Eurotopics.net

Germany elects a new parliament as well as Angela Merkel's successor on Sunday. The latest polls put the SPD under chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz in the lead with 25 percent, followed by the CDU/CSU with 22 percent and the Greens with 16 percent. As important as the election may be for Europe, most commentators don't believe it will change much in Germany's politics.

The delivery service efood wanted to demote 115 delivery workers in Greece from fixed employee to freelancer status - or dismiss them altogether. Their protests met with a huge wave of social support: thousands of customers have uninstalled the company's app in recent weeks to exert pressure on the company. Now efood has announced plans to hire more than 2,000 delivery workers on permanent contracts. The media are thrilled.

Lithuania and China are at loggerheads after the Baltic state gave Taiwan permission to set up a diplomatic mission called the Taiwanese Representative Office in its capital in August. China, which rejects any official use of the name "Taiwan" and considers the island part of its own territory, has reacted by imposing economic sanctions and withdrawing its ambassador. Who will stand by Lithuania?

Since the semester began at Turkish universities in mid-September, students across the country have been sleeping in parks to protest the lack of dormitory accommodation and the inflated rent prices for that which is available. The national press examines the roots of the problem, which has now come to a head but has existed for many years.

The European Court of Justice has ordered Poland to pay 500,000 euros per day in fines as long as it continues to mine lignite in Turów. The open-pit mine is located in the Polish-Czech-German border triangle and threatens to lower the groundwater level in the entire area. After the Czech Republic lodged a complaint, the European Court of Justice ordered an immediate halt to the extraction operations in May. What went wrong?