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In today's edition of The Capitals, find out more about the Czech Republic amending its gun laws, Ireland preparing its ICU's for a new surge in COVID-19 cases, and so much more.

The interior ministers of Serbia and Spain, Aleksandar Vulin and Fernando Grande-Marlaska Gomes, met in Madrid on Thursday to discuss the development of cooperation, especially in training, the exchange of information and suppression of cyber-crime, while Vulin also spoke about...

Croatian Finance Minister Zdravko Marić has said that: “Regarding the budget, I think we can be relatively satisfied at the moment. Naturally, with great caution. We should do everything to prevent the situation from becoming complex in some way.” Marić...

Future American investments in Poland could be jeopardised if Warsaw does not renew the licence of 24-hour news channel TVN24, US State Department Counselor Derek Chollet said on Thursday, referring to potential new Polish laws against its ownership by American media...

Bulgaria’s caretaker government plans to increase all pensions from 1 October this year, announced Finance Minister Asen Vassilev, adding that if parliament supports his proposals, no pensioners in Bulgaria will be living below the poverty line by autumn. Currently, nearly...

Another Western army is leaving a fragile, landlocked region. But whereas the United States has pulled its troops out of one country, Afghanistan, France is walking away from five, argues Faisal Al Yafai

Russia and China failed on Thursday in a bid to get the U.N. Security Council to strip some powers from an international envoy overseeing implementation of a 1995 Bosnia peace accord and shut down the envoy’s office in one year....

Slovakia’s car dealership market is worried that sellers from Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, countries which import tens of thousands of cars to Slovakia each year, could be selling cars damaged by the floods, the TASR news agency reported. After the floods,...

The Czech Senate this week approved the right to own weapons to defend oneself and others under legal conditions to be embedded in the constitution. This comes as a reaction to the EU’s tendency to regulate firearms acquisition and possession....

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has said that people pushing anti-vaccine messages are spreading a deadly appeal. “The appeal not to get vaccinated is an appeal to die, basically. You don’t get vaccinated, you get sick, you die. Or you...

The conservative Greek government (New Democracy, EPP) has opened the door to obligatory vaccination for all, by allowing the health minister to expand the categories of professions in which compulsory vaccination may be imposed. The new powers granted to health...

The department of health is preparing for a surge in ICU capacity in hospitals because of the “roaring” growth in COVID-19 cases, according to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly, the Irish Times reports. Donnelly compared the possible fatality rates to those in the...

After Austria’s Greens pushed a re-evaluation of the CO2 intensity of various road construction projects through parliament, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has criticised the party’s stance on climate protection. Climate protection should not be “a way back to the stone age,”...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for Germany’s citizens to get vaccinated in a bid to halt the spread of the Delta variant on Thursday, in what is likely to be her last press conference as chancellor before she steps down...

Manfred Weber, the conservative EPP leader in the European Parliament, has described as “important” an agreement struck between Germany and the US over Nord Stream 2 as it sends a signal to the Russian leadership not to abuse the controversial pipeline...

Though vast majority of EU countries welcome deeper integration with Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, their "Associated Trio" initiative finds more support within Eastern and Central Europe, while the Commission and Western member states remain hesitant to adopt the term.

Plug-in hybrids and electric cars have increased in popularity in France, rising from 2.5% of all vehicles sold in 2019 to 7.5% today. The increase in sales is partly linked to the electric bonuses granted under the country's recovery plan, dubbed France Relance. EURACTIV France reports.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday (22 July) insisted that the EU would not reopen the controversial Northern Ireland protocol, a key part of the Brexit agreement with the UK, just a day after Boris Johnson’s published a paper setting out its plans to renegotiate it.

Sofia hosts a summit of the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) on Thursday and Friday (8-9 July) at a very inconvenient time – just before the snap general elections to be held in Bulgaria on Sunday. It’s not great when geopolitics interferes with politics.

The European Central Bank said on Thursday (8 July) that it would further incorporate climate change considerations into its monetary policy, including on disclosure, risk assessment, and decisions on collateral and corporate sector asset purchases.