Eurotopics.net

After his appearance at the Munich Security Conference, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio paid visits to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán spoke of a "golden age" in Hungarian-American relations, and Rubio assured him of the US government's support in the upcoming election, saying: "Your success is also our success."

Russian telecommunications authority Roskomnadzor has throttled data streams and further tightened restrictions on the country's most popular messaging service Telegram, causing major disruptions. Russian soldiers have protested the crackdown as they also use the service for coordinating military actions on the front lines. What is behind the move?

Several European countries which had been declared "measles-free" by the World Health Organisation (WHO), including Spain, the UK and Austria, have recently lost that status following major outbreaks in the last year. According to the WHO and UNICEF, a vaccination rate of 95 percent is needed to prevent the virus from spreading. Commentators in several countries look at vaccination rates and scepticism.

This year's Munich Security Conference was dominated by the tense transatlantic relations. To what extent can Europe count on the US as a Nato partner in the Trump era? Is the US still an ally, or is it now an adversary? Can the continent guarantee its own security? In the search for answers, all eyes were on US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The US government has revoked the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding issued by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2009. The ruling formed the basis for almost all climate protection regulations since then, but now cars with higher emissions can be manufactured once more. Trump has called his decision the 'largest deregulatory action' in US history.