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The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) elected on Wednesday a socialist member of the Azores regional parliament, Vasco Alves Cordeiro, as their new president for the next two-and-a-half years years. Former president Apostolos Tzitzikostas, governor of Central Macedonia in Greece, was elected as the first vice-president. Cordeiro, who has been a CoR member since 2013, is the first Portuguese president of the committee.

Gas is flowing again from Spain towards Morocco via the Maghreb-Europe Gas pipeline (MEG), Reuters reported on Wednesday. Gas flows through the pipeline were halted by Algeria last November, after Spain favoured the Moroccan plan to offer autonomy to Western Sahara. In April, Algeria warned Spain not to re-export Algerian gas supplies to Rabat, after Madrid announced plans to reverse the gas flow of the MEG pipeline.

Germany's BioNTech, Pfizer's partner in Covid-19 vaccines, said the two companies would start tests on humans later this year of next-generation shots that protect against a wide variety of coronaviruses, Reuters reported. The shots are designed to primarily protect against severe disease if variants of the virus become more dangerous, and pan-coronavirus shots that protect against the broader family of viruses and its mutations.

Britain on Wednesday announced sanctions against oligarch Vladimir Potanin, described by London as Russia's second-richest man and who has been buying assets from firms exiting Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, Reuters reported. Potanin was included in the latest wave of sanctions by the UK. Potanin's net worth depends on the value of his 36-percent stake in Nornickel, the world's largest producer of palladium and refined nickel.

The European Commission has been unable to find the text messages exchanged between president Ursula von der Leyen and the boss of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

Hungary on Tuesday passed a decree allowing the government to take over the supervision of vital energy firms plus the gas pipeline network operator FGSZ in an emergency, Reuters reported. It covers key firms in the power, gas and oil industries, and mining. Hungary is about 85-percent reliant on Russian gas imports and 65-percent reliant on Russian crude oil imports, making it highly exposed to a possible energy crisis.

German infighting and divisions between Nordic EU members and the rest over the Social Climate Fund nearly scuppered a crucial set of climate laws.

The French EU presidency is set to announce next week how many asylum seekers will be relocated under a temporary solidarity proposal, billed as a major breakthrough.

Bulgaria has expelled 70 Russian diplomats on grounds of espionage, halving its personnel in the country at a stroke. "This is not an act of aggression towards the Russian people," said Bulgarian prime minister Kiril Petkov on Tuesday, Reuters reports. "When foreign governments are trying to meddle in our internal affairs, we have institutions that will respond," he said. "Their diplomatic role has been more like a cover," he added.

Turkey has agreed to let Finland and Sweden join Nato after a deal on Kurdish separatists and arms exports.

Bulgaria's target date for joining the eurozone, 1 January 2024, seems elusive. The collapse of Kiril Petkov's government, likely fresh elections, with populists trying to score cheap points against the 'diktat of the eurocrats', might well delay accession.

We realise that we are living in one of those key moments in history, with events unfolding exactly the way Swiss art historian Jacob Burckhardt describes them: a sudden crisis, rushing everything into overdrive.

The European Parliament approved last week a non-binding resolution on illegal logging, calling to extend the EU public prosecutor's mandate to also cover environmental crime. The lead MEP on the file has called for urgent implementation.

The aim of the oil-price cap is to ramp up pressure on Moscow by linking insurance and the shipping of oil to a price ceiling.

The European Commission lacks some essential data tools for assessing the implementation and design of its Common Agriculture Policy (CAP), EU auditors said in a Tuesday report. "The commission should do more to tap the potential of big data for analysing the CAP," said lead auditor Joëlle Elvinger. The CAP accounts for over a third of the budget, while agriculture is responsible for about 10 percent of EU emissions.

Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon has proposed 19 October 2023 for another referendum on independence. Sturgeon said she would be writing to UK prime minister Boris Johnson to ask for formal consent for the vote. She said she would press on with her plan if this was not granted, BBC reported. In the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, the "no" side won, with 55-percent of the vote.

Climate groups criticised G7 leaders for "backsliding" on climate goals, after they watered-down pledges to halt fossil fuel investment at their Bavarian summit. The G7 communique said investment in liquefied natural gas was a "necessary response to the current crisis". But Laurie van der Burg, campaigner at Oil Change International, a US-based campaign group, said "we cannot afford this kind of backsliding. There are lives on the line."

Ukraine's ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, on Tuesday urged German MEPs to reject the EU taxonomy, including gas and nuclear as "transitional" technologies in guidelines for sustainable finance. "If the European Union improves the conditions for investments in gas infrastructure, Russia will benefit from this," he said, in a letter published by German media RND. Melnyk said the Russian energy minister has already reacted "happily" to the taxonomy proposals.

EU states received 648,000 requests for asylum in 2021, with Syrians (117,000) and Afghans (102,000) the largest segments, the bloc's asylum agency said Tuesday. The figure was a third higher than 2020. Nearly one-third were minors. The bloc gave out 185,000 positive asylum decisions, with Eritreans the most likely to receive aid (81-percent success rate). This year's figures will be distorted due to the arrival of millions of Ukrainians.

France's state broadcasters protested against president Emmanuel Macron's plan to abolish the TV licence fee and fund public media broadcasters through general taxation, AFP reported, and media unions called a one-day strike for 28 June. The €138 yearly charge, paid by 23 million households owning a television, brings in €3bn annually. In a joint statement, journalists' unions criticised the plans, saying they "threaten the very existence of public broadcasting".