European Union

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic called on Wednesday (4 March) for the regular parliamentary elections to be held on 26 April. Earlier, Parliament Speaker Maja Gojkovic also called the local vote for the same day. The election will be held simultaneously...

Investing in the European defence industry is an investment in citizens’ security, and appropriate funding is needed for this, Deputy PM and Defence Minister Damir Krsticevic said on Wednesday (3 March) at an Inter-Parliamentary Conference in Zagreb attended by EU...

Diplomats in the Italian Permanent Representation to the EU will meet lobbyists only if they’re enrolled in the EU’s transparency register. Italy’s PermRep will also publish the agenda of the meetings with the stakeholders on its website, as part of...

Russia has absolutely no intention to stop its military operation in Syria until the “adversary” is defeated, stated Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday (3 March). While he added that he understood the difficulties of the refugee situation in...

5,000 Brussels citizens have used their right to petition to be heard in front of the regional parliament to demand that Brussels should be declared a “region outside CETA” and that a popular consultation be organised on the subject. In...

Left-wing politician and former Minister-President of Thuringia, leftist Bodo Ramelow (Die Linke), was elected to lead the former east German state of Thuringia in the third round of voting yesterday (4 March). His election brings an end to the state’s...

Two Iranian students in Hungary tested positive for the coronavirus, Orbán posted on his Facebook page.  While one of the students is studying at the Semmelweis medical school in Budapest and the other is studying in the country’s sixth-largest city,...

Hungary’s stance against illegal migration has become the generally accepted approach in Europe, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told the Visegrad Group summit in Prague. “It was us who announced a policy against Muslim migration” the PM added, referring to the...

Flybe, a British regional airline, has gone into bankruptcy citing coronavirus as one of the reasons for its demise. "All Flybe flights are cancelled. Please do not go to the airport as your Flybe flight will not be operating," the British civil aviation authority said Thursday. The firm's demise comes after British tour operator Thomas Cook went bust in September, with trade unions saying the government should have recused Flybe.

One of Britain's biggest airlines, Flybe, collapsed Thursday (5 March) with all its flights grounded, the company said, as the coronavirus epidemic takes a heavy toll on airlines around the world.

Two EU officials have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus - amid different efforts by EU institutions to halt the spread of the virus.

The EU's border agency Frontex says Greece may have to wait until next week before receiving any extra border guards.

Turkey has accused Greece of using live ammunition against migrants, killing one man, amid growing violence on the EU border.

"Nature doesn't bargain, and you cannot make deals with physics", activist Greta Thunberg, and a group of 30 youth environmentalists warned, after dubbing the unprecedented EU climate law 'a surrender' for ignoring a carbon budget.

The EU's reluctance to take in hundreds of thousands more refugees means the bloc's best option is to try to renew migration co-operation with Turkey - even if this leaves a bitter taste in its mouth.

Italy shut all schools and universities on Wednesday (4 March) in a bid to stop the deadly coronavirus from spreading, as Germany warned the outbreak had turned into a global pandemic.

Italy adopted on Wednesday new emergency measures to contain the spread of coronavirus, as the country registered over 3,000 cases and 107 deaths. All schools and universities will be closed until 15 March, Reuters reported. The minister for education, Lucia Azzolina, said that she wants to ensure "essential public service, albeit from a distance" to students. Italy, the most-affected country in the EU, followed by Germany, France and Spain.

German chancellor Angela Merkel told German conservative MPs on Tuesday she favoured the creation of safe zones in Idlib, northwest Syria, where Turkish forces and their rebel allies are facing off against the Syrian government backed by Russia, Reuters reports. The Dutch foreign minister went a step further and called in an official statement to "stop humanitarian catastrophe with a no-fly zone over Idlib".

After two rounds of voting in the state parliament, Bodo Ramelow (Linke/Gue) has been elected as the new minister-president of the eastern German state of Thüringen. The former minister-president, the liberal Thomas Kemmerich (FDP/Renew), was elected with the support of CDU, FDP and the far-right AfD, which created a political crisis in Germany and the resignation of CDU party leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Ramelow will lead now a minority government.

Ukraine's parliament approved on Wednesday Denys Shmygal as the new prime minister, following the resignation of his predecessor Oleksiy Goncharuk after six months in the job after he was caught out criticising the president by a leaked recording, AFP reported. Before the vote, president Volodymyr Zelensky said he hoped that "we will finally have a government for people". Shmygal was previously deputy prime minister and minister of regional development.