European Union

Päivi Sillanaukee, Permanent Secretary of the social affairs and health ministry, told the nation on Monday evening (23 March) on TV that the storage of the National Emergency Supply Agency was now open and its goods are being distributed, calling...

Lawmakers in the European Parliament have called on the European Commission to prepare a strategy anticipating the difficulties that might arise in implementing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Europe’s farming sector could face a dramatic shortfall in workers as a consequence of the border restrictions put in place to stem the spread of novel coronavirus, which could lead to “devastating” impacts, according to Pekka Pesonen, secretary-general or farmers association COPA-COGECA. 

The image of three-year-old Alan Kurdi dead on the shore in 2015 sticks in our memory as a collective failure. Five years later, it looks like we haven’t done much to improve the situation of thousands of migrants who are either still trying to escape war or wait on asylum-seeker centres already on European soil, writes Iratxe García Pérez.

While European carmakers cry for help, environmentalists say public money aimed at helping the automotive industry recover from the COVID-19 crisis must be future-proof and geared towards green technologies.

Two surgeons from the Hospital Saint-Pierre (ULB) in Brussels published a carte blanche to the attention of Belgian Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès over the weekend, sounding the alarm over the lack of medical and protective equipment to fight against the coronavirus. Wilmes responded with a letter of her own on Tuesday (24 March).

In this Open Letter to the President of the EU Commission, media stakeholders and experts, in a personal capacity, along with MEPs and former MEPs ask for the Commission to support trust in public action, and to help sustain the media in this testing time.

Governments and financial institutions are under growing pressure to make economic bailouts designed to counter the coronavirus pandemic dependent on climate action in the longer term. EURACTIV's media partner Climate Home News reports.

Countries of the euro area are close to an agreement to use the European Stability Mechanism to provide credit lines of up to 2% of their GDP to tackle the consequences of the coronavirus COVID-19.

In Europe's biggest asylum seeker camp of Moria, on the Greek island of Lesbos, authorities are trying to keep residents apart from a population with at least three coronavirus cases.

The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes an unprecedented challenge for the whole world. It requires urgent, decisive, and comprehensive action on the part of the EU institutions and at the national, regional and local levels, as well as cooperation with our global partners. We will do everything...

The Indian government said on Wednesday (25 March) that it is banning the export of hydroxychloroquine and formulations made from the medication, as experts test the efficacy of the drug in helping treat patients infected with COVID-19.

The EU's €37bn virus crisis fund and its long-term budget should be used to help cut CO2 emissions in line with the EU's so-called Green Deal objectives, Diederik Samsom, the head of cabinet of European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans told press on Tuesday. "We should ... align everything that we have, including the MFF [budget] into one objective, which is to make the Green Deal happen," Samsom said, Bloomberg reports.

The US could become the new centre of the global coronavirus pandemic, according to the World Health Organisation, which said case numbers were rising quickly there even as US president Donald Trump talked of reopening the country for business, the Guardian reports. "We are now seeing a very large acceleration in cases in the US. So it does have that potential," said Margaret Harris, a WHO spokeswoman.

Eurozone finance ministers favoured opening the purse strings of the European Stability Mechanism, an anti-financial crisis fund, instead of issuing joint bonds as a way of soothing the economic fallout of the pandemic. But they did not agree either way in a two-hour videoconference on Tuesday, with the Netherlands and Germany opposed to bonds. "We still need more work," Mário Centeno, the EU's eurozone group chairman said.

For 2020, hand sanitisers and disinfectants are what new iPhones and electric vehicles were for 2019. So, who are the Apples and Teslas of ethyl alcohol, asks Zoltán Szabó and explains how a climate solution is being turned into health assistance.

Cybercrime and cyberattacks have increased due to the coronavirus outbreak. As a result, the World Health Organization, hospitals and research centres are being targeted by organised cybercriminals - searching for information, intelligence, and systems access.

As Li Wenliang, the deceased Chinese doctor who was reprimanded for reporting on the virus, said: "There should be more openness and transparency".

The European Parliament's internal decision making-body, the Bureau, is set to decide on whether MEPs should continue to receive a daily €323 lump sum despite working from home.

Legal limitations means the European Commission's role when it comes to tackling the Covid-19 pandemic is broadly limited to coordination and support. It is up to member states to work together.