European Union

Germany wants to catch up in digitisation. On Wednesday (22 August), the new Digital Council meeting was meant to address some vital issues in its first sitting but many important questions remained unanswered. EURACTIV Germany reports.

Consumer organisation Foodwatch has called on German Minister of Food and Agriculture Julia Klöckner to give up her opposition to a Nutri-Score food labelling scheme, after Belgium announced this week it will introduce such a label, following similar moves from the UK and France.

"The European Union ... operates on the basis of rules, not threats," the commission said, after Italy warned it would not pay into the EU budget if other states did not take migrants.

The Commission said on Friday (24 August) it will not bow to threats such as those made by an Italian deputy prime minister, who warned his country could stop paying into the EU budget unless other member states agreed to take in migrants held on a coastguard ship in Sicily.

The British government has started to prepare the population and local businesses for a hard Brexit without a deal with the EU. In 25 documents it describes the consequences of such a move for food and medicine supplies, nuclear security, air traffic and other areas. Is London resorting to scare tactics to force the EU to make concessions?

Many states in Europe are experiencing a shift to the right, while leftist and social democratic parties have increasingly lost votes in recent years. In Germany Sahra Wagenknecht, group leader of The Left party in the German Bundestag, has now founded a new leftist collective movement. Europe's commentators discuss her chances of success and the problems leftist movements face today.

Pope Francis will travel to Ireland on the weekend. Against the backdrop of a new scandal over years of hushed-up cases of sexual abuse in the US state of Pennsylvania and an open letter in which the pope asks for forgiveness for the errors of the Church, this will not be an easy visit. While some journalists hear the death knell for Irish Catholicism, others are irritated by the anti-Church discourse in Ireland.

On 24 August 1991 the parliament of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic declared its separation from the USSR and Ukraine's independence. Kiev is marking the anniversary with a big military parade and international guests such as US presidential advisor John Bolton. Just under five years after the start of the Ukraine war commentators paint a grim picture of the country.