European Union

A run-off election this Saturday will decide who becomes Slovakia's new head of state. The liberal former foreign minister Ivan Korčok faces off against leftist parliamentary speaker Peter Pellegrini, who belongs to the camp of the controversial Prime Minister Robert Fico's government. Korčok won the first round with a lead of five and a half percentage points.

Over 12,000 young people and adults were baptised by the Catholic Church in France on the Easter weekend - an increase of 31 percent compared to the previous year. Commentators analyse the impact of the wave of new members on the Church as an institution.

The European Commission played down fears that the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC) could succumb to a Donald Trump presidency as pressure on high-level officials from both sides increased ahead of their meeting in Leuven, Belgium, on Thursday (4 April).

With two months until June’s EU election, the Parliament has gone into alert mode as pressure piles up to respond to a new cash-for-influence scandal rocking the institution, with new reforms back on the table. 

Veteran European ombudsman Emily O'Reilly has cautioned about the risks of tobacco lobbying's influence on the European Commission.

Portuguese Justice Minister Rita Júdice has been tasked with drawing up a package of anti-corruption measures requiring her to hold talks with all parties, including members of parliament, justice sector workers and civil society, the government decided on Wednesday. 

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's Conservative Party is set for a heavy defeat at a national election expected this year, according to a seat projection published on Wednesday (3 April) which showed the opposition Labour Party winning more than 400 seats.

Finland's president on Wednesday (3 April) signed a 10-year security deal with Ukraine in Kyiv where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he believed Russia planned to mobilise 300,000 new troops for its war by June.

The G7 price cap on Russian oil shipments is cutting the revenue that Moscow has available to support its invasion of Ukraine, and the mechanism's effectiveness is helped by the recent actions of Indian refiners, US officials will say.

The European Union condemned on Wednesday (3 April) the attack on an Iranian diplomatic installation in Damascus on 1 April, as well as the reported casualties.

In today's edition of the Capitals, find out more about Polish farmers being dissatisfied after occupying the Agriculture Ministry, Romania possibly set to soon deploy troops to protect citizens abroad, and so much more.