Euractiv.com

All eyes this week are on the NATO summit taking place in Washington, DC, to mark the military alliance’s 75th anniversary with a collective message about unity.

"It can happen that after the tariffs this process [of localisation] is accelerating," Hungarian Minister for National Economy, Márton Nagy, said following an informal meeting of EU competitiveness ministers in Budapest on Tuesday (9 July). 

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday (9 July) that the death of innocent children was painful and terrifying, a day after a lethal strike on a children's hospital in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

A court in Moscow on Tuesday (9 July) ordered Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, arrested in absentia for two months.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Tuesday (9 July) said he would fulfil a campaign commitment to increase UK defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, but underlined he would only do so when the country could afford it and after a review of defence strategy.

The EU's social democrats have set out their key demands for von der Leyen and the next Commission mandate. Banning petrol cars, linking EU funds to rule of law, and own resources on defence, all feature prominently.

The Labour Party's victory in the UK general election has opened up the prospect of harmonisation and collaboration with the EU, according to Europe's fishing industry, although concerned about promises concerning bans in marine protected areas.

Long waiting lists for scheduled operations at Hungarian hospitals are at the centre of a fierce political debate. Seven thousand patients were added to the lists in just one year, delays can take up to six years.

A staunch advocate for the European Health Union, Belgium's Hilde Vautmans begins her third MEP mandate with a renewed focus on healthcare equal access, preventive care and digitisation.

Warsaw has sided with the European Commission on the length of the Regulatory Data Protection (RDP) period in the EU Pharma Package. Poland advocates that the incentives scheme should focus on market protection and not last more than a year.

The new Labour government takes office with an ambitious new approach to health, but there are questions over how these plans will be funded.

New Czech regulation, which took effect on 1 July, allows gay men to donate blood, a practice previously prohibited.

Once again, the German government has used accounting tricks to reconcile its spending wishes with the rules of its constitutional ‘debt brake’ – but unlike the tricks faulted by the country’s Constitutional Court last year, this time experts say it's waterproof.

The President of the Rassemblement National (RN), Jordan Bardella, already saw himself as Prime Minister, but he was elected to lead the Patriotes pour l'Europe group in the European Parliament on Monday 8 July, remaining for the time being trapped behind a watertight "cordon sanitaire".

The chair of the European Parliament's Agriculture and Rural Development Committee (AGRI) will go to the Conservatives, the current European People’s Party (EPP) coordinator for agriculture Herbert Dorfmann, told Euractiv, as they aim for the post of Commissioner for Agriculture.

Spain's Court of Auditors imposed on Tuesday (9 July) two sanctions on the far-right VOX party, the third force in the Spanish parliament, for what it said were two serious violations of Spanish law on party financing.

The Austrian energy minister launched a task force of independent experts to examine the country’s long-term gas contract with Russia’s Gazprom, on Tuesday (9 July), including investigating the level of political involvement in the 2018 signing.

The left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) coalition, the relative winner of France’s snap legislative elections, is set to lead negotiations on a future coalition government but internal disagreements over a few fundamental EU files could test the alliance’s survival.

The UK's new centre-left government has pledged to champion British farming and prioritise food security, but questions linger over Labour’s plans for the country's post-Brexit farming policies.

The pro-EU forces of the European Parliament have agreed to block any member of the newly established far-right “Patriots for Europe” group from getting any parliamentary committee, two EU Parliament sources confirmed to Euractiv.