European Union

Ukraine’s chances of obtaining EU candidate status soon are slim because many member countries oppose the idea and it would be unfair to the Western Balkans that have been waiting for membership for so long, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte...

President Alexander Van der Bellen, who announced his plans to stand for re-election in autumn on Sunday, is set to face little challenge. Van der Bellen, 78, cited his life experience and desire to ensure that “we are all on...

The German Bundeswehr will extend its mission in Niger, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Monday while visiting troops in the country as instability in the Sahel region continues to increase. During his visit to Niger on Monday (23 May), Scholz...

Romania, the only European country with North American nuclear technology, wants to develop its strategic partnership with the US, said Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă after meeting with US Department of Energy Deputy Secretary David M. Turk at the Victoria Palace...

Norwegian Foreign Minister Eivind Vad Petersson rejected Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s accusations that his country benefits from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Norwegian public broadcaster NRK reported. During the Nationwide Congress of Youth Dialogue on Saturday, Morawiecki criticised Norway for its increasing...

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and his Bulgarian counterpart, Kiril Petkov, agreed to propose a common EU gas price after meeting at Palazzo Chigi on Monday. Bulgaria wants the EU to form a joint position on Russian gas so Gazprom...

Talks with Turkey on its opposition to NATO membership for Sweden and Finland will continue but change may not happen overnight, according to Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, the TT news agency has reported. Almost a week after Finland and Sweden...

The new government led by Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne is facing its first controversy after Damien Abad, the newly appointed minister for Solidarity and the Disabled, was accused of rape. He has denied the allegations and said he would remain...

The EU will likely agree an embargo on Russian oil imports "within days," according to Germany, as Moscow said it saw its economic ties growing with China after being isolated by the West over its invasion of Ukraine.

Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia and Estonia will call on 24 May for the confiscation of Russian assets frozen by the European Union to fund the rebuilding of Ukraine after Russia's invasion, a joint letter written by the four showed on Monday.

While EU finance ministers meeting in Brussels on Monday (23 May) discussed the pros and cons of the EU Commission’s proposal to keep the EU’s fiscal rules suspended for another year, civil society organisations used the opportunity to question the fiscal rules more fundamentally.

Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tends to shoot first and ask questions much later, and he is clearly making the same mistake once again with the NATO enlargement issue, writes Henri J. Barkey.

The West should use a $300bn hoard of frozen Russian treasure to rebuild Ukraine, four EU states are lobbying finance ministers to consider.

The European Commission manages a blacklist that aims to prevent fraudsters from accessing EU funds. But it is not being implemented properly, says an EU watchdog.

The world is at "a turning point," Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky warned in Davos — urging Western countries to impose "maximum sanctions" on Russia.

A veteran Russian diplomat to the UN office at Geneva, Boris Bondarev, said he resigned and in a letter to colleagues criticised the "aggressive war unleashed" by president Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, AP reported. "For twenty years of my diplomatic career I have seen different turns of our foreign policy, but never have I been so ashamed of my country as on Feb. 24 of this year," he wrote.

The European Commission has drafted new rules clarifying how "green" hydrogen produced from renewable energy can be legally counted as "additional" and verified as such. The draft rules are seen as a boon for the fledgling European industry.

Belgium will have to throw away more than 1.3 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines by July, the Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported on Monday. Belgium has 436,800 doses of AstraZeneca that will expire at the end of the month and another 880,000 doses of Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer that will reach the expiration date in July. Additionally, there are 422,000 Novavax doses due to expire by the end of August.

Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden have reported 85 cases of monkeypox between 15 and 23 May. In a statement on Monday, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control said the disease could become endemic in Europe if the virus spreads from humans to animals. It also noted that the current cases have presented with mild disease symptoms and that the likelihood of spread is very low.

The European Union has gone to great lengths to sanction Russia over its military aggression against Ukraine and the war crimes committed there. Some of the sanctions are very painful for EU countries, as many of them depend on Russian...