European Union

Niger's military leaders warned against any armed intervention in the country as West African leaders are set to gather in Nigeria's capital for an emergency summit to decide on further actions to pressure the army to restore constitutional order.

China hopes France can "stabilise the tone" of EU-China relations, vice-premier He Lifeng told a senior French minister in Beijing on Saturday (29 July), as European leaders debate how to "de-risk" but also cooperate with the world's second-largest economy.

Thousands took to the streets to protest against the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Friday and Saturday (28 and 29 July) as the party held a convention to choose its candidates for European parliamentary elections next year.

Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, who remains active despite leading a failed mutiny against the Russian army's top brass last month, has hailed Niger's military coup as good news and offered his fighters' services to bring order.

Kosovo's government on Friday (28 July) suspended the license of the country's biggest private television broadcaster over a registration error, alarming journalists who accused the ruling party of an open war against free media.

The Group of 20 (G20) major nations failed on Friday (28 July) to agree on concrete targets to cut dangerous emissions, releasing only a statement that dismissed current measures to address climate change as "insufficient".

Despite the war it started in Ukraine and efforts by the West to paint Russia as a pariah state, Moscow can still count on support from several African, Latin American and Asian governments, including that of heavyweight China.

Mercenary boss Prigozhin tried to use Niger putsch to steal limelight at Africa summit, even though Wagner played no role in the coup, sources say.

The two-day Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, which started on Thursday, was supposed to demonstrate Vladimir Putin’s enduring political influence in the continent. Instead, just 17 African leaders made the trip, fewer than half of the 43 who went to the first Russia-Africa summit in Sochi four years ago.  

With concerns over food security, inflation and the environmental impact of food waste becoming increasingly evident, the European Commission has proposed legally-binding targets to reduce food waste across the EU.

French opposition leaders have called for the resignation of the Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin and police chief Frédéric Veaux in a row over the police's heavy-handed response to the riots that have swept across French cities in recent weeks.

As quantum-powered cyber-attack threats become more real by the day, liberal democracies and autocratic regimes are racing to develop quantum-safe encryption. But Europe risks being a spectator.

As the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy is being implemented on the ground, we can start drawing lessons from practical successes and challenges for the future of the bloc’s farm subsidies. As of January 2023, we experienced for the first time...

Greek government ministers have been under spyware surveillance, including when communicating with their European peers, according to the latest findings. But EU institutions insist on considering the matter a national affair.

The European Parliament is in recess over the summer holidays from 31 July to 20 August 2022.

Source : © European Union, 2023 - EP

EUHealthGov held its third Practitioner Perspective on 19th July 2023. We were delighted to host Elizabeth Kuiper, Associate Director and Head of the Social Europe and Well-being programme at the European Policy Centre (EPC) to discuss the evolving place of health on policy agendas between the COVID-19 pandemic and upcoming changes with a new Commission term and European Parliament elections in 2024.

Against the backdrop of current interconnected challenges spanning the geopolitical context and cost-of-living crises, the profile of health on EU-level agendas has gained more prominence. This has emerged not only via learnings from COVID-19 for public health and EU competence in health, but also via Commission President Von der Leyen’s greater ambitions for health from December 2019, where the previous Commission had seen health famously characterised as a “small thing”.

Elizabeth Kuiper’s experience of working in Brussels since 2010 has taken place alongside this evolving profile of health. Her work with the EPC on health has included highlighting the recent discussions about potential Treaty change and the contrasts between citizens’ calls for, and politicians’ equivocations regarding, more EU-level health competence in connection with marking 30 years of health as a Treaty competence in the Maastricht Treaty. The EPC have also engaged with the current evolutions regarding EU governance and the implications for health, issuing a bold proposal for an Executive Vice President for the Wellbeing Economy.

Elizabeth’s presentation also introduced the EPC’s recent work on examining what the European Health Union means – including as a narrowly-defined concept, or an aspiration. Bringing together a broad coalition of stakeholders (including academics and health representatives), the European Health Union Task Force has enabled the EPC to develop concrete recommendations which will be launched on 12th September 2023.

The EPC’s focus has been on extending the European Health Union beyond the now well-established pillars (including pandemic preparedness and the European Health Data Space) and questions of Treaty competence in recognition of attention this has received in other fora, notably the Conference on the Future of Europe. The directions indicated by this work include extending use of joint procurement to address inequalities and access, particularly for rare diseases; elevating HERA’s status to ensure more independence and autonomy in recognition that perspectives on health may change with the new Commission in 2024; highlighting the need for better implementation of recommendations for addressing the skills gap in the health workforce; and the need to explore more partnerships across the world and work more holistically at the global level in tackling health emergencies.

A recording of this event is available here.

The post Summary: Putting Health on the Agenda: Practitioner Perspectives from Elizabeth Kuiper appeared first on Ideas on Europe.

At its heart, the two sides have different ideas about how this transformation should take place: by increasing production through further industrialisation — or by making the system more equitable and sustainable.

Almost ten years after its launch, the EU’s energy security strategy needs to be rewritten in light of the climate crisis and Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine, writes Joanna Mackowiak Pandera.

As inter-institutional negotiations get underway on the EU’s contentious nature restoration law, EURACTIV’s network took a look at how farmers across 10 member states are implementing nature-based solutions in agriculture.

While climate adaptation plans across European cities are improving, a lack of funding and staff shortages still deter municipalities from investing in climate mitigation and adaptation measures.