The ruling party of nationalist Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban submitted plans to parliament on Monday to tighten control over theatres, a decision - prompting protests from artists who see artistic freedom at risk, Reuters writes. The law says ...

The Dutch national anti-terrorism agency (NCTV) reduced on Monday the threat of a terror attack in the Netherlands for the first time since 2013, Reuters writes. "We still see jihadist attacks in the West every now and then", the NCTV said. "But the ...

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Monday banned Russia from the Olympics and world championships in several sports for the next four years, after WADA's executive committee conclude that Moscow had manipulated laboratory data, the Guardian writes. ...

Human rights abusers around the world will, in future, face EU asset freezes and travel bans under new-model sanctions agreed by foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday (9 December). "Today, the EU unanimously decided to legislate a worldwide EU human ...

The European Parliament has been asked to launch an ethics probe against a Czech MEP following an article published by this website. But in reality, nothing is likely to happen. Out of the over two dozen cases of violations committed by MEPs over the past ...

The European Asylum Support Office (EASO) monitored refugee networks to detect new routes and find smugglers – until the project ran into trouble with the EU's own data protection authority. EASO combed through social media to monitor refugee routes to ...

EU member states have voted to ban from the market chlorpyrifos, a pesticide which is toxic to the brain in both its forms, and has been the subject of a long-running Le Monde and EUobserver investigation. During a meeting of the the standing committee on ...

Human rights abusers worldwide are to face EU asset freezes and travel bans under new-model sanctions agreed by foreign ministers in Brussels Monday. "Today, the EU unanimously decided to legislate a worldwide EU human rights sanction regime," Dutch ...

The European commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement, Olivér Várhelyi, said on Monday that Europe "should be able to move ahead and correct the mistake that was committed in October," when three member states (Denmark, France and the Netherlands) ...

The Greens are demanding an internal investigation by the European Parliament into Czech MEP Jan Zahradil following a story by this website on possible conflicts of interest in his role as lead negotiator on the EU trade deal with Vietnam. "These ...

International monitors recorded hundreds of explosions and bursts of small arms fire on the contact line in east Ukraine as France prepared to host the first peace summit on the war in three years. The number of ceasefire violations was almost double that ...

More than 250 civil society organisations and trade unions warned the EU on Monday (9 December) that the modernisation of the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) could undermine the goals of Europe's Green Deal and the Paris Agreement, unless it is fundamentally ...

Luxembourg's foreign minister Jean Asselborn is trying to convince his EU counterparts to recognise Palestine, Axios reports. In a letter to his colleagues and to EU high representative Josep Borrell he writes: "it is time to start a debate within the ...

Brussels' minister for the promotion of multilingualism, Sven Gatz, presents a plan at the Brussels regional parliament on Monday to ensure everyone graduating from school at 18 in Brussels speaks French, Dutch and English. "The Brussels government has ...

French president Emmanuel Macron and prime minister Edouard Philippe decided to go ahead with their pension reforms plans despite four-day long protests and strikes that brought national transport to a standstill. The government wants to unite 42 different ...

Sanna Marin, Finland's current transport minister, has become the country's next prime minister. Selected by the Social Democrats, she will be the youngest prime minister in Finland's history, and the third female prime minister. At 34 years she is ...

The new EU Commission has an ambitious agenda to make the European Union a global leader on environment, biodiversity and climate action. European farmers manage 48 percent of the land in the EU so farmers will play a key role in realising these ambitions. ...

Climate, environment, and health are some of the top priorities for European citizens. The high turnout in the 2019 EU elections (50.6 percent), mainly driven by the participation by young people, sent a clear message to European politicians. Economy and ...

An MEP spearheading EU trade talks with Vietnam says he doesn't have to declare his role in a group with ties to the ruling repressive communist state regime in Hanoi - despite European Parliament rules. "I have no paid function there, this as I said ...

A report from NGO Oxfam and the Greek Council for Refugees (GCR) found that people who seek protection in Greece are regularly denied access to a "fair and efficient asylum process" due to a lack of lawyers and access to information in the overcrowded ...

The commander of Russia's all important Northern Fleet, A. Moiseev, and other high ranking Russian officials are to take the floor on Friday (6 December) at a major Arctic event in St Petersburg to discuss pressing security issues in Russia's Arctic ...

Britain will elect a new parliament on Thursday (12 December) and the results will show whether the UK is likely to leave the EU on 31 January next year. Prime minister Boris Johnson's Conservative party is leading in the polls, although opposition Labour ...

A new report of a Nato-accredited group concludes that social media companies like Facebook and YouTube are "the new frontier for antagonists seeking to influence elections, polarise public opinion, and side-track legitimate political discussions." These ...

Turkey condemned on Friday Greece expelling its Libyan ambassador, following a dispute over an agreement signed between Libya and Turkey on maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean. The Greek PM, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, believes that "the deal will collapse" ...

The new incoming co-leader of the of Germany's Social Democrats (SPD), Saskia Esken, said on Friday that she was sceptical about the future of their ruling coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives, Reuters writes. "I was and I am sceptical ...

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will be in Ethiopia on Saturday in her first visit outside the EU as president of the institution. "My visit is a political statement. The African Union is a partner on which the European Union counts. ...

More than 5,500 scientists and academics on Friday called on the EU Commission to enforce the European Water Framework Directive, ensuring Europe has "healthy and resilient freshwater bodies to support people and nature, today and in the future". About 60 ...

Hundreds of people over the past two to three months have paid to get locked up in Libyan detention centres in the hope of resettlement to Europe, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). "There are people who pay traffickers to go to detention centres, ...

Iran was "determined to resolutely continue its activities related to ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles" in violation of a UN resolution related to a 2015 nuclear non-proliferation deal, its UN envoy, Majid Takhte Ravanchi, has said in an open ...

The European Committee of the Regions has approved a resolution that supports a bigger budget for a far-reaching Green Deal. Karl-Heinz Lambertz, president of the committee, said: "The Finnish EU Presidency budget proposal is not enough to respond to the ...