Thursday
15th Apr 2021
Denmark is stripping Syrians of residency rights - the first country in the EU to do so - amid threats to deport them back home. The EU did not comment directly, but warned that Syria is not safe.
Happy Ramadan? The UN special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief warned the Human Rights Council last month that institutional suspicion of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim has escalated to "epidemic proportions" worldwide.
Of the €30bn allocated to Romania under the EU recovery fund, just four percent is slated to go to renewable energy and energy-efficiency. Despite the pressing need to decarbonise Romania's heat and power sectors, this is not an investment priority.
Nato and the US have put on a show of solidarity with Ukraine over Russia's military build-up, with American president Joe Biden offering to hold a summit with Russia to defuse tensions.
The digital platform aiming to allow European citizens to share and debate ideas will start next Monday. Some MEPs criticised the rushed rolling out of the digital platform.
While most MEPs have been vocal in support of the proposal by the European Commission for EU-wide vaccine certificates, key questions remain - ranging from fundamental rights, to its scientific validity.
We often talk about the need to establish a relationship between equals in our partnership with Africa. This paradigm needs to be more than a declaration of good intentions
The recession set to hit Europe after the pandemic will help organised crime penetrate legitimate business and recruit out-of-work specialists, the EU's joint police agency, Europol, has warned.
Concern over the low efficiency of Chinese-made vaccines has been mounting since China's top official said existing vaccines offer low protection against Covid-19 - raising questions for those nations relying heavily on the Chinese jabs. That includes Hungary and Serbia.
While Markus Söder, leader of CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU, also threw his hat into the race to replace chancellor Angela Merkel, the CDU's choice is likely to be decisive.
Montenegro had requested the EU help pay off a loan from China, reported the Financial Times. But the European Commission says that is not going to happen.
Several industry EU lobby groups are about to be entrusted again with the privilege of co-deciding how €9.6bn of public EU research funding should be used - in research areas as essential as healthcare, transportation, energy and IT infrastructures.
Ursula von der Leyen appears secure in her job as president of the European Commission. That's despite a troubled vaccine rollout in which delayed deliveries can cost lives and livelihoods.
International research shows, countries that engage with international trade tend to have more gender-equality than less open economies. Trade policy is thus a powerful tool to create opportunities for women - if used properly.
Less regionalised than Spain but more than France, Italy's institutional set-up is based on a complex patchwork of regions, autonomous regions, and autonomous provinces.
On Thursday, MEPs in the Democracy, Rule of Law, and Fundamental Rights Monitoring Group meeting will hear from Polish judges, prosecutors, and government representatives on the situation of the judiciary in Poland.
The European Commission has spent €252m of its farming advertising budget for 2016-2020 to promote meat and dairy products - raising concerns over the compatibility of EU agri-food promotion policy with the bloc's climate ambitions.
Russia has reassured the EU that its anti-coronavirus vaccines have not caused a single death, following EUobserver's report on potential side-effects.
The pandemic has swung the pendulum of political consensus away from the populists, eroding their approval ratings ahead of key parliamentary elections in 2021 and 2022.
The violence came as tensions have been building over Brexit, which has seen trade barriers put in place between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain.
Despite the calls for coordination from Brussels, EU capitals started issuing a jumble of measures for the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to respond to concerns over rare blood clots.
This week's snap election in Greenland resulted in a clear majority for the mining-sceptic IA party, in a historic change.
Beatings, forced sterilisation, police violence and fire bombings by right-wing extremists against Romani communities are still a reality in Europe. The corona pandemic only worsened this situation.
This week negotiations on a renewed nuclear deal with Tehran started in Vienna. Iran is desperate to have a deal quickly. Elections are coming up in June, and the economy is in terrible shape.
Since 2018, when the EU and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries started negotiations on the deal that would replace the Cotonou Partnership Agreement, calls for "de-colonising aid" and a strong role for local actors in development have grown.
The European Commission says its president should be treated on an equal footing with the president of the European Council. The issue came to a head over a meeting in Ankara which saw von der Leyen separated from male counterparts.
On Tuesday Belgium launched a new website, QVAX, where people who are not yet vaccinated or have no appointment to be vaccinated, could register in case 'spare' appointments come up. Brussels will start it's own system mid-April.
The European Parliament has launched an internal probe into the conduct of Czech MEP Jan Zahradil over his dealings with China and a so-called 'friendship group'.
In Germany, there is commotion about a new book in which two journalists describe meetings held during the corona crisis between federal chancellor Angela Merkel, and the 16 prime ministers of its federal constituent states.
Italy's various mafias are allegedly exploiting the chaos caused by the Covid-19 emergency to infiltrate even deeper into sectors where they are already present, such as healthcare, mortuary services, and waste disposal (both medical and non-medical).
As a German national, I see German history as a constant warning to defend the rule of law - and to be vigilant to detect even the slightest beginnings of its erosion.
Russia has suddenly started preparing for full-scale war in Ukraine, but what does it really want?
The EU failed to reach its target of having at least 80 percent of the elderly and healthcare workers vaccinated by the end of March. According to estimates, 55 percent will be vaccinated by the end of June.
