Euobserver.com

MEPs in the women's rights and gender-equality committee passed on Tuesday a report calling on member states to protect and enhance women's sexual and reproductive health and rights. They also said that the violations of these rights are "a form of violence" that hinders progress towards gender equality. A Polish court ruled last year that all almost abortions, including those for severe and irreversible foetal abnormalities, were unconstitutional.

At least nine people, mostly children, were killed after a lone teenage gunman opened fire at a school in the Russian city of Kazan, regional officials said, according to The Moscow Times. President Vladimir Putin has ordered an "urgent" tightening of gun controls in the wake of the shooting, which took place on the first day back to school after a 10-day holiday.

Stefan Yanev will lead a caretaker government in Bulgaria until new elections in July in an effort to quell a political crisis after month-long anti-government protests and infighting in a divided parliament. He will be backed by an expert cabinet to deal with the pandemic and organise the election. Former PM center-right Boyko Borissov's GERB party scored best in the April election but failed to produce a viable coalition government.

More than 100 Catholic priests in Germany have offered blessings to same-sex couples this week, defying the Vatican, Deutsche Welle writes. The church in Germany does not permit it, while the Vatican forbids it. Earlier this year the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome issued a sternly worded 'responsum' (reply) forbidding blessings for same-sex partnerships.

Laura Codruta Kovesi, the head of the new European Union-wide prosecutors office (EPPO), has faulted Slovenia. The country has yet to put forward candidate prosecutors for the new Luxembourg-based office. "Slovenia can't stop #EPPO but the manifest lack of sincere cooperation makes it more difficult for us to be efficient," said the EPPO, in a tweet.

A report of the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed on Tuesday that renewable sources of electricity, such as wind and solar, grew at their fastest rate in two decades last year - with renewable capacity set to continue expanding at a faster pace. "Wind and solar power are giving us more reasons to be optimistic about our climate goals as they break record-after-record," said IEA's executive director Fatih Birol.

The European Union has launched a second legal action against AstraZeneca - in a bid to oblige the company to deliver 90 million doses of its Covid-19 vaccine to EU member states by the end of June.

Disgraced former Fidesz MEP József Szájer is entitled to a transitional allowance. The European Parliament won't say if he took one. An appeal on a freedom of information request is delayed - while appeals are overseen by another Fidesz MEP.

Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo announced that from 9 June restaurants, cinemas, theatres and fitness centres will be able to open their doors again. Indoor and outdoor events will steadily be able to host more people.

EU policymakers are right to resist pressure to emulate the hard security stance and implicit anti-China bias of 'Quad' members: the US, Japan, Australia and India.

The pro-Kremlin affiliation of various radical paramilitary organisations is a significant cause for concern throughout central Europe.

Retaliatory airstrikes by Israeli warplanes in Gaza killed eight Hamas militants, according to the military, Deutsche Welle writes. The Palestinian authorities in Gaza said 20 people were killed, including nine children, and some 65 were wounded. Israel reacted to rockets fired by Hamas into Israel after Israeli authorities refused to withdraw police from the Temple Mount and Shaikh Jarrah neighbourhoods in the Holy City, amid protests over settlement-expansion.

EU countries are unlikely to expel any more Russian diplomats in solidarity over alleged Russian bomb attacks in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria in 2014, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Monday after meeting foreign ministers. "Everybody agrees on the need of not continuing the escalation. That we need to look for strong support, but at the same time to try not to increase the tensions," Borrell told press.

The EU will shortly issue a statement of support for pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong with or without Hungary, EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said Monday, after Budapest vetoed a draft communiqué. "If unanimity is not reached ... we will have to take a position which does not reflect unanimity," he said, adding: "We will continue working [on Hungary's objections] for one more week ... just one more week".

EU foreign ministers discussed Western Balkans enlargement for the first time in two years on Monday in what EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said was "quite strange" given the region's "geostrategic" importance. "We cannot go on holidays without having restarted the talks", on normalising Kosovo-Serbia relations, he said. Granting Kosovars visa-free EU travel and lifting Bulgaria's veto on North Macedonia accession talks were also his top priorities, Borrell said.

Russia has recruited allies in German chancellor Angela Merkel's "inner circle" and in Austrian intelligence services, exiled Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky has warned.

Serving members of the French military have fired a second salvo at Emmanuel Macron's government, in an open letter accusing it of "cowardice, deceit, perversion", just weeks after a first letter said the country was heading for "civil war", The Guardian reports. Like the first letter, it appears in the rightwing magazine Valeurs Actuelles. It was reportedly signed anonymously "by active military personnel," and accompanied by a petition.

Hundreds of thousands of European citizens could find themselves in limbo after 30 June, and left without documented legal rights to remain in the UK, if the British government does not clear a backlog of more than 320,000 applications for post-Brexit residency status, The Guardian writes. The settlement scheme is open to EU citizens who started living or studying in the country by 31 December 2020.

The Dutch government has allocated €2bn to develop a carbon capture and storage project under the North Sea, Reuters reported on Monday. The initiative, involving oil majors Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil, is expected to reduce emissions in the industrial area surrounding Europe's largest seaport by around 10 percent. It is set to be operational in 2024.The Netherlands is among the member states with the highest emissions-per-capita.

Germany on Monday said the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will now be made available to all adults, Reuters reported. Previously, older people were given priority access to this brand of vaccine. Last month, the EU drug regulator backed the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, after reviewing rare cases of bloc clotting in the US. Germans over 60 are expected to be vaccinated by late May or early June.