European Union

The Council adopted conclusions on the future evolution of administrative cooperation in the field of taxation and the structure and rates of excise duty on tobacco.

The European Commission's fresh budget proposal is set to increase the overall financing available for external action but it will rely more on financial engineering, with guarantees and 'multiplier effects', than on traditional funding via the EU long-term budget.

Oil and gas companies throughout the supply chain need to do much more to bring down methane emissions immediately. And they can, writes Maarten Wetselaar.

Bankers ought to give up their bonuses for the next 12 months if they wanted their national governments to pour in public money to soothe the effects of the pandemic slowdown, the Croatian EU presidency has suggested in a paper dated 2 June and seen by Reuters. The ban could be even "longer if such is the duration of the serious economic disturbance determined by the" European Commission, it said.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell has said US president Donald Trump lacked the authority to unilaterally re-invite Russia to the G7 group of powerful states. "The prerogative of the G7 chair, in this case the United States ... is to issue guest invitations ... [that] reflect the host priorities," he said. "Changing membership or changing the format on a permanent basis is not the prerogative of the G7 chair."

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the challenge of holding elections in a time of crisis.  Only the European Parliament has the expertise to advise if voting by mail would be a good idea, writes Dick Roche.

People of Bangladeshi origin had twice the death rate from Covid-19 compared to white British nationals, according to a new study by Public Health England, a government offshoot. People of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and other Asian, Caribbean, or African origins had 10-50% higher rates. Some demographics were also more prone to other health conditions, such as obesity or heart disease, weakening immune systems. Poor living conditions also made a difference.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson said he wants to change the British visa system by giving a right to live and work in the UK to any of the nearly 3 million Hong Kong citizens eligible for a British National Overseas passport, the Guardian writes. The offer would only come into play if China presses ahead with new security laws that strip Hong Kong of its traditional freedoms.

If you want to make money outside the law, forget guns, drugs, alcohol or cigarettes. Trade in illegal pesticides combines high profits with lower risks.

New rules in Greece single out NGOs that work with refugees and asylum, in what the Athens government say is a bid to create greater transparency. But refugee groups say the rules are discriminatory and follow an anti-NGO pattern.

The European Commission said on Tuesday that the updated budget for the Common Agrculture Policy will make farms "green, digital and more resilient". Meanwhile, countries like France and Spain welcomed the commission proposal as a step in the right direction.

The EU's top diplomat said the death of a black American in policy custody was an "abuse of power", while a top liberal MEP on data privacy said the US government actions raise questions on EU-US cooperation.

Before World War Two, Christian parties' commitment to democracy was far from unequivocal. But after the war, Christian Democratic parties adopted a political formula that brought them political domination in much of western Europe for two decades.

Remarkably, no national or EU leader has yet publicly condemned the aggressive and open dissemination of violent hate speech in Hungary's capital. Only Budapest's mayor Gergely Karácsony has raised his voice in protest.

French citizens were able to download the contact-tracing 'StopCovid app' on their devices from Tuesday despite an ongoing debate over privacy concerns, France24 reported. The app was made available on the same day citizens were allowed to go to restaurants, cafés, parks and museums. The government said that the app, which is based on a centralised system, does not track the user's location and deletes their data after two weeks.

Less than a week after Russia's president Vladimir Putin said the coronavirus crisis had peaked, he has announced a referendum on constitutional reforms for 1 July, allowing him to serve more Kremlin terms, the Moscow Times writes. Russia is still recording thousands of new cases of Covid-19 daily. Putin also reschedule a Red Square military parade, postponed from May 9, to June 24 - a week before the vote.

The EU Commission has proposed creating its own reserve of crisis-response capacities, directly purchasing them and financing their costs, as it seeks to step up equipment stockpiles to deal with crises affecting a large number or all member states. It proposes to spend €2bn over the next seven years to create strategic reserves to cover health emergencies, forest-fire outbreaks, chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear incidents or other emergencies.

The European Commission has banned entry flights from Armenia-based airlines because they do not meet international safety standards. The commission said the decision was based on the "unanimous opinion delivered by the Air Safety Committee." The move follows an update to the commission's EU Air Safety List, which lists 96 airlines banned from EU skies.

Spain’s plans to tax tech companies’ revenues does not discriminate against any country, a government source told Reuters on Tuesday (2 June) after the United States opened a probe into such taxes or proposals by its various trading partners.

Telefonica Deutschland will build its 5G core mobile network in Germany using equipment from Ericsson, saying the choice of the Swedish supplier would safeguard the security of its next-generation services.