European Union

Coronavirus vaccines being developed in China may be ready for use by the general public as early as November, an official with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.

A group of scientists sent a formal letter to the Lancet on Monday outlining doubts about the accuracy of early data on Russia's COVID-19 vaccine, one of the authors said, adding further fuel to a dispute surrounding the "Sputnik-V" shot.

British MPs voted 340 against 263 Monday to pass a new law granting London the right to violate its Brexit withdrawal treaty, in a project which had earlier attracted EU fury. The bill is still subject to a "second-reading" vote and to a final vote in Britain's upper house before it becomes law. MPs will, next week, also debate whether to impose an additional "parliamentary lock" on its controversial provisions.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is "not planning to go into exile in Germany, but wants to return to Russia to continue his political mission", an official from the Berlin hospital said on Monday, Le Soir reports. Navalny is recovering in hospital after having been poisoned during a domestic flight in Russia. According to the hospital, Navalny's health was "improving", as he was capable of "temporarily leaving his bed".

Air-travel volumes are unlikely to return to normal for a long time due to the pandemic, the European Commission said Monday, after extending a waiver to let airlines hold on to flight slots at airports even if they did not use them to stabilise the industry. "Air-traffic levels remain low, and more importantly, they are not likely to recover in the near future," EU transport commissioner Adina Valean said.

The knock-on effects of the coronavirus pandemic have halted and reversed global health progress, a report by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation warned on Tuesday (15 September).

Russia has loaned embattled Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko $1.5 billion, as he warned protesters not to cross his "red lines".

Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Monday (14 September) he would like convicted rapists to be publicly executed or chemically castrated.

An EU decision, originally due next week, to extend permission for London-based firms to clear euro-denominated transactions on derivatives, will now be made at the end of September, Reuters reports, citing industry sources. The delay comes amid UK threats to violate its EU withdrawal agreement. Firms could, ultimately, be forced to move billions worth of business to Europe months ahead of the Brexit transition cut-off on 1 January.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen will unveil a new diversity policy on Wednesday, saying the EU fundamental rights agency should work with national police to combat racist policing and urging member states to draw up anti-racism action plans by 2022, The Guardian reports. She aims to revive a 2008 non-discrimination law on the workplace, which also covers LGBTI rights, and conduct a survey on EU staff's ethnic origins.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced that the EU's long-awaited new pact on migration and asylum will be unveiled next Wednesday. "Yes, in fact we decided to forward the new migration pact to next week, the 23th of September," she said at a joint press conference with Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel.

France may seek to hold some sessions of the upcoming Conference on the Future of Europe in Strasbourg, in compensation for lost European Parliament plenaries there due to coronavirus, French Europe minister Clément Beaune said on Monday. "We are exploring various very concrete avenues ... so that the European Union unambiguously expresses its attachment to its presence in Strasbourg," he said.

The European Commission is now considering issuing 'green bonds' for the first ever time, after green groups and other critical voices called for the unprecedented commercial-markets debt to be used on environmental projects

Slacker EU standards, giving slaughterhouses more control over production, have led to more disease-contaminated meat entering the food chain in Europe, the association of Europe's meat inspectors, the European Working Community for Food Inspection and Consumer Protection, has said. "I don't think ... it's safe to feed people abscesses, pus, and TB material [from pig's heads]," even though it is now allowed, its spokesman told British daily The Guardian.

"China has to convince us that it is worth having an agreement," EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said, telling China to move on key reciprocity issues on the planned bilateral investment agreement.

After a little over a year in Brussels as an MEP, and closely following the EU's foreign affairs, it astonishes me how ineffective the European Union leverages its power on the world stage.

As the response to the COVID-19 crisis has shown, European standards play a strategic role in supporting the EU’s recovery and ambitions, acting as a catalyst in the EU’s twin digital and green transition and reinforcing the Single Market.

Ireland’s High Court on Monday temporarily froze a probe by Facebook’s lead European Union regulator that threatened to halt the U.S. social media giant’s transatlantic data flows, a court spokesman said.

Greece on Monday (14 September) accused migrants of deliberately burning their overcrowded camp last week on Lesbos island, where hundreds reluctantly moved to a new temporary site with "no showers or mattresses".

EU-China Leaders’ meeting: Upholding EU values and interests at the highest level - Joint press release by President Michel, President von der Leyen and Chancellor Merkel