Eurotopics.net

Following the resignation of Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas, who is to become the EU's new foreign policy chief, the new cabinet under Kallas' successor Kristen Michal convened for the first time in Tallinn this week. One of the first decisions taken was to increase the income and sales tax. The national media are less than enthusiastic.

US Vice President Harris has come across as resolute in her first appearances since Biden's withdrawal from the presidential campaign. A majority of Democratic delegates are apparently set to back her bid to become the Democratic presidential candidate at the party's National Convention in August. Europe's press follows this turn of events with hope and scepticism.

Europe's most popular holiday destinations are increasingly plagued by hypertourism: between January and April 2024 the number of international flights to Greece increased by 12.3 percent, while the Balearic Islands saw a 9.1 percent increase in tourists in 2023 compared to the previous year. Mass protests have been staged in Tenerife and Mallorca this year over high rents, and Venice is now charging an entry fee. What can be done?

Five members of the Just Stop Oil group have received four- and five-year prison sentences from a London court for their involvement in organising protests which blocked the M25 motorway in 2022. The judge justified this unusually harsh punishment saying that although their cause was just the activists had "crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic". The UN and Greenpeace have criticised the sentences.

A faulty update for the security software CrowdStrike Falcon led to an immense and ongoing international IT outage last Friday. According to initial estimates from Microsoft, around 8.5 million computers crashed worldwide. Thousands of flights were cancelled, banking operations were blocked and hospitals had to postpone surgical interventions. The exact cause is still under investigation but commentators call for consequences.