European Union

Belgium will apply for ten million additional Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccines, Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke announced over the weekend. At the same time, there is still no official database on vaccination efforts. “We’re asking for a fair share,” Vandenbroucke said on...

“We are doing everything we can to prevent the spread of this variant,” Health Minister Olivier Véran told Europe 1/CNews/Les Échos on Sunday morning in reference to the new coronavirus variant that recently emerged in the UK. Eight more departments...

Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble has organised an increase in security for the German parliament building according to a report in the Bild am Sonntag. The move comes after lawmakers made the call late last week to increase security around the...

Cyprus has asked neighbouring Israel for COVID-19 vaccines, Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades told Politis journal in an interview. “I have contacted [Israeli PM] Mr Netanyahu and asked him to consider supplying a quantity for the Republic of Cyprus. He will...

Members of the European Parliament have a renewed duty to address the thorny issue of regulating social media content, in the wake of last week’s Capitol Hill riots, the chair of Parliament’s Internal Market committee has said.

Health workers distributing the Covid-19 vaccine have been forced to take extra precautions after Spain was paralysed by Storm Filomena, which brought a snowfall in Madrid of proportions unseen in half a century, Deutsche Welle writes. Spain was to send special convoys carrying the Covid-19 vaccine to areas cut off by the blizzard, the interior minister said.

France has unveiled a plan to transform the Champs-Élysées boulevard in Paris in a €250m project due to be implemented in 2024, when it hosts the Olympic Games. It aims to cut space forcers by half, and create green pedestrian areas with trees, turning the 1.9km area into an "extraordinary garden". "The legendary avenue has lost its splendour during the last 30 years," the project leaders said ina statement.

Britain has authorised the use of thiamethoxam, a pesticide banned by the EU in 2018 for doing harm to bees, following lobbying by the National Farmers' Union and British Sugar advocacy groups, British newspaper The Guardian reports. The decision was "environmentally regressive" for conservationist group Buglife. Some 11 states have now approved "emergency" use of the product, including Belgium, Denmark and Spain, despite the EU decision, UK authorities said.

The West has underestimated China’s rise, and the centre of gravity has switched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, where Europe has no role, Greece’s former Foreign Affairs Minister Nikos Kotzias, one of Europe's most experienced China analysts, warned in an exclusive interview.

Italy's former far-right interior minister, Matteo Salvini, appeared before a judge in Palermo, Sicily on Saturday, in connection with his order to block migrants from disembarking in August 2019. The judge is to decide in March if he is to face charges on abuse of power. "I am totally at ease and proud of what I did," Salvini told media after the closed-door hearing, British newspaper The Guardian reports.

"The UK government must ... provide an urgent multibillion package of compensation to Scotland to mitigate the lasting Brexit harm done to Scottish businesses, industries and communities," Ian Blackford, a leading MP from the Scottish National party said Sunday, British newspaper The Guardian reports. Scottish fishermen, for instance, have suspended exports to the EU due to excessive paperwork after the UK's Brexit transition-period ended on 1 January, among other disruptions.

The UK has been quicker than the European Union in approving COVID-19 vaccines but it also took greater risks with pharma firms by accepting all liability in case of complications, French MEP Pascal Canfin told EURACTIV.com in an interview.

British citizenship and international awards are not enough to make Belarus dissident Natalia Kaliada feel safe after a high-profile death threat.

The European Parliament's environment committee will hear from the person who negotiated the vaccine contracts, commission director-general of health and food safety, Sandra Gallina.

The European Court of Justice last month ruled Hungary had breached EU asylum laws. Budapest was told to stop pushing asylum seekers back into Serbia - yet nearly 2,500 people have been forced across the border since that judgement.

The three pillars of Italy's G20 presidency - "people", "planet" and "prosperity" aimed at building a more sustainable future, as well as digital innovation - are shared by Joe Biden, which raises hopes of a positive EU-US dialogue.

Given China's size and interconnectedness with Europe, a strategic policy of non-engagement hardly deserves the label "strategic".

The Spanish government will send convoys carrying the COVID-19 vaccine and food supplies on Sunday (10 January) to areas cut off by Storm Filomena which brought the heaviest snowfall in decades across central Spain and killed four people.

Hauliers are already counting the cost of the new post-Brexit border rules after the first week of life with the UK outside the EU’s single market saw truck queues, delays, and supply chain disruptions.

The European Commission on Friday (8 January) refused to provide an answer on whether Germany's bilateral deal with Pfizer-BioNTech for 30 million extra doses has broken the commitment to joint procurement of vaccines.