European Union

Portugal has urged member states and EU institutions to "act without delay" to support European tourism to recover from the crisis, also calling for rapid progress in the creation of the green passport.

Trade unions and other labour supporters are continuing their push for greater worker involvement in company decisions, now labelling this as a push for “more democracy at work.” They want to see this topic play a larger role on the...

A poll has put Spain's centre-right Popular Party (PP) ahead of its rivals less than a week before votes are cast in a hotly contested regional election in Madrid on 4 May. EURACTIV’s partner EFE reports.

Arlene Foster has announced she is stepping down as leader of the Democratic Unionist party and Northern Ireland's first minister after a revolt by party hardliners, The Guardian writes. She will step down as first minister by July, bringing fresh tumult to a region hit by protests over the post-Brexit Irish Sea border. Foster urged her successor to focus on unifying people, amid fears a right-wing zealot could take over.

Moldova's recently-elected and pro-European President Maia Sandu on Wednesday (28 April) dissolved parliament and scheduled fresh elections for July, bringing to a head a dispute with lawmakers loyal to her predecessor.

Four explosions and an assassination attempt in Bulgaria were likely perpetrated by Russia, Bulgaria has said, after the Czech Republic, a fellow Nato ally, said Russia killed two people there in 2014.

The European Commission is considering strengthening its rules to avoid conflicts of interest in contracts with consultancies, following complaints from the European Parliament and recommendations made by the European ombudsman.

The Russian foreign ministry has expelled two diplomats from the Lithuanian embassy in Moscow, as well as one employee each from the embassies of Latvia and Estonia.

Poland's constitutional court has delayed a verdict on wether Polish or EU law has primacy from Wednesday to 13 May, but a government spokesman said he expected it to rule on the Polish side, in what could trigger a legal crisis for Poland's EU membership. The top judge is a former eurosceptic MP, Krystyna Pawlowicz, who has called the EU flag a "rag". Its other judges are also government loyalists.

Europe could see a "tsunami" of business failures after governments end pandemic-linked aid programmes, worth €1.5 trillion so far, the European Systemic Risk Board, an EU financial watchdog, warned Wednesday. "In a worst-case scenario, the postponed insolvencies would suddenly materialise and trigger a recessionary dynamic, potentially causing further insolvencies," it said. "The current low rate of insolvencies would then be similar to the sea retreating before a tsunami," it added.

Press freedom in Europe suffered "extraordinary damage" due to the pandemic in 2020, according to a report by NGOs for the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, out Wednesday. Penalties for misreporting the events, denials of freedom-of-information requests, and impunity for violence against journalists were parts of the problem. The fact just one person was sentenced for the assassination, in 2017, of a Maltese journalist was not credible, it said.

President Joe Biden wrapped up the first 100 days of his term, proposing a new $1.8 trillion plan, pleading with Republican lawmakers to work with him on divisive issues and to meet the stiff competition posed by China.

"Europe will reach herd immunity in July, latest by August," according to Ugur Sahin, the CEO of German vaccine-maker BioNTech, speaking Wednesday. He was "confident" his firm's jab worked against the Indian Covid-19 variant, he added. Some 68.3 percent of British adults had antibodies in their system due to vaccines as of 11 April, the UK's Office for National Statistics also estimated Wednesday, up from 53.1 percent on 4 April.

The UK is planning to use a National Health Service phone app as its Covid-19 vaccine certificate to facilitate travel internationally this summer, Reuters reported. British transport secretary Grant Shapps said on Wednesday that he is working with partners across the world "to make sure that that system can be internationally recognised". The UK will allow international non-essential travel from 17 May. Meanwhile, the EU is preparing its own system.

The French government submitted on Wednesday a bill to strengthen its counter-terrorism law, allowing security agencies to use algorithms to detect activity on jihadist or extremist websites and watch over high-risk individuals after release from jail, Reuters reported. "Terrorists have changed the methods of communication. We continue to be blind, monitoring phone lines that nobody uses any more," said French interior minister Gerald Darmanin.

Switzerland will hold a referendum on same-sex marriage, after opponents gathered some 61,000 signatures calling to put the matter to a national vote, The Guardian reported on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a petition of the political movement 'Operation Libero' gathered 100,000 signatures in favour of gay marriage this month. The Swiss parliament passed a law recognizing same-sex marriage last December. The Netherlands did so in 2001, leading the way in Europe.

Voicing their concerns, a dozen MEPs warned that EU funds would "disappear in opaque funding structures ... which have the purpose of further destroying academic freedom and institutional autonomy in Hungary".

The EU's Covid-19 travel certificate, the so-called 'Digital Green Certificate', is set to trigger a clash between MEPs and member states on what advantages this document would actually bring for free movement.

Dutch liberal MEP Sophie In't Veld says MEPs should not be required to meet only registered lobbyists. "It is profoundly anti-democratic," she said. But Transparency International EU, an NGO, has described the lobby exemption for MEPs as "scandalous".

While the rationale is allegedly "consumer protection", this amendment to the Farm to Fork strategy clearly has the dairy industry's fingerprints all over it.