounted for 37 petitions of concern.
In the most recent assembly term, petitions of concern were used 18 times, compared with just six in 2007/2008, the year devolution was restored.
So what is going on?
According to Mr Durkan, the assembly's standing orders need to be amended to more accurately reflect the 1998 Good Friday Agreement itself, because the measures are being used "as defensive, pre-emptive and prescriptive vetoes".
The former SDLP leader said: "The petition of concern facility was put into the agreement to safeguard communal sensitivities and specifically to protect equality and human rights considerations.
"It was not proposed or envisaged as a tool to protect any minister from due accountability - not least when there are issues on probity in public finances or propriety of ministerial conduct.
"Paragraphs 11 to 13 of the agreement show that the petition of concern was not meant to be played like a joker, as a reflex veto to frustrate any valid proposal.
"Instead, it was meant to trigger a process whereby equality and human rights concerns could be assessed and addressed, by a specially appointed committee of the assembly taking evidence and reporting on those very issues.
"Unfortunately, the assembly standing orders do not actually reflect the carefully calibrated provision in the agreement itself. The 1998 Act says that the assembly standing orders should make provision for what is laid down in those three paragraphs of the agreement."
Mr Durkan added: "I have made the point several times before and do so again that the standing orders need to be corrected in accordance with the agreement and the 1998 Act.
"The argument can also be made, and I made it at the time, that the 1998 Act could have been more explicit in providing for the procedure intended."
The Alliance MP Naomi Long has asked Secretary of State Theresa Villiers to intervene by using the Northern Ireland Miscellaneous Provisions Bill currently making its way through Westminster to instead implement a weighted majority voting system, which would not allow any single party to "over-ride the wishes of the assembly as a whole".
"The petition of concern was designed to offer protection to minorities within the assembly, where decisions of a sensitive nature risked being imposed upon them against their will," Ms Long said.
"Its use in this case to protect the interest of one party in circumstances where there is widespread and cross-community support for a motion is a clear abuse of the mechanism and makes a strong case for urgent reform," she added.
The DUP rejects the criticism but has said the party is open to change.
A DUP spokesman told the BBC: "The use of a petition of concern in a motion calling for an inquiry that has already been established appears to have caused a greater outcry than when its use blocked an amendment to the Justice Bill, that would have prevented abortions being performed by private clinics.
"Hopefully, those who have apparently been so outraged by the use of a mechanism they negotiated and supported in 1998 will be equally as forthright in their support for reform of the Stormont structures, which the DUP has supported for over a decade now."
Just last week, the cross-party assembly and executive review committee decided "further detailed work" needed to be carried out on petitions of concern.
After the events of this week, many will see that work as more urgent than ever.
Of course, if the DUP, or any other party, does not like any proposed changes they can always block them - with a petition of concern.


Double Olympic triathlon champion Alistair Brownlee has become the latest British athlete to have medical documents made public by hackers.

Files show Brownlee was given a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) for the drug acetazolamide, which helps glaucoma and altitude sickness.
Brownlee confirmed the drug was given in October 2013 "to treat altitude sickness while climbing Kilimanjaro".
The files of 19 other athletes were published by Fancy Bears on Monday.
A TUE allows an athlete, for medical reasons, to take a prescribed substance or have treatment that is otherwise prohibited.
British athletes must contact their national governing body or follow Ukad guidance before applying for a TUE.


The US government has agreed to pay €1.1m ($1.2m; £934,000) to the family of an Italian aid worker killed by a drone strike in Pakistan, reports say.

Aid worker Giovanni Lo Porto, 37, was killed while being held hostage by al-Qaeda in 2015.
US aid worker Warren Weinstein, 73, being held with him also died in the operation.
The White House has confirmed that payments were made to both families, without releasing details.
President Barack Obama admitted the deaths in April last year, saying that he profoundly regretted them. It was announced that compensation would be paid to the families.
Officials said at the time that the operation had targeted an al-Qaeda compound in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that they had believed there were no civilians present.
But according to La Repubblica newspaper (in Italian) and the Guardian newspaper, the agreement states that Mr Lo Porto was killed inside Pakistan.
US military commanders have long tried to make condolence payments to families of innocent people who've been killed in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Making these payments has been harder when the civilians were killed in drone strikes in Pakistan, Libya and other places where the US is not officially at war, however. The drone strikes themselves were kept secret, and determining whether - or how - to provide money for victims' families has been fraught.
In July, however, President Obama released statistics on civilians killed in airstrikes outside of conventional war zones (official estimates of the dead range from 64 to 116).
And now the families of Giovanni Lo Porto and Warren Weinstein have received a payment. These are important steps for Mr Obama, part of a fitful, halting effort to provide transparency about the government's actions and to do the right thing, even when operating in the shadowy world of targeted killings.
The payment was considered a "donation in memory" of the Italian, La Repubblica says.
Mr Lo Porto had disappeared from Multan, Pakistan, in January 2012 but little is known about what happened then. He had worked for an international aid group called Welthungerhilfe.
Mr Weinstein, a development worker, was kidnapped from his home in Lahore, Pakistan, in 2011. He had lived in Pakistan for seven years, working on economic development projects.
The strike also killed American Ahmed Farouq, described as an al-Qaeda leader.


Neil McCann has left Dundee after just over a month as interim manager of the Scottish Premiership club.

The former Dundee and Scotland winger, who is a television football pundit, steered the club clear of relegation
But the club said in a website statement: "Since Neil returned to the club, the process for finding our next permanent manager began.
"Extensive discussions have taken place over the past few weeks, and the process continues this week."
No specific reason was given for the 42-year-old's exit, although it is thought McCann decided against continuing in the role.
But Dundee's statement said he gone after "fulfilling his role as interim manager" and they pointed out that: "Sky very kindly allowed Neil to step away from his contract to answer the call for the past five weeks.
"We are grateful to them and also to Neil for his hard work over the period."
Under McCann, who succeeded the sacked Paul Hartley on 18 April with the Dark Blues sitting second bottom of the table, Dundee ended a run of seven straight defeats to win two games in a row.
They drew their next match but ended the season with two defeats but two points above the play-off spot occupied by Hamilton Academical.
McCann, who said he was "embarrassed" by a 4-0 defeat by Accies on the final day, told Dundee's website: "I'd like to thank everyone at Dundee FC for their hard work in the time I was manager there.
"It was an honour to become manager of the club where my playing career started and finished.
"I'm very proud I was able to succeed in keeping them in the Scottish Premiership. I wish them great success in the future."
Managing director John Nelms thanked McCann for his time in charge.
"He came in and did the job we asked him to do," he said. "The club once again owes Neil a debt of gratitude.
"Neil is certainly a credit to Dundee Football Club and Scottish football as a whole."


The number of asylum seeking children in the care of English councils has risen 62% in a year.

The largest group are boys aged 16 and 17, coming from countries such as Afghanistan or Eritrea.
A refugee charity says many children are facing "serious shortages" in legal advice to help them make their case to stay.
The Home Office said it had increased funding to cover the costs of care and other support for unaccompanied minors.
Figures released to the BBC England data unit under the Freedom of Information Act reveal at least 104 councils were caring for more unaccompanied minors than they were in 2015.
There were at least 4,156 children seeking asylum without parents or guardians and cared for by 147 councils on 31 March 2016, compared with 2,569 the year before. The figure is likely to be higher as some councils did not have up to date figures and some would only say they had fewer than five such children.
The BBC's findings coincide with a report by the children's charity, Unicef, which has called on the government to do more to help unaccompanied children driven from their homes by conflict.
Unaccompanied minors made up about 8% of all asylum claims in the UK in 2015.
For more stories from the BBC England data unit follow our Pinterest board.
Bilal is 22 years old and is now a passionate Leicester City supporter. He arrived from Afghanistan as an unaccompanied child, aged 15. The police handed him over to social services in Warwickshire.
"Every single minute I was missing my family," Bilal said.
"I tried to make myself busy with football, games, making friends.
"My English family tried to make me happy. When I tried to cry, they'd take me to the playground or to football.
"Before I'd cry, I'd try to busy myself. It was not easy."
He was initially fostered by an English family, then moved to Leicester, where he went to secondary school, and he still lives in the city. He is in the process of applying to settle in the UK permanently.
Yet he urges other refugees to think carefully about the journey.
"We were in a small boat for 10 to 15 people," he recalled. "It took three or four hours to Greece. It was massive water. If someone was coming now I'd tell them 'stop, it's not easy'. So many people are dying."
Bilal said Leicester was now his home.
"If I go anywhere I say I'm from Leicester, originally from Afghanistan."
The data shows Kent County Council, which includes the Port of Dover, now cares for more than one in five of England's unaccompanied minors.
It is followed by Croydon, which is where the UK's asylum screening unit is based and where asylum seekers must present themselves if they have already reached the UK.
Others in the top 10 include Northamptonshire.
A spokesman for its county council said: "Geographically, it is often the first place that lorries stop to take a break after coming in from the ports and there are a large number of lorry stops, the M1, A45 and A43 as well as warehouses and logistics companies."
When a child claims asylum in the UK they become the legal responsibility of the local authority in which they are discovered. Local authorities receive funding from the Home Office to look after these children and they are usually either placed into foster care or "semi-independent living" situations.
Councils' responsibility to looked after children does not end when they turn 18.
In Northamptonshire, there were 147 children 17 and under seeking asylum. However it was also working with a further 94 care leavers aged up to 24.
A spokesman for Northamptonshire County Council said there was often a shortfall between the government grant it receives and the costs.
Judith Dennis, policy manager for the Refugee Council, said the UK received about 3% of asylum claims made by unaccompanied children in Europe.
"Around the world, more lone children than ever before have been forced to flee their countries," she said.
"These children arrive without their parents or guardians and have escaped countries where conflict, violence, or human rights abuses are rife.
"It's often a child's parents, not the child themselves, who take the decision that the situation is so dangerous that the child must be sent to safety."
Ms Dennis said there were "serious shortages" in the availability of legal advice for children trying to navigate the asylum system.
The largest group of unaccompanied children are 17-year-old boys. And some are not believed by the authorities to be as young as they claim.
Bristol City Council, for example, gave details of two "children" aged 18 and 19, who were being cared for while "appealing age assessments".
Ms Dennis said: "One of the biggest issues young people seeking asylum face on arrival in the UK is that they are usually unable to verify their date of birth with official documents. Most countries from which refugees come don't register births in the same way as in this country, although some will have documents that can help provide information about age.
"Refugees may have to travel on documents that do not belong to them or have been obtained fraudulently; this is accepted in international law in recognition that people may not be able to obtain passports or travel documents from a government from which they are escaping.
"Such documents are likely to have an adult's date of birth because children would not be allowed to travel alone."
The number of people displaced by conflict was at the highest level ever recorded, the UN refugee agency said. About one in every 113 people on the planet were refugees, asylum seekers or displaced, half of them under 18 years old.
Afghanistan and Eritrea, which has been criticised for human rights abuses, account for the largest numbers of unaccompanied children cared for across England.
There were 148 unaccompanied Syrian children in the care of local authorities. These were not part of the relocation scheme for vulnerable Syrians fleeing the civil war.
And there have been instances of lone children coming from Russia, North Korea and Cuba.
For an interactive map breaking down asylum-seeking children by country of origin click here.
Get the data here.
From 1 July 2016, councils were no longer expected to look after more unaccompanied asylum seeking or refugee children than 0.07% of the general child population in their area. If the figure was exceeded they are now to transfer a child to another local authority.
Experts on migration are waiting to see what the impact is of distributing children more evenly across the country.
Dr Nando Sigona, of the School of Social Policy at the University of Birmingham, said: "A better distribution of unaccompanied asylum seeking minors across local authorities may sound like a sensible idea - but if it really is will depend on what criteria will be applied to guide the redistribution."
And Alp Mehmet, vice-chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: "While we welcome the huge efforts being made to help the most vulnerable, it is also important that in so doing there is no encouragement of people traffickers to ply their squalid trade and young people to risk their lives to get to the UK in the belief that once here their future is assured."
Peter Oakford, Kent County Council's cabinet member for specialist children's services, said the authority faced "enormous pressures" on services, foster placements, accommodation and finances.
"We believe that any national dispersal scheme should be mandatory," he said.
"We urge all local authorities to accept their responsibilities under this new system. We urgently need to share the numbers fairly across all local authorities.
The Home Office said children's safety and welfare was "at the heart of every decision made".
"That is why we have substantially increased funding to local authorities who are responsible for supporting unaccompanied asylum seeking children," a spokesman said.
"We are keen to ensure that no local authority is asked to take more [children] than the local structures are able to cope with."
From 1 July 2016, the daily rates paid to councils went up from £95 to £114 for under 16s and from £71 to £91 for 16 and 17-year-olds.


Apple doesn't do media interviews unless it really has to.

The last time Tim Cook took to screens in the US, it was because of a looming crisis with the government over encryption.
On Monday, it was because of a looming crisis on Wall Street.
Last week, I reported on how Apple had suffered its first quarter of negative growth for 13 years.
Since that news came out, Apple's stock price has been dropping, for eight consecutive days, the first time that's happened to the company since 1998.
So naturally, Apple is trying to stem the flow. Mr Cook appeared on Mad Money, a CNBC show presented by the charismatic Jim Cramer.
Mr Cramer presents his show like a sports broadcaster might, with sleeves rolled up and a shout-shout-shout interview style that is a rite of passage for America's top CEOs.
It's arguably the toughest interview Mr Cook has ever subjected himself to - although that's not exactly saying much.
Still, Mr Cramer was blunt: After a bad quarter, and warnings of another one on the way, is Apple on the way out?
"I think that's a huge overreaction," Mr Cook replied.
"We just had an incredible quarter by absolute standards, but not up to the Street's expectations, clearly."
Concerns about the iPhone being "dead" are unfair, Mr Cook argued, as the mediocre (by Apple's standards) sales of the iPhone 6S range are only poor when put into the context of incredibly good iPhone 6 sales the year before.
Mr Cook insisted that Apple wasn't losing its popularity with consumers. He made reference to Apple's impressive customer retention rates - if you're an iPhone user your far more likely to get another iPhone than head to another device from Samsung or similar.
Which is true, but it's in hardware sales where Apple makes its serious money. So, if the iPhone is slowing, it needs another hit.
"We're going to give you things that you can't live without that you just don't know about today," Mr Cook said.
"That has always been the objective of Apple."
He went on to suggest the company's newest line, the Apple Watch, was that hit.
"I think in a few years we will look back, and people will think 'How could I ever thought about not wearing this watch?'" he said, adding that the Watch is only on sale in 14,000 stores worldwide, leaving plenty of room for growth.
"We're still in learning mode," he added. "We're learning quickly. You'll see the Apple Watch get better and better."
The question is whether Mr Cook's confidence was true faith in the product, or a brave face.
The company still hasn't told us how the Watch is performing, but analysts suggest about four million smartwatches were sold in the first three months of 2016, up three million on this time last year. Apple Watch's accounted for just over two million of them.
Pretty incredible by any other company's standards (Samsung has around 14% of the smartwatch market, for example) but minuscule compared to the 70 million iPhones shipped in the same period.
So, if it's not the Watch, then what's next?
"We don't talk about futures as a company," Mr Cook told CNBC.
"We don't talk about products on the roadmap. I'm incredibly excited about things we're working on. I don't want to be more specific than that."
Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC and on Facebook


A High Court bid to stop the amalgamation of two Enniskillen grammar schools has failed.

Portora Royal School and Collegiate Grammar School (CGS) are now set to close at the end of the current school year.
A new co-educational school, Enniskillen Royal Grammar School, will then open in September 2016.
Initially, the school will operate on a split site, but there are plans to build a single new school.
It is expected that the new school will be built at the current Portora site, but this has not yet been confirmed.
A year 10 student at Collegiate Grammar School, whose past pupils include the First Minister Arlene Foster, had challenged the decision by the Education Minister John O'Dowd to approve the plans.
The student claimed that no economic appraisal of the proposals had been carried out and that there would be significant transport problems arising from a split site.
However, Mr Justice Colton said that: "in reality the challenge was brought not by the pupil but by the leadership of the CGS as part of their 'determined and ongoing opposition' to the proposal to close their school".
He rejected the challenges to the Department of Education's plans, and refused the application for judicial review.
In his judgement, Mr Justice Colton acknowledged that: "the decision will come as a great disappointment to all of those associated with the CGS", but said the minister's decision was "neither irrational nor unlawful."
The principal of Collegiate Grammar School, Elizabeth Armstrong, said they would need time to consider the judgement.
"We are disappointed at the outcome, but our focus will continue to be the young people of County Fermanagh and the surrounding area, whom it is a privilege to serve," she said.
Established in 1618, Portora Royal School counts Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett among past pupils.
Its current principal, Neil Morton, had previously told the court that: "the proposals and campaign against the amalgamation has pitted neighbour against neighbour".
Following the court's decision, he said that he was delighted that the interim board of governors for the new school, "will now be able to continue the very good work that they have already done to establish a new school".
Education Minister, John O'Dowd, also welcomed Mr Justice Colton's decision.
"I believe this decision is the right one for the young people of Enniskillen and I wish all those tasked with taking these plans forward well as they establish the new school," he said.
Enniskillen Royal Grammar School will be a co-educational grammar school with an enrolment of around 900 pupils.
Mr Justice Colton said that all current pupils at Collegiate Grammar and Portora Royal would be accommodated at the new school, and that any reduction in admissions would be gradual.
However, he also said that the split site arrangement should not be permanent, and that it would be "nothing short of a scandal" if a new school was not built.


A 25-year-old man was injured in a suspected shooting in Nottingham.

Officers were called at 20:45 BST on Saturday to a woodland area between Colwick Road and Sneinton Boulevard.
The man, who sustained shotgun injuries to his back and leg, remains seriously ill in hospital, police said.
Det Supt Rob Griffin believes "two shots were fired". A 22-year-old man, arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, was later released on bail pending further enquiries.
A 30-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of assisting an offender.
Det Supt Griffin added: "We understand a blue Yamaha R6 motorcycle with two occupants, both wearing helmets, parked on Sneinton Boulevard near to the entrance of Sneinton Wood.
"The movements of this motorcycle leading up to the time it was parked are of interest to us."
He said there would be an increased police presence in the area and additional patrols were planned.


Five Chadian security officials and six militants have been killed in an explosion during a raid on a weapons cache in the capital N'Djamena, officials say.

Officers seized weapons and explosives at the scene, the state prosecutor told Reuters news agency.
Militants refused to surrender and then blew themselves up when police arrived at the building, local media report.
At least 33 people were killed last month in a bomb attack in N'Djamena.
The government has blamed the Nigerian Islamist militant group Boko Haram for the June attack, but the group not yet commented.
It had previously threatened to attack Chad, after it sent troops to help Nigeria recapture territory from the militant group.
Authorities in Chad arrested 60 suspected militants on Sunday, saying they had dismantled the cell responsible for the deadly attack in June.
Africa live: Latest news updates
US trains Chad forces to tackle terror
Who are Boko Haram?
The "mastermind" of Boko Haram activities in Chad and northern Cameroon was also arrested as part of Sunday's operation, the country's interior minster Abderahim Bireme Hamid said.
One of those arrested on Sunday gave up the location of a safe house in the capital where militants were making bombs and storing weapons, which resulted in Monday's deadly police raid,  he added.


Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola is getting a lot of criticism for the changes he keeps making to his team and formation, especially with them defending as badly as they did against Leicester last weekend.

Danny Murphy will join Gary Lineker and Jermaine Jenas on Match of the Day on BBC One and the BBC Sport website at 22:25 GMT on Saturday.
It is true that City are going through a bad time. Even Wednesday's win over Watford was not a convincing one - but there is definitely no need to panic.
What Guardiola has done so far tells us that, after 26 games in charge of City in all competitions, he does not know his best XI or the way he wants to play.
For some people that seems to be shocking but, for me, it is not a massive surprise.
It is actually completely normal for any manager who comes into a club to try to assess what he has already got, decide what he needs, bring in the players he wants and work with them to get them on his wavelength.
You cannot do that overnight, no matter how good you are. Look at Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool - he was appointed Reds manager in October 2015 and it is only really since the beginning of this season that they have consistently looked like his team.
So far we have only seen glimpses of what Guardiola's City side could be like, but that is fair enough - after all, he has only been in charge since the summer.
Despite that, it seems that when you mix the tweaks he is making to his team with a couple of poor performances and some injuries and suspensions, then suddenly people are trying to put the Spaniard under pressure.
Sunday's game against Arsenal is a wonderful opportunity for Guardiola to put things right.
City may be going through a transitional period but they are still capable of blowing teams away.
Their performance in their 3-1 home defeat by Chelsea at the start of December was actually pretty good - they made enough chances to beat the side that is flying high at the top of the table at the moment.
A win at the weekend would be a statement to the other teams at the top that City still mean business, but Arsenal are likely to look at the game in the same way.
The Gunners will be determined to show that their defeat at Everton on Tuesday has not knocked them off their stride, and that they are still a good side.
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I will be interested to see how Arsene Wenger's side line up and whether they will sit off like they did when they went to Old Trafford last month and let Manchester United dictate play.
I think Arsenal might have learned from that game because they got dominated and should have lost. They were rescued by Olivier Giroud's 89th-minute equaliser.
Even if they are not on the front foot at Etihad Stadium, the Gunners might actually be quietly confident.
City have got some key players missing - Sergio Aguero and Fernandinho are suspended, and Ilkay Gundogan is facing a long injury lay-off - on top of their defensive problems.
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I am all for players being adaptable and teams being able to change formation, but doing it constantly makes it really difficult to gain any consistency in your performances.
Consistency is City's biggest issue at the moment, particularly in defence where they have found it hard to keep any clean sheets.
That is why I think they should stick to one formation from now on. The personnel might still have to change but at least they would all be working on the same system at the back.
Which one? Well, I thought City looked settled earlier in the season when Guardiola went with a version of the 4-3-3 he used at Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
The last game City started in that shape was their derby win against United in September, but their players appeared comfortable with it.
Rather than making them overthink by chopping and changing the team shape, Guardiola should just let their quality come through.
Stability in a system can be a good thing. I am a bit old school but the success I had as a player at Liverpool and Fulham, for example, was based on every member of the team knowing their jobs and having a good relationship with the players around them.
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Some people seem to want Guardiola to fail in England, but I am not one of them.
I love the way his teams play and it is great to have him and the other 'super coaches' - like Jose Mourinho, Jurgen Klopp, Antonio Conte, Mauricio Pochettino and Wenger - working in this country with their different philosophies and methods.
I don't doubt Guardiola's ability, either, but his task at City is definitely his hardest job to date.
City were not and never have been as dominant as Barcelona or Bayern Munich, either in Europe or domestically. Guardiola knew that when he took the job, and I think he was always aware that he needed some time to build.
The difference with him doing that here compared with in Spain or Germany is that there are some matches where, even if Barca or Bayern do not play well, they know they will not lose them.
In the Premier League, there is a danger of City losing every game they play - and of him getting stick when it happens.
It is the same for every one of the 'super coaches' in the Premier League, though. It goes with the territory.
Chelsea boss Conte was under pressure in September, when Guardiola was still winning every game. It was the same with Mourinho at Manchester United before their results picked up.
What Guardiola is going through now is part of working in the English top flight. You are going to have spells where things do not go your way, and you have to ride them out. All the good teams do it.
Right now it is City's turn to have a sticky patch, but you know they will have a great spell at some point because of the quality they have got in their squad.
From a neutral's point of view, the competition between the top six is immense and trying to call the title race at the moment is extremely difficult. I would not put any of them together in a game and be confident of picking a winner.
Chelsea and Liverpool do not have European commitments - which I see as a really big advantage when you are trying to work on tactics and fitness - but right now all six teams look like they will remain competitive at the top of the table.
By the end of the season, the difference points-wise between first and sixth could be as small as it has ever been.
Every game they play against each other has such intensity and, like Sunday's, is something we all look forward to.
Danny Murphy was speaking to BBC Sport's Chris Bevan.


Just four years ago, Sir Philip Green was dubbed king of the High Street by BBC Radio 4's Profile programme.

Since then, he has been branded the "unacceptable face of capitalism" after BHS, the retail chain he sold in March 2015 for £1, went into administration leaving a £571m hole in its pension fund.
In the latest development, a damning report by MPs found that Sir Philip had extracted large sums from BHS and left the business on "life support".
The retail tycoon's life story to date is rich in character and anecdote, from his failed attempts to take over Marks and Spencer to the lavish lifestyle that has attracted accusations of tax avoidance.
Despite being born into a well-to-do family in south London, Philip Green prided himself on having worked his way to the top.
His competitive streak was apparent from an early age, noticed by school mates at Carmel College, his exclusive boarding school, nicknamed the "Jewish Eton".
School friend Tony Rauch recalls Philip making a beeline for the table-tennis table at break time, tussling with another boy to get hold of the bat that was in best condition.
"Unfortunately the other kid was a bit bigger than Philip and won," he told BBC Radio 4's Profile programme in 2012.
"He got very angry; cried a little bit," says Mr Rauch. "He wasn't physically hurt, I think he was just very angry at having lost."
Sir Philip never lost his will to win. Profile reported that even when playing a game with his own children, he played to win, and quoted him as saying: "Why do you want to do something and not win - to not succeed at something?"
He left school aged 15 and began working on the forecourt of the petrol station that his mother managed.
He then went on to learn business basics as an apprentice in a shoe warehouse. At 23 years old, he set up his own business importing and selling jeans.
Stuart Lansley, the author of an unauthorised biography of Sir Philip, described those early days for Radio 4.
"He had a very mixed track record of starting up companies, and closing them down, working with other people, falling out with people.
"He travelled a lot, learning a lot about the supply chain, who the cheaper suppliers were and so on - but he certainly wasn't a household name."
Ironically it was BHS, known then as British Home Stores, that marked the moment Sir Philip Green finally "arrived" in 2000.
He paid £200m for what was already a slightly faded, dowdy chain. According to Stuart Lansley, his restless mind had spotted a beguiling new way to make money from the High Street.
"Philip Green moved from having a few million to a few billion in the space of a few years," says the author.
"He learned the way to make big bucks was essentially to do what's known in the trade as a 'leveraged buyout'.
"He borrowed very large sums of money, invested a little bit himself, and bought up companies that were relatively cheap, because they weren't doing very well. He turned them around, paying off his debt, and then tripling - quadrupling - the money he put in, in a matter of a couple of years."
Two years later, he copied that model of the leveraged buyout when he bought the giant retail empire Arcadia, which owns brands such as Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Miss Selfridge, and of course Topshop and Topman.
Sir Philip Green's most ambitious move came in 2004, when he put together £10bn ($16.1bn), much of it from investment banks, to make an offer for Marks and Spencer.
Even Sir Stuart Rose - then his rival and at the helm of Marks at the time - was impressed.
"Philip is not only a first-class retailer, he is absolutely pre-eminent in his generation in terms of his financial nous and ability," Sir Stuart told Profile.
"If I wanted to be slightly uncharitable, I could say that he came to the market to raise a very, very large sum of money at a time when money was cheap and freely available - but only Philip could have put that together. It was a pretty amazing achievement."
Sir Philip's business skills may not be in doubt - but his interpersonal skills are another matter, and he reportedly has a very short fuse.
Sir Stuart Rose has first-hand experience of this, with Sir Philip reportedly grabbing the then Marks and Spencer boss by the lapels during his second unsuccessful takeover bid in 2004.
"There was a fairly physical occasion one morning, yes. I think tension had got quite high during the bid and Philip got upset about something," said Sir Stuart.
"He wasn't above ringing me up during the height of the bid and singing 'if I were a rich man' down the telephone to me, trying to point out the error of my ways [for not selling]... that I would make more money.
"He used to say, 'The only jet you know is Easyjet.'"
Sir Philip Green is not shy about enjoying the trappings of his success - his personal fortune is estimated at somewhere between £3bn and £4bn and he enjoys spending it.
He commutes into London from Monaco in a private jet, has a super-yacht called Lionheart, and is famous for throwing extravagant parties for friends and family in exotic places, with entertainment from the likes of Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez and George Michael.
Radio 4's Profile explores the life of British businessman Sir Philip Green
Download the Profile podcast
Listen again via the Radio 4 website
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He has also forged a business partnership with supermodel Kate Moss, whose line of clothes helped raise Topshop's profile in the world of high fashion.
But what has attracted the most controversy is not the lavish lifestyle, but his tax affairs.
In 2005, his company paid a £1.2bn dividend to the owner of Arcadia - Sir Philip's wife, Tina. Since she is a resident of Monaco, she paid no tax in the UK.
In 2010, activists demonstrated outside the flagship Topshop and BHS stores in central London after Sir Philip was chosen by then Prime Minister David Cameron to conduct a government efficiency review.
They thought his tax arrangements made him the wrong choice. Despite their anger, however, Arcadia has paid significant sums in corporation tax.
But some of Arcadia's glamour has waned in recent years. Critics say that Sir Philip, notoriously averse to electronic gadgets, has not embraced online shopping as aggressively as his competitors.
While sales remained steady through the group, BHS was seen as the weakest link, and was sold for £1 to Retail Acquisitions, a group of investors including a Formula 3000 racing driver, bankers and entrepreneurs.
Now questions are being asked over just how much money Sir Philip had taken out of the company in the years before that sale.
Angela Eagle, the former shadow business secretary, said: "In this situation, it appears this owner extracted hundreds of millions of pounds from the business and walked away to his favourite tax haven, leaving the Pension Protection Scheme to pick up the bill."
BBC business editor Simon Jack said: "In his defence, he ran this company for 15 years, he employed thousands and thousands of people, and he was a great force for UK fashion retail, and made it a great force here and in the US.
"It doesn't look good as he jumps on his yacht to go back to Monaco leaving pensioners and employees worried about it, but he is not a natural corporate raider. He's not necessarily the vulture type of capitalist that people have portrayed him as in the last couple of days."
This edition of Profile was first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday, 8 December 2012. Listen again via the Radio 4 website or the Profile podcast.


A convicted fraudster used an "ingenious" escape plot to trick prison wardens into letting him go free, a court has heard.

Wandsworth inmate Neil Moore was on remand when he used an illicit mobile phone to create a fake email account.
He posed as a senior court clerk and sent bail instructions to prison staff, who released him on 10 March 2014.
His deception was uncovered when solicitors went to interview him three days later, only to find him gone.
Moore, 28, from Ilford, east London, handed himself in three days later.
Southwark Crown Court heard he had set up a fake web domain which closely resembled that of the court service's official address.
He then emailed the prison's custody inbox with instructions for his release.
The court heard Moore registered the bogus website in the name of investigating officer Det Insp Chris Soole, giving the address and contact details for the Royal Courts of Justice.
Prosecutor Ian Paton said: "A lot of criminal ingenuity harbours in the mind of Mr Moore. The case is one of extraordinary criminal inventiveness, deviousness and creativity, all apparently the developed expertise of this defendant".
The judge, Recorder David Hunt QC, described the behaviour as "ingenious" criminality.
Moore had previously used four different aliases to commit fraud worth Â£1,819,000 in total.
Posing as staff from Barclays Bank, Lloyds Bank, and Santander he managed to persuade large organisations to give him vast sums of money.
Sometimes he answered calls from victims using a man's voice and then pretended to transfer the call to a colleague before resuming the conversation in a woman's voice, the court heard earlier.
He was so convincing police initially co-charged his partner Kristen Moore with the deception. All charges against her have now been dropped.
Moore, who has pleaded guilty to eight counts of fraud and one count of escape from lawful custody, will be sentenced on 20 April.


The Afghan Taliban's new leader Hibatullah Akhundzada is a hardline religious scholar from Kandahar who is thought unlikely to change the group's direction.

The fact that he comes from the Taliban's traditional stronghold is likely to please rank-and-file fighters.
In the 1980s, he was involved in the Islamist resistance against the Soviet military campaign in Afghanistan, but his reputation is more that of a religious leader than a military commander.
He has been a senior figure in the Taliban courts for years and is believed to have issued rulings in support of Islamic punishments - such as public executions of convicted murderers and adulterers and amputations of those found guilty of theft.
He served as a deputy to previous Taliban chief Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, who was killed in a US drone strike on 21 May. The latter named him as successor in his will, Taliban sources told AFP, in what was seen as an attempt to legitimise the transfer.
The new leader is not as controversial as his predecessor, who led the militants for two years before news emerged that Taliban founder Mullah Omar was actually dead.
Hibatullah Akhundzada was appointed by senior Taliban figures who are said to have met somewhere near Quetta in Pakistan. However, not all members of the shura (council) were there - many apparently feared being attacked and did not show up.
The Taliban called the new appointment unanimous, although they did the same when Mullah Mansour took over last summer.
Splits soon emerged after that - and this time there could still be some disagreements, BBC correspondents say, but probably not enough to challenge the new leader's authority.
The announcement also named Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, son of Mullah Omar, as a joint deputy head of the movement, alongside current deputy leader Sirajuddin Haqqani.
Haqqani is well known as leader of the notorious Haqqani network, which has been blamed for a string of bloody attacks inside Afghanistan in recent years.
Born in Panjwai district in Kandahar, Hibatullah Akhundzada was quick to join the Taliban after the group emerged in the 1990s, following the withdrawal of Soviet troops.
According to Gharzai Khwakhogi, a political commentator who worked in intelligence for a while under the Taliban: "[Hibatullah Akhundzada] has lived most of his life inside Afghanistan and has maintained close links with the Quetta Shura."
When the Taliban captured Afghanistan's western Farah province, he was put in charge of fighting crime in the area.
Later, Hibatullah Akhundzada was appointed to the Taliban's military court in Kandahar and then as head of its military court in eastern Nangarhar province.
As the Taliban consolidated its grip on power in Afghanistan, he became head of the group's military court and deputy head of its supreme court.
When the Taliban were toppled by the US-led coalition in 2001, he became head of the group's council of religious scholars.
He is a member of the Taliban's leadership council and has been responsible for issuing most of the Taliban's fatwas. He also reportedly ran a madrassa (religious school) near Quetta, which many top Taliban commanders have attended, sources within the group say.
Experts say that Hibatullah Akhundzada maintained close links with the Quetta Shura, which is understood to make the Taliban's main decisions as well as appointing its leaders.
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.


More than 200 weather records were broken during Australia's most recent summer, a climate group has warned.

The Climate Council report, titled "Angry Summer", said the season was defined by intense heatwaves and bushfires in eastern Australia but heavy rain and flooding in the west.
It showed climate change was being felt across Australia, the researchers said.
The report also warned that electricity networks were likely to be strained by increased demand in the future.
Source: Climate Council
At least 205 records were broken over the three-month period, the independent body said.
Lead author Will Steffen, a climate scientist, said the extreme weather was driven by climate change.
"We're experiencing unprecedented extreme heat and setting new records at an alarming rate, with every part of Australia feeling the impact," he said.
"Extreme weather will continue to intensify through this century if we continue to sit on our hands and fail to move rapidly to get fossil fuels out of our economy."
The authors said Australia's "ageing, inefficient and polluting" energy system would come under more pressure from extreme weather.
The Climate Council was formed after Australia abolished the Climate Commission, a government advisory body, in 2013.


Wing Alex Cuthbert has been ruled out of the second Test of Wales' summer tour against Samoa on Friday, 23 June.

Cuthbert scored the opening try in the 24-6 win over Tonga at Eden Park, but suffered a shoulder ligament injury.
The 27-year-old Cardiff Blues player is set to be sidelined for up to six weeks.
"Alex has been in excellent form leading into this tour, so it's a shame he's had to leave us at this juncture," says Wales coach Robin McBryde.
"He's also been a great influence off the field with the younger players in the squad. I know he'll work hard now to be back in action for Cardiff Blues' pre-season."
Cuthbert's withdrawal and the departure of Kristian Dacey, Tomas Francis, Cory Hill and Gareth Davies to join the British and Irish Lions squad leaves Wales short-handed.
But at this point Wales will be making no additional call-ups as they prepare to face Samoa in Apia.
McBryde's captain Jamie Roberts believes Wales can cope after seeing their squad depleted.
"We have a big squad. Some players missed out against Tonga and now others will get an opportunity," said the Harlequins centre.
"We have to develop our strength in depth across the senior playing group in Wales.
"We're doing that well at the moment with the young players in this squad and we have the artillery to come in."


A woman in her 70s has been attacked and raped by a man who forced his way into her south London home.

The woman opened the front door to her home in Russell Hill Road, Purley, on 11 May at about 07:50 BST when she realised a man was outside.
He used his foot to force the door open and entered the property where he first assaulted her, bruising her face, before raping her.
The Met said it was "doing everything we can to arrest the suspect".
Det Insp Keith Ward said "specially trained detectives" were providing support for the woman.
The man is described as white, about 5ft 8ins (1.73m) tall, with short brown hair. He also possibly had a Scottish accent.
"We ask that anyone who recognises the suspect's description contact us as a matter of urgency", police said.


More children are being taken into care, some unnecessarily, because councils in England cannot afford to intervene earlier, a report suggests.

Late interventions often meant problems had escalated before support could be put in place, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children heard.
Its report into children's social care found 90% of councils were struggling to fulfil legal duties to children.
The government said offering early help was the best way to keep children safe.
The report, No Good Options, said the challenge faced by children's social care teams had always been tough but had recently taken on a whole new dimension.
"Local authorities are too often failing to reach children and families who need help whether through early intervention services, statutory support for 'children in need' or statutory support for children care," it said.
The inquiry repeatedly heard more resources were being directed towards children who had already suffered abuse or neglect or those at a high risk of harm.
Meanwhile, fewer resources were being allocated for early intervention and prevention, including support for families.
The report said: "The result is a shift towards late intervention, where needs have often escalated significantly before any support is put in place.
"This often results in more children being taken into care, and ultimately in poorer outcomes for children and families."
There was evidence this shift in focus was "leading to an unmet need and a rise in costly late intervention", it added.
Between 2010-11 and 2015-16, the number of children subject to a child protection plan grew by 29% while spending on children's social care rose by just over 2%.
At the same time, the number of children taken into care rose 17.4%
Funding to local authorities had dropped 20% over the same period, the report said.
MPs said there was "clear evidence that funding for children's social care services is not keeping pace with demand".
And they called on the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government to review how social care was resourced.
Tim Loughton, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, said the government "must act to address the funding crisis engulfing children's social care, and in particular the lack of resource for preventative and early intervention services".
A spokesman for the Department for Education said children should receive high quality care and support no matter where they live.
He added: ''We have been taking tough action where councils are failing children, stepping in when they aren't doing well enough and linking them with better performing local authorities and sector experts.''
He also highlighted an Â£800m in bursaries for people training to be social workers.


Chinese flags hoisted in the Czech Republic ahead of a visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping have been defaced.

Dozens of the flags hung in the capital Prague were "spattered with a black substance overnight", a police spokesman said.
The Chinese leader is due to arrive on Monday for a two-day visit before going to the US for talks on nuclear issues.
Czech demonstrators who oppose China's policies in Tibet are expected to stage protests during the trip.
They also plan to hang a giant photo of exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama near the airport alongside one of former Czech President Vaclav Havel, a former dissident and human rights activist.
Rights groups have accused China of suppressing Tibetan culture and freedom of expression.
The Chinese government says Tibet's economy has developed considerably under its rule.


These are troubled times for the leaders of the European Union.

Its leaders are beset with a whole series of issues that bubble away menacingly, even if they only occasionally come to the boil - like the Greek debt crisis.
And more ominously still, from their point of view, an organisation which has been in a state of constant expansion since its foundation in the 1950s is suddenly about to experience a bout of contraction.
It's true that Brexit does not mark the first occasion on which the EU has shrunk. It happened in 1962 when Algeria, which briefly became part of France in the panicky and violent end to the colonial period, gained independence.
And in 1985 the Autonomous Danish Territory of Greenland followed it out through the door of what was then the European Economic Community (EEC).
But neither of those events delivered the seismic shock to the system that Brexit will bring. The UK's withdrawal process is expected to start next month.
Its impact will be felt at all sorts of levels, from the economic and political to the diplomatic, legal and even sporting.
What is less obvious, perhaps, is that Brexit will have a geographical effect too. One German village is about to lose its status as the geographical centre of the EU and another is about to acquire it.
Calculating the centre of Europe - not the EU - can be done by taking into account the entire landmass of the continent. But even then the measurement is not straightforward. Is Belarus really part of Europe for these purposes? And what about European Russia or western Turkey?
Then there's the matter of outlying islands and overseas territories. You can skew the result quite a bit by including parts of France including Tahiti, Reunion and French Guiana.
So the location of the continental mid-point depends on what rules you adopt.
Every cartographer in history has faced similar issues.
In 1775 the Polish astronomer-royal, Szymon Sobiekrajski, calculated that the mid-point of the continent was in a town called Suchowola near Bialystok, in the north-east of modern Poland. It may be a coincidence, but he managed to place the centre inside the kingdom that paid his wages, by excluding the islands of Europe.
Years later the French National Geographical Institute (IGN) added in more of those territories and relocated the middle to a point near Purnuskes in Lithuania, where a proud government has erected a monument to mark the fact.
Calculating the centre of the EU of course includes similar geographical complexities. You have to remove geographically awkward countries like Switzerland, which are not part of the EU, for example - and then throw in a bit of politics too.
The EU has expanded in a series of steps since it - in the form of the EEC - was created by the Treaty of Rome in 1957. (It seems reasonable to ignore the previous iron and steel community for these purposes, since this is complicated enough already.)
The French IGN has recast the calculation each time the union has changed, providing a kind of dynamic map of how the EU has evolved over time.
In the 1950s for example - when the union was a community of six countries and the eastern provinces of the still disunited Germany were excluded - the centre was calculated to sit near the Franco-Swiss border in the Doubs valley, outside the ancient city of Besancon.
As the EU expanded the notional centre began to move - first to the Auvergne in France and then gradually, in the wave of eastward expansion that followed the end of the Cold War, into Germany.
The last time it moved of course was when Croatia joined the union in 2013. Because that's not a huge landmass the effect was merely to nudge the mid-point a little way to the south-east, to the point where it now sits in the Bavarian village of Westerngrund.
The local people are delighted - they have built a little park with flags around it in a field just outside the village. And there is a kind of flask which contains a little soil from each member state, topped off with a bit of earth from Croatia.
In a modest way it has become a bit of a tourist attraction too - the last people who signed the visitor's book before me had written a lengthy message in Chinese.
Like many Europeans the people we met in Westerngrund were saddened and mystified by Brexit, which they saw as a perverse attempt by one of the EU's larger powers to decouple itself from one of history's prime motors of peace and prosperity.
Once the UK has left of course the centre point of Europe will move again, a little way down the road to the village of Gadheim.
It is a quiet and essentially rural place, and for the moment at least there is nothing there to show that its people are preparing to mark their new status, or to welcome a sudden influx of tourists.
They have a little time to prepare. Even the first formal stage of Brexit won't be completed for two years and no one knows how long a negotiation will follow in whatever trade talks are to come.
And Gadheim might hold on to its status for quite a while. The centre point will not move again until someone else leaves or joins the EU. And after the shock and complexity of Brexit there's no sign that anyone else is heading for the exit door.
Nor is there much indication that potential future members like Ukraine, Bosnia or Turkey are getting close to entering.
If the taxpayers of Gadheim do decide to stump up for a new garden with flags and a visitor book then at least they might get a few years' use out of it.