Euobserver.com

The European Commission proposed on Wednesday €585m to support refugees plus host communities in response to the Syria crisis. Of that, €485m EU humanitarian funding will be directed to Turkey in 2020, while €100m will go to Jordan and Lebanon. "As the coronavirus threatens the most vulnerable, we cannot stop our lifesaving assistance," said the commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarčič.

Germany will lift its travel ban for EU member states, the UK, Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland from 15 June as long as there are no entry bans or large-scale lockdowns in those countries, foreign minister Heiko Maas said. He said the move is not an invitation to travel, and Germans would be urged not to go to Britain where a 14-day quarantine is in place.

Sweden's chief epidemiologist, who designed the country's loose lockdown policy, acknowledged that the country has had too many Covid-19 deaths and should have done more to curb the virus' spread. Anders Tegnell told Swedish Radio on Wednesday that there was "a potential for improvement in what we have done". Tegnell had earlier criticised other countries' tough measures. Sweden's death-rate-per-capita is among the highest in the world.

The EU Commission decided on Wednesday to classify the new coronavirus as a mid-level threat to workers, a move that allows employers to apply less stringent safety measures in the workplace than if the virus was deemed a high risk, Reuters reported. The decision will impact on companies' costs in fully restarting business activity and workers' safety. The commission said it consulted with scientists and the World Health Organisation.

Bankers ought to give up their bonuses for the next 12 months if they wanted their national governments to pour in public money to soothe the effects of the pandemic slowdown, the Croatian EU presidency has suggested in a paper dated 2 June and seen by Reuters. The ban could be even "longer if such is the duration of the serious economic disturbance determined by the" European Commission, it said.

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell has said US president Donald Trump lacked the authority to unilaterally re-invite Russia to the G7 group of powerful states. "The prerogative of the G7 chair, in this case the United States ... is to issue guest invitations ... [that] reflect the host priorities," he said. "Changing membership or changing the format on a permanent basis is not the prerogative of the G7 chair."

People of Bangladeshi origin had twice the death rate from Covid-19 compared to white British nationals, according to a new study by Public Health England, a government offshoot. People of Chinese, Indian, Pakistani and other Asian, Caribbean, or African origins had 10-50% higher rates. Some demographics were also more prone to other health conditions, such as obesity or heart disease, weakening immune systems. Poor living conditions also made a difference.

UK prime minister Boris Johnson said he wants to change the British visa system by giving a right to live and work in the UK to any of the nearly 3 million Hong Kong citizens eligible for a British National Overseas passport, the Guardian writes. The offer would only come into play if China presses ahead with new security laws that strip Hong Kong of its traditional freedoms.

If you want to make money outside the law, forget guns, drugs, alcohol or cigarettes. Trade in illegal pesticides combines high profits with lower risks.

New rules in Greece single out NGOs that work with refugees and asylum, in what the Athens government say is a bid to create greater transparency. But refugee groups say the rules are discriminatory and follow an anti-NGO pattern.

The European Commission said on Tuesday that the updated budget for the Common Agrculture Policy will make farms "green, digital and more resilient". Meanwhile, countries like France and Spain welcomed the commission proposal as a step in the right direction.

The EU's top diplomat said the death of a black American in policy custody was an "abuse of power", while a top liberal MEP on data privacy said the US government actions raise questions on EU-US cooperation.

Before World War Two, Christian parties' commitment to democracy was far from unequivocal. But after the war, Christian Democratic parties adopted a political formula that brought them political domination in much of western Europe for two decades.

Remarkably, no national or EU leader has yet publicly condemned the aggressive and open dissemination of violent hate speech in Hungary's capital. Only Budapest's mayor Gergely Karácsony has raised his voice in protest.

French citizens were able to download the contact-tracing 'StopCovid app' on their devices from Tuesday despite an ongoing debate over privacy concerns, France24 reported. The app was made available on the same day citizens were allowed to go to restaurants, cafés, parks and museums. The government said that the app, which is based on a centralised system, does not track the user's location and deletes their data after two weeks.

Less than a week after Russia's president Vladimir Putin said the coronavirus crisis had peaked, he has announced a referendum on constitutional reforms for 1 July, allowing him to serve more Kremlin terms, the Moscow Times writes. Russia is still recording thousands of new cases of Covid-19 daily. Putin also reschedule a Red Square military parade, postponed from May 9, to June 24 - a week before the vote.

The EU Commission has proposed creating its own reserve of crisis-response capacities, directly purchasing them and financing their costs, as it seeks to step up equipment stockpiles to deal with crises affecting a large number or all member states. It proposes to spend €2bn over the next seven years to create strategic reserves to cover health emergencies, forest-fire outbreaks, chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear incidents or other emergencies.

The European Commission has banned entry flights from Armenia-based airlines because they do not meet international safety standards. The commission said the decision was based on the "unanimous opinion delivered by the Air Safety Committee." The move follows an update to the commission's EU Air Safety List, which lists 96 airlines banned from EU skies.

President Donald Trump threatened to deploy the US military to end "riots and lawlessness" across the country after days of violent outbursts following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police, Bloomberg reports. Trump on Monday night called on governors and mayors to "dominate the streets" and announced that he was sending thousands of heavily armed military personnel into the nation's capital.

Russia, which was kicked out of the G8 group of powerful countries over its invasion of Ukraine, should be reinvited to future talks of what was now called the G7 US president Donald Trump has said. Australia, India, and South Korea should also come, he said Saturday. "I don't feel that as a G7 it properly represents what's going on in the world," he said.