Euobserver.com

Russia has reassured the EU that its anti-coronavirus vaccines have not caused a single death, following EUobserver's report on potential side-effects.

Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu has contradicted claims by EU Council president Charles Michel that Turkey was to blame for a recent fiasco, which saw the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, given a second-class seat in a mini-summit in Ankara. "The protocol ... met the demands of the EU side. In other words, the seating arrangement was designed to meet their demands and suggestions," Çavuşoğlu said on Thursday.

French president Emmanuel Macron has pledged to close the École nationale d'administration (ENA), an elite French academy, which admits fewer than 100 students a year, who are fast-tracked into top civil service posts, and which educated four French presidents, including Macron. The move comes in response to popular anger against social inequality ahead of next year's elections. The ENA closure marked a "profound revolution in terms of recruitment", Macron said.

The number of Covid-19 infections in the UK dropped by 60 percent in March due to the lockdown restrictions and vaccination, a study found. Imperial Collage London researchers said "infections may have resulted in fewer hospitalisations and deaths since the starts of the widespread vaccination". But they warned on Thursday that the UK's current strategy out of the lockdown could lead to 15,700 deaths in the UK by June 2022.

The pandemic has swung the pendulum of political consensus away from the populists, eroding their approval ratings ahead of key parliamentary elections in 2021 and 2022.

US president Joe Biden, who has Irish roots, has called for "calm" in Northern Ireland, following sectarian riots over post-Brexit border arrangements. "We're concerned by the violence in Northern Ireland and we join the British, Irish, and Northern Irish leaders in calls for calm," the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said. "We welcome the provisions in ... the Northern Ireland protocol," she added, referring to the Brexit border deal.

Italian prime minister Mario Draghi on Thursday called Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan a "dictator", drawing condemnation from Ankara. EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and European Council president Charles Michel met Erdoğan Tuesday, but the Commission chief was left with no seat, causing a stir. Draghi said "with these, let's call them what they are - dictators ... one nonetheless has to coordinate, one has to be frank".

Russia urged Slovakia on Thursday to return thousands of doses of the Sputnik V vaccine against Covid-19, after Bratislava's drug agency said the jab batches it had received were different from those being reviewed by the EU medicine agency, Reuters reported. Slovakia bought 200,000 doses of Sputnik V last month. However, Slovakia's drug agency has not been able to assess the jab, due to gaps in data provided by Moscow.

Four people recently died after taking Russia's Sputnik V anti-corona jab in previously unreported cases, which are being taken "seriously" by the EU regulator, the European Medicines Agency.

The number of people in France being treated at intensive care units (ICU) for Covid-19 is the highest in almost a year. The French health ministry on Tuesday said the number of people in ICU increased by 193 over 24 hours to 5,626 - a peak since 20 April, 2020.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky says Nato should speed up his country's path toward membership, arguing that there is no other way to prevent further conflict in the eastern Donbass region, Deutsche Welle reports. Zelensky said his government hoped to be invited this year to join a Nato Membership Action Plan (MAP). "Nato is the only way to end the war in Donbass," he said.

The European institutions were hit by a cyber attack last week, reports Bloomberg. A European Commission spokesperson told the media outlet that it was too early to tell the origins of the attack. "Thus far, no major information breach was detected," said the spokesperson.

European Council president Charles Michel got top diplomatic seating alongside Turkey's president, leaving European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen sitting on the couch during a meeting in Ankara on Tuesday. Seating arrangements in diplomatic arenas are generally symbolic, suggesting possible power plays.

Australia has said it will ask the EU to release more than 3.1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine - testing Brussels claim it is not blocking shipments, as the country struggles to vaccinate its population, Reuters writes. The EU denied blocking vaccine shipments to Australia, saying it was not responsible for AstraZeneca's failure to uphold commitments to other countries.

The European Commission is working on a new proposal on financing Syrian refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. "I am very much committed to ensuring the continuity of European funding in this area ," said European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday. "EU funding should in the future increasingly provide better opportunities for refugees to earn their livelihoods," she added.

In a Viennese hotel, officials from Britain, France and Germany, will act as intermediaries between Iran and the US, shuttling between both delegations. Russia and China, the other parties to the 2015 nuclear pact, are also attending, Reuters reports. Tehran has repeatedly rebuffed "direct and indirect negotiations" while Washington said on Monday it expected the talks to be difficult. Neither side expected any early breakthrough.

Israel's president, Reuven Rivlin, has nominated current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to form a government after the latest inconclusive election, but voiced doubt that any lawmaker could forge a parliamentary majority, The Guardian writes. The 23 March election, Israel's fourth in under two years, did not produce a clear path for any candidate to form a coalition capable of commanding a majority in the 120-member parliament.

On Tuesday Belgium launched a new website, QVAX, where people who are not yet vaccinated or have no appointment to be vaccinated, could register in case 'spare' appointments come up. Brussels will start it's own system mid-April.

The European Parliament has launched an internal probe into the conduct of Czech MEP Jan Zahradil over his dealings with China and a so-called 'friendship group'.

In Germany, there is commotion about a new book in which two journalists describe meetings held during the corona crisis between federal chancellor Angela Merkel, and the 16 prime ministers of its federal constituent states.